Just a few more to add...


The Road to Stalingrad, and the Road to Berlin.
John Erickson

Before Stalingrad
Glantz

Stalingrad
Michael K. Jones

Red Partisan: Memoirs of a Soviet Resistance Fighter on the Eastern Front
Nikolai I. Obryn'ba

__________________
The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

I would recommend books by Paul Carrell:

Hitler Moves East.

Scorched Earth.

Also,

The Center for Military History has many books about the fighting on the East Front.

The Command & General Staff College has a Pamphlet called, "German Small Unit Actions on the Eastern Front". You have to search there site, but there are five (5) files that complete the entire book. GREAT info in this book.

how about one for Stalingrad?

My bad some where already given. Shoulda read the other page. Thanks for ya'lls help

Germanys treatment of Russian POW's was a huge propoganda boost to the slavs.

Think about it....On a march full of your comrades(exscuse the pun) a march heading west to what you think to be a POW camp.

you start to remmember the propoganda stories about captured soldiers not geting a scrap to eat,and no water at all to drink except snow.

But after awhile the snow hurts you more then helps,so you start thinking about drinking your own urine to warm you up.

Then you start to get hungry as you walk by a patch of grass and start to eat on your hands and knees like an animal,and your bestfriend shoves you away and starts to eat.

You get to the camp (which is little more then a barbed wire parimiter) as nightfall sets in and at night you hear men eating the flesh of a man who lived not more then five seconds ago.


I dont know about ya'll,but that would convince me more then anything in the world to fight and never surender.

1.its impossible to defend a 1000 mile front no matter how good your army is
2.simple attrition,the russians could replace losses far more easily than the germans
3.partisan activity in the german rear,the russians effectivly had an army behind german lines
4.russian equipment was more suited to winter conditions
5.the russians adopted defence in depth which was the right way to deal with blitzkrieg,if the germans made a breakthrough they were unable to exploit it.

__________________

Thats very true,in your opinion what do you think the wermacht could have/should have done in fighting the partisans?

I will say that the treatment of the civilian population/reprisals was doing nothing but pouring gas on the fire.

The germans should have kept their eye on the ball and stuck to their origional objectives instead changing at a whim.

If i was in charge of the rear areas the civilians would have been fed and housed but they would have been worked hard improving the infastructure and also would have had them doing lots of defensive works,the germans should of at least seen the possibility of a revearsal after they were defeated at moskow.

__________________

Bob;
The Wehrmacht should have shot Hitler and all the NAZI officials, then made an Anti Stalinist pact with any Soviet citizens who would rally with the aim of doing the same to Stalin and his clique.
JeffinMNUSA

__________________

Both North and South did it for a while in the ACW. The Soviet Union managed it in WWII. Several powers managed it in WWI.
Could they? They certainly did but it's not clear to me they did so "easily". Indeed they were facing a pretty severe manpower problem by the end of the war.
These to me to be problems to a large extent the Germans made for themselves.
The Germans were exploiting their breakthroughs right up to the end. The Soviets defeated the German offensives and moved over to the offensive themselves. They also on the strategic front out generaled the Germans.

#1 reason: A pathetic inability to perform civil engineering operations. The Wehrmacht was singularly unprepared to operate in a theater that did not possess a useful road network, rail system, etc. The Wehrmacht's construction engineering capability was limited almost entirely to non-mechanized construction using nothing but hand tools. Their construction engineers had great difficulty in providing semi-permanent bridging, repairing or replacing railroads, improving or maintaining roads, building shelters, and virtually any other construction function. This leads to

#2 A lack of appreciation for logistics. The Wehrmacht was very badly orgainzed and staffed in the field of supply. This leads to massive inefficenices and waste. The fact that duplicate lines of supply for the Luftwaffe and SS exist only make the whole system even worse.

These two factors more than anything else, including the Red Army, lead to Germany's initial defeat in Russia. The Wehrmacht simply could not press their advantage when their frontline units had no fuel, no ammunition, food, or other supplies with which to operate.

While making good point as usual T.A., to simply claim that these were the two main reasons the Germans lost in Russia would be to denigrate the "Ivan's" effort and ability to wage war and ultimately defeat the German soldier.

After the war numerous German accounts from ordinary soldiers, officers and even generals such Heinrici began to surface. All mentioned countless of reasons why they lost.... All said that the biggest reason was the underestimation of an enemy which they have never faced before. An enemy that would fight with out food, clothing or even ammunition. An enemy that would fight even when all seemed lost and would rather die then surrender. The biggest problem that the Germans encountered when entering Russia was the Russian infantry man.

Logistics and weather were more of inconveniences. After all, one can not repair a bridge, road or build an adequate defense when constantly under fire.

__________________
The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

I love this

Regards
Kruska

__________________

The world is grey - not black and white

The two reasons why the Germans did not bother feeding the people in Russia which they had conquered was because....

1. They themselves did not have enough food for themselves (even with the capture of Ukraine which they stripped of virtually all livestock,wheat and winter clothing).

2. Whats the reason for wasting your own limited supply of food and/or housing for the very same people who you are later going to enslave or exterminate?

So unless you are the owner of a farm the size of the mid west and have the ability to over ride Hitler's cleansing policy's in the East, I do not see how you would accomplish this.

Everything else you mentioned above, the Germans did.

__________________
The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

I support you 100%,but i also think that it would have been hard to say the least to feed the civil populations.

The Wehrmacht should have tried to bivowack there troops in tents that are made strong to withstand the winter conditions,but they must also be very cheap and fast to produce.

I also agree that the whole "we will make them slaves in the future" does make it hard to think the population would treat the Germans as "communist liberators".

I didnt know about the manpower shortage,thanks for the info.
About the germans creating their own problems i agree.

I disagree about the germans exploiting their breakthroughs,when the germans broke through the russians would fall back to the next prepared defensive line so the germans would end up having to do it all again,and again.

gardiner:#2.i guess they could have done with a guy like eisenhower.

__________________

You know what?i have no idea how the german rear areas worked in russia.I know the german solders retreated to assemble areas later on where they could be assembled into fire brigades but thats about it.

As for feeding the civilians i would encourage joy through work and only feed the hard workers,nice guy

__________________

good reply kai..

__________________
ray w.

Hello macker33,

You are actually forwarding/mirroring the Nazi KZ slogan : Freude durch Arbeit!! onto yourself.

What's wrong with you? how old are you ? do you actually mean what you write???

Kruska

__________________

The world is grey - not black and white

Kruska,i wasnt being serious,i dont know what i'd have done.

__________________

Sloniskp;
Possibly 4:1 if you factor in the guerrilla war. No the Axis lost because the Soviet won-and I do recall a German account stating something about the fighting spirit of the Russian soldier.

Attached Images

Frontovikassaulting.jpg (150.1 KB, 3 views)

__________________

i think stalingrad was more than it should have been. if hitler had let von paulus retreat then they could have regrouped and regained 300,000 men for future efforts.

kursk was nothing more then the germans flaunting their tigers around and getting pummeled by superior russian defenses.

hitler was a politician, not a general. he should have never went to russia in the first place. it cost the wehrmacht the war.
.

[QUOTE=panzerdude182;402916]i think stalingrad was more than it should have been. if hitler had let von paulus retreat then they could have regrouped and regained 300,000 men for future efforts. [quote]

And, how exactly does Paulus retreat? His army is basically immobile at the point where it becomes apparent the Soviets might surround it. All of what motor transport he has (whichi is totally insufficent) is engaged in trying to move supplies forward. He is already relying on the Luftwaffe for air lifts of critical supplies even before the Soviets counter attack. Basically, his army would have to abandon their equipment and walk out of the encirclement.

russian mass and quick mobilisation from the first day =the only reason for the germans not beying able to win the war in 1941,after 1941 it was a war of attrition they could never win.

I think Russians mobilized before the war started. Russian army already opened fronts and country was geared up for war. Politiclly, culturally and economically Russians were better prepared for war than Germans.