by Oles Buzina
translated by KA
source: http://www.istpravda.ru/digest/13381/
Otto Skorzeny „Why didn’t we take Moscow?“
German memoirs explain what caused the defeat of the Wehrmacht in the war.
Every Spring in the run up to Victory Day, television starts to show feature films devoted to the Great Patriotic War. Honestly: most of them are simply exploiting the grand subject-matter. They need to sell something “interesting” to the belching inhabitant sitting with a bottle of beer in his hand in front of the TV, something pleasing to his eyes which have grown lethargic from his peaceful life. This is where those shows such as “Fighter” appear, the main plot of which is who gets into the female pilot’s knickers – the “bad” political officer or the “good” son of a repressed pre-revolutionary aristocrat, who carries a small volume of Goethe – in German – under his arm and is played by the actor Dyushev? Those that don’t themselves fight and don’t even serve in the military tell others who do not fight that war is fascinating and erotic. There is even, so they say, time for a Russian soldier to read Goethe. Frankly, such films disgust me. They are immoral and false. As false as the American film “Pearl Harbour”. Because they are founded on the same clichés – war and girls. And such films do not add to our understanding of the question: why did our grandfathers win back then? After all the Germans were so organised, so well-armed and had such an excellent command system, that a “realist” could only surrender. Thus Czechoslovakia surrendered (without a fight), Poland (with almost no fight), France (nice and easily – like a Parisian prostitute “surrendering” to a client), as well as Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece…
But this didn’t work in the East – everything went awry and it ended for some reason not in Moscow but in Berlin. Where it had all started.
It seems to me that the memoirs of SS Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, the world’s most widely published “commando” and “super-saboteur”, can help clarify this issue. This latter, liberator of Mussolini, kidnapper of Horthy and hunter of Tito, was the same person who, smelling of gunpowder, took part in the 1941 offensive campaign against Russia. He was part of the SS “Das Reich” division, which belonged to the Panzer Group Guderian.
THE PURGE OF 1937 STRENGTHENED THE RED ARMY
Otto Skorzeny was in the middle of the troops of the Southwestern Front in Ukraine, advancing via Brest and Yelnya and admiring through binoculars the far away domes of Moscow. But he never made it there. And the question – how come they didn’t take Moscow? – plagued the retired Obersturmbannführer for the rest of his life. After all they wanted to. And were prepared. And they were such fine fellows: with a feeling of deep satisfaction Skorzeny describes how he completed a 12 kilometre forced march in full gear and was able to shoot almost without missing a single shot. But his life came to an end in far-away Spain – in exile, fleeing post-war German justice, which went after him with the typically German meticulous “denazification” in the same way that a housewife poisons a cockroach. What a shame!
Otto Skorzeny
Skorzeny’s memoirs have never been translated in Ukraine. In Russia – there are only excerpts -chiefly those episodes which describe special operations. The Russian version of the memoirs starts at that point when Skorzeny lands in hospital following his adventures close to Moscow. But in the original there are 150 pages preceding this. About the road to Moscow and how, in the author’s opinion, the shame came about.
Hidden sabotage among the German Generals was, according to the SS veteran, one of the reasons for the defeat of the Germans: “Right in the heart of the old Prussian System – in the General Staff of the Army – a small group of generals were still hesitating between tradition and the new ways, some unfortunately didn’t accept the benefits of those … It was difficult for such people, for example Beck and his successor Halder to obey a person, whom some called the “the Bohemian Corporal””. Skorzeny diverts a lot of attention to the military conspiracy and believes that it existed as a form of secret counteraction to the Führer long before 1944.
The author of the memoirs holds up Stalin in 1937 as an example to Hitler “The massive purge of the military, carried out after multiple executions among the politicians, did not just mislead Heydrich and Schellenberg. Our political intelligence was convinced that we had achieved a decisive victory, the same opinion was shared by Hitler. The Red Army however, contrary to popular belief, was not weakened, but strengthened… Young officers – committed Communists – took over the posts of the purged commanders of the army, of the corps, of divisions, brigades, regiments and battalions. And the conclusion: “After the wholesale, horrific purge of 1937 a new political Russian army appeared, capable of withstanding the most brutal battles. Russian generals carried out orders, but did not engage in conspiracies and treachery, as often happened in our highest circles.”
It is impossible not to agree with this. Unlike Hitler, Stalin created a system wholly subordinate to him. For this reason in the autumn of 1941, when the Germans were close to Moscow, there was no conspiracy of generals in the Red Army. But three years later there was one in the Wehrmacht – although Berlin at that time was further away. It is inconceivable, that Stalin would be blown up by one of “his own” in the Kremlin, as Colonel Stauffenberg tried to do to the beloved Führer in the Wolfsschanze.
THE ABWEHR DIDN’T REPORT ANYTHING IMPORTANT
“In war”, writes Otto Skorzeny, “there exists a further little-known but often crucial aspect – that of undercover work. I am talking of events taking place away from the battlefield, but which have a very large impact on the course of the war – they entailed a huge loss of equipment, the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of European soldiers… More than any other war, the Second World War was the war of machinations and plots.”
Skorzeny plainly suspects Admiral Canaris, the head of German military intelligence, of secretly working for the English. It was Canaris who persuaded Hitler in the Summer of 1940, that landing in Britain was impossible: “On 7th July he sent Keitel a classified report in which he informed him that two first line defence divisions and 19 reserve divisions would be waiting for German troops disembarking in England. However the English at that time had only one battle-ready unit – the 3rd division of General Montgomery. The general recalls this in his memoirs… From the very start of the war and in key moments, Canaris behaved like Germany’s worst enemy.”
If Hitler had known about the misinformation that his head of intelligence had slipped him, then Britain would have been defeated. And in the Summer of 1941 Hitler would have been waging war not on two fronts but on just one – the Eastern front. You have to agree that under these circumstances the chances that he would have taken Moscow would have been much higher. “I talked with Canaris three or four times”, recalls Skorzeny, “and he didn’t strike me as a diplomatic or remarkably intelligent person, as some write about him. He never spoke plainly, he was devious and inscrutable and that is not the same thing.” And anyway: “The Abwehr never reported anything really important or significant to the High Command.”
“WE DIDN’T KNOW”
This is one of the most common complaints of the great saboteur: “We didn’t know that the Russians were using outdated equipment and not their best soldiers in the war with Finland. We did not realise that their hard-won victory over the brave Finnish army was only a bluff. We are talking about concealing a huge force which was capable of attack and defence, about which Canaris – the head of German intelligence – had to at least know something.”
Like the rest of us, Skorzeny was impressed by the “magnificent T-34s”. The Germans even had to throw bottles filled with petrol at the tanks. In films such an episode characterises images of the heroic Soviet soldier forced to fight virtually bare-handed. But in reality it was sometimes the other way around. Moreover – it was quite often so: “German anti-tank weapons, which could easily destroy tanks of the T-26 and BT class were powerless against the new T-34s, which suddenly appeared out of the overgrown wheat and rye fields. Our soldiers then needed to attack them with “Molotov Cocktails” – ordinary bottles of petrol with a lit fuse instead of a cork. If the bottle landed on the steel plate protecting the engine, the tank would catch fire… “Faust-bullets” appeared considerably later, which is why in the early campaigns some Russian tanks could only be held back with direct fire from our heavy artillery.”
In other words, all of the Reich’s anti-tank artillery proved useless against the new Russian tank. It could only be kept in check by heavy guns. But the memoirist was no less impressed by the Red Army sapper units and their equipment – they could construct a 60 metre bridge, making it possible to transport vehicles weighing up to 60 tons! The Wehrmacht did not possess such technology.
LACK OF TECHNICAL UNIFORMITY
The whole design of the German offensive doctrine was based on the high mobility of its motorised units. Engines however require spare parts and constant maintenance. And there was no procedure for this in the German army. The diversity of car types in one division was a problem. “Each German car company was still making different models of their brand just as they did before the war, laments Skorzeny, remembering his own experience of service in the “Reich” division in 1941. A large number of models is not conducive to the creation of a corresponding stock of spare-parts. In the motorised divisions there were roughly 2.000 vehicles with sometimes 50 different types and models, although 10-18 would have been enough. In addition our artillery regiment had more than 200 trucks, of 15 different types. In the rain, mud or freezing weather it was not possible for even the best specialist to carry out a high-quality repair.”
And this was the result. Just outside Moscow: “On 2nd December we continued to move ahead and were able to take Nikolaev, which was located 15 kilometres outside Moscow – during clear sunny weather I could see the domes of the Moscow churches through binoculars. Our troops fired on the outskirts of the capital, however we no longer had artillery tractors.” If you still have guns but the tractors are “all out of commission” it means that the German “supertechnology” had to be left behind as breakdown on the road. You just can’t drag heavy guns yourself.
The German army arrived in Moscow absolutely exhausted: “On the 19th October it started to rain in torrents and the “Centre” army group was bogged down in the mud for three days… It was a terrible scene: a column of equipment stretching out over hundreds of kilometres with thousands of vehicles standing in three rows, bogged down in the mud sometimes up to the hood. There was a shortage of petrol and ammunition. Three valuable weeks and large quantities of equipment were lost… At the cost of hard work and back-breaking efforts we managed to pave 15 kilometres of road with round logs… We dreamt of it quickly turning colder.”
But when from the 6th to 7th November cold weather struck and the division in which Skorzeny served was supplied with ammunition, fuel, some food and cigarettes, it became apparent that there was no winter oil for the vehicles and weapons – and the engines started causing problems. Instead of winter uniforms the troops ended up with the sand-coloured kits intended for the Africa Corps and equipment painted in the same light tone. Meanwhile the temperature dropped to -20° and even to -30° Celsius. With sincere amazement the dashing SS officer describes the winter uniforms of the Soviet soldiers – short fur coats and fur boots: “It was an unpleasant surprise – at Borodino we fought with Siberians for the first time. These were strapping men – superior, well-armed soldiers; they were dressed in wide fur coats and hats and wore fur boots on their feet.” The Germans only learned from the Russian POWs that winter footwear should be a little roomier, if you didn’t want your feet to freeze: “After careful study of the equipment of the courageous Siberians, captured by Borodino, we learned that, for example, if there aren’t any felt boots, you don’t have to wear leather boots – the most important thing is that the boots are spacious and don’t press the foot. This was known to all skiers but not to our specialist clothing service. Almost all of us wore fur boots taken from dead Russian soldiers.”
EXCELLENT RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE
Almost the main reason for the defeat of the German Army was, according to Skorzeny, excellent Russian intelligence. The “Red Orchestra” spy network in Europe – mostly made up of die-hard anti-Nazis – provided the Soviet General Staff with information about German strategic intentions. He also recalls super-spy Richard Sorge, whose information that Japan would not enter the war led to 40 divisions being redeployed to Moscow from the Far East.
“The Reich’s military strategy was superior” Skorzeny says, “and our Generals possessed a more powerful imagination. However, from the ordinary soldier up to the company commander, the Russians were our equals – courageous, resourceful, gifted conspirators. They resisted fiercely and were always ready to sacrifice their lives… The Russian officers from division commander and below were younger and more resolute than ours. From 9th October to 5th December the “Reich” division, the 10th tank division and other units of the 16th tank corps lost 40% of their total personnel. Six days later, when our positions were attacked once more by the newly-arrived Siberian divisions, our losses exceeded 75%.”
So there is your answer to the question – why the Germans did not take Moscow. They were quite simply beaten. Skorzeny himself didn’t fight on the front any more. Not a stupid man, he understood that there were minimal chances to survive this meat grinder and so he took the opportunity to transfer to service in the SS commando unit. The front no longer attracted him – kidnapping dictators was more pleasant and safer than coming face to face with Siberians in felt boots, who were fighting under the protection of T-34s and with the best intelligence in the world.
PS The author of this article – Oles Buzina – famous Ukrainian journalist, writer and historian – was murdered last week in front of his house in Kiev. “Istoricheskaya Pravda” offers its condolences to relatives and friends of the deceased.
http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2177913.html
Put this link into Yandex or your other translator for English.
The tour of WWII war sites, in famous cities of the USSR will show a composite montage of then and now. Brilliant way to demonstrate why Russians feel so deeply about the Great War and the importance of remaining sovereign in the face of all the efforts to destroy Russia.
This cannot be done with the US except at Pearl Harbor. And it is a wonderfully creative geopolitical tour of history.
It’s titled: Four years of war in motorcontroller Sergei Larenkov.
The project “Connection of times” includes over a thousand of photos. Soon there will be a new great album “From Brest to Berlin”, which will include more than 270 of the most interesting works.
This would be a wonderful way for teachers to educate their classes on history, geography and cultures.
I thought it was established long ago that Canaris was an English agent – from Starikov’s Nationalization of the Ruble, I checked up on the evidence and discovered them to be reasonably sound.
Then I read that this article is by – Oles Buzina – famous Ukrainian journalist, writer and historian – who was murdered last week in front of his house in Kiev.
Rest In Peace… The good always die young.
Jade, yes the Starikov book is something else. I learned a lot from it and it was like reading a novel.
http://lit.md/files/nstarikov/rouble_nationalization-the_way_to_russia%27s_freedom.pdf
@The Saker
thanks for posting this
Yes, thanks BUT… still written out of WW2 history is Operation Groza, Thunderstorm, the Stalin regime’s planned conquest of all Europe and the reason that frantic Germany launched her pre-emptive Operation Barbarossa—
As the superpower preparations for Stalin’s strike at Western Europe became terrifying, Chancellor Hitler desperately sent Third Deputy Hess to Scotland to alarm the substantial peace lobby into beseeching the highly unpopular Churchill war party to accept Germany’s treaty offer to vacate the occupied west. But Churchill’s cabal was staunchly globalist. Hess expected to be in Scotland for two days to discuss peace possibilities then to be assisted to return to Germany. But the Anglo-Zionist satanists were bent on accomodating the two year Soviet preparations to annihilate German sovereignty, and had no objection to “sovietising” all Europe.
This removes the dense veil of official and media secrecy that still blankets the Hess affair. He was closely confined until Nuremberg for “crimes against peace,” jailed for life in 1947 and, as a warning from the English speaking victors to the leaders of all nations, was kept as the sole inmate of Berlin’s Spandau Prison from 1966. To ensure protection of the “Thunderstorm” secret and the echelon that perpetrated the Second Great War, he was strangled by British agents on 17 August 1987, aged 93.
On the night of 10 May 1941, the Battle of Britain was ended with a final night raid on London. Was Hitler suggesting that England agree to peace? Was the cessation yet another peace gesture to give time to Hess and Lord Hamilton’s peace group, or had Germany no more choice than to concentrate east to face Stalin’s buildup to Thunderstorm?
On 12 May 1941, Stalin learned of the Hess flight. In those fleeting days, the launch date for Groza was probably 15 May. Both sides knew of the other’s preparations but Stalin observed sensibly that Hitler could not open a second front while Britain was still in the war, and the Germans had neither winter lubricants nor clothing. Still, he had to fear that if the peace mission succeeded, if the British withdrew from the war, the Russians would have to stand alone against Germany. Thus, fleeting indecision caused the Kremlin to postpone Thunderstorm to probably 6 July or to the 15th. When it became clear that the Hess mission had failed, the satanic dictator of the Bolshevik superpower had committed the Providential error that saved all of Europe.
Hogwash! Pro-German/Hitler revisionism at its finest.
“The Satanic dictator of the Bolshevik superpower” sounds like the usual Nazi propaganda. And the argument that the USSR was going to attack has many possible flaws, not that we will ever know the truth. One, the USSR probably had some traitors in high ranks. Wasn’t one of the top generals executed due to that early disaster? Even Zhukov was suspected of this by Stalin. Next, the US Congress had proclaimed something along the lines of “We support the Soviets if the Nazis attack, and we support the Nazis if the Soviets attack.” In other words, just like today in the Ukraine, the political ramifications of invading were serious for Stalin. He knew he needed Western support, and he would have lost that if he had attacked. Then Hitler would have been the reasonable one.
It is rather amazing to watch the spread of Nazi propaganda over the last ten years. Instead of talking about their economic and technical successes, which were many, there is this promotion of Nazi foreign or racial policies. This is sick.
It is rather amazing to watch the spread of Usanian propaganda over the last seventy years. Instead of talking about their economic and technical successes, which were many, there is this promotion of Usanian foreign or “humanitarian” policies. This is sick.
It is clear beyond any possibility of reasonable doubt that the USSR was going to attack Germany. It is equally clear that Stalin’s grandiose plan failed. He miscalculated badly, at enormous cost for his own country, as well as for Germany.
I don’t know what you think is “Nazi propaganda”, but few people read or listen to the actual Third Reich propaganda. What I can state with confidence (I’m German, I understand English pretty well and I’m beginning to understand Russian) is that our propaganda focused on inspiring confidence and belief in our own cause and lacked this element of inspiring hatred of the enemy, which can be observed in Soviet and Usanian propaganda, and which likely has had an effect on the conduct of the soldiers, and had an operational equivalent in massacres like Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hamburg.
Hmmm,then you need to restudy nazi propaganda.There are countless posters,pictures,and films showing their propaganda about “non-Aryans”.
The fact that the US has turned into the Nazis without the good side and with better marketing doesn’t make the Nazis something to write home about.
And I studied plenty of Nazi material, besides studying the German language for many years.
This blog is being overrun by pro-Nazi types. Yes, the Germans were shafted. Yes, there were many decent people or factions within Nazi ranks. But the insanity of seeing Slavs as subhumans is not OK.
And it isn’t clear as day that Stalin was going to attack. It is clear as day that Nazi-friendly people always say that. It might be the case, but there are many reasons that he would not have wanted to attack.
“But the insanity of seeing Slavs as subhumans is not OK.”
What you’re implying (“subhumans”) is incorrect. Germany’s allies included Croats, Bosnians and Bulgarians, which we all agree are Slavs. And, come to think of it, there were Ukrainians “willing to help” (Hilfswillige), as well as (non-Slavic) Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians (who come closer to the Nordic phenotypical ideal that was propagated by *some* (not all) circles in Germany, and that has long dominated the model of female beauty in the whole Occident, by the way).
The “subhuman” nonsense is an invention of post-war propaganda.
What was going on was Anglozionists striving (and eventually succeeding) to have Germany and Russia destroy each other, and Stalin trying (and failing) to outsmart all other parties, inflicting horrible damage on his own country as well as on Germany in the (tragic) process.
Studying German, Soviet and Anglo propaganda and warfare, I’ve come to the conclusion that Usanian propaganda and warfare (especially against Japan) was most evil, racist and inhuman, while “Nazi” propaganda actually compares very favorably.
what You are speaking about ? how Your papa want to eliminate slavic people and englishmen payed You ? my grandfather was in concentration camp and my father got nothing i mean sorry or what, really nothing and know You why ? then he would can ask for some money maybe ? russian went away from east germany and You apretiated it to spark civil war in ukraine, bombarding serbia …. stalin wanted invade germany and putin want go with his tanks to berlin … oh do You have wet dreams ? russians dont need germany, Your turks take care of Your woman, oh, patetic german, dresden was needed to save british soldier, You understand ? russians gave You merci and You throw it to toilet, dont You thind it can be mistake ? du
The sole source of racism is that ancient, separate, superior “chosen” tribe, the one said fraudulently to descend from the Christ killers with the divinely cursed blood. Proof that racism does not really exist is that it is hurled only at whites, whatever a “white” is, and I have to suppose that this is because Europeans built the civilization based on the one true/hated religion.
Judaism is neither race nor religion. It started in AD30 (or 33 to avoid another argument) as dedicated anti-religion which most Jews—the very first victims of Judaic deception—have always deserted in sublimated fear for their sanity and humanity. Thus Jewish communities have ever been not small but minuscule!
lumi
———————————————————————————————————————-
Studying German, Soviet and Anglo propaganda and warfare, I’ve come to the conclusion that Usanian propaganda and warfare (especially against Japan) was most evil, racist and inhuman, while “Nazi” propaganda actually compares very favorably.
———–lumi, You can tell this those 100 burned people in odessa who doesnt exist and any info doesn exist too
———————————————————————————————————————
Studying German, Soviet and Anglo propaganda and warfare, I’ve come to the conclusion that Usanian propaganda and warfare (especially against Japan) was most evil, racist and inhuman, while “Nazi” propaganda actually compares very favorably.
—————stalin outsmart all other parties
—————————————————————————————————————————
Germany’s allies included Croats, Bosnians and Bulgarians, which we all agree are Slavs
————–allies wow – what can i tell You – maybe croats but others ? i can tell You only this – when russians will come as visitors with iskandar rockets, probably You will be better ally as mostly central european slavic coutries and know why – cause germans are very good vassals, so maybe change allies with vassals
—————-You can study but if You dont understand how things are connected – ou, study again, first study how can person learn common sense
michael
—————You think whites for example in iran – decendants of caucasian skyts with brown skin or nothern chinese with brown skin and caucasian faces ?
—————judaism is real religion and it deserve place under sun, michael
du
I suggest you read the book of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
Then you’ll understand what kind of satanic power the Sovjets (Bolsheviks) were.
http://www.thechristianidentityforum.net/downloads/Gulag1.pdf
And now they are INDEED coming for all Christians…
http://communismbythebackdoor.tv
You’ve been indoctrinated for too long. Time to wake up.
@still written out of WW2 history is Operation Groza
If it is written out of WW2 history it is because it is largely discredited. Its revival is due to the new wave of anti-Russian propaganda. Russia is ready to attack!
A wonderful thing happened in 1995. The archives related to the events of World War Two and the events leading up to it (basically from 1919 to 1947) were released by the Allied countries, including the Kremlin. Historians and historian enthusiasts were suddenly able to read first-hand accounts as well as officials’ memoirs and government reports that had not been available before.
Anti-Semitism was a derivative of the fear and loathing that Germans had for Bolshevism. The prime movers for Bolshevism within Germany in the 1920s were Jews. The rise of the Nazis had more to do with anger at those seditionists among the German people who wanted to turn Germany into a Bolshevist state in concert with -and eventually under the control of- the Soviet Union. There should be no question that the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was merely a detente, temporary in nature, while these two brutal and thoroughly menacing entities swallowed up the rest of Europe between them. It was unspoken but understood, that the two would soon engage in a grim struggle for total domination of all Europe.
Stalin wanted to control the world. He ordered the assassination of Trotsky and others who disagreed or opposed his plans for a world subjected to a socialist system controlled and directed from Moscow. In the quantifiable measure of people killed, Stalin was several times worse than Hitler. And we know that Hitler was terrible!
But, while Americans were propagandized about the evils of Hitler, the monumental cruelty of Stalin (as as Lenin before him) was concealed from them. FDR was totally in the control of those who despised the anti-semitic policies of Hitler and who cheered on the Bolshevik Jews who were in control of the Soviet Union. They envisioned a Soviet State in America. So many New Deal Programs were adaptations of the Soviet system.
Had America been properly informed, I am sure that the Lend-Lease Act and other measures which enabled Britain to carry on with the war, would not have been enacted. And just as assuredly, the United States would have been content to watch from afar as these two evil entities -Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union- battled each other to exhaustion, if not their mutual destruction.
These days, there are many more Russians with a nostalgic fondness for Stalin and his gulags, than there are Germans with similar feelings for Hitler and his concentration camps. Why not? Stalin won after all. But the Russian efforts to redeem the reputation of Stalin today isn’t all that different from Ukrainian efforts to redeem Bandera.
Your last paragraph nails it.
We have to admit it as it really happens.
Your statement was confirmed by facts and is fully logical.
But the narrowminded cannot digest it.
The desperate comments below only confirm it.
A good article. Though one wonders, if the Germans were so bad a beset with problems, how were they able to march all the way to Moscow? How were they able to conquer all of Western Europe to the English channel?
Have a look at Suvorov’s ‘Icebreaker’, you’ll want to scratch your head. I wish I could get a definitive answer as to the book’s veracity.
The premise is that Stalin had removed all defensive installations and was ready to attack Germany and Hitler beat him to the punch by a few weeks. Stalin was ready to attack Germany’s fuel sources in Romania wiht two armies, if he succeeded Germany would have been without fuel and the Wermacht would have ground to a halt.
“I wish I could get a definitive answer as to [Suvorov’s] book’s veracity.”
Can’t give you that (too young, wasn’t there), but Suvorov quotes, among other things, a lot of Russian wartime memories, describing how they were set to strike, unprepared and unequipped for defense. Wehrmacht findings were that there was a lot of fuel and ammunition hidden in depots in the forests close to the border, lots of machinery, lots of stuff, unprotected from attack, dangerously exposed. So, that’s a match.
The Russian state today cannot officially endorse that, of course. First, there’s nothing to gain, not even from a German state whose government crew prides itself in being the most systematic endorser of the lies decreed by the victors (and the various co-victors and ever-whining victims).
Second, there’s a lot to lose, first and foremost the faith of the Russian people who suffered more than any other during the war. (No one knows the extent in numbers because the Soviet authorities have given so many different numbers but I do not doubt they suffered more than anyone else.)
Third, the “Nazi” bogeyman propaganda – however nonsensical it actually is if you check all sides for crimes and lies – is such a fantastic propaganda asset (just read this blog) that you would have to be a complete idealist^H^H^H moron to voluntarily give up on that.
@ Lumi,
Q; ever-whining victims.
R; But… but… how about the 2nd and 3rd generation holocasut [sorry, I’m a hollywood exec] survivors????
All the way to Moscow: “The Soviets had been forming up since the beginning of the year, which, due to the bad Soviet railroad lines, went rather slowly. Hitler judged the situation perfectly and plowed right into the Soviets while they were deploying. This is how Vlasov explains the Germans’ enormous initial success.” — German intelligence officer, quoted from: Why Hitler Invaded the Soviet Union – This should explain why so much territory was won in the first weeks. The Soviets were preparing for attack; they were unprepared to defend their forward deployments.
Western Europe to the channel: BeNeLux are small countries. Belgians basically put the white flag up on sight of the first German. The Dutch defended valiantly, inflicting losses on the Wehrmacht. (These countries were neutral only on paper.) The French were too static, so were outflanked, and then surrendered, and were sent home to their families, because, as de Gaulle writes in his memoirs, there was “no time to take them as prisoners”. The British withdrew to the channel, from where Hitler let them escape, unfortunately.
The mud, the cold, the distance, the vastness of Russia, bad roads, the unreliability of sophisticated German machinery under extreme conditions, the unavailability of equipment (kein Nachschub), on the one hand; the reliability of Russian technology (always works), their resilience, their enduring fighting power, and the modernization of Soviet tactics during the war on the other hand … this is the recurring theme as for why they didn’t succeed.
The initial overwhelming German success with huge Soviet losses was mainly because the Red Army was riskily exposed in massive forward deployment, in preparation of an attack on central Europe (just like German propaganda said), without preparations for defense. (Read Suvorov’s Icebreaker.)
@Lumi
I can’t claim to know what Soviet intentions were, but I find this line of argument entirely unpersuasive as an explanation for what happened in 1941. Were the Soviets intending to attack Germany?Perhaps. Is Putin attempting to recreate the Soviet Union? Perhaps.
What I do know is what actually happened at the time:
It was Germany that massed 3 million troops on the USSR’s border with all the armament and supplies required to launch a blitzkrieg against the USSR. Was the USSR preparing to defend itself against an attack that was clearly being prepared by Germany? Yes To call those slow and hesitant preparations offensive is not believable. It was Germany that prepared an offensive, it was Germany that launched an offensive. The rest is speculation and self serving analysis.
To say that the Red army suffered major initial defeats because it was preparing for offense not defense is also not credible. If the Soviets were preparing an offensive and Germany attacked in the nick of time how is it that the Soviet air force was destroyed on the ground in the first few days? At the very least an army preparing an offensive would have been keeping its eye on the massive German forces right across the border. It would not have been taken by surprise in this way. Furthermore and army preparing an offensive against a very powerful enemy would place its best units at the front. The Soviet units that the Germans initially met could hardly be described as their best units.
There is much historical revisionism that has been going on for awhile now, both from within Russia and from without. Personally I find the conventional explanations much more believable. Hitler had stated years before in Mein Kampf that Germany would expand to the east. The USSR was well aware that they were the ultimate target of the Nazis. Just as Russia is aware it is the ultimate target of NATO in Ukraine. Or that China is aware it is the West’s ultimate target in the confrontation with Russia. So the Soviets were preparing for war. Just as Russia to day is preparing for war. If Nato launches a massive attack on Russia today no doubt some future analyst will cite these Russian war preparations as proof that Putin was intent on recreating the USSR. And that the NATO attack was a defensive premptive attack.
In the end the claims of Soviet intentions to attack must be measured against the facts of an actual German attack and utter Soviet unpreparedness and initial defeats.
Agree 100%.
Stalin was informed that Germans were preparing the attack, by Sorge, by Dora, by Foot. He thought that it was British intoxication. He was perhaps aware that Brits were afraid more than anything else of a Russian-German “entante” (as they are today) which was feasible in the wake of the Hiler-Stalin Pact. There were even musings of a possible joining by SU of the Axis. At the same time MI5 was feeding Germans with information of an impending Soviet attack. For them it was indifferent who would start the war, essential was to bring the two powers in conflict, to exhaust both and to intervene at the end in favor of the weakest (the perennial policy of balance of powers which was the favorite game of the “perfidious Albion”). The Germans snapped first. It seems to me impossible to dismiss the absolute necessity for the Germans to reach the oil fields of Baku. It was also the fear that Russians could lay their hands on the Romanian oilfields – the only source of oil form Germany. Germany lost the war when she lost the Romanian oilfields (a fact systematically overlooked).
Weak opponents.
They met real resistance in Greece and USSR/Russia.
If they had not abandoned Rommel in North Africa (no air power), that might have gone completely different also.
However, if Stalin and the Russia core had not held and Moscow fell, the US would have wiped out the USSR first, then put Hitler to the sword.
Look at how the Hegemon operates now. Syria is key to everything. Ukraine is a feint, useful, but not the key.
The Hegemon will use Turkey then undermine Erdogan once Syria is destroyed.
They are going to do the same to Saudi and Gulf States down the line. If they can’t subvert Iran,those kingdoms are useful. Once Iran is destroyed (if they can), they’ll cripple the sand kingdoms.
Because French elites wanted to lose; they wanted an EU with German leadership. And Britain didn’t want to fight – they just wanted to be able to fight when the war was over.
There is a fairly recent book in French on the French elite helping the Nazis. It has a fair bit of documentation for this idea, which makes perfect sense. Hitler hated Slavs, Jews, and Gypsies. Not a problem for France.
And the Germans didn’t have that many problems. They were designed for a blitzkrieg, not a long and cold war.
1. The French as well as the Germans were influenced by WW I: the French thought to win over this time again, just with fewer losses, and came up with the Maginot Line of fortifications; the Germans on the other hand realised they had to do something very different from last time to have success, and came up with Blitzkrieg, which relied heavily on mechanised units and air power. This worked quite well in Western Europe, with good infrastructure, but failed in Russia (in a pinch, in France it was possible to search for a filling station, if your tanks ran out of fuel, but not in Russia).
2. The Soviets had problems of their own, and this is a point where I disagree with the article: Stalins Terror in 1937 did not strengthen the Red Army, but weakened it. It is NOT a good idea to remove trained specialists and replace them with careerists whose only qualification is unconditional loyalty to the leader. Their dismal performance durin the Winter War against Finland proves it, as do the horrendous losses during 1941-1942.
The distance is less.The resistance was less.The weather less extreme.Poland had a backward military.The nazis seized Norway,Denmark,with little to no fighting.And Belgium,Luxembourg,and Netherlands also with little fighting.The only fighting was in France,Yugoslavia,and Greece.And the German military vastly outclassed those countries forces.Reminds of the US wars after WW2. Attacking countries too weak to truly fight back.That as of the US today, left the Germans thinking they were invincible.And when they attacked the USSR they thought it would be a walk over.As Hitler said “kick in the door,and the whole rotten edifice will collapse”.But that hubris cost them the lives of millions of German soldiers and the end of their “thousand year Reich”.Again,sounds a lot like the US thinking on Russia today.And will end the same way if actually attempted.
Boris Vasiljev was the Red Army battle officer during WW2: “The Germans waged war perfectly. Even when they were encircled, they fought excellently! I know it. I saw it by myself!”
Full article by Alexander Mezentsev: http://www.vojnik.org/en/3
It could be argued that the Russians would have lost as quickly as the Czechs, Poles and French had their country not been a lot bigger! (And the roads worse…) But those extra 40 fresh divisions must have been a nasty surprise.
I have read a number of books by German soldiers and officers (or based on their diaries), and they all acknowledge the bravery, determination, resourcefulness and capacity for sacrifice of the Soviet troops. Also, after a while, they came to recognize that the Soviet generals knew a thing or two – once they had time to adjust to the Blitzkrieg tactics and adopt them themselves.
It seems to me that the Great Patriotic War, like all wars, served in the end as a lesson. The Germans set out convinced of their superiority, and were shown in the most conclusive of ways that they were NOT superior. All peoples are capable of heroic feats of courage and endurance, and in time of need they all find amazing individuals who become brilliant generals or tough, competent junior officers.
How long will it take us to understand these things, and stop trying to impose our will on others by force? It’s wicked, it’s stupid, and it doesn’t even work.
You are wrong. German troops were superior.
Says Daniil Granin (born in 1919), who spent 3 years blockaded in Leningrad: “The Germans fought better, much better than our soldiers. Moreover — we`ve managed to win that war only by human flesh!”
Full article by Alexander Mezentsev: http://www.vojnik.org/en/3
Without firsthand knowledge, we must rely on the memoirs of veterans and the historical facts provided by the militaries and governments of the countries involved. The points of view, the recollections, and even the “facts” themselves are varied, sometimes greatly.
Skorzeny’s views must be respected, since he was an outstanding and daring small-unit commander on the German side. But his speculation that Hitler was impeded by the ambivalent attitude of some old “Junckers” or that Canaris was serving the interests of British intelligence is just that – speculation. I have been an avid reader of WW II memoirs and histories since I was a schoolboy back in the ’50s. These particular musings by Skorzeny don’t show up anywhere else.
Hitler was a romantic idealist. That doesn’t mean he was a nice guy. This romanticism projected him far beyond what a man of his limited means should have achieved. But it also detached him from the cold hard facts. One thing for sure is that it was Hitler, who changed the minds of others, and not the other way around.
The failure of the German Army to anticipate the need for cold weather gear was catastrophic. The German obsession with the “Offensive” and “Objective” principles of war, as well as hubris with which the entire German Nation was inculcated, prevented the General Staff from contemplating that the war against the Soviet Union would require years to win.
By the end of July 1941, Felix von Manstein came to the conclusion that the Germans could not defeat the Soviets. He based this upon the determination displayed by the Russians to fight on, even when death and defeat was certain, and upon his recognition that the German Army artillery and armor did not match the best that the Russians had. That was before America was in the war, and before 40 divisions of the Siberian Army arrived on December 5th 1941 to repel the frigid and exhausted Wehrmacht from the outskirts of Moscow.
Skorzeny gives way too much credit to the cruel consequences of Stalin’s murder of the core of officers, who had fought and won the wars to defeat Poland, and the White Russians who had opposed Bolshevism. It would take almost 3 years before the Soviet military hierarchy became competent enough to match the generalship of the German Army. Even to the last days of the battles for Berlin and Vienna, Germans were winning tactical victories only to be overwhelmed by brute force of the Red Army.
But his speculation that Hitler was impeded by the ambivalent attitude of some old “Junckers” or that Canaris was serving the interests of British intelligence is just that – speculation.
I think historians have pretty well established thatCanaris–along with others in the Abwehr–were secretly trying to foil Hitler’s designs, and sometimes passed on classified information to the enemy.
I read Skorzeny’s memoirs. Recommended to anyone interested in WWII. A remarkable thing about Skorzeny is that he always openly stayed true to his engagement. Stated shortly before his death that if it was to do again, he would have done exactly the same. He sometime speculates, but the bit about Canaris is confirmed, and about the old Junckers, it’s a fact that the Stauffenberg conspiracy was supported mostly by old Prussian general, the Stülpnagels, Tresckows, Becks, and had tacit sympathy from some others – read the memoirs of Warlimont, who spent 5 years in the Führerbunker while keeping constant hostility towards Hitler and nazism in general.
As to the reason for failure in the East – Yes it’s like Skorzeny describes. But it would be as silly to dismiss completely the weather effect than to attribute the victory of the Soviets to it. Fact is that weather played an important role in the initial phase of the invasion. First the “raspoutitsa”, which bogged down the vehicles in the mud. Then the exceptionally cold winter, for which Germans were not prepared.
It’s always easy to remake history, but although the Soviets had plenty of reserves, I believe it may have been possible for the Germans to take Moscow, if war had started 4 years earlier and with a bit of luck regarding weather. The propaganda effect would have been huge, bigger than the actual military gain. Recall that there a few days in 1941 where everything seemed to vacillate. There’s this famous day where in the morning the British ambassador was getting ready to leave Moscow then in the afternoon Stalin had the newly arrived Siberian troops parade on the Red square. The British ambassador stayed, a few days after the first counterattack was launched by the Siberians, the Germans retreated.
After that it was more or less evident that the best the Germans could achieve was a stalemate, especially as they were not able to cut the supply line of Murmansk, from which American aid was coming to Russia.
The Nazi’s were not only foiled by Canaris and the Red Orchestra, but also by Soviet penetration of the Black Orchestra starting with Prince Anton Turkul.
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/randy/swas4.htm
@ Arthur Brina,
“The Germans had battle plans and strategies, we had men…” – Russian WWII officer
Read this eons ago [can’t find a source].
They had men. They also had Cheka blocking units.
Exactly what do you think “firsthand knowledge” is?
Felix von Manstein? Felix?
LOL!
“THE PURGE OF 1937 STRENGTHENED THE RED ARMY’
I have heard that point of view from American Communist Party hacks. Evidence and research of World War 2 overwhelmingly disagrees.
Beevor, Clark, Solzhenitsyn, among other military historians, of widely varying political pursuasions, clearly state that the absense of experienced commanders in the early part of Germany’s “Operation Barbarossa” led to huge and unnecessary losses of Russian soldiers.
This review by Buzina fails to mention the catastrophic defeat and surrender of 3 million Soviet soldiers, (a million surrounded and surrendered at Kiev alone), BEFORE the battle of Moscow began. This is an incredible omission. By way of analogy, this omission is equal to a discussion of the Brooklyn Dodgers, without mentioning Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Joe Campanella, and Duke Snider.
The 3 million surrendered Soviet soldiers were equal in number to the entire attacking German Army. Russia survived World War 2, but they paid a huge price. Most of the captured 3 million Russian soldiers were starved, or otherwise exterminated. Or was it part of Stalin’s ‘brilliant’ strategy that half the Soviet army surrender to the Nazis in the first few months of the war?
The Stalinist bureaucracy survived only thanks to the toughness of the Russian people, and their sons and daughters in their armed forces. The newer Soviet Army officers, such as Generals Zhukov, Koniev, and Rokossovsky (Rokossovsky had to be rescued from a Stalin prison camp – where he had been tortured and had all his teeth knocked out), had a difficult job to restore the Soviet army, and reverse the tide of the war. When Rokossovsky, fresh from prison camp, entered Stalin’s office, to be placed in command of an Army, Stalin had the nerve to inquire – as to his health.
The losses the Russian people suffered during the first 2 years of the German attack were ruinous. Some were clearly unnecessary. Gorbachev, for whatever it’s worth, has stated that Russia still has not recovered from the war.
The discussions of World War 2 are circuitous, and, like the Hollywood tall tales, are misdirecting attention from the -Current War in Europe- and the Desperate War just south of Europe -in Syria.
It is in these 2 closely linked war wracked ‘theatres’ that the fate of humanity is being decided.
This missive is not a negative critique of the leaders of the Resistance. The Russian people, and their courageous Vladimir Putin, are doing their best to resist terrible pressure. The Novorossyan Partisan Militia and their civilian population must endure heavy bombardments with their hands tied. They must hold the lines, as did the Spanish Republican Armies, with little more than courage. They are bombarded daily, and ordered to hold their fire.
Many have done well in resisting the Oligarchs of the Old World. Snowden, Dieudonné, Ron Paul, Manning, Assange, Kucinich, Ventura, McKinney, and others, are doing their best. Many other heroes are dead.
They didn’t take Moscow, but, until we liberate Washington, the war will not end.
For the Democratic Republics! Here and There!
IMAGINE
@ Peter J. Antonsen,
Q; They didn’t take Moscow, but, until we liberate Washington, the war will not end.
R; I’m with you on this one. Well said.
Peter, I agree with you and disagree with Buzina on the Stalinist purges. Miroslav also has it right: the best case scenario for Nazi Germany was a bloody stalemate after seizing Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad, with the line probably stabilizing somewhere along the Volga with the Germans simply strung out over 1,300 miles from Murmansk to the eastern Black Sea coast.
To some degree the endless debating is a distraction, and I still disagree with Suvorov’s hypothesis while acknowledging that some evidence exists for it. It’s too bad the very smart guy who runs DeepResource gets too hung up on it, though Deep State politics and the dialectic are real.
In other words, Britain and later the U.S. played off the Russians and Germans against each other in both World Wars. But from this truth the Deep Resource author goes too far in asserting that there was a full fledged, massive conspiracy with the U.S. to side with the Soviets against the Germans prior to 1941. In fact there’s much more evidence for vice versa, that America’s Ford/IG Farben and Chrysler/Fiat were arming the Nazis for an assault on the East which Hitler had proclaimed in Mein Kampf as his goal and British and French diplomacy all the way up to Munich and afterward was designed to direct Hitler eastward. That is the fact, and DeepResource’s refusal to acknowledge it or at the very least that the Westerners were playing all sides off against the middle (as numerous players in the U.S. intel community all the way up to Henry Kissinger have admitted was the case during the Iran-Iraq war where America, Israel, W. Germany, France and Britain armed both sides). Thus perhaps in the end the Nazi-Soviet war was a kind of Iraq-Iran war on steroids, the mother of all efforts by the bankers to play everyone off against each other.
@ The Kulak,
So many, behind the scenes shenanigans went on, that it’s impossible today, to fully embrace one answer/theory/whatever, as the single, sophomore and exclusive reason A led to B.
It’s like piecing back together a broken mirror; you may succeed, but what you see and what it reflects, will never be the way it was before.
Daniel, true enough. And multiple, simultaneous grand theoretical arcs are possible for both WWI and WWII.
For example, one can believe the unpopular Fritz Fischer thesis that German industrial elites had aggressive aims, particularly in the East during the First World War to carve out puppet Baltic and Ukrainian states from the Russian Empire (sound familiar?) and simultaneously, that the British also had their own imperialist goals and were playing their usual game of offshore balancing by pitting the Kaiser against the Tsar, who after all were cousins. It’s not inconceivable if one believes certain elite families pull the strings behind the scenes that the ‘R’ types hedged their bets with both the Entente and the Germans in 1914, waiting to see which side would win. By 1915-16 despite the apalling losses of the Western Allies it was clear Germany could not match the industrial or manpower resources of her enemies, as Bismarck understood and sought to avoid from the Franco-Prussian War on with his masterful diplomacy that Henry Kissinger is so fond of as a historian.
The full blown Icebreaker thesis is not incompatible with the notion that the British and French were deliberately trying to push Hitler East, which for obvious reasons is much more popular among Russian historians than those in Europe or America who prefer to simply ascribe appeasement to fear of Germany and another war, rather than complex Machiavellian calculations.
The whole Rudolf Hess story and his silencing for decades locked up in Spandau prison is another interesting bit…who was Hess convinced when he made his infamous flight that he’d be negotiating with on the Fuhrer’s behalf? Or was there a whole other faction behind Hitler’s back say around Himmler, or another figure in the Nazi hierarchy? What secrets did Hess take to his grave, and did he ever speak of them to his relatives or did he keep his mouth shut when they visited him in prison for fear they’d die in ‘accidents’ or ‘suicides’?
We know that the SS secretly negotiated with Dulles and Co in Switzerland as early as mid-1943, which means there was so much more riding on the Kursk battle after Stalingrad even than previously thought before the Soviet archives were partially opened. This was not made up for the miniseries Seventeen Moments of Spring, it’s just that the Soviet writers created a fictionalized version of these secret negotiations that went on as so much Nazi loot was passing through Switzerland and Swiss banks en route to the Vatican, prior to the SS establishing their Vatican-aided ratlines pre-Operation Paper Clip. The Dulles brothers who were linked to the Harriman family (the same family that provided the U.S. Ambassador to the USSR during the War and the ownership of the Washington Post) were instrumental in Paper Clip as were other figures linked to the scientific and even religious establishments (Vatican).
One of the most depressing things to realize about Von Stauffenberg’s heroism, aside from the fact that he still hoped Germany might retain its Polish Reichsgovernate colony in a deal with the Allies, was the fact that the SS probably knew about the plots to kill Hitler from as early as late 1942 on. Meaning that Himmler likely allowed the Stauffenberg bomb plot to go forward to get Hitler out of the picture and allow the secret talks in Switzerland to perhaps (he falsely hoped) move into the open with a separate peace with the Anglo-Americans despite the Teheran and other agreements demanding ‘unconditional surrender’. Some have even speculated that Stauffenberg’s last words before being shot by firing squad at the Benderblock in July 1944, “Long live the hidden (secret) Germany!” sometimes mistranslated as ‘sacred’ Germany since geheimnes and heiliges could sound similar to multiple listeners, was a reference to both the plotters and those who hoped they’d be able to salvage some bits of the Reich from the ruins. Total capitulation like what Berlin witnessed in May and June of 1945 still being unimaginable to the old Prussian families who plotted with Von Stauffenberg.
@ The Kulak,
I think the roots, of what would eventually turn into ‘The Great War’ can be traced back to the “Franco-Prussian War, a war that united a divided entity into ‘modern’ Germany.
From then onward, Germany became too powerful [the provided link also points at unrest in Germany’s colonies] and had to be boxed in, one way or another.
I’ve always found the timing of the Balfour commission’s declaration, in 1917, in the midst of a bloody, ongoing war, of an oddly timed nature.
Anyway, thanks for the time you took to pen down this lengthily reply, it sure was worth the read.
@It’s not inconceivable if one believes certain elite families pull the strings behind the scenes that the ‘R’ types hedged their bets with both the Entente and the Germans in 1914, waiting to see which side would win.
How many people realize that the common fixture of both World Wars was the man named Winston Spencer Churchill? The very incarnation of the Anglo-American oligarchy? The man who devised all the tricks to quash the entente between Germany and Russia (the permanent nightmare of the Empire which ruled the waves) and supervised all the time their implementation. The man who buried both Hitler and Stalin. The man who started the Cold War.
The hypothesis is not solely that of Suvorov, but many others as well, including the late Ernst Topitsch, Grigore Gafencu, the late Joachim Hoffmann and Brian Fugate.
Peter Antonsen, what a very fine survey of then and now.
@Antonsen
Agreed. But the WW2 discussion is part of the current war. The revisionism is an attempt to cast the USSR as the aggressor in WW2, and therefore, cast Russia as the aggressor today. Thus Germany was really just defending itself against a forthcoming Soviet attack. Just as NATO is doing today in Ukraine.
“The revisionism is an attempt to cast the USSR as the aggressor in WW2, and therefore, cast Russia as the aggressor today.”
No. Non sequitur. Whoever argues in the line of your therefore (and there are such people) is clearly only interested in using history to distort present reality. But just because I support Russia and Putin today (which I do) doesn’t mean I have to endorse all the lies about Germany and Hitler. (Whether such a stance is propagandistically adroit or even feasable is another question. But as a free individual, I don’t have to adhere to any party line.)
In the interests of full disclosure I am a non European Muslim.
“The revisionism is an attempt to cast the USSR as the aggressor in WW2, and therefore, cast Russia as the aggressor today”.
Do not confuse the Godless USSR with a rising Christian Russia. Do not do that. I repeat, do not do that.
This would be the supreme victory of the propaganda emanating from nations that are controlled by Gog & Magog. (NATO). It is even more important that Orthodox Christian Russians do not confuse the two.
All German generals who survived war presented their theories why they lost – Manstein, Guderian, Halder, Skorzeny… and Paulus. The last seems me to be most valuable source, because he has understood thoroughly BOTH systems – Soviet and Nazi, and much more personally than other top commanders. And his opinion was that defeat of Soviet Union was impossible from very beginning,no matter what would have been done by German strategists and armies. Moscow could have been taken if Hitler managed to resist tempting of Ukrainian sources, but Germans would have eventually lost anyway.Because of total strength of Stalin’s system.
The same “Stalin’s system” that killed so many Red Army troops at the outset of the war.
Think about it. Never shy about letting people die. Prepared to lose 10 men for every 1 enemy (came to about 4:1 in the end). Prepared to purge the officers if they didn’t perform. The new ones were not tied by tradition or methods suited for older style wars. And they learned from those early huge losses.
Plus, not Stalin’s credit but plain geography, the fighting was on the soldiers’ home lands, in their home villages, their families killed or run away — if they didn’t win they had nothing left to live for. So worth it for them to fight to the death.
Also geography — shorter supply lines. Dictatorship — food and other necessities could be FORCED to reach the army, while the Germans had to go without or try to requisition/loot from hostile populations as they went through. Oh and another Stalin thing — scorched earth. If civilians had to flee, they were not allowed to leave anything behind. What they couldn’t carry (on a cart or on their backs) got BURNED, including crops in the field, so the advancing enemy could not use it.
Oles Buzina commentary: What a heartfelt way to honor his determination to truthtell unto death! Thanks for the translation. When the Southern States of the US lost the American civil war they had a theory called “the lost cause” because they fought longer than was expected and in most cases better ( although Lee’s insistence on front attacks was a big blunder at Gettesburg) but lost anyway.
In the Nazi case the lost cause was thus: 1. bad intelligence 2. poor logistics,3. long supply lines 4.getting bogged down in urban warfare and 5. hubris of a late start. With Hubris comes thinking that Blitzkrieg Russia would be like Blitzkrieg Belgium. Ah, the current Empire thinks it can apply the lessons of coup a la Latin America, embargo a la Cuba, starvation a la Iraq and now Yemen, destabilization via drugs a la inner city USA, rewriting of history a la American TV and Hollywood for a highly literate Russian population with its own proud narrative .The current speaking of the older soldiers giving oral history memory to the youth today in Russia is one of those inestimable factors of morale which the cerebral engineers of “regime change” miss big time.
Intelligence and the outcome of the war
The allies also had enigma. They knew all the plans ( in 1940 they were to slow in converting to profit from this). But this basically won them the battle of the atlantic ( sinking the submarines because they knew their refueling places and so on).
Knewing that the western allies with their knowledge took so long to defat the nazis makes the soviet performance even more outstanding.
Brings up an interesting point.Since the British had that intelligence information.Why didn’t they use it to help the USSR. It would have saved countless lives of Soviet civilians and soldiers.Does the fact that they “didn’t”, point to them wanting to also destroy the USSR as well as Germany.And the lives of millions of people in the East meant nothing to their “allies”.
Apparently brit intelligence. together with rus intelligence did tip of russia just in time so that zhukhov was able to pre empt the germany operation citadel, ie leading to the battle of kursk success that was the major turning point.
TES I ‘ve read this somewhere, I think a book called “Conjuring Hitler”
Search, it is written by an Italian Preparatta.
http://www.guidopreparata.com
Soviet victory at the Battle of Kurzk was possiible because of Enigma. The Soviets were able to concentrate force at the right place.
I think the article below provides a little context to the role that the Soviets played in WW2.
World War II: The Decisive Role of the Russian People in defeating Nazi Germany
According to Norman Davies, fighting went on between 400 German and Soviet divisions on the Eastern Front for four years. The front itself spanned 1,600 km. In the meantime, the fighting on the Western Front involved 15-20 divisions at most.
The German army suffered 88% of its casualties on the Eastern Front. It was the Soviet troops who broke the will and capacity of the German army to carry out massive front offensives in 1943. The Battle of Kursk – that is the name historians must remember! Norman Davies writes that the key role of the Soviet army in WWII will be so obvious to future historians that they will merely credit the US and Great Britain with providing a vitally important support.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/world-war-ii-the-decisive-role-of-the-russian-people-in-defeating-nazi-germany/5619
I would also recommend this weeks John Batchelor Show
http://johnbatchelorshow.com/podcasts/tues-5515-hr-2-jbs-stephen-f-cohen-nyu-princeton-professor-emeritus-author-soviet-fates-and
The following questions are still a mystery to me:
1. What exactly prompted Hitler to stop rounding up British troops at Dunkirk?
Is it Roosevelt/Churchill secret agreement with Hitler? Not much documents about it?
Is it Secret Elite of UK (the one that started WWI) order to Hitler?
Is it both?
2. It is now slowly emerging that Stalin started to plan, with both Roosevelt and Churchill, attack on
Germany as soon as 1933/1934, that is as soon as USSR was diplomatically recognized by
USA. USA, on the other hand, has brought Hitler to power (see A. Sutton’s book) and kept
supporting him with fuel , and other essentials, until 1944. And, from the book by V. Suvorov
and some other recent material , Stalin supported Hitler from 1933 until June 1941.
So both sides, USSR and Anglo/American coalition supported and plotted against Hitler,
which means that at some point Hitler was, around 1940, turned against USSR.
How did Anglo/American coalition do it? That is the real question.
Regards, Igor
The British did it by defeating the Luftwaffe in 1940/41. The Germans lost yheir traing squadrons. After this they never had enough airmen. At Stalingrad, across Rusdia, the Western Atlantic, the Arctic route, Africa and D day this was decisive.
Yeah, keeping the populace fearful still works to this day. If it isn’t for the IRS goons, it’ll be for the ‘terrurists’ from the foreign or homeland.
Color code RED!!!!!!!
Whatever you choose to do [as a leader], make sure [your] people are frightened sh**less, so they don’t have the gall to leave the side of your deathbed, stop clapping or stand up for their rights.
Short recap; Hitler, the mass murderer, was outdone by Stalin, our best buddy at that time?
(1) A very good, concise analysis of a lot of what went wrong for the Germans re Moscow is in this book by Robert Forzcyk, a retired American armor officer. I know the thing might look like tank-porn for modeler enthusiasts, but it’s much more broad in scope than its title suggests, and it’s technical in all the right ways (e.g., stuff like how the basic fuel measure for a panzer division, the Verbrauchssatz, meant to allow the unit to move 100km, only enabled 50-75km in Russia). The books by David Stahel are also good, but Cambridge University Press seems to adopted a Peter-Jackson-The-Hobbit strategy with its military history books (they seem to be doing something similar with Michael Leggiere’s upcoming work on the 1813 campaign in Germany), and there’s really no need to buy each individual one of the books he’s made out of his research.
(2) ¿Can anyone recommend a good history of German intelligence in World War 2? Masses of nonsense written about the Abwehr because some of its members involved in 20 July, and stuff about about Fremde Heere Ost tends to be admiring in a rather credulous way, partly I imagine because its head Reinhard Gehlen was later recycled by the Americans for his contacts behind the Iron Curtain, to the point that his unit would later become the German BND.
In the interests of full disclosure I am a non European Muslim.
Why N.S Germany failed to take Moscow? Or Why not just ask why did they lose WW II?
The most important reason why the N.S Germans lost – they did not know eschatology (specifically Islamic but not exclusively). If they had studied it they would have realized they were up against the forces of Gog & Magog both from the West and the East. If they had studied eschatology they would have known that only God Almighty can destroy them. If they had studied it they would have adapted their strategies. If they had studied eschatology, (specifically Islamic) they would certainly not have co-operated with the Zionists and they would not have been used by the Zionists! WW II was ultimately about catalyzing the formation of the State of Israel.
(It seems that a rising Orthodox Russia may know a thing or two about eschatology).
And God knows best.
Sorry, T.
For those of us , orthodox atheists, nonbelievers, skeptics, agnostics, etc.,
God explains precisely everything and nothing. Hence , not terribly useful in trying to
see what is going on in past present and future.
And the study of eschatology, as long as it invokes God, is not too enlightening
either in predicting the future.
On the other hand, use of entropy, no matter how difficult when applied to
such nonthermodynamic, nonisolated processes, might help.
This is not to say that I don’t respect believers. It is just that theological arguments
can not be verifiably used in nontheological situation here.
Regards, Spiral
Dear Spiral..your comment, even though it professes to be respectful of theology and eschatology…is disrespectful of everyone who does profess these things…if you can’t say anything intelligent…just be silent…
Dear Spiral
Eschatology transcends theology (at least Islamic eschatology, I will let the Christian, Jew, Buddhist Hindu etc answer for himself). It is a branch of knowledge which INTEGRATES both knowledge from the external world (e.g. science, reason, empiricism, logic, politics, philosophy, economics, etc) and spiritual world (e.g revelation, true dreams, intuition, “religious experience” etc) into an organic and DYNAMIC whole. The two are complementary – like Men & Women. One grasps Reality piecemeal and the other grasps it in its wholeness. One is temporal and the other is eternal. One is specific the other is general. TOGETHER they bring forth real understanding of Reality. Visit http://imranhosein.org/ to learn more.
Now for those who do not accept a transcendental world, they are like a one eyed man or a one legged man or just a single man without his mate – Incomplete.
So if the N.S Germans had this, they would have realized that WW I was ultimately about liberating the Holy Land so that eventually the Children of Israel could be brought back there by Gog & Magog. They would have realized that the Gog & Magog Zionist movement needed a population in a liberated Holy Land to re-establish a State. They would have realized that the (Gog & Magog) Bolshevik revolution and thereafter the establishment of the USSR was needed to destroy the only Christian nation which would have opposed the Children of Israel being re-established in a State of Israel. They would have realized so many other things. (Of course they realized other things e.g the role of economic and monetary oppression in enslaving nations and struggled against this and to their credit but they did not have the BIG picture).
And God knows best.
Interesting perspective.
The Balfour Agreement (1917) promised Lord Rotschild a ‘homeland’ for the Jews, specifically what was then called ‘British Palestine’.
(The Rothschilds still own 80% of Palestinian land, most of it in the ever-expanding state of Israel.)
But how to get large numbers of people in Europe to move a dry, desert-like region in the Middle East with none of the benefits of cities, infrastructure etc.?
Stories of a Jewish Holocaust appeared in American newspapers in 1939 – several years before the Final Solution. But this holocaust took place in Russia, not Eastern Europe. And it was blamed on Bolsheviks, not Nazis.
In addition, initial numbers for post – WWll victims of the Eastern European, Nazi-instigated holocaust proposed to the NYT (owned by the Schulzbergs) included the figure 12 million – twice the ultimately-decided on 6 million.
Which makes the clamp-down on historians attempting to sort fact from myth /distortion as ‘deniers’ deserving of jail-time all the more suspicious. Truth should have no need of coercion.
To what extent the Nazi ‘untermensch’ mentality specifically targeted Jews, as distinct from others deemed to fail the Aryan ideal, is therefore seriously moot. It is possible the Rothschild/financiers encouraged the inclusion of ordinary Jews in the ‘racial hygiene’ project as a flight strategy to people post-war British Palestine. The self-colonization strategy would finance the holocaust-as-industry and anti-semitism-as-persecution through popular culture/education to ensure a permanently paranoid population in a state of constant movement towards hegemony – exactly the ‘state’ of Israel and it’s project towards a Greater Israel that will swallow Syria whole.
It’s illegitimate and immoral inception, compounded by relentless expansionism then institutes a feed-back loop of popular opprobrium (the BDS movement) and resistance (Hamas, Hezbollah) from the displaced. This in turn garners counter-support from sympathizers to it’s historic persecution and it’s current survival, support that whitewashes and finances it’s permanent martialism.
I wonder how many Palestinian Jews understand the level of deceit that has been practised on them by the 1% (allegedly) of their ‘tribe’ ?
It is possible the Rothschild/financiers encouraged the inclusion of ordinary Jews in the ‘racial hygiene’ project as a flight strategy to people post-war British Palestine.
Alison Weir’s excellent recent overview of the Zionist movement, “Against Our Better Judgment” makes it pretty clear from documented sources and events that this was exactly the case. The greatest problem for the state of Israel was getting people to move there. In several theaters around the world, Zionism persecuted Jews, raised scare tactics, and terrorized refugee populations, in order to drive them to Israel.
Speaking purely now from my own speculation, I truly wonder if the entire Zionist activity has been simply a reflection of the Rothschild fortune become so large that it can afford, not merely to influence from behind the throne, but to engage directly in the myriad affairs of state in all their details, to the level, for example, of the entire neocon cadre in the US, and the earlier example of the Zionist control of USSR.
“.., not merely to influence
from behind the throne, but to engage
directly in the myriad affairs of state in all
their details, to the level, for example, of
the entire neocon cadre in the US…”
Thanks Grieved – I didn’t know of Weir’s work. Sounds like it’s worth checking out.
I agree with your ‘speculation’. I also think a personal fiefdom to store/control wealth tangibles – art, jewels etc., in the event of crisis played a major role in it’s desirability.
Even banksters like ‘stuff.’
That, and it’s acting as a conflict-generator – the new Israeli leaders were deliberately vague about borders. Keeping the region in a state of semi-tribalism/low-intensity conflict would act as permanent attrition, so preventing them for ‘maturing’ into nation-states.
All the better to maintain control over oil supplies. The British Establishment never gave anything away and had little interest in the quality of life for the colonists. But they were interested in Suez..
I find it pretty ironic Nutty keeps a picture of the ‘great man’ (Churchhill) in his office: to Churchhill and the Rotschilds this grandson of a rabbinacal Polish Zionist would be nothing more than a ‘useful idiot.’
@Daniel Rich:
Thanks for the link.
Btw… ‘Elmar?’ You ‘Fudding’ with me? o:
(apologies mods – am addicted to puns ;)
@ EImar,
Here’s a youtube clip that provides evidence [via 10 newspapers] of 6,000,000 dead Jews, from the period between 1915 and 1938 [way before WWII].
Makes you wonder why that number remained sooooooo important and why it’s still with us today, doesn’t it?
my second attempt..perhaps no one is moderating
Daniel your link did not work,this does.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dda-0Q_XUhk
… 6,000,000 jews from 1915-1938
The earliest mention I have found date from 1902/3 from the earliest days of zionism,mostly US papers.
“Otto Skorzeny: ‘Why didn’t we take Moscow?'”
Basically for the same reason a ferret can’t take down an elephant. Especially when the ferret is exhausted from simultaneously fighting the weasel (Britain) and the rat (USA). The real question is why didn’t you take Britain which was already on its knees instead of diverting precious resources towards the paquiderm? Arschlochs.
Britain is an island and has a strong navy, so couldn’t be “taken”. Also, Hitler was an anglophile, unfortunately. He admired the British Empire. He wanted to make peace with Britain. He let the Brits escape from Dunkerque, which proved to be a horrible mistake. I don’t know why he did that … maybe he wanted to perform an act of chivalry. He didn’t know he was dealing with snakes. (Not the Brits, of course, but their leaders.)
As for the pachyderme, it was getting ready to trample the ferret.
Plural would be “Arschlöcher”, by the way.
Brand new, strong airforce, at least the Fighter Command, as well.
I take umbrage to equating French resistance to the nazi invasion with a Paris prostitute.
France was the only country that had made any sort of serious preparation against a German invasion – the Maginot Line. Not one bit of it was ever breached or taken. Even after the panzers were pouring in through the Falaise gap and coming in from behind, the Maginot Line remained impregnable. It was only after the formal surrender of the French government that the soldiers there gave up.
And speaking of the Falaise Gap, that whole situation was unbelievably lucky for the Germans. If the allies had succeeded in destroying the pontoon bridges or closing the gap it was over for the nazis. The way the situation unfolded was pure luck.
Even after the bulk of the BEF was forced to withdraw from Dunkirk and the Germans were halfway to Paris, all was not lost. The French forces facing the Germans were equal in number and their lines had stabilized. The big German blitz had run its course. The problem was that the French were looking at an ugly long-drawn out struggle which certainly would have resulted in the total destruction of Paris with the best case scenario being some kind of draw. With that in mind and the shock of what had just happened, the French lost their nerve and capitulated.
Russian gloating should be contained. That French defeat went to Hitler’s head. Flushed with that victory (and too arrogant to recognize the role of luck) the nazis were way overconfidant when they attacked Russia. Underestimating Russian cunning at Stalingrad got them surrounded. Russian resolve when the panzers were in sight of Moscow was also a major morale-destroyer.
The Maginot line was also circumvented by airdrops I believe.And the Germans showed in Belgium how to take fortifications similar to the Maginot Line.Though it is true,had the line been fully completed, instead of only partly.We would have a better gauge of whether or not it would have had any real success.I doubt it,but there is no way to know now.
I think in reality though, that France was beaten at the start.The government was in tatters,and once the Maginot Line was bypassed France lost the will to fight on.They had been told for years that line made France virtually impregnable.And they really didn’t have a Plan B to count on.As the article talks about some in the German military betraying Hitler.But in France,defeatism in the high ranks was even worse than in Germany.
I do agree with you though,that France gets too little credit for the fight they did put up (I mean the common soldier,and low ranked officers).The British promised much and delivered little in the way of aid to the combined Franco-British military forces.And then retreated leaving the French to face Hitler’s onslaught alone.They kept on promising and encouraging the French to “fight on” from across the Channel.While the fighting was on French soil and the men dying were French.So when it appeared hopeless the defeatists gained control and forced a surrender.
I am finding all of your comments so revealing of much information that has been hidden from us. Thanks to all of you.
My father was stationed at Dunkirk. He was Liason from the French exiled army to a British Colonel. He wrote to my mother on yellow paper his experience jumping out of his jeep into ditches each time he and his Colonel were strafed.
All of a sudden, my father believed in God.
He made it back to where my mother was hidden in the South of France (Vichy territory)…..where eventually I was born.
We all need to know the truth, but as we can see, even/especially the participants in this ghastly war were prevented from knowing the full truth.
I have gifted one of my grandaughters the story “Snow Goose” by Paul Gallico…..very touching story about Dunkirk, of course from a British point of view.
I am eternally grateful for Hitler’s love for the anglo society, malgre his love was misplaced?
Cheers
Christine
The Maginot Line remained impregnable because it was never attacked. The Blitzkrieg strategy was precisely to avoid it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T65SwzHAbes
I like this “Im not ok” channel.
@Pelantaro
I like it also. Thanks for posting
Christine
Some respect for Greece role in ww2 would not have gone to waste….i will not start flaming and i will only blame your ignorance on that role and the sacrificies of greek people during that time.
To give a few examples,Greece lost more than 10% of its population during ww2 and its struggle against the axis.Comparable to USSR one.
Also we fought first against Italy that we beat,a superpower at the time….we still had cavarly units…later one when Germany joined,along with Bulgaria,we were left basically alone from the allies and basically even tho our bulk of forces were in the Italian border,Germans didnt broke through our fortified defences in the bulgarian borders where the germans attacked from….the so called Metaxas line.
We had left our borders with Yugoslavia basically defenceless,so after Yugoslavia fell in just 3 days the germans entered there freely,reached Athens,the Metaxas line was still fighting and never fell….only after the greek goverment had capiculated they surrendered.
Wont even go to the battle of Crete,that to some theories was a very crucial battle since it stalled the german attack on USSR,thus giving USSR a lot of precious time to prepare a bit more,Stalin had thanked Greece for that on one of his radio messages.
Here is a video about greeks in WW2 and some quotes about us from some head figures of the time,even Hitler himself praised the fighting spirit of the greek army.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBZpBAKliWE
Some of us know now, things we were never taught at school.
Thanks largely to the internet and blogs like this one.
Reparations are also owed to Greece by the UK repression of the partisans and the US involvement installing the ‘Junta’.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/08/why-germany-should-pay-reparations-to-greece/
Getting the German government to pay might be difficult,but if the Greek people were to revert to the ‘silver Drachma’,as Hugo Salinas Price suggested,you could not only bankrupt the corrupt german banks,but create real savings.
Every pro-Greek writer I read are shouting “Leave the Eurozone”,all the countries that joined are puppets of the US/Brussels masters.
BTW Alex Tsipras should create a ‘youth work force’ and employ, them before a ‘color revolution’ comes to Athens.
When a nation gives the power of money creation away,it loses sovereignty.
When a nation issues it’s own currency debt free! it can afford any real growth,check out the original Bank of Canada and the current …Bank of North Dakota…debt free currency and low interest credit.
Berlin rules,Frankfurt rules and Brussels instructs,vassals obey.
German reparations issue is coming as you probably have heard yourself.Tho yeah,i doubt much can be taken from Germany.
Tsipras in general is a tool tho or simply a coward,ofc he wont do something like that,he has alrd put a minister of internal affairs someone from the old establishment.The police is Greece is basically facist.More than half of the police forces vote for the neo nazi party Golden dawn and they have been seen working side to side with their terror squads in protests.Youtube is filled with videos.
Tho i should mention of the existance of a traditional communist party,which has deep roots in greek society,100 year old history and was the one that created the biggest partizan force in Greece during the nazi occupation and later fought a civil war against the pro-english forces.The party was illegal till the 70s and a lot of its members were still killed by firing squads till the late 60s.Many also died by torture in police departments during the US backed junta.
It has a strong and organised presence in the streets even tho its electorate power is less than impressive.I mention this,cause there was at some point a *maidan* like movement in greek,thats where golden dawn nazis showed its face first and got considerable electrorate power on the next elections till this day….and the KKE *forces* present there,even tho they were protesting against the goverment,as all of the others in there,when things heated up and there was a possibility of the parliament to be stormed by so called *anarchists*,it went in front and stopped them on its own,at the time ofc that seems suspicious,it was at 2012 if im not wrong,later on when maidan happened,things became a lot clearer of the service that it did to Greece,basically the goverment would have fled and a mini coup would have been established to keep *order*,which would have made things in Greece even worse than they are.Since demonstations and other social liberties would have been *suspended*,as has done in Spain as we speak.They also had a maidan movement,basically they started the trend.
Its kinda complicated,i hope im being understood.
I forgot the most important….KKE is fiercly anti-EU,anti-NATO for all its history,its predates EU and NATO and in favour of a national currency….ofc also immediate exit from EU and NATO and departure of all NATO bases in Greece.
You are right on the youth movement.When you don’t you run the risk of them being co-opted by the Empire and neo-nazis.The Ukraine is the perfect example of what happens when the youth (not all for certain,but enough) is co-opted to the “dark side” by the Empire and those groups.Russia during the 90’s and to some extent now has a problem with some youth being attracted to fascist groups.That I think is why Putin spends so much effort on working with youth.If they see they are valued in society they aren’t as attracted to anti-social violent neo-nazi groups.And those are the kind the Empire uses as their cannon-fodder for destabilization.As again,Ukraine shows only too clearly.
A very interesting article. Sad the author was murdered by the ziofascists/fascists.
I suspect that Skorzeny’s nazi mental disease had quite a play in his pov of Soviet Russia. Especially the bit about Stalin’s purges. That and the low level intelligence clearance usually given to special units so they don’t get “confused” about things outside basic tactics. From Skorzeny’s position, he saw very green troops slowly become veterans and viewed this as the troops overcoming the evil commie teachings. What I mean is he thought the communists were lesser, defective creatures, lacking human attributes, all the nazi stereotypes of the “evil reds”, no different from that of the Israelo/pindo/Euro far right freakshow, btw, as delineated by such closet homosexual fascists and nazi supporters as J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy. The evil commies are now the evil Russians/Chinese/Iranian/Venezuelans/and of course, the evil Muslims.
The Stalinist purge essentially created the the grounds the nazis found so easy to initially conquer in the USSR. The USSR military was commanded by toadies, not quality, directly due to these purges. The exception being Zhukov who completely defeated the Japanese in the east in 1939, using many aspects of the German combined arms tactics which proved so successful, BTW, in western Europe.
The purges directly lead to the 1941 disasters, and also the 1940 failures in Finland. The experienced were purged, the ones who Stalin felt were no threat, and who maintained his outdated, but personal backgrounded, cavalry-minded base for military strategy/tactics were kept on. The result was the USSR was woefully short of experienced commanders, and the higher up the brass chain, the more so, and they were also saddled with a military doctrine more suitable for fighting Polish Pilsiduki’s 1920’s cavalry than 1941 German blitzkreig tactics. There is a whole lot more to this, for example failure from “above” due to cronyism, and further, the corruption of image over reality.
It was literally the slaughter and capture of massive numbers of USSR military in the early months of the war that forged the effectiveness of the Soviet soldier. Not the debilitating purges. That destruction literally killed off the less effective (or I should say, the less lucky, initially). The survivors learned from their experiences. the longer their luck held out, the more combat experience they gained and the more effective they became. The Soviet brass did this as well. What the purges did was remove the necessary experience and replace it with blind loyalty, thereby setting back effectiveness.
On the other hand, that the purges prevented later dissension among the brass with Stalin, and therefore saved the USSR from the sort of collapse in western Europe is something I had not seen before.
“It was literally the slaughter and capture of massive numbers of USSR military in the early months of the war that forged the effectiveness of the Soviet soldier. […] That destruction literally killed off the less effective (or I should say, the less lucky, initially). The survivors learned from their experiences.”
As remembered from reading Stalin’s War of Extermination by German military historian Joachim Hoffmann (a depressing book, about the bleak horror of war):
In the first months of the war, the Soviet commanders issued lethally stupid commands, senselessly sacrificing thousands of soldiers, without any chance to achieve anything, regardless of the quality of the infantry. They were effectively sent on suicide missions, WW1 Somme style, such were the orders they were given. There was a grotesque system of terror within the Red Army threatening officers as well as simple men with capital punishment so no one would dare question the orders given. The truth about “Soviet mass heroism” was, just like you said, slaughter. Pointless slaughter. It did not bring any advantage at all to the Soviet side, it was nothing but an absurd waste of their own human lives. They were exterminating their own troops by sending them straight into the fire. Had they carried on like that they would have lost. But as we know, they wised up.
Anonymous on May 09, 2015 · at 7:24 am UTC
Oops, forgot to “sign” this post.
Ceaseless Western drivel about World War 2 is an institutionalized propaganda fraud kept going by the ruling Big Bourgeoisie and its corporate media. Evidently, the chief purpose of this whole trash indoctrination campaign — allegedly “historical science” — has been to keep the West’s home constituencies forever dumbed-down, self-opinioned, and arrogant.
But for all noisy, mendacious Western revisionist/Nazi tripe, it’s actually not the past but the future which constitutes the real source of conflict. And it’s our very contemporary reality that puts matters into perspective. To fully understand the role assigned by the powers that be to their perpetuated drivel about World War 2 — especially their painting it ever more in brown with each passing year — here goes:
As far as capitalism — especially decaying, parasitic Western capitalism — is concerned, German Nazism is appreciably less problematic than is the example set by Soviet socialism. Hitler was, after all, a very Western politician, mostly aping his Anglo-American forerunners with an eye to make his country wealthy at other peoples’ expense. Land-grabbing, enslavement, torture, genocide, and racist chauvinism are Anglo behavioural traits par excellence. NATO embodies all of this to the hilt, its appointment of Nazi Germany’s former top brass to high positions within the organization a mere 10 years after the war ended speaks for itself.
The only reason why an overall disapproval of Nazi Germany still persists in the West is because of the needs to defend the existence of the Zionazi statelet.
The creatures running IG Farben were re-habilitated even sooner!
A slap on the wrist at Nuremberg and within 3-5 all were back in the saddle,formed from 4 companies and broken back to 4 co’s.
No loss, no pain for the enablers….Ford, Dupont Standard Oil etc etc.
“NATO embodies all of this to the hilt, its appointment of Nazi Germany’s former top brass to high positions within the organization a mere 10 years after the war ended speaks for itself.”
Some people think it rather speaks for general Hans Speidel (among others) having helped the Normandy invasion succeed by preventing efficient counter-measures.
very interesting discussions indeed.
Unfortunately I am not familiar with the sabotage of the German defenses by general Speidel during the landing of the Allies in Normandy, as described by Lumi. Was the sabotage of German coastal artillery prior D-day, having ammo and aiming optics removed, one of these operations? Why didn’t Hitler intervene after this treason, it must have been easy to find the culprits, who gave these strange orders? Why didn’t Hitler capture the British Forces in Dunkirk? The official reasons are not convicing. Why did the French generals not put up a proper fight, after the German attack 1940? Personally I agree with Skorzeny and Erich Ludendorff, who claim, that during wars, there is a lot of treason and complicity going on behind the scenes on the highest levels. Ludendorff is identifying the Freemasons with Zionist BnaiBrith at the top as the main culprits.
Understand, that most of the commentators on this page agree, that the present world is close to a new major war. Given this fact it is very strange, that our Swiss political establishment, including all the different parties, is in the process of cutting our armed forces again into half and deliberately let a good part of the airforce rot unprotected in the open… The BigBoys must be very active these days, their agenda has to be utterly negative for the general population..
“The Spaniards who defended the USSR”:
http://www.publico.es/opinion/espanoles-defendieron-urss.html
Whatever happens, now as then, some of us have very clear which side we will fight against.
Articel is written in a typical manners of modern days. A person, few generations later, eduaceted by propaganda of the winner side, writes an articel about a subject he dont really understand. Not from profession and also not as a witness of the time as all the events happend.
His motivation is, based on a very emotional language, to prove his side is and was far superior. A lot of people has worked on the issue why Germans were defeated in the east. Some of the reasons are mentioned by Skorzeny. But one thing is for sure, they was not defeated because of the tactical brilliance of the leadership of Stalin or his general stuff.
First of all, it was the masses and the kind of use of masses. The soviet generals has sent millions in to the German counter actions. The storys of polit commisars who has forced common soldiers to run even without own gear against the german lines are endless. To get it in mind, they threatened with weapons common soldiers, to run and attack german lines without any weapons. They were advised to pick up the weapons of there fallen comrades. Withdrawal for common soldiers were not possible, because in there back were the troops of NKWD/GPU with the order to shoot down every soldier who is escaping from that kind of madness. I want to emphasize that exactly the same technic is used by ukrainian general stuff. We read more as one time. There is a reason why they do it, it is the way how they learned in the soviet academys.
The defeat of the Germans has many reasons, Skorzeny has mentioned, not emotinal as Buzina, a view of them. But the defeat was for sure not a lack of good gear as Buzina suggested. The answer for the t-34 is called Panther and not bottles of petroleum as the author is suggesting with his way to select quotes. It is something normal in the development between enemys. One is creating a weapon which is the other one in an ideal case countering with something else.
The defeat was also not a lack of will to fight. Germans were more as one time outnumbered until 1:10 at the eastern front. Often enough they have beaten the sovjets and proved they are damn good soldiers. It is nearly hilarious, as the author is doing, to suggest Skorzeny was worry about sovjet troops. It was Skorzeny who has taken out Mussolini of a fortress, which was impossible to capture. He did it just. There are some things it could be possible to say about him, but they are more personal and emotional, but he was a fighter and a good commando leader. This should be respected. In opposite to Buzan, Skorzeny respected his enemy. Something I have learned the most people who fought and survived the war did.
Buzina is not a historian as mentioned. I can see it the way how he selected the quotes and how he is using language. It is more emotional and less analytic. He is trying to use soviet propaganda to emphasize how good his side is. Sorry, communism was not that good system. It wasnt Germans who has slaughtered millions between 1918 and 1941.
On the big picture, everybody should realize that fascism of the westeuropeans was the answer of the easteuropean communism. Some people maybe do not like it, but it is what it is. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Austria, even Poland had established fascist systems. In France, Netherlands, Belgium and Great Britain were a strong sentiment to support that kind of ideology. I would like to mentioned again, Fascism was the answer of an ideology (communism) which killed in the eyes of the world with barbaric actions own people. Fascism was the reaction on communism, not vice versa. There is not one fascist authoritarian goverment which has started to destroy the historical heritage or culture of there country. Where communists raised pigs in former churches, cultural life was flourishing in Italy and also Germany in that time. It is a fact, possible to prove, that the life of commonn people has developed much more better under the condition of there fascist systems as in soviet Union. It means also not, fascist systems were the home of saints. They did what they did to defeat communists. And they defeated on the long term.
People should start to understand, that first and second world war, were at the end one single war of more than 30 years. It was a civil war between all european nations. In a fratricidal conflict, a war between members of a family has no winners. All members of the european family lose. It is important to understand that people start stopping to fight a virtual war of the past. WE DO NOT LIVE IN 1939! It is 2015!!!!
It is something important I want also to point out. In the complete time of the european war, a third force has equiped both sides of this european civil war. This side has delivered factorys, ressources as money to both sides of the conflict, fascist and communist one. This side has even supported that groups long before they came in power. It has worked with Hegels Dialectic. Create a problem, force a reaction..and offer a solution.
Are we really going this path again ? Are you all serious? This time using the propaganda which was used since over seventhy years? Because it is so easy to use preseted emotions? Is Russia communistic? Is Germany fascistic? Is it France? Russia is the last free european country. All the other ones are occupied. There is no 1940. Whith that attitude, to take out the ghost of Nazis, we will run very fast in the same structures as in the great european civil war. Russia will be blamed very fast to be a communistic dictatorship as well as the other occupied nations will be blamed to be fascistic. If we start all again with that kind of reenactment games we will end up all in the same situation and even far more worse as 1945. And the third party? Gets what it want. DONT FEED THE ANGLOZIONIST TROLLS!
@Wolf
“If we start all again with that kind of reenactment games we will end up all in the same situation and even far more worse as 1945. And the third party? Gets what it want. DONT FEED THE ANGLOZIONIST TROLLS!”
Agreed
Christine
I had only heard of Oles a month before he was murdered.
But I miss him.
Katherine.
Lord protect me from my friends, I can take care of my enemies ..
Easy to make Operation Barbarossa sound complicated but to call an invasion by a 3 million man Army of your country a “surprise” (which it was) and then an “intelligence failure” (which it was not) is just being stupid. Once you achieve the element of surprise then there are only operational failures not failures of intelligence. Admiral Canaris was very pessimistic about the chances of victory over the Red Army…and after the huge initial successes he was well nigh ignored until Army Group Center call rolled back and ultimately destroyed. He was a committed anti-communist and that kept him alive until the final day of the War…but he knew too much so there was no way he could survive the defeat and was shot the day before Germany surrendered.
Army Group South lost the Eastern Front…and the War actually. They got lucky the first six weeks because they had no idea the totality of the Russian counter-stroke was in Kiev but Hitler found out and through “force of will” shifted two of Guderin’s 3 Panzer Divisions South to annihilate the million man Army there…and then got lucky again when in 1942 the Red Army launched its main offensive…yep, you guessed it…right into Case Blue, the main offensive area for the German Offensive of 1942. The Red Army attacked first…getting annihilated at the Second Battle of Kiev and then Voronezh and Crimea. The Road to Moscow was wide open in the Summer of 1942…instead Army Group South divided it’s forces and attacked Stalingrad.
“The rest as they say is History.”