German and American operational theory was similar but the devil was in the details. According to the stereotype Americans were wusses who couldn't do anything but dump "tons and tons of TNT", while the Germans were elegant experts in manuever who kicked around at foes like Bruce Lee. As with all such things there is some truth, but the German affectation is rather odd-besides the fact that they had no problem blowing up Poles, the idea is to make the other guy die for his country.
Americans trusted more to their rifles and were less centered around the squad machine-gun. This was because the M1 was quite good as rifles go.
The American Third Army had a fancy for what they called, "marching fire" which was a way of giving suppressive fire as one advances, rather then have one wing suppress while another advances which was more typical.
Neither army can be seen as a monalith. In 1942 the Americans were highly inexperienced. By 1945 there was little left of the German army but militia. So comparisons should be based on time.

 

 The US infantry in the ETO also suffered quantity as well as quality problems in 1944 1945. It was burdened by a chronic shortage of replacements, McNair?s  stupid individual replacement system and the siphoning off of quality personnel into more technical specialties (Air Corps ,communications etc.).

Added to this was the lost of the ?old? experienced infantry soldiers.    As the Army expanded many were given opportunities to transfer to other branches such as the Air Corps with a chance to immediate promotion to NCO or even to officer.

 So poor was the situation that one Infantry commander complained that he lacked qualified officers and NCOS because? everybody higher than a moron? had been pulled out of his unit.(The procurement and Training  of  Ground Combat Troops , by Robert  Palmer, pp 16-19)

?on 1 December 1944 the Third Army was under strength in infantrymen by the equivalent of 55 rifle companies. ?

?The crisis reached a peak in January 1945, when the full extent of the casualties resulting from the Battle of the Bulge were felt. Stringent economy measures and a reorganization of the replacement pool improved matters in February. However, it must be said that the only thing that finally solved the problem was the end of the war.? link

 

 General Patton even went so far as to complain that his Infantry units were incapable of any sort of maneuver bellow Battalion level due to the shortage of quality Officers and NCOs.  He recommended the use of only the most basic of tactics, the Marching Fire you speak of.  (War has I knew it, George S Patton, pp 293)

 Patton was so discouraged by their performance of US infantry  the he felt the French criticism of US infantry in WWI still applied in WWII (The poorer the infantry, the more artillery it needs; The American infantry needs all it can get?.  (The Patton Papers, pp. 521)

 

 

 

 

 

Actually I was referring to companies "further back", in the Corps Support Commands, for example.  From browsing through TOE's, I seem to recall some transportation or maintnenance companies being especially large.

HHC's in mechanized combat battalions were, as you said, essentially sub-divided amoungst the staff... kinda-sorta like "mini-companies"... I wonder how the mindset would change, if the larger chunks of an HHC were split and called companies?

 

Armored Cavalry Troops (when I was in) had 126 personnel, plus 3 medics and a 3-man fire support team (attachments beyond that were actually rare, but then again, a cav troop was rather self-sufficient to begin with)...  Maybe a Bradley Stinger vehicle with 4 crew....

Many of the US Army's most competant officers and NCO's were sent to the Pacific as it was seen as more of an infantryman's war. The US infantry performed as well as any other in Western Europe, and the Germans believed that of the allies they had the soundest grasp of mobile warfare. Criticisms of US infantry performance was when they were on the defense. The Germans could often push US infnatry back for miles, while they had a terrible time counterattacking the British. One false criticism is the US reliance on airpower. Post-war reports showed that airpower did not have nearly the affect on the German military machine that the allies thought it did.The bombings disoriented the Germans, and made them less mobile, but most of the killing (for the US) was done by the awesome US Army artillery.

 

WW2 critisicms that the US depended too much on artillery is unfounded also, as it wasn't an issue of poor performance of US infantry, but rather of the excellent performance of US artillery, which was, without a doubt, the best in the war. Almost all captured German soldiers stated that what they feared most about the western allies was American artillery. The US had good artillery, plenty of it, and used it to maximum effect. This does not mean that US infantry in western Europe was unwilling or incapable of closing with the enemy, only that US artillery did an excellent job.

The true strength of the United States in Europe during WWII was our logistics.  Most of the time we simply had more of everything to throw at the enemy than they had to throw back.  It's not elegant, but it works.

 

One of the big complaints that those German soldiers also had was that when they spotted US activity, they had to send out a patrol to see what we were up to.  When the US Army spotted German activity they tended to send an artillery barrage and then a patrol to see what they had been up to.  The German's thought we were trigger happy.

True, but the material superiority argument can be used for almost any allied army from 43-45. Yes, one of the US Army's strengths was logistics, but we had to send materials and supplies across two of the worlds biggest oceans, so we often did not have as much as some historians would like us to believe. The Germans had an advantage in that they were on the defense, and materials and supplies didn't take long to get to the front. The US had to ship them across the ocean, first to the UK, and then to France and so on. We had to ship oil across the ocean as well, whereas the Germans had access to Indo European oil fields. We also did not adhere to the "Germany first" strategy, as we sent a lot more men and material to the pacific than we did to Europe.

 

Artillery was the greatest offensive weapon of that war. This was true of both the Eastern and Western fronts. Infantry alone did not have as much say in the outcome of the conflict. After Stalingrad, the Russian infantry relied mostly on raw recruits with little training. But in Kursk, they went up against the cream of the German army, and almost achieved parity in kill ratios. In operation Bagration, the Russians handed the Germans their greatest defeat of the war, perhaps as devastating as operation barbarossa. A lot of this is owed to the Russians superiority in artillery. However, Russian artillery, while plentiful, was often innacurate. US artillery on the other hand, was very accurate. The Germans had little confidence in their own artillery, and thought that anyone who used artillery to it's full advantage had to have a ton of it. This wasn't always true, American generals always had to fight for their share of supplies. Was the US military in WW2 a logistical masterpiece? No doubt. But people often underestimate the difficulty of supplying two fronts across 2 huge oceans. We didn't just snap our fingers to get what we wanted, we often had to wait for supplies to cross the ocean, even at the most critical moments of the war.

To correct my post. Operation Bagration was as devastating to the Germans as Operation Barbarossa was to the Russians.

Much of this was because the Germans, not great artillerymen themselves, didn't understand how artillery could be used so effectively.

You do realise the German army fought in WWI?  It is simply not true to suggest they "didn't understand how artillery could be used effectively".

Germany however, was not ready for war in 1939.  They had insufficient war-stocks to defend an allied counter-offensive after Poland for instance, while they only had Panzer I's and II's in numbers at the start of the war.  They also were lacking in suitable artillery.  This was why they focussed their doctrine on the Stuka and dive bombing to provide CAS in place of artillery support.

 

By the time America was heavily engaged in he ETO on the continent, German air-cover was not sufficient to provide air-superiority for their Stukas.