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Time is only enemy you'll never get rid of.

A signed print by Finnish StuG men on Tali-Ihantala battles with tank commander Börje Brotell´s Stug in the print after destroying 10 T-34´s.

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" The battle of Stalingrad entered its second phase at the beginning of December 1942. Because the OKH did not allow the troop commanders freedom of operation, the Germans could not take any countermeasures. Only the commander of the LI Army Corps, General of Artillery von Seydlich-Kurzbach, ordered the troops in his sector to withdraw to better defensive positions."

Army group South 1941-45 by Werner Haupt

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November 1941. Blitzkrieg in Ost?

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At least the snow seems to be hard enough to provide good going...

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There is an ass in my avatar.

The background sky has a kind of faint mushroom image.

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Work Harder ! Millions on welfare are depending on you.

"Under a skilful rider it rushed along like an arrow, but when you lost control you could end up beneath its hoofs"

Alexander Pokryshkin, top ace of VVS during the Great Patriotic War on Mig-3

MiG-3 family

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YouTube - Victory parade 24.06.1945 in colour

YouTube - Victory parade 24.06.1945 in colour part 2

YouTube - Victory parade 24.06.1945 in colour part 3

YouTube - Victory parade 24.06.1945 in colour part 4

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76 mm divisional gun M1942 (ZiS-3)

76 mm divisional gun M1942 (ZiS-3 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

After having been built, the first ZiS-3 gun was hidden from the wathchful eyes of state authorities, who continued to ignore the Red Army's need for light and medium field guns. The authorities' main argument was the information that German heavy tanks carried exceptionally strong armour.

The beginning of the Great Patriotic War showed that German tanks had weaker armour than was anticipated. Some were even vulnerable to large caliber DShK machine guns. Pre-war models of 76-mm divisional guns punched through German vehicles with ease, but almost all these guns were lost in battles or captured by Germans in holding facilities . Marshal Kulik ordered that mass production of 76.2-mm divisional field F-22USV guns be relaunched.

V. G. Grabin and the head staff of Artillery Factory No. 92 decided to organize the mass production of ZiS-3 guns instead of F-22USV's. They succeeded, but ZiS-3 was not officially tested and adopted for Red Army service. There was a stroke of tragic comedy to the situation: Red Army soldiers were in urgent need of these guns, the guns themselves were fine and numerous due to improved production technology, but all of them were in stock at Artillery Factory No. 92, since the military representatives refused to receive these non-official guns.

After some internal struggle between Grabin's team and military representatives, ZiS-3 guns were finally transferred to the Red Army under personal responsibility of Grabin and Artillery Factory No. 92 head staff.

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Air reconnaissance over the Gulf of Finland remained essential to determining the wherabouts of the Soviet Fleet, but lack of fuel and Soviet air superiority impeded the fulfillment of this vital mission.

The Navy had to continue to rely upon its own vessels for scouting, because the air force did not fly a single reconnaissance mission in the months of November 1944 and January 1945....

Hitler. Dönitz and the Baltic Sea by Howard Grier

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1942

Kommando Philipp

During the summer and autumn 1942 German Luftwaffe naval detachment Einsatzstab Fähre Ost (Commander Oberstleutnant F. Siebel) equipped with about 20 armed "Siebel artillery barges" and supported by four light German mine layer boats under the command of Luftflotte 1 operated on Lake Ladoga for interfering Soviet supply shipping to Leningrad together with a rather weak Finnish naval detachment and a squadron of four Italian motor MAS torpedo boats. Their bases were at Sortanlahti and near Käkisalmi.

To protect these vessels German flying detachment called Kommando Philipp or Kommando 1./JG 54 (1.Staffel / Jagdgeschwader 54, also planes from III./JG 54) (Staffelkapitän Oberleutnant Götz) was moved to Petäjärvi airbase. In September detachment was reinforced with two Heinkel He 60 and one Heinkel He 59 maritime rescue planes located at river Vuoksi near Käkisalmi. About 15 Messerschmitt Bf 109F-4 fighters operated from Petäjärvi and Mensuvaara airbases between 28.6. - 29.10.1942.

FMP - Luftflotte 1 in Central and Southern Finland 1941 - 1944

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Germans in Finnland

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On September 24, 1941, at an inter-Allied conference in London, Russia, represented by M. Maiski, endorsed the Atlantic Charter. He stated: "The Soviet Union defends the right of every nation to the independence and terri*torial integrity of its country, and its right to establish such a social order and to choose such a form of government as it deems opportune and necessary for the better promotion of its economic and cultural prosperity." The same was asserted by M. Litvinov on January 1,1942 in Washington, when he signed the United Nations Statement in the name of the Soviet Union. The third time we find the same noble principles of the Atlantic Charter in another binding instrument, the twenty-year Mutual Assistance Pact between the Soviet Union and Great Britain, signed on May 26,1942 by V. Molotov and A. Eden. "Both Powers will", it said, ";resist aggression in the postwar period, they will act in accordance with the two principles of not seeking territorial aggrandizement for themselves and of non-inter*ference in the internal affairs of other States."

Latvia / The Story of Latvia / The Last Act of the Baltic Tragedy

However...

Through his ambassador to Britain (Maiski), Stalin declared that the Soviet Union was in agreement with the Charter, “provided that the practical application of these principles adjusts itself of necessity to the circumstances, needs, and special historical characteristics of the concerned countries”. This is the so-called Maiski clause, which enabled Stalin to profess lip service to the principles of the Atlantic Charter while disregarding these principles in practice. During the negotiations for the British-Russian mutual-aid pact in December 1941, the British had refused to go along with the Soviet demand to recognize their pre-war borders, which in essence meant the recognition of the annexation of the Baltic States and Eastern Poland; however, with a more favourable progression of the war in 1943, they became inclined to accept the pre-war borders of the Soviet Union.

Maþoji Lietuva

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"EAST FAILURES"

By the time the Germans had acquired large areas of territory in the Soviet Union, they had run out of competent and experienced individuals to administer the occupied areas. Most of their better personnel had already been assigned to occupation posts in other parts of Europe. Furthermore, occupation duty in the East was very undesirable. Therefore, the occupation officials had a scrape the bottom of the barrel to find administrators for the newly-acquired territories. As part of their quest, troublemakers, alcoholics and other unreliable individuals were "dumped" into those post. Back in Germany, those who knew what was happening had a name for these people: "Ostniete" (East failures).

Source: "German Rule in Russia" by Alexander Dallin

World War Trivia and Cartoons - Riebel-Roque Publishing Company

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Viktor M. Iskrov, Colonel of the Guards (retired)
During Winter War - Lieutenant, forward observation platoon leader, 68th Independent mortar battery

Viktor M. Iskrov

And naturally...

http://www.mannerheim-line.com/

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Early Red Army General losses in Barbarossa:

" By July 1 two top military commanders who had been present at the May 24 meeting in his Kremlin study had shot themselves, Commissar Vashugin and Commander of the Western Front Air Corps Kopets. A number of generals had died on the battle field, including Major General Semen Kondrusev, commander of the Twenty-second Corps, who was killed on June 24 on the southwestern front, and Major General Vladimir Borisov, commander of the Twenty-first Corps, who had been killed on the western front, leaving no grave nor even an exact date of death. The same was true of Major General Fedor Budanov, Major General Alexander Garnov, Major general Vassily Evdokimov, and major General Alexander Zhurba.

Another list was much more worrisome to Stalin, who was still vacillating between purge and lenience. Quite a few Red Army generals were now reported missing in action, and he couldn´t be sure whether they had actually surrendered to the Germans. Among the suspected traitors were his emissary at the Western front,Marshal Kulik, and Pavlov´s deputy, General Boldin, both of whom had disappeared with the Tenth Army at Belostok.

From " Stalin´s folly " By Constantine Pleshakov

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