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

  1. @ Burns Can't you get anything right? Being the left flank of Monty in Sicily would NEVER have split it in two. The Palermo push drove the Germans crazy. Instead of fighting through the mountains, left of Monty, Patton destroyed the Germans in much, much better offensive terrain. Why to you dream up this rubbish? Ike gave Monty EVERYTHING requested by 21st Army Group. That's what Patton and Bradley were howling about. My own father's truck went to them -- so he had to take a vacation from the war... along with an entire truck regiment -- one of many. 3rd Army NEVER comes up in "A Bridge Too Far."
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  2. @ Burns Fighting up a volcano is an insane military goal. Good grief.
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  3. @ Burns Patton's route was -- and ever remains -- THE classic route into Germany from France. In an era of trucks, pure distance became almost meaningless. The USA never ran out of logistical reach because they never ran out of ever more 2.5 ton trucks. So many that they were backed up in England. The Pentagon assumed that truck losses would be vastly higher than events proved. That's why America had trucks coming out of its ears. IKE stopped Patton. The flick you doubt is nothing more than scenematic testimony by BRADLEY. He wrote those lines. The convo was strictly private at the time. Bradley was the only surviving witness -- and a witness privy to EVERYTHING. He was, de facto, the American ground commander. 6th Army Group (Devers) was out of the Med and notionally under Alexander. [ Obviously, only on paper. Once the 6th AG merged with the 12th AG Alexander had backed entirely away from further involvement. He had all of Italy on his plate.] It was PATTON that split the Jerries in two in Sicily. It was BRADLEY that tore into Patton's reputation -- not Monty. And he did so mostly within the film you dismiss. Both Bradley and Monty were wrong. Going up the coast, side by side would've been logistically insane. What tactician would cross mountains instead of the pass? No-one. What pissed off BRADLEY -- far more than Monty -- was that he was junior to Patton -- and was getting NO PRESS. He -- at the time -- believed that he was in danger of being stopped out as merely a corps commander. Being a genius ( est IQ 153 ) it was galling for Bradley to see sloppy, impulsive staff work. In his own bio, Bradley openly wrote that he STILL couldn't understand how Patton got such good performance out of a staff that Bradley wholly disdained. The crazy idea that Bradley was in Patton's corner must be dismissed. It must have totally stunned Bradley that Patton gifted him 1st Army -- by breaking the ultimate taboo -- slapping an enlisted man -- while in a hospital -- no less. What Bradley didn't know, nor did Ike, was that Marshall had already decided that it was IMPOSSIBLE for Patton to lead 1st Army. Why? The Japanese ambassador sent massive missives to Tokyo. In one of them he detailed Adolf's opinion that ONLY Patton would lead the Americans in Overlord. And once his leadership was correctly established, Adolf would send his ENTIRE French garrison to oppose him. This was exactly what London and Washington wanted to prevent. In this regard, the English performed one of the greatest deceptions in military history. Astonishing, really. McNair was originally supposed to lead 12th AG. About which Bradley has lied his ass off about. McNair had no other job at that time, having previously been in charge of the USA build-up -- which was effectively over. So what you have is Bradley telling you the absolute truth one moment -- when it makes him look good -- and then lying his ass off when the truth would diminish is awesomeness. In sum: the classic, striving, climbing, military general. A pattern you'll find in Monty, Patton... and many another. Instead of quoting obtuse historians, you must use your HEAD. All of the decisions in written form were reached many hours if not days and weeks before. For security reasons, generals don't even let their staffs in on what's to come -- until there really is no other choice. Being inside the insider's loop is what command is really all about. All in all, the Anglo-American alliance of WWII makes all other collaborations look bad. Think of the French-British command situation in WWI. That crap is exactly what Marshall and Ike had to stop. De Gaulle was astounded when Ike treated him as peer to FDR and Winston. He was allowed inside the insider's information loop. He was totally ungracious - and rightfully earned the ire of Churchill. Let's face it, De Gaulle was a prick, a genius, but still a prick. In sum: with all of these inflated egos bloating around it's amazing that Ike could keep the crew together. Ike's right-hand man was Tedder, of whom not enough is praised. The fight was against Adolf's tyranny -- not which peacock had the nicest military record. BTW, Monty, Bradley and Patton and all the rest had their days of excellence -- and some full on fiascos, too. Let it go. They're all dead.
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  4. @ Burns As for MG -- Monty shielded Churchill's involvement -- his insistence on it. His line of reasoning TOTALLY turned on what the French spy was feeding him -- and she was always right. London knew practically all they needed to know about the V2 -- in terms of stopping it -- they couldn't once it got going. From the first, the RAF spared no resources (fighters// recce ) trying to shoot up the rockets before launch. As Desert Storm showed, even decades later, neither the RAF nor USAF could perform a decent job against Saddam. So the counter-V1 program that had worked so well -- all of those launch ramps being destroyed -- would not work. As you well know, the NAZIS built the first 'IBM' launch base. It looked all the world like today's USAF Minuteman in a silo scheme. The RAF pulverized it. That's one reason the V2 arrived so late in the war. Plan A was destroyed by the RAF! So von Braun's team had to develop -- on the fly -- the mobile launch system. That the Jerries didn't see that they HAD to be mobile -- well, I guess they were not super men after all. Under Plan A, the Nazis figured to launch and launch and launch from the handful of ultra-bunkers that they'd crafted. This would save them a LOT of gasoline -- and actually decrease the need for launch crews. The silos would be factories of death. This is the kind of stuff that had Winston freaking out about. He put his own son-in-law on the case. Any news about the V2 went straight past all other commands straight to the top. Even Monty would've loved to have just carried on the same old way. 21st AG was advancing VERY rapidly and in good order. That would look great in the history books, every general saw that. Monty was no child. He knew that he could never stop Patton from grabbing headlines. But then, Monty was ALL OVER the news with his victories, much to the dismay of the Americans. Their desks were over flowing with British newspapers -- whereas American papers were at least a day or more behind the British. On some days, the British press covered the entire front page with the 21st AG. Well, what would you expect? Whiners need to grow up. That MANY British authors disdain America, its army, its culture -- infects their take on reality. Check out the crazed bias of Zucker versus Trump. Everything that Zucker hates in Trump is but a mirror of Zucker's own personality. This is typical human behavior -- to see in others ones very own faults. Bradley, Patton and Monty were of exactly that stripe. In the movie, Bradley -- its ghost author -- paints himself as a SAINT. What tripe. He takes virtually no swipes at Monty at all. Indeed, virtually every subordinate commander under Monty sung his praises. But then, that's also true of Patton. My father worships him. When his division was under Bradley -- it bled to death. When under Patton things ran smooth. It was like night and day. So Bradley has everything backwards. Patton was the GI's general -- flash and all -- whereas Bradley -- the genius -- is bleeding his AG white. BTW, Bradley NEVER let go of 1st Army. Marshall stopped him from growing it even larger than 15 divisions. So he kept the best. When 3rd Army broke out across France -- it was HALF the size of 1st Army. It was to take weeks to bring the rest of 3rd Army over. Patton was well set to liberate Paris. Bradley stopped him by vectoring him south. Yet, no-one comments on that vanity.
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  5. @ Burns The German army in the west had collapsed...especially in front of 3rd Army... the original rupture point. So while Monty and Bradley were still fully engaged, Patton could just roll along like it was peace time. In Sicily, Patton had the 34th division fighting 24 hours a day -- for a time. The Krauts had never seen that before. By convention, WWII forces called it off shortly after nightfall. Patton used sequential regiments -- going up the same main road. He blew the Krauts out because they're commander never imagined that this gambit would be used. Patton used it BECAUSE he knew that the Jerries were thin -- really had only had a composite protection force. So they were brittle. After they cracked, Patton rolled straight into Polarmo. The Germans had simply not sent enough to the center of the island. They focused their defense against Monty -- because of his killer reputation. Monty didn't quite catch the fact that now that he was world famous, the Germans were going to dog him like no other Western commander. This occurred so famously in Normandy. Hitler thought nothing of jumped up corps commander Bradley. So 21st AG got virtually ALL of the reinforcements from 15th Army. In the spy game, this phenomenon is known as blow-back.
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  6. @ Burns But you're speaking of yourself. Your take on Sicily is miles off. You have NEVER realized that he Americans had their gasoline shut way back -- to send to 21st AG. THAT was the supply crisis. All other military goods were useless to their buddies in the opposite army groups. Monty didn't need ammo. Fighting had virtually stopped. MG revived German morale. It was the PAUSE, which was exactly what Bradley and Patton, et. al were howling about.
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  7. @ Burns Quoting me -- in essence -- to rebut me -- how does that work? I ALREADY made that point. Monty ATTRACTED the Germans to him. It's THE REASON that Ike tossed Monty's pipe dreams into the garbage bin. It's the SAME REASON that Patton was denied a role in Overlord. The broad front -- which Monty hated -- worked because the Krauts could never focus on any one threat. And they certainly couldn't handle the Big Picture. Monty was as vainglorious as ANY General -- ours or theirs. Unlike you, I'm not obsessed with fantasies about what happened 70 years ago. That Ike and Lee cut off 12th Army Group is beyond question. My own father -- sitting in the next room -- constantly re-tells how his truck was pulled out from under him in favor of Monty. His ENTIRE truck regiment instantly sat on its ass -- at a time most histories tell us that the front needed EVERY truck in the world to supply it. The British had given up on their own lorries. That's what had happened. BTW, my father drove across 12th and 21th AG boundaries EVERY day in Normandy. He was shuttling aircraft landing mats -- and was attached to 9th Army Air Force -- not really a ground trooper at all. ( He was kicked out of pilot training because the USAAF was not losing enough pilots -- 50,000 cadets, un-cadeted, at one stroke. ) In such transits he saw just how staggeringly inferior British trucking was. The American army had brand new GMC trucks in their thousands. They didn't. Trucks are more important than tanks. You need 50 to 200 trucks to support one tank -- properly -- depending.
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  8. @Evgeniy If it's news to you, Zhukov's peers HATED him. Stalin knew this. It the reason he was spared during the purges. Stalin's concern was always about his personal well being -- as in staying alive. He moved against threats, and Zhukov was no threat to him. No-one would EVER join with Zhukov in a plot against Stalin. He was THAT unpopular. He didn't change his stripes during the war, either. His high point in history was when he shot Beria in the head... to universal applause... well, at least the Politburo.
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  9. For your information: the Germans actually took Panther turrets and used them as pill boxes in Central Italy. They worked great -- until the Allies drove around them. At first, no-one could believe what they were looking at. They were a bust, of course.
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  10. @LtBrown For anyone curious as to what is entailed in making an ice bridge, check out "Ice Road Truckers." Keep in mind that the American & Canadian truckers are crossing virtual mill ponds versus the mighty Volga. During the annual freeze-up the Volga cascades relentless compression ridges -- each much taller than a commercial truck. They start out looking nothing too spectacular -- and then they just build and compound away. By the end, they look like the scene from "Superman II", the movie, where the man of steel has his abode in a crystal palace of ice shards. Superman has much better house-keeping, that's for sure. Even Lake Ladoga was a piece of cake compared to the Volga. The Red Army had combat engineers hopping all over the southern wing of the Uranus advance. Getting down, across, and up the Volga bank was a first class bitch. It's the reason that the German army thought twice about marching eastward to encircle Stalingrad, something that most cardboard generals would've thought of straight off. The northern wing of Uranus was LONG. You were still crossing major rivers, but at least the crossings were east and north of the battle front. Still, the Reds had to hide their logistical preparations where they crossed such obvious channel points. The Germans arrogantly assumed that the Soviets just couldn't do something that the Germans couldn't do. It's a fact of WWII, the Reds, the Brits and the Yanks schooled the German army on logistics -- and the dullards never picked up on the craft. Once the Red army was across the Don, it still had to contend with peasant tankers who only knew how to beat a burrow// ass. The reason that the T-34s had epic failure rates turned largely on the astounding ignorance of its drivers -- and crews generally. The contrast with the USA Armored Corps was night and day. The typical American tanker had been in his Sherman for about two years before it was sent into battle. ( 2nd, 3rd, 4th Armored, especially ) The result was that once they got away from head to head tank shots, they ran wild all over every German formation -- including Panther battalions. Even the pop-gun 75mm would destroy Panthers from the side or rear. This became the standard mode of counter-attack. Panthers were just mobbed. StgIII and Mark IV were at even greater hazard. This is why no German panzer attack really got rolling against the Americans. They needed to punch 'clean air' -- a tank-free seam. During the Bulge, the 7th Armored and 10th Armored just ruined things for the Germans. Within days, Joachim Pieper's unstoppable panzers were stopped. It never happened, but if Shermans and T-34s met, the Shermans would've utterly destroyed their opponents. The T-34 had about HALF the glacis armor of the Sherman, while their guns were rather similar in penetration. The Sherman would've been five times as reliable. So after but a few days of combat, there would've been no T-34s left. Most would 've been abandoned due to running gear issues.
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  11. @John You've nailed it. I find it passing strange that jeeps weren't employed by the thousand so that XXX Corps would no longer be road bound. A few jeeps were landed with the 101st and 82nd. They went everywhere. Why, why, why didn't the 101st drop in between the two critical bridges. The location is an ISLAND. There was no FLAK to deal with. Indeed, there were no Germans on the island. To reach the island, the Germans would have to use the pitifully few ferries -- or parachute in themselves. ( Fat chance ) The drop zones were selected by someone who was high or drunk. Good grief.
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  12. @Ixsalit At this scale, your best stats come from gender imbalance. Keep in mind that the Red army used widows by the thousand, too. The answer is stark: Russian fatalities were EPIC. The widow count was through the roof. BTW, the STAVKA attitude towards its troops is reflected in such terms as: 'Cucumbers.' -- Yes, that was the slang lingo for fresh meat sent to the front. When ordered to cross the Dneiper, an entire company of cucumbers immediately followed orders -- and jumped into the freezing river. All were lost. An hour later, the engineers arrived with boats and paddles. They were pissed. All of the cucumbers were missing. Now they would be in trouble. All of this was recounted by a 1st Lt in the Red Army. He was an eye witness to this folly. (Artillery observer, he was there should the Krauts show up on the far bank.) He had no authority -- and just sat their in amazement and disgust as his superiors threw the boys away. Later, he cried himself to sleep. With boats, the cucumbers did get to the west bank. The cucumbers jumped into the water because of insane Red army demands. ANY cucumber questioning an officer's order was pulled out of the unit and sent to a penal battalion -- PDQ -- never to be heard from again. Did you ever hear about Stalin's take-a-shower order? May 1943 EVERY front line trooper had to take a shower. IIRC this was a Sunday, too. (A courier had showed up at STAVKA smelling like walking chit. ) So it was with total amazement that the Germans were treated to an astounding sight: shower equipment for field troops was erected in plain sight -- right up to the front lines. Then ENTIRE formations lined up to take turns showering -- obviously as fast as possible. The Germans held their fire. And then, when it seemed as if every Red was standing in line, every German formation across the 2,000 km front opened up with mortars and machine guns, belt-fed, too. It was time to call up for fresh cucumbers! Virtually no Soviet trooper escaped German fire. If a general attack had been authorized, the front line would've marched east at quite a clip. But it wasn't after Stalingrad, the Heer was quite happy to just sit in its trench line. This entire travail was published in Russian, over twenty-years ago. It's one of THOUSANDS of such similar tales. Most of these cluster phu ucks could not be exposed until 1992.
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  13. @Ixsalit You'll be refreshed to note that the German supply system routinely ripped off their allies of all heavy weapons. Yup. The reason that the Italians and Romanians folded up at Stalingrad was that the German army stole ALL of their anti-tank weapons. Yeah, their homelands had sent them, but they evaporated during the trip to the front. THIS is the primary reason why Hitler lost ALL of his allies for the Russian campaign. The WORD got out: you'll be lucky if you can hold onto your d i c k.
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  14. @Merceb You're off base. The Germans had Stalin by the throat as long as they were on the Volga. That river is the Soviet version of the Rhine or Mississippi. The Soviet economy HAD to get its oil up the Volga once the thaw occurred. Shipping it up by river barge WAS the system. There were no pipelines. ( America was no different. She built her first trans-continental oil pipeline in a panic during early WWII. It ran from Texas up to New Jersey -- where all of New York's refineries were. ) With -- literally -- no oil at all, Stalin would have no air force, no tank force, no truck force, no NOTHING. That's why he issued Order 227, "no step back." It REALLY WAS that dire. This situation is why Stalin burned through no less than TEN reserve armies to hold the Don-Volga land bridge and the city proper. For Uranus Stalin brought up yet more brand-new reserve armies. These included one of his first attempts at a Tank Army. (the 5th) It also featured his earliest Cavalry Army. So, no, the Nazis had their shot right up until Uranus. They screwed up Case Blue -- primarily because Adolf was high as a kite on meth. You read that right. Hitler was jacked up on speed. His behavior was so weird that Himmler had his medicine analysed by expert chemists. They were astounded at the evil brew. It was Hitler that kept swinging the 4 Panzer all over the joint. He flip-flopped more times than a pancake chef. Absolutely no-one could straighten him out. He even broke with Keitel at this time. Keitel defended Army Group A's commander from Adolf's critique. Hitler dressed him down for embarrassing himself. He wouldn't talk to Keitel for a solid month -- just froze him out. When it counted, Hitler was floating in and out of reality. THAT'S what really happened during Case Blue. His addiction also explains why he had 6th Army even attacking into the city. This was a 100% reversal of his prior General Orders which read -- stay the Hell out of major cities. ( This was drafted after the Kiev fiasco. The Heer took thousands of casualties inside an 'abandoned' city. One bomb blew up the top leadership of multiple divisions. (!!!) [ Shades of "Inglorious Basterds" they were killed in a theatre. ]
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  15. The Tukhachevski tryst was revealed during this Russian broadcast. It was the first time anyone, anywhere heard such an allegation. But, the Russians stated that it was the trigger event that created the female spy squad.
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  16. I first heard of this from an official ( Putin era ) video originally broadcast from Moscow in the last four years. It was up on YouTube, overdubbed in English. Hollywood has taken the Putin-era film as the basis for their film "Yellow Sparrows." ( Hollywood is merely juicing up what Moscow broadcast as a documentary. ) Found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-0SMryFWpc It's wickedly fun viewing. I don't fabricate history. That's what CNN is for. But, I get 'it' with your nic. Perfect!
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  17. @Denying History So, you lose.
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  18. @Greg... You then must know that Stalin had HATED Tuch for almost twenty-years before he liquidated him. See: the Russo-Polish war.(1919-1920) Stalin was universally seen as the fool that lost that campaign. Heydrich's gambits were a joke to Stalin. They didn't fool him. The USSR out-spied Nazi Germany -- pretty much at every turn. (Yes, Stalin had agents inside the SD.) Russia's reverses during the war turned on Stalin not believing his own agents. In this, he repeated his stupidities of 1920, in Poland.
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  19. Stalin was negotiating with the Poles as late as July 1939 -- proposing that his armies be given a free corridor straight through Poland so as to attack the Nazis in conjunction with Poland and France. Britain was figured by Stalin to be a non-factor on the ground. Warsaw, amazingly, didn't trust Stalin. Go figure. So, Stalin double-crossed his erstwhile allies and launched WWII in Europe. Yeltsin's late 90s presentation to the world's press made it crystal clear that STALIN, not Hitler, launched WWII by way of the anti-Western Pact. Hitler always wanted a prompt war, see Munich, but was totally frustrated by both Goering (Munich again) and strategic realities (Oil, nickel, rubber, ... the list is long) The Soviet theory -- soon proven catastrophically wrong -- was that the Reds could 'aim' Adolf against the West and after a huge blood-letting the Reds could/would come in the back-door... reaching all the way to the Atlantic. Virtually to a man, Western experts are still stuck on the idea that Adolf started the war. BTW, the negotiated deal was for BOTH the Nazis and the Bolsheviks to invade 9-1-39. That was put in writing. 'Clever' Stalin delayed his entry until the onus totally fell upon Hitler. This entirely fake fumbling was to result in Barbarossa. One should note that MORE nations were invaded by the Reds as a result of the pact than by the Nazis -- right up until 5-10-1940. (Finland, Romania, the Baltics, Poland -- even a touch of Slovakia was taken when the. Nazis invaded from the west. ( The passes through the eastern mountains) As for the Pact: Stalin had the original -- it was drafted in Moscow -- and Hitler merely got a 'carbon copy.' (!) It was the original that Yeltsin presented to the world. The Press was gobsmacked. Allied war propaganda was proven to be totally wrong. The West became allied with the initiator of the conflict -- the fellow that gasolined the French air force out of the sky. Yes, the crazy high number of sorties over the Meuse were ONLY possible because of Soviet crude oil. Paris never planned on that. Poland's aggressive policy consisted of not trusting Stalin. Oh, my!
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  20. @TIK Hitler ruined most of the German infantry divisions across AGS by burning up their engineers. The blood toll was astounding. The engineers had more flame throwers and machine guns than line infantry. So Hitler threw them into tunnel warfare and all the rest. ( rat war ) Later this would bite him, as he ran low on sappers able to set mines.
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  21. It was a common practice in the Heer for divisions to swap around corps. Hence it was common for a corps commander to have as few as one to as many as six divisions under his command. These links would even shift from day to day. In the case of the Leaping Horsemen they were over-staffed with talent precisely so that they would truly come up to speed with their panzer brothers in double-quick time. That's why the 24th had so many command tanks -- double what you'd expect. Remember that command tanks are Mark IIIs with only dummy main guns -- and stuffed with extra radios and a map table. Yes, it swung up and away when not needed. This scheme was abandoned when the Mark III was pulled from front line duty. Command tanks were supposed to blend in with the main battle tanks, of course.
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  22. It wasn't actually rebuilt to its TO&E. It had lost virtually all of its field officers in Normandy. Then it was sent against the American 2nd Infantry -- itself expected to attack December 16. So it was loaded with ammo and had 8" guns in support. These were the guns that triggered the Malmedy massacre. They had gutted Piper's boys.
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  23. Hart had consistently negative things to say about the Allied High Command -- all of them. They'd SHUT HIM OUT. No-one would consult him. He remained insulted to the end of his days. He is hopelessly biased.
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  24. News flash: virtually ALL of the Socialist politicians in Germany were inducted en masse by Adolf Hitler. They had 72-hours to sign up -- and they did so. When the Soviets crushed the Nazis -- they inducted Nazis into their ranks en masse. You'd be stunned as to how many East German political and military figures had made this transition. There were -- not so amazingly -- some younger True Believers who went through Socialist-Nazi-Socialist transition !
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  25.  mike mcmike  Obviously you need to read "The True Believer" by Hoffer. This little tome is considered by all to be in the top-three political tracts of the 20th Century. As for the 'converts' -- I'm talking explicitly about Top Politicians in the national legislature, mayors, and others of similar rank. This offer was NOT extended to the hoi poloi which you are describing. They were NOT part of the 72-hour "join us or flee" edict. There were true Conservatives in the legislature. Those guys were NOT invited into the Nazi party. They just went into internal exile -- that is -- prompt retirement. There were no jobs/ government positions for them. Socialists were kindred spirits. They merely had to jump from Stalin to Hitler. No other attitude adjustment was required. Again: read "True Believer" to understand the dynamics described here. There could never be an adjustment between Hitler and Conservative Germans. They were all-the-way-out of government. Yes, they had to keep their heads down. You'd be shocked as to how many went clean through the war with their noses clean -- pensioned off by the Nazis. It's for the above reason that I gag and howl at all the cinematic references (Hollywood) about the Nazis sending Socialists to Dachau. Actually, if you kept your mouth shut -- and stayed lucky -- the SD was not really interested in you. That all changed in a stroke if the Nazis thought that you were an activist. Free-thinkers were sent to Dachau in a steady stream. BTW, Dachau was not only torture college -- but it was the only camp that entirely focused on POLITICALS. Early on, many of those Politicals were Jews. It took a while for the full insanity of Nazism to kick in. High profile Jews were not sent to the larger death camp system. They were tortured to death right there at Dachau. Dachau was Camp #1 in the entire evil scheme. EVERY camp monster learned his evil craft while at Dachau. That's where the sadists 'made their bones.' Truly evil cruelty was propagated outward from Dachau. BTW, don't believe Wiki. Dachau was founded by the SA -- not the SS/ SD. That all changed after the Night of the Long Knives. Eicke took over. He merited hanging, without a doubt, but beat the noose by death at the front, 1943. He was the villain that crafted the rationale for death camp torture. Mere murder was simply not enough for Eicke.
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  26.  mike mcmike  Since you are plainly a True Believer -- evidence, so much in abundance -- will have no impact on you. I'm not going to g@@gle for McMike. But for the general readership, IIRC, the magic 72-hour window occurred after Hindenburg died -- over a three-day-weekend. IIRC sometime around August 1934. McMike -- virtually NO-ONE fled. Hitler got 97+% to sign on the line that was dotted. Even Socialists and Stalinists were not so crazy as to actually go to the USSR. They knew, far better than most, just what was up in the Soviet Union. They had many personal contacts -- and many were in the Trotsky fan club, to boot. In sum, your entire world view is false. After the 'mass conversion' there were NO Nazi reprisals for the very dudes that they'd been street fighting with for more than a decade! For both factions were minorities compared to the general German population. As seen today, Germans want Conservative Values and Socialist Outcomes. Note that Merkel, herself, was an EAST GERMAN college professor. No wonder she's a go-along politician.
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  27.  mike mcmike  It was International News and is easy to g@@gle. I'm not going to do so for you -- the True Believer -- since I know that you are truth-proof. You radiate your set mind and mind-set.  I don't post for you. I post for the rest of the planet. For all other readers: You must read The True Believer to grok McMike. Then you'll understand why McMike simply can't learn, can't change, ... until his world falls apart. Then he'll hop to a new world-view which could be anything across the political & religious spectrum. For he is a man-of-faith in the truest sense of the word.
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  28.  mike mcmike  Won't.
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  29.  mike mcmike  I'm not your student -- and you ARE a True Believer. As a consequence, you are 'Truth Proof.
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  30. @Neil You're preaching to the choir. That was MY POINT. Would you believe that a modern jet airliner uses about 30% of its entire fuel load just getting to altitude? Then it can fly the next thousand miles on the rest -- and have a cushion for landing safety. Why are you informing' Me of all people ?
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  31. @Neil You seem to have entirely missed my point. Oh, well. Each trip into the kessel required two ascents on ONE load of rotten Luftwaffe avgas.
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  32. @Neil Why are you belaboring all of this tedium? BTW, your stats are typical of much lower and slower craft. It stands to reason that you don't burn much when you're not even going up all that high. For the Luftwaffe, the nightmare of the kessel was that the Reds positioned an astounding number of heavy AA guns all along the western egress from the kessel. This meant that the Ju-52s had to bob and weave about five times a minute -- lest their flight path be entirely too predictable.   ( Typical AA round uses 1,000 feet per second when calculated to working heights. ( USAAF doctrine, per their training films ) For the USAAF this meant that no more than 20 seconds could me maintained in any specific direction. ( ie 20,000+ feet ) For the Ju-52s -- running at 12,000 feet// 3.6km -- twelve seconds would be pushing your luck. But at least the small arms fire became irrelevant. )
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  33. @Neil -- and the commentariat: German accounts tell of AA fire from BIG guns so intense that it looked like machine gun fire. Stalin// STAVKA had sent essentially EVERY BIG AA gun he could spare from Moscow to the kessel. In this, Stalin was pre-peating what Churchill did during the V-1 blitz. Winnie sent essentially the ENTIRE 32pdr AAA out from London to the Channel. ( In three-days -- or else -- heads would roll.)
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  34. @Neil Your line of argumentation is weird. 1) Ju-52s are TRI motors -- although I'd agree that they follow the stats for modern single engine reciprocating aircraft. The ONLY salient point to modern readers is that the Ju-52 fleet had to fly OUT, land, take OFF, and Land on one fuel load. That's brutal even now, let alone back in late '42. This equation was last seen during the Berlin Airlift... and at least the Red Air Force was not shooting down USAF/ RAF machines. ( France was a joke at the time. ) 2) The BIG issue for the Luftwaffe was that they couldn't easily avoid Soviet FLAK: 76.2mm guns -- and the occasional 85mm gun. Either one was more than able to rip the Ju-52 to pieces. These FLAK batteries were relevant because the Luftwaffe quickly determined that they couldn't get into the kessel during daylight. Which rather stands to reason: most of the 24 hours available were in the dark in the first place. The number of Luftwaffe pilots able to fly at night, navigate at night, was VERY much less than the total of pilots in the ranks. This latter fact does not get much mention, BTW. When you add up all the risks, the damages, the kessel was destroying he Luftwaffe. The Germans were not losing the average pilot, they were losing he very elite pilots. This was all compounded during the Spring of '43. You'd scarcely believe the Lufwaffe fatalities when the weather broke. The Red Air Force had been TRANSFORMED. It was now receiving AMAZING amounts of British ( think Iranian ) and American avgas. Yes, yes, the British, British Petroleum, were shunting astounding amounts of avgas up from the Persian Gulf once the rail lines were squared away. Even before Uranus, the USA was shipping astounding amounts of LendLease aid: jeeps, tanks, -- the WORKS. It's FALSE that LendLease kicked in only after Kursk. LendLease was RESPONSIBLE for BOTH Uranus and Kursk. The flood had already started. 1942 LendLease reached astounding figures -- from the start. It just kept intensifying as the war years rolled on. This causes moderns to miss the astounding impact of LendLease.
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  35. @Neil This troll thread is a classic. Where is it headed? Hah, ha, ha, ha....
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  36. @Neil No, you're a troll. Heh, I get it. I can't say it's been illuminating,... but it has been of a British humor. It does not translate well across the water, BTW. Get yee to a nunnery. Or any other self-esteem clinic you can afford.
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  37. BTW, the Americans found that drivers were the WORST of maintenance labor -- since they'd been up for 48-hours straight on a jag of coffee. My father's V-letters show him writing, ever writing, down into babble. When I converted them to English, (spelling issues) he couldn't dope out what he was writing about. That's how frazzled war time driving became. BTW, every 5th GMC 2.5ton truck had a ring mounted .50 cal machine gun -- because the US Army thought that the Luftwaffe would show up. Thanks to the USAAF, they were a no-show -- which is good. After 48-hours of driving, no driver could've hit anything in the sky. During the Red Ball, the routine was to drive 72-hours straight -- basically until you dropped. The US Army kept adding drivers and trucks straight through the project. Monty terminated the Red Ball with his 2,000 GMC truck request. Yes, it was the BRITISH that terminated the Red Ball -- and it was the Red Ball that was supporting 12th Army Group. This is the event that Bradley and Patton are howling about in the film "Patton." Hitler stopped the Western Allies by shooting up London with V-2s. Winnie, not Monty, was the inspiration for Market-Garden, and London was the reason why.
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  38. The primary objection to landing on the island between the bridges was that it was not suitable for GLIDERS. So... Why didn't Browning see the obvious play? Drop the Poles on day one. Browning should stay in Britain. and the 82nd could drop on BOTH sides of Nijmegen and the 101st should just skip the Son crossing. It's so close to the front you KNOW that it's not only wired, but its guard detail is wired themselves. In the pre-battle days, there was absolutely no reason not to push the XXX Corps as in regular way operations. Indeed, why not press across the front so that the Germans can't race to block the key highway? And, why not bring up jeeps by the thousand? They were perfect for the muddy farmland that was everywhere in front of XXX Corps.
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  39. The British burned out their trucks prior to Market-Garden. That's why Monty had to beg for 2,000 GMC trucks! That was about as pleasant as gargling shattered glass. But, XXX Corps simply had to have reliable trucks for Garden to work.
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  40. @Mulder The ENTIRE gambit blew up once the SS rolled across the Arnhem bridge and entered the island. Close in maps fail to show that the gap between these critical bridges was an island. Obviously, the priority was to grab both bridges from both sides at the start. The critical weapon necessary was the flame thrower. It stops tanks hot. Without the Arnhem bridge it did not matter what happened elsewhere. The gambit was a bust. BTW, the island was deemed to be the launch location for the V-2s hitting London. Shutting that down was what caused Monty to claim 90% success. The V-2 aspect was a highly classified secret for YEARS after the battle. This is why no-one uttered a word about it.
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  41.  @allangibson8494  Ploesti was lost in early September 1944 to the Red Army.
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  42.  @mikefay5698  You are largely correct BUT France does have coal down in the mountains. But mining it was of a much smaller scale because that coal was FAR from the primary markets up north. A&L were in the sweet spot. During WWII, the Nazis were not about to ship A&E coal to unoccupied France. So Vichy France subsisted on these lesser mines. This worked because Vichy France had but a fraction of the pre-war population of metropolitan France. (Vichy France included Algeria and Tunisia and French Morocco. Torch caused Hitler to invade, even air-landing troops into Tunisia.)
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  43. Point of IRONY alert. The US dime of WWII -- usually described as the "Mercury dime" had the Fascist, bundle-symbol, on its reverse side. It was replaced, after FDR's passing with the modern design still in mass circulation. The Fascist symbol was adopted for the dime's reverse in 1916 -- when Wilson was going to keep America out of WWI. It was plainly a sop to the American union movement.
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  44. @Donald Hill You've found the acorn. Keep in mind that Gavin received his second star promptly after MG. He HAD done exactly as ordered: save Browning at any cost. Browning in SS hands would be a tortured LtG - a man who knew too much about ALL Allied airborne operations. If MG had been a success, Browning would certainly be given his fourth star -- and a life peerage -- like the other British greats. He was a PREMIER general in the eyes of all of his peers. How many guys can EVER claim to have founded a essential arm of the Service? That only happens about three times in a millennia. Gavin's personal bravery is beyond question. In this event, he's wiping clean the stain that Browning put on his own record. He should absolutely NOT have landed with his troops. He was far too valuable.
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  45. Second STAR
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  46. One of the worst fiascos for the British -- uniquely -- was their petrol tin. These LEAKED, especially under rotten road conditions. The typical fuel truck was nothing more than a standard truck loaded to the gills with petrol tins. THAT'S why you dared not light up near such a machine. The US Army simply didn't use British tins because they were so leaky. BTW, mechanized armies use so much fuel that 'supply' is dominated by fuel trucks. Normal machines carrying 'Jerry' cans. The name alone tells you which nation the Americans copied.
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  47. Rommel and Halder hugely disliked each other -- which went back before North Africa. Rommel 'dissed' Halder back when Rommel was the commander of Grossdeutchland -- appointed by Adolf himself. If you get the right footage, you can see Rommel talking to Hitler when Rommel was still wearing a steel helmet... and a mere Col.
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  48.  @JRobbySh  That's not quite how it worked. Fuel oil supplanted COAL. Coal was actually cheaper than fuel oil -- but was a MESS to deal with. Back in the good-old-days refineries did not have the technology to up-grade heavy fuel oil. It became a glut on the market. It was sold to rail roads -- to raise steam -- and to the USN -- to raise steam -- and even to utilities to raise steam. (Hawaii used fuel oil for years.) As the price of crude oil exploded, the industry attacked the heavy oil problem with 'cat-crackers.' ( Catalytic Cracking of long-chain crude oil molecules.) It's expensive, but it works. The US has a lock on this technology. That's why heavy crude oil from Canada and Saudi Arabia is shipped all the way to Texas. The industry is getting such crudes at a discount from list prices -- the numbers you keep hearing in the news -- what you read in the newspapers. Fracked oil is light and sweet. So America is EXPORTING said light & sweet crude oil to Europe -- even some went to China and Japan. Their refineries need such a high quality feedstock, America doesn't.
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  49. Folks, once Graber got across Arnhem bridge -- before Frost even reached it -- the ENTIRE operation was dead. Nijmegen bridge became ENTIRELY irrelevant with Graber owning the southern end of the Arnhem bridge. Browning is the ONLY fella that can be blamed, he set the landing zones, and overruled Urquhart and Gavin's requests to land on the critical ISLAND. The land between Nijmegen and Arnhem is an ISLAND. Until the bridges were built, that farmland was accessed by river ferry. The Germans used one of those ferries to shift men onto the island even after Frost interdicted the Arnhem bridge. Without the Arnhem bridge Market Garden was DEAD, DEAD, DEAD. It's that simple. Browning was 'fired' ASAP, by Monty; sent in disgrace off to hide in India, to a staff job of no importance. When you're an army commander, that's pure punishment. Gavin was promoted to major general instantly after Market Garden. Those are the irrefutable facts of Market Garden. XXX Corps, the Americans, the Poles are all irrelevant side players, reduced to that status by the critical flaw in Brown's plan. Monty can't really be blamed, as he deferred to Browning as England's absolute expert in airborne operations... for understandable reasons. That's why MG doesn't even look like a Montgomery operation. Set-piece battles were his speciality.
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  50. @Cornell NOPE. 2,000 trucks were taken from the US Army, by request. This caused the entire operation to be delayed by THREE DAYS. This 'minor' detail keeps falling off the table during MG discussions. GASOLINE was also diverted from 12th AG. Ike shut the entire AG down so that Monty would be fully fuelled. So, on the facts, you are quite wrong.
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