GERMAN
SQUAD TACTICS
IN WORLD WAR II
Introduction
The following work was translated and published by the Military Intelligence Service in January 1943 as The German Squad in Combat. The name and date of the original German manual is unknown, however, it is “the greater part of a German handbook designed to aid in squad training”. Because of changes in infantry organization it is possible to date this manual to the period 1940-1942; the 4 squad platoon was established after the Polish campaign of 1939, the squad leader’s weapon was changed to a machine pistol sometime in 1940 and the number of soldiers in the machine gun troop was reduced from 4 to 3 in the early part of the war.
To get the most out of this book, you will have to study it and incorporate it into your behaviour in the field. Old habits are hard to break so your whole unit has to implement the changes to make this information work.
I have heavily edited the text and put in many of the original German words. This was accomplished by using an assortment of German manuals from the same 1940-1942 period. Figures 11 and 12 were altered to show the formations of the late war platoon (three squads per platoon instead of four).
Making a word plural in German is not as easy as it is in English. Therefore, the German words are usually only given in their singular form (except Gruppen, the plural form of Gruppe, for instance). The German diagrams were added by me and there are no explanations for them in the text. They are provided to familiarize you with the German terms.
Differences between German and U.S. Tactics
In contrast to the doctrine of other nations the German army holds that the machine gun, not the rifle is the backbone of infantry tactics. The German squad is built around the light machine gun. It is the squad’s base of fire. The riflemen support it and provide ammunition for it. In the U.S. squad, the riflement are the base of fire and the BAR (Browning automatic rifle) supports the riflemen. This may be on of the reasons why the Germans stayed with the K-98k rifle (designed originally in 1898 and modified last in the 1930s). In the U.S. squad the M1 rifle (adopted in the 1930’s) was the newer weapon while their automatic weapon, the BAR (originally an 1918 design) was old. In the German squad the MG-34 (introduced in 1936) was the new design. The Germans even came out with a replacement for the MG-34 in 1942 (the MG-42).
All German soldiers learned how to use the machine gun, but only the best marksmen were given further training on it. German soldiers were expected to be able to fire 50-60 well-aimed shots in 5-8 round bursts in 30 seconds with the MG-34.
The Germans considered the infantry to be the queen of all arms. Every soldier received basic infantry training before any other training. German officers, regardless of their speciality were taught to lead up to an infantry battalion in battle.
Why do German machine guns have such a high rate of fire?
After much study the Germans realized that enemy soldiers would be in view for only brief moments when they advanced from cover to cover or when they fired their weapons. In order to take advantage of this the Germans kept their rate of fire high in order to put the most amount of bullets at the enemy in the shortest amount of time.
