Rommel's "PROBLEMS FOR PLATOON & COMPANY" 1940 EDITION - Translated

Problems
for Platoon and Company

(Combat Problems, Target Shooting, Terrain Briefing)

Your System and Management

by

Major General Erwin Rommel

Fourth, revised edition

with 66 sketches in the text

Publisher E.S. Mittler & Sohn / Berlin 1940

I have been searching for this book written by Rommel when he taught at the German Military Academy in Potsdam for a long time. There was a version that had been translated to English and sold in the 1990s, but it has been impossible to locate a copy online.

The version I found after a lengthy search was the 1940 version and is in the archaic Fraktur font which is very hard to read, though I am starting to make it out easy enough.

Oberst Rommel

I have set myself the task of, slowly, attempting to translate this document using Google Translate and common sense. I will present these Problems in order from the book, and there are a total of 19 Problems across 82 pages. I will be adhering as closely, as my ability allows, to the original text, though in some Problems (like the first) I am adjusting the ground scale so it can more easily be represented in Combat Mission.

I will provide a CMBN scenario with each Problem from the book, so players can attempt each. This post will include the text from the two Forwards included with this edition of the text. All translated text will be in black and any comments I may have will be in blue.

Forward

Following the publisher's instructions, I am making the collection of Problems for Platoon and Company available to the public.

I had the opportunity to work for several years at the infantry school as a teacher of Infantry cadets and then as commander of a Jager Battalion. I look back on an eventful and interesting time during the war as a front-line officer. I served in the ranks of the Infantry Regiment King Wilhelm I (6 Württemberg) Nr. 124 from the beginning of the war until autumn 1915, with only a brief interruption due to reinforcements. I experienced the battles in Belgium and Northern France as a platoon leader, later as a Battalion adjutant, and the Argonne battles of 1915 as a Company Commander. I was also fortunate enough to be a member of a core unit of the German Army, the Württemberg Mountain Battalion, from the end of 1915 to the beginning of 1918. --- The achievements of this force are particularly noteworthy in the battles in the Southeast Carpathians (August 1917), in the offensive against Italy (October 1917 to January 1918) and in the major battles in France in 1918. See the history of the Württemberg Mountain Troops by General Sprosser and the youth book by Schittenhelm: "We went to Friaul"*. --

Being a company commander for these troops, a leader of mixed forces with up to 16 companies, and having led the Württemberg Mountain Battalion units deployed in the front line in the south-eastern frontiers and in Italy to decisive success is the most uplifting memory of my time as a leader in the war.

The combat problems presented here are partly based on personal experience in the war, and partly on many years of training at the infantry school. They have all been tried and tested in practice.

*"Infantry Attacks" by General E. Rommel, released 1937


In order to keep this volume of the collection of editions as small as possible and thus the price low, the exercise regulations have been completely omitted in almost all editions, and the air situation, the troops' bus routes and the ammunition situation are only mentioned in a few words. For the same reason, in the imagined excess of editions, no instructions have been given for each individual case to the referees.

Spring 1935                                                                                                                          The Author

The book is a newly revised version of the regulations published since 1935, especially the A.B.F. and the shooting regulations.

It is intended to provide young officers and company commanders with guidance on how to plan and conduct combat exercises, target shooting and troop terrain briefings.
January 1940                                                                                                                        The Author

Next: 

Problem 1: Deployment