Re-touching history?

[Dog Soldier]

Altering history is making truth a lie.
HSL

Ever try to read Soviet era history? Hard to tell which self serving memoir has a grain of truth in it.
Glad there are professional historians trying to sort it out.

Dog Soldier

I could say much the same thing about some post war German sources. For example Hubert Meyer's 12th SS divisional history has no mention at all of the murder of Canadian POWs during the Normandy campaign. The original hardcover version of Michael Wittmann...of the Leibstandarte by Patrick Agte read like an SS propaganda leaflet. I don't know if the Stackpole version was cleaned up (better edited) but the original was almost nauseating in it's worship of Wittmann & company.

You are of course correct. Many German officers doctored their memoirs also. In fact, several re-fought the war in their books and won! We know such armchair history assumes the other side does not react differently to the new strategy proposed, thus rending such analysis as fantasy.

One of the largest myths is the inexhaustible man power of the soviet Union as an excuse for poor German leadership and lack of correct intelligence. The Soviets were so short on man power towards the end of the war, they impressed many formations from recently conquered German allies in the Balkans to hold quiet zones of the front. No need to trust these units, even with some corseting or "supervision" by Soviet forces if you have plenty troops of your own. In such a case one would just hold them in POW camps for several months as was done in 1939 to the Polish units facing the Soviets when their country surrendered to Germany.

Dog Soldier