Hermann Goering' gold-plated handgun up for aution

@ABWorsham:

Stug III if I get off the first shot.

If the engagement is any longer than the first shot, give me the T-34.

By the way love the question.

Me too. Sorry I did not say, Aequitas.

One of the major improvements to the Soviet armed forces that came out of the Winter War was the replacement of Kliment Voroshilov by Semyon Timoshenko as People’s Commissar for Defence. Voroshilov had helped Stalin carry out the Great Purge by denouncing some of his military colleagues, and (as I recall) he reversed some of the army reforms that his predecessors had carried out.  He also bungled the opening phases of the Winter War, and was eventually turfed out in favour of the more competent Timoshenko.  After the Soviets won in Finland, Timoshenko set about modernizing the Red Army.

Thanks for sharing

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17390290

19 March 2012

A British general kept Winston Churchill and Free French leader Charles De Gaulle in the dark about a top secret 1942 plan to arm Vichy France, recently discovered documents reveal.

The defeat of Leningrad would have been easier than Stalingrad.

The loss of Moscow would have been much greater loss than Baku and resulted in a shortening of the front of which a latter southern drive could succeed without fear of getting cut off because at that point all logistical support for Soviets would be coming entirely east of the Don and this country is not too developed. The last Soviet Factories would be in range of Axis bombers and the front would have rolled up more easily, than committing the 6th to Stalingrad with all other Soviet logistical and political objectives are intact allowing easy reinforcement from rail heads running south from Moscow.

There are many good books on the ordeal of Black Americans in WW2…amazing what they had to go through in the armed forces and most of the time they were the fiercest fighters around…

I know you didn’t ask me but, If I could have set up a rondezvous with a supply ship, with food, fuel and ammo (although I am pretty sure the GS had plenty even after the fight) and had enough food and fuel to make that rondevous then I might have risked making a run for it, at night, trying to avoid a general fight. Get past the cruisers, try to out run them and lose them if possible. But it would have been difficult and all the cruisers had to do was shadow. German (or even Spanish)  ports were awfully far away. And eventually something bigger would show up if I couldn’t lose them.

If I could not arrange the resupply then no, it would have been a waste to even try
and ship’s captains rarely make suicide charges…some do but not most. A ship would have to have a decent shot at making some friendly port.

And the River Plate while wide at its mouth and looks very big in maps/photos (Montivedio is on the big entrence) is not a very manueverable body of water, (we were in port at Buenos Aires once) you would be forced to stay in the channel for quite some distance and given how the Brits fight they probably would have violated the soverignty and fired on the ship in the channel. Who knows?

I spent 6 years at sea and any sailor with an ounce of salt learns to respect the power and danger of the seas. Sailors have two enemies, the other guy on the other ship and the ocean. Get beaten by one and you might not (if they don’t pick you up) survive the other.

German ships did elude the British Radar many times during the war, not sure if any of these ships had it.

You know the more I think about it making a run was probably, given the cirumstances, not a good idea.