The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

[Mr Bean]

Yeah. The catastrophic traffic jams will occur outside Atlanta, which unfortunately is where the Wehrmacht wants to go. Some of them will be far enough down the highway to not concern marching infantry at first, but they'll be obstacles to panzer divisions within a short time.

Every Panzer has towing gear, and as mentioned before. Highway mediums and sideways make excellent tank ground. If the Germans can clear thirty kilometers in dense second growth forest I don't see miles of stalled cars with big wide open spaces nearby being that much of an issue.

[Simon_Jester]

Should I interpret that as "I don't think the Germans can clear thirty kilometers in dense second growth forest?"

Also, while the Germans can no doubt advance along the open patches near a highway, they may run into problems if the highway hits a bridge, tunnel, or cut, where there generally aren't any open patches along the sides or divider... and that's exactly where the jams are worst.

[K. A. Pital]

Armies are made to advance over roadless terrain if and when necessary, anyway. So unless we are talking about massively huge obstacles like a high mountain, large lake or huge marsh, which did slow units down and break the frontline in real-life combat, traffic jams are a minor issue.

[Beowulf]

Soldiers moving through a forest will move slower than soldiers of the same fitness moving on a road. That's the entire point of roads.

[K. A. Pital]

Soldiers moving through a forest will move slower than soldiers of the same fitness moving on a road. That's the entire point of roads.

Roads are also easily defended while the surrounding terrain is not. So generally units need to be able to move without roads if necessary.

[Simon_Jester]

Armies are made to advance over roadless terrain if and when necessary, anyway. So unless we are talking about massively huge obstacles like a high mountain, large lake or huge marsh, which did slow units down and break the frontline in real-life combat, traffic jams are a minor issue.

An army can advance through trackless forested tangles.

An army cannot advance through such a tangle as fast as it can advance down the nice, flat, open roads and nice, flat, plowed fields.

Thus, at the tactical level, if your soldiers advance radially outward in all directions from a single point, then at the end of a day's march they will not form a nice neat circle on the map. They will form an amorphous blob, created by all the times where soldiers trying to force a way through a maze of kudzu vines* spent four hours moving a distance that would have taken half an hour's stroll to cover in more open terrain. The blob will have pseudopods extending along roads and cleared areas, but will be quite small everywhere else.

*(extremely heavy clinging vines that cover everything, choke out all other vegetation, and can actively collapse houses and such under the weight of vines)

Soldiers moving through a forest will move slower than soldiers of the same fitness moving on a road. That's the entire point of roads.

Roads are also easily defended while the surrounding terrain is not. So generally units need to be able to move without roads if necessary.

I'm not sure you understand.

The point is not that they "can't move through the forest," although kudzu and the like are a near-impassable obstacle unless cleared with flamethrowers or (laboriously) with machetes.

The point is that if the horde of foot soldiers are trying to get anywhere fast, they will necessarily be channelized and forced to walk along the roads and through open terrain. If they go off road they slow down and don't make as much progress. But if they go on

The odds are that the German foot-soldier horde will do both- send columns down the available roads, and send other soldiers to filter through the woods and rugged terrain. But the columns marching down the roads will move farther, and get their faster... which means they are susceptible to ambushes and flanking attacks, because their flank protection simply hasn't caught up with them yet.

All this is relevant only at the tactical level, but it is relevant. The area is not a big flat steppe where you can have soldiers advance in a neat, geometric line at a uniform pace that stretches for hundreds of kilometers. At least, not if you want them to advance with any real speed.

[K. A. Pital]

Oh in this case I agree that the offensive will be channelized; I even think a lot of the forward-deployed units be it rapid armor formations or paratroopers will get obliterated once real fighting starts. But in general, no major strategic offensive can be made against such a huge force. Especially at the start. It will be more like bee stings, and the main task for the US will be conserving manpower and fighting smart, unless they are willing to commit to total war and destruction of the place.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, my original point was that the existence of these 'bee stings' is still enough to force the Germans to advance (relatively) slowly and cautiously, rather than simply driving as far as they can for as long as they can. It's not so much the risk of a unit running into opposition it can't dislodge. It's that any casualties resulting from any opposition are likely to be very very severe and lopsided.

It's hard to make troops maneuver recklessly under those conditions.

[Patroklos]

I think we should take into account confusion and caution the unfamiliarity with the weapons they do encounter even if in small numbers will cause. Guided missiles randomly blowing up vehicles out of the blue will be a WTF, but when a solitary M1 shows up and slaughters and entire panzer platoon in minutes these units are not going to be throwing themselves headlong into the front. Imagine what an Apache will look like to them.

It is one thing to face an enemy you know and understand even if the odds are against you. It is quite another to blunder into the unknown when that unknown is indistiguisable from magic.

This was already brought up but good luck moving millions of men in anything resembling an organized fashion or calling in any of that German artillery without any wireless communication. I real life they relied pretty heavily on laid telephone cables but that doesn't work for quick reaction on the march.

[K. A. Pital]

Guided missiles could be understood; the Germans invented one, the X-7, remember.

And you would be surprised but laid cable is okay. It did not slow down the German blitz or the Soviet offensive on the Oder.

[Beowulf]

Guided missiles may be understood... but probably won't be. The X-7 never reached deployment. And the vast majority of guided weapon usage in the initial stages will be by aircraft, in which case the weapon may be barely seen before impact. All they would know is that their vehicles are blowing up. Most guided missiles are low-smoke now, so there wouldn't even be a smoke trail. Just the sound of the missile moving through the air shortly before an explosion as their Tiger or Panther or Panzer explodes.

[Patroklos]

Guided missiles could be understood; the Germans invented one, the X-7, remember.

By a few engineers and a couple Luftwaffe crews and their officers who knew they existed at the time. By 99% of the Wehrmacht and specifically that Bavarian farm boy driving the tank next to the one that just seemed to randomly blow up for no reason not so much.

Imagine them finding an abandoned Javelin that looks like this:



and then disappointedly looking down at his own meager kit:



What do you think is going to happen when a battle hardened tank commander who knows his trade up and down gets a look an M1 assuming one get close enough to be more than a dot on the horizon and he is the one in ten tanks who survives the encounter? Or the pilot that gets a good look at an F-15 flying by and lives to tell about it?

They are going to surrender.

And you would be surprised but laid cable is okay. It did not slow down the German blitz or the Soviet offensive on the Oder.

That’s because they didn't use wire communications in this situation, they did without and relied on wireless and physical messengers until the signal corps caught up with them. Given the crudeness of their comms gear it would take on F-18G to shut down the whole spectrum to them.

[Simon_Jester]

I think we should take into account confusion and caution the unfamiliarity with the weapons they do encounter even if in small numbers will cause. Guided missiles randomly blowing up vehicles out of the blue will be a WTF, but when a solitary M1 shows up and slaughters and entire panzer platoon in minutes these units are not going to be throwing themselves headlong into the front. Imagine what an Apache will look like to them.

In World War II, helicopters were close enough to the state of the possible that the mere fact of a helicopter wouldn't be the problem. It is, essentially, just another aircraft, and one that doesn't fly impossibly fast or high, either.

What would be shocking and horrifying would be the effect of the Apache's guided missiles on its tank-hunting capability- it pops up from behind a range of hills several kilometers away and the next thing you know, ten tanks are burning, just like that.

[Patroklos]

They knew about airplanes too, but I doubt Gunther Rall will climb back into hs Me109 once encounters an F-22.

[K. A. Pital]

They knew about airplanes too, but I doubt Gunther Rall will climb back into hs Me109 once encounters an F-22.

Why would he not? Some craft are sometimes impossible to intercept/detect (examples are the Me-262 or MiG-25 when introduced) and they do cause people to crap their pants a bit... but that's it.

[Patroklos]

Niether the Me262 or the MIG-25 were impossible to detect or intercept at the time (neither even tried to be undetectable), but more importantly neither represented anything close to the multiple orders of magnitude of advancement in technology an F-22 or even F-15 represents over the WWII Luftwaffe.

For the Germans it would be like Independence Day aliens showing up, but instead of committing genocide asking them to surrender and join a marvelous futuristic society with technological marvels and a standard of living that were unfathomable to them even before the war until they discovered a working iPad in the Atlanta suburban home the teleported into. Angry Birds alone is probably enough to make them question why they are destroying this land of wonder. Hell, an average homes stocked refrigerator will reduce a hardened veteran appearing from the Eastern Front into cycling fits or hysterical laughter and uncontrollable crying. Some ATL kid is going to show them his cellphone and tell him he can call instantly anywhere in the world, he'll even look up his grandkid's phone number on said same device and give him a call. Seriously, surrender is not really in question here.

[Simon_Jester]

Put another way, the modern US military's technology outclasses the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe by about as great a margin as the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe would outclass the Prussians of 1870, with their needle guns and observation balloons. That kind of technological disadvantage is massively demoralizing, especially when it comes as a shock. There have been, oh... I don't know, two whole new rounds of game-changing military technology since World War Two? Possibly three.

Now, if our hypothetical Ghosts of the Nazis are very fully prepared for this and had at least some semblance of training for what to expect... they might be able to keep fighting for a while. But over the long haul, common sense is going to take over, especially when the fuel-air bombs start going off- or, worse yet, the nuclear weapons.

[K. A. Pital]

Niether the Me262 or the MIG-25 were impossible to detect or intercept at the time (neither even tried to be undetectable), but more importantly neither represented anything close to the multiple orders of magnitude of advancement in technology an F-22 or even F-15 represents over the WWII Luftwaffe.

For the Germans it would be like Independence Day aliens showing up, but instead of committing genocide asking them to surrender and join a marvelous futuristic society with technological marvels and a standard of living that were unfathomable to them even before the war until they discovered a working iPad in the Atlanta suburban home the teleported into. Angry Birds alone is probably enough to make them question why they are destroying this land of wonder. Hell, an average homes stocked refrigerator will reduce a hardened veteran appearing from the Eastern Front into cycling fits or hysterical laughter and uncontrollable crying. Some ATL kid is going to show them his cellphone and tell him he can call instantly anywhere in the world, he'll even look up his grandkid's phone number on said same device and give him a call. Seriously, surrender is not really in question here.

You mean becoming slaves in this brand new world who will be mistreated even worse than any other kind of illegal migrant? Many being jailed, some killed, and others reduced to the most hated minority on Earth?

That is a tough call. Do you see people living on less than $2 per day suddenly stop running a war or rebellion because there is this land of technological wonder and we are in Star Trek: Enterprise or something? I don't. Sorry but not earning enough to properly feed yourself is exactly why this land of wonder isn't that cool for many people.

The F-22 is not 'totally undetectable' - you can see it with your eyes, and understand that this is an airplane. An advanced one, but still.

[Beowulf]

Because everyone in the Wehrmacht are Nazis, right?

And the F-22s are effectively undetectable. So are pretty much all US fighters At ranges greater than ~20nm, aircraft are normally considered Beyond Visual Range. All US fighters are capable of BVR combat. So although you maybe be able to see it with your eyes in a theoretical sense, in a practical sense, German fighter pilots won't be able to, since they won't come close enough.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Not only that, but even sans missiles in a traditional gun engagement it would be pretty rare for our Luftwaffe pilots to ever actually see the F-22 or F-15. This was the problem in WW2: Attackers would ideally dive on their targets from superior altitude and speed whenever possible, which results in the targets generally being caught unawares. Of course, that was between aircraft of comparable capabilities which had similar rates of climb, flight ceilings, and maximum speed (limited by the strength of the airframe, not the engine per se), so dogfights frequently resulted when neither group could spring a surprise dive on the other.

It's for that reason that the air combat disparity in this scenario is such a joke. Without even talking about the F-22, even an F-15 can climb higher, faster than even an Me262 could ever dream of, cruise around with utter impunity well beyond Luftwaffe flight ceilings and speeds (and the pilots' eyesight, given that WW2 pilots often couldn't even see their contemporary attackers before it was too late), and engage with guns and then disengage at will with no possibility of being counter-attacked or getting drawn into an actual dogfight, and a very slim chance of even being seen at all, save for the spiraling fireball of whatever poor bastard was targeted.

[Beowulf]

On another note: the US is not a signatory to the Ottawa Treaty. As such, it still maintains stocks of landmines. More notably, the Volcano, Gator, and ADAM systems of scatterable mines. These allow mines to be emplaced beyond the forward edge of battle.

[Simon_Jester]

You mean becoming slaves in this brand new world who will be mistreated even worse than any other kind of illegal migrant? Many being jailed, some killed, and others reduced to the most hated minority on Earth?

That is a tough call. Do you see people living on less than $2 per day suddenly stop running a war or rebellion because there is this land of technological wonder and we are in Star Trek: Enterprise or something? I don't. Sorry but not earning enough to properly feed yourself is exactly why this land of wonder isn't that cool for many people.

Note that it might well take considerable time for the German intruders to figure all this out. You are making a highly specific social critique based on long familiarity with the First World. They are entering from a position of ignorance. It is unlikely that they're in any position to even understand your social critique, or to anticipate the fate you predict for them.

The F-22 is not 'totally undetectable' - you can see it with your eyes, and understand that this is an airplane. An advanced one, but still.

The F-22 never needs to come close enough to any of the things it's killing to be detected with the eye, under these conditions. It can launch missiles and drop bombs accurately from altitudes and speeds that a human observer can't hope to track. That's the point of describing them as "beyond visible range" combatants. You cannot see them; they are too far away to see.

[K. A. Pital]

In case you don't see it they will likely interpret it as an advanced form of guided artillery or something. After all, you don't see the coming projectile that's gonna blow up your whole platoon too. In case they see nothing how can they be scared of the technology? They would assume they are getting hit by artillery from BVR. Now, they will capture some US air tech at the AFB near Atlanta, but I am not sure they will be able to figure the capabilities fast enough for that to matter (or that the knowledge will be quickly disseminated).

Because everyone in the Wehrmacht are Nazis, right?

Much worse: they come from a time when extreme racism and xenophobia were the norm, not an abberation. A few decades before the war black people were shown in cages in zoos like animals, and in Germany in particular a whole generation had been brought up in intense hatred of the lower races that formed an integral part of their worldview. The fact that you get an army of ressurected soldiers (not civilians) makes it only worse, as these were directly involved in the massacring of the lower races, and thus they will be hated by most people, distrusted and excluded from normal social relations.

True, as Simon said they can be unaware of this fate. But... then again, they can also consider a bargaining chip in the form of Atlanta civilians a better negotiation lever than nothing at all.

[Beowulf]

Guided artillery? They had no such thing. To think you could fit a guidance system into something the size of a shell? Madness! How would the guidance wires even work? They may assume artillery until they realize it's hitting particular things, not just being spammed over the area.

And Dobbins ARB has no fighters or bomber stationed there. The reserve wing has C-130s assigned. There are no fighters or bombers are Robins AFB either.

[K. A. Pital]

Interpreting the events as very accurate artillery or missiles is the natural thing to do, especially once they discover missile fragments near to the destroyed machinery. Of course, the tech level gap is immense and will be shocking, but given the knowledge of the circumstances I think they can understand it, not just go 'it's magic!'. I mean, come on. The newspapers show the date and time, one can make the necessary connections.