Posted on 06/22/2021 10:05:55 AM PDT by Captain Peter Blood
I was waiting to see of anyone would mention this and as of now no one has.
80 years ago today Germany invaded the Soviet Union in a surprise attack.
It started one of the bloodiest and catastrophic episodes of W.W. II.
The scope, scale, casualties , and atrocities almost dwarf anything that happened anywhere else in the ETO.
Without the sacrifices the Russians made on the Eastern Front the invasion of Europe would not have been successful.
Estimated deaths on the Eastern Front are not totally known but an estimated 20 million died
As operations go Barbarossa was a consolation prize for the Nazis. It’s estimated that had the Battle of Britain lasted at least a couple of more weeks, Germany would have won it. They nearly wiped out the RAF. But Germany didn’t know how close they were to winning and cancelled the invasion of Britain. The rest is history.
> Stalin practically was bending himself over in appeasing Hitler <
I once read a book that presented those days from Stalin’s point of view. (The book was written by an anti-communist, by the way. So it wasn’t a hero worship kind of thing.)
Anyway, Stalin watched as Hitler gobbled up the Rhineland, then Austria, then the Sudetenland, and then Czechoslovakia itself. All the while France and Britain did absolutely nothing to stop him.
So maybe Stalin thought: The West will not oppose Hitler. And I could be next. Better to ally with Hitler than be his next victim.
Stalin was wrong about that, of course. But the reasoning makes sense.
I have a similar feeling about the Russians.
I greatly admire the defense of their Motherland from the Nazi invader.
But as far as the government? Lest ye forget, that while the Nazis were rolling into Poland and France, the Low Countries and Norway, and bombing Britain, the Soviet Union was helping them with war supplies.
You’re right that 93 German film is so great but please do check out the 1959(?) German film I mentioned you won’t be disappointed...there is also a Russian film from 1949 called The Battle of Stalingrad....you will not believe the amount of equipment and mower employed in that film both are free on YouTube . I suspect the 1949 Russian film used actual German prisoners and captured equipment....its unreal
The Soviet Army was very focused on tanks.
The best antitank weapon the Nazis had was the 88 flak cannon.
Somehow, these cannons had to be removed from the Eastern Front.
The Americans began daylight bombing of Nazi targets.
The Nazis had to pull 88 flak cannons from the Eastern Front to use to defend against American bombers.
The losses to American crews was astounding.
The bombing wasn’t really all that effective. Something like 25% of the bombs landed within 15 miles of their targets.
The real success of the American bombing campaign was to reduce the power of the Nazis on the Eastern Front. This allowed the Soviets to survive and counterattack the Nazis.
A lot of good young American men died in the skies over Europe to save the Soviets.
And saving the Soviets won the war.
I wish that I was the one who first realized this, but it was actually Victor Davis Hanson.
Great question.
A lot of questions about whether Hitler really ever wanted to invade Britain. Deep down, he still thought of Britain as a potential ally, if only the British people “would wake up and get rid of that madman Churchill!”
He figured they were at least neutralized to the point they wouldn’t matter much anymore, as long as they could put up their Atlantic Wall in France.
Of course, he didn’t factor in the US entering the war.
Also Hitler’s mistake was not in promising the Ukrainians some autonomy and their own State, albeit a Puppet state. But I suspect most Ukrainians would have taken that over Stalin. I think also a lot of Russians would have taken it as well, if the Nazis offered it.
Germany had half their army fighting Stalin on D-Day, so if they had not been pinned down in the east, Hitler could have made the Allied invasion much more costly. But thats just ‘what-iffing’ on my part.
Yes, I’ve become quite the connisseur of Russian war movies over the years.
Some of them are quite laughable in terms of their over the top portrayal of Stalin.
But I highly recommend the “Liberation” series of movies.
We were also busy fighting the Japs pretty much on our own, so that Japan had no desire to mess with the Soviets during that time.
Had Japan been freed up to attack the Soviets in Siberia, that would have definitely been a problem for the Soviets.
Hmmm...to my knowledge, the daylight bombing only started after the P-51s entered the fray because they could cover the higher flyers. The Brits did their thing at night because they were better versed on the terrain and the US had issues navigating at night from a foreign land!
> The bombing wasn’t really all that effective. <
Hitler’s Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer, once said that the Allies made a mistake by bombing a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. Instead they should have concentrated on Germany’s ball-bearing plants.
Agreed. had Hitler been half a diplomat, German would be the language of continental Europe.
Read ‘Hitler’s War on Russia: Hitler Moves East, Vol I 1941-1943’ and ‘Scorched Earth, Vol II (London: Harrap, 1970 ISBN 0-88740-598-3) by Paul Carell.
I was able to find paperback Vol I and hardcover Vol II in 2014. Somehow I also downloaded a .pdf version to read Vol II.
The geographic sizes of the offensives on both sides of the Eastern Front boggles my mind.
The distance between Lenningrad to the north and Stalingrad to the south is close to 1,000 miles.
The Polish/Soviet border to Moscow is 600 miles.
The equivalent area in the US would be an advance from Washington DC to Illinois with a north-south front extending from Green-Bay to New Orleans.
This is also a good series on Barbarossa, produced by the Russians.
Soviet Storm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97iOxxH_64s
Some people today question why the UK entered against Hitler’s fascism instead of against Stalin’s communism. After all, Stalin started the war. The UK entered the war as Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin, and Hitler was blitzkreiging Britain’s free allies in Europe and threatening the UK. Stalin wasn’t doing that.
What’s funny is that if you listen to the Soviet Propaganda before Barbarossa, they defended the Nazis, and said that it was “Capitalists” driving the British to fight against Hitler.
Suddenly after Hitler invades, the Soviets go to the Brits and basically said, “No hard feelings, eh, pal?
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