Posted on 05/09/2021 7:36:22 AM PDT by dynachrome
Say what you like about the Russians. But had it not been for their spirit, fighting and incredible capacity to tolerate suffering and loss, they would not have decimated the best of the German army by 1944. If America had to invade Europe with the German army largely intact, the casualties would have been huge. Many young men would have never returned, never had children and many Americans would have never come to exist.
It’s indecent to read them to the world. The letter wasn’t for you. I doubt he would like his letter to his wife exposed to the world. And had he known that was going to happen, he wouldn’t have written it.
It’s mostly a form of porn for modern women.
Unless the person is an archaeologist reading about something from 500 years ago, you shouldn’t read and broadcast other people’s mail.
A wise man, Henry Stimson, said “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail”.
Like I said, I know I’m in the minority on this. And I know people enjoy it. But I don’t think I’m alone and a lotta grunts agree with me.
Thank you for the tip—I just read it. Wow.
Thank you for that. I’m sobbing as I type.
“I know I’m probably backwards on this. But I don’t like soldier letters being exposed for the world.”
I somewhat agree with you.
Publishing those letters while that generation yet lived would have been wrong.
In this case though everyone who survived that war has pretty much died of natural causes in the last 76 years.
Their letters can make their history more personal to future generations. Also provide a useful timeline as the tone of the letters change from hopelessness to hope to outright certainty of victory.
They are our history, how else are we to learn?
Good point. Something like 75% of the German army was in the east fighting the Russians. If those troops had been in France instead, Eisenhower probably never would have even tried a D-Day.
But the Allies still would have won - only because of the A-bomb.
And what a mess that would have been. Unlike Hirohito, Hitler was insane. So it probably would have taken a dozen or more nuclear bombings.
My grandmother would have understood that poem all too well... all of her sons were overseas (my father and his brothers) in WWII.
Talk about worry... enough to make your hair turn white, I’d imagine...
The USSR was supplied by the West to keep them in the war; they did much of the fighting but for Americans the price (beyond all the food and arms sent) was fighting Japan with no help from the USSR. The Soviets could concentrate on the Eastern Front because they observed a ceasefire with Imperial Japan until the last months of the war.
FWIW, “Soviets” is a more accurate term then “Russians” - especially by the end of the war, when so many “European” Soviets had been killed that they were using many Far Eastern minorities as troops.
In terms of Hitler being “insane”, I suspect his determination to fight until the death was influenced by Mussolini’s execution and the subsequent displaying of his body afterwards. Hitler had a bizarre notion that the Soviets were going to display him naked in a cage in Moscow after the war...
I wonder how many Russian soldiers died because of what the censor read in their letters?
> In terms of Hitler being “insane”, I suspect his determination to fight until the death was influenced by Mussolini’s execution and the subsequent displaying of his body afterwards. <
As you probably know, the Allies guaranteed Hirohito’s personal safety. That was to sweeten the pot - to help induce the Japanese to surrender.
Suppose the Allies had done the same thing with Hitler, say after the Battle of the Bulge. Let him escape to Switzerland or Argentina. Stalin never would have gone for that. But it would make for an interesting historical novel.
I doubt anyone would have gone for that; unlike Hitler, the Japanese Emperor was not in direct control of the war effort. He didn’t have clean hands, but for decades the real control of Japan had been in the hands of the military. Also, Hirohito could be used to control a population; he served a purpose that nobody wanted Hitler for.
For example, imagine the islands of Japan populated by millions of die-hards like those Japanese holdouts in the remote areas of the Philippines - because the emperor never gave permission to stop fighting.
Part of the Soviet’s death toll also includes people in the West who fought for the Axis (Ukrainians and Baltic people, for instance). On paper, they are USSR casualties; in reality, they were fighting against Stalin.
Agree... I was in the last letter “War” (GWI), before internet/easier phone access.
I hope none of my letters get published...
I remember the quote from the German German Colonel Bernd Von Kleist from the early days of Barbarossa...
“The German Army in fighting Russia is like an elephant attacking a host of ants. The elephant will kill thousands, perhaps even millions, of ants, but in the end their numbers will overcome him, and he will be eaten to the bone.”
Ukrainians suffered a much higher death rate than ethnic Russians.
That said, some Ukrainians were just as bad as the Nazis, they killed over 100,000 Poles in Volhynia.
Imagine if Tojo had succeeded in bumping off Hirohito and then blaming his death on Allied bombing.
Many of the prisoners of war taken by the Nazis in the early days of the war were from the Central Asian areas of the USSR.
> The Soviets climbed into bed with Hitler, and got half of Poland as their payment on the counter. <
Many years ago I took a political science course that examined politics from the other guy’s (non-American) point of view. One of the topics was the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939.
Stalin watched as France and Britain let Hitler take Austria in 1938. Then Stalin was deliberately excluded from the Munich conference that gave Hitler Czechoslovakia. So maybe Stalin is thinking, the West won’t stand up to Germany. I’d better make a pact with Hitler, or I’m next.
I’m not saying that’s the correct interpretation. But it is something to think about.
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