Posted on 10/02/2011 5:45:54 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1941/oct41/f02oct41.htm
Germans take aim at Moscow
Thursday, October 2, 1941 www.onwar.com
On the Eastern Front... Operation Typhoon, the German attack on Moscow officially begins. German Panzer Group 3 (Hoth), Panzer Group 4 (Hoeppner) and the 2nd, 4th and 9th Armies join the attack of Panzer Group 2 (Guderian). The operation is lead by tank units and includes substanial air cover.
In Australia... the elections result in a new government headed by John Curtin of the Labor Party.
"As a reprisal for the September 24 booby-trap deaths of German troops at the hands of Soviet soldiers in Kiev, Ukraine, 33,771 Jews are shot to death in a ravine at Babi Yar, Ukraine.
The massacre is masterminded by Sonderkommando 4a commander Paul Blobel.
In the coming months, German units shot thousands of Jews, Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war at Babi Yar. "
"The daughter of Klara and Joseph Halef-Miropolsky , Mania Halef, here shown in a 1936 photograph, was only seven years old when shot at Babi Yar.
The Nazis believed it especially important to murder children, who represented, in their minds, the future of the Jewish 'race.' "
September - October, 1941
"SS murders of Soviet Jews escalate as German troops push east toward Moscow. 48,000 are killed at Odessa, Ukraine, and at Kiev, Ukraine.
"More than 20,000 Jews are executed in the former eastern provinces of Poland."
"The 33,771 victims of the Babi Yar massacre included Jews of all ages and from all walks of life.
The perpetrators showed no mercy for the elderly, women, or even children.
Among those murdered were Klara Halef-Miropolsky and her husband, Joseph."
October 1 - 2, 1941
"33,500 Jews are killed in Vilna, Lithuania.
"Rakhil Mikhailovna Boorakovskaya was among the thousands of women killed in the Babi Yar massacre"
In “The International Situation” (p.3), Rep. Martin Dies (D-Texas) and Fr. Edmund A. Walsh of Georgetown University objected to FDR’s statement that religious freedom is guaranteed by law in the Soviet Union. I think Dies and Walsh are right.
Periodically, one reads one of these articles announcing the roundup of axis spies or people from axis nations that violated visa provisions. Never will you see similar announcement during the FDR era of Soviet spies being rounded up.
Periodically, one reads one of these articles announcing the roundup of axis spies or people from axis nations that violated visa provisions. Never will you see similar announcement during the FDR era of Soviet spies being rounded up.
Other victims included thousands of Soviet POWs, communists, Gypsies (Romani people), Ukrainian nationalists and civilian hostages. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 more lives were taken at Babi Yar
Part Two
On Tuesday morning 7th October the most advanced parts of General Fischer's 10th Panzer Division penetrated through the slush into the suburbs of Vyazma and finished off Soviet resistance inside the burning town.
Beyond the northern edge of town the men of the 2nd Battalion, 69th Rifle Regiment, crawled into the abandoned Russian fox-holes. The spearheads of General Stumme's XL Panzer Corps, followed by 2nd Panzer Division and 258th Infantry Division, had thus reached the objective of the first phase of Typhoon.
Meanwhile the 6th and 7th Panzer Divisions reached the undamaged Dnieper bridges at Kholm, and likewise wheeled round towards Vyazma. On the evening of 6th October the battle-hardened 7th Panzer Division, Rommel's old division from the French campaign, was sitting on the Moscow highway behind the enemy's rear, facing west for the third time in fifteen weeks. On 7th October Hoth's tanks linked up with Hoepner's in Vyazma.
Colonel General Hermann Hoth commanded the Third Panzer Army for the first three days of the offensive, until he went to Army Group South to command Seventeenth Army and was replaced by Colonel General Reinhardt.The pocket around six Soviet Armies with 55 divisions was closed.
Simultaneously with the breakthrough towards Vyazma, von Manteuffel's combat group had also reached the Moscow highway with a stunning advance, and cut it.
At Bryansk also, Guderian's two Corps had meanwhile trapped Yeremenko's three Armies of 26 divisions in a northern and a southern pocket. Now followed difficult days for the infantry—opposing fierce Russian attempts to break out of the pockets, splitting up the pockets, reducing individual strongpoints, and dealing with prisoners as, towards the end, the Soviets surrendered in entire regiments.
The fighting continued until 17th October. Naturally, parts of the trapped forces succeeded in breaking out, especially from the southern pocket at Bryansk. Among those who succeeded were General Yeremenko and his staff. Yeremenko himself was seriously wounded and had to be flown out by aircraft.
The great battle was over. The first act of Operation Typhoon had been played out. Some 663,000 prisoners had been taken, and 1242 tanks and 5412 guns destroyed or captured.
Only three weeks after the battle of Kiev, when half a dozen Soviet Armies of Budennyy's Army Group had been crushed in the south and more than 665,000 Soviet troops taken prisoner, another vast fighting force of nine Armies with 70 to 80 divisions and brigades had now been annihilated on the Central Front.
These were the Armies which were to have protected Moscow.
In endless, pitiful columns they were now trudging into captivity over the muddy roads. Moscow had lost its shield and its sword. A wide gap had been torn in its defenses.
The German Army Group Centre had gained freedom of maneuver for the bulk of its armored and motorized formations against Stalin's capital. The second phase of Operation Typhoon could now begin—the pursuit of the enemy right into the city.
Tank rally in Red Square!
On they drove. Or, rather, they did not drive—they slid, skidded and descended into the mud.
Entire companies were pulling bogged-down lorries out of the mud of the roads. The motor-cyclists made wooden skids for their machines from boards and planks and pulled them along behind them.
Major Vogt, commanding the support units of 18th Panzer Division, was in despair.
How did the Russians manage with these muddy roads year after year? He hit on the answer. He got hold of the small tough horses he had seen the local peasants use, as well as their light farm-carts, and used them for sending his divisions' supplies forward, a few hundredweight on each cart. It worked. The motorized convoys were stuck in the mud, but the small peasant carts got through.
The prize of Moscow spurred the men to a supreme effort.
Kaluga, 100 miles south-west of Moscow, fell on 13th October. On 14th October Eckinger's advanced detachment of 1st Panzer Division took Kalinin, 93 miles north-west of Moscow, cut the Leningrad—Moscow railway, and captured the only Volga bridge that was to fall into German hands intact during the Second World War.
A small bridgehead on the eastern bank, held by 1st Panzer Division and Motorized Training Brigade 900, covered the bridge. Thus the cornerstones of the 190-mile-long first line of defenses covering Moscow had been brought down.
The centrepiece of this line, however, the barrier across the motor highway some 60 miles outside Moscow, was between Borodino and Mozhaysk. There, at Borodino, 62 miles from Moscow, the "Reich" Motorized SS Infantry Division was in position on 14th October.
It was historic ground.
Here, in 1812, Napoleon was brought to the brink of defeat. Here, in 1941, Stalin intended to bring Hitler to a halt. To do this he had hurriedly brought up the best forces he had—a crack unit from Siberia, the 32nd Siberian Rifle Division from Vladivostok, with three infantry regiments and two armored brigades newly equipped with T-34s and KV-2s. Stalin began to denude his Far Eastern frontier ruthlessly. He could afford to do so. He knew that Japan would not attack.
Japan, after all, was planning to strike at America in the Pacific. Stalin had reliable information from his spy Dr Sorge, the adviser to the German Ambassador in Tokyo. Dr Sorge was worth more than a whole army to Stalin.
To Be Continued-Part Three
"an appalling battle"
Indeed, the total death toll for the Second World War is estimated as circa 75 million, of whom 92% were not Jewish.
These include about 20 million Soviet civilians.
"In the months that followed, thousands more were seized and taken to Babi Yar where they were shot.
It is estimated that more than 100,000 residents of Kiev of all ethnic groups, mostly civilians, were murdered by the Nazis there during World War II.
A concentration camp was also built in the area."Mass executions at Babi Yar continued up until the German forces departed from Kiev.
On January 10, 1942 about 100 sailors from a military flotilla were executed there.
In addition, Babi Yar became a place of execution of residents of five Gypsy camps.
According to various estimates,[according to whom?] during 1941—1943 between 70,000- 200,000 Roma people were rounded up and murdered at Babi Yar.[citation needed]
Patients of the Ivan Pavlov Psychiatric Hospital were gassed and then dumped into the ravine.
Thousands of other Ukrainians were killed at Babi Yar.
Among those murdered were 621 members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
Ukrainian poet and activist Olena Teliha and her husband, renowned bandurist Mykhailo Teliha, were murdered there on February 21, 1942."
Here is a partial listing of Babi Yar victims.
Now, my point is: I post on the Holocaust because it is important historically, and because much data is readily available.
This should in no way diminish the deaths of nearly 70 million other victims of that war, and I'm certain anyone who wishes to contribute factual posts on those deaths will find them as welcomed by Homer_J_Simpson as mine have been.
Democrat Representative Martin Dies, East Texas, was a staunch anti-Communist who sometimes tangled with the Roosevelt administration, because FDR was far more concerned about Nazis than Communists.
Dies died in 1972 at age 72.
In April 1964 he published an article in American Opinion in which Dies claimed to have seen a map in early 1941 showing Pearl Harbor as the target for a Japanese assault.
Dies wrote he had discussed the map with Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Hull responded after talking it over with President Roosevelt: the map should be kept secret from news services.
No copy of that map has been found.
Today scholars, such as our own CougarGA7, dismiss Dies alleged map out of hand, implying the story was obviously politically motivated.
American Opinion magazine is still published by the John Birch Society, now called The New American.
Once again, you misrepresent me. You really ought to stop trying to assume what my opinion on anything is since you have not been correct yet.
Ironically, in this case, you are also misrepresenting a majority of the scholars as well. Most scholars, myself included, would point out that this map is just as you say, "alleged". There is nothing out there that substantiates that this map ever existed.
From a scholarly standpoint I would have difficulty accepting this source for a few reasons. First of all, as we have clearly seen over the last few years, Martin Dies is a very outspoken individual. Though I believe that if he was asked to keep this knowledge secret prior to and during the war, he would, I don't see how he would have been able to remain silent in some of the post war fall out from the still ongoing Pearl Harbor investigations. He likely would have said something then and not 23 years down the road in an article he did, not on Pearl Harbor, but on the assassination of John F. Kennedy (specifically its an article in which Dies tries to make a case that the Soviets were behind Oswald's assassination of the President, another conspiracy).
Secondly, this is a map that would most likely had been obtained by the intelligence community at the time and even in Dies statement it was clearly seen by many people. Yet despite that, Dies is the only one who ever mentions this map and that is 23 years after the fact.
Then of course there is the problem with it being just that; a 23 year old memory. I have a fantastic memory, but I can't remember everything from 23 years ago (and I'll say, 1988 was a huge year for me personally). And even the important things that happened 23 years ago are not remembered with the exacting detail that would make them absolutely accurate. So how good this recollection that Dies makes 23 years after the fact in an article on a separate subject is questionable.
Finally, of course, there is the issue of where you likely got this information in the first place. You see, this particular reference to a map is so questionable that even Robert Stinnett wouldn't touch it. You weren't reading the article from the New American archives because they don't go back to 1964 (At least not online at least, but I think I can safely assume that you didn't go to a library magazine archive to find this since you yourself said that you leave the research to others). I am certain that you didn't contact the Texas State Library and Archives Commission who houses a large collection of Martin Dies papers (none of which have ever been sourced as saying that this map existed by any scholar I'm aware of).
But there is this, George Victor's "The Pearl Harbor Myth" pages 47-48 which quotes this article. I'd bet this is where you got your information. Now I don't want to go back over all the errors and intentionally misleading claims in this book. Anyone who wants to can find my posts on this matter from the 1939 and 1940 threads. But I will reiterate that as bad as Stinnett's work is, Victor's book is even worse, designed to be intentionally misleading. I certainly would never use him as a source unless I was doing a study on propaganda trying to represent itself as academic work.
I would take anything from the John Birch Society with a grain of salt.
I have never subscribed to the various Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories for several reasons:
1. A Pearl Harbor attack was not needed to get the US in the war. It was clear in fall of 1941 that war was coming and it would include an attack on the Phillipines. The US, despite pre-war plans to not defend the islands in force, was engaged in a major build up with three US Army Divisions moving to re-enforce them.
2. Had FDR any sort of reliable intelligence about a Pearl Harbor attack, then he could have easily arranged an ambush. While taking out Kido Butai itself would have been difficult, there are more than enough Army and Navy aircraft available to wipe out the first and second waves and cripple the IJNs main striking arm for a year or more.
3. Had any hard intelligence about Pearl Harbor being a even a probable target been known, the alert level could have been raised. Given tensions at the time it would not have been unreasonable.
4. FDR gets no personal or political benefit from knowing about the attack but letting it proceed unhindered. The traditional “FDR sacrificed some old battleships” argument doesn’t wash because in 1941 those old battleships were all we had.
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