dgaad

The assessement of the reviewer, while unkind in some aspects, is right on target with respect to game balance, and historical and economic accuracy, unfortunately.

To say nothing of the "Minds of the East". note : "also case in Soviet War in Afghanistan" Gigantic Contradiction : on the one hand you say that bomber damage is overestimated by crews and military / political leaders. On the other hand you say that bombing against economic targets becomes "step by step" bombing of civilians because the damage to economic targets doesn't happen. How do the military or political leaders know that economic damage isn't happening if the damage is always overestimated? Why do they switch to civilian bombing? Your logic is so perverted it can only be called wish-wash. What happens at the bitter end? Do they keep fighting to the other bitter end? Like, the bitter bitter end? Or, maybe the really biting sour bitter bitter near term bitter end? Your thinking is also years old. In fact, its proponents are now mostly dead. Also, look at your own SIG : "we must overcome this lag in 10 years or we will be crushed". This is a Stalin quote from 1931. You mean, comrade, the lag that Stalin himself introduced into the Soviet Union? You mean the lag that came about as a result of Comrade Stalin's destruction of the NEP? The NEP which had cause the Soviet Economy to be growing at a faster rate than all Western economies in the 20s? Or, the other lag introduced by "spies and saboteurs" obviously working for the Capitalist Exploiters?

OMG you don't even know about Giulio Douhet?

John : love your name. Would you try to work out a balance of power arrangement with someone who had made repeated public statements over a long period of time that indicated their main goal in life was to crush you and everything you represent and enslave or exterminate your people? By the way, feel free to be me vicariously by posting anything I say here to that NG. [ October 16, 2002, 08:47 PM: Message edited by: dgaad ]

I generally agree with the notion that the Soviets could have defeated the Germans in the long run, but only in the context of the US and Britain remaining in the war, and thus providing a potential threat of invasion. As you may know, Some 50 German divisions were deployed in France and Western Europe by 1944 (not including the 20-odd divisions deployed in Yugoslavia fighting the Partisans there), BEFORE the D-Day Invasion, most of them at full strength and a large portion of them quality units. Had the *potential* threat of invasion been non-existent, these 50 divisions would have balanced the ratio of force on the Eastern front to the point of stalemate -- ASSUMING, and this is a big assumption for the Germans in 1944, RATIONAL use of that force. This is a bit of propaganda mixed with half truths. The Soviets were on the "pre-war" Polish border, not the Demarcation line, and this itself was only a tiny portion of the prewar Polish border. The Germans still held Minsk and all points north of that, right up to Leningrad. In the south, the Ukraine and South Ukraine, the Soviet Winter offensive of November 43 to March 44 had largely stalled out in the Lvov / Carpathian border, and along the Bug. The Soviets did not push substantially over to the Demarcation Line (also known as the Curzon Line) until after the Destruction of Army Group Center offensive which began on June 22, 1944 (18 days after D-Day). Not quite true. The Germans had a full Corps in Africa starting in 1941 before Russia was even attacked. There are several instances of the Germans pulling out one, two, or more, high quality formations from the Eastern Front to meet a potential or actual threat in the West. The Kursk offensive, according to Manstein, was halted because of the order by Hitler to transfer several panzer divisions to the West to take over and defend Italy which was at that point near to collapse, and had to be defended against the threat of invasion (which occurred in September, 1943). I don't necessarily agree with Manstein here, but it is a fact that Hitler ordered these formations to the West while the Kursk battle was still in progress, and his stated justification was as I (and Manstein) have said. Moreover, the successful offensives by the British in November 1941 caused the Germans to redeploy an entire Luftflotte to the Mediterranean, or about 1/3 of all German airstrength in Russia. These figures are over inflated on both counts. Germans suffered approximately 8.5 million casualties on the Eastern Front. The Western Front accounts for approximately 2 million (when surrenders are included). Soviet battle casualties and surrenders are about half the value you quoted. The total casualties to the Soviet Union are on the order of 25 million for the war, if you also include civilian losses due to starvation and extirmination programs in German-occupied areas. Now, this type of statement is one that would cause a historian to begin to doubt your objectivity. There were elements of FIVE SS panzer divisions that fought in the area of Market Garden, a couple of Panzer Brigades, elements of two or three Wehrmacht Panzer division cadres, and some elite German parachute divisions. You are slipping down the slope of objectivity and going straight into bias. Please do some serious research on the deployment and nature of German formations in the West prior to the D-Day invasion. Very sloppy wording. British/CW and US production was about 5 times Soviet industrial capability. If you mean they carried the brunt of combat in WW2, you are correct. Highly debateable, but a point with which I personally agree. This is indeed an indisputable fact, if you mean battle casualties. Largely true. Also largely true. You are climbing back up the slope of bias and approaching quasi-objectivity. I don't really understand what you are trying to say here. Something that is characterized as "probably true but impossible to prove." is a can of worms and probably has no place in a serious discussion, except as hypotheticals to illustrate points about which we have more solid facts. [ October 16, 2002, 08:42 PM: Message edited by: dgaad ]

I award this post the "MOST RELEVANT QUESTION IN THIS THREAD" prize. Seriously.</font>

Sogard : In the first place, the idea of the "conventional wisdom" of either that period in history, or the "main thinking" of historians, is not entirely relevant. Look at what EB is trying to say : that Stalin was wise (and even "humane"). If there was ANY possibility of Germany winning a victory in the West, surely the wisdom of permitting even the roll of the dice was patently stupid, from an objective strategic view of Russian interests. The alleged "wisdom" of Stalinist policies, both domestic and foreign, simply does not stand up to even a remotely objective analysis. Stalin quashed the NEP (designed and implemented under Lenin) program in the 1920s, and concomittantly sent to the Gulag or executed most of the best economic minds in Soviet Russia at the time, Bukharin and others. At the time of the assault on the NEP, Russia was actually approaching pre-WWI production levels in nearly all areas, for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution. The subsequent economic crisis which obtained in the late 20s and early 30s was due almost entirely to Stalin's domestic policy, which was driven by the personal self interest of the Stalin clique. The Great Depression actually had very little impact on the Soviet Union because they did relatively little trade with the West in the first place. In the environment of precipitously dropping agricultural and industrial output, Stalin did not relax punitive controls on the economy, much less re-institute the NEP or some other similar policy. No, instead Stalin increased punitive controls on the economy, virtually outlawing any concept of private property. Private garden plots, of no more than 1/4 acre, that were being grown by individual families in the countryside to keep themselves from starving, were torn up and outlawed, and millions of individuals were sent to the Gulag for this tiny attempt to keep their children from starving. They were called "Kulaks", subjected to a trial by mob, from which their was little hope of survival. And, Stalin went even further. Punitive economic controls didn't seem to turn things around, so the only explanation must be (in the Stalinist view) sabotage by the West. By 1933, the Soviet Union was replete with paranoid mania in which neighbor accused neighbor of saying bad things about Stalin, and millions more were sent off to the Gulag or executed outright. It was in this period that most of the remaining Old Bolsheviks, who remembered something about Lenin's policies and approach (which, for all its ruthlessness, actually did encourage logical debate to some extent) were arrested, sent to prison for immediate or slow execution. In the climate of 1934-1936 it is estimated that some 20 million people either died of starvation, were sent to prison where they either died or languished. The Soviet Union could not feed itself, and the policies of Stalin insured that any individual attempt on the part of people to prevent starvation (such as the growing of a few tomatos in their yards or the hunting of a deer in the local woods) was punishable by imprisonment or death, since it was "obviously" an attempt to undermine Bolshevism or the power of Stalin's clique. Having failed to restore any semblance of rationality to economic life with this economy by coercion, Stalin began to suspect an even wider Western conspiracy to thwart Bolshevism. The Red Army was the prime suspect. Tens of thousands of officers were arrested by the NKVD, most never survived. There is a famous picture of Voroshilov at a Red Army conference in 1936, where he is surrounded by most of the leading minds of the Red Army of the time (most of whom had very innovative ideas about modern warfare), including Tukachevsky. Every one of the officers in that picture would not live to see the start of WW2, except the idiot Voroshilov. Having weakened Russia to the point of prostration by 1939, Stalin felt the desperate need to somehow protect his country against real external enemies (instead of imaginary internal ones), such as Germany. Western nations were now recovering from the Depression, and one of them, Germany, was led by a man who had made no secret about his desire to crush Bolshevism and colonize Russia. This was something Stalin had to take seriously. His response? A cowardly diplomatic manuver which fit right into German plans. I'm fully aware of the backdoor negotiations that took place all through 1939, as Europe began the slow but inexhorable march towards a conflict that the European nations had largely brought on themselves by retributive policies towards Germany. Stalin even discussed his general strategic view at the time with an American who was sent there a little while later by Roosevelt in 1940, and the record of these meetings are one of the sources historians have to attempt to understand Stalin's moves which in retrospect appear to have played into the hands of Hitler. But the Non-Aggression pact fails a logical analysis even if you factor in all of the assumptions of the time. Logically, the only way the Germans could threaten the survival of the Soviet state was if Poland and France were eliminated and Germany had no serious rival for miltary power on the continent. The Non-Aggression Pact provided the *opportunity*, though far from a guarantee, that Germany could do just that. Without the Pact, there was NO risk to the Soviet Union's survival in a strategic sense. So, the question is : why take that risk? Because Stalin was an illogical and flawed man, driven by paranoia and a very poor understanding of potentials and human motivation, interested primarily in the subordination of all Russians to his own person and skewed ideas about social and political organization. The Pact only makes sense to minds similarly limited. If Stalin had perfect hindsight, the Pact makes no sense either. If he KNEW that Germany would defeat France, he would not have agreed to the Pact because it was the Pact that enabled Germany to concentrate all her forces on the French front. If he didn't know that Germany would defeat France, why allow her the opportunity at all? It doesn't make any logical sense. It only makes sense to a paranoid psychotic. Stalin's postwar policies fit in the exact same pattern. There were accusations of plot after plot against Stalin, the most notorious being the "Doctor's Plot". Tens of thousands of more people were sent to the Gulag. Stalin wanted Yugoslavia in the Warsaw Pact, and wanted every aspect of Yugoslavian domestic, economic, and military policy to follow the Soviet model. Even the Yugoslavs could see the stupidity of this, and bravely refused. Even the Chinese, who under Mao were equally willing to be unscrupulous and implement idiotic economic ideas, couldn't stand Stalin's unbridled craving for control, and wisely put some distance between themselves and Uncle Joe. E.B.'s posts are straight out of history books written and published for Soviet elementary schools in the 1950s. No wait, that's not true. The Pact was suppressed history until the 80s. This great and wise move on the part of Comrade Stalin was so embarassingly stupid that it was erased from history by the Soviet Regime, until the period of Detente and, later, Peristroika. By the way, its not the only thing that Stalin did that was similarly "erased". [ October 16, 2002, 08:14 PM: Message edited by: dgaad ]

I award this post the "MOST RELEVANT QUESTION IN THIS THREAD" prize. Seriously.

But, they did receive British help. But, they did receive enormous amounts of US help for two years prior to Italy's surrender. The USA received NO help from Russia in the defeat of Japan.

The didn't share a border until Uncle Joe himself agreed to a divsion of central Europe that put half the space between the Baltic and the Black Seas in direct contact between the Soviet Union and Germany. Or, alternatively, the Soviets would not have launched their invasion of Finland in November 1939, and instead used the resources wasted in that war to further prepare their own military for defense. Or, alternatively, the Germans would not have invaded Poland in the first place because they had no guarantee that they would not now and thereafter be involved in a two front war, which had been the bane of all German strategic planning since Frederick The Great. Instead, Stalin gave Germany a free hand to fight a one front war against first, Poland, and then France. The German Army could not have invaded the Soviet Union without the direct assistance of the Soviet Union to clear the Continent of all belligerent forces. The German army was in NO position to attack the Soviet Union in 1939 or 1940, assuming no Non-Aggression pact, they simply did not have the forces to guard in the West while attacking East, or vice versa. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, they had approximately 35 combat ready infantry divisions, 6 panzer divisions, 4 light divisions, and a few miscellaneous divsions such as one cavalry division, 2 motorized divisions, and so forth. These were totally inadequate to guard both the West and the East, much less guard one front while attacking another. Only a rapid victory against Poland and the guaranteed security of one front thereafter would have enabled a concentration of force sufficient for offensive action. Stalin's agreement with Hitler allowed exactly what the Germans needed to conduct these strategic allocations of force. What utter nonsense. Obviously you've never heard of the extensive negotiations between England, France, Poland, and the Soviet Union which occurred during July and August of 1939. Stalin took Hitler's offer agreement because Hitler offered him the one thing the Allies could not : extensive tracts of Polish, Estonian, Latvian, Romanian, and Lituanian territory. It was craven. It was also stupid because Stalin did not anticipate or expect the Germans to succeed against the West. In fact, it was Stalin who hoped the Germans and the West would weaken each other by fighting while HE watched. Unfortunately for him, things didn't turn out that way. Nope, still don't see it. Perhaps some more literature from the Agitpunkt would enlighten me.

Jeff, how sadly misguided you are. Stalin was the greatest man in all history. We all know that the Purge of the Soviet Officer Corps insured that only "reliable" officers would be in command of the Glorious Red Army. This is proved by the fact that no one deserted from the Red Army except the criminal Vlasov and about 5 million other Red Army troops. We all know that a nation preparing for war is MUCH STRONGER when you kill off about 20 million unnecessary people over a four year period of industrial reorganization. We all know that sending millions of people to the Gulag for crimes such as accidentally stepping on a photo of Stalin while cleaning a room makes all citizens much more patriotic and willing to die to defend the only person who truely understands the needs of proletariats : Josef Stalin.

I agree. The assessment problem is a classic logical problem of "proving the negative". Germany's war economy was expanding at a tremendous pace starting in late 1941 after the Soviet counter-offensive (though not as rapidly as the US war economy would expand starting in 1943). The growth rate in the German war economy was *slowed*, not reversed, by the SBC. Only after the destruction of infrastructure and transportation reached a critical level in Germany in the Fall of 1944 did Germany's industrial potential begin to decline dramatically.

It would not have been necessary to prepare for a war of survival against the Germans if Stalin had not agreed to let them crush Poland and France in the first place. It also enabled the Germans to concentrate their full military industrial might against France, England and the West. This may be a hard concept for you to understand EB, but the leaders of the time, particularly Hitler and Stalin, were thinking in *strategic* terms. Strategically, Stalin knew that Germany would now turn West after the Non-Aggression Pact. This policy ENNABLED Germany to ISOLATE the Soviet Union on the Continent of Europe. The policy ENNABLED Germany to defeat the Soviet Union's western barrier in the form of Poland, which the Germans would have to crush in order to have access to Russia. These effect of the policy is much more important that giving the Soviet Union a few more years to prepare for war. Such a war would not have been necessary if Stalin hadn't made the agreement in the first place. An unnecessary gamble. Had Stalin not made the agreement in the first place, it would have been impossible for the Germans to concentrate all their military force against France, and consequently the war in the West would never have occurred, or devolved into stalemate. (side note : Yes the French surrendered without fighting. Right. The Germans suffered over 100,000 casualties in the Western Campaign due to bad bidets). Yes, I'm sure that after the surrender of France, old Joe recognized his mistake. He now had no balance against German power. He now had no army hostile to Germany on the Continent but his own. His own policy had allowed this development. The Soviets probably recognized the danger as early as November, 1940, and is evidenced by the famous meeting between Molotov and Hitler which took place that month. Stalin, however, remained in the realm of wishful thinking. He hoped that Germany would attempt to finish the war against Britain before turning to Russia. The moves against Yugoslavia and Greece, and the British in North Africa, must have appeared to the Soviets as a new strategy against Britain's Mediterranean position, not as what it was : the securing of Germany's southern flank for a massive attack against Russia. A concentration of force that Stalin himself had helped to bring about. Also, the poor performance of the numerically equal Red Army was due, again, in part, to Stalin's decimation of the Red Army officer corps during the Purges of 1934-1938, which incidentally also killed millions of civilians. [ October 16, 2002, 05:30 PM: Message edited by: dgaad ]

Oh, that's not all I trust. Their assessment is borne out by almost every other significant study and interview of those in a position to know about the German war economy such as Albert Speer, etc. Have you read Speer's memoirs EB? Have you read the Strategic Bombing Survey? Have you read Harrison's "Accounting for War" book, which is considered the most extensive scholarly analysis available in the English language regarding the war economies of WW2?

NOT BAD for the nation USSR, considering that they managed to build almost equally as much as USA, when they had the Germans stomping all over the place, and bore the brunt of the axis juggernaught, on Sovjet soil. Alot of their factories were simply burned to the ground or bombed to pieces. Roosevelt on the other hand, prepared the American factories for war, ahead of time. The Americans never hadto struggle with moving their factories away from Chicago and Washington, because the cities were getting shelled to hell. Remember that. When you guys are saying they ran out of manpower because they used 16 year olds in their military.... duud, heh. Please read the story of Leningrad. There you see that the entire civilian population, was vital to the defence of the city. My grandfather showed me pictures of grandmothers wearing AK-47's, of children throwing molotov cocktails, and little girls digging trenches. Thoose of you here, who read some book, disregad some facts and emphazise some others....it does not appear that you know what kind of war was waged there. It was total war in every sence, and the USSR contribution to the war cannot be underestimated, even if USA produced 50.000 more planes or whatnot. You guys want to compare USA to USSR, to prove that the USA ment so much more towards the goal of victory, and USSR didn't mean that much. You say "compare crude steel production so we can find out who contributed the most, and hurt the enemy the most". And you ( I can't be bother to look for nicks )try to laugh away the human contribution. Compare this. When the Germans attacked the Caucasus mountainrange in the summer 1942, unarmed Sovjet factory workers, volentarily strapped mines on their backs, and jumped in front of the German tanks as they approached their homes. How the hell can you compare that to anything? The axis juggernaught were blown up by some untrained, unarmed factory workers. Civilians who resisted. How much "production power" did you need to get thoose guys to actually stop the German tanks, and blow up the German crew? How can you claim that "nah they didn't produce X number of planes, so that doesn't matter...." Here are some figures for the lend lease. --------------- Lend Lease Aid; major recipients 41-45 Brazil:---------------- 230.957.000$ China :------------- 1.729.333.000$ Free French :------ 2.039.472.000$ USSR : -------------5.516.412.000$ Commonwealth : 14.296.120.000$ Think about the figures for awhile. ~Norse~</font>

Both Feld Marshal Rundstedt and Feld Marshal Kesselring stated, and I quote : "The strategic bombing offensive was one of the main reasons Germany lost the war." Lets not start a new debate, but lets agree on a few basic things. 1. The Strategic Bombing offensive could not alone have won the war. 2. The significant effects on the German war economy occurred mostly in the last 9 months of the war, when the war was already won at the ground level. 3. During the last 9 months, when average daily tonnage dropped on industrial targets inside Germany was about 10-20 TIMES what it had been in any other phase of the war, on the order of around 90,000 tons of TNT per month (thats the equivalent of 4 atomic bombs). 4. The raid on Hamburg in 1943 created a firestorm which killed 40,000 people and wiped out most of the city center. Again, don't fall into the trap of thinking that because the German economy continued to function at a basic level that the SBC was of no significance. Many cities suffered Hamburg's fate, and the loss of workers *alone* would have had a serious effect on the war economy, to say nothing of the loss of the means of production and tranportation infrastructure.

The reason that the Soviet Union was almost crushed by Nazi Germany, and as a consequence suffered enormous human and economic damage from which they have yet to recover fully, was because of The policies of Josef Stalin himself It was Josef Stalin who made an agreement with Hitler that allowed Hitler to concentrate his full economic and military power against France, and drive the English off the Continent. It was Josef Stalin who cravenly attacked Poland pursuant to that agreement, simply to gain territory -- like so many of Hitler's allies during the prewar period he was fooled into believing that he would gain something out of Hitler's triumph. It was Josef Stalin who, during the attacks against Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, France, England, Yugoslavia, and Greece, sent Hitler's Germany enormous amounts of critical raw materials which funded part of Germany's continuing effort to conquer Europe. Eventually, Stalin and Russia found themselves in the same position of every other nation that had facilitated Hitler : betrayed and fighting for their lives. They had no one but themselves to blame. Stalin's foreign policy gave Hitler the freedom and power to completely isolate Russia on the Continent in the first place.

Here's a point to consider : The reason that the Soviet Union was almost crushed by Nazi Germany, and as a consequence suffered enormous human and economic damage from which they have yet to recover fully, was because of The policies of Josef Stalin himself It was Josef Stalin who made an agreement with Hitler that allowed Hitler to concentrate his full economic and military power against France, and drive the English off the Continent. It was Josef Stalin who cravenly attacked Poland pursuant to that agreement, simply to gain territory -- like so many of Hitler's allies during the prewar period he was fooled into believing that he would gain something out of Hitler's triumph. It was Josef Stalin who, during the attacks against Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, France, England, Yugoslavia, and Greece, sent Hitler's Germany enormous amounts of critical raw materials which funded Germany's continuing effort to conquer Europe. Eventually, Stalin and Russia found themselves in the same position of every other nation that had facilitated Hitler : betrayed and fighting for their lives. They had no one but themselves to blame. Stalin's foreign policy gave Hitler the freedom and power to completely isolate Russia on the Continent in the first place.

Norse : No offense but you've missed the point entirely. These figures were put up to *counter* the notion by one of the thread posters that the ALLIED contribution to the war was practically nil. Putting up production figures was not meant to imply or infer that the Soviet war effort was inconsequential in either monetary or human terms. It was in fact a great accomplishment. Advise you to read the entire thread to provide proper context for the posts. [ October 15, 2002, 09:10 PM: Message edited by: dgaad ]

Real Staistics a/c produced in WW2 USSR 146,445 USA 283,230 . . . </font>

I am a fanatic about the truth. Views and opinions are not the truth, so, yes, I am not interested in them. You harped over and over on this Master Strategist point, will you please try to understand that the term "Master Strategist" is a *BOOK TITLE* which I included for YOUR reference, not to start a debate about whether Manstein or Kesselring was a master strategist.

Thanks for the insightful list dgaad, I'll take the post under advisement for future references/ideas! Hubert</font>

How much high grade steel does it take to make a type VII or type XXI sub? How many tanks could you produce for each sub that you decide not to produce?

This is a preposterous number, and causes me to question the veracity of Frieser as a source. None of Frieser's books have been translated into English, making it difficult to critique their use of source material. [ October 15, 2002, 05:22 PM: Message edited by: dgaad ]

1. Interesting book, but the point is, that not Kesselring was the Master German Strategist, but v. Manstein was it (like it is written history). Kesselring played a role defending North Italy, but not much more. So this first line of your book shows everything about the rest!!! Really amusing! [/QB]</font>