Who is your favorite Russian from WW2

Why not? Some consider him the best.

 

CB;
Thanks for the recommendation!
Tank Rider by Evgeni Bessonov - Powell's Books
JeffinMNUSA

 

i read a touching story somewhere about this russian peasant who, while his friends went off raping and pillaging in East Prussia, chose to look after these cows at an abandoned german farm. he was amazed how healthy these cows, compared to the ones in collectivised farms, were and devoted himself to them. he's got to be one of my favourites.

 

Wanowhnkob

02 10 1882 - 26 03 1945

 

vassily zaitsev

 

Good book so far.

 

My favorite Russians are Vassili Zaitsev and Roza Shanina, both well experienced sniper!

Regards

Ulrich

 

Hi;
I just finished and here is yet another epic movie that should be made. LT Bessonov attributes his miraculous survival to "luck and instinct"-I have heard the term "combat ESP" from some vets I know and I wonder what Evgeni would make of this? Two years riding tanks and four major offensives? The American Joe Beyrle was lucky to have made it a few weeks being a PPSH submachinegunner on the Soviet spear point. A humorous section of the Bessonov account was where the LT and his tank riders captured the German luxury coach and were riding to battle dressed in all the pomp and finery of 18 century Prussian aristocrats-they must have presented quite a spectacle as a passing officer stopped them and made them remove the decidedly unSoviet dress, though he did let them keep the coach. Also interesting was how Bessonov's platoon was replenished with Partisans and later POWs as the war progressed.
JeffinMNUSA



http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Tank-Rider/Evgeni-Bessnov/e/9781932033489
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_...-nations-exhibit-opened-by-beyrle/405559.html

 

Indeed--it's an excellent book and I am finishing it right now. At times it seems the only mission of the 49th Mechanized Brigade was to get Bessonov killed, and somehow failed to do the job in spite of having two years to accomplish the mission. Fascinating read and definitely give some insight to the inner workings of the so-called "hordes" of the Red Army.

 

3c;
The basic mission of the 49th seems to have been to "drive through the breaches in the front line and into the enemy rear, and attack until you can attack no more!" You can see from this personal account how the Soviet mechanized forces gained in strength and sophistication from '43 to '45. You can also trace the decline of the Luftwaffe from offensive to offensive until in the final offensive when the main concern was the Panzerfaust. A gripping account-though I believe the author is blanking out some atrocities he might have witnessed in East Prussia.
JeffinMNUSA

 

It's interesting to see the decreasing effectiveness of Wehrmacht fires during the later offensives. Those attacks in which Bessanov charged German trenches over open fields and got through unscathed, even though the German soldiers were shooting all guns, seem to suggest a severe decline in the training of Wehrmacht troops. Either the gods of war smiled on Lt. Bessanov or the German aim got much, much worse after Kursk.

Indeed, I have those "I saw nothing" passages underlined. It almost sound like the standard mantra for that sort of thing.

 

3C; Whether or not LT Bessanov got caught up in the madness that happened in East Prussia 1945 is known only to him-for certain he would to have heard the Ehrenburg propaganda; Ilya Ehrenburg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So why did Bessanov survive against all odds? He ascribes it to "luck" but what is luck? Extreme skill coupled with intuition as a gambler friend of mine theorizes? It seems the LT is still puzzling this over. The average life expectancy of a Soviet Frontovik at the time was two or three weeks-riding shotgun on the Soviet armored spear points driving deep into the guts of the German war effort was no doubt a more hazardous affair.
JeffinMNUSA

 

Lieutenant General Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov

 

.

 

Wow, Ilya Ehrenburg, one of the badest guys that ever made propaganda! Goebbels was evil but Ehrenburg seems to be his master!

Regards

Ulrich

 

Perhaps not that aweful.

Goebbels made murderious propaganda against Jews and 'undesirables' who had never wronged the German state and its people in any way. Ehrenburg wanted vengence. I imagine witnessing foreign invaders wiping out my ethnic group, targeting women and children, for no reason, would put me in a sanguinary mood as well.

An excerpt of the text preceding the infamous Kill Him! passage is reproduced in Wikipedia:

According to current scholarship on the Holocaust on the Ost Front, the letters that Ehrenburg allegedly took from the German officers might very well be authentic; if they were fabrications, they were pretty good fasimilies. The Wehrmacht starved millions of Russian POWs to death and connived or acquiscienced the liquidation of hundreds of thousands of Jews. I am not condoning Ehrenburg's subsequent blood-thirsty propaganda, but what would one expect from any other man put in his position?

 

TripleC,

You stated correct! But is a man that prays "Death to all Germans" better than a man that said "Death to all jews and Untermenschen"? In my opinion not really. Although he distanced himself from his statement, he was the spark for an huge forest fire! And this sentence was the one the Russian soldiers heard until they reached Germany. I know that the Russian Propaganda Officers hammered this sentence in the soldiers head and not he in person, but the words were his ones. I dont want to excuse the atrocities of some units of the Wehrmacht and the SS on the Russian people, there is no excuse. But where is now the difference between the atrocities of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army? in bodycount? No, in principle it makes no difference if one side killed a million people and the other only 900.000. One side heard your enemy is to kill and the other side heard the same. So in my opinion Ilya Ehrenburg wasn´t better than Goebbels if he were he would know that murderous revenge isn´t the right way to show the rest of the world " We are better than those German Beasts" Sorry if my point of view isn´t understandable, but it is my one!

Best Regards

Ulrich

 

I do understand. But Ehrenburg was actually one of the guys who dared criticizing Stalin and genuinely contributed to the liberalization (in relative terms) under Khrushchev. The Red Army never set out to exterminate Germans and while their behavior in East Germany was unpardonable, it should also be noted that STAVKA busied itself with supplying food to feed Berlin. They hadn't the intention to wipe the Germans off the face of the earth. That said, WWII was just a plain miserable time to be a citizen in the combatant state.

 

TripleC,

i agree with you! It wouldn´t be right to damn the Russians, they did good things to the people too. Ehrenburgs criticizing on Stalin was very quiet, but this is an fact that i understand for the reason that he wont stayed alive if he were getting louder.
Your last sentence is very good and true.

Regards

Ulrich

 

Chuikov... period

I don't see Zhukov as the hero of Stalingrad in any way at all. He formed a circle after steamrolling through bunch of under supplied, stretched out and demoralized Romanian and Hungarian troops and held the line. This is not something genius, it was conventional WW2 tactics, it was only different to what the soviets usually did which were continues human waves that failed.

Chuikov however was still under the same old difficult orders from Stalin which was, to hold Stalingrad, and by some miracle and a bit of genius managed to hold onto the city which (in my view) was still easily breakable even after Richthofen's bombings.