The myths of WWII (Eastern Europe)

There were no German units in Italy in 1941.!!!
I don't know why you are refusing to admit reality ,or,is it to put the blame of the German defeat in 1941 on Hitler ?
Already before Barbarossa,there was a crisis of manpower :the commander of the reserve army 5fromm) had warned that the Ostheer could receive in 1941 some 400000 replacements only,and they could move to the front from september on only .
The army +WSS had a strength of some 3.95 million men:some 2.7 million were initially engaged in Barbarossa(some 125 divisions),they would be followed by the strategic reserve of 28 divisions (some 0.6 million men):the remainder(55 divisions,some 700000 men) were needed as occupation troops,and most of them (32 divisions ) were UNFIT for active service in the east .Thus,the Germans attacked with every thing that was available .
And,already in 1941,the Germans had problems with the number of Russians:while the 3.3 million Germans could expect only 400000 replacements,the 2.7 million Russians did receive some 5.5 million reinforcements and replacements:you get the picture ? I am very sceptical ....

 

your point is all confusing;I already have given you a hint,I will give you an other (the last):are you sure of your figures ?
I can't understand some one (pretending to be a military expert) making such an elementary mistake and being not conscious of it

 

Warming! System overload! Man exposed as a fraud blames everyone else for his predicament.

You surely should have Tiger. If you did you might have noticed it was not me. I have never ever posted anything on the quality of the Tiger's armour. Never once.
Yet again you are exposed, a man who invents facts.

Charming!
Anyway the cold hard fact is the figures you provided are wrong. It follows that your argument (based on those faulty figures) is equally false. Your case is built on sand and it has no merit.
The claim more Tigers were written off than were manufactures is idiotic.
Your numbers are off and your conclusions are absurd.

 

Or not depending on why they are off and if they are corrected and just how small or large they are.

If that's the case I think you are wrong. That's just the sort of argument to which minor or even moderate limitations in accuarcy are unimportant.

There's a difference in being out numbered say 3:4 vs 1:3 vs 1:10. The numbers are good enough to determine this sort of thing. Now part of the problem was that while the Germans expected to start Barbarossa out numbered they expected to even the odds up and get a lead that the Soviets could never recover from by enciricling and destroying Soviet units. One of the big reasons their plan failed is the Red Army reconstituted itself at an unexectedly high rate.

 

The belief that the Red Army’s rapine & plundering in Germany in 1945 were due to manifestation of ‘’Russian barbarism’’

The belief that they were any more "evil" or ‘’barbaric’’ than any other group of frightened young men, half-mad with nerves, frequently drunk, armed with sub-machine guns and so far beyond being desensitised to violence and suffering that even contemporary war-veterans would scarcely be able to relate. (Nor were the German soldiers any more "evil" than anybody who's been relentlessly indoctrinated by racist propaganda to de-humanise the foe, and is drunk on power and far from their own society and its mores. Same with the Japanese or whoever. But that’s another topic…)


Also the smug complacent belief that Anglo-American solders in similar circumstance wouldn’t commit the same acts.


Another ''myth'' is the attempts by some during the Cold War and after to draw moral equivalency between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during.WW2.

The intent and starting point of both side’s war effort were vastly different. The Germans meant to exterminate the Russians, Belarussians, and Ukrainians. Are we to believe that the Soviets meant to exterminate the Germans, Hungarians, and Romanians?

 

Sorry but no one who has any understanding would agree with you on the Tiger numbers.
The reason (when it finaly hits you) is fairly simple and I can not understand how you persist with your argument.

That is quite simply not true.
To be written off a tank had to be beyond repair. The decision to scrap a tank was made by men who repaired them and a German tank would NEVER be written off if there was any chance of a rebuild. Some tanks were sent back for factory rebuild but they were not written off as total losses. They appeared as a loss to the unit but were not counted in the calculations of losses.
What you seem unable to grasp is the difference between a casualty and a loss. For every 4 tank casualties 3 would be repaired and 1 would be written off.
German tank CASUALTIES were 4 times production but German tank LOSSES were only 100% of production.

With the manpower figures a person could be wounded many times but a dead man only appeared once. If someone wentmissing during a retreat and turned up safe later he would appear as MIA (not dead) in the initial report. However these reports were consolidated and updated on a regular basis and took account of these conflicts. The later repost would remove the man from MIA.
This has been explained to you many times but to no avail.
Put simply the complete mess you have made of the Tiger numbers shows you lack the sophistication to do more than repost conclusions drawn by others. Your assume your raw data is correct and have done no research to validate the numbers.
Your numbers are wrong and your conclusions worthless.

 

Or is it because the wesern allies didn't allow these cicumstances to occur?

Depeding on just what is meant this may or may not be a myth.

Actually you are wrong there. The Nazi's intent was to drastically reduce the numbers of the Slavs in the land they conquered and reduce what was left to slaves but not to exterminate them. The Soviets on the otherhand especially under Stalin went about exterminating the opponents of Communism with an equal fever.

 

Nothing to do with ''allowing'' it. Barring a German invasion of genocidal brutality of the UK and USA. The same circumstances couldn't exist

In any sense the sheer magnitude of the genocides the Nazis had planned puts them beyond the pale of any other regime. Frankly the way they did and would've kept screwing up Germany alone is bad enough.

The first thing the Germans did in any major Soviet urban centers was cut-off any food supplies. The first thing the Soviets did after the fighting in places like Berlin ended. Was to open soup=kitchens at a time when areas of the U.S.S.R were in a state of borderline famine. Whatever else can be said of the Soviet war-effort it wasn't motivated by an insane desire to extermnate the Germans and break any hint their statehood in an insane race war.

The death rates in some areas of the occupied U.S.S.R and amongst Soviet POWs was nearly the same as that of European Jews (60%). The majority of the Slavic population was destined to be wiped out in long-term Nazi planning. Hell the first the Germans did after rounding Jews in occupied Soviet cities & large towns was cut-off the food supply (even though local food scources would've kept them fed ditto with Soviet POWs).

 

Or, might these circustances not have occured in largely due to natural obstacles ?

The Western Armies were unsuccessful on main land Europe in 1940 crossing the pond became the issue for Germany.

Perhaps im mis-understanding something (apologies in advance, its late here) but exterminating half and enslaving the remainder is not extermination because not all are dead?

Not much difference in how the two regimes dealt with "their" opponents, Germany just had way too many of them. This probably had something to do with their ideological views.

 

That is conjecture and if one looks at the Pacific it does not seem to be well supported.

Who knows what Stalin had planned? He certainly ended up being responsible for deaths on the same order of magnitude. Pol Pot's regime proportionally probably killed more than the Nazis. I'll admit that many of Stalin's victims don't fall under the normal definition of genocide but that's a rather academic matter.

 

Not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand.

Exterminate means to kill all of. So yes that is correct. I'm not sure it was 50:50 either.

Pretty much my point. Hitler did assume that certain racial groups were by definition his opponents so his aims had a bit broader scope.

 

Something tells me that if he could, he would have. Glad he did not.

 

I will make this my last 2 posts to you as obviously you are a russian fanatic and are here only to talk down and not accept anything that is said against you but LJAD I dont see an elementary mistake. As Tigers that were lost were counted as a loss. They were recovered, repaired, and re-activated. Why would a German take apart a diss-mantled tank and reb uild one at a factory when they can simply replaced the damaged parts? IF you wreck your car do they take it to a factory and use its parts on a new car? No they take off the parts that are damaged and replace them with new ones. It is far cheaper and easier to simply order parts from a warehouse and replace them than ship a tank all the way to a factory scrap it and use its parts for another tank. (Not saying this didnt happen as it did but the more of the lot were towed in and repaired. A tank that was lost in battle is one that is either abondoned by its crew or a the crew was killed. Yes some tankas were so damaged that they were only able to be scrapped but many vehicles are repairable just out of action. And yes they are counted as losses as they are sent back to a shop and replaced by another tank. I believe i see your point clearly and though it is true it is not eh case for most vehicles as most are repairable.

 

m kenny the figures are right. sorry if you cant accept that. I undrestand the difference between a loss and a casualty. There is no such thing as a casualty for tanks. They are for men. Tanks and equipment cant be killed they are counted as a loss.

 

What sort of expert adds together Tiger 1 & Tiger II losses and then compares the combined total against only Tiger I production.

You, like the second rate sources you use, forgot that there were 500 more 'Tigers' than you thought!
Thus 1350+ Tiger I and 490+ Tiger II makes 1840+ Tigers.

It is quite obvious that 1715 can be lost from 1840 without any double counting.

The rest of your post is more indication of your confusion.

I can only say I am astounded you are unaware of the difference between a tank casualty and a tank loss!

 

Is this the pot calling the kettle black?

 

Well he did plan on enslaving part of the population. I'm not sure that that would have been much of an improvement though. I definitely agree with you that I'm glad he was stopped before he could do anymore damage. It should also never be forgotten that the people of Easter Europe paid a horrible price to do so.

 

Is that so?
Someone should have told the people who wrote this secret report




Just in case you can't see it clearly here it is in close up:



The full title is 'Technical Memeorandum ORO-T-117, A Survey Of Allied Tank Casualties in World Was II. John Hopkins University 1951.

 

Not sure you could say that the weather was a myth & you could argue that it played a critical part in finally putting an end to any chance the Germans had of enveloping or taking Moscow.

But it wasn't so much the minus 45oC temperatures of Winter [even by Russian standards, the 1941-42 winter was particularly harsh, the Germans caught without full Winter gear suffered devastating results with frostbite cases & other weather related sickness due to exposure.] by then the Germans were cactus.

It was the heavy Autumn rains from October 7 that turned the country into a bottomless sea of mud that was the key problem.

Not ideal weather for rapid, mobile operations ...........

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-289-1091-26, Russland, Pferdegespann im Schlamm.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shows '42 Spring, '41 Autumn was similar.


That's how Major Timothy A. Wray see's it in 'Standing Fast: German Defensive Doctrine on the Russian Front During World War II Prewar to March 1943' U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.............

...The heavy rains began on 7 October after the Vyazma and Bryansk pockets were created by the rapid movement of the Panzer groups cutting through the Red Army in ideal Autumn weather, with 658,000 irrecoverable losses
for the Soviets.

After Kiev [700,000 casualties, over 600,000 irrecoverable] & the yazma/Bryansk battles the Red Army fell to it's lowest point of the war,and there was very little was left between the Germans and Moscow, [Koniev is quoted in 'Erickson's 'The Road to Stalingrad' telling Stavka 'we have no way of stopping the superior German mobile forces' and in his memoirs Zhukov reported that the road to Moscow was virtually open & the defences of the Mozhaisk line were to weak to stop a determined attack.]
But the rains continued through the remainder of the month, turning the Russian countryside into a quagmire and stifling Army Group Center's offensive operations. The Panzer's were bogged down in a sea of glutinous mud.

German forces continued to slog ahead here and there, with tactical progress being made with great difficulty. However, the mud also paralyzed the German logistical system, which depended entirely on motorized and horse-drawn vehicles to draw supplies overland from the rearward railheads. the effects of the weather on the supply situation, which was already strained, were devastating.
The rain-induced pause that suspended major operations for five crucial weeks in October and November thus worked greatly to the Soviets advantage. That respite gave the Soviets sufficient time to bring up reinforcements to hold off the attack, and time to assemble substantive reserves for the climatic point in the battle.When German attacks over frost-hardened ground resumed on 14 November, the way to Moscow was again barred by fresh Red Army forces and formidable defensive works.....

It doesn't necessarily mean that 'if' the Germans take Moscow/Leningrad that the Soviets collapse, [not according to many like Glantz etc, etc,] but naturally some take a different view.

Fortunately the late start to Barbarossa meant it wasn't put to the test.

 

Apologies for the late reply (forgot) but I will only address this claim...

The first German air raid on the Russian Capital occurred on July 22nd 41'.

According to an NKVD report submitted to Beria Shcherbakov and other top Moscow party officials on November 24, 1941, there were nintey German air raids on the city during the first five months of the war. "Enemy planes dropped 1,521 demolition bombs and 56,620 incendiary bombs on the city" it added. As a result of those attacks, 1,327 were killed, 1,931 seriously injured, and 3,122 lightly injured.

In the "The greatest Battle", Nagorski writes: Young people, especially young women, raced around the roofs of buildings to toss of the small incendiary bombs before they could do much damage, those devices set off 1,539 fires. Taken together, the two types of bombs destroyed 402 apartments buildings and damged another 852. Twenty-two industrial plants were also destroyed and another 102 industrial facilities were party destroyed.(p186)

The most fortified city in the world was quite concerned about the possibility of air attacks as well. As a result, the Soviet leadership had concentrated 40 percent of all of its anit-aircraft batteries in or around the capital. Giant search lights were installed and operated by women in shifts 24/7. Blimps with dangeling nets were also deployed which would snag a few low flying planes.
Lieutenant Richard Wernicke, who flew one of the notorious Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers, recalled how surprised he was along with the other German fliers, by the hail of anti-aircraft fire they faced as they dove down over their targets. "It was terrible: the air was full of lead, and they were firing very accurately. We hadn't seen anything like this before"( Greatest Battle p189).

The last of the 122 total air raids on Moscow ended sometime in the spring of 43'.
According to the figures of the Moscow Defense Museum, only about 3 percent of the city's buildings were damaged during the raids, a far cry from the extensive destruction in the British capital.
A total of 1,392 German planes have been claimed to have been shot down over Moscow.



For someone who has claimed to have access to such a high volume on knowledge, you dont seem to be taking full advantage of the opportunity. Dig deeper.