Best WWII infantry?

> Smart
> Cheap
> Effective with a rifle
> Effective at hand to hand
> Willing to suicide bomb at a moments notice
> always fight to the death
> never surrenders
> basically brainwashed from childbirth to be the perfect soldier

i understand a lot of these traits can be seen as weaknesses, but i think they’re all positive overall. Even if a Japanese soldier would never surrender (when it might be strategically beneficial to keep him alive), i would still rather have that than a soldier that would be quicker to surrender.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=W6peJ0ur4jY
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-German_cooperation_1926–1941
warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/field-marshal-erich-von-manstein-at-kursk-an-impossible-victory/
history.army.mil/html/books/070/70-89-1/cmhPub_70-89.pdf
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

>never surrenders
That was more because they were told we'd shoot them for trying. They weren't 100% wrong.

Given their average loss rates once the US got a foot in the door, I highly doubt that. It's probably either krauts or soviets

The ones that won.

their weapons were absolute dogshit though

pretty good doc on IJA small arms and how it held them back
youtube.com/watch?v=W6peJ0ur4jY

So under good squad leaders and officers they'd be the best troops.
I think that's unfair, their small arms weren't bad enough to give them a major disadvantage, their tanks and planes let them down.

Their planes? Maybe late war, but the Zero served its purpose, to say the least.

German Panzer Grenadiers, guy.

*teleports in front of a machine gun*
Nothingu personner

> basically brainwashed from childbirth to be the perfect soldier

Most of the rank and file were what they always are in any army: farm boys. Whether you bought into the bushido agenda (which only ever applied to the samurai elites before they rewrote history) was irrelevant, you were physically beaten into compliance. Life as an Imperial grunt was god awful.

The Japanese air force had good planes but they couldn't keep up in speed and they never built enough.

Japan in WW2 is an irony, they were technologically and strategically superior to the Chinese and so defeated them, but this caused complacency and thus it was reversed against the USA.

Would I want to be a Japo grunt? No

Would I want to turn Japo grunts loose on the kikes? Oh yessss.

global rule 3 is enforced on this board, please delete your post

We actually very nearly had Germany V Japan. Germany was supplying and supporting China until the late 30s.

gonna need a sauce on that one, buddy, me boyo

Lack of initiative at NCO levels, they ran on an early-WW1 mindset where any loss of communication either lead to a direct assault or bunkering down, regardless of if they were being flanked.

I would rather have a solider who was smart enough to not get into a situation where the choice is surrender or death.

I'm gonna assume he's talking about Falkenhausen

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-German_cooperation_1926–1941

Germany trained and supplied the Chinese Nationalist army (the guys who lost the civil war to the commies) until 1937 when Japan invaded and Germany figured they're the better ally.

i hope, next time i wont have to bloody ASK for sources. this is Veeky Forums, lad

its common knowledge though, this is Veeky Forums lad

>goesn't know about the pre-WWII sino-german cooperation
I'm bloody SURE have no work discussing anything in this thread

>history channel
>good doc
I've seen it, nothing but fuddlore as usual. In reality jap small arms are greatly underrated, people always remember the few faulty quirks but not the more brilliant aspects. For example the nambu MGs were very good, it's often believed they were a copy of the bren (aka zb.26), but internally they were completely different in a way that made them very reliable. They were even regularly issued with SCOPES.

They also had the type 89 "knee mortar", which was a very unique hybrid between a grenade launcher and light mortar. They had one of these PER SQUAD. They were incredibly effective, being able to deploy quickly and with great accuracy, even the marines who went up against them wanted an equivalent.

This is the real reason the japs failed in the field. Not to mention strategic reasons such as nightmarish logistics, lack of heavy weapons or jungle warfare meaning disease and starvation is more deadly than combat. And of course defending an island without a navy nearby is a hopeless endeavor. You are outnumbered and outgunned incredibly and have nowhere to retreat.

However, when the japs had actually good troops and commanders and not shitty island garrisons, you ended up with battles like Tarawa, Peleliu or Iwo Jima. And before that the japs launched many successful offensives, where they were usually outnumbered too, with the most brilliant probably being at singapore. I'd say jap infantry was more than competent, but was held back by fanatical, ignorant and careless officers, and countless strategic factors.

>asking for sources for something this basic
What's next, asking for proof that Barbarossa actually happened?

>complains about having to show his sources. thinks he can make it in the field of history.

They still used those ridiculously long rifles for a very long time into the war, back when everybody had switched to 600 mm (or thereabouts) short rifle barrels from the beginning.
They pistol round was shit, inferior to every other one. Also, what is an SMG? Do we really need it in this close-fighting terrain on the islands we've landed on?

...

The type 99 was shortened to about average length. Although I think adopting the type 99 was retarded in the first place because the 6.5mm round was fine. I agree about the SMG, but it's weird because they were using SMGs (among special forces) as early as anyone else, but then kind of forgot about them until the last years of the war. Regardless though, the MGs and mortars were the only thing that mattered in 90% of combat.

Based shitposter

>fuddlore
wtf does this mean

/k/'s way of saying "gun and gun-related myths". Like ".22 caliber rounds will bounce around inside the skull"- type of stuff.

the soviet red army grunt was probably the most hardy and solid soldier, held back by doctrine and shitty commanders early on.

Probably Germans. Their level of training was second to none.

>Teleports behind you
Nothing personal kid

Fudd means gun casual in /k/ lingo.

>Adolf Hitler was born in Austr-
>SOURCE ???

IJA had technological and "tactical" advantages compare to China, but not strategically. From strategic aspects, they actually had lots of mistakes and errors, hence they never really defeated China and gradually became a stalemate, until US dropped the bombs to their islands.

>Nazis are Germ-
>Citation needed
This is you.

>bloooody hell

The Australians for sure

*starves to death*
Not so perfect now are they?

Cameron Highlanders by pure bias. Core of inter-war professional NCOs and used in almost every theatre the British fought in. Last mass bayonet charge (with kilts and bagpipes) during the Battle of France rear-guard for extra steel-testicle points.

> Smart
> Cheap
> Effective with a rifle
This fits russians more than japs
> Effective at hand to hand
Implying that hand to hand matters, lol.

>Soviets
>Smart

I can't agree.

>"If we come to a minefield, our infantry attacks exactly as it were not there." - Zhukov

Russians had some good snipers if you believe the kill counts as stated. Definitely cheap. The Soviet army lost it's original number about 2 and a half times over. I'd vote Soviets as the least effective in all categories from air to infantry ability.

In Fuller's "The Second World War", he talks about how the Japanese require less luxuries than the average British soldier and consume less.

Given the calorie density of rice and how long it lasts when dry, it's a perfect army food as long as there's water and cooking fuel around.

If Japan's submarines had focused on sinking supply ships, would it have affected the course of the war?

>If Japan's submarines had focused on sinking supply ships, would it have affected the course of the war?

I thought they were?

Generally conscripts can be very effective if properly motivated or are seen as the victims in the conflict. American conscripts (mind you, the median age was 20) fought very well in world war II because they saw themselves as the victims, but during the Vietnam war fought comparitively subpar because many amongst the ranks did not understand aggressively combating the domino effect. But the Japanese are a different level where whatever war they fight, they maintain their level of morale almost throughout. Japan was straightup the aggressor in the Russo-Japanese war (a good example being Nogi Maresuke who asked for permission to kill himself after feeling he lost too many men and eventually killing himself after the emperor died) and World War I Pacific theatre, but fought with the same devotion in world war II. So Japan is indeed unique on this one.

>the soviet red army grunt was probably the most hardy and solid soldier
Artillery - definitely.
Tanks - after 1942.
Infantry - our weak spot, always.

Japan's navy submarines were primarily used as fleet components. Mahanian doctrine (Evans & Peattie 1997, p. 497) Scouts and finished off at least one aircraft carrier. Later in the war many were converted to ferry suicide torpedoes. Mini submarines were produced en masse for coastal defense.

Nothing like the all out anti-merchant warfare of the American and German subs. But then I suppose American supplies came in massive well defended convoys.

Not sure what the Japanese Army submarines were used for, will have to read up on those. But the fact that the Army had submarines at all hints at the rivalry-strewn mess that was the Imperial armed forces' structure.

I think the troopers were well versed in the domino-effect judging by the diaries in Vietnam in HD. The moral problem was due to the problem of fighting an impossible police action in the jungle with arbitrary limits as to where they could go, who they could fight, and not being allowed to hold the ground they'd taken. Obvious to the man on the ground, not so much the ones behind desks.

>Not sure what the Japanese Army submarines were used for, will have to read up on those

IIRC they were solely used for supplying hard to reach island bases, once the Navy/Army feuding got so bad that the Navy refused to use their ever-dwindling number of supply ships for the job.

It got to the point where the Army was even constructing their own escort carriers...

Canadians were pretty top notch on an individual basis and as a collective effort, fough on the pacific and the western front, being a large part of the italian campaign, d-day, japanese island hopping

They were only a large part of D-Day to VE Day. Italy was secondary and the Japs evacuated Kiska before they landed there.

Canadians pulled off some important shit. (I just wrote an essay on this.) In fall 1944 the British took Antwerp, which was the only intact deep water port to move supplies in and they needed to get supplies in because the only other place to land them was in Normandy and hundreds of kilometers away. Only thing was, Antwerp's passage to the sea was blocked by the Scheldt estuary, a muddy swamp that the Germans fortified to hell with minefields and prepared positions.

The Canadians were able to take it in November, and 1 month later the Battle of The Bulge happened. Since they were able to take it, the supplies could come through Antwerp and reach the guys on the front line faster, not having to take so long to come from Normandy. Had that not happened who knows how the battle of the bulge could have went.

Japan never defeated China

Not sure where you retards crawl out from, but please return.

Underrated

It's finns, they showed unimaginable bravery against unthinkable odds. They showed early example of modern small unit tactics, and seemed to have great unit cohesion therefore high morale. In winter war especialy ,they continued to fight on until literaly either run out of ammo, got battered in ground by massive soviet artillery strikes, or simply went insane. At the same time they inflicted higher cassualties on soviets than anyone expected from them, in arctic conditions.

this

> Willing to give it a go
> Knows his weapons are kak
> Knows when he's beaten
> Avoids needless prolonging of the bloodshed
> Friendly and likeable to his captors to the point where they're allowed to mingle with the townsfolk and many migrate after the war
> Fish and Chips and Ice Cream specialists

Best

That most people never imagine that Japanese conscripts were often miserable, complaining about beatings, lack of food, disease, thirst, etc shows how well the US dehumanised them.
is especially important, bringing me to my next point:

Unironically German infantry up until 1942-1943. Superbly trained NCOs with the ability to take initiative and fully implement the 'leading by intent' system, and the average Landser had fine training as well. People love to wax tales about the Luftwaffe or Panzer troops but imo the ability to have such excellent basic troops across the board is one of the big standouts of the early Wehrmacht.

Soviet troops were poorly trained and often poorly educated, with incompetent NCOs. But they weren't just the dumb landmine-trampling chaff you often hear about. Quite good on the defensive, showing real bravery, and also had an aptitude for camouflage. Check out the concept of maskirovka in general, it's a highly underrated part of the Red Army's docrtine during WW2.

US Marines, they might bitch a lot but at least they get the job done and it usually takes 3 soul crushingly brutal campaigns to break him

fuck the chinese nationalist party seemed to damn promising goddamn nips

this
deep battle put a large emphasis on covering up and deception
a lot of people bring on about the allied deception plan for Normandy and Italy but forgot all the soviet stuff like Uranus with Paulus getting fully cut off in st*lingrad,Manstein thinking he was close to breaking the soviet in Citadel when Hitler asked to pull back for Sicily when there were 2 million soviets behind that salient and Bagration when the whole German defense by Model was swept away when Rokossovsky did that double pincer and probably cut off the length of the Eastern Front by 3-4 months
Also it's a misconception that the soviet soldiers were whipped up by commisars and punishment alone, the call to defend the motherland rings very loud to each soldiers ear
This,they pulled of the spirit of Gustavus Adolphus pretty well since most soldiers were conscripted from the same area and they would know each other just like the olden swede system
its partly Monty blunder in Garden Market which held off the opening the canal for so long
Most of Netherlands were taken by then but they forgot to take hold of the Scheldt Estuary which is crucial in letting ships pass

Feels good to see a fellow connoisseur of the Red Army and the Eastern Front. I totally agree with how people overstate the importance of commissars and punishment, people who say that the Soviet soldier fought purely out of terror and brainwashing are just parrotting Nazi propaganda, whether they know it or not

ww2 is babbys first history lesson but people only skim at it very thinly when the whole thing is very thick
also nazi propaganda still ringing today is my rebuttal to people saying history is written by victor

pistols are rarely ever used in combat. Nambu jerking is a meme

the arisaka type 99 and type 99 light machine gun were pretty god tier though. everything else though was pretty shit. too bad Japan did not have the resources to make better stuff

it was holdover from the 1905 war
the japs fought against ruskies on land with waves after waves of charging infantryman
they basically won due to the russians uninspired leadership,static line defense,bad communication,antiquated command structure and worse artillery(which was very suspect) and basically all the veterans at that time who now hold the high command basically taught the newer generations this

>But they weren't just the dumb landmine-trampling chaff you often hear about

I'm pretty sure they did exactly that, along with Order 227 and Zhukov's orders to literally march through landmines yeah they weren't expertly deployed in any sense.

>Quite good on the defensive

Not really. They lost 2.8 million men in less than the first year of combat against the Germans. Then they lose that number twice over while the Germans finally tucker out over time. They were horrible on the defense. And the offense if the three wars with Finland are evidence of anything.

>showing real bravery

Cowardice. Order 227.

>also had an aptitude for camouflage

Wearing white in the snow and that's it.

>Check out the concept of maskirovka in general, it's a highly underrated part of the Red Army's docrtine during WW2.

No it's highly overrated. Read the biographies of Soviet generals and compare them to autobiographies of Germans. Soviets had no idea what the fuck was going on and they misread their enemies constantly. Rokossovsky thought earlier in the war that his strategy of feeding troops to the enemy piecemeal was slowing them down- in reality the central sector redirected forces south to help expedite the slowdown in the southern sector. Rokossovsky didn't counter attack in one enormous blow when they were redeploying, which was a blessing to the Germans. I get the feeling that he was LARPing as Kutuzov/Barclay, but I can't prove that.

you're parroting things that you read without understanding context and nuance sweetheart
it's overblown to say that the russians were acting out on pure fear of reprisal which if that was the case than we would see practically no partisan effort
also the effort to conceal citadel,uranus,bagration as mentioned above shows that the part in deception that was important for deep battle where the enemy was misled into blundering their battle plan
even the Germans themselves thrown away Blitzkrieg by Kursk,specifically attacking a known strong point
the early war blunders could be attributed by the sweeping changes in leadership due to st*lin's idiotic purges,and the failure to counter attack while the army group was redeploying was risky as hell,since smolensk shown that the German were very averse in blunting counter attacks and that they had air superiority,if not supremacy

>>IIRC they were solely used for supplying hard to reach island bases, once the Navy/Army feuding got so bad that the Navy refused to use their ever-dwindling number of supply ships for the job.
>It got to the point where the Army was even constructing their own escort carriers...
Christ, how do these huge internal rivalries and splits in resource management in militaries develop?

>it's overblown to say that the russians were acting out on pure fear of reprisal which if that was the case than we would see practically no partisan effort

Tens of thousands of volunteers fought for the Germans at Stalingrad alone. Thousands more joined the SS. More fought across the whole of the front.

>inb4 sauce

Promise you'll look it up before you ask.

>also the effort to conceal citadel,uranus,bagration as mentioned above shows that the part in deception that was important for deep battle where the enemy was misled into blundering their battle plan

This run on typing style with lower caps and no periods is very irritating, but here we go: the deception aspect of Uranus and the counter attacks didn't matter. The Germans were limited in logistics and equipment reserves. They agreed, under the advisement earlier by Jodl and Brauchitsch, that holding ground was the strategy in response overall. Yes, there was the "backhand blow" and counter-encirclement's being used, but it didn't matter what the Soviets were doing to "hide" their operations. They fact they couldn't encircle any of the major enemies early on in those operations speaks for itself. You tell me in which way maskirovka worked, because I can't find any evidence it had any effect on German thinking at all.

>even the Germans themselves thrown away Blitzkrieg by Kursk,specifically attacking a known strong point

What's your point here? They didn't bypass the Soviet offensive there? Where would they have gone to perform and encirclement without cutting themselves off? That's not proof of anything and it's not the first time Prussian military theory was used in this way.

>the early war blunders could be attributed by the sweeping changes in leadership due to st*lin's idiotic purges

I'm going to disagree, but I don't have enough evidence to present the obvious counter theory. The only good thing the purges killed that they needed was Tukhachevsky.

The last bit about Smolensk and air superiority isn't half bad. But it's still to Rokossovsky's credit that he legitimately thought he was actually slowing Germany down by feeding his men to the grinder in small portions. The Soviets were bad at predicting movements themselves- so how do they know for sure they fooled the Germans to any effect? All appreciable gains they made in the end of the war was due solely to sacrificing men and machinery to the meat grinder.

By allowing the Army and Navy to independently garner massive political influence while moderate politicians are swept aside or assassinated. You saw similar bizarre redundancies in WW1, e.g. with the navy controlling British armoured cars.

How do ultranationalists explain away these issues? Like how the japanese naval commander outright said that they couldn't defeat the USA.

>Tukhachevsky
They also killed of his disciples bruv, along with everyone else who got a proper hands on education during the civil war.

Current Japanese ultra-nationalists? No idea, but I assume they start by saying America forced the war.

Yamamoto was a realist, but he was still an admiral in the Imperial fleet. The run up to the war was mostly down to Army machinations. Like with Germany, early victories swept the doubters aside.

>They also killed of his disciples bruv, along with everyone else who got a proper hands on education during the civil war.

Yeah you're right I was exaggerating the lack of loss way too much there.

Clark, Lloyd (2011). Kursk: The Greatest Battle: Eastern Front 1943. Headline. ISBN 978-0-7553-3639-5.
on how they tricked Manstein that the Kursk Salient was the only thing Russians had convinced Manstein that he almost won,particular emphasis on how they basically mislead the Germans that their focus was on the North when it was actually the Dnieper
Max Hastings also had the book on the Eastern Front where he emphasized on how 4 fronts were concealed from the OKW and Model was misled into putting his bets on Minsk which led to the annihilation of heersgruppe mitte an advancement of 670 miles in a 1190 miles front
Early Barbarossa clearly didnt show the best or most imaginative of Red army leadership
your points on how Red Army generals being clueless is such a disingenuous thing to assert when its clear that Heer itself was misled several times

>t. antifag that only reads the Sovietboo materials and none of the German autobiographies

Stop quoting Anglo historians you Anglo nigger.

maybe in your video games hun

oh wow talk about moving a goalpost bud
somehow i have to prove that the German general were confused and was actually deceived by the soviet plans well here it is
Truthfully speaking Kursk went so well also due to excellent intelligent reports by the Brits
warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/field-marshal-erich-von-manstein-at-kursk-an-impossible-victory/
here's a short read if you're interested in Kursk with an excerpt about Manstein wanting to let the Soviets attack first
Manstein and Guderian had a good idea on wanting to go back along the Dnieper and set up shop and let the soviets have a go there but it was shut down by the dumb Austrian in charge

It's cool man it's late out

history.army.mil/html/books/070/70-89-1/cmhPub_70-89.pdf
good read over here with contents stating on deep battle with the excerpt on importance of deception
also i would say that the japs did pretty well against soviets
obviously they got hilariously steamrolled in Manchuria but the Kwantung Army was basically in shambles,they basically had nothing to penetrate T-34 rolling on them but still there were enclaves that held out,Sakhalin is also a good showing of Japanese defenses
and in Khalkin Goal the japs were outnumbered and still managed to put on a casualty parity

>oh wow talk about moving a goalpost bud

I completely ignored the goalpost and decided to point out what I can't help but feel is a slight failing. Will read, thanks for the shares

Not him, but here's quotes from German historians on different applications of maskirovka:
Kursk:
>Over the first two years of the war the Red Army had made considerable progress in terms of quality. But the extent of its tactical inferiority to the Wehrmacht was already apparent in the initial phase of the battle of Kursk. At a strategic level, however, it pulled off a master-stroke before the first tactical action had even begun. It managed to hide not just several armies but a whole army group from German intelligence in the depths of the interior. That strategic reserve consisted of Steppe Front. Without a doubt, this was one of the war’s most striking examples of ‘maskirovka’ (camouflage and deception). The original plan was to hold back the strategic reserve until the start of the Soviet summer offensive, and then let it sweep like an avalanche over the German formations defeated in the defensive battle for Kursk. However, when Voronezh Front seemed about to collapse after only a few days, the avalanche had to be launched earlier—in the direction of Prokhorovka. The aim was not to stop the German attacking forces but to ‘envelop and destroy’ the three German armoured corps that had surged forward. In other words, the Red Army high command was seeking not an ‘ordinary’ victory but a victorious battle of annihilation, the ‘Cannae’ which the encirclement strategist Alfred von Schlieffen always had in mind—Stalingrad in the form of a tank battle.

Bagration:
>The Soviet forces were masters of ‘maskirovka’ (camouflage and deception). They successfully concealed the massing of forces by exploiting the terrain to best advantage and moving units at night, while simulating offensive preparations in remote sectors of the front. When the decision was taken to direct the main
offensive against Army Group Centre rather than against Army Group North Ukraine at Kovel, they continued to divert the enemy’s attention to Kovel. The Soviet high command sent empty goods trains to Kovel at night, and then had them return during the daytime, when they were clearly visible to German reconnaissance. Such measures contributed to Foreign Armies East’s initial assumption that the main point of concentration would be at Kovel. Only in the final phase of the Soviet assembly of forces did the German Ic sections of the individual armies see through the deception. In any case, the offensive units detected at Kovel were not necessarily a deceptive manoeuvre by the Stavka. That was seen on 18 July, when the Red Army did indeed launch a powerful offensive in that area. Shortly before, an average of 35 tanks and 178 cannon per kilometre of front had been deployed against the armies of Army Group Centre stationed in the Belorussian bulge in the main concentration sectors; at Kovel the average was 83 tanks and 356 cannon per kilometre.
>Soviet radio traffic had previously been one of the most important sources of information for German enemy intelligence. But just before this decisive offensive, the Red Army succeeded for the first time in doing without their insecure radio communications and maintaining strict radio discipline. In this crucial phase, the ‘electronic oracle’ fell silent.
Frieser, Karl-Heinz et al. (2007). Germany and the Second World War, Volume VIII, The Eastern Front 1943-1944: The War in the East and on Neighboring Fronts. Oxford. 0-19-822889-9.