Stalingrad by Antony Beevor is a book every man should read. The brutal, five-month struggle between the German Wehrmacht and the Red Army broke new records in human brutality. The Soviet counter-offensive towards the battle’s end, trapping and annihilating the Sixth Army, became the high water mark of the German Reich. It is perhaps the closest humanity has ever come to answering the question – what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?
10. Striving for intoxication
The Russian strategy in a nutshell
In an attempt to forget the living hell they were fighting in, soldiers on both sides went to enormous lengths to dull their senses. After passing it through a gas mask filter, many drank antifreeze, or industrial or surgical alcohol. Many were poisoned, blinded, or even died as a result.
Tobacco, too, was heavily valued, with most soldiers smoking constantly in battle. Finding paper with which to roll up cigarettes sometimes proved difficult. Soldiers risked execution for picking up enemy propaganda leaflets for such a purpose.
9. Being in the 13th Guards Rifle Division
These poor fuckers
You may have heard of these guys if you’ve ever seen the film “Enemy at the Gates” or played the Russian campaign in Call of Duty. Both start with a scene where a boatload of soldiers crosses the Volga River into the burning inferno of Stalingrad.
Of the 10,000 men who began crossing the Volga on September 14th 1942, over half were dead within a few days and only about 300 survived the “Stalingrad academy of street fighting.” This was hardly atypical. The average life expectancy of Russian soldiers fighting in the city often dropped below 24 hours.
One craft was recorded with 436 bullet holes after a single crossing. Many went across with no training or ammunition, or had to wait for the man next to them to die so they could pick up his rifle.
8. Women warriors
Your average woman today has to do very little to be declared a “hero” in the media. A key feature of Soviet Russia however was that everyone was equally oppressed, meaning woman could be sent in to do the dirtiest of work just as men. Many served as pilots, anti-aircraft gunners, snipers and surgeons.
Take Zinaida Gavrielova, an eighteen-year-old medical student. As the head of the Russian 62nd Army’s hundred-strong “sanitary company” her job consisted of crawling forward under fire to rescue wounded soldiers and dragging them back to the Volga bank.
Or Gulya Koroleva, a twenty-year-old who left her baby son home in Moscow to volunteer as a nurse. During the battle she was credited with having “brought over a hundred wounded soldiers back from the front line and killed fifteen fascists herself.” She was awarded the Order of the Red Banner…posthumously.
In the air, several all-women aviation regiments were formed, led by the famous Marina Raskova. Flying outdated biplanes whose top speed was below the stalling speed of Luftwaffe fighters, the Germans soon nicknamed them the “night witches.” They flew more than 24,000 sorties during the war at a time when Western women had barely left the kitchen.
7. The NKVD
How do you convince a million Russian peasants to fight and die in a living hell like Stalingrad?
The military wing of the communist party, the NKVD, was tasked with “maintaining discipline” at Stalingrad. They carried out 13,500 executions during the battle. Some heinous crimes meriting death included –
- Retreating without orders
- Self-inflicted wounds
- Corruption
- Desertion
- Attempting to surrender
- Failing to shoot at any comrades trying to desert or surrender
- Being in command of any troops which had deserted or surrendered
With friends like these…
The list of possible infringements, described as “extraordinary events,” was endless. One lieutenant captured shortly before the battle in August managed to escape his German captors. Upon reporting for duty again he was arrested, treated as a deserter and sent to a penal company.
Even a soldier who discharged himself from a field hospital to return to his unit could be condemned as a deserter. One man was convicted of a self-inflicted wound according to the logic that he had tried to “hide his crime by applying a bandage…”
Paranoia was so great behind the Russian lines that groundcrews at airfields were forbidden to count the number of airplanes on the ground at any one time. It soon became common practice to place a second line of NKVD troops behind the frontlines to prevent desertions and shoot at any who wavered.
6. The feldgendarmerie
Not to be outdone, the Germans had their own equivalents of the NKVD – among them the Feldgendarmerie.
Even out in the steppes of southern Russia, 2,000 km from Berlin, Jews were forced to wear a yellow star on their sleeve and anyone found to be a member of the Communist party was handed over to the SS. Over 60,000 civilians were deported back to Germany as slave labor. Farmers were tortured to find where they had hidden their grain and their homes were torn down for firewood.
Maintaining law and order grew harder as the battle turned against the Germans, particularly among their so-called “allies.” To make up the numbers promised, one Romanian division contained 2,000 convicts previously sentenced for crimes such as rape and murder.
Tens of thousands of Russian defectors soon made up the 6th Army’s ranks as well. Loathing the Soviet regime and fearful of reprisals, they were perhaps the German’s most reliable helpers, though as Slavs, they all had to be re-labelled as “Cossacks” before they were allowed to wear German uniforms.
5. Being a civilian
Nearly a million people lived in Stalingrad on the verge of the battle. While hundreds of thousands fled in last-minute evacuations many remained trapped on the west bank of the Volga. Despite all odds, about ten thousand were still alive upon the German surrender in February 1943.
Civilian dwellings were often buried deep underground. The Tsaritsa Gorge in southern Stalingrad was home to thousands who dug enormous caves into it’s sides. Others survived in cellars or even sewers. During breaks in the fighting women could be seen emerging to cut the meat off dead horses before rats got to them.
Disease, the cold and starvation slowly killed thousands. Civilians who fled from the city and made the arduous trek across the steppe often found little shelter for many days. The remnants of families huddled together at night were found by roadsides, babies died in their mother’s arms because of the cold and bitter winds.
4. Being captured
Despite enticing many Russians to surrender with promises of adequate food and shelter, the Germans offered little sympathy to their prisoners. Prison camps were little more than a barbed wire enclosure out on the open steppe. Food supplies stopped entirely after the German encirclement. Of the 3,500 Russian prisoners trapped with the 6th Army only 20 survived, and that had been by resorting to cannibalism.
The attitude of the Russians was no different. Their treatment of the invaders who had spent the past two years busily murdering, pillaging and raping their homeland was predictable. Of the 290,000 Germans surrounded in November, 90,000 survived to be taken prisoner, of which only 5,000 ever saw their homes again.
3. Surviving the winter
Stalingrad in winter
Once winter hit, temperatures around Stalingrad plunged to as low as -30 Celsius. Meat and food froze into barely edible blocks that had to be sawed open because they were too hard for knives. By October the Volga had begun to freeze over. Many Russian reinforcements were crushed by incoming ice floes while trying to cross.
Within the German encirclement, called the “Kessel” (cauldron), there was eventually no fuel left to melt snow for washing or shaving. A bath and clean underwear were as distant a dream as a proper meal. Soldiers’ minds went blank because the chilling of their blood slowed down mental activity. Walking wounded and sick made their own way to the rear through the snow. Many stopped to rest and never rose again.
There they sit like hairy savages in stone-age caves, devouring horseflesh in the smoke and gloom, amidst the ruins of a beautiful city that they have destroyed
2. The German surrender
Ever since the Germans had advanced upon Stalingrad in August, Stalin and his generals had been planning a massive counter-offensive. Hitler believed that Russia’s armies were finished. However, the three million Axis troops fighting on the Eastern front were still facing five million Russians. Stalingrad had become the bait in one of the largest traps in history. On 19th November 1942 the trap was sprung.
The situation at Stalingrad after the encirclement of the Sixth Army
Every imaginable horror faced the beleaguered German troops. As winter came the ground became too hard to dig trenches, causing thousands to eventually die of exposure. Food supplies were running dangerously low by December. Even when food was delivered, many soldiers quickly died from over-eating, akin to concentration camp survivors.
As clean clothes became as elusive as a hot meal, lice spread to nearly every member of the Sixth Army. Epidemics of typhus, dysentery, and a dozen other diseases swept through the German ranks.
A scene of utter chaos pervaded at Pitomnik airfield, the only major airstrip within the Kessel. Thousands of critically wounded were packed in rows along its edges while the burnt-out husks of destroyed aircraft and piles of stacked corpses lay nearby. So desperate was the need for fuel that the signpost at the airfield’s edge was removed and replaced with the gruesome sight of a horse’s leg stuck in a mound of snow with the sign re-attached to it’s top.
The German’s supply situation grew more and more desperate…Actually, you know what? This is just getting depressing…let’s move on
The final blow began in January 1943 when the Russians began their assault to crush the Kessel. The remains of the 6th Army retreated east towards the ruins of Stalingrad. The spectacle of defeat grew more terrible the closer retreating soldiers came to the city:
As far as the eye can see lie soldiers crushed by tanks, hopelessly moaning wounded, frozen corpses, vehicles abandoned through lack of fuel, blown-up guns and miscellaneous equipment…
1. Child “traitors”
Civilians in Stalingrad didn’t just have the Germans and the elements to worry about; running afoul of the Soviet side was tragically all too easy.
In their desperation for food many civilians begged the Germans for help, who occasionally obliged. As many simple tasks in Stalingrad were dangerous because of Soviet snipers, German soldiers sometimes promised young Russian boys and girls a crust of bread in return for something as simple as refilling their water bottles down by the Volga.
When the Soviets realized what was happening they shot children on such missions without hesitation. This was not just a local anomaly, but rather an official Soviet policy. Stalin had ordered the previous year that Red Army troops were to kill any civilians obeying German orders, even if under duress.
Stalingrad has far too many anecdotes to mention here about what happens when hell descends to Earth. Both sides showed absolutely no mercy. Every red-blooded man should give it a read.
Read More: Clash Of Steel And Wills: The Story Of The Battle Of Lepanto
Under a century ago, our grandparents, great-grandparents endured stupefying horrors. Look at what their great-grandchildren are complaining about now.
Exactly, they fought and died so a pair of women or men can cut a wedding cake???
Dyers Eve…..
Buried somewhere in some dark metal lyrics lie explanations for all this.
My daughter, who is pretty conservative, was frustrated with the rampant leftism at her high school. I played Eye of the Beholder for her and it seemed to cheer her up.
And Justice For All.., Best Metallica album ever…
If they remastered it with a nod to Newsted’s bass, I wouldn’t need to live anymore.
Yup….the rumour at the time was Fleming Rasmussen mixed Newkid, as the other band members called him, bass down low in respect to Clive Burton….. how true it is I don’t know….
Apparently it was all thanks to Lar$. He said to turn Jason down to where he was just audible, then turn him down again another few db into being pretty much non-existant. If you listen to the remixed versions on youtube (with Jason’s original bass tracks, not the fan overdubbed ones) its mindblowing. Then again I always felt that the dry, thin, weird sound of AJFA actually suited the album really well.
Hate what they did to the bass
That dry drum kick is legendary tho.
Complaining that their iPhone battery dies too fast mid-selfie. Wow, rough life!
yeah. like the guy who drove right into flooded streets, nearly lost his life, and sued the state for not”warning”him the bridge was dangerous at that time. Or the woman who sued because her coffee was “too hot”.
But maybe its all good. better a damn SJW heckling you than living under islamic rule.
It was a really hot cup of coffee.
She DROVE WITH IT AND SPILLED IT ALL OVER HERSELF. Fuck stupid people, they deserve whatever happens to them.
It wasn’t her fault.
That mcdonalds had had other people burnt/complaints as well.
They willingly kept their coffee too hot.
Third degree burns?
Turn the heat down.
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
From what I remember at the time, it was. Don’t drink and drive. Anyway I don’t care enough to go back and check, it was a stupid story.
You remember wrong.
Point still stands. Don’t drink and drive. Yeah turn the heat down, but still don’t drink and drive.
Correct. These types of people just want to run around calling everyone a pansy ass.
Just wait, someone will post about their morning molten lead enemas and how everyone else is just a cry baby.
As if greedy corporations aren’t a problem.
Don’t talk and drive, don’t burp and drive, don’t fart and drive, in fact don’t breath and drive.
‘stupefying horrors.’ even these strong words do not adequately convey the extent of the horror. phew.
That’s not funny! Today, I faced my own personal Stalingrad, when I wasted way too much time trying to get this one page to load!
Gramps assisted the local resistance group. But… it all started with their generation.
The boomers are considered the worst generation ever, but why? If their parents had taught them the realities of life and war, they might have been better and we in turn would have been as well. The reflex to “shield the little ones from the horrors of what we lived through” is to blame for part of our problems today.
Don’t be this. When the next war comes, teach your children and grandchildren everything you know and have experienced. Talk about things. Be better than our ancestors were, as is right and proper.
Don’t venerate the “Greatest Generation” too much because after the war they spent the next 60 years destroying what was left of America. They voted for tax breaks, entitlement programs, and worse. There’s a picture “the Greatest Generation, the Lamest Generation” but really we’re all in the world they created. Yeah, it’s got some freedom, but those whores sold out our economic prosperity in a rash of: I want mine fuck the children, give me tax breaks and free shit!
The Greatest Generation? They sold us out. They were the useful idiots of Rothschild, Warburg, Kuhn, Loeb, Schiff. They presided over the destruction of Europe and European civilization everywhere. Now we are scheduled for extinction. The Saturday people are working day and night to flood our lands with non-Europeans and they have such a stranglehold on the financial and monetary systems that our government is theirs to do with as they wish. I piss on the greatest generation.
Exactly, and to the boomers’ credit, they volunteered in larger numbers for Vietnam which was a harder war for the average man in uniform, whereas the GI generation had to be drafted and many dodged that (among other things in WWII the GI generation of Americans, deserted, showed cowardice in greater numbers than in Vietnam.)
I think the obsession with space flight and science fiction is our instinct to get the hell out of this place, all we have to do is terraform and establish an energy source around a star, of which there are hundreds of billions,
Stage 1: The anti-aging revolution
Stage 2: Personal space travel
Stage 3: basically purchasing a habitable planet, and colonizing it
It all sounded completely nuts to me….
Until i found out that all the tech billionaires are funding anti-aging medicine and are obsessed with space travel because they have a much clearer picture of the future than we do ;), So here is their vision in a nutshell:
We will augment our intelligence so that an IQ of 1000 is only “idling” I just don’t see how any individual with this level of intelligence would be dependant on a species that exists today, Especially not a genius with an unlimited IQ, and with unlimited time. Our computers are external calculators but the general idea is to eventually have them augmented with our brain perfectly and wirelessly to solve any problem instantly, this would enable an individual to be limitless, also our biology will have advanced particle carrying drugs which simulate ultimate pleasure
So that is basically the ultimate end point, limitless intelligence , and limitless time, for limitless possibilities,
However, i do not trust the super-organism of humanity to be “stable” and just let me mind my own business in a sentient way, That would be naive
There is also the possibility of being trapped in a virtual hell for eternity, someone could send out “cell sized drones that hijack your brain into their computer and trap you in some hell for eternity while you lie in suspended animation
Literally, this could happen on a long enough time-line….
So what are out bottlenecks:
Bottleneck/limiting factor1: Time, We age
Bottleneck/limiting Factor 2: Our intelligence and reliance on groups,
advanced AI and simulators will be more creative than all of our modern divinci’s put together, computers are not just calculating anymore, they are becoming creative and the progress is coming quick, as in, they know your subconscious ideal, and can produce it consciously, so say you crave a particular experience, it can figure that out ahead of time and than generate the experience automatically
As the future gets better the stakes get higher, Will we make it to year 2200 without some kind of tyrannical siege?
consider the entire “science fiction industry and the influence of tech billionaires and eventually the pieces of the puzzle come together’ the numbers suggest we all fantasize about forming our own intricate societies
Our destiny is to form colonies with people like ourselves, eventually creating a bunch of different interstellar races as we basically decide to go our own way with genetic altering technologies
Theatre is “wish fulfillment” concept art that eventually becomes reality in time,
Most people today would do the same thing (and will).
My grandfather was held in one arm by his mother as she leapt from the dock onto a ship pulling away into the Baltic Sea. That ship was bound for Brazil, and the Germans were marching in.
The term now being used is “teacup kids”, the 18 year old children, adult only according to their drivers’ licenses, incapable of living without mom and dad hovering overhead, and needing trigger warnings for even the most mundane topics. It’s astonishing to think that just a few generations back these same people were being called on to kill, and to die for their country.
Next war? It’s here now. Play ISIS videos for your kids. Do it. It’s reality. It will help them put whatever cause du jour that has captured their attention into perspective.
I love how you old folks hate on the kids of today.
You act like they did not comes from your generations children.
What?
You could just take them hunting. They’d learn about death and the bloodiness of it, without the trauma of watching a human die. I remember quite a few veterans saying, anyone who wants to witness war is nuts. I wouldn’t force that on my children.
The Millennials were given birth to by Gen X. Gen X were given birth to by the Boomers.
Yeah, but there are lots of unpleasant things that “build character”. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t have the answer. But I do feel strongly that sheltering leads to weakness.
I would agree to an extent. Sheltering can have very negative consequences when they eventually face life’s problems. I suppose it’s all a matter of degree. I think one can get the point without having to simulate Stalingrad (to return to our article). That wasn’t a beneficial experience for anyone.
Over doing discipline and harshness can have the same effect. Like aversion therapy.
And the bigger threat to ‘Merica is Chinese and Russian nuclear warheads.
Wrong, Millennials are the children of Boomers, and like our parents when the time came to leave high school we got our asses into further schooling, work, or the military.
The genXers? Birthed by the Silent Generation (like the GI generation but more obnoxious and spoiled.) And the Xers were worthless slackers who bummed around and got bummed out over nothing, and were coddled. When they finally wanted real jobs, it was there for them with little fuss.
The Boomers and Millennials had/have to fight their peers tooth and nail for anything like a career.
….no they are not. I have no idea what you are talking about. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials
What a load of complete bollocks.
Okay, yeah. Don’t you have something to stick your dick in?
I appreciate the invitation but I don’t go that way.
I thought you got the memo, I am the Alpha of the week.
I am so Alpha I walk into bar and immediately snd the 8s and above into spontaneous orgasm.
I am so Alpha strippers pay me to dance on my lap.
I am so Alpha I walk into board rooms and everyone hits their knees and bows head to the floor while calling me, ‘M’lord!’
I am so Alpha when I get in one of five hundred lambos, it drives itself.
I am so Alpha my cat thinks its a Pittbull and fights bears at my Alaskan mansion staffed by twenty five big busted Japanese sex slaves.
Basically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRUIO3Kt3qk
“The Alpha Crap” i just thought this would be the title of the poem you just have composed.
I am so Alpha I can impregnate women just by staring.
Our society lost too many of our best men and never recovered.
Europeans today are going to need fighting skills and a proper military organization. We’ll have massive wars in the next fifty years, spurred on by global resource shortages combined with enormous islamic fifth columns in our cities and towns. We’ll see wars that will make World War I and World War II look like regional kerfuffles.
European control of the globe at the beginning of the 20th century came about as the result of hardship and endless warfare, especially against Asiatic invasions. We repelled the Asiatic hoards but allowed one Turko – Mongolian tribe who posed themselves as simple merchants and money-men amongst us. This has proven to be our undoing. Read the words of Lothrop Stoddard from 100 years ago. We will have to prune the weak from our ranks again to survive as a people, for surely hardship is what made us great.
“And the white man proved worthy of his opportunity. His inherent racial aptitudes had been stimulated by his past. The hard conditions of mediaeval life had disciplined him to adversity and had weeded him by natural selection. The hammer of Asiatic invasion, clanging for a thousand years on the brown-yellow anvil, had tempered the iron of Europe into the finest steel. The white man could think, could create, could fight superlatively well. No wonder that redskins and negroes feared and adored him as a god, while the somnolent races of the Farther East, stunned by this strange apparition rising from the pathless ocean, offered no effective opposition.”
Lothrop Stoddard
“European control of the globe at the beginning of the 20th century came about as the result of hardship and endless warfare, especially against Asiatic invasions. We repelled the Asiatic hoards but allowed one Turko – Mongolian tribe who posed themselves as simple merchants and money-men amongst us.”
It was Byzantium/Russia that served as bulwark against Islam, Mongols, etc. The Western Europeans, on the other hand, came to excel at butchering each other for all manner of stupid reasons; they eventually went out and conquered the world, only to be conquered from within. And, today, Russia is the only part of Europe in command of its own destiny, because its religion and civilization are stronger and older, and therefore Russia could produce and put in power, Putin.
I give all credit due to Russia in its bulwark defense of Europe against Asiatic invasion. They were however nearly wiped out in the 13th century by the Mongol hoards. They spent 200 years under the Mongol yoke which was not so much direct Mongolian control but tribute paid to the Golden hoard which was camped in Southern Russia. The Mongols were actually defeated and stopped from further incursions into Western Europe by an army of Templars and Teutonic knights and Poles at the Battle of Legnica. Eventually the Russians overcame the Golden Hoard with the rise of the Muscovite Russia.
The Russians were not alone in their wars against the Ottomans but had a powerful ally in Austria.
To think that Russia however was any less infiltrated by the “Tribe” and destroyed from within is ludicrous. Have you not noticed how the murderous regime of the Bolshevicks was another “Tribal” production? Financed and led by the Saturday people themselves?
Also, didn’t Russia participate in these so called Western European wars called WWI and WWII? Were not 10 million Russians killed in the first world War and some 30 million in the second? Let’s not even look at the 10’s of millions that were liquidated in the Gulag by their own government.
To think that Russia was somehow immune to the virus of the Saturday people is nonsense. If anything they have suffered more from their pernicious presence.
I also would not count on Putin as being some savior of Europe. He is a shrewd and cunning politician to be sure, but let’s not forget his former role as head of the KGB which was the means of murder and oppression of the Russian and Ukrainian people. I’d like to believe he is a real Russian nationalist. But having been married to a Russian and having been to the country 3 times I have my doubts, as do my many Russian friends.
It’s good at least that he has voiced concern for the low birthrates of all European nations.
Look at what their Great County is turning into now.
I sometimes wonder if They could have seen ahead and see what the country has turned into, would they have still Fought, Or figured it’s not worth it?
I don’t know. In a way I wish I were back then. The moral ambiguity today leaves me restless and insecure.
Yeah even though Times were tough I think the Country had a better sense of Morality, and the Male wasn’t suffering an Identity Crisis. Somebody told me once that all the Righteous Men went off to fight the War, while all the Cowards stayed home and Procreated, Maybe that’s why this country Now isn’t unified with it’s Issues, you’ve got the Genes of Cowards on one side, and the Genes of the Brave and Righteous on the Other.
The best explanation i’ve heard for all the crybabies we have crawling around
As I’ve said before, the Eastern Front, (aka The Great Patriotic War to the Russians) was truly an example of a Badguy vs. Badguy conflict.
.
Kinda like watching a mafia/mobster movie, I can’t take either side because both are evil.
Applying the Lend-Lease program to the Soviets was indeed a mistake.
Copy paste but I thought it would be better to address dumb cold war inspired propaganda in the movie Enemy At The Gates. Book written by Antony Beevor is pretty good though.
1. At the beginning of the movie with the young Zaitsev with his grandfather, the scene is a work of fiction. Although Zaitsev spent his youth with his grandparents he only killed a wolf once(he was 14) while trapping rabbits with his cousin, Zaitsev saw eyes in the distance in the darkness and fired with his hunting rifle, hours later they found a dead wolf.
2. The movie labels him as an “un-educated peasant”(or herder/rancher) which is not true, at the age of 17(1932) he moved to the city of Magnitogorsk and began working at an industrial construction site. In this city he attended a Technical School where he got a degree in book-keeping.
3. The map at the beginning shows an un-realistic map of Europe during WW2 with the the Soviet Union having modern day Russian border missing a large chunk of its territory. Italy was never conquered by Germany, much of Eastern Europe were Axis Allies.
4. He was not a “conscript” either. At the age of 21(1936) he was drafted into the Soviet Navy, where he became a clerk in a Navy office. By 1942 he had a senior NCO rank (Rank equal to Senior Sergeant I think Staff Sergeant in US Military) and 6 years of service with the Navy in the city of Vladivostok(Russian Far East city on the Pacific Ocean). In May of that year the main Black Sea Fleet base of Sevastopol was abandoned after 7 months of siege. Many sailors including Zaitsev wanted to get into the fight and get revenge for Sevastopol. In June 1942 there was a call for Volunteers for a Marine Battalion to join the 1047th Rifle Regiment of the 284th Rifle Division, Zaitsev reported to his commanding officer and requested re-assignment to the new Battalion. His commander said that he might be too short to be a Marine but granted his request. In July the Battalion went through Army training(where AND THIS IS KEY Everyone learned how to fire a rifle with accuracy, clean a rifle, and survival skills). In August the 27 year old Zaitsev was mobilized to head West.
5. Then there is the scene with “soldiers”(pseudo-soldiers) heading to the Front in a train full of civilians, then the train is stopped, the civilians are removed and the train (cattle) car doors are locked shut. Now that is absolute nonsense. There were no civilians heading in the direction of the enemy on Military trains(especially not on Military trains), the flow of Refugees was 95% of the time to the East, while troops would head to the West. There was also no locking of any train cars, both officers and soldiers rode in the same train car.
Zaitsev did indeed go to Stalingrad on a train, but it had no civilians on it. The only women he saw on the train were Army nurses and medics, one caught his attention. She was not Tatiana Chernova. Days before arriving near Stalingrad Zaitsev’s Platoon was instructed on how to use a Maxim machinegun, the standard Medium to Heavy Machinegun in the Red Army at the time. Then on September 19th they arrived about 10km East of Stalingrad and were off loaded near a road because there was a threat of German bomber attack if they went any closer. They marched on foot in full combat gear with weapons until trucks became available to drive them to the town of Krasnaya Sloboda across from Stalingrad where they underwent further urban combat training.
6. The scene where they arrive at Stalingrad by train is therefore also fiction. The whole guy waving flag and yelling through a megaphone looked very stupid, in reality they would have made the perfect bomber target. Such a disorganized structure would have never won a single battle. There were officers assigned to each unit, the unit trained with the same officer since boot camp. The structure was the same as in any Army, the Major communicated his order to his Captains, who communicated the order to the Lieutenants, who would issue orders to the Sergeants below them who would order their soldiers to carry out the order. The only time officers used megaphones or microphones to address troops was when they were gathered together outside of battle not in battle.
On September 21st Zaitsev assumed his role and led a Squad of troops into a wooded area across from the city of Stalingrad and took cover here until night. Most of his Battalion took up positions near the Volga river. At night wounded were brought over from the opposite side and transported to nearby field hospitals. On the morning of September 22nd barges and rowboats became available and the 284th Rifle Division crossed the Volga river before sunrise. There were no attacks on the crossing that night even though German howitzers could do that and had attacked previous crossings several nights before.
This means the crossing in the movie is also fiction and somewhat suicidal.
7. This movie caused a lot of confusion and misunderstanding as far as ranks and titles are concerned. The term “Commissar” was not a title, it was a rank, in the Red Army it had been used since the Russian Civil War(1917-21) as a Senior Officer rank. But it also had an adjective describing the authority of the officer. Battalion Commissar meant the officer was equal to a Major, Regiment Commissar meant the officer was equal to a Lieutenant Colonel, and so on, the highest rank of a “Commissar” could have was Corps Commissar, this rank was rare and completely abolished by 1939, replaced by a rank of “General”, before 1939 the highest ranks were Komandarm 1st class etc and Marshal. Komandarm was simply Commander of a (Field) Army, Marshal was the highest possible officer rank somebody could have. Commissars were the primary officers (not political officers) in the Red Army up to 1939. Before 1939 officers below the rank of Commissar were normal ranks(commander of a Company and commander of a Platoon) and a rank of a Political Supervisor or Politruk, this rank required both officer training and Communist Party member status for political indoctrination. Politruks were equal in rank to a Lieutenant, usually Junior Grade to Senior Politruk(could command a Company). In the 1939 this system was abandoned, replaced by a more common system of Majors, Colonels, and Generals. The term “Commissar” became an Executive Officer rank from that year on. Lieutenants replaced “Platoon Commanders” and Politruks became 2nd in command. Commissars never “personally” ordered any soldiers around as shown in the movie, as I already mentioned. NCO’s would order around the Privates, the highest ranking NCO was the Starshina (equal to Master Sergeant or Sergeant Major), to be a Starshina you had to be a Veteran of many years of service, just any idiot would not do.
The above information has to be mentioned before any more mistakes can be listed.
8. So the suicidal crossing scene is fiction as I mentioned. So are the depictions of sadistic “pseudo-officers” who in the movie go around being called generic “Commissars” and “Political Officers” which don’t really mean anything.
During the morning of September 22nd 1942 troops of the 284th Rifle Division crossed the Volga river under the cover of darkness, each men knew as soon as he set off for Stalingrad that deserters(and I mean REAL deserters not people who retreat) would be punished and faced possible execution under Order 227. Nobody even thought about jumping overboard into the river knowing full well that he/she would drown as soon as he/she did because of the equipment carried by the soldiers.
Was night crossing always the preferred form of moving across the Volga? No when necessary day crossings were made with small amounts of fast patrol boats, but this was rare as the battle went on.
9. The Ju-87 Stukas attack in broad daylight and there is not even a hint of anti-aircraft weapons or an Air Force on the Soviet side(another mistake, as there were 100’s of air battles over the Stalingrad sky with Soviet fighters against German fighters and bombers). One female Soviet ace Lidya Litvyak flew Yak-1 and La-5 fighter planes over Stalingrad.
Shit movie…..
Have you ever seen Brest Fortress (Russian film, only in Russian with subtitles)?
I don’t know if its the same movie but I did see a Russian movie about a young Russian boy in the Soviet army during WWII…..can’t remember the name….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J_wyXGa9dc
10. When the boat arrives at the dock the really absurd events start taking place. Yet again no organization. And then the writers decided to get “creative” and start rationing rifles. Really how the hell did we ever win the Battle of Moscow in 1941 with “One man gets a rifle, the next man 5 rounds of ammunition”? Of course the most stupid scene that is connected to this one comes several minutes later when Danilov asks Zaitsev: “Do you know how to shoot a rifle?”. The next statement a viewer should make is: “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN THE ARMY IF YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO SHOOT A RIFLE!?!”. And this is true, it makes no sense. Every Regular Army in the world teaches their soldiers how to shoot their weapon, there is no Army that “skips” this vital part of training their soldiers. So when the writers invent their own rules and “suggest” that these “pseudo-soldiers” never saw a rifle in their lives this made a lot of people(Russian WW2 Veterans) angry. Then they are not soldiers, just people wearing Army caps and Winter coats in the month of September. What could civilians without training accomplish in battle, nothing! It takes experience for civilians to become soldiers. And the writers seem to not know this.
No Regular Army in the world has a practice of issuing weapons to its troops just seconds before they enter battle. Weapons are issued as I said before after training and distributed long before entering combat. Nobody in their right mind would set up arms distribution in the middle of a battle under enemy bomber attack. And no, weapons rationing did not happen in Stalingrad, especially with the bolt action rifles, there were millions of them lying around since WW1. Even civilian volunteers who wanted to fight could expect to at least get an old WW1 period rifle.
The “Pseudo-soldiers” in Army winter coats run up the river bank and suddenly in between them “soldiers” wearing actual combat gear materialize. I have no idea where they came from. But the scene seems to suggest there was a caste system in the Red Army or something, because the “soldiers” have weapons and helmets and don’t appear the same as the “pseudo-soldiers”. There are also “soldiers” firing sub-machineguns at aircraft with no hope of hitting them since they are out of range. There were no “upper class” soldiers. A soldier was a soldier, only Penal Companies or Battalions had soldiers who were considered less important and did not even wear any kind of insignia. This was because these were made up of deserters and prisoners not regular soldiers.
11. The next scene is of a handful of idiots with some of the ugliest faces I have ever seen wearing what appear to be officer insignia, although the leader had insignia of a Senior Lieutenant and the guy behind him had insignia of a Major. But if they were supposed to be a Politruk and a Battalion Commissar then I have to say their uniforms were those of regular infantrymen. High ranking officers wore chevrons on their sleeves and had yellow or dark red outlines on their insignia patch.
These “officers” give no formal orders, no information on the enemy, do not set any objectives that need to be completed. They just make threats and throw unarmed troops at an enemy that is already waiting for them. There is no hope of victory in such a situation. Of course the “attack” is a failure. One could expect nothing else from a “mob” of untrained unarmed “pseudo-soldiers” who have no idea what they are doing.
I will describe what really happened later, but I want to finish this scene first.
What next? But of course the “reinforcements” who have been shipped halfway across the country need to be gunned down for what? Falling back from a failed attack? Did the writers seriously think that EVERYONE who tried to take cover from enemy fire was gunned down by some insane death squads? So what would stop the enemy counter-attack? If the situation continued as it is shown in the movie then the Germans who had just massed in this nameless Square would have continued moving forward, 1 machinegun and a handful of sub-machineguns and revolvers would have done nothing to the armor of German Pz. III tanks and half-tracks, the Germans would have rolled over them in seconds and continued on to the river where no significant resistance existed, and the next scene would have been of how the Germans won the battle, end of story. The simple fact is, nothing shown in the movie would have stopped the 6th Army from winning the battle.
Ah but people will defend the writers claiming “Stalin ordered everyone who retreats shot” and this is a distortion of fact. Stalin ordered deserters punished, but who was a deserter? Somebody who abandoned their assigned position in battle, the position he/she was to defend and hold against enemy attack, abandoned weapons and material as well as their comrades to the enemy. Nothing was said about retreating from attacks. Stalin held officers responsible for failures of their soldiers. And for the most part real deserters received minimum punishment while others were sent to Penal Companies and officers could find themselves in a Penal Battalion. Executions of deserters and traitors were rare. In about 3 months during the most important period of the battle 265 people were executed from the whole Stalingrad Front where there were 100,000’s of soldiers deployed.
This is the account of Zaitsev’s first combat experience, I am paraphrasing it from his Memoirs.
On the morning of September 22nd 1942 Zaitsev got off a barge with his Company on the docks of the Krasniy Oktyabir(Red October) Industrial District, northeast of Stalingrad city. He was armed with a PPSh-41 sub-machinegun not a Mosin Model 1891/30 bolt action rifle, this is what he was trained with and this is what he was issued after training. He was in an Assault Platoon, automatic weapons were standard issue for these units. German troops(Light Infantry) were advancing towards the Volga river and had occupied several multi-story buildings of a factory near Mamayev hill(the highest point near the city) and had a perfect view of the river bank, this meant they could direct artillery and air strikes onto exposed Soviet troops. Zaitsev’s Battalion(2nd Battalion 1047th Rifle Regiment) was ordered to capture these buildings and hold them against counter attack. The attack began when Soviet Artillery BM-13 Artillery Rocket Launchers(called “Katushas” by Russian soldiers, a term now frequently misused) fired a salvo of rockets onto German positions to cover the advance.
They had to bypass a fuel oil storage depot to attack their enemy from the side(see photograph for reference). But, the enemy saw them and called in fighter-bombers that dropped incendiary bombs that started quite a few fires, some soldiers(no specific number given) were seriously burned, most of the Battalion got through before the bombs fell and prolonged house to house fighting began(Zaitsev says his Squad had to defeat a German machinegun nest by 1. suppressive fire and 2. grenades). It was quite a mess, for example: the first floor was captured but the basement and upper floors remained in enemy hands. More than once soldiers had to use bayonets and rifle butts to fight in close quarters combat. Casualties were high and when the basement was captured it had to be turned into a field hospital, Zaitsev claimed he strangled a German soldier to death when ran into him in a dark room. Fighting in dark rooms and hallways (littered with debris from bombs) of an industrial building involved using voice recognition to determine friend from foe and grenades to clear out rooms and hallways held by the enemy. At this point Zaitsev developed a favorable opinion of his PPSh and made sure to have one around for the rest of the battle. It took a week of fighting to reduce Zaitsev’s Battalion from more than 700 men to 80-90 men left in fighting condition, they held residential buildings, offices, and machine shops in a Metal Processing Plant.
(Aerial photo of battle scene possibly weeks after the battle began)
http://stalingrad-game.ru/index.php?typ … age_id=246
12. In the movie none of the above happened. Zaitsev’s whole unit(just a mass of pseudo-soldiers) is 99% wiped out in minutes by German fire and of course the death squads of “evil political officers”. The “officers” don’t even try to outflank the enemy, they just send all the reinforcements at enemy machineguns, like this is the first time they had ever seen battle or commanded soldiers. “Somehow” Zaitsev survives without a weapon, strange with all those dead bodies lying around there seems to be no rifles of any kind among them.
13. The massed German troops disappear, as if they got tired of killing enemy troops and no longer wanted to push forward towards the Volga river with their overwhelming firepower and numbers and win the battle. Only a handful of Germans are left and they use Danilov’s car as target practice. It seemed like he was driving from the German occupied zone. What was he doing there in the first place? He ends up in the fountain of Dancing Children(re-created with the wrong number of figures) surrounded by corpses of pseudo-soldiers and not a single dead German in sight. He finds a rifle, Zaitsev the “Sheep herder from the East” could not, but he does. Zaitsev loads the weapon with the 5 rounds of ammunition and gives it to an officer(also not very appropriate designation), and as I mentioned before Danilov asks Zaitsev “Do you know how to shoot a rifle?”. Zaitsev answers “a little” or something like that. I have already covered the absurd nature of this dialogue and how it was obviously written by somebody who has no idea how Armies work. Zaitsev gets the rifle and of course eliminates the 4 German officers preparing to take a shower in the middle of a battlefield(as this is obviously the best place to do it) and also kills a German soldier who was arming a Model 24 Stiehlhandgranate to throw at Zaitsev who was no more than 5 meters away maximum and the German soldier had an MP-40 sub-machinegun!
In the Russian version of this movie Danilov introduces himself as a Senior Political Officer of the “21st Infantry Company”, in the English version he just says “21st”. Here is the problem, a “Company” is a sub-unit of a Battalion. A Battalion normally has between 3 to 9 Companies. There never was a single Battalion with 21 Companies. So this is wrong from the start. If he was from an “Independent Company” there may have been an excuse for this mistake, but there is none. The next problem is Danilov’s rank. It is more like the lack of one, even though he has Senior Lieutenant insignia on his collar. Where is this “Infantry” Company he is supposed to be commanding? None is ever shown, nobody else from this incorrect 21st Company is mentioned in the movie, this seems like a part of the story the writers decided to abandon right away without developing it or giving an explanation. How did Danilov become an officer? He obviously has little to no officer experience, and yet he is not a Junior officer but a Senior one! It was never a practice in the Red Army to give out ranks at random. Poor leadership had harsh consequences, including execution. His Company is AWOL, he has no side arm even though he is an officer(or at least he appears to be). What is he? From appearances a Newspaper Editor not a Rifle(correct designation) Company Officer. Officers attended various Military Schools like the Frunze Academy in those years, they would learn how to command a unit and operate in combat, these were the basics. Danilov does not even know the basics, he would never be issued an officer’s uniform, he is not even fit to be a messenger.
Following the introduction Danilov says Zaitsev will be moved to the “Sniper Division”. Another moment in Military Doctrine ignorance by the writers. A whole Division of Snipers would serve no purpose, they would be at a severe dis-advantage in close quarters house to house combat and against tanks. Snipers assist other units, they do not fight as the “primary”(majority) force in a Division. It would make no sense to maintain a Sniper Division because a. it lacks anti-aircraft firepower and b. it lacks large anti-tank weapons. Snipers are most effective when they operate in Teams and Groups attached to other units, a Combined Arms Force is the best choice for urban warfare. Snipers would eliminate Machinegun nests allowing units of 10-20 soldiers in Assault groups to advance and capture enemy held buildings. If the enemy brought in artillery spotters or crew served weapons it would be the job of the Snipers to eliminate them from a long distance. At the same time the Wehrmacht frequently used “Designated Marksmen”(Scharfshutzen) in Infantry Platoons and such to cover their troops and eliminate Soviet Snipers. Snipers could operate in units of around 16 men but rarely had more than that(the real Zaitsev pioneered the tactic of using large groups of specialized Snipers). The Sniper is a master of camouflage and accurate shots, large numbers of Snipers are not needed.
Following all this Danilov and Zaitsev SOMEHOW get back to their own lines without being shot! Remember the absurd logic of shooting all of your own soldiers who fall back from the battlefield? Danilov and Zaitsev “magically” teleport to some kind of print shop later on safely behind their own lines.
14. The next chronological scene is the arrival of Khruschev in Stalingrad. Another winner in the contest to re-write history. The real Khruschev, the bureaucrat, never actually stepped foot inside Stalingrad when it was a warzone. He was not an officer and he never commanded any real troops. He had good organization skills and he helped organize the evacuation of civilians from the city as well as other events a bureaucrat is useful for. As soon as Khruschev in the movie steps off of the boat the writer’s fantasy takes over. For some odd and retarded reason the civilians are told “Comrade Stalin has forbid any civilians to leave the city”, why? So they could get massacred? Please, the city was evacuated in August 1942, almost 1 month before the Axis arrived in the city, the Luftwaffe began bombing the city in early August and yes there were high civilian casualties, but 90% of the people in the city were transported to the other side of the Volga river and sent to places where they could be useful. Stalingrad was an Industrial city, its population was made up of highly skilled workers and engineers, they were valuable to the War Effort and would be sent to factories in the Ural mountains to supply the Army with weapons and other supplies. Factories don’t work by themselves, they need people to work in them. The Movie’s twisted logic of threatening civilians and condemning them to death has nothing to back it up. Civilians from Stalingrad would be shipped by the 1,000 to Factories behind the Frontline. Anti-communist rhetoric takes the place of the truth in these scenes.
15. Kruschev is shown wearing winter clothing in September, he would be sweating rivers if he tried to do the same in the real Stalingrad in September. Soldiers keep materializing in these scenes even though reinforcements are massacred(according to the film). He arrives in some kind of Command Bunker, where an idiot General is seen crying and begging for forgiveness or something. He is a 3 star General, in Stalingrad he would be a Field Army Commander. He says something like “I sent all my boys in…but the Germans have tanks, artillery, and planes”. That is great, BUT SO DID THE RED ARMY. Ever hear of the T-34? Ever hear of Ivan Kozhedub, the Allies Top Fighter Ace? So if he sent in all his men to die, who is holding back the German advance? I think that is a good question. The idiot General is given a TT-33 pistol by the movie Khruschev and he uses it to kill himself.
The movie idiot General never existed. He is a work of fiction. I can’t believe the writers never did any research into the commanders at the battle of Stalingrad! They were far from cowards and morons depicted in the film. The Field Army in the city of Stalingrad was the 62nd Army. It started its service as the 7th Reserve Army formed from fresh Reserve units in July 1942. It was in the reserve of South-Western Front commander 4 star General Andrei Yeremenko, who went on to become Marshal in the Soviet Army when WW2 ended. As the Axis advanced on the city(in August) Yeremenko promoted 3 star General Vasily Chuikov to the position of organizing the defense of Stalingrad(mainly on the advise of Army[5 star] General Giorgi Zhukov the un-official Red Army Commander in Chief). Chuikov had been serving as the commander of the 64th Army, which had been fighting the German 6th Army since it had crossed over the Don river to the west of Stalingrad. Chuikov was a specialist in urban warfare, he had served in Spain and had been an advisor to Chiang Kai-Shek’s National Revolutionary Army which had been fighting and holding back the Japanese Army in China with nothing more than rifles and Molotov cocktails, he knew how to improvise and defeat a stronger opponent.
Chuikov moved to Stalingrad and a General Abramov took command of the 64th Army which dug in south of Stalingrad. The 7th Reseve Army was renamed the 62nd Army and began to build up defenses around and inside the city. The city had been bombed repeatedly by the Luftwaffe and Chuikov had to improvise Anti-Aircraft units formed from volunteers including local police forces these were issued a variety of heavy Flak guns and heavy Machineguns. The population was evacuated and he had little time to build up strong points outside the city. The defenses outside of the city were then just simple trenches and fox holes and were meant only to delay the advancing Axis forces. Rather than crowd the city with heavy equipment Chuikov decided that most of the heavy artillery(which the Red Army did possess) should be moved across the Volga river to the opposite side where it would form a line of batteries that would support the troops in the city. The fire of the heavy artillery was concentrated on choke points and bottle necks in the streets of Stalingrad where German tanks and vehicles would get stuck and could be destroyed. Tanks were not available in large supply to the 62nd Army, so those that were available were used to support infantry attacks or were transferred to Tank Brigades and Cavalry units outside of the city. Chuikov then set up a network of Anti-tank Guns and Mortars to support the troops inside the city where heavy artillery could not be used.
The German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army advanced into the city at the cost of heavy losses. Advancing German Infantry Battalions suffered 80% casualties. But the Axis troops had numerical advantage and had 100,000 troops to Chuikov’s roughly 60,000(losing men every minute). He had to organize reinforcements if his 62nd Army was to hold out. So as the Axis began taking the city on September 14th 1942, Chuikov began sending reinforcements over the Volga river either at night or under cover of a smokescreen. Also at the same time he pushed for the construction of airfields near Stalingrad so he could have 24 hour fighter and bomber support. In late September Soviet Night Bomber Air Regiments began hitting Axis Supply dumps, Airfields, Camps, and Troop concentrations near Stalingrad. The raids were effective and the Germans and their Allies began to expend great resources to build up Flak traps near their bases. The battle quickly became one of controlling floors of buildings and less like Blitzkrieg and this was the beginning of the end for the Axis at Stalingrad.
The movie scenario looks nothing like the above. The idiot General acted nothing like Chuikov. And Chuikov commanded the battle in the city, there was no Khruschev there.
16. The movie Kruschev pretty much orders the ONLY (un-named) Field Army commander with any potential combat experience in the city of Stalingrad to shoot himself. Now lacking a commanding General he walks out into a room filled with a mass of fat, ugly, and incompetent people dressed in officer’s uniforms. Some of these “political officers” look like they ate all the rations set aside for a month in 1 day, it is a mystery how they managed to get so fat in wartime. Anyway Khruschev gives them a “motivational” speech about soldiers “sh*tting their pants” and such. He wants these idiots to tell him how to win the battle, because you know after having won the Battle of Moscow a year earlier they would obviously not know any strategies of winning this battle. An insane anonymous “military genius”(which the movie is filled with) suggests killing family members of soldiers who retreat. Great idea! That should really help Nazi Germany to even out the odds that are currently 3 to 1 against it. The only marginally reasonable leader in the room(of course Khruschev because all other Russians are murderous incompetent psychopaths as this movie suggests) does not like the “plan”. Ah but there is at least one other voice of reason, and this is our friend “Commissar” Danilov. He has a “brilliant” idea! How about we promote our soldiers as heroes? Oh my god that is great idea, why didn’t we think of it before in the 2 years the war has been raging? Uh well we did, just the movie writers never bothered to read any history. Such as the stories of Soviet pilots flying their planes into German bombers from 1941. Or similar stories such as the one about the 28 “Panfilovtsi” who in the heroic story destroyed a tank for every man in the unit using Anti-tank grenades and Molotov cocktails and never surrendered each dying in the battle, again from 1941, a year before Stalingrad.
The idea of promoting heroes does not require somebody to be a genius to think of it. But it seems every “Russian” but Danilov in the film has an IQ of 25. And many people take this idiotic display of “officers” as fact. These idiots would have been shot for incompetence a long time before this battle started. Khruschev asks Danilov if he knows any heroes? In the course of 2 years of war no heroes materialized? Do these people have any belief in what they are fighting for? Is there something else but brutality on the minds of these “political officers”?
Obviously not, as this movie tries to claim. But the reality was so much different. Soviet citizens had been sacrificing themselves for some “greater good” since the war began. The city of Leningrad was starved and bombed each and every day for nearly 900 days, yet it never surrendered, it never gave up. Obviously its besieged citizens believed in something if they continued to work and fight during starvation. The city was cut off from the rest of the country by a Nazi encirclement around the city, there was little hope of victory in the first year, but people refused to give in. To suggest that in the fall of 1942 there were no “heroes” to look up to for the Soviet citizen is just plain stupid. Also, just because you promote heroes does not mean you will win the war. You need something to back up those heroes.
17. So Zaitsev is promoted to “hero” status. Simply because he killed 5 enemy soldiers. What are the writers suggesting? That the Wehrmacht had suffered no casualties before this? I think the 1 million + dead Axis troops since June 1941 would disagree. Now that he is a “hero” he has a personal “agent” just like a movie star, because “agents” are more important than competent officers I guess the movie writers are saying. And no doubt as soon as Zaitsev is told the “good news”, told because he apparently can’t read(after 3 years of a College Education according to the real Zaitsev), Zaitsev and Danilov celebrate that they will be “famous”! Fame is what soldiers fight for. Not to protect their wife/girlfriend/husband/children/mother/father etc, not to protect their homes, not for patriotism, no for Fame! Because apparently being famous and making a lot of money is the only important thing one thinks about during wartime.
Zaitsev and Danilov meet in an “intact” Newspaper printshop in the middle of bombed out Stalingrad. Because it is smart to run a printshop surrounded by the enemy. And of course it is much easier to get paper and ink for a printshop in wartime then it is to get enough rifles and ammunition for your soldiers, because paper and ink are the most mass produced products in wartime! The “propaganda” about Zaitsev starts rolling.
I have read Anthony Beeveors book and found it the definitive historical book on Stalingrad. Years before when I was much younger I read Sven Hassels SS General. Although a work of fiction it accurately chronicles the experiences of a German platoon throughout the conflict and sparked my interest in the Eastern Front. It was the most brutal of wars and the deciding factor in the Second World War. The Brits and Yanks can blow all they want about winning the war but if it wasn’t for the sacrifice of the Russians it would have been an entirely different result.
The U.S. supplied the Russian Communists, to our eternal shame. Before that, the Germans were beating hell out of them.
Are you one of those “conspiracy theorists”?
My TV did not tell me that so I don’t believe you!
Murca don’t like Commies!
Back to the ‘History’ Channel I go!
Ye olde “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” mantra. We side with the lesser of two evils. They sure did a lot of the dirty work for us, to put it politely.
Had Britain and France not promised Poland anything, it could have been National Socialists v. International Socialists the whole time. Neither would have come out well, and both might have been overthrown, with no loss to the West.
This is true to a point. The tide began to turn against the Axis powers on the outskirts of Moscow in 1942. The forward German positions could see the steeples of the Kremlin. The Russian winter and overstretched supply lines gave the Russians a chance to go on the offensive.
The vast number of conscripts drawn from the Soviet republics and the moving of much of the Soviet industrial complex to beyond the Urals gave the Russians the breathing space to reorganise its forces and production capacity. The increased production of the T34 was another factor in the demise of the German Wermacht on he Eastern front.
It was the world against Germany stupid.
I am simply amazed at the ignorance that tries to pass itself off as “educated” here.
I think the point was that had the Germans been able to knock out that industry before they moved it, it would not have mattered that numbers were against the Germans at that point in the war.
Which part of my post didn’t happen? Did Germany have allies in the form of the Axis? The world covers more than just the Allies.
“Did Germany have allies in the form of the Axis? ”
I don’t speak “allies” jargon.
Sorry.
The whole point of my post to you was to point out that it was a bit more complicated than your textbook edumcation.
And you provide no more of an explanation than “it was a bit more complicated”. Well done. And what’s a “text book edumcation”? Spell checker got the better of you? Seems like you don’t speak or spell much in the way of anything. Oh look here is a ball, go out and play little boy…..
The Russian losses were so great in part because of their own stupidity and rigid ideological purity, both before and during the War.
Yup….I agree, the upper echelons of the Soviet military were pretty dumb and inexperienced as Stalin had executed or imprisoned the most experienced of his generals and advisors in the previous purges…
Man, always been fascinated by this battle ever since looking at the Time-Life World War II Series book “The Soviet Juggernaut” as a kid. Just one more thing they never teach us about in school. All we learned about the war is “Nazis were killing Jews (and of course no others), Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, we beat the Nazis and dropped atomic bombs on Japan then the war was over!” That’s it, that’s all. Pathetic!
Well, History, Discovery, TLC and the Military channels tell us Hitler:
1. May have had contact with aliens.
2. Had secret UFO technology.
3. Was a drug addict.
4. Was mentally ill.
5. Could not consummate a sexual relationship.
6. Wasn’t a Christian, but a “demonic” Occultist.
7. Had plans to conquer the world.
8. Was the most evil man in history.
9. Was a Jew himself or a “self-hating” Jew.
10. Was a part of the the “New World Order.”
11. Financed by the Rothchilds.
12. Was seeking the “Spear of Destiny.”
13. Had underground arctic bases.
Cause, you know, Hitler.
“‘Demonic’ occultist”, that part always gets me. Anybody with with the power to arouse desperate, starving masses who will listen to anybody who looks and sounds good MUST be an ipsissimus, oh yes! So what are Al Sharpton’s and Jesse Jackson’s excuses?
You know when he farted it killed hundreds of enemy soldiers cause the smell was evil.
That’s a bit OTT. Sorry I meant OTO
Dedicated to Mega Therion in the presence of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, of course.
AC saw himself as a right-hander I believer. Quite cuddly compared to Mr Hitler?
Nephilim Press put out book called “Holy Guardian Angel” that is supposed to be awesome. This is one thing I wish to dabble in further.
I’m not an occultist, but AC is definitely an interesting figure – more substantial than I thought.
11. Warburgs?
Yup, only #11 is true, so 1 out of 13 ain’t too bad for the “History” Channel.
burying the truth is as good as lying though
True dat.
Actually burying the truth is arguably worst than lying as the latter is easier to discredit once exposed. Obfuscation is harder to deconstruct and thus makes for more effective propaganda.
Any of items on that list that happen to be true?
Let’s not forget the whole ‘Castle Wolfenstein’ project..hehe.
I remember endless “social studies” classes year after year. My most hated class. You learned nothing factual, and looking back, all of it was cultural marxist propaganda.
It is a fantastic book as well as his Battle of Berlin book. I remember a part in the Stalingrad book were the Russian took flame throwers to the German make shift hospitals and killed the wounded.
Strapping explosives to dogs and sending them running to the enemy – yep you’re in hell alright
Would it be possible to talk about this without these childish images? Or is ROK targeting teenagers now? Thanks.
Exactly what i thought
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W5QYdfQhmc
Тhis is a good documentary, unfortunately nobody translated it into English. Probably it does not fit the anti-Russian narrative.
Au contraire! Watch the whole series, it’s great! There are a couple of different people who have posted it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf8Rmf4m8rs
Ah my bad, I couldn’t find it. Thanks for posting it.
It is a very good series. They also made a series about Russia in WWI.
Do you know its name? The WWII series was presented in the West as “Soviet Storm: WWII in the East.” As I posted below.
In Russian it’s just Первая мировая война (First Word War).
tremendous article. helps to put things into perspective. i highly recommend the book ‘bloodlands’ by timothy d. snyder for more of these horrific stories.
Before the big drumbeat of war begins sounding, we must sieze the little drumbeats pitter pattering across the land. The Atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a huge KA-BOOM beat that registered surely beyond Earth. The little drummer beat is more like a small African bonga drum like a tiny heartbeat: ”bu dum ba dum ba dum”.
Before we get flanked from behind by a big ‘ass-shot’ from organized traitors, before we begin bleeding out pathetically, unprepared, take the individual initiative and sieze a ‘litttle drumbeat’. While the sun shines, re-align your own sphere. Like a chiropractic adjustment, a little shit test here and there, your family, at work, on campus – do a little prodding. Yank a few questionable enablers and potential traitors, twist a few neck ties, not severely but politely clear the water. Establish that WE’VE got the beat. Get your friends and associates in line. No ‘knock on the door’ at night when your close circles are in step, in beat and in vibe. THEY do the barking that your dog may not sense.
”Bu dum ba dum” All hail the patriarchy!!
I usually consider myself knowledgable about WW2, but honestly I don’t think there was a single thing on this list that I already knew. Sure I had seen “Enemy at the Gates” but I didn’t know how much of that was accurate.
Yea the whole Soviet official policy to shoot hungry soviet children who tried to help German soldiers in exchange for only a little food shock me to the chore how absolutely inhuman the soviets were. I almost cried when i read that part of the book.
Once again, General Patton had the right idea.
“The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinaman or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them, except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other Asiatic characteristics, the Russian have no regard for human life and is an all out son of bitch, barbarian, and chronic drunk.”
I would agree that Russia isn’t Western, but it’s still Orthodox, which is quite a bit different from Buddhist or Shinto, isn’t it?
Russian Communism yes!
German National Socialism no!
American kosher Fascism yes!
-ahem-
I’m just going to put this here.
Would the Nazis not have put up just as hard of a fight had we tried? How many American lives would that have cost? The Russians lost 300,000 in the Battle of Berlin. That’s about what we lost in the whole war.
And frankly, the Germans had thrown off their traditional culture and faith by then, what replaced it was a barbaric faith in blood and soil. I don’t consider that an upgrade from marxism. It was well that they killed each other off.
*81,000
Does that count the Seelow Heights or just the city proper?
I think it’s both.
“Actually, the Germans are the only decent people left in Europe. it’s a choice between them and the Russians. I prefer the Germans.”
August 31st, 1945
Blood and soil is traditional faith.
By that calculation, so was infanticide, paedophelia, cannibalism and human sacrifice. That’s not a tradition I’d want to continue.
Blah blah blah blah
Of course, how could I have been so foolish as to forget that time tested debate skill of the “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
You are too emotional to have a debate with.
You cannot see reason, nor objective reality
You have been brainwashed by the “victors”.
Don’t take it personally.
Emotional?
If you never try to argue a point, but instead declare from the get-go that anyone who disagrees with you is irrational or brainwashed, before anything is discussed, that’s a heck of way to never lose an argument or change your opinion, but it’s hardly the mark of an honest debater.
Yes.
Go back and reread what you wrote.
You lauded the rape and murder of the German people and the destruction of their history, as well wiping them off the map.
Again, its obvious you are brainwashed by the victors of that bs war.
Let me clarify. I didn’t laud their rape and murder. If they had only fought one another, it might have ended in stalemate, not in one marching through the other’s homeland, raping and pillaging. (Too bad for those caught in the middle.) Under those circumstances, just as it actually was fought, most of Germany avoided “being wiped off the map.” In fact, they’re doing rather well now.
I’d rather no one was wiped off the map, but I would have liked both ideologies of nazism and stalinism to have been overthrown by the German and Russian peoples. A stalemate, might have done that, as it had in the WWI. By “each other,” I meant the hardcore believers in Nazism and Communism.
If we (the West) had not gotten involved, it might have happened that way.
You have not read one of my comments to you.
You breeze over them like they don’t exist.
Bush league.
Part of having these discussions here, is for the benefit of other people reading them, not just the people directly involved. They will be the judge.
This is because you are weak and stupid.
We still have infanticide, it’s called condoms, pills and abortion.
I suspect you are thinking, at least partly, of hebephilia which is a word, dictionary and also the natural order of things. What we have now, with women fucking around and not getting pregnant for the effort, and waiting till 30s to think about having kids, is unnatural and damaging to everyone involved.
Cannibalism gets a pass. One out of four aint bad.
Many humans today, including some of us here, live lives not worth living. Human sacrifice at least ended the pain, and set an example for others to know not to do that thing that the sacrificee did. It was a tool to maintain social order.
This is the image I get when I think about “oldfashionedfellow”
Condoms and the pill prevent conception, they don’t end it. And yes abortion is infanticide, but that’s because our culture has largely drifted away from a belief in the value of humanity, and now it accepts it as a utilitarian means for selfish action.
“What we have now, with women fucking around and not getting pregnant for
the effort, and waiting till 30s to think about having kids, is
unnatural and damaging to everyone involved.”
I agree.
Our culture is wicked. And I feel the pain of many of you out there who feel as angry and betrayed as you do at how our society has acted.
If you believe you have no answer to live, the answer is not to give up, but to find an answer and begin the hard slog of fighting against that which caused such desperation.
I don’t believe that answer is to be found in Nazism or other related Pagan cultural faiths.
I don’t know you and you don’t know me. And it’s foolish to make up your mind about someone after a brief internet exchange.
The spartans actually did things better than modern contraceptives. We kill our unborn children indiscriminately, they only killed the degenerate ones. This resulted in an overall healthier population.
Perhaps it did, in a utilitarian sense. But the health of a culture, I believe, should be measured not how it treats its best citizens, but how it treats its worst and its weakest. That may be a point of separation on values. I believe in the innate value of all human life, Imago Dei.
“A stalemate, might have done that, as it had in the WWI.”
Stalemate?
Are you serious?
This is the rail train that the Germans surrendered in after world war 1.
Afterward, France sold Germany out at versailles.
You obviously don’t study history.
Fuck your values. What matters is survival. A society that exalts weakness and degeneracy will not last. What matters is strength and pride and honor. Without promoting and focusing on those virtues, a culture dies. Simply from lack of baby making. As we are witnessing.
“the innate value of all human life, Imago Dei.”
I knew you were YKW.
“Fuck your values.” A thoughtful retort.
The Spartans were eventually conquered; Christendom managed to last nearly two millennia, and I’m not giving up carrying the torch.
You can have strength, pride and honor without devaluing other human beings. It’s not an either/or proposition. You needn’t accept cruelty, to avoid being degenerate.
We should not promote degeneracy, I agree, and up until we got rid of the Christian faith….we didn’t. After all, the Spartans loved homosexuality and other perversions. Was that strength and pride?
And don’t suppose that a culture that is as utilitarian as you’d like it to be, won’t find you holding the short end of the stick.
“I don’t believe that answer is to be found in Nazism or other related Pagan cultural faiths.”
Ah, yes. The kosher sky god will save us.
I’m well aware of the problems with the Versailles treaty. But bear in mind that in the event of a protracted stalemate, the battles would not have reached either Russia or Germany, and there would have been no other powers besides the two, to enforce that kind of Versailles style truce that you would be concerned of. It would not have been an unconditional surrender by either side. In the best case, it might have been two sides with provisional governments, no longer interested in ideological struggles.
Evereyone was eventually conquored. That’s not a point against them. They lasted longer than any other civilization before they fell from internal degeneracy.
Religion is not a new invention. It merely changes shape over time. How long did our ancestors believe in Ursa the Great Cave Bear, you reckon? Also, we were talking about civilizations, not religions.
Explain what this means in concrete terms. What would you change, today as things stand, in order to improve society without hurting any of the feminists, gays, trans or other degenerates we live with?
Thats neither here nor there.
WWI started WWII.
And you hate non judeo-christians, obviously.
“They lasted longer than any other civilization before they fell from internal degeneracy.”
So if everybody eventually gets conquered, by the eventual acceptance of degeneracy, (this follows Durant’s thesis about the rise and fall of civilizations) then the discussion would become a comparison of which civilization, Spartan/other v. Christian, that you’d prefer. I think that there is a comparative advantage to Christendom versus the society that Sparta produced. I’d rather be an average person during most of the Christian era, generally, than one living in Sparta or among the Nordic tribes.
Maybe you think that’s wrong, but I don’t think an honest person can say it’s completely without any justification.
“without hurting any of the feminists, gays, trans or other degenerates we live with?”
That depends if you accept their definition of what “hurt” means, where not accepting their behaviors is oppression. I wouldn’t. By my reading, a patriarchal society with men as legal heads of the household, along with the re-installation of the laws and customs from years gone by, would help balance out the extreme power women have by virtue of their sexuality, to the benefit of all.
As for those of “differing sexual orientation” so to speak, I think we could go back to believing what we did just a few decades ago, where those perversions were considered twisted expressions of a natural human desire, where the behavior was disapproved by all facets of society as well as the greater culture, and where criminal penalties were still in place (as they were quite recently) to deter that behavior, at least in public. Not that we would go about breaking down doors to throw people in prison, but as a sign of disapproval by society to discourage the public expression of these behaviors. That doesn’t deny them their humanity, anymore than criminalizing and shaming adulterers.
I wouldn’t follow the Nazi/pagan path, and just kill them. I believe that’s pure evil. Behaviors of this sort may be deterred, like any other behavior harmful to society.
Christianity is not a civilization. Try again without that ridiculous idea.
“I wouldn’t follow the Nazi/pagan path and just kill them.”
“‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
◄ Leviticus 20:13 ►
You dont even follow your own faith, hypocrite.
It (did) unite the peoples of Europe, in a way that the Roman legions only did by totalitarian force. Rome had a civilization, everyone else just poorly copied them. Under the umbrella of Christianity, there was plenty of space to vary when it came to other cultural aspects.
“. Under the umbrella of Christianity, there was plenty of space to vary when it came to other cultural aspects.”
Rome started off and went hundreds of years without being christian.
You seem to forget that and only remember eastern rome.
So now we’re discussing the enforcement of Old Testament law? Why would Christ have died on the cross, if our salvation was still tied to following with perfection, the old Abrahamic code? There would have been no point to it.
You have a lot of anger in you.
I haven’t forgotten the Roman Empire.
There have been many successful empires in the history of the world, European and otherwise. The question was, which one would you have liked to live under?
It’s the whole point. Under those circumstances there would have been no one sided victory. You’re dodging now.
Why?
“4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Matthew 19 1-8
Thats why you hypocrite.
If god is perfect why didn’t he get the bible right on the first try.
Religion is a pretty dumb way to justify anything regarding physical reality.
Christianity is not a goddamn civilization. If you can’t at least admit that much then you are a waste of time.
Where did I disagree with the Gospel of St. Matthew?
Marriage is still marriage. Divorce is still forbidden. We just don’t put people to death for it. It’s still sin, but “revenge is mine, sayeth the Lord.”
I Would much rather live during the beginning of a nation than live during its downward spiral.
Yelling and cursing doesn’t make a point true.
What defines a culture? Views on morality? Viiews on a well lived life? Views on what constitutes success? The art inspired by that belief? Or is it just your language and what food you eat for dinner?
Well, we’re in agreement there buddy. This era certainly isn’t fun.
I find it funny, under pauline christendom, how modern pharisees, oops, I mean modern jesus worshippers think sin is okay because of what zombie jesus did or did not say.
Thats why christians are so evil.
“Christ” is a get out of the old testament fire and brimstone turnabout card. Yall can do anything and get away, because jesus….insane.
“Christians” can do no wrong.
Its like a license to steal.
The sin hasn’t disappeared. The punishment is no longer ours to deal out.
Don’t confuse Christianity, with Churchianity.
Language makes a culture.
State religions always destroy cultures.
“The sin hasn’t disappeared. The punishment is no longer ours to deal out.
”
Me thinks you read the bible babble wrong.
Matthew 5-7
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
The modern “anything goes” lifestyle comes from lax social reformation of degenerates, and allowing evil to continue.
Exactly, Christ comes to fulfill and to judge. We don’t. And I don’t agree with the “social reformation.”
“Don’t confuse Christianity, with Churchianity.”
Obscuris vera involvens
What paedophilia. Such practices involving prepubescents were not even codoned unless proven otherwise.
Language is indeed a key component to a common culture.
“State religions” do have the effect of destroying cultures, as evidenced by the binding of the Churches to the government policies in the Great War. Their support sullied the message of the Gospel and sundered the support they had retained among the populace.
If you’re determined to see it that way it is.
It depends what culture and at what time.
Nowhere in the bible does it say,
“And jesus saith, do whatever you want”.
The whole “died for our sins” is malarky and evil.
True. But one must keep in mind the clinical definition before condemning people for marrying young and below the age of 18 and after puberty. For example my grandfather married when he was 16.
I was pointing out the obscurity of the bible babble and its modern interpretation that allows christians to do whatever they want.
That is where our culture went down the drain.
“On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? 21Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? 22What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? Romans 9: 20-22
“Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker– An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth! Will the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’ Or the thing you are making say, ‘He has no hands ‘?” Isaiah 45:9
If men are sinful, then we could only expect heresy to result, when God’s word is left in the hands of men. That alone, wouldn’t reflect on its value and truth.
As a matter of fact here is the minimum age of marriage in Israel:
http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/marriage_age.htm
I hate theism.
You hypocrites need to just be killed off once and for all.
For the children.
Quite so. It didn’t say “do whatever.” And people who think it does…..
“Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in
Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform
many miracles?’ 23″And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’” St. Matthew 7: 22-23
His death for our sins, wasn’t license to break the law, but grace for our imperfections in following it. God’s law convicts us of our brokenness in sin (rebellion from God), God’s grace is salvation and deliverance from our imperfections/uncleanness before God’s standard.
With only the law, we become depressed at our ability to follow God’s will and regress into apathy and willful sin. Grace provides absolution.
With only the grace, absent the law, grace is just therapy, absent from any purpose. And God’s love would look empty, if the troubles of the world were not a result of our fall from grace in the first place. From which, grace delivers.
The balance between the two, is by design.
possunt quia posse videntur
If in the sense that men foolishly think they can mock God, then, yeah.
The communists you so despise were also godless, or perhaps it should be said, that man was their god. And the Romans, Greeks and pagans had many gods. If one is bad to you, why would many be any better?
Of course.
But the real tragedy, is the one happening to the planet and all life on it.
Even if the bible wasn’t full of contradictions and nonsense.
I’d rather not have to read through that whole thing, so summarize your point, if you will.
“Some call it Marxism — I call it Judaism.”
(The American Bulletin, Rabbi S. Wise, May 5, 1935).
Religion is the mother of communism.
What’s happening to it now, or that which has always plagued it?
Yep, pretty dumb. Done with you.
I’m not Jewish, but ell, I guess I’d disagree with that old Rabbi. Jews are supposed to worship God; Marxists worship themselves.
And that’s quite a leap from “Judaism” is bad, to “religion” is bad. Especially since pretty much every civilization has had a religion of some kind.
The 6th great extinction.
I know you are christian, and don’t care about the planet/life here after you go back to your sky god.
But I do.
This is why the population needs to lose 7 billion people.
http://time.com/3035872/sixth-great-extinction/
“His death for our sins, wasn’t license to break the law, but grace for our imperfections in following it.”
I can count the number of christians who think this on one hand.
Most jews worship themselves.
No different than most christians.
So this is all because of a Malthusian fear of planetary extinction?
Why would you care what happens after you? Why do you think you’d have any control over it one way or the other?
They may well be, but that doesn’t change what they’re supposed to do.
Which is what it comes down to; you can’t understand why it might be, so it isn’t so. So all of this was just a rehash of the limits of reason and faith.
I hope you find that reason to live. At least, I pray that you do. Take care.
So could Lot.
The minimum age of marriage for young women is 12 years and six months the age when they sexually matured and had their 1st menstruation from which they transitioned from girlhood and womanhood with the corresponding ceremony of ritual washing to mark the transition. And 13 years for young men after they have gone through the bar mitzvah which is basically a male initiation rite then they are considered young men.
That is the biblical age.
Ok, and? Our definition of paedophilia is outrageous. I wouldn’t marry off children at 12 necessarily, (though I had a great-great grandmother married at 14 in 1858), but they would be considered adults at that age, instead of being stuck in perpetual adolescence. But in many cultures, much younger kids were used as “lovers” by older men. In a Christian culture, that’s wicked.
“So this is all because of a Malthusian fear of planetary extinction?
”
Only humans matter in your book eh?
“Why would you care what happens after you?
”
I believe in reincarnation.
And fear the repercussions of my actions here.
Oh. No, the other creatures of the earth are, by my understanding and faith, created by God as well. Though I’m not quite sure why eating them, or letting other creatures eat them, is any worse fate than extinction.
Well, if you believe in reincarnation, then you’d have to believe in some “power” that would affect this process, would you not?
I agree, and I wouldn’t condemn it, necessarily. But there is such a thing as paedophilia, child abuse, call it what you will. It’s just that our definition of it has been broadened.
There is no “value of humanity.” Man is not equal. He does not have a generic value. He can be neither good nor evil. There is nothing European, Traditional or truthful about a Jewish cult.
“Though I’m not quite sure why eating them, or letting other creatures eat them, is any worse fate than extinction.”
Christians have never really accepted the planet they live on. Most of you hate the planet and look at enviornmentalists as pests to be exterminated. Perhaps this stems from pagan hatred?
Let me remind you of what befalls your kind….
Numbers 35:33-34
You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.”
”
There is no good and evil. Only weakness and strength, beauty and ugliness, order and chaos, truth and lies. This is the worldview of masters as opposed to that of slaves
Numbers 35:33-34
You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.”
”
Well, if you believe in reincarnation, then you’d have to believe in some “power” that would affect this process, would you not?”
I believe in free will.
And a lot of you bacon eaters will come back as pigs, and eaten by other pig eaters….
Its the nature of things.
Sure, we should be good caretakers of the land. I agree. Exactly what that looks like may vary.
How does free will affect reincarnation, a process that goes beyond reason?
There is no sin. There is only error. There is only a proper way and proper rites to perform to communicate with the gods. Superstition, sin and sermons are the way of the mob.
True. I agree. The trouble is in trying to avoid promiscuity go to the other extreme of frigidity. Whilst chastity is neither. But rather the channeling of sex into a monogamous stable relationship while remaining virgin until marriage. A strong patriarchal culture that teaches responsibility at an earlier age than currently as well as strong fathers able to safeguard their daughters from predatory men is needed.
The reason I cited this is fhe flagrant abuse of the word paedophilia in conservative media.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t hate environmentalists. (I may disagree with them on a few issues, but I don’t hate them). Hate is a strong word. In fact I don’t hate anyone. Hate consumes all. I may hate sin, but I don’t hate the person behind the sin. Or at least, I struggle not to.
And the witchhunt that ensues.
Ok, that makes sense. It is abused readily.
“Sure, we should be good caretakers of the land. I agree. Exactly what that looks like may vary.
”
Should have?
Or should now?
Like I said, christians disdain the planet. We reap what we sow though right?
“How does free will affect reincarnation, a process that goes beyond reason?”
Reincarnation is very reasonable.
Again, you reap what you sow.
Who transfers your “soul” to the new being, in the next life? If not a greater power, what scientific evidence supports that thesis?
“Who transfers your “soul” to the new being, in the next life? ”
The Vedics call them the “lords of karma”. People who die and come back (NDE) call them “angels”, or “jesus”. Lets call them “higher beings” for brevity.
“If not a greater power, what scientific evidence supports that thesis?”
A greater power exists, every angel has a job to do.
Ok, higher beings. Fair enough. That being so, I don’t understand your expressed hatred of theists? It would appear that you also believe in some sort of higher being, no?
“, I don’t understand your expressed hatred of theists? ”
I have come to the conclusion that a lot of christians, jews, and muslims are for the most part, demon worshippers. They have been hoodwinked into a false sense of religion. Don’t get me wrong. I believe most buddhists, hindus and others of various religions worship evil as we live on a prison planet/galactic insane asylum.
It is very problematic.
“It would appear that you also believe in some sort of higher being, no?”
I believe in free will.
I believe in higher beings.
I believe that the reality of free will negates the point of having “one god” who oversees everything.
That is a logical fallacy.
We are all made up of “god”, as eternal spirits.
Our bodies are made up of “god” stuff in the form of energy.
But there is no being at the center of it all.
Again, that defies logic.
Spartan women were whores and most of their men were fagots. The demographic situation stemming from their stupidness (women marrying in their 30s after “extensive physical training to acquire fitness aka slutting around) in believing in almighty State (children were raised by the State since 7) led to its demise.
I’d rather follow the successful societies (former West) than utter failures (Sparta, Greece, pagan Germanics, Babylonians et al)
Pagan Europe
would have beenis being is being overrun by Islam whilst Christianity and its values drove our civilization to its zenith and kept invaders at bay. Like Americans said nuff said and fuck you.Public schools are worse than I thought
Not only that but it has lead to innocent people being killed. And like false rape accusations should not be allowed to stand
Sorry. I no habla espanol.
Couldn’t agree more, let’s have some order here then. How about you’re next?
Actually we do, in a manner, have cannibalism. Aborted foetal cells are harvested and used in “medicines.”
“People who die and come back (NDE) call them “angels”, or “jesus”. Lets call them “higher beings” for brevity.”
I’m curious where did you source this information? Thanks.
Oy vey
“It was well that they killed each other off.”
in beevor’s follow-up book, berlin 1945, he says that the US army was poised to take berlin long before the soviets, precisely because the germans (SS excluded) were no longer fighting the americans, preferring to surrender to them. however, a deal was struck among the allies to allow stalin’s troops to take berlin, so the US army held up before making it into the city.
Yes, I know about the desire to get to Berlin and the pact with the Soviets to let them take it. As I recall, we opted to go after technological installations in Saxony and Bavaria. Maybe it would have been better to go all the way to Berlin; might have saved a few lives.
It would have been best to drop atomic bombs not only on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also on Leningrad and Moscow, and to then rout those Russian hordes from Europe.
It would have been best if you were never born. What a waste of semen you are.
German commanders in the east of Germany were already trying to surrender to the Americans. But do you know what? The Americans refused to accept the surrender of Germans beyond the line that they had agreed would separate the Allied zone of influence from the Russian zone of influence. The Americans, spurred on by that rat Morgenthau, wanted to hand the fate of the Germans to the Russians.
Traditional German culture was completely thrown off by the Treaty of Versailles, not the Nazi regime. And if you don’t see the apparent differences in standard of living between National Socialism and Communism from that era, you’re crazy
That’s amazing.
It is. Did you watch the movie? If you didn’t, it’s a great one. Shows what leadership looks like.
I saw the one from the 90’s and it was brilliant. I haven’t seen the ridiculous-looking CGI-fest that came a year or two ago.
Well, and don’t take this the wrong way because I admire Patton greatly. Patton was not a politician (as he said himself) he was a soldier through and through. He was the guy who made some of the toughest calls during the war, and out men through a meat grinder to win. He was not Bradley (a very good general in his own right) BUT one thing Patton had was a certain devil may care charisma. He wasn’t bashful, he would get dirty, but don’t necessarily expect it, he’s the general after all. He also had extremely strict discipline, and that’s not hard to maintain when things generally go well.
I honestly don’t know if he could’ve pulled off killing Stalin himself. He certainly would have tried, and put a rifle in the hands of any German who joined “his” army. One thing is certain, I don’t think the Russians could’ve held out again without our material support. Patton would’ve made the first Battle for Stalingrad (if he went there, he may have just enveloped it and starved the fuckers out, but he’s want to take it, soldier’s instincts) look like Sunday school if he thought it necessary. He wouldn’t have let his ass get bogged down and sent men through the grinder in any way possible to get it over with before winter is more likely. He was a true student of military history, and in no way would he want his ass in Russia fighting in the winter without being able to starve the commies out while his troops ate regularly.
Add in daylight bombing campaigns, the Finns looking for vengeance, and a couple nukes of necessary, and I think Stalin would have been killed and the USSR wouldn’t have existed by 1949.
Help the Japs and Chiang Kai-Shek (for their dishonor, they would have to take his orders, on the orders of MacArthur) and China never becomes communist.
Too much extra fighting though, at least another 4 years worth, and who knows if the people would’ve stuck through it all. That’s a long ass war and shitload of casualties all by themselves.
The Military Industrial Complex was ready for it.
Someone pulled the plug.
Patton was partially right. We should have annihilated the Russians. Too bad we had already been at war for so many years. Arm the Germans and the Japs and let them finish (with Allies) destroying one of the greatest monsters in history.
Edit: the Japs to finish off Mao in China. That would’ve been a beautiful fight as well.
Well, the end of that is:
Essentially, Operation Unthinkable.
I still wouldn’t have trusted the then Japanese gov’t to arm them. They would have had to have resigned or be replaced in a coup d’etat before I would have armed Japan to take on China or the Soviet Far East.
That was Herbert Hoover’s position in his book Freedom Forgotten. Let the Nazi and the Communists fight each other.
I hope you gonna rot in you grave with no one to remember you.
Stalin was a monster. The USSR would’ve been better off without. He sent millions to their deaths. Mao’s policies led to how many people starving again? The People’s Republic of China could have done better than that monster.
Stalin saved Russia from the Zionists who were murdering Slavs in millions. This is the main reason the Zionist media made people like you believe that he was a monster.
I see, no defense of Mao at least. As I have friends who grew up under the purges initiated by your bestest bud – whom you obviously didn’t know. They were ROC, and that church certainly didn’t fare well during the change from Tsarist to Communist. Many of their family members, not to mention members of the church leadership, were sent away never to be heard from again.
Keep calling it a Zionist conspiracy commie. I’ve got friends you wouldn’t want to share that opinion with, namely because they’d offer to give you the “Stalin tour of Archipelago” from which you would have the same chance to come back from as Comrade Stalin’s victims.
My grandfather fought at Stalingrad. Colonel, 138th rifle division, 62nd army. Спасибо деду за победу!
Out of curiosity, did he consider himself fighting for Russia or for the Communist Ideal? Did he ever mention what most soldiers’ feelings were on the matter?
I don’t know, I never met him, he died the year before I was born.
Oh, sorry to hear that. I suppose as a colonel, he was relatively older at the time of the war. My grandfather was 18 when he was drafted in ’44.
I’m sure you’re all thankful he played in a hand in turning all of eastern Europe into a communist hellhole
Better than a Nazi shithole.
And that’s coming from a monarchist, a natural anti-communist.
A Nazi shithole? Germany under National Socialism had one of the highest standards of living in the world at the time. The Great Depression which was ruining virtually every other Western country hardly put a dent in public life in Germany.
Germany took over many countries, if you haven’t noticed. Yugoslavia was not better off under Nazi occupation. Neither was Norway. Nor was Poland, France, and Soviet Union. Also Germany was not good to those who happened to be born to a certain race or condition which was deemed inferior.
The Soviet Union treated both its own populace and the nations it took over FAR more harshly is all I’m saying, I’m not sure why someone would be proud of that
I’m not. I am just proud of the defeat of Nazi Germany. I don’t like communism, being a monarchist.
You forgot Pavlov’s House.
Fat girls who dare walk around naked – heroes! Women who mutilate themselves to be men because they “always knew that was who they are” – heroes! Single moms who “don’t know where the dad is” (read: he’s in jail, she’s too ashamed to say so out loud) – heroes!
Fuck off, you degenerate low-lifes! The above-mentioned women are actual, MERIT-based heroes!
Time to play some Red Orchestra 2.
I always thought Shostakovich’s 8th, Stalingrad, was the metal of classical….
And some people actually think that war is “cool” “fun” and “glorious” until reality hits them square in their asses and they actually get shot at and having to endure the horrifically loud sounds of artillery landing right next to them while they are stuck in a trench sounded by thousand rats as big as their feet and having to watch their best buddy bleed out in font of them while they haven’t eaten in days.
If you go to the core of it.. war is done for the right to breed.
War is always for resources one way or another. Humans (especially women to breed and men to enslave for their cost free labor) with being one of those resources.
War isn’t cool, fun or glorious – it is necessary. All wars are caused by populations with vastly divergent interests or beliefs clashing. It’s like a pot, and at a certain point it must boil over. As long as there are two people in the world left alive, there will be war. It’s not fun, but it’ll happen again.
Some wars are necessary, not all, but at least we can say that war is the state of man, and will always be with us.
I do agree that war is necessary and wasn’t intently implying otherwise. But it should be a last resort if all other means fail. War should be taken very seriously, the Nazi’s(and now America) learned that the hard way.
As a kid, my grandfather used to show the pictures he took after surviving Iwo Jima as a Marine Sergeant. “That’s a dead Jap. That’s a dead Jap. That’s what’s left of a Jap…”
Atheist-on-atheist violence is especially brutal.
Sage-like reply. Well done Sir!
Gott mit uns, on the belt-buckle of every German soldier, yeah really atheist.
Moron.
That was actually German military tradition. The Nazi leadership mostly consisted of neo-pagans, atheists and some radical catholic anti-semites. They also tried to create their own spin of Christianity. Google “Positive Christianity”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gott_mit_uns#Usage
I have read about and studied the Battle of Stalingrad for 25 years (since college). Most of what I learned up until the public access to the Russian achieves after the fall of the USSR was total BS.
If you want some
truth watch this video.
The Soviet-German War, 1941-1945: Myths and Realities
Glantz lecture series
I am impressed that someone has brought Glantz up. I use to get to see one or two of his lectures in Columbus, OH at Origins each year. Unfortunately, that group stopped having him attend as a lecturer a few years ago.
I remember in one of the lectures that he mentioned he was more use to seeing the maps and source material in Russian (or German) and knew those designations better than the English ones.
One interesting thing I learned about the battle of Stalingrad that wasn’t mentioned here (although I think 2. alluded to it), was that the Germans took something like 90-95% of Stalingrad.
Then the counterattack started, and they ended up losing the entire thing. France may or may not have been involved. I’m not sure.
Fucking interesting regardless, though.
Not the battle of Stalingrad, but my Dad knew an older Gentleman who was in the Battle of the Bulge, the Guy would smoke his Cigarette holding the Butt between his thumb and Pointer finger and Cup the rest of his hand around the Burning End so you couldn’t see it, the story goes him and his buddies were smoking one Night and a German Sniper saw the the Glow from the Cigarettes and Shot one of the Guys in the Group, ever since then the he smoked his cigarettes like that.
Speaking of Night Witches…
Trypical anti-NS German BS on ROK again.
“the invaders who had spent the past two years busily murdering, pillaging and raping their homeland was predictable. Of the 290,000 Germans surrounded in November, 90,000 survived to be taken prisoner, of which only 5,000 ever saw their homes again.”
Operation Barbarossa was a defensive front as the Soviets were on the verge of invading the Reich. As a general rule, the Germans conducted themselves as gentleman, and it was actually the ALL-LIES who committed most war crimes.
“If it wasn’t for me you would be speaking German”
Firstly, if it wasn’t for the bulwark of Germany, Western Europe would have been speaking Russian, and suffered horrendous genocides at the hands of their Jew Bolshevik masters.
Finally, I would rather speak German rather than Urdu, as on current projections my grandchildren will most likely speak.
The so called ‘Suvorov’ (not a historian, not a scholar) book is not accepted by any scholar, be it the anti soviet British and American or the Russian.
There is absolutely no real evidence for what you stated, you probably also believe nonsense like how Eisenhower starved a million German troops right? You are probably a neo nazi too right?
Come back without the baseball hat on back-to-front you ignorant amoeba, then maybe we can debate.
I don’t debate with women, jews, nor fools.
You are obviously the latter.
hahahaha
Of course scholars will deny whatever goes against their version.
Question : Why do you think Hitler invaded Russia?
Of course there are different views among scholars, but the Suvorov’s version is not accepted by any scholar. Suvorov himself is not a scholar anyways, but a guy who stole his name from a legendary Russian general Alexander Suvorov, is not educated in history or other relating subjects, did not have an access to the archives and worked for the British intelligence.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Greater_Germanic_Reich.png
This was Hitlers vision for Germany. As you can see you can’t get there without attacking the SU. It was both for lebensraum and the ideological hostility towards Marxism.
Exactly Paine, if Stalin was on the verge of invading the Reich then where the hell were all the troops that could have fended off Barbarossa? Yes, smells of neo Nazism.
Informative OP. Love the Stalingrad in Winter and Situation Map graphics.
Cheers.
In Nazi Europe crime and feminism would be non existing. And I’m sure that after some decades the hotheads from the Nazi regime would have cooled down to an extent that even homosexuality would have been tolerated. As for warcrimes, those were committed by the US and Russia as well. In great numbers. Millions of women were raped by the Russians, conscripted German Soldiers killed in the Siberian gulags. Even the US hanged whomever they saw as a burden in the new puppet state Germany. If you were an officer chances existed that you would disappear after the unconditional surrender.
Being mostly libertarian I don’t like admitting that when I’m observing how Europe looks today demographically a German victory would have been a good thing. The last 70 years Europe is flooded with immigrants. We Europeans are supposed to think that is normal. Any white person laying claims to South Africa is laughed at because Africa is for Africans, Asia for Asians. But saying Europe is for indigenous white Europeans will get you an indictment for sure. Point is. Europe will be muslim in 200 years if we don’t stand up for the preservation of our own ethnicity.
As I said in the other comment – I am a Dutchman – I’m kind of rethinking the idea that it’s a good thing the Germans lost. At least with the Germans, Europe would have still existed a century from now. Our current future is one of balkanization and civil wars as far as the eye can see, with people who aren’t just foreign, but non-European and of a strange faith and culture.
We defeated the Germans, only to hand large parts of our country over to the Turks, the Moroccans, the Pakis, the Somalis, the Afghans and other retarded islamic goat herders. And it’s not just a crime against our people, it’s a crime against humanity itself. Mohammed and Ali aren’t going to find a cure for cancer or go to space, and yet we’re giving them and their families tremendous amounts of resources to expand and live comfortably.
We’re a cuckold nation, literally. We’re letting these strangers have their way with our money, our resources and our very future.
I have the same feelings you have. Now Dutch liberation day is coming forthcoming week (Mai 5th) and the veterans are parading thru the streets once more. I have respect for the fallen conscripts off all nations, resistance fighters etc. All did what they perceived as the right thing. But taking the Islamisation and Africanisation of Europe into consideration my respect for these “liberators” drops every year. They see themselves as guardians of freedom and democracy then and in the future. In the light of the current developments that is becoming more laughable every year. Maybe Nazi Germany was the last chance Europe had to survive in this world full of locusts plagues.
The mass immigration of Africans, Asians and other people of non-European descent is actually genocide. Yes genocide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Well, prase C is definitely applicable. Importing useless people into Europe to replace our elderly and keep the population figures up.
I am always amazed and fascinated in the same time by the German engineering. Things they were able to develop was 21st century stuff. And let’s not kid ourselves. The technological advances of the U.S. and Soviet Union in the 20th century were undeniably due to the same German minds.
A lot of ground breaking stuff was invented by Slavs and who knows, it might be one of the reasons Hitler was so afraid of them!!. Electricity/AC Current being one of them (Tesla) and the nuclear reaction by Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard. Even the rocket wasn’t a uniquely German invention. You have to put things into perspective and imagine a company where the manager takes all the credit. Germany did very well in organizing tight engineering processes and management principles… plus good old fashioned slave driving and exploitation 😉
Edit: some other Slavic inventions to consider:
Hand Held Radio: Henryk Magnuski
Theoretical Astronautics: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
The OIL INDUSTRY: Jan Józef Ignacy Łukasiewicz
Radioactivity (also first Nobel Peace prize and also a chick): Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Caterpillar tracks (for tanks etc): Dmitry Zagryazhsky
Electric railway (in Berlin): Fyodor Pirotsky
Helicopter: Igor Sikorsky
Solar Cell/Power: Alexander Stoletov
The list goes on… feel free to google, it’s all there.
All this was a precursor to Germany’s continued development of modern technology.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was exposed as a total fraud… he was a mentally sick nobody. look it up.
I’ll have a google. What about the other people?
there’s no doubt that many great inventions came from Slavs (Hungarians are not Slavs though). it’s just i recently learned the true story about Tsiolkovsky – and was surprised.
Yeah I’m still not 100% convinced about Hungarians or what they think they are. Genetically they are highly slavic but then so are many East Germans…
I get that Hungarians have an adopted language and part of their culture (which country doesn’t?) but is the base make up of Slavic stock?
To be honest, I think the world would have been a better place if the Germans had been able to finish Stalin’s forces off at Stalingrad and had been able to start paying attention to the western front. There might have been a National Socialist Europe (although it probably wouldn’t have lasted), but at least there would be a Europe a century from now. I’m by no means a National Socialist, but I think Leon Degrelle was right here:
The world will be a better place without euro-faggots like yourself. Im glad you’re doing a great job at making this happen. You should turn your female relatives in to the vibrant immigrant hordes. And just be over with your cuckload existance.
Good article. A technicality but there were no AK 47s used in WWII as intimated by the picture at the top of the article. AKs didn’t come around until after the war.
…and there was no Smirnoff vodka in the Soviet Union then either.
Hmm. Maybe my life isn’t so bad after all.
Great article!
This article is at least tendentious. Didn’t like at all.
Somehow, I think you learned a new big word “tendentious” and wanted to show off your new and expanded vocabulary. I’ll give you a hint about your new big word and the context in which you used it: everything written on this blog and everywhere else falls into the realm of opinion.
That’s called relativism, in other words: the denial of truths, only interpretations exist. Relativism is a marxist concept. And don’t worry, I speak spanish (natural born), english, portuguese and I’m learning italian right now. I always keep myself reading and learning, you should do the same.
That’s true Emanuel; it is relativism. And I, relatively speaking, only care about the continuation of my kin. To think you will get a Chinaman or an African to view history the same as you or me is unrealistic. There are some absolutes, but that falls under math and science, and even there we continuously find there are no absolutes.
Franz Boas and his “cultural relativism” was another infection of our society in my relative opinion, and Boas and his Tribesmen need to be done away with. I’m sure many here disagree with my relative opinion.
Im going to disagree with you relative opinion again. There are absolutes that go through every time or culture, they remain untouchable, and they are not only math and hard sciences. It is true: history and politics give place to opinions, but there are indeniable facts. When I said the article was tendencious, I meant that I distrust some of the concepts written here, nothing more and nothing less.
The are certain absolute truths in history of course. The battle of Stalingrad certainly took place, but what was so “tendentious” about the 10 points in this article. By just dismissing the article as “tendentious” without support or reason only lends to the veracity of relativism. You made a completely opinionated statement about this article. Your dismissal of the article being tendentious was entirely tendentious.
The article shows itself very anti-german to be honest. And other poster belows thinks the same way. It reminds me Mel Gibson’s movies portraying the english ones always cruel and miserable. I´m not dismissing the article completely, some of what it says It’s true, but It’s still tendentious. And I’m not validating relativism, you mistake my idea.
Well, thanks for fleshing out your intent more clearly. You can never go wrong in JRA by being anti-German.
I’m afraid that I don’t know the acronym JRA, so I cannot reply.
You really think that the world is better because the Germans Surrendered? What will the author write next? “Why yes means yes will be a good thing for the west” I am so sick of the infiltration of Return of Kings by Israeli shills.
Dont believe me?
https://www.google.com/search?q=israeli+pays+bloggers&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
one thing is true in your post: you are seriously sick (and so is anyone who liked your post).
Paulus failed to en – circle 300,000 Soviet troops on their way to Stalingrad. Hitler told him they must not get into the city. But for some bizarre and unexplainable reason, Paulus stopped and rested for two days, failing to en – circle and capture them. Also, Soviet spy Harry Hopkins, kindly gave the Soviets 11 billion Lend Lease loan to fight Hitler. In fact, the Soviets had ran out of tanks by 1942.
Hitler, the worst general in human history, who marched his own soldiers into certain death to let the russians win.
Second worst, had Stalin not engaged in his paranoid purges 1936-38 his top military men probably would have anticipated Hitler’s breaking of their non-aggression pact and had troops ready when Operation Barbarossa was launched in ’41. Hitler’s remarks about gaining “living space” in the east by invading Russia can be found in Mein Kampf, so his betrayal came as no surprise to many top leaders, including Churchill. Stalin was so surprised by the invasion he at first denied it then, thought his administration leaders and top military men were going to arrest him and have him executed. Neither of them was a military strategist and their idiotic leadership and blunders complimented each other. Too bad so many innocent people were taken along with them.
It was Stalin who betrayed Hitler. Stalin was ready to attack Europe. Hitler had no choice by forestall him by two weeks.
there way bigger problems with the Soviet army than those purges. you’re just repeating the official version from Soviet schoolbooks.
Had he not, the Soviets would have continued their assault westward, which was only growing stronger and stronger by the day thanks to billions of dollars (in 1945 dollars, mind you) of arms support from the US.
The Germans had guarded flanks and supply lines when they first marched into Stalingrad, and this was after massive Luftwaffe bombings beforehand as well. They were seemingly prepared well enough – as the author alluded to, though, it was large Soviet counterattacks that knocked out the German flanks and ended up trapping the German soldiers inside. Germany made numerous attempts to break back through but were unable to.
I always have wondered what would have happened had Hitler not gotten greedy and decided to keep the two armies he had approaching Stalingrad fighting together instead of sending one off on a wild goose chase. All the Russians had left in the area at that one point was one badly mauled and Army group that had had it’s morale broken. Germans occupying both sides of the Volga could have squeezed Russian oil supplies and made a huge dent in Russian military capability.
I always thought Stalingrad as being very good proof that you don’t alter your original strategy when it is working. For the Germans, that meant being superior locally and having superior mobility. They abandoned that at Stalingrad and Leningrad and it cost them beyond belief.
Minor problem with your “striving for intoxication graphic”.
The Kalashnikov (AK-47) depicted had not been invented yet.
Here is a more appropriate weapon for your graphic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosin%E2%80%93Nagant#World_War_II
The AK-47 was actually ‘invented’ post WW2 (basically a rip off of the German MP-44 that had started to appear late in the war).
The last picture is rubbish. Soviet people (russians,ukrainians,jews etc) have won WW2 not because but despite Stalin.Stalin is to blame for all the meaningless casualties and ill preparation of the Soviet army.
ps: both of my grandfather have fought 2WW on Soviet side,one took part in assault on Berlin, another one marched onto Austria.
German POW (about 58k captured in Byelorus) being paraded in front of public in Moscow.1944.
http://varlamov.me/2015/moskva1944/08.jpg
http://varlamov.me/2015/moskva1944/26.jpg
http://varlamov.me/2015/moskva1944/30.jpg
Same.Few of these men came back home alive.
http://varlamov.me/2015/moskva1944/23.jpg
Wow, this site is realy just cheap clickbait.
Great post. I have only one thing to add: 2 book that those so inclined may enjoy reading:
1. The 900 Days — (the siege of Leningrad)
2. Fighting in Hell (a German’s soldier’s experience from Barbarossa to defending Berlin — a quick but interesting read).
Both sides were filled with MEN. MEN who understood sacrifice and privation in a most intimate manner that most of us today cannot comprehend.
WWII was a tragedy and I believe after many years of studying it, that it was orchestrated by bankers for maximum profit. The killing of many Europeans (by each other) was just lagniappe, or an unplanned benefit for certain groups, who also happen to control the Central Bank, the media, and many politicians in this country.
One of the very dumbest battles in history.
Any soldier knows that urban warfare is a meatgrinder. And it negated all the German advantages in mobility,equipment, and training, But Hitler was an idiot and the Germans were suckers willing to follow his idiotic orders.
Bypass the city, surround it and let it starve and continue the actual mission (the oil fields to the southeast if I remember correctly).
How do you bypass a city supplying an army of over a million? How do you encircle a city when it’s divided by a river and has the only bridges capable of transporting an army over it for hundreds of miles, especially when your strategy is to capture that region? Hitler screwed up with the timing of the attack. Just like Napoleon.
This is a myth and probably promulgated by the Soviets as propaganda. The Soviet Military, just prior to WW2 was the most technologically advanced and well equipped military force in the World.
In general yes, however in that case the division was thrown into battle in the middle of a refit, so here it is actually true. It says more about the desperate state of the battle than the Red Army’s supply situation in general however, and may be the origin of the myth.
I agree that the Anthony Beevor book is a good read. To me, however, the most fascinating aspect of the battle of Stalingrad is the conduct of the German 6th Army commander, Friederich von Paulus. He was a fairly highly regarded officer before the battle. But Beevor makes the point that his operational judgment was flawed that he failed to maintain any kind of a mobile reserve to parry the Russian counterattack that he must have known was coming. He relied on Romanian and Hungarian allies to hold his northern and southern flanks. Their level of motivation was probably pretty low to begin with (just what does being on the Volga have to do with the security of Romania or Hungary) and their anti-tank capabilities were even lower. The Russian forces advancing to link up to the west of Stalingrad kept looking over their shoulder, expecting the German mobile counterattack (at which the Wehrmacht was quite good) that never materialized.
But it was after the encirclement that the character study of von Paulus becomes very interesting. He had to have known that his only chance to extricate even a portion of his army was to launch a counterattack to link up with German relief troops who got within about 40 miles of German lines around Stalingrad. It’s true that Hitler had ordered him to hold, but the orders were obviously suicidal and his immediate superior (Field Marshall Eric Manstein) was signalling him to break out, so he would have had that cover to present to Hitler as a reason for his disobedience. But he did nothing to break out and condemned troops who were among the best in the Wehrmacht to death or captivity. Granted, a break out in winter on the steppes was hugely risky, but the situation was already desperate.
The story of von Paulus really begs for a good theatrical production or screenplay.