In the Europe of 1939 winter warfare skills were highly developed only in the Scandinavian armies. Lack of comprehensive doctrine was perhaps forgivable in Britain and France, where no requirement for prolonged winter fighting could easily be foreseen. In the Red Army and German Wehrmacht – given geoclimatic realities, and a desire to wage wars of conquest – unpreparedness was both bizarre and catastrophic. The Soviets eventually defeated the vastly outnumbered Finnish defenders in the Winter War of 1939–40, but the costly and frequently incompetent manner in which they did so revived, in many countries, an interest in the tactics of cold-weather warfare. The lessons learned had import both for the development of training and equipment, and on the course of the war itself – on the one hand, German observers formed the impression that the Soviet Union could easily be beaten; and on the other, the Russians realized that their approach required total and immediate revision.
Mountain warfare skills were also at a premium in 1939, but in this instance there were pockets of advanced practice in several of the major armies, notably the French Chasseurs Alpins, and amongst a small number of British and US officers with experience, for example, of the mountains of the Indian frontier and the Americas. Clear leaders in the field, however, were the Germans; the long-term interest in Alpine sports centred in Bavaria, and the annexation of Austria in 1938, facilitated the formation of whole divisions of Wehrmacht mountain troops. Even so, both mountain and winter techniques still continued to be regarded as specialist skills, requiring the attention only of specific bodies of troops. The Russo-Finnish Winter War, and, more importantly, experience on the Eastern Front in 1941/42, altered such complacent perceptions dramatically. In the words of Gen von Greiffenburg, chief of staff to German Twelfth Army, ‘The effect of climate in Russia is to make things impassable in the mud of spring and autumn, unbearable in the heat of summer, and impossible in the depths of winter. Climate in Russia is a series of natural disasters’.
It has frequently been said, largely on the basis of the winter 1941/42 campaigns, that the Red Army was vastly superior to the Wehrmacht in winter warfare techniques. While there is much truth in this, and the Russsians had clearly learned much, especially from the Finns, this statement still requires qualification. While German preparation, equipment, and doctrine were all sadly lacking in 1941, the best German and Austrian skiers were already more than a match for their Soviet opponents, and the Red Army regularly suffered greater losses than their enemy. Sometimes Russian ski tactics were faulty, and numbers were no guarantee of success. In 1942, for example, Gen Raus recorded an attack by a Red Army ski brigade over a slope in daylight that resembled a ‘winter sports show’, brought to an ‘unfair conclusion’ by machine-gun fire and a flank attack by assault guns. On that occasion Soviet losses totalled more than 550, including the staff officer of 39th Guards Army in charge of ski training.
By 1943, albeit too late to have any decisive effect, German winter techniques and technology had largely caught up. Interestingly, that same year the Finnish Field Marshal Mannerheim paid his German colleagues the sideways compliment of telling them that not only had the Soviet enemy learned from the Winter War, but in terms of general tactics they had since learned much from the Wehrmacht, as for example in attacking and enveloping boldly and aggressively. Nevertheless, after the first winter campaign in 1941/42 perceptions had changed: as Russian infantry platoon commander Anatolij Tschernjajew put it, a once-mighty enemy had been seen unprepared, and now ‘miserable, half naked and hungry in front of Moscow’. The impact of this spectacle in restoring Soviet morale would never be wiped out by later German improvements.
Over the broad mass of armies the provision of special winter clothing was always uneven even late in the war; there were often complaints from the front lines that the more desirable items tended to stick to the rear-area personnel. Here, during the Battle of the Bulge, an NCO from US 2nd Armd Div is muffled up warmly enough in a mackinaw over his lined tanker’s jacket and bib-front overtrousers, and has improvised a mask against the biting December wind.
As late as the summer of 1942 official German teaching was that there were no special winter tactics, and despite some improvement in the provision of clothing and equipment widespread improvisation would still be necessary the following winter. At the same time, misleading assessments of Soviet abilities and powers of resistance were endemic, and sometimes deliberately disseminated as propaganda. General Halder referred to a ‘chronic tendency’ to underestimate the enemy, which is perhaps confirmed by Gen Raus’s claim that one of the key advantages of the Germans was that ‘the intelligent German soldier wanted to know what he was fighting for and what significance the mission of his respective unit had… He was an independent, individualistic fighter and felt far superior to the Russian soldier, who was trained for mass commitment’. Yet after the ‘Stalingrad winter’ of 1942/43 German military censors were reporting to Goebbels that 57 per cent of correspondence was skeptical or derogatory about the conduct of the war, 33 per cent indifferent, and only a tiny percentage of letter-writers were fully behind the senior direction of the conflict. As Gen Halder observed, this had serious morale and practical implications – for the regime, as well as for the Army.
Most of these GIs in the Belgian woods late in the Ardennes fighting have two-piece hooded snow suits, fastening with front tie-tapes – these were reckoned easier to handle with gloved hands than buttons. They are operating a light sledge relay for stores and casualties. Note the great depth of the wind-driven snow drifts.
It may be suggested that early in the war the Allied armies made many of the same mistakes of ommission as their Soviet and German counterparts, the fate of Norway being a particular tragedy in Britain’s case. Fortunately, however, neither of the major Western Allies was embroiled in a mountain campaign until the winter of 1943/44 in Italy, nor in protracted winter fighting until late 1944 in North-West Europe; by that stage they had taken aboard the main lessons of earlier failures, and their remaining shortcomings could not significantly influence the outcome of the conflict. That the development of winter tactics did impact significantly upon the course of World War II, particularly in Scandinavia and on the Eastern Front, is, however, undeniable, and it is a subject worthy of further research.
The German 7.5cm gebG 36 mountain howitzer that equipped Gebirgsartillerie units in the Mountain Divisions was recognizable by its unusual muzzle-brake, and had a variable recoil feature. In high mountain terrain guns usually had to be emplaced singly, so their effectiveness depended on careful selection of observation posts in reliable communication with the single gun positions.