The Wargamer

Introduction

The sum of war is the whole of its parts, so to speak, because no war can be attributed to one event, nor can it be made up of any one event. Defining just the boundaries of a war has a short-sighted consequence, for there are always matters that build up to one as well as the cleaning up and healing that is done in its aftermath.

While those at the frontline or those protecting the homelands carry rifles, guns, and other weapons, the non-combatants are not quite so lucky and often suffer along with the men and women in uniform. Taking a civilian into the ranks of the military involves a long and drawn-out process that requires conditioning, both physical and mental, as well as a toughening-up period of sorts at the front where the new soldier gets accustomed to his role on the battlefield. If he’s lucky enough to survive a few skirmishes, he learns valuable lessons. These lessons will serve the new soldier well in coming battles, or to teach other newer soldiers how to survive.

However, it is a different story when soldiers who are not trained for combat duties are relegated to the infantryman’s role. While modern military organizations don't have this issue, in the mid-20th century few armies gave much weight to the idea of multiple specializations for each man (an exception being the United States Marine Corps' training of each and every member, including clerks and cooks, to be combat riflemen first and foremost). This was pretty much the case throughout the Second World War. Some branches of service could be considered more technically-trained than other branches, as some depended on highly complex machinery or concepts to perform properly. For example, Luftwaffe (German Air Force) men were, on average, better educated in technical aspects than their Heer (German Army) or Waffen-SS combat counterparts. As Adolf Galland himself said in his book The First and the Last, the Luftwaffe was a well trained group of men which can be compared to highly complicated machine tools; one can extrapolate that using these kinds of precision tools as axes to cut down trees would be foolhardy:

The almost unbelievably expensive product of clever designers, precise technicians, and specialized workers, given into the hands of scientifically chosen and comprehensively trained experts, constitutes an arm of the highest efficiency, but also one of great delicacy. It can be compared with a razor blade which must be guided by a sensitive hand. The man who uses it like a hatchet must not be surprised if it turns jagged in his hand and finally becomes useless. (54)

While Galland was not discussing Field Divisions in particular, he was discussing the Luftwaffe's personnel in general. Heer and Waffen-SS troops managed to build a formidable fighting force, despite steadily dwindling resources, whereas the Luftwaffe men with better technical training and schooling were not suited for ground combat. This observation is certainly not universal – after all, many great combat leaders and fighters came from these "delicate" backgrounds. The point is not to bring about an argument that these Luftwaffe men were bad soldiers because they were smart – but rather that their leadership chose to misuse their innate intelligence and abilities in a manner that would have been more effective in defense of the Reich. It's also important to understand that had these 200,000 or so recruits been inducted into the Heer or Waffen-SS en masse, they might have been trained into a couple of dozens' worth of divisions – or served as a mass of trained manpower to replace the appalling losses suffered through the beginning of 1942. That many men could have easily filled out the losses of upwards of 20 Heer Infantry divisions and therefore replace almost 20 percent of the losses suffered on the Eastern Front in that first year of the invasion. 

Any soldier can be taught a new role; it is not so much the complexity of combat to grasp as it is the time required to be appropriately trained for it. Military necessity, or really more accurately, disaster, cause men in other branches of service or in jobs not suited to combat to be called upon to serve in roles which they are ill-trained or equipped for. World War II has countless instances of clerks, typists, cooks, drivers, and other support troops thrust head-first into battle – Axis and Allied alike. This has happened since time immemorial, as the soldiers who are trained for battle fall there is almost always a pressing and overpowering need for more such soldiers to fill the gaps. As these pressures mount, so too usually do the numbers of men scraped together to fill those gaps. In any such event, men who are not trained for frontline fighting will die in greater numbers at the hands of enemy soldiers who are better trained for it. Any man so pressed into service to fight such overwhelming odds becomes a true underdog of the battlefield.

If it is true that humans have some kind of subconscious affinity for an underdog, the Luftwaffe's Field Divisions may be likely to attract some attention. Born of both a manpower necessity and of the need to salve the Reichsmarchall's immense ego in the face of an expanded Waffen-SS, the Luftwaffe Field Divisions were doomed to failure. Not only were these poor souls not trained adequately for frontline service, but they were for the most part equipped with second-rate weaponry and more often than not had to scrounge on their own to stay supplied. After all, most new equipment and the cream (for what that was worth by mid-war) of the replacement pool typically was first directed to the Waffen-SS first, then to the Heer. The Luftwaffe's ground units were faced with the problems of allocating poorly-trained replacements, small amounts of relatively pitiable equipment (good equipment did often make it into these divisions, but rarely did it stay long enough to do any good), and inept leadership; and yet, some Divisions actually managed to give a good accounting for themselves. Most often, however, Luftwaffe Field Divisions served as bloody meat to be ground into a pulp on the soil of Soviet Russia and in the vicious Normandy fighting in the West. Of the 21 Divisions actually formed, eleven were disbanded after severe losses, six were destroyed, three surrendered, and one survived to the end of the war. The one that survived to the end intact (the 14th) was based in Norway and never saw much fighting beyond dealing with the occasional raid.