The myths of WWII (Eastern Europe)

Well,I should not say that the Soviet counter-attacks were minor,in the sense that their results were insignifiant ;the result was very heavy losses :the weekly German losses till 31 august 1941,were the biggest for two years:some 45000.
OTOH,it is so that the Soviet strategy failed :the préwar Soviet strategy was(in case of an invasion):counter attack,repel the enemy,and march to his capital.But,the German plan (to eliminate the SU in a short campaign) ALSO failed,and,IMHO,on 31 august,the Soviet situation was better than the German one .

 

Exactly the soviet counterattacks were minor and insignificant. the only significant one being a failure. The strategy was to bide time to collect a force large enough the germans couldnt handle which is exactly what happened. the germans had extended themselves and exhausted themselves only to be overrun by a large force. The russians practiced this continously throughout the war stalingrad, barbarossa, kursk, etc. The worse part is the germans never seemed to figure it out.

 

These counterattacks might have been futile but they included whole armies and hundreds of thousands of men and equipment. It is because of these counterattacks, the Wehrmacht suffered over 800k casualties before the battle of Moscow.
What is your definition of minor?

Boldin's encounter with Guderians Southern flank at Tula was a success.


P.S.
The ONLY time when the Russians outnumbered the Axis at Stalingrad was during Zhukov's counteroffensive. Inside the city the 62nd army was outnumbered by as much as 8-1 with virtually no air support...

 

First ever against the Germans....

 

i agree on this. but i am not saying that russians were fully organied. the point was they knew a war was coming evident by the moves made before hand. hitler invaded poland in 39. he did not enter usr untill 41. thats 2 years stalin had to be prepared for an eventual war. yes maybe the military was still not where it needed to be but after the initial suprise they were fighting. you cant say the germans reaching all the way to moscow in a few months along a 1000km front is not impressive. it would take the soviets 4 years to reach berlin with the help of other superpowers.

 

The germans lost 775000 men in all of operation barbarossa. so your saying the germans lost no men while attacking and only suffered losses when the soviets counterattacked? the germans lost 775000 men because they marched along a 1000km front to moscow fighting soviets all the way there. im sure the germans expected high losses. i dont think the germans expected their objectives to switched 2 million times, the soviets to unleash weapons that performed where there's couldnt, and i dont think they expected to meet the huge number of soviets waiting at moscow.

 

Perhaps the greatest myth of WWII is embodied in the demonization of Stalin and Russians in general during the "Cold War". To understand the war on the East, western historians should in the first place renounce ideological stigmatization of Russia and Soviet Union and then re-read carefully again memoirs of defeated German generals.

 

Ooooohhh the cold war...Russians the big bad bogie guys....One only has to look at a map of Europe in 70's or 80's to see the red surrounded by the blue. And then work out why the cold war was the way it was...Russians have been demonised in the cold war for far too long without anyone looking into the b.s. from our side that helped drive it. But I'm ot again...

I have to edit this post as I realise there are many members who lived on that side of the wall that have first hand experience of the incarceration involved...I'm not that naive to realise what happened, we knew what happened and I would not like to antagonise any of our former Warsaw Pact nation members who had a different experience.

Just saying...not one sided in the causes or the continuation of a situation that should not have continued as long as it did.

 

I respect your opinion and your care not to hurt anyone. I sincerely appreciate that.

I am not saying that everything was like in a fairy tale but the Devil was not so »red« as He was painted. It is shame that anxiety from the Peril from the East exists even today; the truth might be quite opposite. Rhetoric from the Cold War era is still present even in the academic history.

Over the past centuries Eastern and Central European nations were not only jeopardized but they were too long under the harsh region of their Western neighbors: the German and the Austrian empires. The most fertile parts of the conquered lands were colonized by Germans. In some parts of eastern Hungary and western Romania, in Banat and Batschka, Schwabians have taken the most fertile land in Europe: you may dig there 10-20 meters deep and it is still just black fertile soil: a dream-land for agriculture. When you stand there in the middle of the fields it looks like a green ocean. They took just the best.

Only in the first half of the 20th century my country has lost large historical territories located at our northern border. Territories that have remained under the Austrian region were ruthlessly Germanized. At the end of the WWII that trend has been finally stopped. For the first time in the recent history there was no danger that East European territories would be used by Allies as compensation in negotiations with Germany. Paradoxically, Eastern and Central European nations have developed complete national independence under the »Red Terror«. This is certainly the fact that needs serious consideration.

After centuries of steeling the land, aggressors had to be repelled from the East with the same degree of harshness they used to enslave Czechs, Poles and other Eastern nations. The freedom has arrived owing to Communists and owing to Soviets. That is the fact!

The process wasn't spontaneous; regretfully some force had to be applied to make things work.

Neither I was a communist nor anyone in my family but I have deep respect for everything that communists and Russians have brought to the Eastern Lands: Hope and Prosperity in her higher, non-material sense.

 

Without to intervene in this (political!) discussion ,I like to mention the following
1)east European countries also annexed and Polonized,Magyarized,etc other east european countries,thus,IMHO,it is to easy to point the finger at Germany
2)communism failed,because it was going against the two most important motives of mankind :nationalism and self-interest (also because it did not work economically)
3) the West should be wrong by triumphing (claiming :the end of history in 1989):20 years after the fall of communism,the taboo of the west(=multiculturalism) has failed,and,liberal democracy is contested,and,one can argue that democracy will not survive if capitalism will be destroyed by an other crisis (even in the US and Britain)

 

All good stuff...No disagreement with anyone there...But we better get back on topic before Skip arrives....He's Belgian...He has a stump..

 

That's good! I feel much better now. I don't know why, but I have always suspected he was NKVD!

 

Stasi surely...Slip is Nkvd..Skip Stasi and TD Tommy the punishment battalion.

 

... and LJAd is a member of the Politbeauro!

 

only a candidate member : I will have to use my ellbows to become a member of the politbureau.,or some good old nepotism

 

Don't wary comrade, you're in. I will call Kremlin today.

 

In reality USSR was of course not prepared for a war. However this is not what the soviet leaders were thinking at the time of Soviet-German alliance 23.8.1939.

Stalin already had at that time a huge army, which had been built up and modernized through 1930's. It had more tanks than the rest of the world combined and heeps of other material. "The moral support" provided by the politruks was supposed to make it even stronger. Soviet army had defeated the Japanese the previous year and was just about to take home the second victory.

In comparison the German army at the time was much smaller and (on paper) not any better either. Only the Winter War - and later operation Barbarossa - exposed to soviet leaders the true (lack of) capabilities of the soviet army. In August 1939 those incidents were however still in the future.

One cannot use the reality exposed in the future to reason the thinking of Stalin in the past.

 

What a great pile of bull...!

Somehow it doesn't suprise me that you fail to remember the vast areas of Europe and Asia - none of which was "historically" Russian - colonized and enslaved by the imperialist Russia's regime during the previous centuries. Here's a map for you to refresh your memory:

http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/brunell/russian empire 2.gif

The harsh russification measures ensured that all supressed nationalities were reaching for their independence when the empire collapsed. Unfortunately not all succeeded.

The soviet regime after the WW2 was a great disaster for all of the Eastern Europe - and not least for Russia itself. For example the Estonian standard of living before the war was higher than that of Finland's. After the collaps of the SU it was only 1/10! Luckily the Eastern European nations managed to save their sense of independence during the dark years.

Unfortunately the Russian imperialism has not vanished with the communism, which was (and still is in some countries) the greatest plague of the modern world. The soviet (Russian) rule and communism were great catastrophies in all possible senses - whether material or non-material.

 

Even in june 1941,the Soviet army was no good,it was incapable to start an offensive against Germany,and it even was incapable to defend the SU against a German attack.

 

That is all very true. However this is not what Stalin thought himself in August 1939!