Posted on 12/28/2021 1:13:03 PM PST by RomanSoldier19
More than 100 are deployed in a training and advisory role with Polish, US and Canadian forces. The move to shape an exit strategy follows Defence Secretary Ben Wallace saying it is "highly unlikely" UK forces will fight Russian troops on Ukrainian soil.
Satellite images from US firm Maxar Technologies have revealed a new brigade-level unit, consisting of hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles, situated at an army base in Crimea.
Moscow has also published changes in regulations to allow military fatalities to be buried in theater rather than be repatriated to Russia.
This is widely seen as an attempt to signal that plans for a military incursion are being made, though Russia denies this. And last night it announced it was pulling back 10,000 troops from close to the Ukrainian border in a surprise move ahead of talks with the US.
However, it represents a fraction of the number still believed to be stationed in the area.
(Excerpt) Read more at express.co.uk ...
I believe that, too. However, our population in 1939 was just above 80 million, and the number of our military casualties has been estimated at 5.3 million (by German military historian RĂ¼diger Overmans, Ph.D. in his seminal work on German military losses in WW II. I don’t know whether it has been translated into English).
The losses in the last months of hostilities were particularly high, ranging up to ten thousand dead per day, but a huge share of those were “Volkssturm” child soldiers and “elder men” from 45 to 60 and over.
There even were some women soldiers during the latter phase of the war, though far fewer than in the Red Army.
I've also seen films and documentaries saying the same about Russia. The Bolshevik in Doctor Zhivago mentions peasants rushing to enlist.
Those nations might have had standing armies. But when war broke out in 1914, they needed more men, and a great many eagerly enlisted.
Yes, it does, and indeed many men enlisted all over Europe due to a feeling of patriotic duty, and some of them maybe due to a sense of “adventure”. Grotesque, but true...
We may consider this naive from our point of view, but imho they had no clue what the reality of a fully mechanized war of mass armies was going to be like, since there had not been such a war in Europe before.
However, in the latter years there has been done more research in Germany on the question how people reacted to the outbreak of the war: a few young people were enthusiastic, as I said, but the majority were apprehensive, if not shocked, at the prospect of a major war. This was especially true for farmers; and not just because it was harvest time, after all.
Furthermore, it ought to be remembered that AQOTWF was a novel, and I have no clue how realistic the book was in all of its details.
P. S.: it seemed to me that you had been talking about the size of standing armies of the European nations before the war - the British were the only bigger nation with no national service, iirc, but it came in 1916.
That’s what I had in mind when answering to you; I regret any misunderstanding :-)
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