Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Military History Visualized" channel.

  1. The book "Ostront" by Charles Winchester mentions German bombing raids on Russian industries in the Ural mountains right before the Stalingrad battle took place. When that battle begun, the airforce had to change their focus for ground support for the troops for obvious reasons.
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  2. What about mechanized divisions?? Didn't they have most tanks and firepower of all divisions in 1939?
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  3. Atleast the existed in theory, I read it in a book (Kraftfahrzeuge und Panzer der Reichswehr, Wehrmacht und Bundeswehr) that takes up the number of men and composition of the manpower within all types of German divisions each year from 1939 to 1945. Maybe they didn't exist for real in 1939 (I doubt they did, since Germany didn't even have enough tanks for their panzer Divisions, and putting them in an even more Overpowered mechanized Divison seem like a terrible idea). However, their composition and strenght seemed so very different from a motorized division... a mechanized division on paper did even have more tanks than a panzer division, and a panzer division was much more powerful than a motorized division. So a mechanized Division was pretty powerful compared to a motorized.
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  4. The german army had their smart tricks, and then they had their auftrags taktik. It inherited its proffesionalism from the army of the Kaiser. In the First World War it almost on its own drove the Central powers towards victory after the Austrians suffered so heavy losses the first 4 months of the war that they basicly were knocked out of war. And the Ottomans suffered so heavy losses in the winter offensive in Armenia in late 1914 that their Army was no longer the one of a great war. So Germany had to fight almost alone, but still it almost managed to defeat Beligium, then Serbia, then Romania, then Russia, then Italy, and the French army almost collapsed after the failed Nivlle offensive, and if America hadn't intervened then both the French and Britsh army could very well have collapsed as well. So the German army was superior in many ways. But when it comes to the 2nd World War I think that the greatness of the German army have been exaggerated a bit. It was also much luck behind the German successes as well. They achieved more than the Kaisers army despite being a much weaker force.
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  5. witch ammo type are goodest?
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  6. next HOI expansion pack
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  7. The germans used to count a kill when they had fired so many rounds into a tank until it catched fire, and therefore they usally had more reliable statistics than the russians. The germans simply didn't have the luxury of controlling the battlefield after a fight in the last years of the war, so they had to make sure that an enemy tank was unrepairable if they couldn't capture it for their own use.
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  8. https://www.amazon.com/Kursk-1943-Statistical-Analysis-Russian/dp/0714650528
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  9.  @jameshannagan4256  The aid in 1943 was important. My views on lend lease is also different from 7 years ago.
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  10. Germany had foolishly thought that the war would just over within a few months. And despite that most units were starting to run low on ammo only after 2 weeks, and Luftwaffe lacked bombs and planes to deal with the enormous amounts of targets in Barbarossa.. they bombed and bombed but there was always more job that could be done. And by october had wear and tear and heavy fighting made the tank arm lacking half of it tanks that was either to be replaced or repaired. With other words, shortly after the war with Russia begun it became quite clear that the preparations was unsuffiecent for the task. Some sources say that Germany lost 2000 men per day in Barbarossa and 1000 in the winter months, while other sources instead say German only lost 200.000 men in Barbarossa and 400-600.000 in the winter 1941-42.
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  11. Germany had no real factories suitable for American style assembly line massproduction when Hitler came to power, so those factories had to be built. In 1938 they began a large scale construction program, that became completed around the time of Goebbles Total war speechs. And meanwhile those factories was under contruction they sucked in much money, manpower and concrete from the rest of the economy. So before 1942 Germany couldn't have done any massproduction of weapons on the scale of 1944.
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  12. No. The name was intented to mislead the allies about the purpose of the project.
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  13. It is true that Germany didn't begin the war with a big army and industry like in 1914. The re-arment and competent leadership could compensate for some of the shortages, and later on would plunder help too. But it wasn't until 1943 Germany was able to make large scale assembly line production like the allies. Before then Germany simply didn't have any large scale factories and equipment for such. One another thing worth mentioning is that an economic crisis can be positive for re-arment, since you don't have to take the unpopular decision of stealing workers from the private sector to feed your army with manpower. With the massunemployment, people rather happily went from unemployed to become a man in uniform, or going to a factory to make that uniform. Americas quick total mobilization for a war economy in 1942 wouldn't have been possible to make as smoothly without the massunemployment, and all empty factories that laid idle and could be converted into factories for tank production and building guns. The low standard of living under the great depression also made people more tolerant of war rationing, since they were used to meager standard of living. Had the economy been rolling along well before the war, people might have been protesting the higher taxes and lower standard of living and the limitations put on concumer choice. But things wasn't like that, so the reaction in USA to the war became quite different. People remember it as a time when the American people became one. Everyone, rich and poor, black and white, women and men had to make sacrifices for the final victory. Unemployed was no longer seen as worthless, but as military service men worthy of respect and deserving of veterans benifits for risking their lives for the country. Other unemployed got jobs in the war industry with well paid wages, and since foodproduction actully did grow under the war, America could afford both guns and butter, and people could get a much better diet than other wartorn nations. People got jobs, income, and unemployment in US went down to 0%! some factories owners even had to go out on the streets and start searching for workers themselves to fill the labour shortages. And the high inflation during the war had wiped away the large national debt. The economy was rolling. New innovations was ready to become the next generation of consumer products. And the people which was broken and starving, was now in good shape and had their pockets filled saved money, since the wartime rationing system had made it impossible to waste the money on consumer goods. And veterans was guaranteed housing benifits and could also contribute to the great demand for consumer goods that would create the economic boom after World War 2.
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  14. Number of men is important, but so is also organization, equipment and training. The German army was at its peak in 1941. Their numbers were strong. The men were battlehardened and experienced. Their confidence inthemselves, in their officers, their comrades and the Army was record high after all the victories in Europe. Their tactics and training had been improved by the great amounts of experience they gained by all the countries they had invaded. Germany also tried to produce more of the equipment that had been proven unexpectedly successful and phase out the more dissapointing stuffs. The Army also recieved lots of captured trucks from the french army and the British expeditionary force.
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  15. What was the point of multiplying Panzer Divisions if the number of tanks was reduced in half? The experiences during the battle of France showed that the panzer Divisions was way too overpowered when it came to tanks, while their infantry support was a little bit weak. So the solution to this problem was to spread out the tanks in more units, and letting each panzer division gain a larger proportion of infantry support.
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  16. Genocidal policies had a negative impact on the German war effort, yes. But would it be possible not to be hated by the Russian people when you must steal their food when Germanys food consumption excedes their food production? And would it been possible to treat all russian POWs well when there wasn't enough food for them or men to spare guarding them?
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  17. Well thats what I thought, I wouldn't like the German liberators either if they stole my food so my family starved under the winter. And surely could Russian POWs have been treated much better than they were historically, nevertheless I wonder to what extent good treatment would have been possible with the limited resources at hand?
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  18. I would say the contrary, that Germany had bad ability to take care of the prisoners of war in 1941 compared to let say 1944, partly because of the higher amounts capture in 41, and partly because Germany hadn't prepared for a war to the same extent in 41 as in 44. Germany never planned for taking so many prisoners as they did in 1941. No one could even ever dreamed of it. The prisoners had to sleep out in the open, and Germany didn't even have enough food to feed their own people, And the unexpected scale of the battles fought in 1941 sucked up men, and the high losses were impossible to replace as fast as needed, so Germany didn't have enough men to take care of their prisoners, since all men were at the front. Anyways, thats just the impression I have gotten upon things. Maybe I am wrong :)
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  19. Yes, but even so it was too late for Germany. Even if the had built He-162 wich only needed one jet engine instead of two like the 262, adopted pre-modern missiles, and built the first SAMs.. the air superiority was still beyond reach for the Germans. The Americans totally outproduced the Germans, and to make matters worse the British and Soviet aircraft production was also overwhelming.. while the Japanease and Italian aircraft production was too small and pathetic to compensate even a tiny share for that. Furthermore would the allies have plenty of time to train new pilots and could move planes and skilled pilots from the pacific if Germany had fought on. And they had plenty of raw material to build planes, unlike the germans who lacked both fuel and rare earth metals for production of reliable jet engines. And the allies had the meteor jet fighter with a better engine than the 262. But even if it had rained every day of 1944 so Germany would have time to rebuild its airforce and having their factories running, I doubt the outcome of the war would have changed considering the huge manpower and stockpiles of equipment the allies had. The allies would probably had won even without the atombombs.
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  20. But having a super-battleship would have been pointless, since the light enemy ships would just be faster and just move away. So the only way of fighting the enemy would be to have ships of the same speed.
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  21. bah... too much writing. Part II has to wait.. if it ever comes. We should see.
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  22. War of independence?
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  23. The Tiger I gun had a muzzle velocity of 810 meters per second. According to a Swedish magazine of military history. http://www.pennanochsvardet.se/militarhistoria/militara-artiklar/pansar/tiger-i And this is said about Panzer IV: "The real boost came with Ausf F2 which was equipped with a newly developed 75-mms gun with a long barrel, KwK40 L/43, which gave it a much better impact than its predecessor. It fired a 6.8 kg projectile that could penetrate 99mm angled armor from 1000 meters." http://www.pennanochsvardet.se/militarhistoria/militara-artiklar/pansar/panzer-iv And regarding the King Tiger: "The new cannon could with a standard armor grenade hit through 132 mm 30-degree angled armor plate at 2000 meters!" http://www.pennanochsvardet.se/militarhistoria/militara-artiklar/pansar/tiger-ii--kungstigern
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  24. Othwerise I recommend watching interviews with the Stuka Pilot, Heinz-Georg Wilhelm Migeod https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxDkoIVcq6o
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  25. The reason why I call battle of Britain a mistake wasn't because the Germans failed to crush the RAF, but I rather see it as an unnessary waste of pilots and planes to do the air battles to begin with. Had I been in charge I would attack british ships only, and putting the brits into dilemma: lose the ships, or lose air planes while defending the ships.
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  26. The Dunkirk order came from Hitlers generals and not from Hitler himself, and the "not a step back" order Hitler gave was oftentimes idiotic... since germany was much better at defence in depth and at making counterattacks against an overextented enemy like (Kharkov 1943).... but in 1941, most military historians agree that Hitlers order saved the army from completly collapse after Stalin launched his winter offensive.
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  27. In the German Army doctrine of World war II, capturing cities was not only important, but the main goal of their strategy. Cities are economical centers and transportation hubs and have a larger political importance now than during the agricultural societies of the middle ages since more people live there and the most economically productive areas in an economy is the cities.
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  28. I guess there are many differences now. Especially logisticswise with all combustion engines, railways, massproduced arms, and food that can last for years on a shelf. But media and demographics is also different. And the cost of war have increased according to some: "Lowell Limpus says that it cost Caesar about 75 cents to kill an enemy in his day. Napoleon almost bankrupted France because it cost a fraction under $3,000 to kill an enemy in his day. The World War ran the cost up to $1,000 per dead solider, and it is estimated that before the present conflicts ends it will have risen to $50,000." And also ammunition consumption has risen dramatically. On average it took 400 rounds to hit an enemy under Napoleons days, and "In Would War II, the United States and its allies expended 25,000 rounds of ammunition to kill a single enemy soldier. In the Korean War, the ammunition expenditure had increased four-fold to 100,000 rounds per soldier; in the Vietnam War, that figure had doubled to 200,000 rounds of ammunition for the death of a single enemy soldier."
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  29. Many reasons.... 1. The Germans took the Russians by surprise and could encircle huge groups of men on the first days, and when encircled units were trapped without food, ammo, fuel and water their fighting effectivness was much lower. Furthermore, did the unexpected attack on Russia cause lots of confusion so the Russians couldn't co-ordinate all their men to make effective counter-measures to the German invasion. 2. The Russian army lacked good leadership since Stalin had killed lots of Generals, Field marshals, Colonels and so on... and then he took incompetent, but politically loyal men to replace all his murdered Generals as leaders over their each own army with hundreds of thousands of men. And those stupid incompetent leaders would make many mistakes... attacking on the wrong time, getting lured into traps, and so fourth. 3. Russia wasn't prepared for the war, so their airplanes were nicely positioned as a straight lines on their airfields. So when Russias former friend (Germany) decided to betray her, it was quite easy for Russias enemies to destroy thousands of Russian planes the first days of the war. Thousands of planes was destroyed even before the Russians had any chance to make counter-measures. 4. The Germans would have the total advantage of control over the skies and could therefore use planes to spot Russians troop movements on the ground, while the Russians couldn't see were the Germans were going with their ground troops. So the Germans could make better plans than the Russians. Another advatage the Germans had with air superiority was that they could bomb Russian troops on the ground and attack trains transporting Russian tanks to the frontline and easily knock them out even before those tanks had a chance to get unloaded off the trains. And when German ground troops were in danger of getting destroyed they could always call their airforce for help, and German planes would rain bombs upon Russian troops and destroy their attack. But the Russians ground troops never had the same luxury in 1941 because their entire air force had been destroyed the first days of the war. 5. Russian tanks didn't have any radio, while the Germans had. So the Russian unit leader had to order his troops movments by using signal flags in the middle of all enemy fire. And the view range was also limited. So if you roll forward and attack an enemy there is not much of a problem. But if the enemy on the other hand just suddenly appears on the sides and the tanks got no way of telling their commander, so he could order a swing to the left or right, well then you got a problem... And Russian tanks would therefore often get outflanked and outsmarted by the experienced German tank arm. 6. The Russian army was in a bad shape when the war begun. On paper it was extremely impressive, but about half of the tanks in a normal tank regiment was in need of repairs before they could be put to use against the Germans. And Russian infantry regiments often didn't have the manpower they were supposed to have in times of war. 7. The German surprise attack caused panic in Stalin and made him make stupid decisions out of desperation. He forbade retreats and ordered ill-crafted offensives that costed lots of men. And things didn't get better by him ordering the execution of people who disobeyed his insane orders. And hundreds of thousands Russian solidiers would get killed by the Russians themselves during the war - a waste of lives and solidiers no other army in history have been able to afford. And the Russians also used unarmed men in punishment battallions to attack German positions in order to clear minefields. And the Russians also lacked rifles for all of their troops, so a regiment could therefore attack the Germans like in the "Enemies at the gates" movie about Stalingrad, so not every man had something to shot with, unless he could pick up a rifle from a dead comrade to use... so the losses was of course heavy for the Russians. 8. Germany had the best army in the world in 1941. In fact, the army of 1941 was even much better than the German army of 1940 that had conquered Western Europe. The confidence and pride of the German army was record high in 1941. The solidiers was trained and battle experienced. The superior German tactics from World War 1 combined with a great airforce, a skilled leadership, the invention of the radio, and the newly used kampfgruppe tactics had helped the Germans crush the armies of Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Yugoslavia, Greece and giving the British a bloody nose. But as I said earlier, the German army had even become much better in 1941 than what it was in 1940. Since the Germans had learned lessons from the wars in Europe and seen what worked well, and what didn't work well. So training and tactics was improved to deal with all the shortcomings.... the oversized panzer divisions had their number of tanks reduced by half, so more panzer divisions could be created. The great StuGIII had proven itself to be a great weapon in France and was therefore ordered into massproduction. It was decided that German tanks should get more powerful guns, because they had lacked much to ask for in the fight against French tanks. So Germany was in the best fighting shape, while the Russian army was in a shitty condition. Stalin had just killed his military leadership. His regime was extremely unpopular - especially in Ukraine where millions had been starved to death under his reign. Much of his tanks was in need for repairs. And the self-confidence of the Red army wasn't that great after Stalins embarrasing failure in Finland - the poorest country in Europe - where the Russians suffered heavy losses against a small and badly equiped army.... while the Russians had plenty of tanks, planes and guns to spare, but failed to gain any results. 9. Another reason worth mentioning is that the Axis had numerical superiority at the frontline in the first months of the war, because half of the huge Russian army was positioned in the Russian interior, and not all Armies was sitting along the border with Germany. So it would take time for the Russians to move all men to the front. And meanwhile did the Germans have the upper hand in the fighting the first months of the war. The Germans had prepared for this war, and the Russians had not. And the Russian road and railroad network got overloaded, which caused deleys and lower effectiveness for the Russian war effort. Wounded men had to be moved back. Tanks had to go to repairshops. Factories had to be evacuated and equipment moved. And meanwhile did more men and equipment have to reach the frontline. And millions of men had to be supplied with ammo and fuel. And all this had to be done, while German airplanes was wrecking railroad stations, bridges, and attacked trains and supply trucks. So things was quite caotic for the Russians in 1941 and 1942.
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  30. Russia was fighting a life and death struggle. Hitler wanted to exterminate half of the population of Russia and enslave the other half. So unlike western countries did Russia not have the option of just surrendering, because of the unacceptably high price of such a thing. And the huge scale of the conflict and large territories that had to be conquered makes a fast victory seem unlikely to me. Germany had many strenghts, but they also had many weaknesses. Preparations had been insuffiecent. German intelligence expected opposition from 150 Divisions, but after just a few months after Barbarossa had begun they had counted opposition from atleast 300, and despite they had already destroyed 150 by then so were they nowhere even close to victory. And many German Divisions were running low on ammo just 2 weeks after the war had begun. Luftwaffe was bombing targets with steaming intensity, and its role in the first months was large, and Barbarossa could easily had ended very bad for the Germans if they hadn't been able to take control over the skies as fast as they did. The German army did had very little artillery compared to the Russians, and instead relied more upon air support to soften up enemy opposition. So when Germany lost air superiority in 1943, did the Army also lose much of its fire support for its ground troops. So if Germany had not won the battle over the skies the first days in 1941 and bombed Russian tanks to pieces before they even had a chance to reach the front by railroad, then things could have gotten very tough for the Germans. Germanys preparations for the Eastern front conflict was insuffient. German trains was smaller than Soviet trains, and therefore needed to be refueled with coal more often and couldn't travel the same huge distances between coaling towers and water stops as Russian trains without running out of fuel. And strangly enough had no German planners thought about this.. so the Germans had no other choice than to start building an entire new railroad network in Russia with new stations and narrower space between the tracks for German trains. Which was a task that sucked resources. German tanks got exhausted by all wear and tear the long distances it had to travel. And less than half of the German tanks were operational by October if I remember correctly. And the Russians also had many better tank designs than the Germans - but they had simply not started to build those tanks in large numbers yet and given them radios and learned how to use them move effectivly... but it was just a matter of time that the Russians would learn their lesson. Germany had also started the war with insuffiecent warproduction. The lack of standardization made Germany unable to massproduce things like the Russians and Americans. And instead Hitler thought that he could win this war by using army trucks stolen by the countries he had conquered. But that just added up to even more difficulties to the German logistical organization. And that combined with Spanish, Italian, Hungrian, and Romanian made stuff just made the logistics hopeless when millions of spareparts had to be stored and transported And I have heard that the average lifespan of a German military truck was just two months because of all wear and tear. And Luftwaffe was running out of bombs because of all intense bombing. And pilots was getting exhausted by making multiple dive bombing raids day in and day out. And the logistical capacity to transport bombs and fuels to forward airfields was getting harder and harder. So the Luftwaffe had to prioritize between ground support and strikes against communications and industrial facilities... because there was simply not enough planes and bombs to attack all targets that the Germans wanted destroyed at the moment. And in the long run did Russia have many advantages. Its huge landmass enabled it to sacrifice land to an enemy in a way other countries could not afford to. Its large landmass also provided Russia with lots of resources, such as oil, while the Germans had to set aside large resources to produce much more expensive oil in amounts that were also much smaller. Germany did also consume more food than it produced, and importing food was not an option because of the royal navy blockade... so it was not in a favourable position in a long war. Russia was also slowly learning from its mistakes. And the confusion the first weeks of the war did not last forever. The Soviet air force was copying Luftwaffes tactics. Soviet tanks was supporting the infantry in their attacks so their attacks didn't just collapse in 1943 like they did in 1942 and 1941. Weapons got improved, and tanks were made easier to massproduce. And the Russians never over-engineered weapons like the Germans too often did.
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  31. Barbarossa was a bad plan on a too large scale with too little planning. The German airforce ran out of bombs to drop. Army units were running low on ammo within the first weeks. More than half of all tanks were no longer operational by October thanks to heavy losses by combat and wear and tear. The Germans had also not planned anything at all on how to refuel their small trains with coal on the Russian railway lines that was built for supplying larger Russian trains that didn't need refueling as often as German trains.... so the Russian water and coaling stations were standing too far apart from each other to be used by the German trains, so new ones had to be built. Furthermore was the idea of occupying everything west of the Ural mountains completly unrealistic. Militarily as well as logistically. And starting a genocide on East Europeans didn't make things easier. So I am not surprised at all that Germany couldn't win the war in 1941 or 1942. I am rather surprised that things didn't turn into a disaster for them in 1941 instead of 1944... after all was it just pure luck that the Luftwaffe could destroy the red airforce - the world largest airforce by far - on the first days of the war... and therefore was able to unhindred bomb Russian ground troops and destroy their attacks and soften up their defences. And if Stalin just had a few IQ-points above 60, he should have not overextended his winter-offensive that almost destroyed the entire German army on the Eastern front. And if the Russians had used their superior tanks (KV2, KV1, T-34, BT7) to fight togheter instead of being spread out destoyed piecemeal by the German tankers, then the Russians could have avoided many unnessary losses and inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans. My adivice to Hitler would be to fix supplies and tanks for a long war before attacking, and meanwhile let the German army fix a victory in North Africa. And when a war on Russia should be unleashed, then grabbing Caucausus/Ukraine and Southern Russia should be the limited initial goal - since it is a place that can provide Germany with black soil, lots of oil, lots of factories and provide Germany with a strong strategic position with control over the black sea trade, and airbases for strikes into Persia and deep into Russia. And losing Southern Russia would be heavy blow for the Russians - that would be denied many key resources that could be very helpful for a long war.
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  32. Germany and Sweden also needed quick wars. Germany could win a two front war so it needed to win fast at one front and then move all forces over to the other fron in order to win. Unlike Russia who got lots of land, or Switzerland with good defensive terrain with mountains or the dutch with their rivers... Germany never had natural obstacles, and they were always surrounded by powerful enemies, Like mongols, or Frenchmen, Swedes or Russians...and the powerful coalitions that Prussia fought against proved the need of mobile warfare. Sweden also needed a fast war. It was not a Great power of Europe, but rather a regional Great power of Northern Europe. And it wasn't a country with much money or manpower, so a long war against a real Great Power like the Holy Roman Empire or Russia would be hard to win. So the solution became to finance the upkeep of the relativly large army with the plundering of enemy lands. And output of food per square mile of farmland was low in Northern Europe, so Armies had to move fast from one area to another in order to not run out of food. So depending on the quality of the soil, the tempo of changed. So when the Swedish Army fought in rich Germany in the 1600s the speed of movement wasn't as fast as when the Swedish Army fought in poor Poland during the Great Northern war.
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  33. Sweden continued to roll around in Germany and into Bohemia under skilled commanders such as Lennart Torstensson and Johan Banér. And after Adolphus death Sweden would win large amounts of territory at the treaty of Brömsebro 1645 and the treaty of Roskilde 1658. And Sweden continued to have one of the best (if not the best) and most modern armies in Europe until the end of the Great Northern war. Sweden alone stood against Denmark, Saxony, Poland and Russia.. and managed to defeat the three first of them, and gave the Russians a pretty hard nosebleed at Narva in year 1700, but of course, invading Russia during the winter never ends well... Just ask Napoleon and Hitler, they know. But after 1720 there was no weapons glory. So our army got much to be proud of, and togheter with England do it have some of the oldest regiments in the world. Unfortunatly did our navy totally suck and with the exception of the battle of Svensksund 1790, it never seemed able to win a battle during all hundreds of years.
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  34. Kampfrad = combat bike Ingvar Kampfrad = Ingvar combatbike
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  35. And Japan only produced 60k Aircrafts in the war, while America produced 100k in 1943 alone. And American designs were better, so instead of having their more and more obsolete planes shot down, the Japanease began using kamikaze attacks in the end of the war.
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  36.  @ssgtmole8610  We have clearly already tried all peaceful options. But they have failed. It takes two for a tango. So blame Russia for that and not the west. And there is absolutly nothing wrong in using violance in self-defence - either to protect oneself, or to protect someone else who is getting unprovocedly attacked. Indeed, I would even consider it a moral duty to gun down the man who did the mass shooting in Las Vegas. By not doing that you would put 800 peoples lives at risk because of an evil mad man. So it is a duty of the civilized world to stand up against a bully. If we can get the world to unite against a country which is starting an unprovoced war like we did in Ukraine - then we discourage anyone from trying in the future. And then we will never get another Hitler again and world peace. To me this seems like the perfect solution.
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  37. Sweden was a world leader in civilian nuclear power during 1960s. Sweden also had its own nuclear bomb program the 1950s and 1960s. So if Russia would have attacked, then Russia would have been nuked as well. USA did not like the development it saw in Sweden and prefer to see the country not developing any nukes. So it therefore offered Sweden a guarantee of nuclear retaliation against any country that would use nukes against it. And in exchange did Sweden drop its plans to get its own nuclear bombs.
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  38. If I was Stalin, then I wouldn't attack the best army in Europe with an army where half of all tanks are unfit for service
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  39. All tanks have bad side armour. In my opinion should this tank rather have lost some of its side armour, and its frontal armour was already so thick that is was overkill - so also that could have been reduced a bit. And with a lower weight would the panther become easier to transport, use less fuel, use less materials to build and becoming easier to produce in large numbers. And if the need for a 40 tonnes tank would arrive one day, then the germans could only switch over to the heavier version of this tank that already existed.
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  40. I think that the nazi leadership wanted anyone who could do the job of killing innocent civilians with a smile on his face was perfect for the SS camp duty. Killing women and children is hard to do for most people, so many Einsatzgruppen men hated their job and fell victim to alcoholism or mental illness after all deeds they had done. So to motivate people of taking the job as a death camp guard, they offered higher wages and a life without the dangers of dying at the Russian front. And the men in the Einsatzgruppen got lots of alcohol to make their job of shooting civilians easier. And criminals and thieves were preferred for this job. They lack of morals made it easier for them to kill people, and their lust for plunder could work as a motivation for doing this shitty job so they could steal clothes and jewelry from murdered victims. Criminals did also often get the job of dropping the buckets with poison gas into the gas chambers. The problem of course was that criminals had a problem with discipline and many of them became mad after all painful memories of killing innocent people they had piled up. So they could no longer do their job. So the nazi leadership did send them to the front - where they hopefully would die. Their death would solve many problems for the nazi leadership - eye witnesses who had seen and knew too much about the holocaust would die and take all their secrets with them into their graves. So the punishment of suicidal front line duty for the guard crew that failed to stop the Sobibor prisoner uprising/escape, was basically just another example of killing two birds with one stone. Eye witnesses were killed, while punishment also acted as an deterrent example for other death camp commanders for what would happen if they too failed to stop prisoners from fleeing. The system of killing people did become more efficient as time passed. Gas was cheaper than bullets, and letting slaves empty the gas chambers and burn the bodies into ashes almost entirely dump all the workload on the prisoners, so that the nazi guards did rarely ever have to do any dirty work themselves. So while the first nazi camps were guarded by fanatical nazis in the early years of Hitlers regime, would they later on become more guarded by teenagers and elderly men that often lacked fanatical political beliefs. The elderly grey haired guards gassed people too, but they were often kinder to the prisoners than nazi guards of the old kind. And the teenagers had a varied temperament, a few were kind, while others could be extremely cruel and they felt like it was cool to wear a military uniform so they tried to make a militaristic posture and trying to impress on their superiors by mistreating the jews. Another thing that comes to mind about the holocaust is that much of it was done by men in their 30s. Reinhard Heydrich was only 38 when he died. Odilo Globocnik was also born the same year, and he organized "operation Reinhard" that killed of 98% of Poland's jewish population. Adolf Eichmann was only 35 years when he planned all railway transports that would transport millions of people to the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Amon Göth (the monster in "Schindlers list") was only 35 years old when he became commandant of a concentration camp. To me this seems like those men were too old to be fighting at the front, and therefore took this job of committing crimes behind the front lines instead. Useless men who wished to be soldiers, but stayed behind the front line instead.
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  41. All countries believed that they had enough supplies when world war 1 began, but after a few months of fighting they all started to run out of ammunition, and the fighting on both fronts started to calm down. Then wartime production was expanded and fighting could start again. But Russia never had managed to build an industry capable of supplying its own army, so oftentimes did the Russians had to start offensives where many men didnt even have their own gun. But Russia attacked anways since she was a faithful ally that gave what she could when the western powers screamed for help and needed to have some pressure taken off their front. But in the long run, did Russias unindustrialize economy doom their war effort. And shortages, higher prices and higher losses led to riots and the bolsjevik revolution.
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  42. I would say that both France and Britain had better tanks than Germany in 1939-1940, and I say this more as an objective fact than a subjective opinion. Germany began the war with tanks with shitty armour, underpowered engines (compared to the allied tanks which had a better horsepower per ton ratio), and some french tanks had so thick frontal armour that it was immune to frontal hits from any German panzer. Furthermore was the German tankers also heavily outnumbered, and their tank fleet was mostly consisting of pzII light tanks since their production of medium tanks was so low that they wasn't able to replace their weaker machines to any significant extent. Germany was also pretty much in love with the idea of building boxshaped tanks, while the french on the other hand was early into that. The only minor advantage German tanks had, was having a two-man turret (which was hardly close enough to compensate for all the advantages french tanks had overall). But the Germans was good at realizing the importance of the radio early on, so they could oftentimes deal with enemies with better tanks thanks to better tactics - such as when they faced KV1 and T-34 tanks in Russia who lacked radios. The only time in the war Germany actully had better tanks was in 1942-44 I would say. Because then they had the PZIVH and the Panther. And in 1945 the allies got their Centurion, T-44, ISU152, and Pershing... which were just as powerful machines as the German ones. And overall did Britain actully build quite good tanks. Panzer IV and StuGIII was usally the best thing Germany had, and the Sherman, the Cromwell and Comet could easily take those tanks on quite well. Indeed, they were even slightly superior to those machines, and junk like Panzer III and Marder that Germany used is simply a sign of desperation since those things were hopelessly outdated.
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  43. Germany was better at the tactical level, but they lacked supplies, they lacked experienced manpower, they didn't have air superiority, and they also made many severe blunders at the strategic level (much thanks to Hitler) - D-day, Arracourt, Bagration, Ardennes - which certainly speeded up the defeat of the reich with a year or two. Had Normandy and Operation Bagration not ended up as allied victories, then history would definatly had another course. Germany would still lose the war, but it would have taken a much different path to get there. So was the German defeats in 1944-45 caused by bad equipment? No. An army can suffer terrible losses even it got excellent equipment - which the Soviet union proved in 1941 when it had the worlds best tanks, KV1, T-34 and Bt7.. and had very good artillery and yet suffered millions in losses. Another thing we also need to remember when we talk about killratios and such is what kind of opposition our forces are meeting. Having a killratio of 30:1 would be impressive if a plane from the 1950s manage to shot down some MIG15s with skilled pilots, but having a killratio 30:1 is not that impressive if our pilot got a 5th generation fighter from 2017, those MIG15s are driven crappy pilots. So a high killratio of a tank doesn't tell much, if we don't look at the circumstances on the battlefield, the training of the men and quality of the equipment and such. And in 1945 things were dire for the Germans, their lack of rare metals had made the steel quality in their tanks really shitty, they lacked paint to camouflage their tanks, they didn't have much fuel. And having great tanks doesn't mean much if the support organization has fallen apart. Without AA guns tanks were vulnerable to airpower, without proper recon they could easily fall into ambushes, without artillery to soften up the enemy attacks could turn into costly failures and so on.
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  44. The allies had both better tanks and larger numbers of them than the Germans. Somua 35 had sloped armour and was immune to all tank guns the shitty German tanks had in 1940. And the french 47mm anti-tank gun had the best muzzle velocity and armour penetration of any anti-tank gun in the world at that time. Its true that the allies used many old machines, but so did the Germans too. In fact, 90% of the German tankforce was outdated garbage (panzer I, Panzer II, Panzer 35t, Panzer 38t). While PanzerIII and PanzerIV only existed in small numbers, and their guns, engine and armour was inferior to the best allied tanks and those huge disadvantages could hardly be compensated for by any radio or extra crewman in the turret. Panzer IVD (of 1940) had only 30mm frontal armour, compared to Char B1's 60mm and Matilda II's 78mm. Char 1b, S-35 and MatildaII were clearly more powerful than any German tank. Here is what Mosier writes: By May 1940 the French, as we have seen, had twelve armored divi­sions, comprising literally thousands of tanks, together with twenty-eight independent battalions of R.35 and H35 tanks." By that same point the British had managed to assemble one armored division, the First, com­prising 156 Cruiser tanks and 174 Mark 6 vehicles, 100 Matilda tanks in two independent tank regiments, and another 200 or so Mark 6 tanks distributed among the "cavalry" regiments. Like the Germans and the French, the British were still thinking about how to deploy armor, so in addition to separate cavalry regiments equipped with light tanks, there were two independent tank regiments equipped with "infantry" tanks, which in 1940 meant a vehicle known as the Matilda, owing to its ungainly waddling movement. The Matilda 2 was a massive vehicle weighing about 27,000 kilograms and armed with a two pounder gun. It was decently armored, and certainly the best tank the British had. The problem was that production was late starting (in September 1939 there were only two of them) and plagued by mechan­ical problems. In France the BEF had far too few of them to make much of a difference on the battlefield, although the combination of thick armor and a hard-hitting gun gave the Germans some nasty shocks in late May.
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  45. That game is so silly. It doesn't matter that Britain and India has fallen into German hand. The British empire still refuses to surrender even when they have lost their army, navy and airforce. And all 200 Divisions in the US Army gets located in Washington and gets wiped out by a nuke. And then the city gets 100% rebuilt after a few moths. And then there are no concentration camps in HOI.
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  46.  @HiTechOilCo  Soviet tanks have good concealment due to their low siluette. The are harder to spot for the enemy, but in turn are they also bad at finding their enemy due to their low viewrange. This game is biased in favour of Russian tanks. Partly because to get love from its Russian audiance. But partly also because the game would probably not be very well balanced if other nations could take out Russian tanks at ranges 4 times longer than the ranges Russian tanks need to fire back. And even if the Russian tanks would be able to fire at their maximum range, their gun sights would have so bad a dusty optics that they would miss most of their shots. A German saying on the eastern front goes that "Ivan always misses his first shot" because of their optics and poorly trained tank crews.
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  47. Unit suitability also depends on unit type. If you have a panzer division with tanks, foot soldiers, field guns and so on, you will see higher losses among the riflemen than among the tank crews. So you can therefore not compare tank units with infantry. Furthermore was the SS better supplied with weapons and reinforcements, so a comparison between a SS and a Wehrmacht division will not be a fair comparison.
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  48. Ukraine have been for peace all along. The only ones keeping this war going is nazi-russia that illegally have troops inside another countrys borders.
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  49. There is much truth to that story. Germany surprised attacked other countries, and their auftragstaktik always made them able to make decisions before their could respond to the changing circumstances on the battlefield. And on the strategic level was large troop concentrations encircled by the enemy and cut off from supplies and forced to surrender. In Russia however it turned out that the enemy had enough resources to survive one gigantic encirlement disaster after another with hundreds of thousands of men being taken prisoner each time. And the iniatial benifit of surprise attacking a country dissapeared as time progressed. And the superior speed of the German army could not have the same effect as in western Europe because of the long distances, the poor infrastucture and the wear and tear on the German army's vehicles. The German army did still however remain the fastest army in World war2 throughout the war thanks to its ability to make fast decisions on the battlefield with its auftragstaktik and kampfgruppen. But on the other hand did the German military still suffer heavy losses. The Russian army compensated its lack of skill and finesse by having Russian troops dig in and creating strong defences that were costly to take. And superiority in artillery, air power and amounts of tanks to support the infantry could help unconfident Russian solidiers to put up a fight against the German veterans. And as the war progressed did the Russians learn to copy many of the smart tactics that the Germans used, and then use the same tactics against their enemy. The Russian airforce tactics became a copy of the Luftwaffe. In the end however was it perhaps the large blunders the German leadership made on the macro level which caused the German defeat more than all the other factors already mentioned above. Germany should have massed an extra army in Southern Russia to capture southern Russia in 1942. The German army should not have overstreched itself by launching its Moscow offensive in october 1941. They should not have invested so much in keeping Rzhev. They should have scrapped overly complex weapon designs, mobilized the women earlier and endorsed the He162 jet fighter project earlier and built surface to air missiles instead of V-bombs. They should have locked the allies into the Normandy beachhead and turn it into a siege and a disaster for the allies. Hitler should have allowed retreats and allowed a more flexible defence, and then the disaster of operation Bagration would never have happened. And using German armour in forrests and swamps was a bad idea and many tanks were wasted at Arracourt, Ardennes, Budapest and other places And giving the best weapons to badly trained men was a bad idea. And the German army after Stalingrad would have been better off getting reinforcements to existing formations instead of creating new units only because of political reasons. The list is very long of the mistakes of the german generals, Hitler and his industrial policies. Hitlers decisions was perhaps not worse than any other leader. But on the other hand did Germany's enemies have more resources to play with. The loss of the Afrika Korps, the 6th army at Stalingrad, 400.000 men during Bagration, and the twenty divisions lost at Normandy, and the large losses during the winter 1941-42 with the offensive towards Moscow and Stalins counter-offensive also caused 200.000 - 800.000 losses to the German army. All in all was those losses too much for the German army to take. And the war more and more seemed like lost. One could of course wonder what would have happened if Hitler had spared his men and evacuated the Afrika korps and his other troops instead of throwing them away in this wasteful way. But all of this is of course observations done by a person who have the benifit of hindsight.
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  50.  @filipmisko9363  Worthless comment not answering my question.
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