@Der:
The late Russian war veteran Viktor Astafjev was on the Soviet-German front all the war long, 1941-1945:
“The Germans fought much, much better in all respects! The Communists chose to shed rivers of the Russian blood literally in order to win the War. The Soviets won over Germany only by their extreme brutality and inhumanity!”
The best WW2 Commander? “Field-Marshall Erich von Manstein, of course!”, tells the great Russian national writer:
“He managed to push three Bolshevik armies into the Azov and Black Seas with the help of two German corps only! He was the great military genius”
And Zhukov?
“Honest Russian patriot? Ha! This b��t��d covered half Europe by the millions of the Russian guys` corpses by his extremely sadistic personal kind of war waging! He deserves neither honor, nor respect, never!”
Taken from here: http://justice4germans.com/2012/11/12/russian-wwii-vets-say-germans-were-the-best-soldiers-in-the-world/
Good post. Obviously von Mannstein was a much better general than Zhukov. That’s not a knock against Zhukov; who was a solid general in his own right. But generals like von Mannstein don’t come around very often.
To add to what you’ve written: Germany’s prewar population was 69 million, compared to 169 million for the Soviet Union. On the other hand, a study conducted by the U.S. military indicated that German soldiers normally achieved a 3:1 exchange ratio when fighting the Soviets. However, the Soviet Union achieved a 1:1 ratio at Stalingrad; killing or capturing a million German soldiers in the process. (Over 1% of Germany’s entire prewar population!) The Soviet Union lost a million men in that battle also. But for several years the Red Army added 500,000 new men a month–a replacement rate Germany could not possibly hope to match. By the summer of '41, 80% of German men between the ages of 20 and 30 were in the military; with the remaining 20% considered too valuable to industry to release for military service.
The role of the Western democracies in hindering the German Army should not be underestimated. 500,000 Greman soldiers were uselessly tied down in Norway, against the threat of a British or American landing. Several hundred thousand were taken prisoner in North Africa. Others were tied down in Italy or France. As early as 1942, the distraction effect of the Western democracies had become considerable.
While Germany had the best generals of the war, von Mannstein rose above the level even of the other German generals. (Of course there were exceptions to the above rule. Some German generals weren’t much more creative than their Allied counterparts. Patton, on the other hand, would have been one of Germany’s five best generals had he been German.)
