Remembering Stalingrad 75 Years Later

Townhall.com ^ | November 9, 2017 | Victor Davis Hanson

[JohnyBoy]

>Russians got a lot of help from us, but they hushed that up

>>Yeah, umm, when you sacrifice an entire generation of men who bled themselves white on those fields, you don’t exactly chalk up the victory to the folks who supplied some of the hardware. They deserve the national pride that came from Stalingrad. It saved millions of lives, and possibly the world, and easily many thousands of American lives (if not hundreds of thousands). We should be grateful, not they.

We should be greatful to each other. With Russia and the US in the war Germany would have won.

[minnesota_bound]

The Cornelius Ryan Trilogy - A Bridge Too Far; The Longest Day; The Last Battle

‘The Last Battle’ was the battle between the Germans and the Russians. So much death and destruction that was far worse then the western allies went thru. It was hard to understand the brutality.
https://www.amazon.com/Cornelius-Trilogy-Bridge-Longest-Battle/dp/B000IE8MIU

[tom h]

"Hitler erred when he halted in front of Moscow. He ordered the advance to resume after a muddy fall,then winter but it was too late!

The old adage "to kill a snake, cut off it's head," applies here."

Agreed. While Army Group Center paused for two months some good things happened down south -- the capture of Kiev and 650,000 troops, for example -- and Hitler was able to straighten out his front line.

But the Generals were now firmly behind blitzkrieg and the value of armored thrusts deep into enemy territory in sowing terror and fear among the troops they had passed. Had German armored divisions blown through the line and surrounded and penetrated Moscow there would have been no defense, the government would have panicked and run, and the other Russian Armies north and south would have collapsed due to poor leadership, poor training, and lack of of desire to fight.

[tom h]

Thanks for correcting my spelling, typing on an iPhone keyboard on a plane in poor light can really screw up one's penmanship. FYI, the notion that Hiwis were all volunteers is not true, nor is the fact that there were recruited from POW camps. Most of them, at least at Stalingrad, were civilians who were usually conscripted to do the menial work supporting the German Army -- cooking food, digging latrines, building temporary shelters, driving trucks and handling supplies. They were screened for loyalty, and like ordinary men, many of them DID become very loyal to people who treated them kindly, paid them, and let them do some productive work.

There were a number of SS fighting divisions that were recruited from the conquered countries, and they were not called Hiwis as well. They were largely recruited from the free population. In Lithuania, a large number of Soviet forces deserted and went straight over to join the German forces; they never spent a day in a POW camp and were rapidly recruited to join rearguard security forces.