Andreas

Nah, he is just trying to prove something. Not sure what.

You are a funny man - or maybe you are just a the typical 'I read this on a weetabix pack so it must be true' type of hobby-historian. So, please enlighten me on how Chruschtschow influenced operation Mars. I am all ears.

ROFL

Oh sorry - I did not realise it was me who is such an expert that I could not tell apart Rzhev and Stalingrad. Well thanks for telling me anyway. There is no shift in my argument. You are wrong, and you are clueless. I have said that from the start. It is very easy for you to disprove it - maybe you should make an effort to do so?

Where are your sources? Anything to back up your opinions. If you don't have any, or are not willing to show them, you are trolling in this discussion. You have stated your opinion, it has been challenged, you are unwilling to back it up but instead continuously shift the argument, probably to avoid the embarassment of admitting that you don't have a clue what you are talking about.

More tripe from you. a) Proper research = do not judge a book by its cover. The Glantz book I cited was simply an edited translation jobby of the Soviet general staff study on the battle, not one of his 'popular' works. c) Chruchtschow was nowhere near 'Mars', he was too busy taking credit for 'Saturn'. 'Mars' - operations against AG Centre in the Rzhev area. Do you know anything? You must be quite the expert, if you are unable to tell the difference. You are not just a troll, you are also clueless. You can not tell the difference between two of the most important operations the Soviets undertook in 1942, yet presume to lecture me on my choice of books. And you are an idiot if you think you can get away with pretending that you are worth talking to or that your opinion is anything anyone should take note of.

A - they can have my firstborn too, should there ever be one.

No. Still waiting for you to bring any sources. Unless you bring any, your opinion is tripe, and you are a troll.

So did the Germans when they were successful. The Sichelschnitt was based on the execution of the Anglo-French plan to move into Belgium in case her neutrality was ignored by Germany. Rommel had very good radio intercepts providing him with a lot of valuable information on the British.

I don't understand your point, to be honest. Yes the Germans did well. Part of the reason they did so well was that the others were not particularly impressive. So there is an inherent reason for the Germans doing so well (good operational leadership and planning, thorough implementation of combined arms warfare, willingness to take risks), and an external reason they did so well (the other side's leadership was not up to the job). If the Germans had just been great, they would still not have had these successes if the other side had been equally great. They needed bad opponents to carry out their plans in the way they did as much as they needed a good doctrine and good operational planning.

But what is different from those that post here and the casual player? If anything, the guys asking that pbem not be dropped are by definition casual players. BTW, check your e-mail </font>

One man turret.

So, what you are suggesting is that customers here should be more valuable to BFC than casual players? Do you want to multiply US$45 by the membership number or the post count to make that work for BFC?

No

Can we write it off as unexpected success against very bad opponents?

How dare you suggest the Slavic sub-humans were a patch on the Aryan super soldiers! Get with the starry-eyed Wehrmacht worship program you dolt! </font>

No Fall Gelb Sichelschnitt? No Weseruebung? No El Alamein? Dunkirk taken? It works both ways. Panzers on the beach in Normandy would not have changed things, except for some British infantrymen who would have died on the beach rather than near Caen.

No. It is very clear that for the first two years of the war, the Germans were fighting nations that were seriously unprepared for war. Also, many of them were significantly smaller nations that could not have been expected to resist indefinitely even if their armed forces been in tip-top condition and their populations united in hardened determination to fight. And those were the years when Germany's atacks were mostly succeeding with the drama that so enamours a certain kind of wargamer and history buff. Michael </font>

The former is in, the latter I am not so sure that the Red Army had lost the initiative by as much as they had during the former, so I would not count it as German offensive period. If you get my drift.

That's a scary thought.

No. It is not a beauty contest Tero, and I do not give a flying monkey's who won the pissing contest of 'I killed more than you'. I think that if you want to get an idea of relative operational capabilities, you are best off leaving the total outliers such as Barbarossa and the last two months in the Reich out, since they completely skew the picture, without adding any information of value - it is not at issue whether the Wehrmacht stomped the Red Army in 1941, or whether the reverse happened in the last few months of the war. We know that.

bigduke - email's in the profile, happy to have a chat with you.

Sorry, where except in your fevered imagination am I quoting you? I am paraphrasing you. Since you still do not give any sources, I stand by my conclusion about your attitude towards proper research. I have given you all the info you need to check for yourself whether my sources are valid or not. You however believe that a strong opinion based on what you read on the back of a fag packet for all we know is worth as much. There is nothing more to say about your opinion than that it is tripe.

Why is it that BFC and their shills say garbage like this? . </font>

I see - sources are not relevant in a discussion about history. Oh well, learn something new every day.