sparten

Sir,
How exactly do you justify the existence of Army Groups within theater? The use in WWII is especially confusing, the main combatants all had different uses for them.

The Germans (especially in Russia) seemed to think them as fighting different wars, during Barbarossa IIRC Army Group North was responsible for the Baltic, with Army Group Center to go to Moscow, and Army Group South to go on to the Ukraine and Crimea.

The Allies in the Med seemed to use the concept of Army Groups as simply a unified command for the allied armies, but in ETO the various Army Groups seemed to be merely oversized armies with a different name.

The Soviets used their Army Groups as independent commands, I believe they had their own air contigents. This is the only justification I have ever seen for their use.

It cannot be merely to control a large force, would say Ike have not been able to control all the armies under his command, without adding a second layer of command? There were countless examples of generals controlling multiple armies in history, WWI, Sherman Atlanta Campaign, etc.
After all a regt is still one if it has three comapanys, or eight.

__________________
"Any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality." ~ George William Russell

Officer of Engineers

You're asking a way lowly me to answer that?

Seriously, the easiest answer is the big picture. Just how big of a picture do you have to have before it becomes too big? A private only needs to worry about the guy shooting at him. He doesn't have to worry about the tank 20 miles down the road. During WWII, the level of action shrunk from even from the War of 1812. The Brits took Washington DC with less than 10th of the men committed to Stalingrad. So, say for the Red Army, a division would only have a very narrow focus and could not take on the bigger picture.

Now, this being said, the Soviets (and the Chinese) had a very different command style and culture than ours, one borned out of necessity by Stalin's purges. Alot of good officers were lost and the few that were left had to be put into place where they are of maximum use, ie the bigger the picture they control, the better.

Ours is a different circumstance. We had the good fortune of keeping our officers and even spreading them out to the Dominions, Colonies, and British India. So, we tended to keep the control at the division and corps level but more at the regiment level.

The US, however, was an officer factory.

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Chimo

sparten

Sir,
Take ETO for example. Ike used to communicate directly with Army level commanders often bypassing the "group" commander. What is the prupose of having them then?

Officer of Engineers

Ok, that's a different circumstance than the Soviets or even the Wehrmacht.

Straight answer. Someone to blame when things go wrong. The Group Commander should have been in charge but wasn't. A pretty good scape goat if you ask me.

However, it certainly did not start out that way. The Group Commanders had a hell of alot to do in the beginning, especially during the Normandy Invasions. It was only when things got worked out and communications increased that their roles started to be reduced.

gunnut

I have a more fundamental question. How big is an army group? Does the hierarchy go from division, corp, army, and then army group? How many men in an army group?

Also, I remember watching the History Channel talking about the Soviet army in WW2 a few weeks back. The show said Stalin controlled his generals by keeping them competing and seperate from each other. Zhukov had an army group and there was this other guy with another. He would put a dividing line between their army groups and ask them to reach Berlin as fast as they can.

Also, the show mentioned the Soviets called their army groups "fronts." There was the Ukranian Front and the Belarussian Front.

Officer of Engineers

Our organization is brigade-division-corps. Theirs is regiment-division-army. So in essence, our army groups consists of two or more corps and theirs, two or more armies.

Jay

Sir,
Now with Integrated battle command systems arent these things redundant? I guess everyone can see atleast a part of the big picture.

Also how will an Army battle group accomadate AF or Navy battle group as per the combined command operations?? Wouldnt it confuse the hell out these different groups??

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A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

Wraith601

NATO realistically won' deplo anything bigger than corps level now. Of course I'm not sure how much experience nations other than the US have in corps level operations.

__________________
"We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be, detested in France."
-Sir Arthur Wellesley

gunnut

It just seems like there won't be any land battle on the scale of WW2 in the foreseeable future. All the deployment today are on the brigade level. Why is that? Did people finally realize that wars are an expensive endeavor? Or are people finally making good enough living that they don't want to fight?

Anon

During ODS all the US units deployed on the Divisional level. Two full corps worth of them.

Officer of Engineers

Everything old is new again. This is not the 1st time that we went down in formation size. It has happenned at least 15 times in history. The Greek Phalanx, the Roman Legion, the Han Tri Link, the Mongol Horde, the Napoleonic Regiments, the Blitzkreig all defeated larger formations with smaller numbers.

As I already stated in this thread. The British managed to burn Washington DC with 10 percent of the men committed to Stalingrad.

What is happenning today is the wide gap between combattants. The primitive combattants facing 1st world or even 2nd world armies are so far behind that we can commit brigades, hell, let's be real, battalions and destroy entire 3rd world armies without blinking an eye.

The problem is what happens when 1st world army meet 1st world army ... as happenned at Stalingrad.

sparten

Sir, what about the fact that Soviet Fronts/Army Groups usually had their own air force, while Allied ones did not. A corps is a combined arms formation, up to division level the conecentration is usually on one specific arm as I understand. You can understand an army level headquaters may be required to coordinate the their use. But adding an army group seems to be an unecessary, unless it is combined with full air assets like the the Soviet front in which case it has a whole new dimension, while with the Germans as said before the AG's were often fighting very different wars anyway.

Officer of Engineers

The Soviets did not have something called Bomber Command. Allied Army Groups did not have their own air elements because the air elements were needed elsewhere for strategic bombing campaigns.

gunnut

Let's hope we never find out...again.

xinhui

If I may....

PLA used Army Group [Field Army] very different from that of soviet. They are not only operated as a military unit, they were also a governing body as well. While it is correct they were campaign focused, they also carrier the responsibility of governing that area under their command. For example, the 2nd Field Army with Dong XP as its Political Commissar operated upper Yangtze River worked closely with land lords and did not push too much in terms of radicalized land reform. While, areas under the 1st and 3rd Field Armies witnessed a greater radicalization land (and executions of landlords) Since FA also served as a political base, there were many political factions formed within PLA senior commands based on association from the formal FA days.


Also, unlike Soviet Group Armies, PLA FAs never operated side-by-side, there was only one general HQ per threater. Two examples: During Korea war, while majority of the PLA units were members of the 4th Field Army, the commanding staff were all from 2nd FA, thus 2nd FA had complete controll of all units. During battle of Huaihai, HQ of Central China FA was assigned the overall command over both Eastern China FA and Central China FA.


PLA naval and Airforce cmdr also serve as duputy general staff departments and Military regions.