Foxbat

Thanks for the answers, seems like my own guesses were actually rather optimistic Still I suppose it makes sense for an offensive grenade to have a small blast range (10 meters, yikes!) so you can drop it in the trench and jump into the fray immediatly after. And for that you'd need accuracy rather than range I s'ppose.

Wow.

From: <a href="http://www.nachkriegsdeutschland.de/p_paul_carell.html" target="_blank"> Paul Carell alias Paul Karl Schmidt, War and Post-War career of the PR-chef of the Nazi Ministry of Foreign Affairs.</a> Translation: "His [Carrell/Schmidt's] likenamed bestseller [Operation Barbarossa], that is being reprinted to this day, has shaped the view of the war against the soviet-union in post-war germany: It was a clean, neccesary and comraderly war. A war in which there was german heroism, rather than massmurder. The SS was nothing more than a fighting force, only once on page 439 is there mention of an SS that is fanatical and fearsome: "Stalin's SS, backbone of the statepolice and secret service (...) the NKVD-troops". Carell's "Operation Barbarossa" does not waste a word on the Nazi-exterminationpolicy. His work begins with a two-page citation of Hitler's day-order for the attack, in which the thesis of a pre-emptive war is brought forward, according to which the Wehramcht had seemingly only beaten a Red Army invasion to the punch" Translation mine, so not entirely literal. [Edit: I guess 'Unternemhmens Barbarossa' was translated as 'Hitler Moves East', 'Operation Barbarossa' is the photobook] [ January 01, 2003, 12:06 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

Oh don't you just love it, "Carrell"'s background can't have been hidden since people have exposed him or are telling others about his background. Circular logic at best. But tell me what does it say on the backflap of a Carell book? "Paul Carell (real name Schmidt) was a ranking nazi officer who during the war published Nazi propaganda that was presented as interesting and readable lecture on the war." I don't think so. I strongly urge not to keep up this "You are a frigging delusional moron so shut up already" line of reasoning. Have you seen those wartime Signal mag's? Do they contain OBVIOUS nazi propaganda? No then I must be a ****ing idiot to think that the nazi propaganda machine had an agenda when they spread them in a dozen languages and enormous numbers. In fact I must be completely delusional because I think I can see right through The Nazi Propaganda campaign and guess their "hidden agenda" A few points: 1) I've never claimed Carell's books were the "best" books on the eastern front. I've said that are very good, readable descriptions of combat on the eastern front from the German point of view. But certainly anyone wanting to know the full story of the war must study many more sources. Carell alone won't cut it; 2) Carell's books are not the most "widely read" books on the eastern front, nor do other books on the eastern front "languish in obscurity" in relation to his; 3) I would actually be MORE LIKELY to read "Archbuckle's" book if I knew his true background. I think it would be fascinating to see a former Soviet official try to defend the regime (and, in fact, there are such books). But, again, I'm not claiming that an author's background is irrelevant. I'm simply saying that an author's works should not be rejected out of hand simply because of his background.</font>

Now that is the main problem with "Carrell", he has kept his identity and background hidden. He has in fact actively fostered the idea that he was a neutral observer.. no it could all be in my mind but I can only assume that the reason for that is to prevent people from reading his books with that awareness.

If it's not readable then I don't think I'll buy it. An unreadable book can be a real problem.</font>

? I assumed that you brought up Solzhenitzin because of his desciption of the Gulag archipello :confused: Anyway, the point is Solzhenitsin does not hide his background or beliefs. Now imagine the following: a book comes out by John F Archbuckle on the Gulag that shows things in a much better light, in fact shows that all those construction works were a good thing, most guards cared for the men put in to their custody and that all bad things that happened were caused directly by stalin and a small number of NKVD hardliners. Assume also that this book is the most widely read book on the Gulag while Solzhe's books are languishing in obscurity (oh and Archbuckle's real name is Ivan Schlapusnivik, former head of the departmnent of the interior). Would you think that situation would be objectionable? Would you think it would be a good thing that people were recommending Archbuckle as the bbest book on the Gulag? Would you yourself recommend the readable Archbuckle book over the often long-winded and "unreadable" Solzhenitzin books? I guess you missed the reference, the reason Schmiddt calls himself Carrell is to create the impression of distance and relative neutrality.

So if it doesn't say NAZIST PROPAGANDA, INCLUDING THE LIE THAT THE WEHRMACHT DID NOT PARTICIPATE IN THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF RUSSIA on the cover I could never know.. heck I must have imagined it all. In fact I reckon I should reread every book I ever read and take everything literaly from now, otherwise I'm just projecting my assumptions on someone else's writing. So I guess Carrell's propaganda work in ww2 is just as harmless as his later books? After all the goals I imagine Nazi propaganda had is only achieved if the reader accepts it. Fictional accounts, that paint a schewed picture of the war. Of course it is not important to know that to evaluate the book, after all that would make it important to know who wrote it. I guess you missed it, but it was already commented that the memoirs of Guderian et al are just as schewed, but that that is a lesser evil as you know who they were. In your case I assume the North Korean propaganda was not published as "New York Weekly - the US's first and foremost weekly magazine".

Yeah I really distrust that guy, after all he has tried to hide his identity and background from us and he wrote his books based on fictional accounts of what happened in the Gulag.

IIRC Carrell says that Rotmistrov was fired because of his defeat at Kursk, that is just a small example of something slightly twisted to add an air of veracity to the gist of his story. His descriptions of small unit actions are also often either pure fiction, or "inspired by" Signal stories (which in turn were based on embellished after-action-reports) and again used to add an air of truthfullness to his pov. As propaganda goes it is relatively subtle, but it does achieve his goals. Now I expect you are going to ask me what his goals were, well for one thing he is saving what could be saved by turning Hitler in the SS into scapegoats for every mistake/massacre in the war thus drawing fire away from the Wehrmacht, the OKH and the glory of the army's successes. He also paints a rather dark picture of the bolshevik hordes, again on idealogical grounds.. Now you would expect such stances from a german officer or a member of the nazi bureacracy, but an english historian is obviously a fairly neutral observer [ December 31, 2002, 01:53 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

Ok short summary so far: Carrell hid his background in orther to decieve us into thinking that he did not have an agenda, he also hid his agenda well and there are no obvious references to endorsing nazism. People who object to that are attacking the pesron not his work, thus they are bigots. I would write more but I'm off studying the war by reading Signal magazine, Signal doesn't have any obvious nazist connotations and rather convincingly brought as 'the real picture of the war' so it can't be wrong, or nazist (not that that is a bad thing, I guess...) [ December 31, 2002, 01:51 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

Or is short: "Stalingrad" is much like "All quiet on the Western Front", except Plievier never recieved the same critical acclaim because he was 'a commie who wrote his book for Stalin' or 'a traitor who wrote defeatist literature after fleeing to the west'.. depending on which side you were on

So? In 'Stalingrad' he hardly writes about the Red Army. He writes about the german soldiers in Stalingrad based on personal interviews (not embelished AAR's) and captured personal documents (letters home mostly). He knew these guys, and he wrote their story.. the Red Army is treated very cursorily for most of the book, existing mostly as a force that shapes the german soldier's enviroment. The liberation/capture of the remaining germans in Stalingrad may be over the top at times but I always felt that that was the only way the book could end, it was the light at the end of the tunnel that showed that besides the path of darkness there is also a path of light (sappy but true, and in a way 'Berlin' is the anti-thesis as it shows how the paths of light and darkness converge as the Red Army's path to Liberation becomes a path to occupation). Of course he gave his book to the censors (as was mandatory to get anything published at all) and they thought it was a good idea to publish it as-is. He later moved west and never bothered to add the missing/surpressed passages or rectify the few passages that really deal with the soviets. So I don't see that he changed his view because of 46-7. Moscow is about the Red Army hence the Red Army gets the same work-over that the german army got previously. I don't see that as related to his change of allegience, 'Berlin' OTOH... Berlin is I think supposed to be about Berlin before and after the liberation, but it seems much more hurriedly written maybe he wanted to get it done before his time ran out...

It does look somewhat impressive, but it really is just a very big BT that can't shoot it's gun at you if you approach it from the right-front.. a PSW should be panzer enough to kill it

I think I have a pretty good idea of the effective throwing and blast ranges of pine-apple type grenades, but the german Steilhandgranate is so different from modern stuff I'm not sure how it would work out. I guess you could probably accuratly throw them up to 50 meters, the handle should give it slightly better range then a normal grenade but not extremely so. And I wopuld guess that effective blast range would be 20 meters max, with kill range being nearly point-blank only. That's my guesses, but what's the truth? [ December 29, 2002, 12:47 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

A T-35 heavy tank. Technically yes, but only if the tank is surrounded [see link for a picture of the fields of fire of the turrets], besides 2 of the small turrets are MG turrets. 8 men, and a link: The Russian Battlefield, T-35 It was about as mobile as a fortress too

Ok, I see what he's getting at. I thought he meant relative to the red army's percieved needs (like for example with tanks, where the Red Army had only 10% of it's nominal amount of modern tanks). But I now see he means that the was left bereft of automatic weapons through the meddling of officials, and that certainly seems to have been the case. For example the new Degtyarev medium machinegun was taken from service and replaced by the old maxim (and not the Goryunov model that had just become available) two weeks before the invasion :eek: The Vuvodin pistol, although essentialy available a year before the war, was never adopted because trials dragged on too long. And worst of all (and probably what Werth is referring too) the Shpagin submachine gun had passed the most exhaustive individual and comparative tests in late 1940 and was almost immediatly adopted, but even though production was simple and effective and could be carried out in spartan circumstances by untrained workers output of these weapons was the basic squad only had two of these weapoons (if they were lucky) and the official organisation called for these weapons to be distributed mainly to special SMG companies, leaving the regular rifle squads without the automatic fire capability they could, and should, have had...

It wasn't rare in absolute terms they made 1.3 million SVT's mostly pre-war as production essentialy ceased in 1942 and well over 50 thousand of the preceding Simonov rifle (as Bimmer said, not rare in terms of rifles available on the surplus market). But the intention had been to equip the entire infantry arm with these weapons (and some selected units were), but in reality this was scaled down to two per squad. And since the rifle was being disributed with a preference for more specialist units that had a longer training time (and thus could be expected to properly handle the weapon in the field) a regular rifle squad was lucky to have even it's two designated SVT's. Btw: since you actually have an SVT could you share some of your experiences with us? [ December 29, 2002, 11:01 AM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

Good point, most soldiers probably didn't know you had to clean the SVT, and if they did they probably did not know how. Instructionm was always lagging behind because of the large intake of new recruits with every wave of conscripts, and the fact that the instructors-to-be were also conscripts from the previous wave. Now imagine you are tought and instructed how to use, maintain and clean a basic rifle and you are given an SVT. Obviously you will treat it like a rifle and the gas-operating system (that you know nothing about) will clog quickly and the rifle will become unreliable and even stop working after a few days. Now for the naval infantry this was less of a problem, cleaning things is a mariners day-job so they were probably thoroughly instructed in keeping their weapons clean, presentable and thus functional

I reckon he means after the invasion, the Red Army had quite a few SVT's and PPSh's and tons of machineguns on the eve of the war.. but most of them went AWOL rather quickly. And most units after june were newly raised or reformed units and the russians had a hard time finding enough rifles to equip them, let alone automatic weapons. In fact the SVT and one of the previously common Degtyarev LMG's were officialy dropped from the squad TOE.

To model plundering, looting and worse will be possible only after the engine rewrite.

"A war without Garands" - An american's guide to the eastern front, by J Doe. Well it is a good idea anyway.

It wasn't Schmidt but Theodor Plievier, a commie rather than a Nazi. You'd never goes from the books though, probably because life in eastern germany shortly after the war soured him on Stalinism somewhat. A short review of his Stalingrad book (in german): Stalingrad (theodor plievier) Or to quote Nick Cave: And I wish that I was made of stone So that I would not have to see A beauty impossible to define A beauty impossible to believe A beauty impossible to endure.. [ December 28, 2002, 10:01 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

It's right in front of me on the desk.. I just don't have a scanner and it's driving me nuts :mad: The pics (piclettes?) are sorta like thumbnails, they are only 2x2cm (they do have have better detail then the decal sheet) and I'm not sure how well they can be enlarged.. but here's hoping. You really are a heart-warming kind of guy, always a kind word for anyone.. I'm touched.. That is if you are[ a guy, if you're in reality a woman who makes mods for tanks in a computer game expect my marriage proposal to arrive via express mail I guess I've found a a nice niche But I really should update more often/at all, but I won't have any time until next year Luckily that's less than a week from now Any tank unit could recieve the honorary guards title, and if they did they would have the right to paint the guards insignia on their tanks. This was not generally done because such insignia tend to stand out or break-up the vehicle's [drab green] cammo, but it was done if the unit thought it was good idea (especially if they had Lend-Lease or captured tanks that friendly AT-gunners may not have been familiar with ). So you could make it an option on all types of tanks except the M39/40 models (no Guards tank units before november 41, by which time all pre-war models were destroyed in combat or abandoned in the now occupied territories). [ December 28, 2002, 08:42 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

This thread just hit the bottom of the first page, and the sound it made was something like this: Bump.