Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "TIKhistory"
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@Donald Hill
You've got everything backasswards.
Marshall told Ike that he'd be relieved of command if he mirco-managed.
Yup.
Ike let Monty be Monty. No-one could stop him anyway.
Just ask Alexander and Tedder.
Ike NEVER dipped his toes into battle tactics. He didn't have the time of day to play at being despot. ( Two exceptions: the Kasserine fiasco and Pantelleria -- hope my spelling isn't too bad -- note these both occurred when Ike was commanding tiny formations -- just few armies.)
(Stalin, Churchill, Hitler all loved that game. FDR didn't have either the energy nor the inclination. And playing despot during wartime has always blown up for American presidents. Note how President Trump promptly moved war decisions back to the Pentagon, unlike Barry. )
Bradley and Patton were fit to be tied when they found out that Ike had given Monty ALL of their gasoline and 2,000 trucks and anything else he wanted. This decision was a done deal without Tedder, Bradley, Patton, Hodges, Simpson, et. al. having a word edgewise. Bradley and Patton opined that Ike had committed treason, that he'd gone over totally to the British. Tempers were HIGH.
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@ ger du
You'd think so, wouldn't you?
Once back in full supply, the panzer troops would've had a field day mowing down Soviet infantry that simply could not dig fox holes in ground frozen so solid.
Remember that their heavy weapons are still sitting on the east side of the Volga until the river is made 'truck worthy.' This entails a brutal slog of dynamited ice peaks followed by spot re-flooding to create extra thickness and a flatter, sweeter ice bed for the trucks -- and their brittle tires. At the temperatures involved, any sharp ground// ice will ruin a truck tire -- instantly.
[ A hole must be bored though the ice so that cold water can be pumped up and over -- sprayed like you'd make snow for skiers on a mountainside. This snow is then compacted -- as if it were asphalt -- until the ice-road is both strong and sweet. This process takes days to pull off. The Volga south of Stalingrad is just huge. Think: Mississippi, Rhine, Vistula, Waal, lower Thames.
While all of this was going on, the Germans are shelling the engineers performing this work. Crossing even further down river would've made encirclement all the more difficult... and require even more troops... a lot more.]
The Germans were to discover JUST how frozen solid that ground was when they had to pull back and set a new defense.
1) You either started a bonfire and thawed the ground, which would be quite a trick on the treeless open steppe...
2) Or you blasted the earth with howitzers pointed down. This craft was first performed during WWI. It was something that Adolf Hitler knew all about -- and recommended to his generals. You do have to watch your step and it is laborious. But, at least you'll end up with some sort of hole in the ground.
Ammo consumption goes crazy, though.
This method had best be done before Winter really sets in. When that happens, you may find that you need five shots to get any decent depth. The early attempts just about bounce off the dirt.
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@jsfbr
MG was lost the INSTANT Grabner got across the Arnhem bridge.
The Nijmegen bridge became irrelevant at that point.
NOTHING could stop the SS from dropping the Arnhem bridge into the Rhine after Grabner got onto the island.
TIK, and the other Brits, are engaged in a fantasy.
They ALL operate from the view that Frost was in command of the Arnhem bridge. But, he never was. He was totally thwarted by the pill box -- and then -- later -- by the SS sitting on the south end of Arnhem bridge.
What everyone has skipped past is that both bridges were wired -- from day one -- the day they were built -- to be exploded down into the rivers. This was a COMMON feature for major European bridges of the period. EVERYONE did it.
It was NOT a common feature of American or British bridges. Neither nation figured on losing control of their bridges to invaders.
The Germans and Dutch were obsessed with such a consideration.
The detonation cables led off to bunkers on the SOUTH side of both bridges, as the Dutch figured the Germans to be the primary Threat from the very first. (History, heh) They did not figure on the Belgians or French being remotely as threatening.
There NEVER was a need for the Germans to bring in explosives, cables or anything else. All that they had to do was break into the detonation bunker, and hook up a plunger.
MG was RUINED as a plan the moment Browning didn't put paras on the island from the VERY FIRST.
If Grabner had never crossed Arnhem bridge, Gavin's tempo would be irrelevant. BTW, the local Dutch had already sabotaged the Nijmegen detonation cables. That's why the bridge stayed put.
Neither the British nor the Americans had anything to do with it.
BOTH have taken credit, though.
Lastly, the explosives that count CAN'T even be seen from the outside. You can't even touch them. They are inside an armored assembly. This was standard engineering practice at the time.
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@agentorange6085 It's more complicated -- but of course. Warsaw was a BIG sticking point. It turned out that the British wanted to pump up Poland's strategic position -- WITHOUT Britain doing the pumping up. For example, Warsaw pitched that the RAF should send Spitfires to augment the pitiful Polish air force. Whitehall said: "No dice." The RAF objected on the ground that sending three-to five squadrons to Poland was no different than throwing them away -- and that even their deployment could and would be used by Hitler as a casus belli. Further, there would be no chance of keeping such squadrons supplied -- and aircraft chomp through supplies. Likewise, Polish proposals to station a token force of RN ships went no-where. The diplomatic status of Danzig was just to weird. ( The "Free City of Danzig" ) Warsaw was trying to establish a trip-wire that would crystalize in the mind of Berlin (Adolf) that to invade Poland// seize Danzig was to initiate a general Great War.
Very Secret discussions with Stalin to bring the USSR into alliance with Poland, Britain and France terminated because Stalin wanted a FREE CORRIDOR forty-to eighty miles wide straight through Poland on to Germany. In this, he'd be re-creating the logistics of WWI in the East. His armies wouldn't have any dependencies upon the Poles to speak of. For some crazy reason, Warsaw didn't trust Stalin. Imagine!
However, it's BECAUSE of these negotiations that Staline came to fully understand TOO MUCH about what was up with Poland, France and Britain. It was with this knowledge that he CONTRACTED FOR WAR WITH ADOLF HITLER.
Yeltsin exposed the Soviet-Nazi Pact (for War) to the world's press. The paperwork was shocking to all assembled. For the first time it was realized that STALIN, not Hitler, started WWII in Europe. Hitler ALWAYS wanted his war, but without Stalin, he couldn't dance. He had hyper-critical shortages in rubber, nickel, tungsten/wolfram, oil and food. Stalin eliminated the corset that the West had Adolf in a bind. Stalin's oil conquered France. It put the Bf-109s into the sky.
BTW, the Nazis were on fumes when Poland fell. They'd used up their strategic reserve. Their show of sufficiency faked out France and was the primary reason that France stopped invading from the West. By going so low into the barrel, Hitler had impeached the intelligence estimates of Paris so badly that they'd lost credibility.
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@auguststorm2037 You're the closest poster to what happened. Stalin's pitch to Warsaw was that he wanted a 40-80 mile wide exclusive zone for Soviet forces ( the Red Army ) to attack westward. That zone was never nailed down -- as it was a non-starter with Warsaw. Based on the rail grid there were just not that many spots that could possibly support the Red Army in Stalin's scenario. The Polish rail grid, no surprise, netted around Warsaw, itself. Since Berlin had to be the focus of any Red offensive, Stalin was a rotten ally -- even logistically. This is something that is always left off the table by historians.
BTW, note how Stalin's Pact was certain to include Brest-Litovsk East of Stalin's division line. Yeah, he crayoned in how much of Poland he be given by the Nazis in his Pact. That document was produced by Yeltsin direct from Soviet archives a generation ago. Yeltsin's revelations are so inconvenient that twenty-years on -- they are totally ignored. BTW, the Pact settled on 9-01-39 as the invasion date for BOTH Hitler and Stalin. In the event, Stalin conned Hitler and the world by stalling his invasion. He lied to Berlin that his boys couldn't be mobilized all that quickly. This was a bald-faced lie. His huge tank armies would've rolled across eastern Poland even quicker than Germany's XIX Panzer Corps.
The M-R Pact was Stalin's Pact and it was TOTALLY one-sided. It was a Contract for War. In it the stop-lines for their mutual war of conquest were pre-negotiated -- if you can call Stalin's deal any kind of negotiation. Hitler had NO INPUT -- nor did Rippin-fool. The Nazis were THAT desperate for war... as part of the Pact was Stalin's economic rescue of the Nazi economy. Over Poland's dead body, Hitler gained access to Soviet oil, Soviet war-critical metals, foodstuffs -- even a back-door to rubber. The counter-trade included everything from ball-bearings to machine tools. These latter items are virtually ALWAYS over-looked as to why the Nazis wanted to invade the USSR. The army was up in arms about providing the most advanced metals technology to their next, and ultimate, enemy. But these were the ONLY exportable items that Nazi Germany had to offer Stalin. She lacked any commodities, as Stalin had plenty of everything.
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The Greens were a significant political force in Germany when it was unified. They absolutely flipped when they actually saw East German atomic plants -- that had NO containment worth talking about. { Soviet units went naked -- hence Chernobyl; their exported versions often had some semblance of containment -- but no-one in the West would trust such engineering. Soviet atomics had a LARGE reactor volume -- raising steam at lower temperatures than found in the classic Westinghouse design or the classic GE design. This meant that any containment for a carbon pile would be very much larger in mass... and cost.}
So the pressure to shut down East German atomics began right from the start. It didn't need the Japanese fiasco.
You'll also note that the Greens spread their dogma to Sweden. It's stopping its atomics, too.
What Japan did was show that in extremis, the crews are witless. Straight out of "China Syndrome" they proved that they were able to do just about EVERYTHING wrong.
Badly sited atomics, (tsunami coast, anyone?)
Badly sited emergency power, (right at sea-level)
Badly reacting crews, (didn't scram PDQ; didn't use sea-water to flood the cores; didn't vent N-19 to stop a gas pocket at the top;...good grief!)
Badly schemed strategic back-ups; ( what if an earthquake// tsunami of severe power? Yet, the geology told all that such events MUST be expected.)
In sum, the Japanese showed that from top to bottom their entire scheme was not as advertised. In reality the crews FROZE. They panicked. Then they made every wrong decision possible in the matrix.
BTW, drastically more citizens died from the tsunami than atomic radiation. Total fatalities were in the many thousands. So, atomic hysteria is very much with us.
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@elLooto It's on the record that Red China imports staggering amounts of steam-coal from Australia. AFAIK, Red China does NOT import steam-coal from the USA -- certainly not in any size. For Red China has steam-coal coming out of its ears. And it's right near the surface. And there has been a HOWL from the work force every time the CCP cuts back steam-coal mining. Their stuff is filthy, too. While they have the technology of bag-houses and all the rest, the Reds simply shut off the air pollution control gear as it costs money to operate. And the price of wholesale electricity is set by the CCP. This means that power plant operators are under insane price pressure. But, their WHOLE economy is run in this crazy fashion. This is another story that Western publications just don't allow into print.
Red China imports met-coal from just all over -- especially Australia. The US is a MAJOR exporter of met-coal -- which overwhelmingly goes to Europe. That's what our deep mines produce. It goes at one heck of a premium.
Your tale about (slave-produced, price-controlled) cotton reflects what I'm 'on-about' namely that Red China is using staggering amounts of forced labor to crank out primal commodities without letting the 1st World in on what's up.
That's the story of the Muslim 'labor-force.'
FYI, what triggered the recent genocide: jihad. A hefty crew of Muslims used knives quite a few years back to mass-attack Han commuters in Southern China. It was THEIR 911. The attack was at a train stop. Knives met Mohammed's dictums, BTW. Muslims would LOVE a gun-ban, for then the stage would be perfect for old-school jihad by blade.
The CCP concluded that the problem was innate to Islam -- and that across 1400 years there has been no cure (from jihad) except the complete expulsion of Muslims. (Hungary, Spain, et. al ) So the CCP opted for genocide and total repression of islam. Not mentioned, the CCP is certainly whacking ANY imam they can get their hands on. If you preach islam, you're dead by torture. A koran is now more incriminating than a Bible. ( Yes, they hate those, too. Atheism is the state religion of the CCP. )
You might note that you NEVER read about any of this rationale in any Western publication. It's taboo.
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@Strizhi
You are mistaken on this one.
Glantz goes into this in great detail.
The so-called battle of Stalingrad was actually fought well outside the city and to the north: the land bridge between the Don and the Volga. Russian losses to the Germans on this front are EPIC. This one zone had FOUR Soviet armies committed under the command of a Front. They received four times as many replacements as any received at Stalingrad, proper.
Every last time the Germans tried to swap out the motorized formations pinned down there, a new wave of attack would take off.
All accounts report Russian corpses stacked up so HIGH that you had to push through or over them to make further progress. They were not buried. So in no-time the smell wafted off for miles and miles. This last aspect demoralized the German troops. As for the Russians, they were DEAD.
This was also a situation where it was EASY for fresh Russian troops to find 'spare rifles' laying all over the ground.
These insane attacks were ordered directly by STAVKA -- and no-one else. Allowing this panzer corps any freedom of movement was seen as a lethal blow to the Soviet state.
The most intense period was at the start, when Stalingrad, itself, was very much up for grabs.
The motorized divisions HAD to be pinned down. (3m, 60m, IIRC )
It was THIS fighting that triggered most of the post-war blather about the Russians having unlimited man-power.
Which was wrong.
They only had unlimited manpower for this situation. IIRC, no less than TEN reserve armies were committed to the larger campaign. They were all totally consumed.
Uranus was launched with a fresh batch of reserve armies.
IF TEN ARMIES evaporated, then the loss ratio is much more like 3:1 maybe even 4:1. ( Soviet armies of this period tended to run about 100,000 or less. (some times much, much less, as no attempt was made to keep them at original strength, whatsoever) 6th Army had about 22ish divisions -- something like 350,000 Axis soldiers running with it. It really was an Army Group in its own right. )
[ A Soviet Rifle Division might start out with as many as 12,000 souls -- and not leave the front until it was down to the last 800 survivors. While at the front, it would receive no replacements -- accept those able to walk back from the aid station.
This philosophy was the exact opposite of George Marshall. He had the totally mad idea that you could piecemeal GIs into line formations like they were nuts & bolts. It was a disaster. Behind his back, Bradley changed things towards the German solution: integration battalions. GIs would be assigned to a beaten up division, but they'd not be sent into combat straight away. Instead, they'd be forced to meld with this or that battalion, held back in reserve, until they'd learned the ropes. Only then was the battalion sent back into action. This 'adjustment' was as commonly breached as not... depending upon war urgency.
As a rule, Bradley wasted lives at a tremendous clip.
He had a WWI mentality in WWII.
He'd have gotten far in the Soviet system.
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@Strizhi
On Glantz you've got everything backwards. ALL of his writings are based upon Soviet archives -- he scarcely ever interviews Germans. He spends virtually all of his work debunking German// Ostheer claims about their military achievments.
When he does bring up German records, in variably it's to illustrate another embarrassing factoid... like the Panther D fiasco at Kursk.
There is ONE location where picking up fallen rifles was known to happen -- and not just once or twice -- the Don to Volga land bridge. This was the Verdun of WWII.
FOUR Red Armies were lined up, side by side, across this land bridge. They were under the direct control of a Front commander -- who was just up the road, behind them.
BY FAR the bulk of the blood lost at Stalingrad was at the land bridge. Stalingrad, proper, was actually a side-show from the point of view of Soviet casualties. ( This is not true for the Ostheer. It really DID bleed in that city. )
The imbalance at the land bridge was due to the fact that the Ostheer stood pat. No attempt was ever made to advance northward. They just stood at their MG34s and mowed Soviets down by the thousand. It was this insanity that had Hitler & Co totally convinced that Russia MUST be running out of manpower.
During 1942, Stalin burned through no less than TEN reserve armies between the land bridge and Stalingrad proper.
Since we're not ever going to get accurate figures from the Soviet archives -- they didn't even establish decent records during the panic -- we'll just have to estimate that each Red army had ~100,000 souls. The implication is that Stalin burned through 1,000,000 men in less than four-months. (!!!) And that's just along this front.
The general word is that Stalin burned through 400,000 DEAD during Mars. Casualties must have also been great. But I figure that few could take a bullet and survive in that cold, the overwhelming fraction would simply be dead, most all wounds would be mortal.
Gender imbalance after the Great Patriotic War was so severe that one can only conclude that Red army losses were epic by any standard.
It's only now that the very last of the war widows are laid to rest.
BTW, when drafted, Soviet boys were often taken from the same village -- and then thrown away in the same battle. The result is that you could go into smaller villages and find virtually the entire male population erased by the war. Their widows kept waiting until the war was over -- and then kept on waiting -- since there was no military mail they had no clue that their loved one had perished in 1942 or 43.
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@Stirzhi
I don't trust battle accounts out of Stalingrad because both sides crafted totally self-serving propaganda straight through the battle.
In the case of the Soviets, they over-promoted their Russian sniper -- and glossed over astounding Ukrainian and female snipers. ( It's pretty crazy, but the Soviets ended up with a slew of female snipers with hefty kill numbers. These gals received high honors -- but were almost never publicised outside of the USSR during the war. Stalin did not want the West to realize that he was using ( forced to use ) women on a grand scale.
Further, I just can't buy that anyone at any time had the paper and pencil to write down this or that guy's heroics. Things were just too crazy.
The ten armies I mentioned were the standard Soviet recruitment cycle through their induction system. Due to the harsh weather and the impracticalities it introduced, the Russian 'system' was to induct waves of new recruits every Spring... after the harshest weather had passed, but before the snow had melted. ( You can't tromp through 5 feet of snow with raw recruits.) Training -- such as it was -- was hyper accelerated. (OJT was expected to bring the boys up to speed.)
The typical boot camp// induction center could cycle through an astounding number of men per year -- because two to three weeks was often deemed enough for the purpose.
Due to the language barrier, eastern recruits were trained to respond to but a few command words -- and to do exactly what their officer was doing.
During the 1942 period, Soviet tactics were so primitive that the above synopsis is considered to be correct. Every surviving 'cucumber' has told essentially the same tale from this period: boot camp was astoundingly brief -- and then off to the front!
I must assume that a given boot camp could process at least eight formations per year.
As for STAVKA, best as I can tell, it didn't order around units smaller than an army. Remember that a Soviet army ~ a Western corps. A 'Front' ~ a Western army.
As to whether Stalin sent eight, ten or twelve of his armies to Stalingrad, does it really matter?
It must be plain on the record that STAVKA was never going to allow the Stalingrad front to run out of blood. It's also plain that Stalin never wanted the larger world to realize how much blood had been spilt there or anywhere.
BTW, after the war, the US Army captured essentially ALL of the Heer's battle maps -- notably those of the Ostheer.
They are an eye-opener. It was after viewing them that I realized what Glantz brought up to the general audience, though I discovered it all independently YEARS before I knew Glantz existed. He was preaching to the choir, in my case.
My memory is weakening, but I do remember that the maps are available over the Internet and IIRC they are in the Dartmouth collection. If not Dartmouth, then some other classic Ivy League library. Google is your friend.
These battle maps were to the exact scale used by Hitler, and ARE those maps. They are virtually 100% perfect as to German dispositions. They are remarkably accurate as to Soviet formations that are in contact with the Ostheer. They are 'soft' WRT Red Army formations behind the front lines.
( As the Ostheer discovered to its sorrow November 1942. )
The unit designations -- of the Red Army -- give the game away. They are TOO many. They are so many because the units are rump formations after the Ostheer has shredded them during Soviet frontal attacks.
What's most remarkable is to count the Red formations along the land bridge and then count them in and around Stalingrad, the city.
Yiikes.
BTW, based upon the German maps, it would appear that the land-bridge was under a different Front than the city. This would make perfect sense as its logistical tail went up the west side of the Volga, whereas the city was fed from the east of the Volga.
Extra rail lines were extended by the Red Army during this campaign. The most remarkable I found was the one out of Astrakhan. The Germans couldn't BELIEVE how fast the Reds built out that line. It was jumping more than ten-miles a day. ( LendLease rails, BTW )
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@Strizhi
Any jerk that loves Stalin and Bolshevism -- doesn't love Russians.
That's for sure.
In his gut, Stalin largely hated Russians. It's why he kept putting Georgians in all of his critical command positions. To an astounding degree, Stalin kept Russians out of his government.
You would've thought that his government would be 99% Russian. Instead you discover it was larded with Jews, Georgians, Ukrainians ( Nikita ) -- just a slew of out-cast minorities.
His hatred of Jews and Ukrainians was unbounded. ( Nikita's diary )
He was a real 'divide-and-rule' tyrant, all right.
There are more than a few war games that illustrate Soviet reserve army creation during that war. All of them are modelled on extremely short boot camps -- based on every Russian 'cucumber's' account of their experiences. This uniquely short cycle time has to be the source of Stalin's instant armies. It certainly corn fused the Germans -- all the way up to Hitler. Western military men just couldn't imagine a boot camp that didn't even last three-weeks. Some Russians write of boot camps that didn't even last two-weeks. (!!!)
Plainly, after you've read enough personal accounts from survivors, ( these number in the thousands, more than anyone can bear to read) you come to realize that Stalin's system for recruits was a meat grinding machine. In its essence, the Red Army just got the extreme basics down, and then depended upon On-The-Job training to carry the day. Lucky for Russia that her sons had no limit for selfless bravery.
It's shocking to read personal accounts of jumping into a T34 -- right before a major action -- for the first time. It was only later that STAVKA realized that this 'training program' was not optimal.
Similarly short training cycles impaired the Red Air Force. The guys were thrown at the Luftwaffe before they were really fledged. When this was finally changed, the Red Air Force became very good.
After reading enough personal accounts -- the stuff the fellas are writing while on their death beds -- one can only conclude that both armies sabotaged their own men via grand stupidities.
Like the Ostheer letting its draft horses freeze to death in the Autumn rains. Good grief. Thumb though the vet statistics. They were reporting astounding losses, day by day, as the animals died. They must have been crying while doing so. The horses you see in those old photos became food stuffs in very short order. (Gag)
Dead horses in Autumn became dead men in Winter. Pure insanity.
And like 1812-13, the weather didn't get any warmer for the Russians. Their own losses driving the Ostheer back were also a fright... largely due to the lack of training and support from their own superiors. (Gag)
I don't know how anyone could survive a bullet wound when it's 40 below.
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@Takh
I think you meant pkwVIs...
But, your thesis is essentially correct.
It's more than production numbers. It's also a case of how LONG a given tank could remain in service and how well it could be kept fuelled. In this basis, the German heavies were DISASTERS.
1) The Nazis used forced labor// prisoners brought in from France, Poland -- even Italy (!) to build their war machine. (!!!) The result was that the second their backs were turned, the production workers sabotaged Panthers and Tigers in a way that was not easily discovered. This typically took the form of phu cking with their lubrication systems. Foreign objects// crud was rammed deep into various lubrication channels. Long after the war, recovered and restored panzers repeatedly show just such sabotage. No panzer has been discovered that didn't have jacked up lubrication systems.
The beauty of this kind of sabotage is that it passed undetected straight through the war. It did cause German panzers to break down in the field for inexplicable reasons. The Nazis could never quite put it all together. Heh.
2) The Panther had a critical weakness that the Allies never picked up on. It's final drive was too weak. The Panther was over-weight by 20,000 pounds. Those extra ten-tons were really too much for the Panther's final drive.
( Final drive = the sprocket that transmits torque to the track. )
Worse, to repair damage to this sprocket, it was necessary to TOTALLY un-build a Panther tank. You had to pull the turret up and off. Then you had to pull the engine, drive shaft and many internals. Only then could you get at the final drive and its transmission -- which were the first thing that the factory dropped into a Panther.
This process was so involved that Panthers had to be sent back to the factory. Germany never developed a field repair solution.
[ The same task took four-hours for Sherman tanks -- which could be performed under a shade tree in the field. ]
BTW, Germany had a LOT of minor factories dedicated to rebuilding panzers. You'd be astounded as to how many micro-factories the Nazis used to crank out repairs and custom modifications, especially of captured enemy tanks. ( Soviet and French )
When the Germans had 500 panzers on the western front, the Allies had 10,000 Shermans. (late 44) ( 1,000s were sitting back as 'spares' ) The Army simply assumed that losses would be stiff, so the system just kept cranking them out and sending them to France. The production tempo kept surging, too.
It got to the point that every front line division had its own tank battalion. Tank divisions would have 300 to 450 Shermans. Regardless of the official TO&E every division just kept adding Shermans. One company of the 1st Infantry Division ended up with its own (secret) tank platoon. Shades of 'Kelly's Heroes.'
By the end, Shermans were used as much as mobile artillery ( shades of the original intent of the Mark IV panzer ) as they ever were as direct fire weapons. Tank destroyers were also tasked as artillery -- most firing 10 indirect rounds for every 1 direct fire rounds.
Like the V2, the Panther and Tiger were mistakes. Strategically, they didn't pencil out. Germany couldn't keep them running, so they had amazingly short operational lives. ( commonly just one battle )
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@Steve
Bletchley was not given a time-line within their intercepts. It's a pretty good bet that Bletchley was tapping into morale boosting chatter between Adolf and OB West about its reinforcement priority -- which was -- in fact -- at the top of the stack. Hitler had ALREADY decided to counter attack out of the Ardennes even before the Allies rolled up to the West Wall. Yes, in his imagining he would repeat his super-success of 1940. All of this was in his head even before Paris was liberated. Quite simply, Hitler had ALWAYS assumed that his play was in the west, and that only Britain and America were sensitive to casualties, for clearly, Stalin was not deterred by even insane levels of blood.
The disposition of Browning's HQ betrays the fact that he KNEW that the ONLY terrain suitable for a counter attack by panzers lay directly between the heights and the German border. Everywhere else, the ground was so soft that tanks bogged down. This was why Hell's Highway was an elevated highway, why XXX Corps tanks had to stay up on that 60-mile berm.
The CRAZY thing about 1st Airborne and 82nd Airborne drop zones: they weren't on the island.
The zone between the two bridges was an ISLAND in the Rhine river delta. The Germans couldn't get on it except by the bridges and a ferry. This ferry, indeed both ferries, were totally ignored by Browning and Monty. ANY Dutchman could've, would've brought them up. They were the traditional way of reaching the farmland that WAS the island.
The island had no Germans, no FLAK, no nothing. No place to hide panzers, either. The island was the OBVIOUS place to take all subsequent air drops. It just screamed: land here, land here, land here!
All of the FLAK was in Arnhem. That's where the RAF was taking a beating.
BTW, the RAF DID adjust its drop zones after crews bitched about loads lost to Germany. However, no matter what was done, the SS kept over-running the new, tighter, drop zones. That's how fast the 1st Airborne was shrinking its perimeter. It was but a short time before its pocket was so tiny that the RAF couldn't hit it. Any plane making the attempt would have no more than a two second window between crossing the Rhine and reaching the (far ) German line.
That's why the film is painting a false picture WRT the RAF. Its crews were not that stupid. What had happened is that British Airborne had lost the ability to defend its perimeter early in the fight. .
ALL of Airborne's problems traced back to Browning's selection of drop zones. He had the PERFECT spot -- the island -- and he didn't select it. Urquhart and Company could not redeem that catastrophic error no matter how much blood they spent.
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@John Burns
Gavin DID follow orders.
His General Order ( from Ike ) was to NEVER lose Browning -- nor to tarnish Browning's reputation.
Taking the Nijmegen bridge became a SECONDARY objective.
If Browning was lost and the bridge taken, Gavin would've been sent down in disgrace.
Even taking that bridge would not make the 2SS Panzer Corps disappear.
Lost in all of the hand-wringing, the sloth of XXX Corp just guaranteed that the Arnhem bridge would be blown up.
This would've happened IMMEDIATELY once it was clear that Nijmegan was lost to the Allies.
The Arnhem bridge was saved precisely because it led to Nijmegen.
IIRC, eventually the Germans pulled back and blew it up.
The ONLY way that the Arnhem bridge could be won was by way of changing the 101st's drop zones on day one. The Germans had be be denied the ability to get to the southern end of the Arnhem bridge, and British Airborne needed IMMEDIATE reinforcement as the city, itself, could easily absorb an entire infantry division.
The ONLY drop zone that could be ABSOLUTELY guaranteed was that of the ISLAND.
So you had both Urquhart and Gavin wasting their time and men defending the unnecessary when the island was RIGHT at the twin bridges.
Duh.
Putting the 101st on the island would also mean that Browning would have 18th Airborne Corps right to hand to defend his HQ and the Germans could not stop further parachute drops.
British Airborne would NEVER fail to obtain drops, either.
The island was the central position -- and the British didn't see it.
The Americans were told to SHUT UP -- to never opine on British operations.
Even Bradley and Patton, who totally disagreed with MG, would not utter a peep! They merely groused about it, referring to events in the most elliptical fashion. Patton didn't even dare run his mouth off in his diary. All because Ike had put them on notice.
If three-stars are choking in silence, imagine one-star Gavin!
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