Wehrmacht Best Infantry Weapon Upgrade

[ABWorsham4]

Which of these two weapons would have best won Barbarossa in 1941 had these weapons been used in large numbers?

Do you combat the t-34and KV-1 with the Panzerfaust or the Red Army’s manpower with the StG 44?

Choose wisely, you may end up in a bunker under Berlin!

[barney]

I gotta go with the panzerfaust since it’s Barbarossa. If it were case blue and they were in stalingrad I think I’d go with the StG 44.

[Witt]

Morning Worsham.
Panzerfaust, definitely. The Germans were at aass ice disadvantage when it came to AT fighting. The 37mm Pak36 was useless and the 50mm would not be available in significant numbers for a Long while yet.

[aequitas-et-veritas]

Panzerfaust in huge nbrs.
Every single German Infantry man equipped with one of these and German Wehrmacht would have taught Russians soldiers how to swim in the Volga.

[ABWorsham4]

Good to hear from many of you. I have not been online much.

[CWO Marc]

Given a choice between those two options, I’d say the one which would have been most helpful would have been the Panzerfaust.  During Barbarossa, I don’t think the Germans (who were fighting a war of rapid maneuver, not a Stalingrad-style slogging campaign) had any particular trouble dealing with Soviet infantry (of whom they killed or captured hundreds of thousands), so I don’t think an assault rifle (a weapon optimized for short-to-medium range combat) would have been particularly advantageous.  The Germans did, however, run into trouble when they encountered the T-34, which was unexpectedly superior to their own tanks, so the Panzerfaust would have been handy to have, especially in large numbers.

I don’t think, however, that either of those weapons would have allowed Barbarossa to succeed.  Barbarossa’s fundamental problems had nothing to do with the Wehrmacht’s weapons; they included such factors as Russia’s lack of paved roads (which made progress difficult when the autumn rains turned the ground to mud), unanticipated levels of resistance from Russian troops after they’d been cut off, and Hitler’s decision to switch his strategic objectives (and shift the disposition of his forces accordingly) a couple of times during the campaign.

[Gargantua]

Waterproof matches, or warmer jackets + gear probably would have done more for the Wehrmacht than either of these choices.

But I like the panzerfaust argument!

[ABWorsham4]

Winter wear would have helped greatly.

[Zooey72]

In June 1941 using a panzerfaust on a Russian tank would be like taking a sledgehammer to an ant.  The choice is obvious (hindsight being 20/20).  Assault rifle rules the modern day.

I got to hold one of those bad boys about 10 years ago.  I am not knocking them, but they are much heavier than an M16.  But a few more pounds of weight is not that big of a deal when your opponent has tech that is now being used to shoot deer.

[Narvik]

@ABWorsham:

Winter wear would have helped greatly.

If the Huns had panzerfaust or assault rifles in the summer of 1941, they would not need winter gear, since the war would end in October.

[KurtGodel7]

I chose the assault rifle. But this is a question which could be argued either way.

My rationale for the assault rifle was that in late '41 the Germans surprised the Soviets by making one last push for Moscow. Has that push succeeded, Moscow would have fallen, and the Soviet war effort would have been altered. The offensive was stopped by Soviets hastily recruited away from their factory positions and put into defensive positions near Moscow. With assault rifles, maybe the Germans would have been able to break those defenses. Not to mention achieving more favorable exchanges in combats prior to the battle of Moscow.

Over the short run Germany’s biggest problem seemed to be its lack of industrial capacity. During 1942 the Soviet Union out produced Germany by a factor of 3 or 4 in nearly every major weapons category. By 1944 Germany’s military production was triple what it had been in 1942. However, most of the strength of its army had been spent. The assault rifle would have allowed Germany to better preserve that strength, by giving German infantry an important advantage in firefights against their Soviet counterparts.

However, the Soviets also increased their military production from 1942 - '44. Just as they were starting to come toward the end of their truly massive reserves of manpower, they were able to compensate by putting unheard-of numbers of tanks and artillery onto the battlefield.

The assault rifle was needed to deal with the Soviets’ overwhelming numerical advantage, and the Panzerfaust was needed to address the fact that the Soviets were able to produce significantly more tanks than the Germans. (Not to mention all the tanks they received through Lend Lease.) Soviet tanks were also superior to the Germans’, at least until the latter began building large numbers of Panthers and Tigers.

[Private-Panic]

Another knowledgeable post from KG7.  Good stuff.  :-)

[WraithZer0]

@Narvik:

@ABWorsham:

Winter wear would have helped greatly.

If the Huns had panzerfaust or assault rifles in the summer of 1941, they would not need winter gear, since the war would end in October.

You, sir, are correct.  That’s what the Huns had in mind.  Take Moscow by Fall.

[ABWorsham4]

Tight vote.

[NoMercy]

Sticking to the poll I think Panzerfaust would have helped more during 1941 with idea of mobility in mind to just continue knocking out tanks and keep on moving and not getting bogged down.

Winter Gear as mentioned would have been great, but so would have just invading 2-3months earlier instead of being stuck frozen in the snow in December outside of Moscow.

[barney]

IDK if they could have started 2 to 3 mnths earlier. If I remember right it was a bad winter resulting in a wet spring. A month earlier would’ve been better but they had to secure their southern flank.

Hindsight would seem to say they had enough time they should have just kept the panzers rolling towards moscow. Who knows tho?

[CWO Marc]

The start of Barbarossa was delayed by about five weeks, if I recall correctly, due to the German invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia.  Once Barbarossa was underway, the drive on Moscow was further delayed because at one point Hitler temporarily diverted many of his central army group’s forces southward to support the southern component of the invasion.  If both those factors were changed, the Wehrmacht could possibly have gotten to the outskirts of Moscow more than a month earlier – and perhaps as much as two months earlier – than was actually the case (they got within sight of the Kremlin on December 2, 1941).  Would this have enabled the Germans to take Moscow?  It’s hard to tell; as I recall, it was around October that Zhukov started receiving reinforcements from the Siberian troops who were released for service on the European front following Richard Sorge’s intelligence that the Japanse were planning to go to war against Britain and the U.S. rather than Russia.

[NoMercy]

Yeah it was Greece and Yugoslavia that delayed the invasion as they had to help out Italy, I don’t think that occupying those countries helped at all plus I think the partisans in Yugoslavia where some of the hardest ones to deal with?

If they had an extra 1-2 months to take Moscow it would have been an interesting fight anyway; even if they took it (or was contested all winter) I’m not sure they win the war against the Soviet Union anyway. A lot of the Soviet factories were moved out further East, each spring, fall + winter always killed the Germans “momentum” and they didn’t have the resources/logistics/man-power to continue to re-start large attacks each summer.

I apologize for commenting outside of the topic of the poll.

[ABWorsham4]

The winter of 1940/41 was harsh. The spring melt was late. This would have prevented a successful invasion in April or May. The Germans may have got a few weeks head start.

The spring thaw caused dirt roads of Russia to become soup and rivers to flood out of banks. This would have been no condition to launch a attack upon.

Lets remember, had the Germans not invaded Greece then Rommel’s adventure in Africa is much different. His role would have been to save Tripoli, instead of counter-attacking and driving to Egypt.

[CWO Marc]

@ABWorsham:

Lets remember, had the Germans not invaded Greece then Rommel’s adventure in Africa is much different. His role would have been to save Tripoli, instead of counter-attacking and driving to Egypt.

I’m not sure Greece was the cause.  As I recall, when Hitler originally sent Rommel to Africa he basically gave him orders to simply dig in and hold the line.  If that was indeed Hitler’s intention, then he made a serious mistake in his choice of generals because Rommel was definitely not a dig-in-and-hold-the-line kind of commander.  Rommel was even prepared to interpret his orders in creative ways which technically adhered to their letter but not to their spirit: for purposes of paperwork, for example, he described first major offensive in North Africa as simply a “reconnaissance in force.”  He ended up routing the British and driving them practically back to Egypt – and with those kinds of results, of course, Hitler was happy to overlook the fact that Rommel hadn’t done what Hitler had wanted him to do.