Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "TIKhistory"
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@Nick
Join the Peace Corps and make an impression.
My Nephew did. He discovered that they really ARE fools. It really is hard to save them from themselves.
It doesn't take too long before frustration kicks in.
To the locals, all of your advice, everything, smacks of arrogance.
For you are challenging the wisdom of their fathers, all of them.
The fact that they a taking craps in public, drinking out of mud puddles, and trying to get by on $0.00 dollars per day for a lifetime....
It's so easy to criticize.
The fact is that MOST societies are vastly inferior to the USA.
1) They resist - often violently - to new thinking, to new ways. Many times this resistance is shocking. You'd think that clean water would be an automatic 'seller.' Nope.
No project gets MORE resistance than any scheme to bring in clean, fresh water to a village, to a town, to a city. Such thinking is the LAST thing on the local's mind. Your proffered project is universally deemed a total waste of money. "What were you thinking of?"
2) They are parochial in the extreme. They really hate their neighbors down the road, or over the hill.
[ Florentines still hate Venicians and vice versa. (sp ?]
3) Lying to you -- and each other -- is a local art form. Hell, it's a competition. This reaches extremes with Muslim Arab culture. This is the tic that caused so much grief in Iraq during reconstruction. Local 'talent' would lie about every phase of construction or repair. When you'd visit a work site, you never knew what to expect. You'd be thrilled if the foundation was actually poured. And so forth.
Need I say it? ALL of these loser societies would regard the Americans as the 'problem.' Too arrogant, and all that.
The REAL problem is that all Americans are naive. We can't imagine societies that are quite that disfunctional. Yet, eventually we come around to the truth. Their cultures prohibit adoption of even a fraction of what we deem normal behavior. Those few souls that figure things out promptly try and flee to the West. They have totally given up hope WRT their own neighbors.
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@MrStoneycool
The NUMBER ONE source of looting: local Frenchmen. After years of privation, they just could not sit still and watch all that coffee roll by. So what you had was a conspiracy: the French would conjure up fresh eggs, the occasional chicken, cognac, and more -- and the GI would discover coffee beans, chocolate, tobacco, even cigarettes.
The other item looted: gasoline. After PLUTO came out of the Channel, it pumped gasoline into a storage farm. (Cherbourg ) Thence it traveled by multiple 4" pipes (laid directly on the ground) towards the front. It was THIS pipeline that the French kept robbing. It got to the point that the US Army had to station two divisions of "pipeline guards" to stop the theft.
Naturally, all of this stuff was kept hush, hush, as it would be VERY bad PR, bad for morale.
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What OKH, OKW, and Adolf Hitler didn't seem to remember was the the 6th Army hard upon the Volga was a WAR WINNING MOVE.
It was no different that having the USA 9th Armored// 1st Army upon the Rhine. ( March 6, 1945 ) [ Remagen happened the very next day. ]
What his meant was that the actual positions of 2nd Panzer Army and 3rd Panzer Army were largely irrelevant. They should've given ground -- which they eventually HAD to -- right off. That was the correct German response to Mars.
The next move was for OKH to vector EVERY strategic reserve to counter-Uranus.
For Uranus HAD TO BE the STAVKA attempt to push 6th Army off its economic jugular vein.
OF COURSE 6th Army had to stay put. Its position would win the war in the east for the Nazis. You can't run a mechanized war economy on coal. The Nazis figured that out the hard way. The pain was already evident.
It was ESSENTIAL that the 4th Panzer Army elements within the kessel leave it before it was formed, and that its 'missing corps' be returned to it,(*) but that Army Group B must shed at least two panzer corps ( 4p + 2m ) to reverse the flow of events.
These latter formations would be at essentially FULL strength. Motoring across the steppe bores you, it doesn't kill you.
{
(*) Hitler took away a panzer corps from 4th Panzer Army way back in July-August. I'd have to look up the exact dates. The first to go was GD motorized division. It had to be extracted from Voronezh where it had gotten tied up in urban fighting consequent to its occupation of the western bank of the Don... where the Voronezh river borders the city to its west. (grab a map)
"By July 6, the German army occupied the western river-bank suburbs
before being subjected to a fierce Soviet counter-attack. In July 24
frontline was stabilised along Voronezh river. This was the opening move
of Case Blue"
The other divisions were shunted north to pump up 2nd Panzer Army - but mostly held in reserve... in a centralish position. The idea was that they'd throw their weight to stop any Soviet Winter Counter-Offensive, by which time, STAVKA held a patent on the content and execution thereof.
The existence of this RQF was a HUGE factor in the Luftwaffe's air lift optimism. The top-of-the-head assumption was that THREE fully equipped reserved panzer divisions would be shooting down to 6th Army in very short order. A rail line heading off to the southeast had been under construction at a furious pace for months.
(It was following a route that involved virtually no river crossings, hence its very long route.
}
It's nothing short of amazing that OKH's staff weren't barking like mad dogs about the cross-up in priorities. Backing away from Moscow was strategically meaningless. All of the ground east and west was already totally destroyed, militarily barren. Useless.
Further, the twin panzer armies were ideally sited for logistics. Backing away from Moscow would actually release trucks and gasoline -- so dearly needed to stop Uranus.
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@beacon
Guderian, himself, laid all of this out in 1953 in his own book. Others have weighed in on the issue. The 'prof' is correct. The condition of the panzer arm had NOTHING to do with the decision.
Guderian protested right on the spot and at that time.
The decision to let Goering loose was the world's worst kept secret as the Nazis used it in their propaganda at the time. (1940) You'll see it referenced in Allied newsreels of the period... endlessly.
The British-French escape was all detailed years ago -- before YouTube even existed by a British author. Dang if I can't locate my copy any more. It's his work that under-pins the recent film. It's been sitting around for decades, BTW.
That author was stunned as to how much spin the Churchill administration put on the BEF story. Prior to his writing, the larger public never knew about the BEF escaping over the mole.
The actual mechanism was one of the deepest secrets of the war - at that time. Every Tommy was sworn to secrecy about every aspect of the fiasco. Naturally, no-one wanted to ruin the chances for their buddies -- so every Tommy kept his mouth shut.
And Britain had ultra-hard line censorship, too. So nothing leaked into the press. The Press wasn't even let near the debarkation piers, either. The outer image was one of Tommies coming back to England all kitted out in spiffy uniforms, rifle in hand, too. That's what the public saw. Actually, the BEF came back without even small arms, ... and the UK had to re-equip every lad from the boots on up. (typ)
The BEF became the cadre for the massive build out of the British Army that soon took place. So its escape from Dunkirk was the ruination of Nazi Germany.
It was at Dunkirk that Brook and Monty made their bones. Both were destined to the highest rank. Monty proved to be a step-ahead of every other commander. The entire BEF would've been lost without him. Yup. He plugged all of the holes. The man had ice-water running in his veins.
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@John... good grief. After taking all of that credit Monty nearly got FIRED. It's pure BS. Bradley was down in Luxembourg City. He wasn't dithering. What a hoot. Bradley was shamed for not 'getting it.' It was IKE that sent the 7th Armored south, the 10th Armored north and the 18 Airborne Corps into the fray. He did so BEFORE the evidence was in.
(Said evidence was what Bradley was waiting for. That's not quite dithering. Rather, he was working to British//Russian speed. It was doctrine at that time that one didn't send in reserves until enemy intentions were clear. Ike had enough clarity to figure it out just by the screams from the front. BTW, it took V Corps's commander, Gerow, ALL DAY to figure out that his 2nd Division MG was right to disobey his attack order of the day. He apologized, humbled by the reality. Bradley placed HUGE weight on Gerow's opinion. Between the two of them, they basically ran 1st American Army, Hodges was a place holder for Bradley who never wanted to leave.)
This German offensive was the WORST performance by them during the war. They went off the rails within the first 72 hours -- that's the GERMAN opinion -- not mine.
The war was running long because of Market Garden. Stopping the 12th AG (gasoline restriction) caused the battle of Aachen.( ... and then the Bloody Hurtgen.) It was going to be surrendered as an open city. With that, the main bridges into Germany would've been secured. (!!!!) This is so embarrassing to the Allied cause that both British and American histories bury it.
Losing Aachen as an open city was the REAL tragedy of MG. Break out a map some time.
The British were barely in contact during the Bulge. They were, generally, relegated to being WEST of the Meuse. They just weren't needed. By the time XXX Corps was settled in -- the tide had reversed.
You're STILL eating Monty's BS. The stuff that nearly got him canned. It's a fraud. BTW, at the time the British army couldn't keep its divisions at proper strength. So they were broken up. In contrast the US Army was adding about a regiment every day at the time. We were still building up 9th Army... and then lending it to Monty! He was bitching and fetching when he had to give it back to 12th AG. US 9th Army WAS Monty's Big Punch. Once he had it, it became his leading attack formation straight through until he lost it to Bradley. Once that happened, the British Army kicked it back into idle. No-one wanted to be the last Brit to die at the front. Read the British accounts.
Monty forced the Americans to retreat -- to clean up their lines. Gavin was choking on such orders. Read his account. Monty got the 7th Armored to withdraw from St. Vith -- just for starters. These quite unnecessary retreats ran up the American blood lost. St. Vith was more important than Bastogne. It was THE choke point frustrating 6th Panzer Army -- later 6th SS Panzer Army.
The Bulge was an American victory. Period. Hitler lost his entire strategic reserve -- two panzer armies and the gasoline to power them. This campaign is the PRIMARY reason that Monty had a walk-over when he crossed the Rhine. Duh.
Then again, Monty was the LAST Allied commander to get across the Rhine, Bradley (Hodges) and Patton had stolen the march. Patton's punch through was so extreme that Bradley made him hold up. At the time Patton joked that he'd captured four ( 4) armies: 6th AG + two German armies. Heh.
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@ Dwarov -- Put down the bong. Get therapy.
Stalin triggered WWII in Europe by initiating the Soviet-Nazi Pact of August 23, 1939. Stalin wrote it, held the original in Soviet archives. Hitler merely signed on the line that was dotted. It, the document, was released to the world's press twenty-some years ago by President Yeltsin. His press conference was attended by the ENTIRE world's press in a huge auditorium -- the biggest in Moscow, IIRC.
Stalin, not Hitler, partitioned Poland -- with his own Fat Pencil. So fat it was that you'd think it was smeared lip stick.
Stalin had penal battalions by the dozen. They were suicide assault units. Defectors from such units became the German's most loyal 'volunteers.' Heh. Such 'volunteers' number in vast numbers by the end of the war. They never laid down their weapons, being 'ghosts' in the first place.
Read also: "Bloodlands." It's a totally depressing eye-opener.
Mass executions of politicals, partisans, Gypsies and Jews was strictly a Bloodlands phenomenon. No Western Power engaged in such atrocities at any time.
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@John Burns
Every German opponent only achieved success when they went with the Broad Front strategy.
The Germans "owned" the narrow front technique.
Broad Front = attacking German infantry -- not panzers.
Further, it meant attacking horse drawn infantry with you're own motorized formations. You'd pin their infantry with your own infantry, then punch through with tanks and half-tracks and race deep.
This was a consistently winning solution.
Panzers would merely back up as fast as you could ever advance, then they'd counter attack -- most inconveniently.
(This was the correct German solution for both Stalingrad and Kursk, BTW. During Uranus, the panzer formations should've fled west, leaving 6th Army behind, on the Volga to interdict it. Then, having reached the German supply network east of Rostov-on-Don the panzers would've wheeled around and begun counter attacking the most extended spearheads of the Soviets. It would've been a rout. By that time most T34s had broken down just motoring westward. Most Red formations were reduced to light infantry, without any heavy weapons. When the Russian north wing met the south wing, no-one carried anything but small arms. The big stuff was MILES to the rear.)
The German infantry could never quite back up fast enough to avoid being pocketed. Usually they, the infantry divisions, came apart in a shredded manner, with individual companies being swept up by on coming motorized formations.
The horses were particularly vulnerable. Once they were in the bag, all heavy weapons had to be left behind. Then the entire division lost its defensive cohesion. ( Artillery can't be pointed in every direction at once, so the simple trick was to come at it from an off angle. )
It wasn't too long before the German Army had a full blown horse crisis. It started in the late Autumn of '41 and never let up for the rest of the war. It's the reason that the Ostheer was restricted to the southern front. ( Case Blue ) and why 6th Army had no horses up with it at Stalingrad.
( They were short on horses in the first place. They had to get their horses back out of the winter weather -- which meant that they had to pull them back -- way back -- to where horse stalls still existed -- that is, had been newly built. The Russians had destroyed everything standing by such a time.)
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@Kristina
WRONG.
Britain defeated Germany the same old way she did in WWI.
Resource denial.
Indeed, that's TIK's main point.
London simply throttled Berlin's economy by denying it access to its critical war imports:
Crude oil ( imported from the USA )
Met coal ( imported from the USA )
Rubber ( imported from the British Empire )
Chrome ( imported from the British Empire )
Tungsten ( imported from China, Russia, British Empire )
Nickel ( imported from the Commonwealth// Canada or France )
Aluminum ( same as Nickel )
Magnesium ( imported from the USA, others)
Copper ( imported from the USA, others)
Canada was a MAJOR exporter of Aluminum and Nickel at that time. The RAF was built out of Canadian Aluminum.
Virtually all of these war-critical imports were dominated by British, American or Canadian firms.
The Americans also had all of the Gold in the world. The figures astonish. You name it, America had it in spades.
Some of these items could also be imported from South America -- however the firms involved were either American or British. If it came from the Westen Hemisphere, the Americans ran the show. If not them, then it was the British. ( Shell Oil, et. al. )
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@thunderbolt
Don't invent history, please.
It was Freddie de Goungand, Monty's chief of staff, that brought Monty around. Churchill was not even in the picture.
He returned to 21st Army Group HQ -- having just left Ike -- who had ALREADY drafted the magic letter addressed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Freddie flipped out, BEGGED Ike to not send it on until he'd had a chance to 'smooth things over with Monty.'
When he revealed to Monty just how perilous his position was -- Monty countered with the astonishing question: "Who can (possibly) replace me?"
Freddie had to tell his own boss that Monty's old boss FM Alexander was the American favorite to succeed Monty. [ The Americans had wanted Alexander ALL ALONG. ] And that their thinking was that Monty would be 'promoted' to some command back in England, and Alexander would be brought up from the Med, where he was already operating as a theatre supreme commander.
(SHAEF actually didn't cover the Med. You can see the politics of it: Britain had its Supreme Commander; America had its Supreme Commander. Their joint status was fuzzed by the press during wartime.
BTW, Churchill bitterly railed against 'Dragoon' precisely because it would take two armies away from Alexander. Churchill had all kinds of crazy ideas about using them in the eastern Med: Rhodes being at the top of the list. Ike had a major row with Winnie over the matter. )
"[Alexander] Commander-in-Chief Middle East and commanding the 18th Army Group in Tunisia. He then commanded the 15th Army Group for the capture of Sicily and again in Italy before receiving his field marshal's baton and being made Supreme Allied Commander Mediterranean."
The fact that Alexander was independent of SHAEF is only apparent when you pull the organizational chart for SHAEF. His entire command is missing, of course. The Med was considered a theatre in its own right. But, with D-Day the BIG action had shifted to Northwest Europe. This latter term was ginned up to make explicit the split between Ike's command and Alexander's command. Both reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As you can imagine, Alexander would cough up anything that Ike needed -- namely the newly constituted 6th Army Group. ( French 1st Army; American 7th Army )
&&&
AFTER Monty realized that Churchill would accept Alexander with no qualms at all... he drafted a contrite 'apology' to Ike about how he LOVED working as a team-member, etc. etc.
Obviously, Freddie drafted this letter. He'd been crafting it while on the plane flying to 21st Army Group HQ.
( Monty never went to Ike's HQ if it could possibly be avoided -- and it usually was. )
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@Magnus
They (incredibly) depended upon the Dutch explosives and Dutch detonation cables. Keep in mind that Bittrich gave express orders to NOT blow up the Nijmegen bridge.
As a result, the attempt was a last second affair. Whoops. But, the impulse was there.
No such reluctance would EVER be shown at Arnhem. The arrival of XXX Corps dispelled any crazy notion of Germany launching a counter attack. Bittrich suddenly shut up. Shooting up paras was one thing, the Irish Guards was a totally different kettle, all right.
A Dutchman had sabotaged the detonation circuit right from the start. It ran into the town precisely because the Dutch figured that the Threat came from Nazi Germany -- not Belgium. They did have a back-up detonation connection that ran back to the opposite bank. This was the one the SS activated. The problem for the SS was that the back-up circuit was in SERIES with the primary detonation circuit. No Dutchman explained that to them. Everything looked kosher right up until nothing happened. It's not as if the SS could test the circuit without dropping the Nijmegen bridge into the Waal. (They assumed.)
Being a civilian, none of the military paperwork// write-ups ever caught this. Hell, the Allies didn't even know that the detonation cables ran through the post office cum telephone exchange. ( in the same building... right at the base of the bridge... obviously built at the same time. ) Neither side prioritized getting into the post office// telephone exchange. It just didn't hit the average soldier that this was 'magic' ground.
Military (unit) histories are not going to waste ink praising a heroic civilian.
For some crazy reason, the Allies looked past the fact that all of the locals were allied with them. When the Germans figured this all out, they starved the Dutch. They had them down to eating boiled tulip bulbs, which makes for a very expensive and tasteless meal.
Once Grabner got across the Arnhem bridge -- long before Frost arrived, MG was dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
Without Grabner, Gavin waltzes across Nijmegen bridge, no matter what. THIS explains why both Browning and Gavin placed it on such a low priority.
1st Airborne was assumed to have blocked Arnhem bridge from the get-go -- and everyone knew that there were no Germans on the island. Hell, it was naked farmland. It only had a hamlet north of the Waal at Nijmegen.
Arnhem bridge could never be taken, was never taken. Interdicting the north approach did not constitute bridge capture.
Arnhem bridge had massively long approach bridging that went on and on. The bridge had to be pretty high over the river, while the surrounding land was way low.
What this meant was that when Frost shot up Grabner, Grabner was already leaving the bridge proper and descending the northern approach. This is why Frost had to shoot from the upper levels, and why 2nd Para could shuttle from side to side underneath the massive approach. It also meant that mortars, etc. couldn't reach under the approach. The SS had to slug it out, man to man, in street fighting. Even the panzers were rather freaked out because they had to wade among tall buildings that provided Molotov fire bomb opportunities galore. The SS took tremendous casualties while attacking Frost.
All of the above explains why ignoring Dutch and Ultra intel that the II SS Panzer Corps was in the area was such a catastrophe. And that event happened up at 21st Army Group and AA Army levels. No-one below the rank of army commander was let in on the Ultra secret.
It's for this reason, that Browning must be assumed to know all about Ultra -- and that Ike may have told Gavin to assassinate Browning at the last second -- rather than let Browning fall into SS hands. For there was no way that the SS would not torture Browning to cough up what he knew. Browning should never have landed with his boys. He simply knew too much.
In the Pacific, USN Captains suicided themselves rather than be caught by the IJN -- for just this reason.
Once Browning was on the ground, he lost all control of events. 1st Airborne needed him, critically, to un-phu-ck their air drops. He could do it. I can't think of anyone else with the authority to step in and stop the insanity of dropping supplies to the SS.
BTW, every time the RAF boys complained about what they saw, the drops were adjusted. Then the SS ran over the new drop zones. The RAF could never 'find' British Airborne in its ever shrinking perimeter.
By the end, the perimeter was so tiny that the RAF would need 'smart chutes' to hit the bullseye. 1st Airborne really didn't have a drop zone any more.
As for the 1,000 tanks story... that just HAD to come down from Bletchley Park// ULTRA... who probably intercepted Adolf's promise to OB West that they were priority. Hitler's promise was in connection with his Ardennes offensive. Bletchley had no idea that the panzers were to be assembled for November ( the original Bulge target date was mid-November ) not mid-September.
And, yes, OB West was the priority for all panzers. The Ostheer had to make do with what StgIIIs, Hertzers, and PAK that they got. The only Ostheer formation that was kept up to strength was Gross Deutschland. ( Hitler was a 'Colonel' for one of its brigades, BTW. Heh. Yes, yes, he made himself honorary Colonel of a brigade. How many hats can that tyrant wear?)
Naturally Bletchley assumed the worst, as did Browning. It's a VERY good bet that the so-called estimate from Gavin's S-2 came instead from Browning. Gavin would never have been clued into ULTRA. The lie that the intel came from his S-2 was generated to hide its source as being Browning. ( and ULTRA) After the fiasco was over, the estimate looked embarrassing, of course. So Gavin 'owned' it.
For falling on his sword, Gavin was given his second star. He was definitely one of the Big Boys after MG was over.
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