On Monday, August 28, the Berliners watched troops pouring through the city toward the east. They were being transported in moving vans, grocery trucks and every other sort of vehicle that could be scraped up.
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The Developments in Europe – 2
Fuehrer Insistent* – 2-4
Hitler Note and Paris Communique – 5-6
Reich Fliers’ Garb Common in Danzig – 7
Poles Dig Trenches and Watch Soccer – 8
* Attn: VaRepublican – More on the Lansing Note at image #4.
I doubt the people reading the paper then could even imagine that it would be like this for the next six years.
It’s scary how things escalated so fast 70 years ago today.
“On Monday, August 28, the Berliners watched troops pouring through the city toward the east. They were being transported in moving vans, grocery trucks and every other sort of vehicle that could be scraped up.”
One of the enduring myths of WW2 is that the Wehrmacht was some sort of mechanized juggernaut that rolled over its foes with an overwhelming number of machines. Not true. The Wehrmacht was actually one of the less mobile of all modern armies. The French, British and of course the Americans had far larger motor pools. The American army decided in the early 1930’s that all artillery would be motor transported. By 1944, you could include the Red Army in that category, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of lend-lease trucks provided by America and Canada.
The bulk of German infantry marched, the soup kitchens, supply vehicles and even artillery was horse drawn. It remained that way during the war. In fact, as Albert Seaton noted in “The Russo-German War” chapter “Germany at Bay:”
“By 1944, the German Army was one of the poorer armies of the world.”