Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Top 7 Red Army Myths - World War 2" video.

  1. I think punishment batalions are an interesting topic. Especially the German ones. I am surprised that the men in them (who were criminals, deserters, cowards etc) would put up with 80% causulity rates and still bravely fight on. I mean most normal combat formations feel completly exhausted already after 25-50% losses, eventhough they consists of real hard men and not the most useless members of society. They were great use of manpower in my opinion. But the moral aspect of using men in this cruel way to send them away on missions where almost everyone would die is of course a bit of bad taste. But hey, what could one expect by Stalins regime or the evil nazi regime who invented things like "sonderkommando"? The gigantic amounts of Russian men killed by blocking detachments, shot for cowardice and sent to penal batallions are simply staggering considering the huge losses the red army had suffered from and the large manpower shortages. For the Germans was the loss of the 6th Army at Stalingrad a very hard blow. But the Soviets killed as many of their own men as the number of German solidiers lost at Stalingrad. And that was only during the battle of Stalingrad. Imagine then how many russian solidiers who then died during the entire war.
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  2. Its "LEND" not "Land" lease.
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  3.  @michaelritzen8138  They would atleast not have fared any worse by not declaring war. I think Hitler made a big mistake even if we would assume that USA would join the war at a later point. Hitler had units tied up in France which he could have used on the eastern front. And a 20 extra divisions could have been enough to prevent the Stalingrad disaster from happening. And maybe he then would have been able to win the 1942 campaign then and basicly knocking USSR out of the war. I also think that Roosevelt would have been very limited in the aid he could have given the USSR. Had USA not been at war with Germany it could have been politically difficult to give away as much aid as they did irl. So the lend lease help would then have been small and not very significant - just as it was in 1941 and 1942. It is possible that USSR still would have been able to defeat the Axis, but on the other hand would it also be very possible for Hitler to have defeated Russia. Losing southern Russia would have been devastating to the Russian war effort, and the economy could have fallen apart like it did in 1917, And the manpower shortages would become more of a problem for Russia. Germany could to some extent compensate their lost men by better weapons and more firepower. And a high GDP per capita of rich countries allows them to replace male workers with machines and tractors to a larger extent than a poor country like Russia. The Russian economy worked impressingly and surprisingly well during the war, and 80% of the country's GDP was directed towards the war effort - which is an extremely high number which normally only rich countries are able to achieve. Russia managed to achieve this by careful planning before the war, and the country had stored up vital resources before the war so a crash like 1917 due to resource shortages and price inflation would not happen. But this way of doing things could not work forever... and by late 1942 were Russia starting to running low on many vital resources. And if the resourced had runned out, then the industrial output would have fallen down like a rock. And Russia would have been forced into a dilemma - should they put more men in agriculture or mining? or should they put them in industry instead? or should they be put into the military instead? All 3 branches desperatly needed more manpower at this very important time period during the war. And more men in the economy would have meant less men for the military. And more men in the military would have meant less men in the economy, and weapons lost in battle would become more difficult to replace. So by 1942 I think it seems like Russia was in a more dire situation than Germany, despite Germany had not even started full rationing and mobilized its women for industrial work. Without gigantic amounts of lend-lease and the resources from southern Russia it seems like Russia would have been forced to fight a terrible up-hill battle for the rest of the war. And Britain would not have been able to do much to liberate continental Europe on its own. Russia had lost its entire airforce in 1941 and the army had lost millions of men, and large amounts of manpower reserves and industrial centers had also been lost to the Germans. So the war had already started bad for the Russians. They had lost 80% of their alumnium production to the Germans at the start of the war, and that was a hard blow to Russias ability to make aircrafts.
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  4. 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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  5. 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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  6. @stopfear I feel kind of the same way towards the red army. The sacrifices of the Russian people and the men who served in the Russian military are worthy of respect and deep greatfulness. They liberated the death camps in Poland and brought the end to one of the most evil regimes in history. But it is shameful how the Russian government treated its own military, with Stalins purge, and then with all punishment of soviet solidiers who had surrendered. And the blocking detachments, penal batallions, and wasteful incompetence of mens lives for the sake of scoring some political points. And the Red army were never forced into dicipline and prevented from commiting massive amounts of rapes and murder in Germany, and misteating German prisoners of war. It is shameful how the Soviets gave von Paulus the promise of treating his men well if they surrendered. And then von Paulus agreed to sign a capitulation under these conditions because he wanted his young men to be allowed to survive and come back to Germany and see their families again. But the Russians lied and betrayed this trust. Out of 250.000 German solidiers did only 2000 get to see their families again. And most solidiers starved to death within the 1st year of the capitulation. If the Soviets would torture and murder prisoners of war from the SS I wouldn't care - since those evil scum deserved everything coming their way and have no right to complain for how they had murdered innocent people. But killing ordinary German solidiers was unnecessary and barbaric. I admire Russias ability to take heavy blows and keep on fighting, and its ability as a poor country to mass produce weapons and beat Germany in the amount of weapons produced, and also oftentimes in many qualitative aspects. The russian artillery had a longer range than the German one. Many of the Russian tank designs was the best in the world when they came and so on. But the disregard for the safety of the Russian tank crews on the other hand says a lot about the disregard for human lives that the regime had.
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  7. This 1917 assumption was probably based on other factors than the 1941 invasion. Germany had no two-front war on the continent to worry about, and the resources of an entire continent laid at their feet. Russia had lost Finland and Poland. And Russias main power in 1914 laid in her huge manpower reserves of 26 million men. But the problem with Russia was of course that this fear of those 26 million men was overblown. The Russian industry was incapable of supplying the army with what it needed, and many of the Russian solidiers had no rifles and the howitzers and cannons lacked ammunition extremely badly. So if France and Germany felt that they were desperatly short of ammunition for their guns in 1915, then the Russian situation was literarly 30 times worse. The Russian artillery could only fire as many shots per month as a typical german gun would do in half a week. And the Russian infantry often had to attack their enemy with enemy at the gates type of tactics, because they did not have guns for all their men. So the 26 million men the German army feared would be used against them was a threat that never came into being because of the economic backwardness of Russia. So the only way of the allies to help the Russians would be if they would manage to transport all ammunition and weapons to the Russians so they could put all their millions of men to the fight. So Britain and France put togheter a fleet and tried to sail through the Ottoman empire and get to Russia and deliever their cargo. But after the failed amphibious landing on Galliopoli it stood clear that Russia would never get any help. And then the country lost the war against Germany. So as I sees it did Germany have better reasons for being optimistic in 1941, since they knew that the Russian army was far from invincible. And many world war 1 veterans would perhaps have been underestimated their enemies and still thought that the US army and the Russians would be easy to crush for the German army in a 1 vs 1 fight between the countries.
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  8. If you are a frontline solidier you do not get drunk or high on drugs because then you will get easily killed by the enemy. Some Russian frontline troops did of course plunder liquor and the consequences became twofold - much rapes and high Russian losses when they came into contact with the German army. Overall have international studies pointed out that solidiers in the frontline often have more respect for their enemies than troops in the rear. Zetterling mentions for example an Israeli study in his book about the battle of Kursk, and in this study it was concluded that Israeli solidiers and their enemies who were serving in the frontline had more respect for their enemy than the 2nd echelon. And the people in the 2nd line scored higher levels of hatred towards the enemy than troops in the 1st line. Also the behavior in World war 1 also seems to prove this point. The only people who knew the hell that French and British troops had to endure at the front was their German solidiers who had to live in the same hell and see death and live in fear. Fritz on the other side was just doing what he could to survive just like us guys on the other side, so there was a kind of mutual understanding of the men fighting on both sides of the frontline. And only the men in the rear could keep their overly patriotic illusions and romantic views of the war intact and keep on hating their opponents and have unfavourable views upon them. Hitlers strong hatred of the western powers can then perhaps be understood as a typical second echelon solidier opinion. And if you hate your enemy, bought into propaganda, and are filled with racist stereotypes... then of course it is easier to commit warcrimes. Many good Soviet men and veterans had died during 4 years of war and formations were now filled with men of lesser quality and with solidiers from places like Ukraine where the Germans had commit atrocities, and many solidiers could therefore have a lust for revenge. Many solidiers had seen many of their best friends die and the war had exhausted them. And Berians nasty propaganda endorsed all warcrime behaviour one could think of. So I think there are many reasons why things went out of control in the Russian army. The rapid advance into Germany created a shortage of time to punish crimes and restore dicipline. And dealing with armed drunken men with shitty ethics would not be a funny buisness I imagine. And besides, the Soviet army was running low on manpower so killing rapists was perhaps not so practical. Regardless do I still think that the Russian army could have done more to stop those crimes. And it is disgusting that even the Russian women in the Soviet army was making rape jokes despite being well aware of the huge scale of the Russian rape epidemic. And after Germany had surrendered and the war was over was mass rapes still happening every day for many weeks after the war. And then Europe suffered from shortages of food and power to heat peoples homes, and German women started to prostitute themselves to survive... and that in turn ended the rape wave as a way to get sex for Russian solidiers. General Westmooreland did also say in his memoirs that it was usally US troops which were not in combat that were doing drugs in Vietnam, because troops who were at the front would not take the risk of becoming easy prey to their enemy.
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  9. Most penal batallions probably had guns. But the movie enemy at the gates are right in that some troops there did not had enough guns for everyone. And this probably had less to do with malice towards the solidiers than the fact that gun manufacturers could not keep up with the large needs of the red army in that area at this crucial time when the perhaps most important battle of the war was fought.
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  10. According to one of those hour long youtube videos with one expert having a speech about the topic did Hitler want a war with USA and his push towards Moscow was according to that expert only just a show intended to impress the Japanese in the latter point of that year. Hitler knew the offensive would fail, but he wanted to give Japan the feeling that the war was soon going to end, and that there was a window of oppurtunity for Japan to strike back on western powers that had put an embargo on her. And for Japan there was a dire situation - either it had to withdraw completly from China and give up all huge amounts of land it had conquered in the war at a great cost. Or it could keep its land, but get into war with the western powers and steal all the resources it needed from western colonies in South east Asia. Japan was weak compared to the west and the leadership was terrified about going to war alone - according to the speaker. So had Germany not given Japan its blessing and joined the war on Japans side shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbour, then Japan would likely had been making peace with USA pretty quickly. So why did Hitler then want Japan pulled over into the Axis team? - It was because Japan had what Hitler did not have - a large and powerful navy. And with it it would be possible to strike back at the Americans. And Hitler was beginning to feel pissed off about the American attitudes towards him. America had embargoed Germany in the 1930s and Roosevelt had asked Hitler to sign non-aggression pacts with a large number of countries... and now Roosevelt even provided both of Hitlers enemies with shipments of weapons. So Hitler wanted to strike back against USA somehow. But as we all know, was that a stupid move, and he walked into the trap where Roosevelt wanted him to go. American public opinion was strongly against joining the war, but thanks to Hitlers declaration of war against USA did Roosevelt not have to bother about that problem anymore. Roosevelt finally got USA into the allied camp as he wanted, and public opinion was strongly changed thanks to pearl harbour and Hitlers stupid declaration of war against USA.
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