Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "TIKhistory" channel.

  1. @Cornell Patton and Bradley both were enraged by Ike's stop order. Each in his own way tried to finesse it. In Patton's case, he advanced his tanks until they were bone dry. This stunt was intended to force Ike to open up the tap. My own father sat on his azz back at PLUTO. His 'gasoline holiday' lasted about a week. Stopping the V2 attacks on London leaped past all other priorities. Strangely, Monty didn't even employ XIII Corps which was immediately to the south of Garden. (XXX Corps) Ike gave Monty everything he asked for because of the politics. How could he explain further devastation of London? The fact the MG was ENTIRELY oriented towards stopping the V2 attacks was kept top secret for decades. It took the longest time for it to leak out that the British captured SS V2 rocket troops right from the first. (Frost) The second those boys learned that the British were close at hand, they fled. One can only wonder why DUKWs weren't brought up? Why Monty didn't request loads of jeeps, perfect for this operation? Why Browning ignored both ferry sites? You do realize that the drop was delayed by a fateful three days so as to allow 2,000 American GMC trucks to be brought to Monty? This was done on a panic basis and hugely explains why my father was sitting on his azz during this period. These trucks came out of the supply chain of 12 AG. Oh, my! Bradley brought this truck issue up in his own bio. It's not a fantasy. No trucks... no supplies. Patton and Bradley were not howling over nothing. Ike's orders also caused the assault against Metz to be stopped... then the weather went totally foul... so 3rd Army had to slog its way to victory. The gasoline shut-off triggered this chain of events.
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  2. Critically, and for decades keep secret in all memoirs -- the ENTIRE Ju-52 fleet was grounded when Hitler arrived at the front to direct Guderian SOUTH. Yes, the Luftwaffe had been bailing out the Heer -- and especially itself -- by fling critical repair parts and even petrol all the way to the front. The Red Air Force was 'missing' at this point of the war, so the Luftwaffe got away with murder. The Luftwaffe would no longer be able to bail out the panzer spearheads -- and Hoth and Guderian wanted to know why. Like the IJN's deceits to Tojo, the Luftwaffe air-cargo command was hiding just how many Ju-52s were grounded because they landed on Russian farmland -- with NO PREPARATIONS to speak of. The contrast with the USAAF, USMC, et. al is striking. On a total panic basis, Junkers came out with a repair-kit solution that was then cranked out by every manufacturer in sight... including its rivals. ( I was a simple kit. ) All of this was done on oral orders. Don't look for surviving documents unless you're Mr. Lucky. Point #2 -- The Russian rail grid was NEVER BALLASTED in the daze of the Tsar. You know, the fella that laid a straight-edge on a map and directed the builders of HIS railroad to follow that line -- skipping all of the peasants between Saint Petersberg and Moscow. The Tsar was never going to ride the rails during the mud-seasons -- so think of all the money he saved by not hauling ballast all across Mother Russia. Further, unlike Western Nations, in the west of Russia there were virtually no hard-rock quarries to speak of. They would have to be built -- on a panic basis -- if you wanted quality ballast. Common rocks just don't suffice. We're talking about, ultimately, millions of tons of ballast -- that had to be hauled a vast distance before it could be laid under the sleepers/railroad ties. The ONLY double-track run in the USSR ran from Karkov to Moscow. It was so built because Stalin constructed a VAST, VAST rank of food warehouses to hold all of the grain the KGB stole from the growers. They were NOT burned down -- but captured during 1941 -- because burning Moscow's food supply was too daunting without a written Stalin order. ( I'm sure you all remember the mega-warehouse that held Leningrad's food for the winter. It was so huge that the Germans blew it up first -- with Ju-87s. Same thing here.) This Moscow-Karkov connection explains why so many mega-battles were fought nearby. Stalin never failed to shunt reinforcements there. From Autumn 41 to Summer of 43, count how many battles were a two-day drive from Karkov. Because the ENTIRE system ( exception noted ) was unballasted ( a surprise for the Germans ) it basically shut down during the mud months. By shut down I mean that the main-line locomotives would fall off the rails into the mud. Thousands of Soviet engineers entered the GULAG with that blot on their record! The change of rail gauge is wildly over-emphasized. The KILLERS were a total lack of ballast -- everywhere you turned -- and destroyed sleepers -- by the million. Green lumber makes for rotten -- and rotting sleepers. Even pulling cross-ties out of France -- and rails, too -- could not rescue the Germans. BTW, the CSA -- circa 1863 -- -showed how a single locomotive can destroy thousands of sleepers in a day by using a custom sleeper-plow. That lesson was not forgotten by the Reds. Finally, when the Red Army needed to link Stalingrad to Astrakhan -- they built 15 KM a day -- by not laying ballast under their sleepers -- and skipping two out of three as they moved ahead. In this they were entirely replicating the American approach, for that was how the first track was laid to craft the Continental Railroad. The missing cross-ties were inserted after-the-fact by 'repair' crews. It was important that the money was in the bank, first. When this tempo of track lay-down was photographed by the Luftwaffe, the Heer was stunned. The Nazis were defeated by the Soviet rail net. The Nazi Power of the Will did not pencil out.
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  3. The only gambit that had a chance: ships in the Baltic change the numbers for AGN. Barges in the Black sea change the number for AGS. BTW, Hitler was wrong, way wrong. AGN HAD to be the priority -- BECAUSE it could be supported by Baltic shipping -- especially to include barges. Yes, the Krauts DID use barges -- both north and south, too. However, they did so in a most trivial fashion. So much so that most histories don't even mention it having even happened. It is critical to Nazi success to reduce the scope of the mega-campaign. Once Leningrad is captured, it becomes a port for Germany. Leningrad is the CENTRAL point for Soviet heavy industry -- in 1941. It's where Soviet heavy tanks were designed and produced. It's where the Russian rail system started. (British imports, later the French...) It's a critical city for the Soviet economy for just this reason. Once Leningrad is taken 4th Panzer Army is permanently released to AGC. All of this had to happen at lightning speed -- only possible if the Baltic sea link is employed. AGS has the same dynamic -- logistically. However, Stalin made sure that Ukraine had NOTHING. The entire 'southern orientation' was flatly wrong. 1st Panzer Army should've been allocated to AGC. Yes, it needed all four panzer armies... all of the trucks to speak of. Slid past, steam locomotives need water tanks -- just all over. Most trains could not travel 100kM without getting watered up... usually much less. Freights ( known as 'drags' in the industry ) suck down water. (It's the weight.) The Germans critically needed Diesel-electric locomotives at the front -- for they would not need so much support. They would also burn heavy middle distillate (ie Diesel fuel) that no others could use -- and which coal-to-liquids plants produce in massive amounts. The entire campaign was based upon emotion. Crazy, it was. Hitler lost the moment he crossed the frontier. You can't win a motorized war without oil. Period.
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  4. His steel versus bridging talent is off the mark, too. The Krauts totally screwed up by not anticipating that they'd HAVE to loot the Western rail systems of every manner of stuff -- starting with the TALENT. By the time the Krauts got around to confiscating the French rail way assets, it was too late. The hang-up at the fortress of Brest-Litovsk was much more pivotal than most historians realize. Only with Putin's 2011 video history has anyone brought it to the fore. It's plain that the Nazis figured that with their new super-mobile grand-tactics that looting the French nation of its trucks would suffice. Obviously, such was not so. Here and there, you'll run across admissions that the Soviet rail net was not working for days at a time. IT'S THE MUD. Because the rails were not ballasted, the Soviet network ALWAYS had to shut down -- typically for weeks. The Stalinist technique was to send out repair crews to lift the sleepers// cross-ties out of the mud towards the end of each mud-season. It's AMAZING that the Krauts were totally oblivious to this practice -- even though their boys had witnessed some of this decades before Barbarossa. This is compounded by the fact that the Krauts had to be aware of the missing ballast the second they rolled over the border. ALL railroad engineers knew what problems come from unballasted track. { The first to witness this: the British. The very first railways in Britain were just stubs from here to there. It took British rain to convince them that they had to lift their sleepers up out of the mud. Dry sleepers last so much longer. Ballasting sleepers allows for track-crews to keep the rails level and true a lot cheaper than playing in the dirt. Today's railroads have trick machines (they are huge -- and on youtube ) to lay down fresh ballast and to re-fresh existing ballast, too. } The fact is that the Krauts should've been hopping all over the ballast issue and the need to replace all of the destroyed sleepers no later than July, 1941. There is one thing that they could've taken advantage of: such straight runs of track meant that in Russia, the Krauts could've laid triple length rails -- and saved on a ton of fish-plates.
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  5. FDR suckered Adolf with a couple of gambits. The #1 gambit was the release of Rainbow Five -- via the back-door. It was initiated by FDR as a survey of the most knowledgeable Americans about the nation's ability to gear up for war in Europe. The survey results were DIRE. In sum: American was in no position to intervene in Europe for at least eighteen-months -- at best -- and more realistically -- America needed two-and-a-half years. The Luftwaffe was THAT far ahead of anything America had. Cute. Then FDR made a STORM about this critical survey getting into the public domain. Heh. Hoover was put on it. After a few weeks he discovered who the leaker was: Hap Arnold's personal aide. Hoover instantly realized that FDR had leaked it himself. Cute. It was dis-information. The #2 gambit was supplied by Stalin. He delayed his Winter counter-attack as long as possible fully knowing that the IJN was going to strike the USN. Yes, his spies were that good. The idea was, like FDR's, to lull Adolf into wild over confidence. And, it WORKED. Even as the Winter Counter-Offensive rolled ahead, Adolf Hitler declared war on the USA. Congress returned the feeling with a unanimous vote. Hitler was done for.
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  6. @Jack Guderian was a radio officer in WWI. Basically a B'dienst man.
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  7. @Xuan Panzerfausts.
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  8. @Xuan Panzerfausts operated as a deterent more than anything. The operator was expected to fire from a spider hole, building or rubble, though training films show guys firing largely from the open, for obvious camera needs. They were effective enough that when found by Americans, they were ALWAYS snapped up, being deemed much better than the Bazooka. US Army stats show that tank destroyers were almost always used in the same role as the early versions of the German Mark Four tank: namely to fire high explosives, indirectly, from immediately behind the forward edge of the battle front. Hence high explosive rounds fired indirectly out numbered direct fire shots 11:1. { Like the Germans, the USA just loved to collect statistics.) After the war, the USA determined that entire concept ought to be dropped, and so it was. The open top did make for easy ammo loading... very handy when firing so many shots indirectly, but not so hot when receiving counter-battery fire.
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  9. @Xuan Provisions were made to deal with it. In a spider hole, the shooter would just pop-up and down. In buildings, the blast would just be suffered. But my main point remains, the panzerfaust DETERS tankers. They hate them. They influence tactics. Great efforts are under way to neutralize RPGs, even now.   It's a sneak attack device, and the sons of panzerfaust, RPGs, are still seen EVERYWHERE -- especially in the Middle East. RPGs are not normally referred to as recoilless rifles, BTW.
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  10. Atomic Annie was never used in combat, but was pretty spectacular, too. ( Named in 'honor' of Anzio Annie. Heh. ) It was combat deployed during the Cold War.
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  11. It's BRADLEY that pushed the idea that Patton was reckless. Bradley was the hidden author for the movie Patton, BTW. Note how many scenes in Patton's film have Bradley in them. Patton's blood record is MUCH better than Bradley. Read up on the Hurtgen Forest. 'Tis to weep. It's the American version of the Somme. Yes, THAT bad. It just stretched out over months. Bradley was a WWI general leading an Army Group in WWII. BTW, Bradley still kept running 1st American Army. Hodges was a place holder.
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  12. @Impala Patton's casualty list is way LOW compared to Bradley's. It's not even close. The fella that has spread the tale of how Patton was ol' blood & gus is none other than BRADLEY. The term we're all thinking of of is Projection. For more facts, instead of Bradley spin, Google the (bloody) Hurtgen Forest, aka Stalingrad in the trees. Many American formations didn't last 48 hours in the Hurtgen. Boy did it generate hurt!
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  13. @Marko You're deluded. Patton was relegated to 3rd Army because Hitler flatly told the Baron that if he showed up any earlier, he'd unleash his entire strategic reserve at once. As for Bradley, he was never intended to be 12th Army Group commander. McNair was. But you can't lead when you're dead. Promptly after McNair died at the front, Marshall had to make Bradley AG commander. There was absolutely no-one else in a position to move up, not even Patton. And Patton had already shown that he could go off the rails. Whereas Bradley was a Marshall boy to the core. Bradley naturally took his 1st Army staff -- on no notice -- and kicked McNair's staff out of the way. Bradley never explained in his writings who his staff replaced ultra-quick. He pretended that McNair's staff wasn't even in the theatre. But he facts are that McNair was ONLY there to take command of 12th AG. He was at the front to familiarize himself and to show his flag and his bona fides, which cost him his life. Patton didn't need ANY education from Bradley, the other-way-round happened all the time. The Cobra breakout was Patton's idea, not Bradley. Patton wrote it all up in his diary BEFORE he met Bradley in Normandy. Bradley instantly adopted it as his own -- and lied about all of this to the end of his days. Of course, Cobra has Patton's style all over it, not Bradley's. Patton didn't need ANY explanation WRT the broad front. You won't find Patton begging for a narrow thrust into Germany -- the Monty plea. Patton just wanted to remain in supply. After that, he didn't really care what the other armies were doing -- not all that much. His ego was such that naturally he figured he'd somehow end up in the vanguard. Reason #1 was that HIS was the traditional invasion route going back to ancient times. All other armies were marching towards either a forest wall or epic river crossings. In the south, crossing the Rhine is tough, but not ridiculous. When it happened, Patton didn't even need an artillery prep. He actually snuck across! The total lack of artillery completely faked out the Germans. Normally, artillery is the American calling card. The Germans figured that they'd have hours of advance notice, and so should hold back from the river, only advancing when the artillery fire calmed down. This thinking was exactly what Patton saw coming. Marko, it's obvious that you post to troll, as you don't have any insightful commentary. As for logistics, those were ENTIRELY handled by General Lee. He had a supply army that was fifteen times the size of the fighting front. Consequently, all front line commanders never had to sweat logistics whatsoever. It was totally outside their command. All that was necessary was phone calls and paperwork. And up the trucks would come, by the thousand. Inre Rommel, his problem was MALTA. Bletchley Park, and the RAF. Bletchley was finking on Rommel -- telling Monty just how rotten his supply situation was. Indeed, at one point, Monty had to disobey orders and inform Smuts that London was reading German transmissions. This news was delivered in person, in private, and so that Smuts would continue to press the line with his blooded South African division. This he did. It was this final attack that broke Rommel's position. (near the coast, XIII Corps, IIRC) Operationally, Rommel was brilliant, with a ton of prior battles to demonstrate his expertise. So you're post indicates that you don't know what the hell you're talking about. As for myself, 45 years of obsession builds a picture. If there was any money in it, I'd write my own history of the war.
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  14. @impalabeeper Patton NEVER ran out of supplies -- and wasn't even in charge of his own logistics -- EVER. That's not how the US Army was set up. A commander at the front simply picked up a phone // drafted a requisition and the Supply Echelon brought up whatever was requested -- until Ike puts a stop to the game, which he did for MG. For every GI at the front, there are 15 in the supply system. Some are literally handling supplies. Others are handling infrastructure like building a rail road. When Patton was waiting in Northwest Africa -- to invade Sicily with 7th Army, the US Army totally rebuilt the rail net of all the nations involved. It even built new links where none had existed before. Spurs were run off to brand new US Army bases where the invasion army could be bivouacked. ( along with roads ) The one area that was too far away for this was the front itself. Trucks in convoy had to be used. One reason for the rail road build up was the horrific state of the local road net. In essence, all long distance travel in that zone WAS by rail. They didn't have anything approaching a highway to drive on. So this was addressed, too. The army experts figured that it'd go a lot faster if the rail road was repaired and upgraded versus some mad scheme to build a highway on no notice across that terrain. This same intense rail road repair kicked into high gear in France. You wouldn't know it, though because it was all happening in the rear, well behind the front. The US Army had to repair the very rail net that the USAAF had so totally destroyed. The route from Cherbourg to Paris was repaired by Autumn. That path crossed virtually no rivers, and the Germans did not blow up the bridges of Paris.
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  15. @John Burns Can't you get ANYTHING right? Patton had no involvement with the 17 Airborne Division. Hard to imagine him opining on it. It was up with 21st Army Group, so it's not as if he'd even be getting after action reports. The path to Bastogne was blocked by the 7th German Parachute Division. The fighting went on around the clock -- in the dead of Winter. The fighting was so intense that the leading American battalion and its counter part German defender lost ALL of their officers... save a single American Lt. Every local building was flattened -- except for their cellars -- which is where you'd find surviving locals. The rest of your drivel is so crazy and off base it constitutes an Alternate Reality. BTW, the #1 detractor of Patton is and remains Bradley. He was a real meat-grinder. ( Hurtgen ) Patton has the best stats, going away. The reason that the Panther Brigades existed was because Adolf had given up on the Heer. He had no intention of ever rebuilding formations that lacked the correct Nazi zeal. These brigades were, AFAIK, ALWAYS given Panthers. I've never heard of one getting Mark IV tanks. Green troops routinely destroyed the final drive// transmission of their Panthers. In one battle -- against Patton's 4th Armored -- 35 Panthers were ruined and lost from this very fault in a single afternoon. This was a crisis for Berlin. Speer was called in to face Hitler over the issue. It was resolved that the drivers needed more training -- and that -- above all -- Panthers had to be driven slowly, softly, whenever they went 'off-road.' The published stats for Panthers proved to be all wrong. Because of the weakly engineered final drive (the Panther was over-weight) panzer crews were instructed to take it easy, to never apply full power from a dead start. It's for this reason the typical wargame values for Panther mobility are MILES off from reality. It ended up being a slower tank than the Mark IV. ( On flat level, paved, test track ground, it could look impressive, however. )
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  16. @John Burns Can't you get ANYTHING right? Hard as it is to believe, Patton died accidentally. My Father served under both Bradley and Patton. Patton was by FAR the more popular with the troops. It was his economy of blood that did it. Bradley was a WWI commander directing a WWII army. He'd have fit in perfectly in the Red Army. He 'owns' the Hurtgen Forest. (gag) Bradley could train men, he just didn't know how to function in WWII.
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  17. @John Burns Get help. The reason that Ike couldn't let Patton touch Overload was due to Purple intercepts -- achieved by the British. The US had given London one Purple machine. Though it's a diplomatic code -- and you'd think it couldn't carry much military info... Hitler talked up a storm with Baron Oshima: I hope the wiki survives YouTube: "Baron Hiroshi Ōshima (大島 浩 Ōshima Hiroshi, April 19, 1886 – June 6, 1975) was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, Japanese ambassador to Germany before and during World War II — and unwittingly a major source of communications intelligence for the Allies. His role was perhaps best summed up by General George C. Marshall, who identified Ōshima as "our main basis of information regarding Hitler's intentions in Europe". After World War II, he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment." The Baron's most important contribution to the Allies was by way of telling us that Hitler was waiting for PATTON to show up before he'd release his entire strategic reserve. Meaning, in this instance, the 1st SS Panzer Corps. Contrary to popular histories, Hitler did NOT block the deployment of his panzer divisions. Just this corps, and a few Heer divisions. (116th immediately comes to mind ) In the event, the 12th SS was committed anyway by Hitler. The 21st Panzer was automatically committed, even without contacting Berlin. At every HQ there was a notice on the door: If the Allies landed parachutists -- real or dummies -- a landing was on. All local forces were to be committed without further ado, by order of the Fuhrer. ( Other conditions would also trigger panzer release, but this one sticks out the most. Parachute dummies were detected no later than 12:30AM. They didn't put up much of a fight, BTW.) Amazingly, most German commanders forgot this and other standing orders June 6, 1944 -- they were that excited. It's with the above knowledge that you may come to realize why Patton's arrival was so delayed and why Hitler was paralysed about committing his panzers out of 15th Army. Instead, they just trickled in. Our Russian friends ought to be reminded that the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions were withdrawn from Poland to reinforce the German position in front of Caen. Then Bagration occurred. Whoops. The Allies had sucked off: 1p,2p,9p,10p, 12p, 17mot SS divisions -- just in France alone. The Russians faced 3p,5p,6p SS panzers. The rest were a motley crew of SS infantry and police units usually tasked with atrocities.
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  18. @John Burns Can't you get ANYTHING right? Patton's 3rd Army 'captured' the 6th Army Group and two German armies (Army Group G) -- by getting across the Rhine first. He was laughing his azz off about it, wrote about same to Bradley. Omar thought the comment was a riot. (Devers was on Ike's chit list -- so he didn't rate well with Bradley or Patton. )
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  19. @will Actually London had shut off replacements for 21st Army Group. Churchill considered the war to be, essentially, won -- and was looking ahead to the need to save British lives -- British voters. This is why many British formations ended up staying out of the war. Some Tommies were so frustrated that they left their units and volunteered into the 1st Airborne. ( Yeah, they were ex-Guardsmen.)
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  20. @Sanders... don't write for me. Compared to the Germans, the US Army had virtually infinite supplies -- as every captured German attested. Bradley told Lee that he didn't need much more artillery after the break-out. That's how severe Victory Disease had gotten. This promptly led to ANOTHER supply crisis -- totally self-inflicted. It was patched over by using 6th Army Group's artillery supplies. Since these were trucked in FORD, not GMC trucks, Devers had to bring the ammo up out of Marseilles in Fords into the rear areas of 12th AG. Then the stuff was moved from Fords to GMCs for the next leg of the journey -- to 9th, 1st and 3rd Armies. (!) This crisis is mentioned by Bradley in his second autobiography of the campaign -- but almost entirely over looked by historians. Marseilles was never crippled like Cherbourg, so 7th Army was able to start importing supplies right from the docks almost from the first. They had so many supplies that they fitted out 1st French Army -- on the fly. (!) Yup. This was totally unanticipated. The Rhone river valley boys had totally missed out on the 1940 campaign. They fell out into their ranks as the 7th Army advanced up country. They had their uniforms, they were trained reservists. They were missing all weapons. so 7th US Army simply diverted their supplies to flesh these divisions out. THAT'S how well endowed the US Army was -- across the board. Somehow it doesn't sink in: the Allied generals were LYING: the V-2 problem caused ALL OTHER PRIORITIES to take a back seat. This is something that simply could not be admitted to at the time, nor even after the war. The V-2 problem is why Ike was brought around to accepting Monty's pitch in one single session -- Bradley and Patton had a fit. They were not consulted for any counter proposals. BTW, note the goofs: the Brits missed the ferries -- both of them -- they failed to ask for jeeps, DUKWs -- both would've been decisive for MG. My own Father sat on his azz during this period. The gasoline was just piling up in the PULTO storage tanks. No attempt was being made to drive it to the front PERIOD. Get it? America had thousands of trucks IDLED at this time. Yup. When this latter on proved mighty embarrassing, it was scrubbed from the official accounts. There was NO WAY to make it look good. General Lee had FAR MORE manpower than the front line army commanders. When Bradley pleaded for them to be diverted to his cause -- he was shot down in flames. Supply troops were simply not at all set up for front line duties. After basic, they'd never touched a rifle -- as a rule. As it was, Bradley was getting a regiment every 24 hours. He then wasted them in the Hurtgen -- another tale that the Army history does not want brought to full exposure.
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  21. @Sanders... At the scale of armies, Patton couldn't pull off the theft/ diversion you're dreaming of. One, he'd have to steal it all from Bradley, his boss. Such a stunt would get him sent back to the states. The diversion is a MYTH. 1st Army and 9th Army never faced shortages because of 3rd army. They got clipped by IKE and LEE. There were absolutely no work-arounds. A couple of sergeants have absolutely no influence at the scale required. They certainly DID help out with table chow. I'll give you that pranks were pulled. However, they didn't amount to a hill of beans. The biggest drain on the supply echelon was the FRENCH civilians. Paris, alone, was a PITA. It sucked down supplies like an entire army. When the Black Market is invoked -- think Paris. The Allies found that feeding the civilians could not be avoided. This task was not in their battle plans. It never quite occurred to Allied commanders that blowing every rail bridge in France would then compel them to throw in thousands of trucks just to haul food to Paris. My Father bitterly complained for decades about hauling coal to Paris on the Red Ball express. He couldn't understand it. I had to spell it out: French trains ran on coal. The French coal fields were still under German control, and the lines between Paris and the east were all busted up. THAT'S why thousands of tons of British coal was shipped on a panic basis to Paris in August. They didn't need it for heat -- but for their trains. You'll look a VERY long time trying to find out about any of this in the written histories. Bringing the French rail net back up and running is deemed an unimportant side-show to the war. Of course, once it was running, the Red Ball was not needed. The trains were restored almost at the same time that Monty cleared the Scheldt. Even Cherbourg became operational late in 1944, right in front of the worst weather. It became insanely busy straight through to the end of the war. The PLUTO net was also doubled -- bringing pipes in in the Calais region on top of the Cherbourg operation. This is another event that is hard to find about in histories. You'd have to really dial deep to know of it. PLUTO was an awesome British invention -- and extremely significant for the prosecution of the campaign. It gets short shrift.
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  22. @Sanders... the US armies were NOT in the British supply train. They NEVER took supplies away from 21st Army Group... EVER. PLUTO was designed and scaled from the outset for ALL of the Allied forces. So it was never the issue. The 2,000 GMC trucks that Monty demanded -- he got. Their primary role, apparently, was to hump even more gasoline from PLUTO to the front. It would've been MUCH wiser for Monty to allocate the GMCs to XXX Corps. They were the only machines that had any chance at leaving the road (up on a berm) without instantly bogging down. Even so, they'd have to be only lightly loaded. Further, they'd have to fan out. The polders can't support repeated traffic. So every truck needed to create its own path. No matter how strongly Bradley and Patton protested, modern Brits refuse to believe that these generals were CUT OFF from gasoline -- by Ike's order. Ike well knew that Patton would instantly try and make 'rock soup.' ( It's a hobo story, retold by Patton. ) Patton did NOT advance in an insubordinate manner. He advanced too rapidly to suit Monty because Patton had no rivers to cross! His only barrier, the Seine was solved by the Paris bridge network, which was not blown up. In contrast, everyone north of him faced ever widening rivers -- with Monty facing the worst of it. Just look at a map. THIS is the reason why Patton was thrilled to be relegated to the southern arm of the advance. As a historian he knew that this was the traditional invasion route. Somehow that legacy does not sink in. What really got Patton's goat was that he was almost able to take Metz via motor march. When he first approached it it was largely EMPTY. MG and the weather shift turned a cake-walk into a PITA. Patton KNEW that he was racing the calendar. He'd fought in that general area in WWI. Stopping the Allied advance for a FULL week was a strategic gaff of the first water. And Churchill, Brooke, Monty and Ike owned it. Stopping the V2s added months to the war -- in this way. Ike's order also triggered the nightmare of Aachen, too. It was about to be surrendered as an open city.
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  23. @Sanders... Patton was on the Classic and Primary invasion route to Germany -- and he knew it. He also knew that Monty's path never worked... going back to Roman times. The British army didn't use American supplies... and vice versa. The ONLY supply that was divertable was gasoline -- and the British received absolute priority -- courtesy of Ike and Lee. So, you thesis lies weeping. It was IMPOSSIBLE for Patton to take supplies away from Monty. Period. Monty did take gasoline away from 12th AG -- leaving its commanders howling in disgust. So, you've got everything absolutely backwards.
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  24. @Sanders, the ONLY supply that could shift from Army Group to Army Group -- across the British-American logistics gap was POL -- namely GASOLINE. To speak of other supplies is to speak in ignorance. Food, medicine, and all the rest -- these could not be trucked under any circumstances from 12th AG to 21th AG. PERIOD. Monty got Ike to give him 2,000 GMC trucks at the direct and immediate expense of General Lee. ( Not Bradley ) These missing trucks are the primary reason my own Father sat on his azz during MG. This shift was on such a panic basis that the Americans had to await fresh truck deliveries from those in Britain, and ultimately the USA. If Monty had asked for them, the US would've given him ANYTHING: DD Sherman tanks, DUKWs, jeeps, ... even a blimp or two if asked. The reason Monty was not focused on the Scheldt was because of the V2 'problem' back in London -- and Churchill howling about it. The reason that Monty had primary access to the Allied Airborne Army was because it was expected ever since Overlord to be required to leap down the coast to shut down these strategic Nazi attacks. The British, via the French, WERE getting horrific news. Namely that the Nazis were going to scale up the V-2 to create a rocket that could -- in theory -- even reach New York City. But long before that, they were told that London would be rubble, that V2 production was scaling to staggering levels. It never happened. But the Allies had to proceed based upon best estimates -- and Hitler had surprised the West more than once. What infuriated Monty was that Patton was taking the easy way to the Rhine. This is something that didn't sink in until it happened. Patton saw it from the first -- because he was a world-class military historian and KNEW that Monty's path had been a bust for every commander going back into ancient times. Likewise 1st and 9th Armies were headed straight for a wall. The Rhine just keeps getting bigger as it flows north. It's no small thing even back up near Switzerland, either. The whole myth of Patton advancing without orders myth corn fuses 1945 with 1944. It was in '45 that Bradley ordered Patton to stop in place. Patton was making the other armies look BAD. So the fantastic breakthrough 3rd Army had has been scrubbed from even American military histories. (thank you Bradley) The maps pick up only after 1st Army has finally pulled abreast of 3rd Army. The seven-day delay just was Winston'd down the Memory Hole. This is where the myth was born.
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  25. @Christian... Half-tracks count as armor when deployed against parachute troops. Indeed, half-tracks are MORE trouble for paras than tanks. Tankers can see a damn thing. Mechanized troops with MG42s pointed out from a half-track are a nightmare for paras. They're like a moving pill box. During a panzer penetration, it's the half-tracks that do the most damage to light infantry. One uses panzers against pill boxes and other tanks... but they are pathetic against infantry hiding in the weeds. In modern militaries, absolutely no-one charges tanks into infantry. APCs are an absolute requirement ... no-one has forgot the lesson.
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  26. @TDavid It was all essential. USSR dies without it.
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  27. @TDavid Blinded by grand statistics -- and wholly off base. 1) LendLease solved CRITICAL Soviet economic nightmares long BEFORE Uranus. 1a) The US bought Swedish Tungsten Carbide tool bits -- paying in gold -- and flew them on to Russia. THESE would appear to a guy like you to be insignificant. They just happened to increase the output of machine tools EIGHT TIMES OVER. You need to sit down with a machinist to grasp what I'm laying on you. 2) Critical war goods arrived BEFORE Uranus that decided the whole campaign: 2a) Radio tubes -- the Germans managed to destroy Stalin's ONLY radio tube factory, November 1941. This was kept ultra-secret then and for years afterward. The USA FLEW IN radio tubes to end the crisis. These came the LONG WAY -- via Alaska, Siberia, etc. This back-door route cost a fortune, but was the only way that America could bail out Stalin in 1942. Because the weights involved looked puny compared to oceanic traffic, they get over-looked in the stats. Because of the extreme secrecy involved, radio tube transfers are usually MISSING from the official reports. 3) The US gave away the latest generation of oil drilling rigs -- the rotary stuff -- PLUS provided Hughes Tool and Baker drilling experts to instruct the Russians. ( Just three guys ) Previously, the Soviets used classic drilling methods that can be seen in the film: "There Will Be Blood." The rotary rigs were 25 times as fast. These were the fount of new Soviet oil that buried the Nazi state from 1943 onwards. [ One of these fellas was interviewed on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour circa 1979. He was astounded to report that since he left them in WWII, the Russians hadn't changed A THING. They were still stuck in 1940's drilling methods.] 4) The Americans also solved Russia's crappy refinery techniques. Like their drilling, their refining techniques were of the 19th Century. In Western terms, the Soviets didn't refine crude oil -- they merely distilled it -- something that America left behind forty-years earlier. This is no place to educate you WRT chemical engineering applied to refinery process streams. Suffice it to say, the knowledge required is equal to rocketry and atomics. Stalin just skipped it. Making gasoline to support cars for the average Ivan was just not on his agenda. I'll stop here. Your knowledge is false knowledge -- made false by deliberate deceptions crafted by the Soviets to hide their dependencies. They never admitted to the world that they had lost their radio tube factory -- then or ever. And so forth. BTW, ALL of Stalin's mainline locomotives were produced up in Leningrad -- the original start point for the entire rail net -- as it was imported from the West. ( IIRR, from France, as Britain was a hostile power to the Tsar way back when, but don't quote me on that.) The USA had to shunt 2,000 main line locomotives to Stalin before the war was over. ( from the Baldwin works -- all of them ) America provided ALL of Stalin's front line military trucks: Studebakers. Even today, the Russian slang for 'truck' is 'Studebaker.' Yeah, they cloned the design. Soviet trucks looked like Studebakers for decades after the war. Look at the photos, you'll believe. Uranus was a success solely because of American land-lines. These permitted STAVKA the luxury of staying off the air. Previously, the Germans were always able to spot Russian counter-moves merely by analysing radio traffic. Such German methods are mimicked today by ALL combatant powers. They were totally novel back then, and responsible for countless early war German victories. (North Africa)
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  28. @TDavid You must have been a rotten apprentice machinist. The machining industry uses 8X as the NORM to be expected when the shift from High Speed Steel to Tungsten Carbide is made. It's the average bump that was experienced. In the war, it showed up as an astounding bump in the machining speed for such critical items as tank turret rings. The machines that performed this were EXPENSIVE and slow to construct. This made them THE bottle-neck for tank production. If you poke around on YouTube, you can watch this machining step in some of the Russian propaganda from the period. And, yes, T-34 production DID explode when the Reds obtained TC bits. Today, no-one routinely uses HSS except hobbyists... and for some final machining steps. ( It lends itself to a superior final finish for many metals, especially the softer ones. ) The other items what were impacted: aero-engines. TC can machine aluminum alloys like they're butter. It not only cuts faster, you lose less downtime swapping tool bits -- 'cause they last so long. When TC was first introduced into American mass production ( 1920s) it was a REVOLUTION. TC meant that you didn't have to worry quite so much about checking tolerances during production. The parts would stay 'on gauge' for much longer. You've just impeached your credibility. EVERY machinist// tech expert knows the truth of what I've posted here.
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  29. @TDavid I'm hardly a Wehrmacht fanboi. You had me laughing at that one. The Western Electric land-lines were given to both the Soviet and British armies. They were THE decisive element in Allied victories at el Alamein and during Uranus. In BOTH cases the anti-Nazi coalition faked out the Germans by spoofing them with radio transmissions while the real orders travelled by land-lines. ( This gag was repeated by the Germans prior to Battle of the Bulge. This time it was the Americans turn to be spoofed// faked out. ) Naturally, neither the British nor the Soviets uttered a WORD about this clever tactic. These Western Electric land-lines just RUIN the Soviet thesis that they could've prevailed without LendLease. They just couldn't. They'd lost their ONLY radio tube factory. No radios = you're dead. They'd lost their ONLY steam locomotive factory. No trains = you're dead. Red Army fanbois just can't deal with the facts as they present themselves. They are addicted to the Offical Bolshevik line which denigrates what Britain and America did during the war -- especially their critical contributions to victory that occurred BEFORE Uranus. Without British instruction, STAVKA would never have doped out just how devastating the German B'dienst teams were. They were the first combatant power to figure this out. Since they passively listened in, there was no outward indication that the B'dienst teams even existed. Each power, in turn, was shocked as to how much signals intel the Krauts were hauling in from their sets. All three had to totally revise their own Signals Security. You won't find any Russian giving the British ANY credit on this account whatsoever. The biggest factor in victory gets no mention at all. BTW, it's Putin's official policy to denigrate the Western contribution to victory over the Nazis. Don't fall for it. The Russians are flatly WRONG. WWII was won in the West: Battle of the Atlantic -- it decided the war -- not Stalingrad -- not the Eastern Front. Victory at sea meant that Germany had to face the wrath of the USA and Canada -- and that Britain would function at full military power. The West provided 65-70% of all inputs for victory. Bleeding all over the steppe did not kill Germans, did not destroy war plants. German fatalities in the East were largely self inflicted -- namely letting the Heer freeze to death -- TWICE. The Red Army looked artificially good 44-45 because the USAAF had destroyed the Luftwaffe// drawn it away from the Ostheer. Only a rump German air force flew after Kursk. No wonder the Red Army was relentlessly successful.
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  30. Dietrich couldn't read a map. Yeap.
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  31. @MGTOW Beachheads are held by the big guns of the navy... See Torch. NO-ONE has ever driven a British or American amphib into the sea... not even close. What was Lucas thinking? He needed to avoid a static battle -- the ONLY one that the Krauts could be effective with. As Patton was to show in August, once the line is broken the Germans simply were not mobile enough to restore it. They were getting by on their reputation.
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  32. @MGTOW... Dieppe is in another category. It's also the attack that the British signalled the Germans was coming. This signalling was to enhance the reputation of turned German agents. It blew up when the raid was delayed so long the Germans were ready and waiting. Whoops. Allied accounts make Torch and Salerno look ultra close. German accounts constantly mention that they're getting their asses kicked. The heavy cruisers were just too much. It is true that the 82nd had to be dropped on an emergency basis -- but such is the nature of war. The Germans were ALWAYS responding on an emergency basis, Anzio being a classic in this regard. The kicker with Anzio is that there are but a few roads that fed the zone. To the south the ground was impassible. To the north was the river. So Lucas only had to worry about his front -- and some delightful hills lay directly ahead -- and astride the main highway to Casino. ( Apian Way ) Grabbing that turf makes you practically impossible to get around. The Germans didn't have any decent route otherwise. Off to the east the terrain quickly gets rotten, not panzer country at all. Lucas needed to grab these bridgeheads and then set up anti-tank traps without end. This position would even beat the Alban hills. THIS is where VI Corps should've dug in, and obviously so.
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  33. It's not generally discussed because it's a crack-pot economic theory... of which Adolf had so many.
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  34.  @gagamba9198  Stalin was so short of locomotive power and everything else that his Siberian rescuers had to march through the snow for many, many days towards Moscow. A LOT of the loco stats are total frauds. Stalin PROHIBITED accurate public statistics. Every now and then a statistician didn't get the message. He'd soon be relocated to the GULAG. Stalin prohibited any national census after 1938. What does that tell you? You can't use ANY Soviet statistic. Every last one is a lie. Truth was prohibited. The US provided about 2,000 full-line locomotives to the USSR -- mostly Baldwins. They were a totally de-bugged design which had been rolling on US & Canadian rails for years. The Soviets loved them so much that they stayed on the rails until the 1960s. A rail tourist discovered where they ended up by accident. During the Yeltsin days, a Westerner could finally take a tourist trip -- up way north -- to nearby the Finnish border. And it was up there our rail buff saw hundreds upon hundreds of retired steam locomotives -- with the Baldwins really catching his eye... him being a real expert on steam locomotion. This ice-yard fleet was there because it would obviously never be nuked. Norway and Finland were right over the border. By the 1990s, everything there was a hunk of rust -- being so close to the Arctic Ocean, too. Zukov called out these locomotives as an essential ingredient in the Red Army's march West. Pilots regarded locomotives as sitting ducks. They were easy to pop full of holes -- and you just can't get away with a cheap patch. Once a boiler receives that kind of 'attention' it's RUINED. You need to build another machine. Soviet locomotive losses were horrific. Their exhaust can be seen for miles -- every machine a bullet magnet. Follow the rail lines and hunt for smoke and steam. How easy can it get?
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  35. TIK's best exposition, yet. OKH's fumbling -- logistically -- was epic for Case Blue. Straight off it HAD to be apparent that Mykop without a rail connection was no asset at all. So the tempo of Nazi victory for Case Blue had to be the advance of the rail net. Yet OKH treated the rail net as a peripheral issue. The 11th Army was the controlling army for the Romanians. So 11th Army really DID get split up after the Crimean campaign. It never should've been sent north, as the ONLY strategic prize that could end the war in the east was the Volga -- the Red's energy throttle. The 'sickle' of Case Blue ran from Voronezh down to Stalingrad. That should've been transparent from the first. The 'sickle' deserved its own army group -- which should've been 'Army Group Don' from the first. Von Manstein ought to have been promoted up to command it from the very first. AGD was the focus of Case Blue. Once the 'sickle' was in place, then AG South would've had free reign to consummate Mykop. Grozny was an oil field too far. The demand upon the rail net troops would've been entirely too much. AGS- AG"A" was too strong... required too much gasoline. The whole scope of Case Blue was determined by how fast and far the rail net could be expanded. Neither OKH, OKW nor AH seemed to ever grasp this. So, TIK is correct, Case Blue blew up even during conception. Even perfect martial performance against the Reds would not have redeemed the German failure to get the rail net up and running ASAP. The consistent blind spot: why did Nazi Germany not see that she HAD to Dieselize? Diesel-electric locomotives would've been fantastic assets for the Ostheer. For you just knew that the Reds would destroy every water tower essential for steam locomotion. The Ostheer needed locomotives that could roll the moment the rails were squared away, preferably smaller locomotives that would be easier to shift around in the field, barged in, even. The British, the Soviets and the Americans constantly schooled the Germans in logistics. But they never picked up a CLUE... even after the war was over. ( For those curious, look at the British use of their Egyptian rail net when it counted. The great DAK was so blind that they missed just about everything logistical. Absolutely no lessons were learned... but, of course.) [ Imagine, the Germans and Italians NEVER thought to punch holes into Libya. Even though the British and American oil firms had LONG established that water and oil was commonly to be found under the deserts. ( Iran, Saudi Arabia ) ]
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  36. Mud, not snow, killed Barbarossa. TIK go an take a look at the loss of horses during mud. The Germans actually ate their own transportation horsepower... thousands of horses per day.
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  37.  rant404  it destroyed their Luftwaffe. The Heer soon followed the death spiral. ( Bagration was driven by fuel starvation.) and every power was increasing war production.
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  38.  @user-jq2iz9zn4p  Slave built missiles have quality control issues -- namely that the labor force was constantly caught sabotaging the product. In one case, a Russian Jew was found standing atop an assembly taking a leak straight into the brain of the missile. Since Dora ( the SS construction plant ) did not use guns, the SS hauled his tush down and bludgeoned him to death. { At Dora, all slaves were executed by truncheon -- very up close and personal. Then they were thrown into a mass grave. Digging such huge pits were the final tasks of those condemned to die at Dora. My Uncle, the sole survivor of the digging crew, gave me the blow by blow -- sixty-years-ago.} He only survived because of the bridge at Remagen -- and Himmler and Goering's gambit to save their lives via swapping 100,000 camp victims for same. When Hitler figured out that such was so, he condemned both to death in abstentia. He needn't have bothered. The United Nations already had plans for both.
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  39. Crusader was the first instance where the British discovered just how much electronic intel the Krauts were generating from B'dienst intercepts -- even when they couldn't quite break British codes. Later, Auck would gut Rommel's B'dienst team while it was 'protected' by the Italians. First -- really the first -- battle of tel el isa. ( Which is NOT the the same as the typical search engine result. That's actually the SECOND battle of tel el isa, and there is a Second battle of tel el isa, which is actually the THIRD battle.) The truly first battle of tel el isa decided WWII. It caused a REVOLUTION in British, American and Soviet signals security. Naturally, every player involved lied for decades afterwards about this battle... made it drop down into the memory hole. It cost the Auck his position, and brought in Monty. He took the fall for his loose talking subordinates. It was during this period that Monty swept out the old and brought in a winning team. The top man in Rommel's B'dienst team was mortally wounded during the First battle of tel el isa. The British did everything in their power to save him. But, no luck. This young captain was THE miracle man for Rommel, and is the true source of Rommel's desert magic. After his loss, the DAK/ PAA was never the same. Account after account misses this critical event... 'cause every major power keeps lying about it. Crusader almost had the same effect... but the British didn't capture the 'magic' captain. ( He was a genius, BTW. In British or American service he would've been a Lt. Col. ... or better. )
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  40. The British weren't being screwed up by the US boner. It was the German B'dienst teams. The Krauts simply DISCOUNTED anything the Italians presented to them. ( Rommel ESPECIALLY )
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  41. @Stuart... of course the Americans were not involved with Crusader in any way. IIRC, it was the British that -- through feed-back -- informed the Americans that their stuff had been not broken -- but stolen right out of the embassy safe. The moment the Axis attempted to exploit the American gaff the British were hot on the trail. Many of the transmissions were in plain text to London, in the first place. So now even the British were cracking the Americans. One can always back into any encypherment scheme if you have plain text, encoded text and enough to work from. in the case of the British and the Americans, they had so much traffic -- of each other -- that they were soon cracking every scheme each other could come up with. It was at this point that Echelon was 'born.' London and Washington decided that it was impossible to fake each other out -- and to what purpose? So they got married, instead. This marriage has lasted down to the present day, and has been re-named over the decades. It's also referred to as Five Eyes and many another spook name. The Americans were the groom, the British were the bride. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, rounded out the 'Five.' Also in during WWII: China and Holland. The Dutch drove the Japanese absolutely crazy with their negotiating style. ( Royal Dutch Shell properties within the Dutch East Indies [Indonesia] and Brunei. It was based entirely upon goading from both the British and the Americans. A tid-bit for you, Stuart: the Americans were intercepting Axis tank-to-tank radio traffic from North Africa -- from Rhode Island! Yes, the signals bounced off the Ionosphere and could be picked-up plain as day by an ultra secret set-up. These signals were then sent all the way back to London, encrypted, on the down low. These very same signals could NOT be picked up in Africa. The Germans never picked up on the fact that their signals were skipping all the way across the Atlantic. These intercepts let Monty know with astounding detail the ebb of the PAA and its DAK. This set-up was kept secret for decades after the war. So don't look for it to be detailed in the average history. It did get a Big Write Up in the New York Times. The base was actually seriously considered as an ideal site for the brand new United Nations and its headquarters. Manhattan won out. More hookers.
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  42. @ Zahara... you are counter-factual. Adolf met with Franco precisely to get him on board -- to get him as an ally in Russia. Franco gave him such a hard time that Adolf later commented that he'd rather have a root canal without pain-killers than sit down with Franco one more time. (!!!!) Franco sent his Blue Division -- of hot heads -- while extracting a full battalion of Mark IV tanks. Most of these were eventually sold to SYRIA. Yup. There are Israeli photos of Mark IV Nazi tanks overlooking the Golan -- in 1967 -- knocked out Mark IV tanks, I should say. The above history is how they got there. Franco also wormed two HE-111 bombers out of Adolf. These show up as Rommel's in the film "Patton" -- which was filmed in Spain. And, yes, at the time, they WERE Franco's private machines. They couldn't bomb anything. They'd been wholly converted over -- rather like Doug MacArthur's private plane was.
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  43. They are also LOUD. The rounds rock back and forth as you march. Clips don't.
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  44. Hitler's Germany had WAY TOO MANY critical dependencies: OIL, tungsten, chrome, nickel, RUBBER. It also had way too many technological dependencies// gaps// behind: oil drilling, petro-geology, U-boat design, radar, sonar, refineries, turbo-super chargers, full-on-mass-production... etc. In terms of war management: Nazi Germany was a case study in how to NOT wage war. Enraging Ukrainians, declaring war on the USA, two-front strategic war, Italian non-assistance -- even Speer could make no headway on this front; German industrialists refused to 'share' blue prints. Pay-offs to Goering, et al, settled the matter. Oh, my! In terms of strategic intelligence... the Nazi regime scores a perfect ZERO. There was no hostile nation that they didn't under-estimate -- usually by astounding amounts. Even in 1940 the Germans didn't realize that Britain was out producing fighter planes. (!) It's amazing that Adolf got as far as he did. That's what momentum and reputation will do for you. Today's American armed forces have the same tail wind. Only primitive cultures even dream of tackling the USA. All other powers regard such attempts as madness.
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  45. His immediate boss was none other than Stalin, himself. It was Stalin who kept over-ruling Tukhachevski. Then things blew up. It was a bitter sequence of events for Stalin. He was not top dog.
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  46. @Marko ALL of Zhukov's professional buddies -- to the extent anyone could be a buddy of Zhukov -- there are no known that fit that description -- were being purged. Their sin: Deep Operations. Stalin HATED the concept. He didn't invent it. And he sure wished that he had. EVERY purged officer in the first, go-rounds, were Deep Operations boys. Later events got totally out of hand. The NKVD just went crazy -- since the could get a banana peel to confess.
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  47. @Marko Parabucki You're corn fusing cliques within the Red Army with grand tactics. Stalin hated, resented, the Deep Operations CREW. The fellas that had coalesced around it. They were of Tukhachevksy's camp... and Stalin was a VERY paranoid tyrant. You might note that old-line cavalry officers were kept in the saddle. These guys were on the outs with the Deep Operations crowd. Naturally, Stalin trusted them. When it quickly turned out that the Germans were whipping Soviet azz with Deep Operations, Stalin turned to Zhukov, the only savvy survivor of the purges. Zhukov gradually brought back the old crew from the gulag -- one by one. They didn't come back 'at the top' but had to work their azzes off... They also had to survive the German army.
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  48. @Marko Buddy, tell that to STALIN. He was convinced that's exactly what was going on. So he killed them off. They were, as far as Stalin was concerned, Tukhachevksy's 'crew' // sympathizers, etc. So he whacked them all. Stalin was a politician--despot and had no time or interest in far-sighted military theory. The ins and outs of who did what, who deserves credit, when each stage happened is irrelevant WRT the purges. All that mattered was that Stalin was paranoid -- and hated Deep Operations Theory and all the thinkers behind it. Like Adolf, he was more of a 'morale-is-the-key-to-everything' guy. Stalin, Hitler and Churchill never came up to speed WRT tank warfare. This becomes obvious when you review their insane orders. Only their generals had a clue. I'm a huge fan of Winnie, but as a military man, he lacked judgment. We can all thank the Lord that Monty showed up in the nick of time. You're going off about arcana that has nothing to do with the purges. That story is one of enemies lists... of Thems and Us's. Period. The delusions of one tyrant. BTW, I don't see any difference between German blitzing and Soviet deep operations. Both punched through and sent their massed tank formations thither and yon raising Hell and breaking things. Everything else is semantics.
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  49. @Mike Do you write for the Onion? I had to ask.
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  50. @Mike Fay Hard Work = BORING work. To all politicals, boring work is that which is hardest. Yes, paper shuffling is ALWAYS deemed the hardest work in the world, to politicals. Keep that in mind whenever you read such accounts.
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