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EvanSchenck posted:Stalin was highly intelligent, well-informed, and fully aware that after Operation Uranus the USSR had the momentum. Even if he was interested in a negotiated settlement, why would he agree to negotiate from a weak position, with German armies occupying Ukraine, the Baltic, and Belarus, and still besieging Leningrad, when it was clear that his position would be far stronger after the next campaign season? Additionally, what would he even gain from a ceasefire? Both sides were fully aware that the USSR and Nazi Germany could not coexist, and one of them would have to destroy the other in war. The Nazi violation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact made that very clear. Why would Stalin give his mortal enemy time to recover just when they were beginning to collapse, when he knew he would eventually have to fight them again anyway? Why would he betray the Allies in such a way as to guarantee they would never help him in a subsequent war? Wait, was he intelligent? I've heard him described as only person in the world who didn't think Hitler would backstab him. He ignored all the reports there were hundreds of divisions massing on his borders and then refused to let them fight back because obviously it was just an accident that hundreds of German planes were bombing west Russia. He also thought early on that he was regaining momentum, that he was eventually proved right after millions of men were lost in pointlessly disorganized counter-attacks doesn't really make him intelligent. Manstein wrote in his memoirs about how his aim by late 42 was to fight the Soviets to a stalemate. The German army might have been large by the time of Kursk, but they had conscripted virtually all the appropriately aged German men by that point and they knew from WW1 that you can't just keep fighting when you can't replace losses. Manstein tried to explain the impossibility of winning in the east to Hitler but Hitler couldn't be swayed.
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Sep 18, 2011 23:50
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SeanBeansShako posted:Plus gay black Hitler would have gotten into the The Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, either with some artistic flare or sleeping with the Dean. Dammit guys stop loving with Hitler!
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Sep 19, 2011 00:38
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Rosscifer posted:Wait, was he intelligent? I've heard him described as only person in the world who didn't think Hitler would backstab him. He ignored all the reports there were hundreds of divisions massing on his borders and then refused to let them fight back because obviously it was just an accident that hundreds of German planes were bombing west Russia. He also thought early on that he was regaining momentum, that he was eventually proved right after millions of men were lost in pointlessly disorganized counter-attacks doesn't really make him intelligent. Certainly Stalin was a cunning and ruthless strategist, at least when it came to politics. You don't just rise to the politburo, then discredit or exile all your equals, then surround yourself with sycophants and finally execute all the old sycophants to be replaced by new ones if you are totally clueless. He was like this Georgian cuckoo chick, slowly killing all the other chicks in the nest until he'd be the only one left at the top of the food chain. Militarily he wasn't as adept, and it was Trotsky who saved his rear end in Tsaritsyn (to be known as Stalingrad) in the civil war. The worst mistakes he made were born out of his paranoia, however: the cleansing of the army to ensure that he wouldn't be overthrown by a military coup. Not only did this result in a shortage of experienced high ranking officers, but it also led into terrible doctrinal mistakes as Tukhachevsky's ground breaking work - the Deep Battle doctrine, equivalent of German Blitzkrieg - was thrown away and in 1941 the Red Army was still in the process of developing a new doctrine and many generals* had to be rehabilitated to defend the government that had wanted them dead. Stalin was a fool in not reacting sufficiently to the German force build-up in 1941, but his reasons were somewhat understandable. Soviet Union was not ready for a war with Germany, but neither did it seem believable that Germany would rather take the huge risk that comes with a war on two fronts all the while losing their most important trade partner. Stalin mistakenly thought that Germany was only trying to bully for concessions - either better trade deals or some more areas in Poland or Lithuania. The trouble was that Hitler wasn't acting as logically as he would have expected and he didn't have a realistic contingency plan. Instead, he fell into panic and withdrew to his dacha for several days before taking charge. During the war Stalin, like Hitler, Churchill and many other armchair generals, tried his hand in operational leadership a few times, and these usually ended in catastrophies. He was at his best when he trusted his generals and restricted himself to accepting or declining their plans. Stalin learned this slowly. Eg. the buildup for the destruction of the 6th Army in Stalingrad was the result of Stalin allowing Zhukov and Vasilevsky do their jobs. But then in the aftermath he once again (as many times before) thought that Heer was crumbling and that he could just press the attack all spring long. Result was the 3rd Battle of Kharkov where Manstein managed to give the Red Army a bloody nose and that direction was stabilized again. From then on such mistakes were fewer. *)One of these was Konstantin Rokossovsky: quote:It is reported that he escaped the fate of so many other officers caught up in the purge by proving to the court that the officer who his accusers claimed had denounced him had been killed in 1920 during the civil war. During interrogation under torture he lost nine teeth, had three ribs cracked and had his toes smashed with a hammer. According to Alexander Solzhenitsyn he endured two mock shooting ceremonies where people were shot dead around him. quote:In October 1949, with the establishment of a fully Communist government under Bolesław Bierut in Poland, Rokossovsky, on Stalin's orders, became the Polish Minister of National Defense, with the additional title of Marshal of Poland.
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Sep 19, 2011 01:11
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Reading The Battle of Kursk has made me wonder if the Germans could've done anything different at this point. Everyone knew the Kursk offensive was coming, and the Soviets had plenty of time to prepare for it. If theWehrmacht could get a do-over, what should they have done different?
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Sep 19, 2011 01:23
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Rosscifer posted:Wait, was he intelligent? Read a good biography of Stalin if you don't believe it. Evil, yes; stupid, no. quote:I've heard him described as only person in the world who didn't think Hitler would backstab him. He ignored all the reports there were hundreds of divisions massing on his borders and then refused to let them fight back because obviously it was just an accident that hundreds of German planes were bombing west Russia. He also thought early on that he was regaining momentum, that he was eventually proved right after millions of men were lost in pointlessly disorganized counter-attacks doesn't really make him intelligent. I think I've commented before in this thread about how people often have a hard time understanding the behavior of historical actors, because when they watch the history channel or read a popular-market history book they're treated to a semi-omniscient hindsight perspective. This perspective is the product of professional historians carefully studying and organizing primary sources for several years before sitting down and writing a narrative that tries to encapsulate all the important details in an easily digestible form. At the time that events are actually occurring, however, leaders have to react according to the information they have, and sometimes they're getting a lot of contradictory reports from sources of varying reliability. Stalin had an additional handicap, in that his overbearing authority and vicious temperament had created a system where people were often afraid to be truthful about bad news, which made it easy for him to deceive himself. Both Hitler and Stalin considered the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact temporary. Stalin and his diplomats had in fact spent the prewar period trying to come to an arrangement with the UK and France to oppose Hitler together, but the British spiked those overtures. Stalin instead opted to find common ground with the Nazis, in the hopes of deferring conflict to a later date when the USSR would be better prepared. Germany would turn west against France and the UK, and stay embroiled in that conflict until he could strike. Whereas there is some disagreement between historians as to when Stalin wanted to attack, there is little doubt that he would have done so eventually. Because he fervently hoped that there would be enough time to prepare, and because he was too powerful to be contradicted, he allowed himself to believe that Hitler would not attack. From a logical perspective Barbarossa was a poor idea. Even if Germany had overrun Western Europe with shocking speed, they were at least still at war with Britain, and the USSR was delivering crucial supplies (particularly petroleum) as part of the M-R pact. Realistically Germany and the USSR did not stand to gain from a war, but Britain and possibly others like Japan or the USA did; thus Stalin tended to dismiss reports of the German preparations as disinformation from his other enemies. Wishful thinking caused him to underestimate Hitler's aggression, much like the British and French leadership leading into 1939. Stalin's conduct after the beginning of the war has also been rightly criticized, because for all his abilities at intrigue and manipulating others he was not a military leader, and his interference was often profoundly unhelpful. It's a sign of his intelligence, however, that he realized this and by the 1941 Winter Offensive had withdrawn to a management role and given his generals a greater degree of latitude. Hitler described an opposite trajectory, in that setbacks only made him more convinced of the need for his personal intervention (EDIT: though as Nennonen pointed out above, Stalin did get overexcited at times later on). By 1943 Stalin was well equipped to make decisions like, say, laughing off a German peace proposal coming immediately after Stalingrad. quote:Manstein wrote in his memoirs about how his aim by late 42 was to fight the Soviets to a stalemate. The German army might have been large by the time of Kursk, but they had conscripted virtually all the appropriately aged German men by that point and they knew from WW1 that you can't just keep fighting when you can't replace losses. Manstein tried to explain the impossibility of winning in the east to Hitler but Hitler couldn't be swayed. So Manstein said in 1959, at least. Schenck v. U.S. fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Sep 19, 2011 |
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Sep 19, 2011 01:57
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Oxford Comma posted:Reading The Battle of Kursk has made me wonder if the Germans could've done anything different at this point. Everyone knew the Kursk offensive was coming, and the Soviets had plenty of time to prepare for it. If theWehrmacht could get a do-over, what should they have done different? The reason that the Soviets were able to predict precisely where the next offensive would fall was that Kursk was obviously where it had to be. Germany no longer had the resources for a colossal offensive like Barbarossa or Fall Blau, so they had to look for a more limited target. Another strain on their resources was the sheer length of their defensive lines. The loss of the Third Battle of Kharkov had halted the Soviet offensive after Stalingrad and left a huge salient centered on the city of Kursk. A successful German offensive against the shoulders of the Kursk salient would result in the encirclement and destruction of a large Soviet formation, and with the salient eliminated their defensive line would actually shorten following the offensive, reducing the strain on the troops. So if they were going to have an offensive, it pretty much had to be Kursk. It's been a while since I read Glantz, so you can confirm or deny this, but I seem to remember passages quoting Hitler's staff to the effect that the Führer was haggard with worry about the battle, in part because of its inevitability. I'm not sure if there's anything in particular the Heer could have done to win the battle, but there were definitely some wasted resources going into it. For example, the Germans had gone to some expense putting new AFVs in place for the attack, like the Elefant assault gun and the Panther--which had not yet had sufficient testing and was still unreliable--which had wasted time and resources that might have been better spent on proven models. But generally the deck was very heavily stacked against the Germans at Kursk.
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Sep 19, 2011 02:17
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It seems the only other option minus waiting for a renewed Soviet offense where the lines currently stood would be strategic retreats to more defensible lines, and try to keep more of a reserve force to fight any Soviet advance in an area to a standstill through attrition. Perhaps putting most of the southern part of the line along the Dnieper. I can't see asking Hitler to retreat anywhere between 100-200 miles going well though. At the least it would've put a little more strength in the line, especially given the fact after the failure of Kursk not only did the Germans deplete so much resources but units had to be transferred to the new Italian front.
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Sep 19, 2011 03:23
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Amused to Death posted:It seems the only other option minus waiting for a renewed Soviet offense where the lines currently stood would be strategic retreats to more defensible lines, and try to keep more of a reserve force to fight any Soviet advance in an area to a standstill through attrition. Perhaps putting most of the southern part of the line along the Dnieper. In hindsight retreating to a line along the Dnieper appears to be a good idea. That's where they ended up anyway by the end of '43, so they might as well go there minus the casualties and damage to mobile formations, right? But there are other things to consider.
For example, perhaps the biggest missed opportunity for Germany in WWII was going for Prometheism a la Josef Pilsudski--shattering the USSR by making common cause with subject nations like the Baltic states and especially the Ukrainians, who had no love for the Soviet Union and in many cases welcomed the invaders at first. Yet doing so was impossible, because it went directly against the racialized raison d'etre of the Nazi state. If they had been capable of making a pragmatic decision like that, they would not have been Nazis. quote:I can't see asking Hitler to retreat anywhere between 100-200 miles going well though. As Rosscifer referenced above, Manstein advocated an elastic defense which probably would have entailed rather more modest withdrawals, and that eventually got him into an escalating confrontation with Hitler that ended in his being fired. I think a general who advocated ceding a couple hundred kilometers to the Soviets might have been risking more than just getting sacked.
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Sep 19, 2011 05:44
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With all this Soviet talk, can someone tell me some sort of an short writeup of Zhukov as a man and a strategist? I mean, all I've pretty much understood of the guy is that Germans stand at the gates of Moscow and he strolls out of Siberia, turning the tide and within few years the Soviet flag flies over Berlin. Internet has very little to tell about him, which is weird because mean, here we have a general who pretty much won the largest theater of war singlehandedly and people like Patton or Montgomery have like ten times the stuff written about him. How come he's never up there with Napoleon, Rommel or Alexander when people discuss generals (or other WWII generals)? Was he really an immensely gifted general or did he just have superior numbers and industry behind him? If the former, how did he get so good? Why did he seem to pretty much fade away after the war? Maybe it's a too vague of a question, but I've always found him a pretty interesting person.
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Sep 19, 2011 06:43
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I was under the impression that by far and a large a reason the German won was due to the sheer amount of Russian manpower. They had a lot of people and the Germans didn't , millions more. Is this a legitimate thought or incorrect?
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Sep 19, 2011 06:50
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DarkCrawler posted:With all this Soviet talk, can someone tell me some sort of an short writeup of Zhukov as a man and a strategist? I mean, all I've pretty much understood of the guy is that Germans stand at the gates of Moscow and he strolls out of Siberia, turning the tide and within few years the Soviet flag flies over Berlin. Internet has very little to tell about him, which is weird because mean, here we have a general who pretty much won the largest theater of war singlehandedly and people like Patton or Montgomery have like ten times the stuff written about him. Russian history has been and remains a difficult subject for Anglo-American historians because of language barriers and continuing difficulty of getting access to archival materials. For a long time the western knowledge of the eastern front was wholly based on memoirs of German generals that didn't draw a very flattering picture of Russian strategic finesse. But in Russia he has not faded anywhere. He was the Soviet defence minister in the 1950s and remains the highest decorated Russian soldier of all time. And in Russian/Soviet military this means a lot of decorations. He would have needed a counterweight to stand up in Victory Day parades. Zhukov was definitely a capable commander who had the added benefit of having gained experience in modern operations in the Halhin Gol battles against Japanese in 1938. But he wasn't incapable of mistakes, either: concurrent to Stalingrad encirclement was Operation Mars near Rzhev, west of Moscow, which ended ugly. According to Soviet military histories it was a mere holding attack to draw attention from the main effort in Stalingrad, but according to Glantz it was the more important of the two offensives. The offensive was poorly supported against well entrenched and equipped defenders in difficult terrain. Soviet losses were equal to the losses of Operation Saturn, except Mars didn't result in the encirclement of a German army. After seeing the defeat Zhukov didn't pull the operation off, either, but sent reinforcements to get the same treatment. It was exactly the kind of senseless waste of men and material that German generals scorned (and envied) Red Army for. David Glantz has written a 400 page book about Mars, but his article goes into plenty of depth.
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Sep 19, 2011 07:39
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Considering Stalin started off as a two bit Georgian Bank Robber and 'Revolutionary' and ended up as virtually the Soviet Emperor of land from eastern Germany to the south eastern Chinese coast I'd call him anything but stupid.
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Sep 19, 2011 16:02
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EvanSchenck posted:You don't seem to like Von Manstein. I always saw him as one of the most brilliant generals of WW2. You particularly seem to be bitter about his thesis in "Lost Victories" that, if Hitler had just let the generals do the fighting, the war in the East could have been won. Rommel achieved similar feats, but nobody is questioning him at all. He is considered one of the greatest in history even. Where does the hate come from?
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Sep 21, 2011 09:26
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Rommel lost, just FYI
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Sep 21, 2011 14:05
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Rommel lost, just FYI Rommel killed himself even. So he didn't get to write a book 10 years later, that "if it wasn't for that Austrian corporal, I would have kicked the British out of N-Africa/Allies out of Normandy no problem. And despite this, he is still considered one of the greatest ever.
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Sep 21, 2011 15:04
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OperaMouse posted:You don't seem to like Von Manstein. I always saw him as one of the most brilliant generals of WW2. You particularly seem to be bitter about his thesis in "Lost Victories" that, if Hitler had just let the generals do the fighting, the war in the East could have been won. Rommel achieved similar feats, but nobody is questioning him at all. He is considered one of the greatest in history even. Where does the hate come from? Maybe my dislike for Manstein comes from the fact that he was a war criminal given a pass by the Allies because they believed he might be useful against the Soviets? He also made a lot of dubious claims at his trial, and later on in public life. For example, he said he had been unaware of the atrocities committed by units under his command, which was A) implausible, considering the scale of German criminality on the Eastern Front and B) obviously false considering he issued his own version of the Commissar Order which specifically exhorted his soldiers to attack civilians, especially Jews. His claims that he could have beaten the Soviets if Hitler had just given him a free hand are also blatant after-the-fact self-promotion, especially considering that he only began to feud with Hitler over strategy in 1944, by which time the situation in Russia was already completely screwed. Conceivably an elastic defense might have bought time, a few months or maybe a year, but to what purpose? To complete the Holocaust? To surrender more forces to the Allies? Historically speaking I also resent Manstein because he was one of the German generals whose postwar writing defined how people in the West (inaccurately) understood the Eastern Front for decades. I'm "bitter" about his claims in Lost Victories because people treat them as gospel, as opposed to the self-aggrandizing personal mythology that they were. The idea that "if this" or "if that" Nazi Germany could have won the war is simply false, however popular it might be as a counterfactual. Germany was completely defeated because their forces were insufficient to defeat their enemies, and finally they were comprehensively outfought. EDIT: quote:Rommel killed himself even. So he didn't get to write a book 10 years later, that "if it wasn't for that Austrian corporal, I would have kicked the British out of N-Africa/Allies out of Normandy no problem. And despite this, he is still considered one of the greatest ever. Rommel is given a lot of plaudits as a great commander because he mostly fought US and UK forces, and believing that they defeated the best was an ego-booster. Also, since he was predominantly on the Western Front, he is perceived as less tainted by the brutality and war crimes that were committed against Soviet forces and the civilian population. Schenck v. U.S. fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Sep 21, 2011 |
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Sep 21, 2011 15:10
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Rommel was good but the level that western hero-worship takes him to as some sort of freak military mastermind is just utterly ridiculous.
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Sep 21, 2011 18:08
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And in all fairness, Rommel and 7th Panzer Division were arguably the all-stars of the invasion of France, a campaign which blew everyone's mind at the time.
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Sep 21, 2011 18:27
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His tactical victories in North Africa too were pretty impressive given the limited amount of resources he had. There definitely is a level of hero worship though, Rommel is seen as basically the "good" German basically. This was even helped as he was being given respect even from Churchill during the war, which was just fed into after his forced suicide.
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Sep 21, 2011 20:09
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Amused to Death posted:His tactical victories in North Africa too were pretty impressive given the limited amount of resources he had. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonner_Fellers
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Sep 21, 2011 23:56
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I didn't know that. I wonder how many lives were lost to that particular piece of stupidity.
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Sep 22, 2011 00:06
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Regarding Rommel's lack of resources, it should be noted that this was a direct result of an OKW decision (not strictly a decision by Hitler) to consider Africa a secondary theater before sending Rommel to it. Rommel blatantly exceeded his orders by attacking the British and had no excuse to be surprised by OKW's lack of material support for his efforts. Indeed, his early successes proved to be a logistical nightmare for the Wehrmacht because of the long supply lines necessary before the taking of Tobruk and the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean in the face of very effective British air and submarine forces operating out of Malta. While Rommel was undoubtedly a very capable tactician, the strength of his strategic thought is less certain. It could be argued that he recognized the importance of the Suez Canal, and was indeed specifically trying to capture it through his efforts, but I believe he was simply more of an opportunist. He knew the British were not expecting an attack, so he attacked...
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Sep 22, 2011 00:07
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If Rommel would have been the strategical genius people think he was, first thing he would have done before going on the attack in North Africa would have been to take out a map and stab his index finger at Malta. Then he should have told everyone that place needs to be taken before any real offensive can happen. But he didn't. The fairest opinion I've seen on Rommel was that he was good when commanding a division but worse at commanding an army corps, especially since he didn't care about logistics too much. Also most people seem to not realize that Rommel was one of the political opportunists who got in bed with the Nazis to further their careers.
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Sep 22, 2011 00:25
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Kemper Boyd posted:he didn't care about logistics too much. Rommel, being the aristocratic type, considered logistics to be beneath him. He believed that quartermasters were inherently conservative in their estimates of what was possible and simply needed to be hounded until they found a way to make things work. I guess he was right, up to a point...
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Sep 22, 2011 01:08
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Rommel actually did recognize the importance of Malta and the effect it would have on any operations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Malta_%28World_War_II%29 quote:The opening of a new front in North Africa in mid-1940 increased Malta's already considerable value. British air and sea forces based on the island could attack Axis ships transporting vital supplies and reinforcements from Europe. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, in command of Axis forces in North Africa, recognised its importance quickly. In May 1941, he warned that "Without Malta the Axis will end by losing control of North Africa".[1] edit: Ah, yeah you're right that was his point. Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Sep 22, 2011 |
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Sep 22, 2011 01:33
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I think Kemper's point is that Rommel decided to pursue an agressive course despite the fact that he knew Malta was a problem. Regarding the Kursk discussion, one of the things Germany could have done to achieve a better outcome in CITADEL would have been to not have a retarded system for designing and producing tanks. The Panther was a miserable abortion of a weapon, and they actually delayed the offensive to wait for the first ones to reach the lines. That didn't work to their benefit, as it gave the Soviets more time to prepare as well, and the Panthers tended to catch on fire. A lot. This was largely due to the fact that their engine compartments were built to be waterproof so they could ford rivers (thus simultaneously not allowing excess heat to escape), even though the rest of the tank was incapable of actually doing that. This was one of the "features" MAN offered the army in order to win the production contract (which it couldn't actually fill anyway - they had to ask Daimler and Henschel for help to reach their quotas after beating those two companies in the bid process). Admiral Snackbar fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Sep 22, 2011 |
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Sep 22, 2011 01:47
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Admiral Snackbar posted:The Panther was a miserable abortion of a weapon The panther, once all of its problems were taken care of, was one of the better tanks in the war wasn't it?
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Sep 22, 2011 04:24
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Why were the Germans of WW1 called Huns?
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Sep 22, 2011 04:35
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Oxford Comma posted:Why were the Germans of WW1 called Huns? British Propaganda, from the 1st World War homefront radio advertisements and posters. They were also called 'The Bosche'.
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Sep 22, 2011 04:36
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SeanBeansShako posted:British Propaganda, from the 1st World War homefront radio advertisements and posters. They were also called 'The Bosche'. But why "Huns"?
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Sep 22, 2011 04:39
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Oxford Comma posted:But why "Huns"? Prussians wouldn't be a good idea, as Prussia was a British ally for several important engagements in the past. I doubt the Ministers in charge of the Propaganda really cared that the Huns were Asiatic people. Plus, it can be hard to find something that rhymes with Visi or Ostrogoths.
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Sep 22, 2011 04:49
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Oxford Comma posted:Why were the Germans of WW1 called Huns? It is kind of an interesting microcosm of one of the major causes of the war. In 1900 the Germans sent a contingent of troops help put down the boxer rebellion, and in his famous style the Kaiser wanted to give them an inspirational speech before they set off. He gave a ridiculously clumsy bit that compared the Germans to the Huns (as in Atilla) and said they'd thump China good and kill a bunch of Chinamen and whatnot. He probably didn't mean this as literally as it sounded; he had no design of his troops sacking or raping or burning poo poo China, but that's more or less what they did on a relatively small scale. The European press (the British in particular, in very particular one Lord Northcliffe) latched onto this speech as an example of German barbarism which kind of entered the national psyche. Of course the great irony is the one thing in the world that the Kaiser didn't want to do was annoy the British, which is something he had a real knack for.
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Sep 22, 2011 04:50
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“Should you encounter the enemy, he will be defeated! No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken! Whoever falls into your hands is forfeited. Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German.”
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Sep 22, 2011 05:16
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bewbies posted:Of course the great irony is the one thing in the world that the Kaiser didn't want to do was annoy the British, which is something he had a real knack for. It was a miscalculation of disasterous proportions not to realise what the effect of building the High Seas Fleet would have on the British psyche.
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Sep 22, 2011 10:21
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Saint Celestine posted:The panther, once all of its problems were taken care of, was one of the better tanks in the war wasn't it? That is what I thought as well...
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Sep 22, 2011 10:41
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Saint Celestine posted:The panther, once all of its problems were taken care of, was one of the better tanks in the war wasn't it? The Panther was a good tank when it was functional and when there were enough of them in one place to make a difference. The problem was that by the time major production started Germany was experiencing serious shortages in tooling and materials and some uncomfortable compromises had to be made. Due to those compromises Panthers were never reliable, and their final drive units had a service life of something like 200km. Which meant they had to ride railroad cars everywhere in a country that had been having its railroads bombed daily for years.
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Sep 22, 2011 10:56
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Alchenar posted:It was a miscalculation of disasterous proportions not to realise what the effect of building the High Seas Fleet would have on the British psyche. Quite. For Great Britain control of the seas wasn't just part of her Great Power status, it was vital for her survival as an independent country. Germany building a large battlefleet specifically to challange the Royal Navy was never going to go down well.
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Sep 22, 2011 12:08
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Rent-A-Cop posted:The Panther was a good tank when it was functional and when there were enough of them in one place to make a difference. The problem was that by the time major production started Germany was experiencing serious shortages in tooling and materials and some uncomfortable compromises had to be made. Due to those compromises Panthers were never reliable, and their final drive units had a service life of something like 200km. Which meant they had to ride railroad cars everywhere in a country that had been having its railroads bombed daily for years. But then again these are not faults of the tank design per se. The main fault with German war production was that while the need to move on from Panzer IV was seen, switching the production from IV to V was not simple as they were very different and didn't have many parts in common. The project was born in 1941-42 after Germans had encountered T-34, at a time when German industry was not yet at full capacity, let alone being bombed by the Allies. It's actually quite surprising that Germans became known for their heavy tanks at all, as German tank production before 1939 was miniscule and a much needed boost in the numbers came from Czech Skoda model 35 and 38 light tanks (the Czech tanks would continue being a nuisance to Allied tankers until the very end of the war in the form of Hetzer). Soviets kept it much simpler: the T-34 remained essentially the same from 1940 to 1945, with only the turret becoming better protected and armed. Russians could have replaced it with the heavier T-43, but despite sharing 70% of its parts with T-34 it was deemed that switching would have delayed production too much compared to just redesigning the turret of T-34 to accommodate an 85mm gun. In the end, the winner wasn't going to be the one who had a better tank fighting against an inferior tank: it was going to be the one who had a tank fighting where the enemy didn't have any tanks. Nevertheless, the production of T-44, a predecessor for T-54, did start in late 1944 but it wasn't accepted for front service mainly for logistical reasons. The T-34 chassis also served as a platform for eg. SU-85, SU-122 and SU-152 assault guns. Likewise the US kept it as simple and efficient as possible. M4 Sherman shared many standardized parts with M3 Lee and other models, and like T-34 it had been designed prior to being pulled into the war. The US had many Sherman models in the field by the end of the war, but getting spares for any US tank unit was always a lot simpler than it was for Germans. Maybe it says something about the T-34 and Sherman that they both stayed in service until relatively recently. About 50 thousand of them both were produced, and many ended being sold to third world armies. Upgunned Israeli Shermans saw combat in the Yom Kippur War, and T-34/85's were still used in the Bosnian war in the 90's.
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Sep 22, 2011 13:28
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SeanBeansShako posted:Prussians wouldn't be a good idea, as Prussia was a British ally for several important engagements in the past. On that note: I have seen a facsimile of an article from the Völkischer Beobachter cirka 1943 that referred to the air forces that bombed Berlin as "angloamerikanische Lufthunnen". Seems that "hun" was more or less used as shorthand for "marauding barbarian" without considering who the historical Huns were or what they did.
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Sep 22, 2011 15:27
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bewbies posted:It is kind of an interesting microcosm of one of the major causes of the war. In 1900 the Germans sent a contingent of troops help put down the boxer rebellion, and in his famous style the Kaiser wanted to give them an inspirational speech before they set off. He gave a ridiculously clumsy bit that compared the Germans to the Huns (as in Atilla) and said they'd thump China good and kill a bunch of Chinamen and whatnot. During the Second World War, German officers would pay visits to the Kaiser in exile in the Netherlands. They found him dressed in tweed and drinking English tea. Like Hitler, Wilhelm was determined to be more English than the English.
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Sep 22, 2011 15:41
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