OMG FACTS

[jj3]

27 minutes ago, Cult Icon said:

  To me, the garrison commander made a common sense decision.

 

 

Taking common sense decisions wasn't the best asset of Nazis lol 

Though, many cities has been bombed by Americans/English. Le Havre has been totally destroyed for exemple. 

[jj3]

22 minutes ago, Cult Icon said:

 

It is ultimately good that the French did not do an uprising imho.

 

Only thanks to Pétain (...). The following sentence must be taken with " ", but some are saying that if de Gaulle saved France, Pétain saved the french. 

So i'm not sure about. The price of honour is huge at time ... Thanks God for de Gaulle, and the Resistance. IMO, if there had more spontaneous uprising, in the end it would have ended like in Oradour-sur-Glane.

[Enrico_sw]

33 minutes ago, Cult Icon said:

 

I meant "Festerplaz" - as in Stronghold/fortress cities.  This was a "Hitler" concept and there was so much resentment among the German generals about it that it should have been common knowledge by August 1944.  The resentment built up since Stalingrad.  What typically happened was that Hitler would name a city "Festerplatz", and then order the troops to fight to the death.  The idea behind this was to stop the German's general frontline from retreating and force a stand.  Also, and even more important- he would use the german troops inside as 'sacrificial lambs' so to speak, and tie down as many allied/soviet forces as possible.  Encircling a city requires numerous divisions and generally weakened the Allied/Soviet offensive.

 

 While some Festerplatz held, what typically happened was that the Festerplatz's garrison would hold out until their supplies ran out and they would surrender or in some cases, fight to the death (Tarnapol, April 1944).  Sometimes there was a prolonged drama in form of an encirclement battle, such at Korsun (Jan 1944).  

 

At Paris, Hitler wanted a repeat but the strategic situation didn't allow it in any form.  To me, the garrison commander made a common sense decision.

 

 

 

The german generals were much better than hitler at warfare. Paulus had very good intuitions at Stalingrad. If his boss hadn't interfered and if he had been the only one in charge, the situation would have been quite different. There is a very good documentary from national geographic on Stalingrad; I really liked it, it was very interesting.

 

[Enrico_sw]

42 minutes ago, Cult Icon said:

 

I think it's because there was no great uprising in Paris (like the 1944 Warsaw Uprising).   In 1944 Warsaw was razed to the ground, and a gigantic number of civilians were killed and much of the population was deported into concentration camps.   The actual destruction of Warsaw took place slowly and over the course of many weeks as German combat engineers blew up buildings in a manual manner.  Meanwhile, the German armies in front of Warsaw were fighting for their life against various Soviet offensives.  August- Oct 1944.

 

It is ultimately good that the French did not do an uprising imho.

 

A part of the French resistance was communist. In 1944, when Stalin understood that the Germans were doomed, he asked the French communist resistance not to do any uprising in France (I'm not necessarily about Paris, but France more generally). Stalin's idea was to slow down the Americans that were moving towards Germany from France. He wanted to be the first one to arrive in Germany and occupy it (and loot it).

Also, the free resistance had been quite well organised and planned by De Gaulle's guys (like Jean Moulin) and they made a lot of efforts to sabotage German operations without jeopardizing Paris.

 

The Polish were the biggest victims of WW2. They have been screwed by the West (the nazis were very cruel with this people) and by the East (Katyn massacre was a terrible butchery). You can still feel it today, they are still very suspicious when it comes to both the Germans and the Russians.

[17 Moments of Spring]

1 hour ago, jj3 said:

Though, many cities has been bombed by Americans/English.

 

my hometown included.

 

the ussr was indeed an evil empire.

 

 

 

 

[jj3]

1 minute ago, 17 Moments of Spring said:

 

my hometown included.

 

the ussr was indeed an evil empire.

 

 

True. But what about the American Empire ... 

[Cult Icon]

3 hours ago, Enrico_sw said:

 

The german generals were much better than hitler at warfare. Paulus had very good intuitions at Stalingrad. If his boss hadn't interfered and if he had been the only one in charge, the situation would have been quite different. There is a very good documentary from national geographic on Stalingrad; I really liked it, it was very interesting.

 

^^

 

I have a bit different POV..

 

I think Paulus would have retreated from Stalingrad, but he was not allowed to by Fuhrer order.  If he retreated, Hitler would have just sacked him and replaced him with a general from Leader Reserve or another army.  As a general he was too much of an intellectual/analyst/accountant and too little of a leader.  He was too slow in decisions, didn't have much in the way of operational/tactical plans except combined arms frontal attacks, and provided too little leadership.  He was a logistics specialist.  The front line attacking units almost never saw him.  They did see, however, von Richthofen (commander of Luftflotte IV) and in charge of most of the Luftwaffe's Close air support.  The type of fighting in Stalingrad required "a tough soldier's General with sharp leadership/tactical skills and improvisation"- like a GFM Model, Rommel, or Chuikov on the Soviet side.  The German 6th Army was the best armed Army in the Wehrmacht and there were many generals that were better than Paulus, who got the job on accident. 

 

Paulus was a very experienced professional in terms of staffwork.  He was 6th Army COS (Chief of Staff) and his general was Reichenau.  This Army was was very successful in France, Poland, and Russia 1941.  They were very much a team- Reichenau had leadership skills/executed while Paulus was the egghead accountant/intellectual.  Reichenau died of a heart attack during the Soviet Wintercounteroffensive (Jan 1942) and Paulus took command.

 

Paulus was successful although he was a bit slow in the 2nd battle of Kharkov.  This victory, along with Manstein's conquest of the Crimea-  opened up the conditions for "Case Blue"- the summer 1942 offensive to the Caucasus and Stalingrad.  This footage is rather insane, look at the gigantic sea of soviet prisoners.  Most of them have a death sentence.  :  

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Kharkov

 

 

[Cult Icon]

3 hours ago, jj3 said:

 

Only thanks to Pétain (...). The following sentence must be taken with " ", but some are saying that if de Gaulle saved France, Pétain saved the french. 

So i'm not sure about. The price of honour is huge at time ... Thanks God for de Gaulle, and the Resistance. IMO, if there had more spontaneous uprising, in the end it would have ended like in Oradour-sur-Glane.

 

3 hours ago, Enrico_sw said:

 

A part of the French resistance was communist. In 1944, when Stalin understood that the Germans were doomed, he asked the French communist resistance not to do any uprising in France (I'm not necessarily about Paris, but France more generally). Stalin's idea was to slow down the Americans that were moving towards Germany from France. He wanted to be the first one to arrive in Germany and occupy it (and loot it).

Also, the free resistance had been quite well organised and planned by De Gaulle's guys (like Jean Moulin) and they made a lot of efforts to sabotage German operations without jeopardizing Paris.

 

The Polish were the biggest victims of WW2. They have been screwed by the West (the nazis were very cruel with this people) and by the East (Katyn massacre was a terrible butchery). You can still feel it today, they are still very suspicious when it comes to both the Germans and the Russians.

^

I don't know much about the French resistance (as I'm a conventional forces guy).  I do have the feeling that the French resistance was more low key and sneaky, and about sabotage. 

 

yes, 1 out of 4 poles were dead after 5 years..

 

In the East the partisans often opened fire and organized into field forces (Eg. Tito's yugoslav forces, Soviet partisans) , like insurgents in Iraq.   The anti-partisan tactics in the East Front used by the Wehrmacht was basically two words: "kill everyone".  There was also decisions made to do genocide on areas that were partisan heavy.  This lead to millions of murders.  The anti-partisan,SS, and police divisions of the Wehrmacht would find the way the modern middle east wars are conducted to be 'very soft'...

 

I see Warsaw as a bit of a case study on how they would have acted.  The resistance fighters were combated largely with militarily 2nd and 3rd rate units (police, SS, anti-partisan, penal).  These forces were extremely brutalized- many of them participated in many genocidal actions.  Some of the units used were basically composed of criminals (SS Direwingler brigade, RONA).  The result was that the resistance was wiped out and there was a six figure death toll of civilians...

 

An interesting bit about the massacres at Tulle and Oradour- the commanding officer was the former COS (Chief of staff) of Waffen-SS anti-partisan units in the East.  Basically he applied East Front methods in France.

[Cult Icon]

957 were killed in Lord of the  Rings 3

 

 

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@Enrico_sw

 

I was going to do a storytime related to another discussion on that thread:  The relatively unknown 1st Battle of Targu Frumos was probably the most impressive defensive action of the war.  It stuck out like a sore thumb when I read "Red Storm over the Balkans" and started reading/accumulating material on the subject. (including postwar NATO conferences with the commanders involved and also help from a Russian historian)  It is remarkable from the perspective of fighting skill, willpower, combat leadership, and beating extreme odds.  It would make an incredible film but it's not politically correct.  It's one of the few battles that deeply moved me:.

 

http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/the-battle-of-targul-frumos-a-defensive-stand-on-the-eastern-front/

[Enrico_sw]

35 minutes ago, Cult Icon said:

@Enrico_sw

 

I was going to do a storytime related to another discussion on that thread:  The relatively unknown 1st Battle of Targu Frumos was probably the most impressive defensive action of the war.  It stuck out like a sore thumb when I read "Red Storm over the Balkans" and started reading/accumulating material on the subject. (including postwar NATO conferences with the commanders involved and also help from a Russian historian)  It is remarkable from the perspective of fighting skill, willpower, combat leadership, and beating extreme odds.  It would make an incredible film but it's not politically correct.  It's one of the few battles that deeply moved me:.

 

http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/the-battle-of-targul-frumos-a-defensive-stand-on-the-eastern-front/

 

I don't know this battle, it sounds interesting.

 

It also reminds me that I wanted to answer your previous post (which I will - I also have a couple great models whose thread I wanted to create tonight! I'll see if I can do both )

 

 

Also, you might be interested in the French campaign of Napoleon in Russia (1812). One French military compared Russia to butter: when it's warm, you enter it like in butter (it's soft) and you go very rapidly deep into the territory. But as you go deeper and deeper, the weather will eventually become colder and colder, and the butter hardens... that's when you get stuck in it (then bad things start to happen to the assailant).

[Cult Icon]

To summarize the 1st Battle of Targu frumos^

 

The functional equivalent of an elite armored division (supported by elite airpower) defeats an elite army in a couple of days and extends the world war.

 

“Be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.”

― Marcus Aurelius

 

Newsreel:

 

 

[Cult Icon]

2 hours ago, Enrico_sw said:

Also, you might be interested in the French campaign of Napoleon in Russia (1812). One French military compared Russia to butter: when it's warm, you enter it like in butter (it's soft) and you go very rapidly deep into the territory. But as you go deeper and deeper, the weather will eventually become colder and colder, and the butter hardens... that's when you get stuck in it (then bad things start to happen to the assailant).

 

 

I've very well studied on Barbarossa and East Front winter combat- there would probably be some parallels between the two campaigns.

[Enrico_sw]

On 08/12/2017 at 3:43 AM, Cult Icon said:

^^

 

I have a bit different POV..

 

I think Paulus would have retreated from Stalingrad, but he was not allowed to by Fuhrer order.  If he retreated, Hitler would have just sacked him and replaced him with a general from Leader Reserve or another army.  As a general he was too much of an intellectual/analyst/accountant and too little of a leader.  He was too slow in decisions, didn't have much in the way of operational/tactical plans except combined arms frontal attacks, and provided too little leadership.  He was a logistics specialist.  The front line attacking units almost never saw him.  They did see, however, von Richthofen (commander of Luftflotte IV) and in charge of most of the Luftwaffe's Close air support.  The type of fighting in Stalingrad required "a tough soldier's General with sharp leadership/tactical skills and improvisation"- like a GFM Model, Rommel, or Chuikov on the Soviet side.  The German 6th Army was the best armed Army in the Wehrmacht and there were many generals that were better than Paulus, who got the job on accident. 

 

Paulus was a very experienced professional in terms of staffwork.  He was 6th Army COS (Chief of Staff) and his general was Reichenau.  This Army was was very successful in France, Poland, and Russia 1941.  They were very much a team- Reichenau had leadership skills/executed while Paulus was the egghead accountant/intellectual.  Reichenau died of a heart attack during the Soviet Wintercounteroffensive (Jan 1942) and Paulus took command.

 

Paulus was successful although he was a bit slow in the 2nd battle of Kharkov.  This victory, along with Manstein's conquest of the Crimea-  opened up the conditions for "Case Blue"- the summer 1942 offensive to the Caucasus and Stalingrad.  This footage is rather insane, look at the gigantic sea of soviet prisoners.  Most of them have a death sentence.  :  

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Kharkov

 

 

 

Of course Rommel was much better than Paulus. Rommel was a war genius (respected by both his troops and ennemies).  Still, my point is that hitler was very bad at warfare. His generals often had better intuitions than him. Paulus knew that he was gonna be screwed at Stalingrad for several reasons, mostly because panzers are made for blitzkrieg, not street fighting. Panzers in a siege are useless and panzers in the streets are just easy targets. Also, from the german's POV, Stalingrad was a good military objective at first (network node and logistical point), but later it became quite useless: the main value became symbolic. The fuhrer was stubborn and wanted to keep this symbol, but symbols are made to "break the enemy" and the Russians' spirit couldn't be broken. They were ready to sacrifice a lot (and Stalin threatenned all the potential deserters).

That's why I think Paulus' intuitions was better than his fuhrer's. And from the german POV, they should've kept cutting the oil supply from Caucasus as their main objective.
 

[Enrico_sw]

Stalin was crappy at warfare as well. He was a political genius, but not a military. At Warsaw's battle (1920) he screwed up badly (and with insubordination). He killed all his generals/officers during the purges in the 1930s (in order to be the only one in power, but it basically meant that he beheaded his army). He assassinated Tukhachevsky (who was one of the greatest Russian generals) just to ensure his power and his pact with the germans (because Tukhachevsky was very anitgerman).   Luckily for the russians, natural leaders emerged (like Joukov) but it could have been worse for them.

[Enrico_sw]

@Cult Icon Do you like Tukhachevsky? He was not at WW2 (he was killed before, during the purges), but he was an interesting military. I read his bio a while ago, and it was really intriguing. He was pretty good (unfortunately for him, he came across Stalin... Stalin was shitty in Warsaw (1920) and Tukhachevsky scolded him for that (Stalin swore to get revenge... which he eventually got)

[Cult Icon]

On 12/13/2017 at 6:40 PM, Enrico_sw said:

 

Of course Rommel was much better than Paulus. Rommel was a war genius (respected by both his troops and ennemies).  Still, my point is that hitler was very bad at warfare. His generals often had better intuitions than him. Paulus knew that he was gonna be screwed at Stalingrad for several reasons, mostly because panzers are made for blitzkrieg, not street fighting. Panzers in a siege are useless and panzers in the streets are just easy targets. Also, from the german's POV, Stalingrad was a good military objective at first (network node and logistical point), but later it became quite useless: the main value became symbolic. The fuhrer was stubborn and wanted to keep this symbol, but symbols are made to "break the enemy" and the Russians' spirit couldn't be broken. They were ready to sacrifice a lot (and Stalin threatenned all the potential deserters).

That's why I think Paulus' intuitions was better than his fuhrer's. And from the german POV, they should've kept cutting the oil supply from Caucasus as their main objective.
 

 

The entire war was strategic nonsense from the fall of 1941 onward.  This is well known among the German general staff and Hitler as well.  But they had to maintain the self-deluded image because that was their identity as militarists and nazis.   It was a one way street.  Historians David stahel and Robert Citino have multi-volume series on this.  Also, the German military has published a multi-volume series called "Germany and WW2" that add a lot to this as well.  I consider Glantz/Mark's work to be the most advanced material on Stalingrad (in English).  

 

Hitler attempted to balance the political (axis allied and domestic) with the military situation- eg. much of his actions were predicated on how the Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, Slovaks, etc. thought of German chances of winning the war and the political will of the German people.  After Stalingrad, he lost a of Axis Allied support.  Postwar, it was quite common for German generals to complain about the delusional nature of grand strategy but usually their complaints did not factor in Hitler's other agendas.  Yes, Stalingrad was symbolic- viewed as a political goal as Hitler's summer offensive had to achieve something.  Around the same time (Nov 1941, where 95% of Stalingrad was taken), Army Group A reached its high water mark in the Caucasus and raised the Nazi Flag on the Elbrus, Europe's highest mountain.

 

The 6.AOK/4PzA, after clearing the Don Bend in heavy combat, approached the outskirts of Stalingrad with only 60% of it combat strength left.  Paulus had the strongest air support enjoyed by the Wehrmacht in the entire war- Fliegerkorps IV was capable of generating up to 3,000 sorties everyday (not only air supremacy and supply airdrops but also ground attack support by dive bombers, medium bombers, heavy fighters) .

 

 Glantz's thesis is that Paulus had a very small window of opportunity to "bounce" Stalingrad and that's pretty much what Paulus initially tried to do.  He stormed into the city with a mobile corps with 3 good divisions that were supported by armor.  They made the most rapid advance in the city itself but ran out of steam and were burned out. The rest of 6AOK then moved in and took their positions.  Afterwards, fighting was extremely difficult for both sides.  The northern front of Stalingrad fixed many of Paulus' good divisions and they were pinned down for the majority of the battle by suicidal frontal attacks with Infantry and armor- these attacks cost the Soviets over 115,000 dead/wounded/mia.  Throughout the battle of Stalingrad, these divisions were usually defending and not able to attack south- into the City!

 

So the biggest dilemma for the Germans was that the Soviets at Stalingrad were to strong and fanatical for them to handle.  Paulus never attempted to clear the Eastern bank of the Volga.  If he managed to do that, the 6AOK/4PzA would have encircled the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies.  But they left them open, so the Soviets received powerful reinforcements and fire support.  It was a wack a mole game.

 

When Red Army divisions were moved across the Volga and destroyed, STAVKA simply send them more units.  Stalin gave the "Not one step back" order which also increased the fanaticism.  The eastern bank of the Volga was a gigantic logistical network and artillery park, filled with artillery and rocket launchers. In half a year, the Soviet war machine built new and improved assault armies for the Winter counteroffensive of 1942/1943.  So, in effect Paulus (6AOK) and Mackensen (AGA) stormed into a giant trap; the Soviets were biding their time as they weakened the Axis in the South to the maximum extent.  Then they launched the united offensive on mid Nov, 1942 and quickly annihilated the axis allied armies that were holding the flanks of the German advance, and then encircled 6AOK./much of 4.PzA themselves.  Army Group A was also under threat of being cut off and had to withdraw from the Caucasus, leaving a portion of their forces on the Kuban Bridgehead.  

[Cult Icon]

On 12/13/2017 at 6:41 PM, Enrico_sw said:

Stalin was crappy at warfare as well. He was a political genius, but not a military. At Warsaw's battle (1920) he screwed up badly (and with insubordination). He killed all his generals/officers during the purges in the 1930s (in order to be the only one in power, but it basically meant that he beheaded his army). He assassinated Tukhachevsky (who was one of the greatest Russian generals) just to ensure his power and his pact with the germans (because Tukhachevsky was very anitgerman).   Luckily for the russians, natural leaders emerged (like Joukov) but it could have been worse for them.

 

On 12/13/2017 at 6:45 PM, Enrico_sw said:

@Cult Icon Do you like Tukhachevsky? He was not at WW2 (he was killed before, during the purges), but he was an interesting military. I read his bio a while ago, and it was really intriguing. He was pretty good (unfortunately for him, he came across Stalin... Stalin was shitty in Warsaw (1920) and Tukhachevsky scolded him for that (Stalin swore to get revenge... which he eventually got)

 

Stalin catastrophically cut off the head of his military during the purges and fatally weakened them in 1941.  The Red Army had more tanks, aircraft, and heavy weapons than the rest of the world combined at that time.  As the war went on Stalin grew to trust his advisers and generals more and more.  They were granted more and more freedom.  With Hitler, it was the opposite- he trusted them less and less, and restricted their actions greatly with his OKH directives and Fuhrer orders.

 

There was also the theorist Svechin and Isserson that were very influential. Isserson was imprisoned and fell into obscurity but his operational concepts were the model for the reborn Red Army of late 1942, mid 1943, mid 1944.

 

I find the Red Army and the Soviet way of war (and soviet military operational art) to be quite fascinating- it's the only national army was designed along the lines of continental conquest.  The Soviet model, which was eventually exported to communist and warsaw pact countries globally- comes across as maximizing combat power among developing and third world countries due to it emphasis on maximum numbers of equipment, massive conscription and infantry generation.  The Vietcong had Soviet advisers helping them in Vietnam and so did the North Koreans/Chinese Communists during the Korean War.

 

The German military was actually not designed to do global conquest- as historian Frieser points out, the Blitzkrieg was an 'accident'. 

 

My favorite Soviet generals are Front commanders Vatutin, Rokossovsky  and Tank Army commanders Katukov, Rybalko, Kravchenko, Rotmitstrov.  Vatutin was killed by Ukrainian partisans in early 1944.  I believe that he would have become a Marshal of the Soviet Union if he survived.  These men were outstanding commanders from the beginning of the war, which made them rise to more and more critical roles later on.

[jj3]

 

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@Stromboli1Baskin looks like Mom. Abby looks like dad...