One Arrogant B*****d Perhaps you have read the book by Otto Carius, “Tigers in the Mud”. It is a book about a tank commander’s adventures in Russia and then the Western front. Otto was a stupid man, a hypocrite and a coward in denial. It’s an interesting read but reading the context you realize how bad he was. First of all, he was an experienced tank commander. He worked mostly with Tigers on the Eastern front and JagdTigers (128 mm Mobile Assault Gun) on the Western front. The book is loaded with classic arrogance that would have qualified Carius for the SS. He believed himself to be the ultimate warrior. I am not saying he was not a good tanker but he overplays his hand when he describes the war on the Western front. Carius got the best of the Soviets, even the T-34s on the Eastern front. He believed the Russians were good warriors because he killed so many and it made him feel better about himself. If you have this book you will know what I mean when I describe his contempt for the US fighting man. Carius gets wounded gets an iron cross and kisses Himmler’s derriere after mocking the German generals for not using their pistols to shoot the leadership of Germany. He of course has his pistol in front of Himmler and is too busy putting smooches on his behind to do what he mocked others for not doing. But why did he believe the Americans were such poor soldiers and tankers? Was he right? He got to the Western front after Bastone so he did not know about the single infantry division that hosed up six panzer divisions there until Patton could come and disperse them. The reason for Bastone's success? Weather. Weather. One more time Weather. Now if a tank is impervious to weather, why did weather affect it...any guesses, that's right, no Jabos. But we will assume that he knows nothing about the Americans before him, so why was he so convinced they were such bad fighters? He said “5 Russians are better than 30 Americans”. Now normally that would be an insult to the men that kicked his butt but to read the context makes it laughable and really makes you lose respect for Carius to the point you begin to think he is a tremendous coward. The Myth of the Tank Carius is very disappointed that the Americans do not rush his tank so he can pad his ego with kills. When he shoots, they dive into fox holes and call in the fighter/bombers (Jabos) or Jugs if you will. A while back I had a discussion on this forum about whether or not fighter/bombers (Jugs in particular) had destroyed as many tanks as the stats claim. I think it was around 8 or 9 thousand German tanks is what I read. The gentlemen debating with me claimed this was too large a number because it was the lion share of tanks on the Western front. But what I have read from Rommel, what I have read from Carius, and what I read from Ninth Air Force, I now have become convinced this number is too low. That’s right, too low. Fighter Bombers killed virtually all tanks on the Western front. VERY VERY few were killed by US tanks in a relative sense. Sorry folks, none of the allied commanders used Shermans to attack German armor in any number. When they did it was by accident and they rarely survived. The more I read the more I realize how little people really understand about WWII. The tank for years drew awe. When I posed the devastation of “Jabos” I was challenged as overstating it. This is why I believe very little is known about WWII by fans of it because they have swallowed the boasts of ground commanders who are full of crap. Patton, Monty, you name them, DID NOT destroy the German armor with their armor. NOT EVEN IN NORTH AFRICA. If you don’t believe this then get the Rommel Papers, or Carius’ book and look at the many many references to their fear of tactical bombers and their cries to their superiors for relief in fear that the jabos will destroy the entire army in Western Europe. Now in Russia, they did not possess air supremacy so they had to slug it out tank to tank. That was a completely different war. It could have been called WWII-MkII. The devastation by the air and artillery is so grossly understated by Patton and Monty that you would think that Shermans were always slugging it out with German armor. Please people, can I get a break here? Is there anybody that believes this? But the “ooh the German armor….its ferocious…” crap has gone on for years when right between the lines, the truth has been screaming at us. Blitzkrieg happened because of slow obsolete Stukas were able to annihilate the British and French armor strength when they had air superiority. The BofB changed that. This too gets lost in translation. Would Monty or Patton ever admit they were simply along for the ride? No. But Patton does let the cat out of the bag a little but doesn’t want the reader to think that Allied armor was protected from facing German armor. Bradley tells it pretty clear. Blitzkrieg - Allied Style The Luftwaffe could have looked in amazement at what a real Blitzkrieg was about. Carius having been on the easy Eastern front for so long did not realize what devastation was when he saw it and was in the middle of it. After his big punch at the “weakness of American’s” compared to Russians, it becomes clear why he believes so. He didn’t understand why they in their small barreled Shermans wouldn’t attack his JagdTigers with their long 128 mm AP guns. But he goes past idiot to hypocrite and moves from there to coward. His belief was that even though the war was a couple of weeks away from being over that Americans should be willing to bravely run at the German assault guns so they could “tell the folks back home they were in live fire”. Yes folks, he was that stupid. He complained that when he would fire, they would dive into ditches and call the Jabos or the long range artillery and give the coordinates. He was always in a defensive position (never attacking the coward...) hiding from the Jabos. Why always hiding? Where is the brave tanker that has contempt for tankers on the move advancing without resistance across his homeland? He acknowledges the deadliness of effect and accuracy of the American artillery. In fact a spotter plane discovers the position of his group and the linked arty fires a round that was about 150 meters beyond them on a ranging round. He screams at his men to get into their heavily armored JagdTiger and flee (what happened to that “only cowards don’t face heavy firepower” he used to described the Americans? Hence was a hypocrite and coward hybrid). The men hesitate and a second round hits 80 meters in front of him. The weak American's now have his range with their cowardly artillery. The next few seconds bring the “fire for effect” on him which kill many of his crewmen and destroy some of their heavy armor. He wanted the Americans to come out of their cover to rush his heavy gun and calls them coward, but in response to his call by shooting they shoot heavy guns at him and he not only doesn’t dig in, but flees in terror. Carius gets frustrated because every other sentence involves devastation from the air (Jabos). Over and over, every line, every chapter, jabos, jabos, jabos. He is so angry that the armor does not fight him. He claims how the JagdTiger is the “best weapon in the war” but seems to forget how he is afraid to move from cover for risk of Jabos. His groups are terrified to move in the day. Their rail lines get interdicted constantly by Jabos. He has to hide his JagdTigers in the barns but still loses a couple to Jabos. After making a comment that they were hounded by fighters and bombers constantly around the clock, he then makes the comment “how I envied those comrades that didn’t have to experience this hopeless struggle during the last few weeks of the Western Front”. What! What happened to the “best weapon in WWII”? “What happened to the 5 Russians are better than 30 Americans”? Whatever you do, don’t shoot! There is part in the last chapters of Carius’ book that reminds me of an incident I read in Bradley’s book about the Battle of the Bulge. It seems a Colonel or General officer comes upon a ridge where a mortar position was not being fired when the enemy was in sight and in range across the ridge. The officer asked the soldier manning the position, why he wasn’t firing. He responded “because they fire back”. The officer orders the soldier to fire the mortar. The moment he does the position receives a barrage of fire of all types and they desperately dive in his fox hole to narrowly escape instant death. The soldier turns to the officer and says “see what I mean?”. Carious hears about a group of his vaunted “JagdTigers” where an argument ensued in that a commander had a field of defile on a column of about 40 Sherman tanks. They were at the optimum range. The commander refused to fire for fear it would give away their position to “jabos” in the area. To him, a Jabo means instant death to an exposed heavy armor tank. This makes Carious mad. Later Carius fires on a column of tanks from 3000 meters and the rounds fall short (couldn’t wait till they got within range). He then receives barrage of artillery on his position that takes out many of his men and some of his armor. I Got a Couple of Jeeps! The Americans are so laid back after the run across the Ruhr Pocket that they don’t come out in the freezing cold at night. This allows Carius to steal a couple of American jeeps of which he is tremendously proud and mocking the Americans. But, the reason he has to risk his men to steal the jeeps is because his “kubelwagons” had been devastated by the laid back Americans. How do you spin getting the living dog crap kicked out of you as some kind of cowardly fighting by those doing it? His measure of bravery is how many soldiers come out and challenge his big guns. If he took the same approach to evaluating his own bravery then all Germans were hideously cowardly because they hid from the Jabos and didn’t come out and challenge them when they were patrolling? Rock, Paper, Scissors The American strategy of a tank is be a mobile anti-tank gun used to hold a line during counterattack, and then to breakout after the heavy armor has been destroyed by fighter/bombers and arty, and then destroy the light armor, and unprotected infantry with fast Shermans (rock). The Germans trump this with the heavy tanks which Carius said was the “best weapons of WWII” (paper, paper covers rock). But, the Americans fought with Fighter/Bombers and precise high caliber artillery (scissors, scissors cut paper). This makes me believe that Carius was living in an Eastern front war when forced to fight on the Western front. This is why I have claimed and still do that the Russians didn’t do anything significant to help the Allies. Had the armor have been moved to the Western front, the fighter bombers would simply have had a more target rich environment to rack up tank kills. It would have made very little different in the grand scheme of the war. Rommel made this very clear. Rommel was honest. He had no illusions of the ineffectiveness of a tank when it didn’t hold air superiority. The bigger, the badder, the more devastating, and accurate the tank, the faster you better abandon it if you don’t hold the air because in a cruel paradox, such an invincible weapon in your possession would bring you death quicker than the thinnest armored kubelwagon. (its the first thing the Jabos destroy) Why do WWII Aficionados Not Know? In all the years I have been reading about WWII history, the tank was always held as the most fearsome weapon. When I read of the Germans, they seem to indicate accidentally or incidentally that it was the Jabo that was the most fearsome weapon. Even here where I received such a refuted response to my claim that Jabos had eaten up armor in WWII, did I get a response so contrary to the opinion of those that faced them. Maybe this is to be expected because just as a cook would swear it was good cooking that defeated the Germans, so would the tankers not give "props" to the Fighter/Bombers. Only the ones being attacked could give an accurate and objective account of it. No one seems to realize that it was a Blitzkrieg ONLY because of the air power devastation, not because of powerful tanks. Same thing in the chase across North Africa, Jabos ruled the skies and pushed the Germans. This is what Rommel claimed. He claims his armor was devastated by air. The Allies claimed the same thing when they were pushed across the desert. The three most important factors to why the Allies won WWII are 1)air power 2)air power and 3)air power. Sure, only Rommel and Bradley were candid as to why even though Carius let it slip in his contempt for Americans. I never expected Patton or Monty to give up their fame by saying that tanks were against soldiers and gun positions NOT TANKS. Even the Falaise encirclement succeeded because of the fighter/bombers. If the German armor could have directed a single trust they could have broken out but according to Rommel, when they tried to move they died from the fighter/bomber attacks. How is it that people on this site that can tell you the belt size of a staff-sergeant of an obscure company assigned 10 miles behind the fighting of the war, but knew nothing about the magnitude of dominance from every aspect of WWII, every front, ETO, MTO, and PTO brought by air supremacy. Is it because of the romance of armor, is it because they simply mimic the historians? Is it the love of the idea of tank to tank battles? It is not just here, it seems to be ubiquitous with all fans and historians. Are historians worth a crap if they never pointed this blatant disparity and domination out, the single biggest factor of the entire war? In a relative sense, do they know anything at all? How can they be so revered if they miss such a large elephant in the living room?
