Quote:
Originally Posted by T. A. Gardner
For the most part the Soviets weren't retreating. Their unit commanders were generally being ordered to hold at all costs and the units were being destroyed in situ. Where retreats were occuring they were generally planned but irrelevant as the units involved were often already pretty much combat ineffective due to losses.
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That's contrary to what Alan Clark says in his Barbarossa. Basically what he says is that every locality was to be defended by "Worker's battalions" with orders to stay put and die in place, while the regular army formed composite units, brigade-size, with orders to operate in the middle and retreat when things weren't going too well.
As a consequence, the regular army units would survive to fight another day, while the units that would be cut off and shot to pieces were the improvised ones that weren't really important anyway.
I'm re-reading Guderian's "Panzer Leader", and the picture he paints about this period is completely dismal. No supplies, no roads, no fuel, no anti-freeze, not even anti-icing paste for the optics therefore guns not firing, 16 hours of darkness per day. Above all troops still in summer clothing at -40º Celsius. And for shooting his mouth of too often he was dismissed for his pains and put on the shelf for two years! Quite frankly, I don't see how they could ever pull it off.
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Seen inside the locker of a German colleague:
"I am a mushroom, I must be a mushroom because I'm kept in the dark and fed bullshit."
Another HC viewer, I s'pose
