Note: On the Réaumur thermometer, water freezes at 0° and boils at 80°. So, it's like Celsius, except the degrees are 25% bigger.
Posted on 03/10/2018 3:14:49 AM PST by NorseViking
Of the 108,000 soldiers of the Sixth German Army capitulating in the winter of 1943 at Stalingrad, only 6,000 returned home in 1955. What has led to such incredible losses?
he attitude of the German soldiers who fought on the eastern front was unequivocal: "Russians do not take prisoners", they believed. This fear of captivity was the result of Nazi propaganda, which was constantly subjected to soldiers - mostly young people. But maybe it was not just this?
The facts are as follows: from the Wehrmacht soldiers captured in the Soviet captivity, their number is estimated at a minimum of 108 thousand and a maximum of 130 thousand people - only 5 thousand or 6 thousand returned to Germany or Austria alive. Many of them did it only in the mid-50's. Thus, the losses from the total number of prisoners amounted to approximately 95%, which is much larger than in any other battle.
Does this mean that the Red Army really did not take the Germans into captivity? Rüdiger Overmans, a military historian and best specialist in both the narrow field of studying losses in the Second World War and this topic as a whole, writes: "In unprecedented quantitative scales, Soviet soldiers shot German prisoners of war, whether from bitterness and thirst for revenge, reluctance to mess with the transportation of the wounded or from the desire to rid the unnecessarily suffering of the seriously wounded, who could not help one way or another.
(Excerpt) Read more at welt.de ...
I have no doubt that if the leftists were in total power, their opponents (like us) would have a very finite lifespan indeed.
I come to that conclusion.””
Exactly why we never give up our guns.
Yeah. And they have the gall to keep asking why we need guns...
favorite photos of the war are those showing the tanks of the Untermensch, rumbling down the streets of the Herrenvolk capitol (Berlin). Karma.
The Germans were initially welcomed as liberators by some in the USSR - especially Ukrainians, no doubt. But Hitler wasn’t interested in merely controlling Eastern Europeans - he wanted Germans to replace them. “Lebensraum,” don’t you know. Not that the Soviets’ treatment of Polish POWs was anything to write home about.Hitler considered Eastern Europeans “untermenchen” - subhuman - and the German Army treated them accordingly.
The upshot was that the Russians under Stalin had no reason to treat the Germans any better than they had been treated - and the Germans treated Russian prisoners like dirt, far worse than they (generally) treated American or British they captured.
Neither Stalin nor Hitler accepted the idea of surrender by anyone under his command. Russians who were captured by the Germans and “rescued” by Americans were forced to go back to the USSR despite their desperate - and justified - fear of their fate upon their return.
The Soviet T34 was nothing short of astounding. Unlike the German tanks its tracks could handle and easily navigate through the "greahze": the muddy muck, stickey grease like mud the Russian, Ukrainian, Soviet territory roads and terrain turn into in the spring and wet fall.
And their tanks could also handle the harsh Russian winters which left the vaunted German tanks dead in their tracks.
Let's hear it for those supposed "Untermensch" that Hitler and the Nazis so underestimated.
It’s quite possible that they could have succeeded if not for Hitler’s meddling and overriding his general staff. By September the army was within striking distance of Moscow with little Soviet forces left between them. And Moscow was the key city. All the railroad and communication systems ran through the city. Probably more than any other nation Russia was dependent on what they called “the center”. Incredibly Hitler called a halt to the advance and sent his panzers hundreds of miles south to help take Kiev. By the time they came back it was November and the Russian roads were a swamp of mud, and winter hit shortly thereafter. It also gave Stalin time to bring a fresh army up from Siberia. Even still the Germans almost got there. They certainly could have taken it in September if Hitler hadn’t squandered the chance. Whether the Soviets could have continued effective resistance without Moscow is doubtful at best.
“...When the Bismarck started sending young men to the front line for cannon fodder many came to America instead...”
Not the case.
Otto Bismarck, the son of a minor Prussian noble, entered the Prussian Civil Service after university and spent years in the Diplomatic Service. The Prussian king offered him the post of Minister-President three times before he accepted in 1862.
To consolidate Prussian ascendancy, Bismarck resorted to war with Denmark in 1864, then war with Austria in 1866. These were short, adroit conflicts to accomplish strictly limited objectives of acquiring borderlands and establishing Prussian primacy in German spheres of influence. In 1870 he engineered war with France - again with limited aims, this time to solidify Prussian alliances with the South German states.
But this time, King William and the Prussian generals overruled Bismarck and annexed parts of eastern France, then pressed on to vanquish the entire country. The German Empire was proclaimed in the palace of Versailles in January 1871 while Prussian artillery bombarded Paris. German militarism became a reality - contrary to Bismarck’s aims. He was heard to say he faced endless troubles, convincing William and the generals that Germany had to live with the other Great Powers - Austria, France, and Russia.
Made a Count after the war with Denmark, Otto von Bismarck became Imperial Chancellor in 1871, a post he held for almost 20 years. Universally acknowledged as the greatest politician in Europe, he masterfully kept everything in balance through deft plays and counter-plays. During that era, Europe became so peaceful that Bismarck complained of boredom.
Kaiser William II - grandson of William I and eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria of the British Empire - became Emperor of Germany in 1888 when his own father died early. He dismissed Bismarck in 1890; after that, Imperial Germany became more bellicose, clamored for its “place in the sun,” acquired large colonial possessions, and unnerved not only Europe but other nations around the globe. Its navy went from nothing, commanded by Prussian generals, to the world’s second largest in an alarmingly short time.
But Bismarck did not do two things:
1. He did not say “blood and iron.” He initially said “iron and blood,” but the record was changed later to make it resonate better.
2. He did not send the Prussian army into a meat grinder in pursuit of indecisive campaigns of attrition.
the “34” was an outstanding design, superior to the German and American medium tanks of the era. Their biggest problem was the Soviets lack of quality manufacturing.
The best tank by far in WWII would have been T-34s built in Detroit instead of Chelyabinsk.
That being said, the Soviets knowingly balanced quality for quantity. It was a formula that, in the end, paid off for them.
“... Hitler ensured that Germany wouldn’t develop the Bomb - which, as we know, they had made very little effort towards even researching....”
Not the case.
German research advanced to a degree that alarmed the British.
The Nazis went to great lengths to accumulate large amounts of “heavy water” - water with deuterium in place of plain hydrogen - for use as a neutron moderator in controlled-fission experiments. They used heavy-water isolation plants in Norway to get it done (a plant in Norway was the first concentration facility, starting up in 1934); after air strikes proved ineffective, British-trained Norwegian nationals sabotaged the plant and destroyed the stocks.
Word in research circles was that the Nazis gave up atomic bomb development when their calculations showed that impossibly large amounts of fissile material would be needed to form a critical mass. They’d made an error in positioning the decimal point.
That’s true to a certain extent, but IMHO, the war was lost when North American P-51 Mustangs appeared over the skies of Europe, flying Allied bomber escort missions and crushing what was left of the Luftwaffe. That signaled the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany because rgey could no longer defend their airspace and industrial output.“Germany lost the war because in the end, they simply ran out of soldiers.” - Flavious_Maximus
Another way of looking at it is that Hitler lost the war when, days after Pearl Harbor, he declared war on the US. His treaty with Japan didn’t require it, since it was a defensive treaty (think NATO).documents the fact that upon the Fall of France (June, 1940), FDR got focused on the threat of Hitler controlling the Atlantic with the Kriegsmarine and the Royal Navy if Britain fell. And as past under Secretary of the Navy, FDR knew that US logistical capabilities had never affected WWI because the lead time required to switch over to military production was longer than the duration US participation in the conflict.
- Freedom's Forge:
- How American Business Produced Victory in World War II
Arthur HermanFDR determined that
Pursuant to that first determination, FDR did everything he could to send US war materiel to Britain.
- Britain was NOT to fall,
- US industrial capacity would be converted to military production capacity ASAP, and
- The USSR, once invaded (June, 1941), was not to fall.
Pursuant to that second determination, FDR asked Bernard Baruch to ramrod the mobilization, but Baruch demurred on grounds of age, proposing instead “two names. Bill Knudsen, and Bill Knudsen” (who, after quitting Ford, had built Chevrolet into a powerhouse part of GM). FDR asked Knudsen how long a lead time he needed to prepare, and he replied 18 months. Which is suspiciously close to the time between June 1940 and December 1941 . . .
Pursuant to that third determination, FDR sent some supplies initially earmarked for Britain to the USSR.
The upshot of these decisions was that at the time of Pearl Harbor, the US had little military inventory on hand - but quickly became the logistical powerhouse of WWII.
Hitler had kept his U-boats on a tight leash to keep the US out of the war, and they sank hundreds of merchantmen in the first nine months after the declaration of war. The US, and Britain, were desperately short of destroyers.
Thanks. Downloaded a YouTube version and ordered the book from the library.
Another good book is Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II
Lots of examples of U.S. Can Do attitude and ingenuity. Just one example of that last - it took the Swedes four hours to create a 40MM barrel for the Bofors AA using the traditional rifling method. We instituted broach rifling and turned one out ever 15 minutes.
The Soviet Union could have been easily defeated, had Hitler had more of a “Divide and Conquer” approach. There were many Russians would would have fought for the Nazis, if it got rid of the Bolsheviks, but Hitler figured (and probably rightfully so), that he’d ultimately have to fight those Russians as well down the road.
Note: On the Réaumur thermometer, water freezes at 0° and boils at 80°. So, it's like Celsius, except the degrees are 25% bigger.
You'll see that Hanson is properly respectful of every aspect of the US's prolific production prowess.
Be aware, though, that rather than being a detailed blow-by-blow description, Hanson's magnificent work is a component-by-component analysis, comparison, and synthesis: truly the Big Picture--strategy over tactics. I've seldom read a book that captured more of the essence of its subject. It is, I think, destined to become the final word.
Ahhhh. So much clearer now
Thank you for your service and god bless your mom and dad.
Bonemaker
USAF 1963-1984.
And you too, Bonemaker.
The Danish film Land of Mine deals with teenage German POWs clearing landmines in Denmark in the spring and summer of 1945.
Bkmk
Your argument has many merits, and is even partly valid, but I respectfully disagree with the assertion that Hitler's failure to take Moscow was a decisive mistake.
Losing Moscow would have been a major psychological blow to the Soviets, and Moscow was a logistical nexus, as you state. But if the Soviet leadership had had to abandon Moscow (and they were poised to do just that - with Stalin even pacing back and forth on the train platform at one point [when the Germans were within kms of the capital]), they would have first razed it to the ground, so that it would have been of little use to the German war effort (see the destruction of Moscow of 1812, just before Napoleon's "Grand Army" entered the city). The Soviets could have then continued the war from some eastern province (the U.S.S.R. was vast), and Hitler's supply lines were already overextended - meaning that he could have not continued pursuing them.
I will agree that Hitler's dithering on the issue of Moscow was a drain on German resources, which should have all been thrown into the fight to capture the oil fields to the South.
Regards,
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