Originally Posted by
Norfolk
Fred, what I know about Shoerner is scant, although he did have a terrible task to perform when he commanded German and Finnish Mountain troops on the Murmansk Front, and it is not clear that anyone could have done much better. I remember reading about German and Finnish operations on the Kola Pensinsula, and it is almost impossible to think of a worse place to have to fight - countless giant boulders blocking the passage of almost any vehicle without road-construction, which itself bordered on the impossible under the prevailing climatic conditions; no vegetation or natural cover aside from said boulders; inadequate clothing, shelter, and rations, and of course, inability to adapt to the conditions of life in a Polar region, until the Germans learned from the Finns how to wage Arctic Warfare; and finally, being at the wrong end of a grossly overlong supply "route", made Operational-level action effectively impossible. Even Tactical action was difficult in the extreme.
He and Rommel were competitors, and both were old Gebirgsjaegars; and both won the Pour le Merite in WWI. Schoerner must have had something truly exceptional about him to share in that very rare honour.
But it was under his command on the Eastern Front that the Battle of Targul Frumos was fought by German and Rumanian troops, and the actions of the GD in particular have been studied by NATO for decades now. Whether such studies focusing on Targul Frumos to the detriment of what else was going on on the Eastern Front in the months just before Operation Bagration are useful is admittedly arguable.
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