PzLdr History Facts

[apples]

I have been thinking about this question. Will have one for you PzLdr! 

[Paladin2016]

FDR had spent 1940 and a good part of 1941 trying to get Hitler into a war with the United States.

He did much the same with the Japanese and that worked.

[jafo2010]

There was no question about the provocations by FDR toward both nations.  I believe we had airmen in China shooting down the Japanese planes long before 1941.  And yes, we were doing everything we could to help Britain and then Russia in regard to battling Germany.

All I am saying is that had Hitler not declared war, I do not believe FDR would have had the freedom to do so.  And after December 7th, I believe FDR would have been under enormous pressure to focus only on the Pacific, so much so that the effort directed toward Europe may have had to be curtailed or dramatically cut back.  Hitler made everything easy for FDR after December 10th, 1941.

[PzLdr]

There was no question about the provocations by FDR toward both nations.  I believe we had airmen in China shooting down the Japanese planes long before 1941.  And yes, we were doing everything we could to help Britain and then Russia in regard to battling Germany.

All I am saying is that had Hitler not declared war, I do not believe FDR would have had the freedom to do so.  And after December 7th, I believe FDR would have been under enormous pressure to focus only on the Pacific, so much so that the effort directed toward Europe may have had to be curtailed or dramatically cut back.  Hitler made everything easy for FDR after December 10th, 1941.

I absolutely agree withyou on this.

[PzLdr]

It has become a classic case of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance": 'When the legend differs from the facts, print the legend'. Boudica's [also spelled Bouadic, Bouaddica, etc] rebellion has been the subject of novels, movies, documentaries, and a statue in London [where she and her two daughters appear in a ROMAN chariot].

And the version that has come down to us is of a doughy British freedom fighter leading the people of Britain in a revolt against the repressive Roman Empire of Nero Caesar, humbling the Legions and coming within an inch of driving the Romans from the British Isles; a combination of Maid Marian, Robin hood, William Wallace and the Black Prince. But is it true? I think not.

Boudica was queen of one of, if not the, most easternmost of the British tribes, the Iceni. Both she and her husband, Prestaugus, were clients of Rome, having submitted to Claudius at Camoludunum [Colchester] in around 40 AD. The Iceni, as well as the romans benefitted from the relationship. Boudica and her husband were left to govern their people, albeit with Roman supervision, trade developed, taxes were paid, and Prestaugus could rely on roman military support if needed.

Generally, the relationship worked well, although the Iceni revolted when the Roman governor demanded they surrender their weapons during the campaign in the west against Caractacus. That revolt was speedily put down, but Prestaugus was left on the throne. And so it went until his death.

It appears Boudica was always hostile to the Romans, which may explain why, in his will, Prestaugus left half his kingdom to his daughters, and half to Nero. He left his wife nothing. But whatever his wishes, and whatever his desire for peace, he failed. Roman law did not recognize gifting the daughters of client kings with their kingdoms. Loyal widows or queens in their own right, perhaps [see Cartimandua of the Brigantes] but not daughters. And then there was the money owed to Roman money lenders, Seneca [at that time favored at the court of Nero] being a major debt holder of the Iceni. And the Romans decided to call in the loans.

And then it got much worse. Boudica, perhaps smarting from being disinherited, treated the roman officials with contempt. Open and vocal contempt. Enough contempt to get her publicly flogged. Worse still, for reasons unclear, her daughters were raped. And then seizing anything of value, the romans withdrew. The ground had been sown for Boudica's revolt. It started in the Spring of 60 AD.

In 60 AD, there were four legions in Britan. The IXth Hispania was to the north of the Iceni. The IId Augusta was in southwest England. But the XXth and XIVth were in northwest Wales, on campaign. Their objective was the island of Mona [present day Anglesley]. They were there under the military governor Suetonius Paullinus to wipe out the Druids, who the Romans saw as the fomenters and leaders of unrest in the country. And aside from those four legions, fortress troops on the coastal ports, and retired legionary colonists, there was nothing between Boudica and Paullinus worth mentioning.

Boudica apparently sought alliance with other tribes to fight the Romans. Surprisingly, except for her neighbors, the Trinovantes, she had little, or no luck. The major tribes, the Brigante and Catavallauni [Caractacus' people], would have nothing to do with her. The tribes most recently engaged with the Romans in Wales, the Silures and Ordovices remained quiet. A number of warriors from other tribes joined her as her 'revolt' progressed, but there was surprisingly little support for her in Britain.


Still, she struck. And her first target was Camolodunum. Camoludunum had been the tribal capital of the Trinovantes. But the Romans dispossessed them, and made it the colonial capitol, a retirement colony for Roman legionaries, and the site of a huge temple to the former emperor, Claudius, which they made the Trinovantes pay for.

It was during the march on Camolundunum that Boudica's warriors fought their first of two engagements with the Roman Army. they ambushed a vexillation of the IXth legion, and wiped out the infantry, with the Legate, Cerialis, escaping with his cavalry to rejoin the rest of his legion. But the IXth was now out of the fight. And so, it turned out was the IId, whose legate refused Paullinus' orders to concentrate with the XIVth and XXth legions [the Legate fell on his sword when it was all over]. So almost from the beginning, Roman effective strength was cut in half. And that half was about as far away from Boudica as one could get.

The Iceni and Trinovante stormed Camoludunum. There were no walls, no defenses, and no troops, except the veterans. Civilians in the tens of thousands were murdered. Women had their breasts hacked off. People were crucified. Those seeking sanctuary in  Claudius' temple were burned to death. The town itself was razed to the ground. Archaeologists have found the layer of ash that marks its' destruction. And then Boudica moved on Londinium [London]. But Paullinus, with an escort, got there first. He determined that the city was indefensible, suggested the populace flee [many did], and rode back up Watling road to the northwest to join his oncoming legions and select a battlefield.

Londinium suffered the same fate as Camolundunum. Bu this time, to a greater degree, the victims included far greater numbers of Romanized Britons. they apparently had no future in Boudica's plans, whatever they were.

Her nextl success was the tribal capitol of the Aretrebes, traditional  enemies of the Trinovante. As usual, it was fire and slaughter. It was also her last 'victory'.

With some 100,000+ people [she had brought her tribe with her, of which some 80,000+ were warriors, Boudica began a somewhat leisurely pursuit of the Romans. When she found them, offering battle at some 1: 10 odds, it should have given her pause. But it didn't. And Boudica was about to learn two things, one of which she should have known from the immediate past: [1] Never engage a Roman in open battle, and [2] Never let a Roman general pick the battlefield.

Historians are not quite sure where the battle of Watling Road was fought. What they do know [from Tacitus] was that the romans were at the narrow end of a valley that funneled into a defile. Their flanks and rear were covered by forest. In other words, Boudica's warriors could only engage the Romans in a frontal attack. And that's what they did.

But the closer to the Romans the Iceni and Trinovantes got, the more constricted they became. the more constricted they became the fewer warriors could face the now equal number of Romans. The more constricted they became, the less able they were able to use their weapon of choice, the longsword. Not that it mattered all that muc.

At some 20-30 yards [normal range], the romans loosed two volleys of plia [their javelin. That alone broke the first charge. The Romans then advanced, and with their short swords, killed the wounded and anyone in front of them. They then withdrew, and waited to receive the second charge. When it came, they again stopped it with pila, and then, forming a saw tooth formation they advanced. And this time, with auxiliary cavalry breaking from the forest onto the tribal army's flanks, they didn't stop.

Boudica's army wavered. This was a hell of a lot different than butchering civilians. Then they broke, and fled back up the valley. But there was no escape. Boudica had lined up the carts, laden with loot across the top of the valley, so her tribespeople could view what she had anticipated to be her great victory. She had corked the bottle. And payment now came due. Caught between the Romans and the carts, Boudica's troops were scythed down. And with their blood up, the Romans didn't stop there.

According to Tacitus, the Romans killed some 80,000 Celts. No one knows how many were sold into slavery. Roman losses were put at 400 [probably deliberately low]. Boudica and her daughters fled the battlefield and disappeared from history. Boudica was reported as either a suicide or as dying of illness.

Paullinus carried fire and sword into the lands of the Trinovante and Iceni, aided by tribal contingents from several tribes whose people Boudica butchered. The Iceni suffered especially heavily, since for reasons known only to her, Boudica had forbidden sowing or storing food from the year before. The Iceni had nothing to eat. Paullinus was so brutal, that upon the recommendation of an envoy from Nero, he was recalled and replaced.

There would be other, minor revolts [the Brigantes for one], but nothing as big again. By and large peace came to Britain.

So how does the legend match up to the history? Poorly. IMO, Boudica engaged in a large scale, revenge raid, not a revolt to free the Britons. She made no effort to conciliate other tribes who didn't share her blood lust. She appeared to have no plan for what would follow her victory. She appeared to have no strategic plan for her revolt. After defeating the vexillation of the IXth, ALL the Roman military forces were on the other side of the country. She might have contemplated besieging the entry points for reinforcements from Gaul. She might have marched on the IId Legion, isolated in the southwest, and then tried to raise the Silures and Ordovices. She did none of those. Instead she chose to sack defenseless towns, and give a highly competent Roman general the time he needed to rally the troops he had, and select a battlefield that would negate her preponderance of troops, and allow him to slaughter them. Having lived through the roman invasion, the Roman victories at the Medway and the Thames, the death of Togodubnus, and the defeats of Caractacus, she should not have underestimated the Roman Army as she did. But she did, and the Iceni paid the price. But it is alovely legend.

[PzLdr]

It was the final attempt, in a series stretching back to the 1930s, to either arrest or, in this case, kill Adolf Hitler, the Fuehrer of Nazi Germany. It was a failure.

It all began with an unrelated group of diverse resistance cells, ranging from a bunch of intellectuals [the Kriesau Circle], to elements, and fairly high up elements, of the German Army. The one common element to these groups was their fear that Adolf Hitler's policies would lead them into a war Germany could not win, and into a German society unrecognizable to any civilized  person.

The events that led to the first timid steps of resistance were two. the first was the 1937 meeting with his senior commanders, memorialized in the Hossbach Memorandum, when Hitler told them he would go to war before 1942, and the earlier the better, and the second was the imminent invasion of Czechoslavakia  in 1938.

General Ludwig Beck, the Chief of the German General Staff, was opposed to the Czech adventure, and to the idea of a war he believed Germany was unprepared for, and rallied a group of officers into a plot to arrest or kill Hitler. the Munich pact put paid to that plot, General Beck [he was retired]and the resistance of the German Officer Corps.

And so it stayed, until BARBAROSSA. Now the military's resistance crystallized around two bases, the conviction Germany would not, and could not win the war, and for a group of officers led by their conscience, by the SS massacres in the East. The new driving force in the resistance was now not the senior officers in the German Army, but the colonels. And primus inter pares among them was the Chief of Staff of Army Group Center, Col. [later Maj. Gen.] Henning von Tresckow.

By early 1944, Tresckow had engineered at least one attempt on Hitler's life [a bomb smuggled onto Hitler's plane that failed to detonate], planned two others [a suicide bomber (hand grenade), believe it or not, thwarted by a Hitler change of plans], and an assassination of Hitler by handgun at lunch with Army Group Center's officers [vetoed by Field Marshal von Kluge].

But Tresckow had one significant success. He had recruited Col. Count Claus von Stauffenburg, the Deputy commander of the Reserve Army into the plot. And it was Stauffenburg who seized on a plan to secure Berlin from attack, WALKURIE, as the way to go about the plot.

The plotters faced problems above WALKURIE's implementation. First, they could get neither recognition, nor much help [they did furnish the bomb] from the British. Having been burned in 1939 when the RSHA kidnapped the two top British agents in Western Europe from Holland via a bogus resistance movement, the British were leery of ANY group labeling itself as the resistance in Germany, especially in the military. Second, they lacked a common goal. Some of those aware of,or peripherally involved [Rommel], did not want Hitler dead. They wanted him tried in a court. Second, there was inner friction with the Kriesau Circle, and other groups over what type of government should be formed to succeed the Nazis, and who would be in it. And third was that the resisters were unsure of the reaction of the German military, especially in the East when they killed Hitler. Still, they went forward.

Stauffenburg brought the bomb to Hitler's Rastenburg HQ on July 20th [at least one other potential attack was aborted because Himmler was not present. His presence was now waived.] where he was due to make a report on the status of the Reserve Army as part of a daily briefing. Because of the heat, the meeting was not held in the concrete briefing bunker, but a wooden building., which dissipated much of the blast. Having planted the bomb, and set the detonator, Stauffenburg left the building. When the bomb went off, he assumed Hitler was dead, and hotfooted it to Berlin to implement the rest of the plan. From there, things went rapidly south.

Whjile arresting various Nazi officials, Maj. Remer, the commander of the GROSSDEUTSCHLAND battalion charged with carrying out WALKURIE went to arrest the Propaganda minister, Goebbels. the latter put Remer on the phone [the plotters forgot to cut the lines] with a very alive Hitler. the result was the collapse of the plot in Berlin. By midnight, Beck was an attempted suicide, and Stauffenburg and his cohorts had been executed on the orders of the Reserve Army commander, General Fromm [hoping to obliterate his own involvement. to no avail. He was shot in early 1945]. But it didn't end there.

The military governor of Paris, von Stulpnagel had arrested all the SS in Paris. His suicide attempt failed. Kluge, in France was recalled. His suicide succeeded. Rommel was forced to commit suicide. Using the doctrine of Sippenhaft, the SS and Gestapo arrested some 5,000 people. Army officers were tried by a Court of Honor, helmed by Rundstedt and Guderian, andif warranted thrown out of the German Army, so they could be tried by Freisler's "People's Court". At least one Field Marshal [von Witzleben], and one Col. Gen. [Hoeppner] were convicted along with other officers and civilians, and executed [many by hanging with piano wire from meat hooks]. People were still being killed while the war was winding down. But 20 JULI [as the Germans would put it] was the last attempt on Hitler's life during the time of the Third Reich. And it, and it's aftermath was an epic, bloody failure.

[apples]

Thank you .....another very good history lesson!!!

[PzLdr]

It has been called history's most perfect battle. It originated the double envelopment, and then some. And when it was over, the largest army Rome had ever fielded was destroyed in an afternoon.

It had begun in Spain, at a city called Sagentum. A client city of Rome, it lay in territory held, by treaty, by Carthage. And the commander of the Carthaginian army in Iberia, Hannibal Barca, decided to use it as the pretext he needed to bring about a war with Rome. More accurately, he sought to re-start hostilities that had smoldered since the First Punic war that had seen Carthage defeated, and humiliated by Rome. He succeeded.

Hannibal's next move was to move an army of some 90,000 men, and some 37 elephants overland, through Gaul, to Italy. His plan to cross the lower Rhone was thwarted by the arrival of a consular Army under one of the Scipios [a family he would meet again]; and Hannibal then made his epic march through the Alps, erupting into the Po valley in 218 BC. By then, Hannibal had lost at least 1/3 of his men, and over 30 of his elephants. Still, he caught the romans by surprise, and after recruiting from the Celts of northern Italy, who hated and feared the Romans, he began his march south, into Roman territory.

By 216 BC, Hannibal had run up a string of victories, at Tinictus, the Trebia, and Lake Trasimine. In the process, he dismembered increasingly more roman formations. He seemed to have adopted the strategy of trying to split Rome's allies [the Socii] from the Romans themselves by releasing the troops from Allied states, but killing, or enslaving Roman prisoners, possibly in the hopes of forcing Rome to treat for peace. If that was the plan, it had, as of 216, failed. On top of that, the Romans had adopted the strategy of Fabius Cuncator ['The Delayer'] of avoiding a general engagement with Hannibal, and concentrating on his forage units and scouting detachments.

But in 216, Hannibal was in Apulia, at the supply center of Cannae, Fabius' six months command as dictator was over, and two new Consuls, Paullius and Varro were in command of the Army [armies were commanded by consuls. They would alternate command by the day]. And what an army it was. Composed of veterans and new levies, it comprised some 16 legions, with Allied infantry and cavalry, as well as Roman infantry and cavalry. Estimates of its size vary from somewhere over 60,000 to somewhere north of 80,000. It was the largest army rome had ever fielded.

To face them, Hannibal had an army of somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 men. It was composed of Iberians, Libyans, Celts, Carthaginians, Numidians and others, mostly mercenaries. Hannibal had two principal advantages: all his troops were veterans, and he had superiority in cavalry, both in numbers and quality.

Of the two Roman commanders, Paullius was the more cautious, Varro the more aggressive. So Hannibal offered battle on August 1st, fairly sure that Paullius, in command that day, would decline. He did. And Hannibal, fairly sure that Varro would attack the next day, prepared his masterpiece.

The Carthaginian army formed to the west of the Aufidus River. The Libyan infantry, in phalanx, was on both wings, with the center held by Celtic and Iberian infantry, in a formation that bowed out toward the Roman center. The Iberians and Celts were considered the weakest of Hannibal's infantry, and their location in the center was noted by Varro. He formed his legions in a grouping twice as deep as normal, and his intent was to break Hannibal's center, split his army into two wings, and destroy them piecemeal.

But as Varro's infantry advanced in the center, the Carthaginian heavy horse attacked the Roman cavalry on Varro's right and drove it from the field. Then, instead of pursuing the Roman horse, the Carthaginians rode across the back the legions and joined the Numidians in attacking the Allied cavalry and destroying them, or driving them off.

While this was going on Varro thought he was driving Hannibal's center back, and breaking through, when it actuality he was facing a staged withdrawal, led by Hannibal himself, and his brother, Mago. What Varro was doing, was driving deeper and deeper into a narrower and narrower pocket with his troops squeezed tighter and tighter together. And the more constricted their units, the less ability the Romabns had to wield their weapons.

Then two things happened. The Libyans, ignored on the flanks, wheeled inward. At the same time the combined Carthaginian cavalry descended on the rear of the Roman Army. The Romans were now surrounded, largely incapable of wielding their weapons, and forced into a smaller and smaller area. The killing went on until dark.

Estimates of Roman losses run from some 56,000 to 70,000 men. To put that in context, the Romans lost in one day more troops than were lost by both sides in three days at Gettysburg, or the United States lost in the entire Viet Nam war.

Some 10,000 or less Romans escaped. They were formed into two legions and banished to Sicily, Paullius died, but Varro survived - in disgrace. Several hundred Romans were captured.

After the battle [he lost some 8,000 men] Hannibal stayed in the vicinity, causing Maharbal, one of his cavalry commanders to remark that Hannibal knew how to win a victory, but not how to use it. In Rome, 30 days of public mourning were declared, but the word 'peace' was banned, and public crying was forbidden. The Romans actually offered human sacrifices to the Gods to supplicate them. When an embassy from Hannibal approached the city, they were told to leave without any discussion of terms. The romans also refused to let the families of Romans captured on the battlefield ransom their relatives. 

Strategically, in the short term, Rome lost some of its southern allies, principally Capua, and Tarantum [both would be reconquered, with massive bloodshed either before, or shortly after Hannibal  left Italy. Hieronomus of Syracuse also allied with Hannibal, but was assassinated before he could do any damage. All Philip V of Macedon accomplished by allying with Carthage was to draw Rome's ire, and attention. And after they finished with Carthage, he paid the price at Cynocephaelus.In the long term, their was no strategic difference. Hannibal had neither the men, nor siege machinery to besiege Rome. Rome continued to build new armies. Hannibal's forces were attritted by battle, disease and desertion. Reinforcements from Carthage either never came, or were beaten off.

Hannibal, for all his tactical brilliance failed to understand his enemy at all. Rome's central Italian allies stood firm, and as a result, the Romans had almost unlimited manpower at their disposal. Within a year of Cannae, Roman armies in the northern Po were annihilating a relief force from Spain led by Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal [they threw his head into Hannibal's camp]. Other Roman armies pinned Hannibal into a smaller and smaller area of southern Italy, a large scale Cannae, if you will. Still other roman armies, including the Sicily legions conquered Carthaginian Spain, and then invaded Carthage itself. And Hannibal never truly grasped the implacability of Rome itself, until perhaps, he looked into the eyes of that last of the Scipios, Scipio Africanus, shortly before he crushed Hannibal at Zama - in North Africa - down the road from Carthage.

[PzLdr]

It was the MAJOR success of the German campaign of 1941. It resulted in the capture or killing of some 660,000 Soviet troops, and the destruction of the Soviet Southwest Front. And yet it has been argued that this success was a major strategic failure that led to the end of BARBAROSSA's successes  on the Eastern Front in 1941, and the eventual defeat of the Germans in the East.

When the Germans attacked on 22 JUN 1941, 3.5 million troops, German, Finn and Rumanian; they were concentrated in three Army Groups [except the Finns, who were operating independently], North, Center and South. Of the three, South faced the most formidable task. First the terrain highly favored the defense. Three rivers ran, generally and sequentially, across most of the Army Group's front. The Army Group's left flank was barred by the Pripyat Marsh, a huge swamp that separated the Army Group from Army Group Center, and would until it was passed. So Army Group South had to attack from two different directions.

Then there were the Soviets. The Soviets' plans were based on the belief that any major German thrust would be directed at Ukraine. So the bulk of their forces were located there, as was the majority of their new KV-1 heavy and T-34 medium tanks. the Soviets were also commanded by the very able General Kirponos.

And while the Germans were, in fact going to attack Ukraine, it was not with the sizable force the Soviets expected. That lay to the north of the Pripyat Marsh, with Army Group Center. And their objective was Moscow, and the objective of the entire campaign, as the General Staff saw it. Which would have been a major surprise to Adolf Hitler.

Hitler saw the war in the East as having three inter-related objectives: seizing Lebensraum [living space - colonies], acquiring the natural resources [oil, grain, coal, metals] from the Ukraine and Caucasus, as well as the industrial capacity of the Leningrad area and the Donbass, and depriving Britain of its last potential ally in Europe while gainsaying any British naval blockade.

But Hitler's plans were not Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch's [C. in C., German Army], nor Col. Gen. Fritz Halder's [Chief of the German General Staff]. They were fixated on Moscow. And by massaging, orders, and ignoring the Fuehrer's wishes, the Opoeration BARBAROSSA that took place much more closely conformed to their wishes than his.

So while Army Group South [Gerd von Rundstedt] had the 6th Army [Germany's largest], as well as the 17th and 11th Armies [plus two Rumanian armies], it only had one Panzer Group, the 1st [von Kleist]. And after breaking past the initial obstacles, Rundstedt faced a front that blocked both flanks from exploitation. to the south was the Black Sea, and later the Sea of Azov. To the north, first the Pripyat Marsh, and then the Dnieper River, which eventually curved in front of the Army Group at Dnieperprotovsk.  It was a daunting task, especially when Kirponos held to Rundstedt's northern flank, harrying him, while more Soviet troops moved to Kiev, and then along the Dnieper, with other units fighting the Germns from the front, and the Rumanians in the south. In a word, it was VERY slow going, and Rundstedt had not been able to force the river.

The going for Army Group Center [Field Marshal Fedor von Bock] was much easier. Aside from 4th Army [von Kluge], and 9th Army [Strauss], Bock had TWO panzer groups, 2d [Guderian], and 3rd [Hoth]. He was in Minsk in less than a week, and by early August, he was at Smolensk, less than 200 miles from Moscow. But then, the crisis erupted.

If you looked at a situation map at that time, the German front of AG Center and AG South, looked like the east end of Long Island, i.e an open crocodile's mouth, with a large gaping area between the jaws. Rundstedt was still across the river from Kiev, and Kleist was just west of Dnieperprotovsk. The Dnieper had no major German bridgeheads. To say Rundstedt was behind schedule would be an understatement. Not that Bock cared. With negligible Soviet forces in front of him, he was preparing for the final offensive against Moscow. But then Rundstedt asked for help. He wanted troops from AG Center, to strike out 90 degrees south of their axis of advance, and come down behid the Soviets, link up with Kleist, and encircle the Russians. Bock was not disposed to do that. Neither were Brauchitsch, Halder, Guderian or Hoth. Enter Adolf Hitler, referee.

Hitler flew into Smolensk to arbitrate among his commanders. To say he was surprised at the disregard for his wishes Brauchitsch and Halder had displayed in their planning would put it mildly. But the usual suspects, aside from those two, lined up as one would have expected. Rundstedt and his commanders [Reichenau, Von Salmuth, Schoberth and Kleist] forcefully asked for help. Bock, Guderian and Hoth argued for Moscow. The wild cards turned out to be  Bock's infantry army commanders, Kluge and Strauss.

Bock's right flank was some 300 miles long, and separated by most of Ukraine from Rundstedt. The only troops in that vast area were Russian. The Germans had started the offensive very light on reserves. Now their frontline infantry was being dissipated guarding the flank from Soviet attack. Kluge and Strauss backed Rundstedt. Hitler ordered Guderian, and supporting troops south. By the time the smoke cleared [26 SEP], the Soviets facing Rundstedt had been killed [including Kirponos], captured, or fled [Budenny Timoshenko, Khruschev], all made easier by Stalin's refusal to listen to the pleas of his generals and give up Kiev, and abandon Ukraine. Within several weeks, AG Center and South had linked up, the line had been shortened, reserves had been constituted, and the Grmans held Kursk and Kharkov, Rundstedt was driving on Rostov on the Don, and Guderian had been re-deployed for TYPHUN, the drive by AG CENTER on Moscow. But Rundstedt was driven out of Rostov in late November [the first time the German Army retreated in WW II], the attack on Moscow was stopped, and the Germans were driven back almost to Smolensk [6 DEC], and BARBAROSSA was a failure.

And yet many historians blame the German failure on the Kiev encirclement. The argument goes that the Germans could have taken Moscow in September, but for the sideshow to the south, and that the failure to seize Moscow then was the reason the campaign failed.

I disagree. Under that rationale, the single thin thrust [remind anyone of MARKET-GARDEN?] would have won the war. Why? the Soviets showed no reluctance to move their capital to Kubiyshev during TYPHUN. Moscow as a rail center? AG North had already suspended operations against Leningrad, and the Russians to the east of Rundstedt did not require the Moscow rail terminus. And then there was the situation facing the Germans in August. The two main army groups were separated by several hundred miles of enemy territory, holding large numbers of Soviet troops and tanks. Both the right flank of AG Center and the left flank of AG South were several hundred miles long, and thinly held by troops needed, and earmarked for offensive operations elsewhere. The German reserves for the entire Eastern Front were thin, to non-existent. Casualties were high, and mounting. To ignore that situation was stupidity of the highest order. But senior German military eyes were fixed, to the exclusion of common sense reality, to all else.

After the war the generals, ignoring Kluge and Strauss, tried to shift the blame onto Hitler and Rundstedt alone. They largely succeeded.
But, IMO, the Kiev Encirclement was neither a failure, nor the fault of two men. The situation that required the operation was the fault of many. But as the saying goes, "Victory has a hundred fathers. Defeat is an orphan".

[apples]

Just love reading these! 

[apples]

Thank you once again!

[Paladin2016]

Haha!

http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/hannibal/videos/the-death-of-hannibal

Delenda est Carthago

I'm a Romanophile.

[PzLdr]

Haha!

http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/hannibal/videos/the-death-of-hannibal

Delenda est Carthago

Hamilcar Barca didn't commit suicide as the video says. He was killed on campaign in Spain.

[PzLdr]

By summer, 1945, the U.S. military was deep in planning the invasion of Japan. It was a daunting task. By now, just about everything in Japan worth being bombed had been bombed. the Imperial Japanese Navy was virtually non-existent. the Empire had been shorn of almost all her overseas possessions, and except for armies in china, the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, and troops in Korea, the only troops of the imperial Army that existed outside Japan were stationed in a series of Pacific islands, bypassed and useless.And yet, the Japanese refused to surrender, 'unconditionally', or otherwise.

The Kamikaze [named for the typhoons that had destroyed two Mongol invasion fleets, but not so called by the Japanese themselves], had expanded to man crewed torpedoes, rocket propelled aircraft, and small surface vessels. Civilians, including women and children,  were being taught to fight with everything available, including bamboo spears. Projected casualties were projected to be appalling. so the question became, short of invasion, what to do? And in a span of three days, August 6th to August 9th, the answer was found.

On August 6th, at around 0830, the B-29 bomber 'Enola Gay', dropped the first uranium atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a secondary target. Hiroshima was the HQ for the southern defense zone of Japan, which included the initial landing sites on Kyushu, the Island to the south of Honshu. Hiroshima was also the chief disembarkation port for troops being re-deployed from China, and the chief embarkation point for the deployment of troops south to Kyushu. So it was a worthwhile target in its own right. The devastation was beyond expectation, and the U.S waited in vain for the Japanese government's acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, and unconditional surrender. That acceptance was not forthcoming. The militarists in the Cabinet, both Army and Navy wanted to fight on. then two things changed their minds. The first, of course, was history's first plutonium bomb detonation over Nagasaki, courteousy of the B-29 'Bock's Car' on August 9th. The second was the effective date [from the day before, and as agreed at Potsdam] of the Soviet Union's declaration of war on Japan, and the Red Army's invasion of Manchuria by Soviet troops under Marshal Vasilevsky. Attacking from three directions with three fronts [Transbaikal-Malinovsky; 1st Eastern-Maretskov; and 2d Eastern-Pukavev], the Red Army brought 11 infantry armies, 1 tank army, 2 mechanized brigades, 3 air armies, and other formations against the once vaunted Kwantung Army. But the latter was well past its heyday, and the Soviet steamroller hardly broke stride in it's offensive.

The Soviet attack deeply shocked the Japanese, who had been trying to enlist the U.S.S.R as a go-between with the U.S. Coupled with the two bombs, and the rapid Soviet advance [They not only took Manchuria, but Korea up to the 38th parallel, and part of the Sakhalin island chain], the next meeting of the Japanese cabinet was actually TIED, 3 to 3 over the issue of peace. And for the first time since the Meiji restoration that tie was broken by the emperor, Hirohito himself, who voted for peace, provided he was left on the throne.

Once Hirohito agreed to be overseen by the Allied governor general, MacArthur, the deal was struck. On August 15th, for the first time in his rule, the Japanese people heard their emperor's voice talking about a 'terrible bomb' and 'bearing the unbearable'. Aside from the formal surrender on September 2d, on the U.S.S Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan's was over.

But getting to that point created problems for the future. The Soviets opened Manchuria [and its weapon stockpiles] to the Chinese Communists of Mao Tze Dung. Within 4 years, China would be lost. And the 38th parallel in Korea would remain peaceful only one year past that, when on June 25th, 1950, the North Korean Army moved south in a bid to conquer the southern half of the peninsula.

And the 'unconditional' Japanese surrender? Not so fast. Hirohito kept his throne [and avoided prosecution as a war criminal], as a condition to Japan's surrender. One wonders how many lives might have been saved, and Red influence prevented, if the U.S had reached terms with Japan before the bombing of August 6th. But that's sheer speculation, and we'll never know.

[PzLdr]

During the battles around the Falaise Gap, the 101st SS SCHWERE [Heavy] Panzer Battalion was attached to the 12th SS HITLERJUGEND Panzer Division, commanded by Kurt Meyer, formerly of the 1st SS Panzer Division LEIBSTANDARTE SS ADOLF HITLER. With the 101st Pz. Bn. came SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Michael Wittmann.

Wittmann had joined the Waffen SS in 136, after serving in the German Army. Assigned to the LEIBSTANDARTE, he served in Poland,  France and the Balkans in the reconnaissance battalion. Then with BARBAROSSA, Wittmann served with a STURMGESCUTZ III assault gun, and then with a Panzer III company. In 1942, Wittmann attended SS Officer Candidate School at Bad Tolz, and after being commissioned an SS Untersturmfuehrer [2d Lt.], he was trained on the TIGER I tank.

Wittmann 'made his bones' in the battle of Kursk, in July, 1943. He destroyed some 30 tanks in a week of combat, plus 'soft skinned vehicles', AT guns, self propelled guns and artillery.

By the time he reached Normandy in 1944, Wittman had added prodigiously to his score of 'kills', and been promoted to SS Obersturmfuehrer [1st Lt.]. Then came Villers-Bocage, and promotion to SS Hauptsturmfuehrer [SS Captain]. Less than 2 months later, Wittmann was leading a group of TIGER and Mark IV Panzers toward some high ground Meyer wanted taken and held. Unknown to Wittmann, the high ground had been seized by Canadian and British Armor units, who were paused, waiting for an air attack to signal their next advance.

Aware of some Free Polish armor to his front, Wittmann led his tanks over open ground toward the Poles[Wittmann had earlier declined a transfer to the rear to act as an instructor at the panzer schools]. An attack from his rear flank caused a fire in his TIGER [007]. The tank exploded, blowing the turret off. Michael Wittmann's war was over.

Wittmann was credited with anywhere from 135 to 142 enemy tanks, 132 artillery pieces, and several hundred trucks, jeeps, etc. He was the holder of the Knights Cross with Swords and Oakleaves, the Iron Cross,First Class, the Iron Cross, Second Class, the Panzer Assault Badge and the Wounds Badge. He is buried in a German Military Cemetery in France.