Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "TIKhistory"
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@Koelebig
Stalin was willing to sell Hitler two or three times as much oil as previously -- just to buy him off in the Summer of 41.
The negotiations were under way June 22, 1941 -- and HAD been under way for some time.
The Nazis were able to explain away their panzer concentrations along the Polish partition line as being in context: they were there to pressure Stalin into making more concessions.
Stalin totally bought that interpretation. THAT'S WHY he was so stunned June 22, 1941. He'd told his negotiating team to give away the store -- do ANYTHING to keep Hitler sated.
The CRAZY idea that Hitler's fuel situation was going the wrong way is TOTALLY WRONG.
Stalin was going to ENTIRELY solve Hitler's fuel crisis.
For starters, Stalin had lost his oil sales to France. He couldn't even get his oil out through the Mediterranean See.
[ A primer: the Baku oil was developed by John D Rockefeller way, way back when. It, the oil, was exported by way of pipelines that went from the Caspian to the Black Sea. ( The terminals were in Georgia. )
IF -- and it's a BIG IF -- Hitler could restore the Baku fields, it would make perfect sense for him to draw Soviet oil out the exact same way. As we can all appreciate, there was no way that Stalin was going to let any of the oil infrastructure stay intact for the Nazis.
The ONLY shot the Nazis had was by way of a parachute drop. His paras would have to jump at night and get the drop on the Soviet detonation teams. That's why Crete was such a pivotal battle.
Indeed, Hitler needed a parachute CORPS by this time. Such a formation was also exactly what he couldn't fuel. Airborne formations are avgas pigs. It takes about 15,000 gallons to train each paratrooper... and that's if you're a fuel miser.
Lest we forget: Ploesti oil is crappy oil. It is no where near as easy to refine as Soviet oil... or American oil. Even Iranian and Venezuelan oil was still light and sweet at this point in time. ( The heavy oils extracted today didn't get tapped until decades after WWII. )
Crappy crude oil translates into crappy octane numbers or serious losses in the refinery stream -- plus major capital expenditures. The Germans were really behind the eight-ball.
Since coal-to-liquids produced mostly middle distillate, it's astounding that Guderian ever built up the panzer force with gasoline engines. Germany had the world's best Diesel technology -- and heavy tanks were already expensive as Hell. A Diesel engine would DOUBLE its fuel economy.
Nazi Germany was an economic Clown Show: cruel, despotic, but still a total mess. Stalin permitted Hitler to get a LOT further along with his empire than he ever could've done on his own.
Soviet oil produced the bulk of the Luftwaffe's avgas. All that was necessary was distillation. ( This was also true for Texas crude. )
All other German sources of liquid fuels required INTENSE refinery processing, so much so, that Nazi Germany could never compete.
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@Treblaine
Ike had standing, General Orders about how American officers were to behave with the British.
1) Absolutely NOTHING was to pass your lips that would insult or denigrate British military prowess or contribution to the fight.
2) Rule #1 goes double for senior British commanders.
3) When under the command of senior British officers, your role is to go along -- and provide absolutely no static -- don't even open your yap. Under no circumstances should you attempt to correct a senior British officer or to show him up.
4) It is forbidden to gloat about American technical excellence and production prowess.
Any SHAEF (USA) officer would be sent packing if Ike heard anything indicating that you've violated #1-4 rules. And, I might add, there was a steady stream of departures from SHAEF all through the war.
Ike wanted team players. The only folks allowed to blow off steam were our allies.
1) They'd been in the war years longer than the USA.
2) They were under far more stress back home than any American.
( V2s, V1s -- they'll do that. Rationing will do that.
Gavin knew all of the above. Ike was delighted with the performance of the 82nd and 101st.
Lest we forget, the Americans lost more men (dead) during MG than the British did. (!!!) The British won the 'captured para' sweepstakes, though.
The American Airborne ( nee XVIII Airborne Corps ) fought continuously pretty much from the second day onward. 15th Army just keep trickling in from the west, and scratch formations kept popping up out of Germany.
Which brings up another point, MG basically crippled 15th Army. The only route left to it required tip-toeing across the Dutch sea barrier, leaving all heavy equipment behind. It, the 15th Army was eventually slotted in north of 6th Panzer Army during the Ardennes offensive. (Bulge)
In all of the planning, this 'reflux' of 15th Army was not anticipated. It really bogged down the 101st.
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@John Burns
Can't you get ANYTHING right?
The Aachen story has been documented in both book and made for TV video broadcast.
The Germans were totally befuddled as to why the Americans didn't show up 'on time.' They'd been rolling right along.
The fact that 1st Army was stopped by Ike, at this time, in favor of Monty was something that you have to piece together, as neither the US Army nor the British Army want that connection made, then or now. It's evaporated from the narrative.
But the German general's plan would've put US 1st Army CLEAN over the Rhine within HOURS -- a full week before the Garden drop.
He, literally, expected to surrender Aachen to a jeep -- the traditional lead element of an American Armored Corps. By this time, Germans were accustomed to surrendering to jeeps.
[ It was common for the jeeps to announce themselves by way of 50 caliber machine gun bursts. This always terrified Germans, as the M2 machine gun usually required a closed coffin for the dead. Jeeps, of course, never travelled alone. They'd pack a tank brigade over their shoulder. ]
(Two jeeps took the surrender of Prague in 1945 -- an event that the Czech Republic honors to this very day. It refuses to acknowledge the Red Army is its liberators. Those monuments have all been torn down. A plaque thanking the US (3rd) Army was erected in their place.)
The jeeps were driven by Jewish Americans on a hunt for their cousins, BTW, and totally against orders. When they returned, their colonel told them, "Don't do that again." And that was the extent of their punishment for disobeying orders. Now contrast that with any other WWII army. Heh.
When Gavin rolled north to the Baltic, (April 1945) he just used two jeeps, with his mounting an American flag. That ended all resistance. The arrival of the US Army was a fantasy come true for northern Germans. They feared the British or Russians.
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"Hitler took hours to reply: 6th Army could break out, he said, but it
still had to hold existing fronts north, east, and west of the city.
This was manifestly impossible. Paulus now showed his moral cowardice.
He informed Manstein that his one hundred tanks had enough fuel to go only twenty miles. Before he could move, air deliveries had to bring in 4,000 tons of fuel. There was no possibility of this, and Paulus knew it.
Drawn between Hitler demanding he stay and Manstein demanding he move, Paulus clutched at the straw of fuel to do nothing. Not even to save his army was Paulus going to buck his Fuehrer. Yet he and Manstein knew that the fuel could have been allocated to half his tanks, giving them mobility for forty miles—enough to break through.
In the week that followed, the fate of 6th Army was decided. For six
days Army Group Don had run every conceivable risk to keep the door open. But Manstein could leave 4th Panzer Army in its exposed position no longer."
https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2016/05/04/manstein-saves-the-army/
Paulus has many detractors.
IMHO, Paulus and his panzers had to squeeze the trigger way back in November -- before the ring was closed. The infantry had to stay put.
Somehow, Paulus and von Manstein didn't see the strategic need to stay on the Volga as a war-winning -- and ending -- move.
It's just that you didn't need the panzers staying inside the pocket to block the Volga.
If put back in full supply, the 24p, 16p, 29m, 3m, 14p would've shredded the Red Army. Its lead elements were light infantry. They didn't even have heavy weapons. That stuff was so difficult to move that it took days to get it across the Volga and up to the front.
The Volga's river ice has to be seen to be believed. It's one compression ridge after another.
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Someone should've told the Luftwaffe that most of the fuel in air flight is used to come to altitude.
Instead of landing their Ju-52s and the occasional Go-244 and He-111 (the Luftwaffe did some crazy stuff) they should've just parachuted the goods down to the boys.
I read somewhere that one T-34 brigade was sent straight across the steppe to a Luftwaffe base that was supporting this airlift. He tore the place up, so the story goes, and was given the medal: Hero of the Soviet Union.
If anyone knows the truth about this tale, speak up.
The plane in TIK's video that's all shot up looks like a likely victim of a ground attack, perhaps the one I've read of.
The story went that the brigade caught the Germans totally by surprise and that the tanks just rolled down the flight line shooting everything up with machine gun fire. The Germans were so far to the rear, that they assumed that they were safe. They'd not even put up a perimeter defense of any kind. The base didn't even have ground troops.
That was the story.
&&&
TIK, when you're talking such huge plane numbers, one has to ask: Where could the Luftwaffe station such a large fleet?
The typical Luftwaffe air strip was a tiny operation able to handle less than 40 planes.
Further, just hauling avgas to the various bases would've been a first class bitch. The German rail head stopped at the Dieper. ( European gauge) Then they humped the goods across that river by truck. ( a 100,000 prisoner operation I've read ) and either trucked it all the way, or -- if lucky -- transferred the goods onto Russian scaled flat cars for further transit.
If anyone knows more about the zany German logistical solutions for Case Blue -- this is the place to pipe up.
I've read nothing but conflicting tales: trucks all the way or trucks to steam locomotive trains east of the Dnieper. I'm corn fused.
But, I'm convinced that this is a big part of why Case Blue went totally off the rails. (Heh)
The Nazis just couldn't afford to burn that much motor fuel... but they tried... anyway.
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@bill
Your analysis is fact-free, I'll give you that.
1) Grabner was ACROSS the Arnhem bridge BEFORE Frost arrived.
That meant that MG was DEAD, DEAD, DEAD.
Arnhem bridge was ALREADY lost before Frost showed up.
Interdicting the northern approach is ALWAYS conflated by British eyes with taking the Arnhem bridge. Such is not so.
2) Once Grabner was on the island, he proved to be too much for both the 82nd and the 1st Airborne. He'd brought FLAK with him.
Yeah, he had both 88mm & 20mm FLAK.
XXX Corps accounts tell of 4 88mm guns. Which would ring true, as that was the standard deployment for such guns. ( They were simply not deployed singly or in duos. Back in 1940, a quad-set destroyed the British counter-attack at Arras. a quat-set destroyed the British ( Indian ) attack at Hell Fire Pass. ( North Africa, see TIK's video on that campaign.)
Once Grabner was across, Frost, Urquhart, and Gavin -- and BROWNING -- were all screwed.
2) Even without Grabner, the SS had continuous access to the island and to the southern end of Arnhem bridge.
Consequently there was ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to stop the SS from dropping the Arnhem bridge into the lower Rhine -- it didn't mater what Horrocks// XXX Corps did.
THIS ^^^ is the REAL reason why the Irish Guards didn't charge off into the night after rolling across the Nijmegen bridge. All other tales are BS.
Not only would the Irish Guards have to blindly roll up a solitary causeway at NIGHT but they could absolutely COUNT ON SS Panthers showing up before they reached the approaches to Arnhem bridge.
Regardless of the opinions of this or that para, the Irish Guards knew from bitter experience that the SS was sure to pull a rabbit of their helmet and slot four more 88s some place further down the causeway. They were the #1 killer of Allied tanks. Nothing else comes close. The Irish Guards had just destroyed four of them around the southern approach to Nijmegen bridge, and that took ALL DAY with both their grenadiers and the 82nd paras.
[ A single 88 could wipe out a platoon of Shermans faster than you can drop your underwear. This was a known fact. ]
The Germans had routine access to the island by way of a ferry that the RAF never put out of business. For some reason, the RAF is given a pass on this matter -- while TIK and jingoist John Burns tees off on Gavin.
If Gavin were such a boob, why did he get a prompt promotion?
If Browning were such a whiz why did he disappear from WWII history?
It takes a LOT to disappear a national hero with three-stars -- an army commander. Browning attained this distinction; yeah he was sent off to INDIA.
( Good grief, what a demotion! )
"In December 1944 he became Chief of Staff of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten's South East Asia Command. "
Considering the travel time, Monty had him hustled out of England ASAP.
( Americans would call that the MG Lloyd Fredendall 'solution.' If you'll recall Lloyd was even 'promoted.' Well, that's what the paperwork said. Heh. )
His trip to India kept Browning away from Fleet Street, that's to be sure.
&&&
You Brits, knock it off with the Gavin thesis.
Browning blew it with the drop zones. Monty, Ike, Urquhart, Gavin, Horrocks ALL saw that to be true -- after the battle was decided. The after-action report must have been BRUTAL.
( Frost didn't comment: he was in enemy hands, wounded. )
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You must understand that ALL of the generals so quoted are hiding the fact that Bletchley Park is decoding German radio traffic. It would've been signals intelligence, human intelligence and flat out paranoia and miscalculation that created the 1,000 panzers.
Further, most of those panzers would've been HALF-TRACKS. Even half-tracks would've been nightmares for the paras. Germany was still producing half-tracks at quite a clip -- and the key factories were only a two-hour drive from the battle!
And the Germans WERE pouring half-tracks, Tigers, Panthers, you name it into Arnhem to rebuild 9&10 SS divisions.
Further, American tank factories produced X amount of tanks per month. Intelligence simply assumed that something like that number, say .3X, would spit out of Germany's tank factories in the Ruhr. They assumed that most of Germany's production was going to the east -- but now that Monty was knocking on the devil's door -- that ALL of the Ruhr's production would be vectored their way.
Adding it all up, you start to see where Big Numbers come from.
( For paras, half-tracks are just as deadly as panzers, and perhaps even worse. Look what happened to Frost ! )
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@at6686 One additional point: no-one knows how much petroleum is out there to be extracted. VAST areas are politically impossible to explore: Russia, Red China, ... and a slew of 3rd World nations. Libya could've been discovered when the Italians ran the joint. But hole-punching had to wait until the 50's... and American firms. Then Libya was discovered to have as much, perhaps more, crude oil than the USA. It took until the late 50's for the industry to even scope out the size of KSA's reserves. Then, further exploration was STOPPED by royal edict. Once publicized, said discoveries caused the price of crude oil to crash in international trade. It was THIS price drop that caused OPEC to be formed -- by Venezuela and Iran -- not the Arabs. KSA and Kuwait jumped on board PDQ once they got the sales pitch. (The common man thinks that OPEC was an Arab creation.)
We now know that Russia sits on top of an oil strata that runs from the Urals to the Baltic and off to the Black Sea that has dreamy light crude oil. It's not economic without fracking. Even though its total volume utterly dwarfs that of Venezuela and KSA, it's a pretty thin strata. (1,000x as large! ... Centuries of global demand. )
When Ukraine brought in Americans to frack her slice of the pie -- Putin was furious. He invaded Eastern Ukraine as a result. (Check the time-line.) The Ukrainians have aimed their fracking effort at natural gas, because for them, natural gas is their big import deficit. They were importing more gas from Russia than crude oil from anyone.
When Putin went to shut off oil exports to Ukraine (they were dead-beats) the Saudis stepped up -- big time.
Putin subsequently countered with a charm offensive with the Saudis -- which has led to them dickering back and forth about production volumes -- so much in the news.
The whole NordStream II dust-up is so that Putin can totally cut-off natural gas deliveries via Ukraine.
BTW, Putin, PERSONALLY, is the largest single owner of Gazprom. So the completion of said NordStream is putting billions into his wallet. Thank you slow ol' Joe!
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@michaelhart7569 You alluded to it up-thread, but PLANTS a starving for carbon dioxide. It's the RATE LIMITING compound for plant growth all along the tropical zone. There, there is sunlight aplenty, water aplenty and soil aplenty. So, at the margins, atmospheric carbon dioxide -- the ultimate plant fertilizer -- determines yield per acre of everything vegetative: wood, crops, weeds, grass, -- and that which eats them.
If the Greens have their way, more souls will die from starvation than those consumed by WWII. For it is in this belt that poverty is concentrated. Note how it is from out of the tropics that the US is being invaded by the poverty stricken.
In Biblical times, Sodom was a filthy rich city. Why? it was raising crops just north of the Dead Sea -- by canal irrigation in the desert -- and the local Partial Pressure of Carbon Dioxide there is the highest on Planet Earth. Think about it. It just took far less effort to grow food, and Sodom was at the cross roads of trade -- being right next to the world's first 'highway' -- meaning International Road. Traders were not compelled to pay off locals to transit it.
They were getting their cut by being hoteliers. (Actually, running RV parks. Bring your own tent.)
And then, out of the blue, Sodom was hit by a meteor that terminated in an air burst. Green trinitite micro-spheres are now to be found all over Sodom's ruins.
( For centuries, folks had been looking at the wrong end of the Dead Sea for Sodom. Isn't that a hoot? The pile of rubble that is Sodom is glaring to the eyeball. )
The whole Biblical tale is just that. A morality saga laid on top of a cosmological tragedy.
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@at6686 I can't argue with that. Europe is doing absolutely everything wrong. But then, they have their legacy from the first fifty-years of the 20th Century.
What's happening is that smart phones are broadcasting back to Nigeria, et. al what a cruise it is up in Paris, London, Berlin. The Africans have absolutely no conception of Winter. They do identify with living in hovels on the street, though.
Europe, as a whole, is NOT a net food generator. France exports a lot -- but it's to Germany, Britain and Italy -- and just a touch to the USA. Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain are net food importers -- and have been for quite some time. (More than a century.)
France is directly headed for civil war -- and even though the generals have told the politicians -- the latter do not want to listen. The result: carmagedon, and car-B-ques. Most young Africas simply go on the dole, pimp out women, or distribute hard drugs. As you can imagine, the social service bureaucracy LOVES them.
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@nicholaskelly6375 My counter argument is that coal is super-strategic. It rarely travels across the seas -- unless it's met coal. But each nation that industrializes does so on the back of its own coal mines:
Britain
America
Germany
France
Japan ( It invaded Korea and Manchuria to steal coal for steel.)
Red China
India
What this means is that it never appears as important as it really is because outside powers can't effectively throttle the coal mining and distribution of other countries -- until NOW.
Yes, the Red Chinese and Arabs and Russians are doing their damnedest to stop the West from burning coal. Without government intervention, coal produces the cheapest electricity on the planet -- unless you're blessed with hydro-potential. (Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela -- and such)
This lowest cost power impacts the entire national economy. So, it's super-strategic, but it can't be fought over -- except by religion. For the faith in Global Doom by Global Warming is based entirely on pure faith. The statistics so often proffered have been revealed to be frauds -- time and time, again.
What really kills me is that carbon dioxide phobia is derived from the Montreal Convention WRT Freon. This was the first man-made global atmospheric pollutant ever discovered. Three chemists got the Nobel in Chemistry in 1995 over this matter.
As for myself, Rowland was MY professor. Freon was MY research white paper presented to him -- all those years ago. Rowland dropped EVERYTHING to follow my advice: that he'd get a Nobel if he pursued Freon, Fluorine chemistry, generally. It was I that spent countless hours going through Chem Abstracts - - 1906 to the time (1974) tracking down EVERY SINGLE abstract on Fluorine. (!!!)
Freon research was what I wanted to do. That was supposed to be MY Nobel.
Instead, Rowland has written me out of (chemistry) history. His (fake) history is up on the Web. He got his Nobel for starting the research, Molina was his grad student, and in my same class. I was the only Junior undergrad in that class. To attend, I needed Rowland's specific permission. Since I was the smartest kid he'd ever seen, I was in.
[ I held the thickest scholastic record in North America coming out of high school. It ran two reams and could not be filed in the cabinets. It took two-days to read. Wonderlic rated me +8 SD up. This was so high that Wonderlic spent Large to prove test fraud. They gave up upon getting my academics. So you can see why Rowland dropped all other suggestions to pursue Freon. He even pulled strings to get on a cruise ship convention entirely dedicated to atmospheric research. Yeah, he was a nationally known chemist even back then.]
I coughed up my project to Rowland KNOWING that he'd get a Nobel. I told him so. ( The number and quality of my predictions would totally freak you out. The less said, the better. No-one can handle such truths.)
So here I sit watching the West going pagan-religious over carbon dioxide because the reverend al Gore is preaching from his bullpit. This is the idiot that had to attend three-universities -- Animal House style -- to get a degree. So, he gets global attention for the "sky is falling" while I'm unknown now... and forever.
The idea that a melting Arctic ice cap can raise sea levels is nonsense on stilts.
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@Worthian
The Ju-52 had EVERYTHING going against it.
The DC-3// C-47 was adopted virtually world-wide by 1938 -- and was the obvious choice for the Luftwaffe. But the Nazis wouldn't have it.
Hungary already had built DC-3s under license, BTW. Their version used Daimler liquid cooled motors -- essentially the same ones needed by the BF-109. When the war came, further access to these engines ended. The total run of Hungarian DC-3s was tiny, BTW. You'll only find them as a footnote.
Airliners of the period did not have cabin pressurization. IIRC Howard Huges brought that into being with his Lockheed machine.
What this meant in practice was that airliners// cargo planes just didn't fly above 12,000 feet. ( The average Joe is going to need oxygen once you pass 15,000 feet. Some Sherpas can take it, but not the average guy. )
The USAAF produced a training film for heavy bomber crews compelled to face German FLAK.
( FLAK = AA or AAA depending upon the period. During WWII the major combatants started adding radar control to their AA -- with the British leading the way -- just as you'd expect. All British advances were kept top secret, so don't expect to find any contemporary documents until well after the Cold War was over. )
In this USAAF film it is asserted that -- at working altitudes -- pilots must assume that 1,000 feet of altitude buys them one-second of FLAK flight-time. The Luftwaffe was so proficient -- with all the practice the USAAF was giving them -- that they could project// predict where the bomber stream would be if they stayed on a given heading for more than X seconds -- with X = (feet in altitude) / 1,000)
What this meant in practice was that Ju-52 and C-47 had to jink all over the sky every few seconds.
This reality goes a long way towards why USAAF pilots were staining their underwear June 6, 1944. They were WAY too low, and were not permitted to jink. The experience of flying through a fire storm of FLAK just has to be experienced to be believed.
One of my old business pals was the SINGLE most off track 82nd paratrooper on the night of June 6, 1944. He was Lieutenant in charge of his plane. His pilot was so whacked out that that he couldn't bring himself to punch the GREEN light. This led this particular stick of paratroops to land right in the middle of the 17SS Motorized Division. He fluttered down straight into a motorized company of SS men, with lights ablazing. If you grab a map, then you realize that my man was dozens of miles south of his drop-zone. He had to surrender before he even hit France.
[ Events have reached the absurd when an entire SS company is surrounding one lieutenant in the middle of a French wheat field. Gavin mentioned my pal in his tome: "On to Berlin." Yes, they met. Gavin chuckled that "Al" had won the booby prize. He was an instant legend among captured American paras, BTW. ]
Later as a PoW he was put on starvation rations. That's where the German guards threw out three potatoes to a hundred prisoners. That was chow time.
In the days immediately preceding his liberation by the Red Army, his pals were fed nothing. The German supply system had broken down. Even the guards were not getting their proper rations. (!!!) All of the roads had become clogged with fleeing German citizens -- all headed west.
Al never had a nice thing to say about the German prison system. He felt that "Stalag 17" got everything wrong, too light.
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@Benedict... Adolf phucked up in the Ardennes. Other than the trite influence of the British 43rd division, and the preening of Monty, the Ardennes was a purely American show.
In the eyes of Germany -- and history -- the Americans crushed the offensive -- throwing it totally off the rails within 72 hours -- the single fastest reversal of a Nazi offensive during that war.
Famous for a time, but now lost to the kids, American engineers totally derailed 6SS Panzer Army -- its spearhead in particular. These were not front line assault engineers. They were trained in bridge building. Which also meant they knew where all of the bridges were and how to blow them up.
Strategy & Tactics magazine cranked out a Wacht on Rhein simulation that used the US Geological Survey of that battle zone. If you should ever obtain a copy -- it's an eye-opener. With it you can follow company level movements during every account -- both sides.
( Wacht on Rhein is the tune being sung by Germans in Casablanca, for you film buffs. It was written in the 19th century as an honor to the Germans that fought against Napoleon. Hence, the Casablanca scene is irony compounded many times over. The French anthem is the aggressive one. By the time of Hitler, what had been a totally defensive ode had been transformed into an opus of offense.)
It is Bradley that smeared Patton as Blood & Guts. Under Bradley's leadership, 1st US Army suffered crazy high casualties -- especially to include the Hurtgen Forest. He OWNED it.
In contrast, Patton was parsimonious with blood. He correctly understood that you can't allow the Germans to get their bearings back. You must keep driving them like a broken herd of sheep.
The second the Germans recover their wits, they become Hell to shift.
THAT was Monty's epic mistake. When his own subordinate commanders brought this fact up -- he had them canned. ( retired, sent to India -- something that happened to Browning. )
The fact that Browning was CANNED by Monty is not something that Burns & Coy can bear to face.
In contrast: Monty and Gavin had a (military reputation) love affair to the ends of their careers. Monty 'forgave' Gavin -- yet NEVER forgave Browning. ( Gavin was absorbing the blame truly belonging to Browning and Monty knew absolutely everything about the events. )
The 1,000 panzers came from BROWNING and Bletchley intercepts. No British general would put ANY faith in brigadier general Gavins strategic insights. No-one tossed off Bletchley's transmissions.
Bletchley was not wrong. They got the timing off. The panzers were for the BULGE. Adolf really expected Speer to crank out that many panzers in time for his dream counter-offensive.
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@ DParry
You've missed your reading assignment.
1) Grabner had crossed to the southern side of the Arnhem bridge BEFORE Frost even closed up to the northern approach.
As a direct consequence, the battle was already LOST.
Arnhem bridge was NEVER captured... and barely interdicted.
MG can't work with Arnhem bridge in SS hands.
2) Both bridges were built with explosive charges -- hidden inside -- no-one could possibly see them -- nor remove them -- with detonation cables that ran off to their south sides.
This was a COMMON feature of Big Bridges in that era. The Germans wired their Rhine bridges the exact same way. That's why the bridge at Remagen was such a shocker. It had been built strictly as a railroad bridge to support the Kaiser's armies during WWI. It was constructed in such a rush that no thought was given to building in explosive charges. At that moment (1916) the Kaiser's armies were heading west, so there was no way that a French army was seen as a risk.
3) A DUTCHMAN severed the detonation circuit at Nijmegen bridge. Stories you hear from Brits or Americans must be laughed at. They are either totally made up ( most likely ) or are things that came in their sleep. The detonation circuit and the explosives were a Dutch national defense secret. Everything about them was highly classified. The detonation cables were encased in concrete -- the usual habit for key electrical circuits even now -- and led off to bunkers right close to the bridges.
The Nijmegen bunker was built into the telephone and post office complex. ( one building with a divider ) The Dutchman who cut those critical cables did so while the Americans were still floating down from the sky. I'd bet your life that he was an out-of-uniform Dutch soldier ( officer ?) who knew the lay of the land, instantly. I figure he'd have a high profile but for the fact that his kin lived on the wrong side of the lower Rhine. The SS would whack his extended family if they knew what he'd done. After the war, no-one cared, no-one believed. And to let his story out would embarrass both Britain and America, as both nations had soldiers taking credit for saving the bridge.
&&&
So, to keep it IDIOT simple for you: MG was DEAD, dead, dead, the second Grabner got onto the island with his recon boys.
They not only screwed up Browning's and Gavin's assumptions -- they RUINED any chance for 1st Airborne to complete its mission.
If 1st Airborne fails, then the whole enterprise fails.
The Poles, XXX Corps, 101st Airborne, even the 82nd Airborne -- they are all irrelevant. Monty needed EVERY bridge -- and Arnhem was NEVER TAKEN.
The northern approach does NOT equal taking the Arnhem bridge.
Grabner & Company HAVE to be driven away from the southern end of Arnhem bridge before he drops it into the river.
Lastly, the RAF never took out the German controlled ferry that was shifting additional panzers, half-tracks and whatnot onto the island straight through the battle -- every night.
This means that even if Grabner didn't get there first, some other SS formation would've crossed over on the ferry and blown the 1st Airborne off of Arnhem bridge. There is absolutely NO COVER for the paras on the south side of that bridge. They'd be standing there with their peckers in their hands, for heaven's sakes. XXX Corps would be days too late.
Browning's scheme was HOPELESS -- deal with it.
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@TIK
But Stalin DID start WWII -- all the way back in August 23, 1939.
The war was rolling right along even before Barbarossa.
We know this is true because of releases from Soviet archives. (Yeltsin)
These clearly show that it was Stalin that wrote the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact -- especially to include the start date of the attack and the demarcation line between Nazi spoils and Soviet spoils. Specifically, Stalin made sure that Brest-Litvosk was in Soviet possession. That alone, it may be argued, cost the Nazis victory. ( Their rail road links to the east could not be rebuilt for a solid three-weeks. The pressure was so great that work started before the fighting stopped. All during this period the Germans had to burn gasoline something crazy to shift their supplies past this bottleneck. )
Stalin pledged to invade eastern Poland on September 1st. That's what the treaty called for. He begged off with excuses for Adolf.
'His army was not able to mobilize all that fast.'
This excuse was to have fateful results when Barbarossa was contemplated. Between Poland, Finland, et. al. Stalin really sold Hitler on military ineptitude.
Instead, Stalin delayed his invasion until the Polish government fled. This fig leaf was bought hook line and sinker by the West.
(And fighting both despots at the same time was too daunting. Churchill rightly figured that there was no way that these two tyrants would not fall out within a couple of years -- if not sooner.)
Stalin proceeded to invade more nations than Adolf Hitler -- who had to play catch-up in the tyranny department -- starting April 1940.
Lest we forget, Stalin even nibbled off eastern Slovakia when Adolf swallowed up the balance of Czechoslovakia. ( He grabbed the critical eastern pass. )
Stalin managed to drive nations into the Axis that didn't even like Hitler: Hungary, Romania -- both were reluctant allies. Finland could also be put in this category, too.
1941 and the Suvorov thesis is actually irrelevant. It's all too late by 1941.
Lost in all of the rancor: FDR pledged to aid Nazi Germany if Soviet Russia attacked westward... in mid-June 1941.
That's how obvious it was to America that both sides were gearing way up to have at it.
Exactly how FDR could aid Germany if she was invaded from the east? Beats me!
I'd say that FDR was talking out of both sides of his mouth. ( A common feat for him. )
And that he always expected that the USSR would end up in the anti-Nazi camp.
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