Opinion Piece - Myths and Realities of the Great Patriotic War

[schnurbart]

I have to question just how well Russia would have fared if the US and UK hadn't kept the Russian population fed and their armies equipped.

Or if Hitler had a sudden attack of sanity and put a little more faith in Vlassov and all the other Russians who flocked to theGerman banner with the thought that they were helping to liberate their country. Hitler may have been fighting a crusade against bolshavism but if he'd sold it as a war of liberation ... well who knows.

Just to illustrate the point I've included a photo, it was taken in 1943 by a chap called Herbert Furbringer, an infantryman with the 9th SS, ended up ffighting in Russia, Normandy, Arnham, Hungary ... well you name it he was there ...

... anyway the picture. It's one of a series Mr Furbringer took during the prelude to relief attempt at Tarnopol (spelling?). It's of a Russian Orthodox Priest, he made a special trip to come and bless the German (SS!!!) troops on their way to battle ... and this in 1943.

certainly western allied help contributed to the overal pace of the last phase of the war with lots of tires and phone cable ...but any lend lease of base materials would have been of minimal effect espeacially since the russian system was still trying to lose thier flat footed penalty early on due to base political correctness of the idea of the soviet offensive.
Pavlov the great soviet panzer general sold to stalin a deployment of the frontier completely void of reality. Then suddenly france is gone and england pressed. By that time in early 41 when stalin caved and allowed a defensive plan but it was to late to just switch. The soviets using the south as the bulwork wrote off the forces in the bialostock salient hoping they would fight it out or try and escape their fate.
The dnepr river was chosen as the place where german tactics must breakdown beacause of poor combined arms cooperation along the flanks of the main blow..this strategy almost faild becasue of soviet communication problems and the germans were not expected to create a blow in all strategic directions so quickly.
Becasue of german command problems the dnepr defense turned out to work better then it might have and the strategic imbalance along the southern flank of AGC forced the higher comands to clear the flank problem before a moskow offensive could resume. Guderian even was in agreement.
That logical operation turned into a huge soviet blunder of gigantic proportion when stalin insisted on holding kiev firing zhukov as chief of staff becasue he would not back down.
But alas after the ukraine and the southwest front disapear. German staffs were rather hastey thinking moskow could fall by winter after the bryansk operation.
There is a lot about what hitler might have done against his very nature. Like consider political ramification of his race policy and his even worse tendancy to put off important decisions..
In my opinion Germany did not show up to the fight to win while russia meant serious business..Americas current war effort suffers from similar problems while i dont think her enemies intend on quitting in 18 months.
cheers*