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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Still Rolling who wrote (36643)	8/9/2002 11:10:27 AM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 281500

Why is that so hard for Americans to grasp, especially now that we have gone from a cold war to a special relationship? Because most Americans have never studied the events on the Eastern Front, or maybe only know about the Battle of Stalingrad. I can't even get my husband, a military history buff, to read about the Eastern Front because he's virulently anti-communist. Even American Jews, who know all about Treblinka and Auschwitz, don't know anything about the death camps and concentration camps in the Ukraine and Belorussia. Nobody seems to know that seven million non-Jews were killed in those camps. Americans have no idea that more than 20 million Russians were killed on the Eastern Front. After WWII ended, and the Cold War began, and Western Germany became our ally, the suffering on the Eastern Front was not polite conversation. Similarly, on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, nobody discussed what happened to the Jews, they only cared about what happened to the Communists. Which is one reason that Eastern Germans are still openly anti-semitic.

To: Still Rolling who wrote (36643)	8/9/2002 6:52:26 PM
From: Hoa Hao	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

What stopped Hitler in '41 was logistics. Look how far he had gone. The German army was still largely supplied by horse and wagon, only some of the units were fully wheeled and/or armored. Space was the only thing that saved the Russians; about the only thing they were capable of was dying like flies. The Russians fighting may have saved the US a lot of hassle, but Hitler lost the war the day he declared war on the United States. I am not trying to disparage or denigrate the Russians, but the opening shots of the movie "Enemy at the Gates" contain certain truths hard to avoid, ie, lack of Soviet tactical ability and the tendency to simply throw away lives for nothing. They stopped the Germans, but it took USW lendlease to give the Soviets what was needed to get to Berlin.

To: Still Rolling who wrote (36643)	8/12/2002 1:50:46 AM
From: james-rockford	Respond to of 281500

Moscow was soon to be captured and made a back water of the war. I wrote about the Summer of 1941, not the Winter. There is a vast difference. When Smolensk (200 miles West of Moscow) fell on July 16, 1941, the Russians were stunned. They thought the city would be able to hold up to the German onslaught at least till late August. When the terrible news came, Stalin broke down and openly wept in the Russian War Room. He said, "We are defeated. Everything that I and Lenin have worked for is finished." After the Germans cleaned up the Smolensk Cauldron (pocket) they moved 20 miles and took the high ground east of the city. So they were now in Army Strength 180 miles from Moscow on July 24, 1941. At this point, General Fedor Von Bock, the Commander of Army Group Center ordered a one week halt, so that his men could rest (they'd been fighting since June 22), and also so that his Army could be fully supplied and equipped. The Engineers needed time to switch over the narrow gauge Russian railway to a standard, wider Western European gauge, and also repair the cratered tarmacs of the destroyed Red Air Force. The Attack on Moscow was set to begin the first week of August, 1941. The Germans had 1.2 million men facing Moscow. The Russians had 400,000 men defending (that is the Russians own best guess, their command and control had totally broken down). The Germans had 5 full Panzer Divisions, that is over a 1,000 pieces of armor. Russian armor, its anybody's guess. The Germans thought their enemy had less than 400, the Russians, they don't know. Army Group Center had 3 Mechanized Divisions, 2 of which were fanatical SS. The Russians had no Mechanized Divisions. The Germans had absolute air superiority. The Luftwaffe flew countless air recon. missions over the approaches to the city. Their reports had a common theme: 'The highways and byways leading to Moscow are unguarded and undefended.' General Von Bock said he expected to push 250 miles east of Moscow before stopping. Gen. Guderian head of the Panzer column that was to surround Moscow from the South thought that the city would surrender on August 24th. Gen. Hans Hoth, commander of the Northern Panzer wing, expected Moscow to fall by August 17th. What the world didn't know, was that when the Germans approached the city that Summer, Moscow was going to be declared an 'open city', and abandoned. This ultra State Secret was only revealed by the Russians in the summer of 2000. It didn't get much play in the World Press, but when I heard that, I was stunned. That means that the Nazi's would have taken Moscow even earlier. An incredible accomplishment. They would have captured Moscow within 7 weeks of the Campaign. Had they taken Moscow that August the Germans would have controlled 51% of Soviet Industrial Production.------ What the Soviets desperately needed was time. They needed time to get that superpower machinery cranked up. Needed time to make munitions, build more tanks, and to train a new army. But, the key thing the Blitzkrieg does is to deny time. The Russians at this point were taking men straight from the Moscow Recruiting Stations and shipping them to the front, often with no weapons. There was no hope of reserves to help the Moscow front. Leningrad was nearly surrounded and Kiev in the Ukraine was fighting for its own life. You're telling me the remnants of this beaten 'Army' was going to stop Army Group Center from capturing Moscow? I don't think so.......... It was Hitler who saved Moscow in August 1941. He ordered Army Group Center not to attack the city, stripped them of their armor and sent it to the other fronts, and this great Army sat around for 2 months and did nothing. The men got so bored they went into the fields and helped the local farmers harvest their crops. It wasn't until late September that their Armor was returned to them. And on October 2, 1941 they began their ill-fated assault on the City. To me the Germans had a very narrow window of opportunity to win that war. By October, 1941, that window had shut and they had no chance to beat the Russians. Some sources: 'Disaster at Moscow' by Alfred Turney. 'Hitler Moves East' by Paul Carell. 'Panzer Tactics' by Heinz Guderian. Basically, I have read everything I can get my hands on about the Russian/German War. As well as Russian novels; 'The Living and the Dead' is excellent.