Camp that held Rommel's men surrenders its secrets

Gar,

––Yep, exactly. I didn’t want to be too detailed and make the discussion drift off topic. I have read three or more books with “valid” accounts concerning this.

----You know, sometimes I (almost) feel “old-school” because I’ve learned most of my military history knowledge through books I’ve bought rather than the internet. I’ve simply never taken the time to “surf” the net like that.

----And thank you very much “El Dominatro Magistero” for sharing your knowledge of Island History with us “normal folk”. :-D

“Tall Paul”

It is early yet Garg.
The Civil War was lost in the West, starting with Nashville and Vicksburg was a greater loss than Nashville.  I agree that a Southern victory at Gettysburg would not have equated to the fall of Washington or an armistice, despite Lee’s hopes for one.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102332/Adolf-Hitlers-fake-British-bank-notes-expected-fetch-2k-auction.html

@legion3:

Naturally though, I voted for the USSR,  :wink: the opportunity to knock them out of the war or at least to take and hold Moscow, a major road, rail and communication hub with no equal in the Soviet Union, was available in the early fall of 41 had the Germans not been diverted and thus delayed in the turn south into the Ukraine. Another Hitler directive.

I take a few issues with this, It is VERY common to overestimate the value of moscow. Because moscow was such a hub, it would be very easy to link the railroads behind moscow, they are not that far apart. The russians built ALOT of railroad in WW2, and this would have been a very small challenge for them. They could probably have made Gorky their new capitol. losing moscow would not have been the end of russia by far.

As long as the russian army is alive and well supplied, russians would win this showdown. What the hitler directive did was to divert the panzers south, to help with the capture of kiev, What this move did was to encircle 700 000 russian soliders and to hasten the capture of Kryvbas and Krivoy Rog, which where the main prodcution of russian steel, dealing another devestating blow to the russian economy. This move severy reduced the resuplyment of the red army and encircled alot of the russian prewar division. This means that the 700k soliders they encircled was among the best equipped and best trained russian divisions. I could very easily argue that if the germans had gone for moscow instead, then these divisions and the increased russian production could have made the summeroffensive of 42 impossible, and the russian winter counterattacks in the winter of 41/42 that much more devestating. It was already devestating because of the of the 18 siberian divisions (guessing about 500K soliders). If you double the number of trained soliders, then the germans would probably have been lucky to even hold moscow, and if they tried, a stalingrad situation might have developed.

Patton is one of the most interesting characters in WW2.

First of all look at how the Germans feared him. They were terrified of the man. Secondly a good many of Patton’s strategic and tactical viewpoints came to pass about both the 2nd World War and the Cold War. The man also had a sense of justice. He forced German civilians that tried to ignore the existence of the concentration camps to walk through the horrors there. As a tactician and commander I doubt we had anyone better than Patton.

The man had his faults certainly. The two incidents of slapping a soldier (he discharged a firearm in at least one of those, not sure about the second), he always seemed to have trouble managing his supply lines, and he always had trouble keeping his opinions quiet. He blundered severely sending troops to liberate a POW camp that happened to have his son in law as a prisoner. Patton never believed in shell shock, “battle fatigue”.

I really enjoyed Rick Atkinson’s first two books (Army at Dawn and Day of Battle). Patton is a major player in Army At Dawn (focused on North Africa). In the second book Patton is involved briefly but you learn many of his predictions about the fight in Italy prove to be correct. I look forward to third which focuses from D-day to the end of the war. I was disappointed in the amount of time Jeff Shaara devoted to Patton in “No Less Than Victory”. True a wealth of information is already recorded about Patton but writing any WW@ novel without Patton would be like writing about the Shenandoah Valley without mentioning Stonewall Jackson.

I believe that some authors portray Patton with a bias and marginalize Patton (most notably alternative writer Harry Turtledove). Part of this is because Patton offers so much stuff to criticize in his character. Part of it also comes from the fact it is popular to criticize anyone that could be considered conservative today.

@balungaloaf:

i have to strongly disagree with zhukov here.

its not insane to attack the russians.

americans were the only ones with the bomb.  japan wouldnt want to get bombed again, and russia could give japan NO support.

american could begin daily bombing runs again on all modes of russian factory output.

plus add nuclear devastation to many key soviet cities and to whole armored divisions.

Nations committing such acts will get retribution in kind, sooner or later.  Russia as a state might surrender, but the atomic bomb alone wouldn’t destroy communism completely, and eventually communists (all over the globe) would find a way to respond.

Truthfully I consider it insane to use the atomic bomb at all.  Unless it is against aliens.

A year since the last post

The Winter War is an amazing tale of bravery on the Finns’ part.