Posted on 08/05/2021 12:40:09 PM PDT by OneVike
Exactly. And why did Stalin go with Hitler, while he spurned France and England's advances? Simple. Hitler let Stalin have half of Poland, something England and France wouldn't let him have.
This is May Day 1941, six weeks before Barbarossa. Nazis and Soviets were still chummy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra8phtzS2jA
Keep in mind, also by single-handedly fighting the Japs, that kept the Japs from attacking the Soviet Union, even though they were a bit gun-shy after Zhukov kicked their asses in 1939, but certainly if Hitler advanced far enough, Japan would have ultimately joined the fray against the Soviet Union.
Thanks. I search it out.
Thank-you for taking the time to research that. Fascinating stuff.
Yep, the more we read the more we find out we don’t know crap. It is the obscure and oddball stuff about history that intrigues me the most. And there is a lot of it but it takes digging deep to find it.
Thank-you again. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to post that.
And I agree with you about the probability of Nazi success had Hitler waited 5 or 10 more years. But then that would have been a violation of Henkster’s Law...
I disagree, Hitler had no choice to strike Russia when he did, in fact, he wanted to do it earlier, but the Italians screwed up in the Balkans, and he had to bail them out.
Russia was only getting stronger with each day, and the window for successfully attacking Russia was quickly closing. In fact, Stalin had every intention of striking against Hitler by 1943.
Hitler’s mistake was not taking a “divide and conquer” approach, Stalin was so hated, that many would have supported the Germans, especially the Ukrainians. The Germans could have basically allowed Ukraine to be a “puppet state” much in the way Slovakia was.
ideologies that are so much alike that the only difference is who gets to have their name on the title of the property or business owned.
Henkster’s Law ????
As early as 1939, the first night vision devices were introduced by the German army. The first devices were being developed by AEG starting in 1935. By the end of World War II, the German army had equipped approximately 50 Mark V Panther tanks, which saw combat on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. The “Vampir” man-portable system for infantrymen was being used with STG-44 Sturmgewehr assault rifles.
The ZG 1229 Vampir weighed about 5 lbs and was fitted with lugs at the weapons production facility. The soldier carrying this was known as night-hunter. As well as the sight and infrared spotlight, there was a wooden cased battery for the light, and a second battery fitted inside a gas mask container to power the image converter. This was all strapped to a Tragegestell 39.
The searchlight consisted of a conventional tungsten light source shining through a filter permitting only infrared light. The sensor was not sensitive to body heat because it operated in the upper infrared (light) spectrum rather than in the lower infrared (heat) spectrum.
The Vampir gear was used for the first time in combat in February 1945. 310 units had been delivered to the Wehrmacht in the final stages of the war. Eastern Front veteran reports consist of snipers shooting at night with the aid of ‘peculiar non-shining torches coupled with enormous optical sights’ mounted on their rifles. Similar infrared gear was fitted both to MG34 and MG42 machine guns.
Their portion of Poland too, they got to keep the parts of Poland Hitler gave them in 1939.
The law was first postulated on FR back on the 70th year anniversary WWII thread series. When Henkster gets here he will explain.
Thank-you for posting that. Onevike has additional comment and photos at #33 above.
IIRC, the British knew Barbarosa was coming and fed false intel to the Germans about invading Greece for the sole purpose of delaying the Russian invasion. The two month delay worked better than expected.
My little theory is that Stalin knew too, and knew the areas Hitler would target. Areas that had a lot of a certain kind of people that both Hitler and Stalin despised.
Possibly, but one cannot discount the fact that from the moment Stalin gained control he systematically eliminated any and all who were against him. He was more paranoid than Herod the Great was about those around him. for over 20 years Stalin had been systematically eradicating any and all highly educated people who were against him.
This turned out to be a major problem for Stalin, because he had very little highly educated individuals to improve his military. By the time Hitler attacked Russia, Stalins military was not much better than Polands. he did catch up, but not for awhile. He depended heavily upon GB and the US to supply the military hardware he needed to fight Hitler.
What stopped Germany was their over extension of the war. There were fighting the West inn the air and on the sea, along with fighting us in Africa, and then with attacking Russia, he was fighting the East. Their supply chains were so stretched out that it was but a matter of time before they started suffering on all fronts. Add in the fact that Russia had one of the coldest Winters in their History. Hitlers mechanized military was not able to even function in the cold. (I give that credit to GOD for the weather)
Even with all that, Stalin knew he needed to change his image with his people, so he did what every totalitarian regime does when things are going bad, he found a new scapegoat. Who better to blame things on than Hitler and his Nazi machine. So Stalin started a successful propaganda campaign to demonize the Nazis as the most evil vile humans on the planet.
He did this by having his propaganda ministry borrow from the Nazi’s propaganda machine. Stalin began using the same propaganda Hitler used against the Jews, only against the Nazi’s. If you look back at the propaganda, you will notice how they replaced the words and images of “Jews” with the word and images of “Nazis”, along with using propaganda photos of what He himself was doing against Poland and only showed what the Nazi’s had done.
The people of the Soviet Union bought into the propoganda hook line and sinker, and the citizens joined the cause against Hitler to fight for the motherland. Thus Stalin turned the people he was eradicating into human shield to make Hitler’s army waste bullets. Hitler mechanized machine was already bogging down due to the historic cold Winter.
Even his famous Luftwaffe was almost completely shutdown because the temperatures were to cold for planes to properly fly. Even when they could the cold limited their ability to be as effective as they were on the Western front.
It would have been better for history if we just limited the supplies we sent to Stalin by just giving him enough to slow Hitler down, but not enough to push him back. If Hitler was allowed to stretch himself out till he almost destroyed the Soviet Union. Once Hitler gained control of Russia, awe could have forced him to defend his new won territory in a similar fashion that he had to fight against Frances underground.
Look at the facts, Hitler’s supply problems began early in the war, as he drastically underestimated what they needed to supply a world wide military force. It was a big problem early in Rommel’s inability to keep supplies coming in his war in Africa. Germany was becoming so stretched that there would still be no way for him to fight against us as we were getting stronger every day. Our technology started outpacing Germany’s and Japan’s ability. Especially since even before we landed in Normandy we were destroying his ability to keep his factories going by espionage inside Germany lines.
The attrition was taking it’s toll on both Germany and Japan. The war may have lasted longer in Europe, but even so, it would have just given us the chance to then drop the Bomb on both Germany and Japan. Thus ending both wars simultaneously and we would have defeated Germany and Japan. Then we would not have had Stalin to worry about, because Hitler would have decimated his ability to ever be a problem again.
Then we could have had Patton take a right turn on into Russia to mop up what would be left of Germany, since it was already Summer, and Japan would not be a problem so all our effort would be against what was left of Hitler, and Communism would have been a footnote in history.
Unfortunately, History its what it is, and we are left wondering what would have been if our country wasn’t run by a bunch of Socialists under FDR. Since FDR would never have even considered the idea of backstabbing his buddy Stalin as Patton wanted to.
“Many Westerners don’t realize that Hitler hated the Slavs just as much as they hated the Jews. The Nazis planned on exterminating the Slavs. It’s a crime that the Slav Holocaust is ignored in schools.”
You are absolutely correct on this. Those that he didn’t kill he was going to enslave.
When he first invaded the Soviet Union many soldiers gave up easily as they first saw the Germans as liberators, however they quickly realized that Hitler was a homicidal maniac and started fighting back with all they had.
The Japanese army was a world war I type of army and was no match for modern mobile army with lots of firepower.
The Soviets demonlished them in 1945 with ease.
Still in 1941 the Japanese would have been much better to leave the US alone and attack the British and start a border war with the Soviets to keep their army in the east.
The Soviets had a spy in Japan and they knew that Japan wasn’t going to attack them so Stalin moved the Siberian divisions west.
WW2 could have tuned in many places and this is one of the major turning points.
http://www.victorysearchlights.com/victory2.html
Heat Detecting Locator
Heat detectors were used to locate enemy aircraft. Looking like a searchlight, this device swept the sky to detect heat from the engines of enemy aircraft. Thermopiles and control equipment designed by the Signal Corps Laboratories were mounted in mechanical structures previously built by the General Electric Company on an Engineer Contract. As operated in 1937, the heat detector received directional data from the radio equipment and in turn controlled the pointing of a searchlight.
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