Comments by "Not Today" (@nottoday3817) on "A Steppe Too Far | BATTLESTORM STALINGRAD E22" video.

  1.  @utvara1  Depends on many factors: Equipment of the 'offender' (O), big positive factor, Usability of the equipment for O, big negative factor (Having a thermobaric bomb is a great way to deal with the bastards, but pointless if you are not allowed to use it) Equipment of the defender Geography of the terrain Integrity of the structures Protections offered by the buildings (through some walls you could shoot with a rifle, for some you need a tank-gun) Enviroment conditions Morale etc. You could have a dude sneaking up during a moonless night and grenading a whole room with all of the people having dinner or you could have a company or a batallion at your disposal with some APCs against a bunch of idiots with AKs and RPGs, but who are located in a tough, tall house, in the firing arks of other friendly (to them) controlled buildings, meaning getting close to the target would be the equivalent of standing up in No Mans Land.
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  2.  @TheImperatorKnight  Well, I think a mixing of the numbers is the most likely answer. Judging by your video, 1st Kotluban costed the Soviets 80,000 casualities while the 2nd costed 88,000. Numbers so close together are almost 1 in a million coincidence cosnidering the different tactical approaches and compositions of units. There should be a bigger difference between them. Most likely the one who compiled the table looked a various reports with casualities (which themselves might have been compiled and dated on different dates) and concluded that he could get accurate figures only for a large period of time, like 10-20 days and tried to reverse-engineer the numbers for each day. I would say each offensive costed the Soviets around 20,000-30,000 total casualities (KIA,MIA, wounded) while the rest of 22,000 is made out of skirmishes victims.
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  3.  @utvara1  Well, how many civilians are there. What weapons are you allowed to use? What weapons do you have for use? You could air-strike them to Hell and back, but if you get a Nurnberg re-enactment with you as a main actor, I doubt it's worth it.
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  4.  @utvara1  I meant more like how many civillians are in the combat area, because you could have the poor bastards in 3-4 blocks, and civillians somewhere else, in which case, Air-Strike/bombard them, or they could hold the civillians hostage, in which case you are in big trouble, I would say that for your number of 1000 rebels, 4000-4500 would allow enough flexibility, maybe go down to 3000 if some of them are in armored support. Realistically, for launching an assault on a city, you would want as many troops available as possible, so you can surround the enemy and constantly harass them in a series of small skirmishes and fast dashes (to cut off lines to more isolated positions and force the enemy to attack you). This would also allow you to weasel in some diplomacy by convincing individual groups to surrender or at least leave the area. Pretty much like how Syria and Russia handled Aleppo. 3or4:1 is good, 10:1 is even better. The biggest downside is that such an operation takes a very long time and it is going to be costly on the civillians in terms of prolonged suffering (you cannot really supply them because the enemy is going to steal the food from them, they are pressed into fighting used as slaves and so on). Thinking about it, dealing with a professional army might be somewhat easier than with a group of insurgents since a professional army, in theory, would try to avoid barricading themselves in the same quarters as civillians (keywords: in theory, try) so they won't face international trials and such.
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  5. Someone adressed this issue. It seems TIKs sources have a flaw. Most likely the numbers cited are for a much longer period of time.
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  6. Sabaton
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  7. Wrong numbers of casualities it seems.
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  8. There were repeated attacks in the North by the Soviets. They were minor compared tot he Kotluban offensives (since the Soviets hoped for a fast relief of the city), but they were enough for the Germans to know that there's a vulnerability in that area.
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  9. Well, one has to factor in the ideea of 'we won the battles, but we lost the war'. Had Germany kept their armies together to go against Stalingrad, they might have won the area, but Stalingrad and Astrakhan were not strategic objectives for their war (well, maybe only Astrakhan). Their goal was the Caucasus. And they could have not gone to Caucasus with the whole force because they needed a huge force to defend their northern flanks and supply routes.
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  10. Well, there are several modern combat principles here. First of all, is defence in depth. You don't place every unit that you have at the frontlines because then you have no units to react in case the enemy breaks through somewhere. And, as a plus, if the enemy breaks through your lines and all the units are committed at the front, they can encircle more men in a single manouver. You cannot concentrate everyone at the front also because you have logistical issues. Finally, you might need to conduct reargurd/policing actions
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  11. there are many and, yes, you should
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  12. Well, unfortunetly for the Germans, if they had to take the Caucasus, they HAD to split forces one way or another. Had they commited to a push for Caucasus, their flank would be exposed and their very few communication and resupply lines would be severed, forcing them to counterattack backwards. If they wanted to prevent this, they would have needed to split AG South into a 'defensive' force, to station on the flank and an offensive one to go South.
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  13. Running low on assets: fuel and people
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  14. A pinned comment says just that. TIK answered stating that his sources might be utterly wrong
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  15. Tanks and tankettes in cities: You might be surprised, but this actually fits the ideas of urban warfare and combined arms. You use tanks to support your infantry that's fighting for the houses. With height and cover advantage, it's hard for assaulting infantry to take a house and even harder to take a group of houses since your rifles are limited in fire-rate and range, with a rade-off between them (more range, less fire-rate). Artillery (heavy one, not field guns) is a bit too inaccurate and too imobile. Tanks and/or tankettes offer the best balanced support platform. They can be used as highly mobile heavy machinge-gun positions, with some armour to withstand small arms fire (which infantry cannot do). For tanks, you can also load HE rounds and start bombarding enemy through the windows of a house. The Soviets also did not have many means to do that. Tanks in urban warfare became an issue more in the modern times, with the rise of ATGMs, which gave infantry comparable effective range with a tank (not going to explain this now) and more firepower than with AT-rifles
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