Blocking detachments

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Acheron

Maybe it defines how you define "blocking detachments"? I would say that an officer with some soldiers or preferably military police rounding up soldiers coming through choke points would qualify.


To my knowledge the flight of the Wehrmacht from France soon after Falaise is well documented, no?

Yes, and yes.

[Pappy]

Originally Posted by Acheron

The term "Blocking detachment" inevitably raises the image of Soviet NKWD units shooting desperate survivors of a bloody defeat from a hopeless battle.

I doubt the correct use of the word "blocking unit" here just as some else on the thread pointed out although I understand your point. Also the NKVD is kind of twisted romanticized picture.
Early NKVD battalions incorporated in the Soviet divisions kept units from pulling back or deserting. Not shooting survivors. When time came even the NKVD could break and pull back.

Originally Posted by Acheron

Yet I remember reading Cornelius Ryan "A bridge too far". According to him, after the virtual annihilation of German forces in France following the allied Normandy breakout, German soldiers in small bands fled towards the Reich in great disarray. He further wrote that military police posts were set up to collect the fleeing survivors and reform them into adhoc combat groups (thus setting the roots of defeat for Market Garden).

When German armies collapsed troops wandered back to safety. Fleeing can be made from a battle for a few kilometers but walking 200 miles is a retreat. These stragglers could be rounded up by field police or using more correct terms "reporting in" to nearest army position to find their own unit or to be transported to the rear to create new units or refill others. Retreating or routing units are not deserters. Under some desperate times if equipment is available they can form smaller combat groups or adhoc formations although it was not that common.

In the Autumn of 1944 Germans started using special police FeldJäger (?) units whose role was to not only stop retreating units but also execute deserters. These operated behind the front line and checked retreating units for signs of desertion and could be in a way compared to NKVD minus the political role.

Originally Posted by Acheron

There might be another example, during the Battle of the Bulge, didn't a couple of American units initially disintegrate and essentially rout towards the rear? If so, I very much doubt other US forces to the rear just let them pass until they felt like coming back, I would suppose them to be also gathered and reformed.

Just as above routing units do not disintegrate into desertion unless under very specific circumstances. Most is actually very happy managing to survive enemy ambushes, traveling under very hard weather conditions day and night for long distances with little or no food arriving at friendly lines where hot food, sleep and medical aid is. US morale was good.

Originally Posted by Acheron

As for the shooting part, if a fleeing soldier refuses a direct order to hold his flight and insists on retreating further, the first course of action would of course be apprehending him, but what if he resists, or there are too many, let us be blunt, deserters? Radioing HQ and telling them where they are heading so that more forces can be sent would be a way, but costing considerably time and manpower in a probably critical situation, so wouldn't blocking detachments or equivalent forces of any nation quite possibly start shooting? And almost definitely so if the enemy was actually attacking and a local rout might unhinge an entire front?

Most units are trained not to panic by discipline. Some individuals do but its not as in medieval times where a groups of farmers is forced together by some one they don't like, to do something that they are not trained to do. When a units hits low morale it surrenders or try to break out finding friendly lines. It doesn't go panic ape unless you are a very low grade soldier like militia operating in their own country (strengthening their belief in hiding) usually considered to be connected with "poor" or turmoiled nations.

Individual deserters (people so scared to death that they don't recover) can be trialled either during conflict of after of cowardice. Military police usually have the role to search these out in the local rear area. But as long as nationalistic/political and brotherhood Army bondage keep troops together (the platoon, NCO or squad will take care of their own chickens as no body wants a guy with them ready to bug out at any moment) units stay some what organized with a goal in mind even if pulling back in front of an attacking enemy. As I recall only one US deserter was executed during the war.

As the nature of fighting in WWII was confined to large areas of countryside with limited to non radio liaison between smaller units a routing unit would simply disappear during the battle with out many noticing it hence it would not create any larger rout to any extent.

Usually it takes pretty long time before a unit realizes that it has lost contact with its flanks and start to pull back. There is still no running or crying but an exfil trying to find other friendly units to link up with or heading toward pre-selected gathering points in the rear.

When a front collapse it will create long lines of retreating units and these can have an effect on the morale of reinforcements or reserves deployed in the area of retreat but it will not make them pull back unless communication with higher command is absent and will to fight is lost.



/Pappy

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Pappy

When German armies collapsed troops wandered back to safety. Fleeing can be made from a battle for a few kilometers but walking 200 miles is a retreat. These stragglers could be rounded up by field police or using more correct terms "reporting in" to nearest army position to find their own unit or to be transported to the rear to create new units or refill others. Retreating or routing units are not deserters. Under some desperate times if equipment is available they can form smaller combat groups or adhoc formations although it was not that common.

That's one way to look at it.
General Reinecke, Chief of the OKW's NS-Führungsstab, however, reported that:

"Es waren skandalöse Zustände. Erfahrene und überlegte Kommandeure bestätigten einwandfrei, das Heer beim Rückmarsch 1918 nach der Revolution sei eine Gardetruppe im Vergleich zu diesen flüchtenden Truppenhaufen gewesen."

In the Autumn of 1944 Germans started using special police FeldJäger (?) units whose role was to not only stop retreating units but also execute deserters. These operated behind the front line and checked retreating units for signs of desertion and could be in a way compared to NKVD minus the political role.

Actually these had been formed back in December 1943, by Führerbefehl. The first operational units were fielded in January 1944. They were yet another additional police service, not a replacement of the already existing Feldgendarmerie.

[Acheron]

Originally Posted by Michele

"Es waren skandalöse Zustände. Erfahrene und überlegte Kommandeure bestätigten einwandfrei, das Heer beim Rückmarsch 1918 nach der Revolution sei eine Gardetruppe im Vergleich zu diesen flüchtenden Truppenhaufen gewesen."

Translation:
"It was a scandalous situation. Experienced and considerate commander positively acknowledged, that the army retretaing in 1918 after the revolution [in Germany - Acheron] was a guard unit compared to the routing mass of troops."

If I may add, Cornelius Ryan quotes Dutch civilians reporting the Germans fleeing in disarray through the Arnhem area (allied forces had not even reached the Dutch frontier), commandeering bicycles and stealing civilian clothes, shouting "Go home, the war is over" to each other.

Now I do believe that the German army was the most disciplined in Europe (national bias a probable factor admittedly), but I would argue that any mass army has a breaking point where it absolutely will disintegrate into a panicked mob. While I do not know of Japanese examples, the constricted nature of Pacific island garrisons may play a role, I wonder if one might find outright routing units in the Chinese theater?

[IronDuke]

Originally Posted by lcm1

Funny thing I did not notice much fleeing going on, but there I must admit that at times like that your whole world is just as far as your eye can see.So perhaps they were doing their fleeing just out of my range of vision. lcm1

They were certainly fleeing at Falaise, although as the pocket collapsed, the units manning the walls held it open long enough to allow 10s of thousands to escape, so for those pressing in, it might not have felt like a rout.

Eisenhower talked about being able to step from body to body. The shelling and strafing inflicted a terrible toll.

Regards,
ID

[The Purist]

Originally Posted by Imperial Dane

Well the Germans didn't use blocking detachements for that. Basically it was Officers rounding up people in an ad-hoc Kampfgruppe manner basically.

Basically the German skill for improvisation if you will. Not so much blocking detachements.

Not always. On the eastern front the MPs and SS were used for more than just forming units into battle groups. Summary execution by firing squad and hanging were not uncommon. The worse the situation got the more the Nazi regime began to eat its own soldiers.

[lcm1]

Originally Posted by IronDuke

They were certainly fleeing at Falaise, although as the pocket collapsed, the units manning the walls held it open long enough to allow 10s of thousands to escape, so for those pressing in, it might not have felt like a rout.

Eisenhower talked about being able to step from body to body. The shelling and strafing inflicted a terrible toll.

Regards,
ID

Hi ID, I do agree,when talking about the Battle of the Falaise gap.A fixed ammount of Germans with no hope of escape were destined to hold that exit route open for as long as possible, that is just what they did and they fought knowing that it was a battle they could not win and yes ,those escaping had to be bloody quick doing it.Fleeing in such a situation is a very tricky term and can be left open to quite a number of definitions and having looked death in the eye I am prepared to remain very open minded on such a happening, for there are a number of similar events in the war which can be likened to that situation and I will not be part of it. So I must repeat as I have said before,most of the German army men that I met had played their part to the full and if they came to the stage of RETREATING it was because there was only one other alternative left (apart from dying) and that was to surrender. lcm1

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Acheron

Translation:
"It was a scandalous situation. Experienced and considerate commander positively acknowledged, that the army retretaing in 1918 after the revolution [in Germany - Acheron] was a guard unit compared to the routing mass of troops."

Yes, sorry, I should have also provided the translation.