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Niels Henkemans Profile picture
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15 Sep, 4 tweets, 2 min read
@OberstWKlink suggested I shared this with my followers and he is of course right...
... Good allied intel documents are available on all these unit symbols, so if you want to move ahead and educate yourself you can use these links...
1) 1943 version: archive.org/details/German…
2) 1944 version:
archive.org/details/German…

Don't worry if this all seems a bit overwhelming, I'll continue my crash course later ;-)
And if you want to take on early war symbols as well,
Dr. Leo Niehorster's website is a good start: niehorster.org/011_germany/sy…
But be warned, things will get more confusing 🧐

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More from @Niels_1944

Niels Henkemans Profile picture
14 Sep
Thread: German orbats #3 Let’s continue our crash course of German OOBs. We’ll stay with this one Image
Link to the previous thread:
Let’s look at an artillery regiment
Staff, HQ battery, 4 battalions (each with a staff, HQ battery and 3 batteries) Image
Read 14 tweets
Niels Henkemans Profile picture
18 Aug
Thread: German orbats #2
Let’s continue our crash course of German OOBs. We’ll zoom in on this one
In case you missed the first thread
Anyway, time to dig little deeper and start with a inf rgt:
Staff, HQ company, three battalions and two regimental heavy weapons units
Read 24 tweets
Niels Henkemans Profile picture
17 Aug
Thread: German orbats
German document can be very interesting, even if you don’t speak German.

Their visual OOBs are prob the best example of that, if you know what the symbols mean.
Yes, you can look those up online, but how about a crash course in several threads?
Modern publications typically use NATO symbols. Useful, but also boring.
(Examples from Zetterling’s ‘Normandy 1944’ and Zaloga’s ‘Cherbourg 1944’)
German OOB charts are great, and a little confusing
Regard them as a unit assembled on an inspection ground: that they're seen from the perspective of a commander looking at his troops. So left on paper is actually right and right is left: So 4-3-2-1. Applies to all subunits!
Read 13 tweets
Niels Henkemans Profile picture
27 Jul
Thread: German 'stomach' and 'ear' units

Let's continue examining Cross-Channel Attack's (CCA) take on the German troops. For 1950/1951 it was admirable, but as we have seen yesterday not all of it holds up. Image
Now look at this sentence. The German use of stomach units has become (in)famous, but CCA correctly states that was just one division: the 70ID Image
The existence of ear and stomach units is a popular story, but it is seldom explored for what it really was.
On D-Day the 70ID did not really exist yet...
In the bigger picture it was very much an emergency formation in the summer (crisis) of 1944.
Read 11 tweets
Niels Henkemans Profile picture
26 Jul
Thread: German static divisions in Normandy supposedly had very poor personnel. While true to some extend but as always it's a bit more complicated. Cross-Channel Attack (1951) made a serious attempt for a balanced view. Arguably better than much what has been written since! Image
The book seems to be key in spreading the message that 'the average age of the 709ID was 36'. This is commonly presented as fact when in fact it was based on anecdotal evidence: An officer explaining the failure of his division.
His claim made it into German records as well 🙄 Image
Fact: the maximum average age of the combat elements in static divisions was set at 36.
And yes, support elements could raise that to over 36. But that’s just theory…
Are there reasons to believe that actually happened in the 709ID? Not really. 🧐
Read 21 tweets
Niels Henkemans Profile picture
6 Jul
By 1944 a standard German infantry division had about 4.000 horses. Yes, you read that correctly: 4.000
#WW2 #SWW #History Image
The number of horses for the artillery as show here is actually too low because it included some batteries with just 3 guns, instead of the actual 4 Image
For Normandy such 'standard' divisions included the 271ID, 272ID, 275ID, 276ID, 277ID, 331ID, 352ID, 353ID, 363ID. Of course these were not identical in strength for various reasons
Read 10 tweets

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