Comments by "Not Today" (@nottoday3817) on "Battlestorm Stalingrad E9 - FIRESTORM" video.

  1.  @Edax_Royeaux  1. Manpower is not the same as soldiers. First of all, you could recruit soldiers on the ground, not have them shipped from Moskow or who knows where. Secondly, manpower also means people building railways, repairing tanks and other equipment, building defensive structures etc. etc. 2. The food would have been a problem anyway
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  2. Well, one has to consider the obvious situation where the Germans are lying.
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  3. well, 'soviet propaganda' is no more of an argument than 'german propaganda'. One could argue that the soviets propagated false stories to boost morales, others could argue that the germans downplayed soviet heroes to save their pride. It's a back and forth argument. The only History channel documentary I've watched was Soviet Storm: WW2 in the east, made by BBC I believe. On that documentary they tended to talk about massive troop movements, not individual incidents like Pavlov's house or Kutznetovs hill
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  4. The series focuses on the Battle of Stalingrad and every resources the commanders could deploy is given by TIK, even mentioning how division from AG B were sent to Paulus. Thus, the overall situation is rather irrelevant for presenting this theater of war.
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  5. Terror bombign. Drop the morale and hope the enemy gives up. US and UK used it as well. Ironically, US and UK used it after the German BLITZ, which obviously failed. Why did they do it then? Well, besides 'they were maniacs', I have no other argument
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  6. Simply said: no. The whole ideea of bombing the city was to force the morale of the enemy to drop to such a point that they would surrender without a fight. Well, there is also another argument. Targetting the civillian infrastructure would hopefully impact the military effort as well, as resources would have to be diverted to rescuing civillians and rebuilding, while other crucial infrastructure, like bread factories/depots, oil depots etc. would cause shortages in the military and reduce their effectiveness. To answer your 2nd question about infrastructure helping the units in the city: in the german plans, Stalingrad was just a minor stop. They did not expect to fight long for the city. Their goal was Astrakhan to cut off oil supplies to the Soviets. Soviet high command guessed that the logistic infrastructure in Stalingrad area would give them a much better chance of fighting back there. That's how the bloodbath started. Soo, the sooner the germans got their hands on the city, the better for them, regardless of the later consequences
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  7.  @johnnydavis5896  Not really. Economy back in the days did not work like it works now. Things like pubs, clubs, restaurants etc were more or less scarce. Same for other sources of entertainment and especially in an industrial city like Stalingrad. Basically, every worker was an essential worker there. And you have the problem of clogged logistic lines
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  8. Well, the key word when discussing the battle of Britain is 'range'. German planes, especially fighters, did not have the range to conduct proper fighting over Britain. By proper fighting I mean manouvering and loitering, which consumes much more fuel than cruise-flight from an area to another. This meant that the bombers, also lacking in range, were left unguarded againt the RAF. As for radar, I have no knowledge about it. Not sure if German intelligence could pin-point their location
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  9. They fled to Stalingrad awaiting evacutation. They could not go to various volga villages because there was no crossing there
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  10. Opinion on the evacuation: It's a nightmare to even think about it. This might sound rash as hell, but when you consider evacuating hundreds of thousands you have to ask yourself: 'okay, now what?' Let's just think about the logistics of such thing. You allow evacuation? Alright. How do you move those people? Don't you need boats and trains? Wait, you don't have unlimited trains or boats! Nor do you have unlimited communication lines like roads and railways! And the number of trains are already used for something else, like transporting troops and materials. If you do not send troops and material to the front lines, the enemy would overcome your position and reach the civillian population even faster. You cannot work extra shifts due to fuel shortages and maintainance problems and also you run into the same problem of limited communication lines. Then is the problem of the harvest that you've mentioned. So...? Ok, let's say that you put the population before the harvest. Now what? You have even more mouths to feed with far less food. That is why they prioritised shifting the harvest first, so others could survive. And if you move the population, where are you going to move them? Do you have enough food, water and shelter where you move them? Furthermore, as someone has already pointed out, an evacuation was already going on THROUGH Stalingrad, that being the people and equipment going from the Western side towards the safer East. Sooo... the communication lines were already clogged.This makes the evacuation of the city itself an unimaginable thought from a logistical point of view. It's something like the 'evacuation of Courtland' which you've debated in that series. Even if an evacuation was already taking place there, the circumstances made it look like it was not. And that was not all. One has to think that the civillian population was also useful in the city, building destroyed communication lines, repairing vehicles, serving and preparing food, building defensive positions etc. etc. May God have mercy on our souls that we'll never have to endure what those people had to live through
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  11. 'I just read this article' What article bro?! :) Generally, speaking, it's hard to asses the performance of US Army. You got instances of germans saying that if the US would have used their infantry the same way the Soviets did, Berlin would have been captured by the US and UK before the end of 1944. There are also accounts of US troops literally selling their fuel to the French civillian population which caused major logistical problems stalling their advance in 1944. Morally speaking, well, there is a speech by Patton (yes, that Patton) which said they should kill their enemy even after surrendering. (That was prior to Italy) To paint a general view: US style of warfare and their efficiency were perfectly adapted for their strategic goals. They were fighting a war thousands of miles away from home, with no threat for their famillies. There was no actualy need for them to rush for a quick victory, especially since the Soviets were tying down the most and the best German forces. They could just take their time and clear off those pesky germans one by one safely.
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  12. Those that argue against Germany winning WW2 are the type of people who look at statistics: production, number of soldiers, tanks etc. Those who argue for Germany are the ones looking at history. If you look at statistics, there was no way for Germany to even conquer Norway. I mean, the whole Home Fleet basically dwarfed all the German navy, which was all poured into this operation. And the British still had at least one more fleet into the Atlantic area, so sacrificing all their ships in the Home Fleet to obliterate the German navy would have still left them on top. Mind you, Norway is 1940, so no Bismark or Tirpitz, so even losing the whole Home Fleet is rather questionable. But, guess what. The Home Fleet was nowhere to be seen. Their most famous action in the Norwegian campaign after Warspite smashing a few lone destroyers at Narvik was losing an aircraft carrier to freaking battleships. The Battle of France? The greatest German victory? Statistically that would have been impossible. France had the best land army in the world. They had better artillery than the Germans. More and better tanks (they even had operational heavy B1s and even superheavies -C1s-). I believe they even outnumbered the germans in terms of soldiers. And they had the support of the British and, theoretically, the Dutch and Belgians. But guess what. The whole fiasco was done with in less than a month. Those are just a few examples of instances where the German operations should have ended on nothing else but their troops massacred in a senseless struggle. But they ended up in brilliant victories. Sooo, tell that to those 'germany had no chance of winning WW2'.
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  13. Hello from Romania. Naval action in the black sea in WW2 (and WW1 as well) was pretty dim because there is no strategic gain that could be achieved via naval and/or amphibious assaults) This being said there are a few important naval egagements in the area: Perhaps the most important single operation was a Soviet assault on Constanta in 1941 with an amphibious raid supported by a few destroyers. Romanian naval batteries, destroyers and a minefield quickly cancelled this operation, resulting in at least one destroyer being sunk. Commercial lanes? Not really. The biggest economic partners for Romania were the Axis (specifically Germany) during the 1930s (this being 1 of the 2 main reasons why we allied with Germany despite the 1940 landgrabs). Plus, the only available trade partner that would require shipping in the Black Sea was Turkey. Now, I do not have exact data on our economy in WW2, but with most of it focused on war production and the most valuable goods (oil and grain) shipped to Germany, I highly doubt we had any big commercial naval routes in this timeframe. Most of the naval shipping lanes were troop and supply transports sent towards Sevastopol and, later, to the Romanian armies east of Crimea. Our navy was tasked with protecting those supply lines. German submarines would assist sometimes or, during Sevastopol, harass Soviet supply lines. The Black Sea Fleet of the Soviet Union, despite being the most important of their individual Fleets, didn't play a big strategic role either. They would often support the Red Army in shore bombardment or deliver supplies or evacuate the wounded. The overwhelming threat of the Luftwaffe (which crticially damaged or even sunk? a lot of their capital ships) caused Stalin to ban all large ships from straying too far from the ports
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  14.  @Kabayoth  You are projecting too big of a scenario in my opinion. First of all, the Red Fleet, especially the surface one, was inactive due to Luftwaffe, but they were not sitting idle. And the submarines were actually quite active with respect to the limited number of targets. Even when the Caucasus fell, I believe the ports on the East Coast of the Black Sea were still open and active. And about shipping lanes all the way to Italy. My question is: Why so far? There are 2 reasons why the allies did not bother sending lend-lease through the black sea. First of all, it was enemy territory. Romanian and Bulgarian navy controlled the east coast, Turkey could not intervene and Black Sea Fleet, well, we've already talked about it. So any supply routes through there could be easily ambushed by submarines waiting at the exit and entrance of the Bosphorus strait. Now, this is also available in the reverse. If Germany tried to sneak oil through the black sea, those straits would be perfect choke points for the Soviet and British subs. Another reason why they did not bother with the Black Sea for Lend Lease was that they already had the Persian Corridor, sending supplies from the middle east territories of Britain into USSR via their logistical lines around the Caspian Sea, so no need of risking the Black Sea. Speaking of alternative routes, Germany also had a better alternative: Instead of overburdening the merchant vessels with a long route to Italy, they could just drop off the cargo in Romanian and Bulgarian ports. Another reason why that scenario seems exagerated: the German merchant (cargo) navy was not that big. And it was also pretty busy delivering iron from Sweden. Also, it would have been pretty hard for the Germans to move their merchant ships from the North Sea, through British-controlled Gibraltar or British-controlled Suez Canal to get them into the Black Sea. Italian navy was also busy supplying Rommel in North Afrika.
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  15. The problem with Armtrak is that it's both a company and an essential need. This means that economically they will lose in some to many parts, but the gouvernment invests in them to gain other things, like connecting distant communities. A funny report that I've read, cannot confirm it's accuracy though, states that the most famous railway in the world, the Japanese high-speed system, is also terribly inefficient, with few routes turning in an actual profit. But the rest are critical for businessmen and more reliable than airplanes (which are either slower considering check-in time, weather delays etc. or more expensive) Thus, you lose money on the company specifically, but you gain money by encouraging businesses to develop in certain areas by maintaining a connection with a central hub.
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