The Danger Zone (DZ)

Paul Fordyce
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Paul conducts the guided tour at the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum, Cairns every Saturday at 10:30 am. Paul’s tour’s like what Carlsberg says about their beer, probably the best tour of an armour and artillery museum in the world. The Trip Advisor reviews of his Tour speak for themselves. This Podcast is like the Tour – only infinitely better. It looks at military history, in incredible detail, the likes of which you’ve never heard before. Never rushed – the topic is exhaustively covered in as many parts as are needed to do the topic full justice.

  1. 2d ago

    DZ Season 064 Part 65. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Americans Had to Say – Beyond the Limits of Individual Human Endurance.

    In the legendary story of the great Salvation Army chaplain who served with the Australian Army in World War I at Gallipoli, and then on the Western Front, recorded in Daniel Reynaud’s biography: The Man the Anzacs Revered – William “Fighting Mac” McKenzie ANZAC Chaplain the author wrote about this truism of modern war, of the need for soldiers to be given regular vital rest from front line service: …. The modern reader may have the impression that soldiers were mostly in the front line, actively fighting on an almost daily basis. But units in France spent relatively little time in the firing line, being rotated regularly between the front and support trenches, the reserve trenches and time away from the trenches altogether. Usually a battalion would spend eight to 10 days in the front trenches before shifting to the supports, reserves and the rear for the rest of the month. Even then, individual companies and platoons would only be in the very forward trenches for a few days before being relieved by other companies in the battalion. Regular periods away from the stress of the front were required to avoid the rapid deterioration of a battalion as a fighting unit. What did the American Army, in the European Theatre of Operations in 1944-1945, do with this essential wisdom, that had already been learnt by the American Army from their involvement in World War One? Tag words: Rotation; American Army ; European Theatre of Operations; Daniel Reynaud; The Man the Anzacs Revered – William “Fighting Mac” McKenzie ANZAC Chaplain; Stephen Ambrose; The Victors; 90th Division; American manpower; Russell Weigley; Eisenhower’s Lieutenants; American ground combat troops; American combat divisions; 'I can't take it anymore; replacement flow; Martin Creveld; Fighting Power. German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945; American GI’s; brave men; SHAEF; 82nd Airborne; Division; 101st Airborne Division; General George Patton; War As I Knew It; psychiatric illness; self-inflicted wounds; desertion; psychoanalysis; exhaustion centers; Freud;

    DZ Season 064 Part 65. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Americans Had to Say – Beyond the Limits of Individual Human Endurance.

  2. Oct 21

    DZ Season 064 Part 63. The American Way of War – What the Americans Had to Say – Officers – Less Than Mediocre?

    Martin Creveld, in his study, Fighting Power, seeking to evaluate the performance of the German Army by comparing it with the US Army, gave his report on the conclusions he reached about the American Army. What were his conclusions about the United States Army, and why? He wrote: If it is indeed true… that …. the officer corps counts for everything in war, then the American officer corps of World War II was less than mediocre …. Between them and their German opposite numbers there simply is no comparison possible. But of the American GI he said: Wherever he came—even within Germany itself—he was received with relief, or at any rate without fear. Let’s flesh out in full Martin Creveld’s conclusions of his study into the fighting power of the US Army. Tag words: German Army; US Army; American GI; Martin Creveld; Fighting Power; General Marshall; SLA Marshall; Men Against Fir; interchangable cogs; penpushers; World War II; Stephen Ambrose; The Victors;

    DZ Season 064 Part 63. The American Way of War – What the Americans Had to Say – Officers – Less Than Mediocre?

  3. Oct 14

    DZ Season 064 Part 62. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Americans Had to Say – Officers – An American War Fought by the Tired, the Poor, the Huddled Masses.

    To deploy all resources as well as possible, to put every man and screw in their proper place, a highly centralized organization and vast amounts of detailed information were needed. Information being superabundant, mechanical means to process it were needed. Business machines being available, any- and everything had to be shaped in such a way as to enable them to process this information as efficiently as possible. Conversely, anything that could not be processed by mechanical means did not exist; and this, unfortunately, included precisely those seelische (psychical—the expression, once again, is difficult to translate) attitudes that constitute the core of fighting power. The addiction to information also had further unfortunate results. Since knowledge—as extensive and complete as possible—was regarded as the key to victory, the best and the brightest were, not unnaturally, put to the task of producing, procuring, and processing it. The number of — frequently commissioned — pen pushers in the rear was enormous, whereas the fighting arms were starved of high-quality manpower. The fact that Class I and II men were proportionally least numerous in the arms that suffered the most casualties, and the definitely low number of ground officers killed, leaves little doubt that the American democracy fought World War II primarily at the expense of the "tired, the poor, the huddled masses." Were American Army combat units starved of the best and the brightest in World War 2? Did this show up in their battlefield performance? This passage is from Martin Creveld’s study of American fighting power compared to German fighting power in World War II, in a book, appropriately called, Fighting Power. Tag words: American Army; World War 2; Martin Creveld; Fighting Power; Officer Candidate School; OCS; promotions; casualties; missing; captured; interned;

    DZ Season 064 Part 62. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Americans Had to Say – Officers – An American War Fought by the Tired, the Poor, the Huddled Masses.

  4. Oct 7

    DZ Season 064 Part 61. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Americans Had to Say – Officers – And Gentlemen.

    According to Martin Creveld, in his book Fighting Power, comparing the fighting performance of Americans in the European Theatre of Operations with the Germans he wrote: The time has now come to examine a constituent of fighting power that, perhaps more than any other, decides the outcome of wars: leadership. An enormous literature exists to show that, in the words of Kurt Lang, "it is what the leader does that counts. Everything connected with him — from the way he is selected to the system used for his promotion — is therefore of quite extraordinary, indeed decisive, importance. Before starting the discussion, a warning may be in place. Unlike troops and machines, which may be produced relatively quickly, an officer corps requires long tradition and broad experience in order to function effectively. The American officer corps, expanded fortyfold during the war, did not and could not have this tradition and this experience. Time to dig deep into this most crucial aspect of the American way of war – how they created their officers, what sort of people they created and were they as effective as the officers the Germans created. Tag words: European Theatre of Operations; Martin Creveld; Fighting Power; American officer corps; World War II; Stephen Ambrose; The Victors; General Brian Horrocks; Somme; Discipline; officers; salute; soldiers; ability to lead men in battle; Army General Classification Test; AGCT; recognized leadership as the paramount prerequisite in officers; character; intelligence;

    DZ Season 064 Part 61. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Americans Had to Say – Officers – And Gentlemen.

  5. Sep 30

    DZ Season 064 Part 66. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Americans Had to Say – Beyond the Limits of Individual Human Endurance – Infantry the Endangered Species.

    Private Donald Schoo of the 80th Infantry Division recalled seeing one of his buddies, named Steehhourst, take a hit from an 88 that blew off his right hand. ‘He was crying and running around yelling, Tm going home! Thank you God, I'm going home!' Steehhourst was lucky, at least according to the standards of the men of the Bulge and specifically to Sergeant Richard Wallace of the 90th Division. After one shelling Wallace told his squad, ‘Boys, I'd give my right arm up to here’ — holding it at his elbow — ‘if this war would end right now.’ The shelling resumed. Shrapnel tore into Wallace's face. "’I can't see!" he cried out. ‘I can't see! Oh, my God, I'm blind.’ He never saw again and the war was a long way from over. wrote Stephen Ambrose in The Victors. Keeping soldiers in the line, continuously, something that the American Army had not done in the First World War, for good reason – wasn’t healthy. A study was undertaken after the war into how the mental state of men in combat evolves if they’re not pulled out of the line. What did that find and why was it relevant to the crisis the American Army in the European Theatre of Operations suffering from excessively high levels of mental illness, feigned mental illness, desertion and self-inflicted wounds? Tag words: American Army; European Theatre of Operations; mental illness; feigned mental illness; desertion; self-inflicted wounds; Robert Kershaw; Tank Men; RL Swank; WE Marchand; Combat Neurosis: Development of Combat Exhaustion, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry; US soldier; GI; Stephen Ambrose; The Victors; World War II; Dominick Graham; Shelford Bidwell; Coalitions, Politicians and Generals; Julius Caesar; first experience of battle; German army; green units; Battle of the Bulge; Hank H Cox; The General Who Wore Six Stars; Eisenhower; Bradley; Paul Kennedy; Engineers of Victory; Carlo d’Este; A Genius for War; Malmèdy; 11th Armored Division; Rick Atkinson; Liberation Trilogy; The Guns at Last Light; infantry losses; Red List;

    DZ Season 064 Part 66. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Americans Had to Say – Beyond the Limits of Individual Human Endurance – Infantry the Endangered Species.

  6. Sep 30

    DZ Season 064 Part 59. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Americans Had to Say – Which Four Men Would Fight a Lion.

    Four brave men who do not know each other, wrote Ardant du Picq in his Etudes de Combat, will hesitate to attack a lion; four less brave men, but knowing and trusting each other, will do so resolutely. The point of the tale is this: of all the organizational problems an army has to solve, that of how best to merge replacements into existing units so as to ensure the cohesion of the whole is one of the most crucial, since on it depends the unit's fighting power. The sheer size of the problem may be gauged from the fact that, on the average, three months of intensive combat in World War II cost an American infantry regiment a hundred percent of its personnel in casualties. wrote Martin Creveld in his book Fighting Power, German and U.S. Army Performance 1939-1945. How the US Army handled this in World War II is a study in how not to put replacements into existing units. Tag words: replacement depots; repple depples; repple depple syndrome; Martin Creveld; Fighting Power, German and U.S. Army Performance 1939-1945; US Army; World War II; Training; Enlisted men; NCOs; Army Training Centers; ATCs; Replacement Training Centers; RTCs; Officer Candidate Schools; OCSs; theater depot; MOS; Military Occupation Specialties; Seventy-ninth Infantry Division; 79th Infantry Division; General Ira T Wyche; Stephen Ambrose; The Victors; Eisenhower; Bradley; Patton; ASTPers; Army Specialist Training Program; children's crusade;

    DZ Season 064 Part 59. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Americans Had to Say – Which Four Men Would Fight a Lion.

  7. Sep 23

    DZ Season 064 Part 58. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Brits Had to Say – Not Enough Soldiers to Die.

    In his book, The War Between the Generals, David Irving wrote about an important meeting, that few people know about, at the time that the Battle of the Bulge was at its height in December 1944/ January 1945: In Washington, after lunch on December 27, Stimson walked back to the War Department and slipped into Marshall's office for a long private talk about an unthinkable possibility: what if the Germans pulled this gamble off? Marshall had been thinking the same thought. Rain and sleet lashed the office windows as they talked. Basic to both men's worries was the fear that they had created an army too small for the job — and that in consequence the infantry was becoming battle-fatigued. The German armies facing the Allies still equaled them in divisions. Should the United States begin raising new divisions now, for autumn 1945?…. the people of the United States [were going to have to] decide whether they wanted to go on with the war enough to raise the new armies which would be necessary to do it. . .  Men – the GI’s – that was the topic that Dominick Graham and Shelford Bidwell next turned to in considering the American Way of War in their book Coalitions, Politicians and Generals. Tag words: GI; The War Between the Generals; David Irvin; Battle of the Bulge; Henry , Stimson; Secretary of War; General George C Marshall; Dominick Graham; Shelford Bidwell; Coalitions, Politicians and Generals; Montgomery; US Army; manpower; George Patton; General Dwight DEisenhower; General Bradley; General Hodges; General Simpson; Russell Weigley; Eisenhower’s Lieutenants; cross-Channel invasion; US Army; Eastern Front;

    DZ Season 064 Part 58. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Brits Had to Say – Not Enough Soldiers to Die.

  8. Sep 16

    DZ Season 064 Part 57. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Brits Had to Say – Was Like a Hollywood Movie.

    British observers of the US Army in action in North Africa, Italy and North-West Europe sometimes had the impression that they were watching a Hollywood production of `A Triumph of the Will'. They could never be certain what had been achieved and was real and what was a stage set, a Potemkin village for the benefit of `American Public Opinion'. The press made George Patton into a character from a Hemingway novel, and he played the romantic lead to the hilt. War had to be good drama which required red-blooded American heroes. Even if American performance was not perfect it must appear to be so. This could lead to deception and disillusionment if taken seriously.  wrote Dominick Graham and Shelford Bidwell in their book Coalitions, Politicians and Generals. Tag words: George Patton; Dominick Graham; Shelford Bidwell; Coalitions, Politicians and Generals; Eisenhower; General Lloyd D Fredendall; General Alexander; General Lewis G Brereton; General Pershing; General George Marshall; Field Marshall Montgomery; General Omar N Bradley; General George Patton; General Simpson; General Hodges;

    DZ Season 064 Part 57. End the War in 44 – The American Way of War – What the Brits Had to Say – Was Like a Hollywood Movie.
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About

Paul conducts the guided tour at the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum, Cairns every Saturday at 10:30 am. Paul’s tour’s like what Carlsberg says about their beer, probably the best tour of an armour and artillery museum in the world. The Trip Advisor reviews of his Tour speak for themselves. This Podcast is like the Tour – only infinitely better. It looks at military history, in incredible detail, the likes of which you’ve never heard before. Never rushed – the topic is exhaustively covered in as many parts as are needed to do the topic full justice.

Information

  • Creator
    Paul Fordyce
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    348
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Paul Fordyce
  • Show Website
    The Danger Zone (DZ)