The Great Patriotic War: 1939-1943

Imagine just how upset I am that a wannabe Tucker Carlson "poli sci" doctoral candidate would ignore moi...yes, imagine.

 

I really don't understand: looking back at the original thread started in 2015, there was a much more reasonable Comrade General posting there, before the thread got out of hand with LjAd's delightful Medical discussions on Asthma, Dysentery, and other gems.

I also wonder about the driveby poster Jesica.

 

Looking back to my entry in this thread to see if I really was at all unreasonable. This is my first post:

Nothing very provocative there that I can see. I did suggest a more nuanced view to which I received the following reply.

Now note that in later post "Comrade" specifically sated he wanted to start in 1939 yet here he is stepping back to 1917. I won't comment at this time on the bulk of his text but lets look at his references.
I found the first one in a number places includign:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40650407
Illegal Killing of Soviet Prisoners of War by Finns during...
and
Antti Kujala's scientific contributions in Political Science and Social Science
I will note that the second sources specifically states in the abstract:

Now going on to Worthen, it's available at:
Tip of the iceberg? Finland and the Holocaust
and
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13501670902750337?src=recsys
Note the abstract there makes it look like the focus of this paper is absolving the Finns of any Holocaust related guilt so I'm not sure how it applies to the topic at hand.

I'll leave interested parties to their own interpretations of this exchange.

 

See? And that's the thing. So ready to claim "whataboutism," while so ready to point out (white) Finnish misdeeds 22 years earlier, yet utterly unable/unwilling to discuss Soviet misdeeds in the Baltic in the discussed time frame beyond "deep collaboration" and Arajs collection of thugs. Not willing to let anyone else tarnish Soviet glory, apparently. *shrug* Lead a camel to water...

 

His post no 30 where he accuses other posters of "what about ism" occasioned my next post (post #32) and is perhaps the beginning of the acrimonious debate. In it he refuse to respond to my specific points and engages in a bit of hand waving along with introducing a number of straw men to the debate and let's not for get a couple of videos which address the straw men rather than the issues brought to question. In what follows the pattern is always to try and steer the conversation to his favorite talking points while introducing numerous straw men and possibly addressing someone else concern in passing.. Although I did question is understanding of what was written in the next few post the first one that looks at all like an insult is this post:

Guess who wrote that one ... oh that's right you don't have to the quote function makes it obvious. Note this totally misrepresents my positon on the matter and that he trying to assert control of who posts in the thread. In the next series of post the closest I came to issuing an insult is this one:

You may judge for yourselves whether or not it was warranted and his reply:

I don't think GS or I either romantized the German side of the conflict or "diminished" the casualties suffered by the Soviets and consider such an accusation as rather insulting. Note despite the challenge for him to do so he has not produced a post illustrating where we did so. I welcome any others that can find such a post to point them out as well.

IMO if someone in this thread has been rude and insulting in hasn't been GS or I.

 

This is the absolute last post on the subject because your dishonest behavior is so apparent here. That abstract doesn’t absolve Finland of anything; it’s remarking that Finland had committed a comparable act of abuse to Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union even though it was a democracy.

And yes, saying “the Finns were bad too” is the definition of whataboutery. Country X committing massacres doesn’t make it OK that Country Y and Country Z did too. The Soviet Union committing atrocities doesn’t absolve any of the Axis Powers, especially when only Germany and Japan launched wars of aggression based on genocidal policies of regional expansionism. Part of what separates the Eastern Front from the rest of WW2 is that it was an ideological war of annihilation. It wasn’t a “clean war.” It was Hell on Earth.

And yes stating that the Germans didn’t know what they were doing when they were besieging the literal former Tsarist capital for 900 days is stupid at best and blatantly dishonest at worst. The German leadership cared not one iota for the people who died, because they didn’t consider them “people.”

I kept checking the ignored content because I thought I could talk maybe one of you down from spamming this thread but it’s clear you have no intention of admitting your offensive behavior. That whole bit with the abstract convinced me that any actual neutral party who reads this thread will plainly see you’re not here in good faith. But if even one lurker finds my actual content interesting and picks up one of the books I recommended or visits my blogs, that’s good enough for me.

All this goes to show what I posted about Internet arguments is right. I’m still willing to answer good faith questions and comments but I refuse to feed trolls.

 

Good to see we are all so dishonest, as declared by 'he who has done no wrong.*

No it actually doesn't show that your post on internet arguments is right. It just shows you are unwilling and unable to actually go back, read what was written, reflect, and act in a mature way. As suggested by Takao.

 

Fundamentally, try to understand how someone with a Baltic heritage would feel when reading your posts on the first two pages.

Not only did Comrade General in his eagerness to "educate" run rough shod over Finland, pontificating on Finnish war crimes (1917-1918, and 1941-1945) without displaying a willingness to understand Finland's situation, when the actual timeline was still in 1939-1940 (post #15 in this thread)... Yet later, of course, we have the outburst claiming "what-aboutism." Which in the context of his previous posts, comes across as very dismissive.

Then we have statements such as:

"I don't know about Baltic resistance but there was deep collaboration with the Nazis throughout the Baltic countries. All of them to varying degrees set up security branches responsible for rounding up and killing Jews and Roma."

"There were many Baltic nationalists who wanted independence, just as there were Ukrainians and Cossacks who wanted that as well. But at no point was this even an issue during the German-Soviet war."
​

We can just wipe three nations off the planet and merge them with the Soviet state, because it wasn't an issue during the war. Deport hundreds of thousands of people, execute thousands. It just doesn't matter. Ponder the audacity it takes accept the obliteration of three sovereign countries, the suppression of their populations. "Not an issue;" well, I can tell you, from the perspective of the inhabitants of those nations, it was an issue. It might not be one Comrade General likes to talk about in his glorious "Great Patriotic War," however. It is an issue, but just because it is frequently ignored in the books he reads, does not mean it is irrelevant. As indicated by Kai-Petri (and the speed of the German advance through those Nation states). Addressing the occupation of the Baltic states in 1940 allows us to a greater degree understand the nature of the Soviet regime, than anything so far provided by our educator. If it weren't an issue, why did the Soviets feel the need to field divisions with National identities? (8th Estonian Rifle Corps, for example).

 

??? how is my behavior in anyway dishonest?

Did I claim it did? No, I didn't. So who is being dishonest? It does however mention that such treatment was not official policy and that the murders were exactly that under Finnish law.

Exactly. It put those acts in some context.

The problem is you are defining things that are directly related as "whataboutery" when the rest of us are using the term for things that are irrelevant to each other. If you look at one side or even look at both sides of an issued but quickly pass over one while delving into the details of the other you are likely to miss the understanding that comes with looking at the overall issue. You are trying to promote knowledge without understanding.

And where did I say that they didn't know what they were doing? Putting words in my mouth again. That's one of the most vile forms of dishonesty IMO. General straw men are a logical fallacy and a form of intellectual dishonesty but directly attributing them to an individual ....

If you really believe that you are either very good a deceiving yourself or very loosely connected to reality. Look at the comments of everyone who has joined this thread.

So it's all about your ego and probably a bit about your pocket book.

No. It shows you are unwilling or unable to support your positions in an open debate and rely on personal attacks, logical fallacies, pretended offence (well perhaps you really are offended but that indicates an even deeper personal disorder), and hand waving to deal with honest criticism.

 

First Battle of Kharkov: October 1941

By October 1941 the German leadership had every reason to believe the German-Soviet war virtually won. The fall of Leningrad was a matter of time and in encircling Kiev the Soviets had suffered tremendous casualties. All that remained was taking Moscow before winter. This overconfidence led them to launch offensives across the Eastern Front rather than concentrating all their forces on Moscow. They also failed to account for the arrival of autumn and the rasputitsa (Russian for “time without roads”), which worsened the abysmal supply situation. Nevertheless, the Red Army faced the same mud and cold, yet performed much better than the Germans. In the words of Geoffrey Megargee: “The weather did not defeat the Germans: their failure to plan for it did.”

With Kiev cleared, Guderian’s panzer group returned to Army Group Center while Army Group South resumed its advance east. As was typical throughout the first year, the German tanks and motorized units of Kleist’s First Panzer Army (no longer a group) reached the Donbass and was headed to Rostov while its infantry tried to keep up. The cautious army group commander, Gerd von Rundstedt, wanted to mop up Soviet forces west of the Don River, but German high command ordered him to advance toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus. Along the way, however, they needed to capture Kharkov (Kharkiv in Ukrainian), the major industrial city (which it remains today) in northeast Ukraine. By the time German units reached the outskirts of the city on October 20, however, the evacuation of industrial materials from Kharkov was completed.

​

As Rundstedt predicted, Army Group South faced harsh Soviet opposition as well as poor weather and exhaustion. The Eleventh Army under General Erich von Manstein stalled as it advanced on the Crimea until Kleist’s Panzer Army threatened to encircle Soviet troops around the Sea of Azov. The German Sixth Army under Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau was meant to advance as far as the Don River and construct bridgeheads to prepare for an offensive against Stalingrad. This was far too ambitious given the mistakes and other obstacles that the Germans faced; taking Kharkov alone required a coordinated attack by the Sixth and Seventeenth armies. This was the most Sixth Army could realistically achieve until it was better supplied and the ground froze. This meant, however, that the knock-out punch intended by taking the Soviet Union’s industrial capacity and oil reserves in the south would have to be delayed until there were better conditions, and thus that the German-Soviet war would not end before wintertime.

​

Heavy German casualties incurred in taking Kiev meant that, formally, German units were forbidden from entering urban areas, but in this case, the rule was not followed. The Germans occupied Kharkov on October 24. The occupation was a harsh one. On October 10 Reichenau had issued his infamous Severity Order, which called for the “complete destruction” of the “Jewish-Bolshevik system” and “the extermination of the Asiatic influence in European civilization.” It called for soldiers to understand “the necessity for the severe but just retribution that must be meted out to the subhuman species of Jewry.” (Army Group South’s commander, Rundstedt, would be so impressed with this he ordered his other commanders to issue similar directives.) As a result of the Severity Order, Jews in the populous city of Kharkov received even less rations than non-Jews (rations were already scarce). Photographic evidence shows victims of the Germans strung up from balconies as a warning against potential partisans.

Sonderkommando 4a, one of the Einsatzgruppen death squads, arrived in November and murdered around 305 Jews; in December, around 1,500 more were massacred at Drobytsky Yar, a ravine, where there now stands a memorial to the Kharkov victims: https://www.jta.org/2002/12/19/life-religion/features/memorial-to-ukraine-massacre-erected

Sources

Fritz, Stephen. 2015. Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press.

Glantz, David and Jonathan House. 1995. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.

Megargee, Geoffrey. 2007. War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/orl-greg-dawson-travels-to-ukraine-071909-story.html

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/wwii-massacres-drobitsky-yar-were-result-years-scapegoating-jews-180961466/

 

The Zhytomyr Massacre

In August 1941, members of Einsatzgruppen C and the German Sixth Army cooperated in the execution of over four hundred Jews in and around Zhytomyr. Tasked with rounding up Jews and Bolsheviks, Einsatzgruppe members arrested Mosche Kogan and Wolf Kieper, two local Jews accused of working for the Soviet security agency, the NKVD. The NKVD was responsible for domestic repressions against “enemies of the people,” including political dissidents. The Einsatzgruppe brought Kogan and Kieper to the town marketplace for a public hanging. Meanwhile, the military commander in charge of the city, Colonel Josef Riedl, used the military police along with local volunteers to capture and bring around 400 Jews to the marketplace as well.

The Germans made an event out of killing. They wrote and posted signs in German and Ukrainian advertising the execution of the “Cheka Jews.” They built gallows to hang Kieper and Kogan. As the locals gathered, the SS officers encouraged the crowd to name their grievances against the Jews and then to physically assault the Jews. Among the audience watched regular German soldiers, who even sat on rooftops to watch the action. The executions became a form of entertainment. After Kieper and Kogan were hung, the Germans led the Jews to a prepared shooting site outside of Zhytomyr.

“…[T]he truck set off, stopping about 150 meters further on. On a stretch of open ground there was a ditch, filled with water, about 150 cm long and about 80 cm wide. It must have been about 50 cm deep. SS men stood at either side of this ditch. One by one the Jews had to jump over the ditch. Because of their bad physical condition – partly and also because a lot of them were very old – only a few managed to clear it… Those who fell in the ditch were beaten with various types of blunt instruments by the SS men and driven or pulled out of the ditch. Many could not get out of the ditch. The ditch had to be kept clear because it was only 80 cm wide and the other people had to cross it.

“About thirty meters behind the ditch I saw a stack of logs. The stack was about 10 meters long, 1.5 to 2 meters high and about 1.5 meters wide. This wooden wall was used as a bullet butt. Little by little the Jews had to line up facing this wall. There must have been five or six people lined up there each time. They then received a shot in the neck from the carbines. Row upon row were shot in the same way. The dead from each row were dragged away immediately and taken behind the stack of logs. There was a large grave there that I only saw from afar…

“I stood about twenty meters from the ditch and about fifty meters from the wood-stack. A cordon was stretched across for the spectators. The spectators were not permitted to come any nearer.” – A truck driver from Technical Battalion 6

Sources:

Klee, Ernst, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds. 1991. The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders. New York: Free Press.

Lower, Wendy. 2005. Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

 

Now check who cleared the Jews in Odessa. I already have made a thread a long time ago as well.

 

Yes... But as long as CG just wants to pontificate, rather than contribute in a meaningful way, he is going to ignore other threads, and deliver his sermons, randomly deciding the content as he goes. His whole premise is to avoid participation and discussion. Most of the content of his factual posts already exist as separate threads; those that don't, probably should. That would be the ideal way to get the most feedback and discussion. Now, this thread is the laughing stock of the community, as discussed elsewhere.The degree to which the OP is unwilling to engage with others shines through.

 

Looks like Otto is in the business of subsidizing bloggers now too...

 

Maybe I should start my own blog in this thread....

 

You wouldn't do any worse. Of course it doesn't help his case when we have a blogger on site that is a shining example of how it should be done. (Wartime Wednesdays in case it isn't clear).

 

I think this is the thread you mean: Romania's Role In The Holocaust Exposed

The Romanian treatment of the Odessa Jews was indeed incredibly brutal: Odessa

The Ion Antonescu regime was almost as genocidal as Hitler's but even their system of extermination was not as cold and mechanical as the Endlösung.

 

​

Operation Typhoon: The Battle of Moscow

On September 6, 1941, with Leningrad besieged and the Ukraine captured, the German high command issued Fuhrer Directive No. 35, commanding Army Group Center under Field Marshal Fedor von Bock to “destroy the enemy in the region east of Smolensk by a double envelopment by powerful panzer forces concentrated on both flanks.” On September 16, Bock drew up Operation Typhoon for this pursuit of the Soviet forces toward Moscow. In the meantime, Soviet General Andrey Yeryomenko transferred from the Western Front to the Bryansk Front, named for the city 235 miles southwest of Moscow. In late August the Bryansk Front had launched an unsuccessful counterattack against Guderian’s Second Panzer Group around Smolensk. Although the German forces were delayed, the Bryansk Front was left heavily defenseless to Operation Typhoon.

​

After the fall of Kiev, Guderian’s Second Panzer Group rejoined Army Group Center and on September 30, and in typical fashion, Guderian’s panzers plunged deep into Soviet territory, capturing Orel on October 3 and Bryansk on October 6. According to Guderian, the electric trains were still working in Orel when the panzers drove in. The Wehrmacht’s 7th Panzer Division almost captured Yeryomenko and his staff, but they escaped. Meanwhile, General Georg-Hans Reinhardt’s Third Panzer Group drove a wedge into the defenses of the Western Front, now under General Ivan Konev. As ever, Soviet resistance could only slow and not immobilize the Germans. By the end of October 4, the 2nd and 10th Panzer Divisions were approaching Vyazma (on the western approaches of Moscow) in the Western Front’s rear areas. It was not until the next day that Stalin finally authorized Konev to begin withdrawing his forces. General Konstantin Rokossovsky attempted to defend Vyazma with the 16th Army but could not hold. Vyazma soon fell, and on October 13 the Germans declared the Soviet forces trapped west of Vyazma destroyed. In reality, encircled Soviet units fought desperately to breakout, usually without success, but kept German divisions tied down. Ecstatic with Typhoon’s early success, Hitler declared that the Soviets “were broken and would never rise again.” All told, the encirclements at Bryansk and Vyazma cost the Soviets seven out of 15 armies, 64 of 95 divisions, 11 of 15 tank brigades, and 50 of 62 attached artillery regiments. Around one million Soviet soldiers were killed or captured; only a quarter of a million escaped. It appeared as though Moscow was even more vulnerable to assault.

As they often did, the German leadership became too ambitious after smelling exploitation. Rather than focusing on a main thrust to the capital, Army Group Center would coordinate with Army Group North to capture the Moscow-Leningrad railway while encircling Moscow from the north, west, and south. The Soviets, however, put all effort in defending Moscow, even enlisting 440,000 citizens from the region to build trenches in less than a month. On October 15 most of the important government offices and major factories relocated to an old city on the Volga river, Kuybyshev. The German offensive stalled due to logistical issues, the onset of muddy roads in autumn, and general exhaustion, and in late October, the German armed forces paused to resupply.

​

Remaining in Moscow and seeking to shore up morale, Stalin went ahead with holding the traditional military parade held every November 7 in Red Square. The parade went ahead, with forces headed straight to the nearby front. By late November, around 65,000 troops defended Moscow, including militia and NKVD internal security divisions. Anti-tank units, infantry, engineers, and artillery were concentrated along the major avenues the Germans would have to use. The Western Front, now under Marshal Georgy Zhukov – fresh from organizing defenses at Leningrad – and other experienced officers, now had leadership capable of stopping and countering German tactics.

When the muddy roads froze, the panzers and motorized infantry regiments of the Germans moved with their usual celerity, and by November 27, the 7th Panzer Division captured the Moscow-Volga Canal, 22 miles from the Kremlin. Around the same time, the Germans approached Kashira, a town 71 miles south of Moscow. Soviet and German regiments had been reduced to the size of companies, with only 150 to 200 soldiers left in each. Bock gambled on one last attack on Moscow using the 4th Army under Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, but this crashed against Soviet riflemen to Moscow’s west. Around ten miles from Moscow’s main defense lines, Reinhardt’s Third Panzer Group and General Erich Hoepner’s Fourth Panzer Group ground to a halt. Guderian’s Second Panzer Group also failed to capitalize on a planned attack on Tula, south of Moscow.

The frozen ground had come at a price; by November 30 it was around -50 degrees Fahrenheit (-45 degrees Celsius). As Operation Barbarossa was always meant to be a fast victory, the Germans were not prepared for the harsh Russian winter; even though the Soviets faced the same conditions, the Soviet had winter-appropriate equipment on hand, while the Germans did not. German soldiers reported over 130,000 cases of frostbite. This meant that by December the Germans had no hope of continuing their offensive; the environment meant that the undersupplied and combat fatigued Germans had totally run out of momentum, despite coming to the very edges of Moscow. More than the weather, the Soviets owed their successful defense to the great effort taken to protect the city, to mobilize soldiers and civilians alike, and to fight tooth and nail against the Germans. The Soviets could also draw on reserve units to reinforce their troops, while the Germans were already overstretched and increasingly understrength.

The Soviet 16th Army earned a place of distinction for withstanding the brunt of the German effort to take Moscow. The army was led by Rokossovsky, who himself was accused, arrested, and tortured during Stalin’s purge of the armed forces in the 1930s. Despite his treatment, Rokossovsky never confessed to any crimes and continued to serve Stalin and the Soviet regime. He molded the battle-scarred veterans, Moscow militia members, and Siberian reservists into a cohesive fighting unit that kept the Germans from entering Moscow. In a famous incident, he attempted to overrule the Western Front commander, Zhukov, by appealing for a retreat order from the Soviet Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov. After Shaposhnikov agreed, Zhukov interjected and asserted that he had ultimate authority over Rokossovsky. This clear (if draconian) chain of command contributed greatly to the Soviet defense.

One unit within the 16th Army, the 316th Rifle Division, was involved in an infamous case of fictional Soviet propaganda. Moscow claimed that 28 soldiers belonging to the 316th Rifle Division destroyed 18 German tanks with the newly issued PTRD-41 anti-tank rifles before being killed themselves. After a post-war inquiry, no evidence could be found to corroborate the claimed casualties and, indeed, several of the “killed” Soviet soldiers still lived. Despite this deceitful propaganda, the sacrifices of the division were no less impressive: it suffered 9,920 casualties by November 17. Its commander, General Ivan Panfilov, received a third Order of the Red Banner for his valor. Panfilov was killed on November 18, a day after Stalin ordered the division elevated to a Guards formation, a status reserved for units that distinguished themselves in combat. The “Guards” title was a direct reference to the elite Imperial Guard of the pre-communist Tsarist regime.

Sources

Bellamy, Chris. 2007. Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Glantz, David. 2011. Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion of Russia. Stroud, UK: The History Press.

Glantz, David and Jonathan House. 1995. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.

Stahel, David. 2013. Operation Typhoon: Hitler’s March on Moscow, October 1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Woff, Richard. 1993. “Konstantin Rokossovsky.” In Stalin’s Generals, ed. Harold Shukman. New York: Grove Press.

 

“The Battle of Moscow, which resumed in mid-November when the gray mud froze, came to be counted among the Red Army’s decisive victories. [General Erich] Hoepner’s tanks took the riverside town of Istra, with its golden-domed cathedral of the New Jerusalem, on 26 November. But his men were exhausted, the veterans among them muttering that even in its bloodiest days the First World War had known no harder fighting. Their ordered blitzkrieg had dissolved into a hell of hand-to-hand combat; their rich new land had drained of pleasure in the vicious cold. Even their darkness, as Hoepner observed, was dissipated in chaotic light as tracers flashed and glittered on the snow. Red Army troops, by now, were dressed in the camouflage suits they had adopted for winter campaigning since the Finnish war. Unlike their adversaries, they ere also prepared for the cold. Looming out of the dark like phantoms, they unnerved their German conquerors. And then they fought, it seemed, with new determination and new stealth. By late November it was clear that the German tanks would get no farther before Christmas. Then, on 5 December, the Red Army attacked in its turn, driving the enemy back from the capital and breaking, link by link, the chain that threatened to encircle it.

“Credit for Moscow’s defense usually goes to Georgy Zhukov. Stalin’s political entourage had failed as military strategists, and now the generals were fighting back. The other heroes were the reserve troops – twelve entire armies – that were brought to the front that October. But the capital was also defended by conscripts from the hinterland, and even by intellectuals, old men, and students. This second group went into battle with the mindset and the preparation of civilians. Back in July, Stalin had called on people to join a levee en masse, and plans for Moscow’s citizens’ defense, the opolchenie, swung into operation immediately. Each district of the capital raised its companies of volunteers. Anyone who wanted to, almost, could serve. Their ages ranged from seventeen to 55. As one survivor put it, most volunteers believed that they were destined to celebrate the anniversary of the revolution that November in Berlin.”

– Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945, pp. 128-129

 

I see he still hasn't figured out how to use quote marks properly.