Originally Posted by gladius

There are pluses and minuses to both tactics, and its nice to see someone speak up for the American side.

I'm willing to bet the US infantry were the hardest opponents for the Germans to fight as far as squad level fighting went.

My, my, your avatar has changed...

Well both Guderian and Manstein are 2 of my favourite commanders so I thought it was high time for Manstein to get an airing.

Hmm I would have thought that the British and Canadian troops would have been equally tough myself.

Originally Posted by c/LCDR

I'm going to have to go with the US tactics. The Germans lost the war to them.

Of course, by that logic, Hanibal was an absolutely terrible general. Believe it or not, there is more to it that just winning and losing. In the Germans case, you get the dubious honor of constantly being outnumbered in mostly any circumstance.

Also, MGs are not the best for offensive tactics...especially the '42s. You have to lug 'em around, which makes u a really nice-looking target.

Handheld machine guns were not that difficult to carry around if the truth be told. Sure, your not going to run around with a .50 caliber machine gun. Rifles and machine guns both have their place, but look at what the world is like today: Machine guns (assault rifles), are in the hands of virtually every soldier on the battlefield. Rifles have been largely relegated to precision focussed things like snipers.

So which tactic has been more widely adopted since WW2? What does that tell us?

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

Hmm I would have thought that the British and Canadian troops would have been equally tough myself.

I'm sure they are I wouldn't want to take anything away from them.

But the Americans had the M1 Garand, and the Brits were still using bolt-action rifles, I'm sure that made the difference.

Also alot of the Germans were suprised (and sometimes impressed) at how so many Americans stood and fought at the Battle of the Bulge.

But yes I'm sure that the Germans also found the Brits and Canucks almost at the same level or at least equal to the Americans on a squad to squad basis.

Russian tactics were always better, charge with thousands of infantry at the position and overrun them. :P

The Germans were always genius's at defence. They always knew where to set up their Mg-42's and defensive positions.

Originally Posted by Kilgore

Russian tactics were always better, charge with thousands of infantry at the position and overrun them. :P

Yeah, the Russian strategy was pretty much just to give everyone a cheap-ass SMG with a few large drums of ammo and have them run at the enemy spraying 9mm rounds everywhere. Worked OK, too...guess those German defensive MG tactics weren't as great as they were made out to be.

Originally Posted by c/LCDR

Yeah, the Russian strategy was pretty much just to give everyone a cheap-ass SMG with a few large drums of ammo and have them run at the enemy spraying 9mm rounds everywhere. Worked OK, too...guess those German defensive MG tactics weren't as great as they were made out to be.

Yeah it worked ok I guess, but to what cost? Go and take a look at the Soviet casualties for WW2 and then come back and tell me that the "German defensive MG tactics weren't as great as they were made out to be".

Russian tactics better? First time I've heard them being described as such.

Actually in military philosophy the Russian theorists are given extremely high praise between the two world wars.

Think he was being sarcastic

Originally Posted by Zucchini

Actually in military philosophy the Russian theorists are given extremely high praise between the two world wars.

..which doesn't have much to do with MG tactics in WW2 though right? Some areas of Soviet design, not tactics, were top class. Like their AFV design which led the world, including Germany. Soviet armoured and infantry tactics in WW2 however were, to being with, abominable and although they improved massively between 1940 and 1944 they never came close to matching the Germans in tactical skill.

Originally Posted by beardo

Think he was being sarcastic

Yeah pretty much.