Aragorn2002

Amen to that.

Great map!

Homo homini lupus....

Kampfgruppe Mühlenkamp! That can only be done by the Maestro of Massacre himself!

Completely missed that one! Thanks for your alertness.

Yeah, it was all one big misunderstanding... Which did cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives, but let's forgive and forget. Fortunately you lot learned from your mistakes...

Okay, thanks, Jim, I will.

No, didn't assume it was your error, Jim. Sounds like a very interesting book. Especially given the fact that CM finally has 'done' the cold war. Did NATO in your opinion have a fair chance to stop the Soviets in a conventional war? Personally I don't believe that. Not without nukes.

I see. Sorry about that.

He probably read the Kindle version. But seriously, sounds like an interesting book, Jim. Will it actually be available on Kindle?

That's a Finnish helmet!

Well, I guess the countries for the NATO module have already been selected (and hopefully more than that), so we will see.

It certainly is.

Brits, Germans and Dutch. The rest is bonus.

Or mine.

Gorgeous, Phil. Thank you. I must admit I've seldom used anything bigger than a Panther.

I'm pretty sure it's not made by anyone, but is there a winter mod for the Tiger II? I've checked CMFB, but to no avail, I think.

My father simply stated to my brother and me'"You can go to a hair dresser, or I will let your mother cut your hair". After that we simply went. I dearly love my mother, but she was a terrible hair dresser.

De kosten gaan voor de baat uit. That's a lesson we could have learned by then.

The dutch navy had to sent it's few ships with hundreds of navy men to certain death in the Java Sea. One of my uncles was among those brave men. So I completely agree with the cartoon.

Pre-WW2, the time of the "Broken Rifle"- movement and the economical crisis. But yes, very stupid. Same as our present defence situation. More investments are coming, but much too late. Some people never learn.

Quote from Quora (not my text, but I agree in general, although it's clearly a bit blinded by nationalism ): " In the fiftees, we started to invest in our Armed Forces, at the same pace as our allies. Thank to our longstanding ally Uncle Sam, we received money to build up our conventional forces. Like another answers already stated, we also made preparations to dam the major Rhine rivers. If the Soviets would invade our country, we could make sure that they would face an impassable mudbarrier. This is of course not effective against paratroopers, but would be quite an effective answer to the Soviet tank waves. Our navy began to regain its former glory, and was expanded with an aircraft carrier, twelve destroyers, two cruisers and eight submarines. The aircraft carrier was acquired in 1948. The Dutch population consisted of 9,7 million people. This makes us the smallest country in population to ever have an aircraft carrier. In the sixties, our navy began to produce more modern vessels of its own design (side note: the United States of America did not allow us to nuclear propulsion). The army became fully mechanized - however - our conventional firepower was therefore neglected. In the seventies, which was a good year for our armed forces, we decided to adhere to John F. Kennedy’s flexible defence strategy in which we started focussing on conventional defence. While the Belgians, French, British and Canadians reduced their forces, we decided to go along with Germany and the United States of America to enlarge our forces. This meant the following (according to Wikipedia): · In the mid-eighties, the Dutch heavy units equalled the British in numbers. · The Dutch Corps (main components: 1st division and the 4th division) sector at Elbe was the only one to have its own reserve division (5th division). · It was conceived as to be able to hold an attack by nine reinforced Soviet divisions (10,000 AFVs). o This is, however, undermined by foreign media. · The Royal Netherlands Navy had over thirty capital vessels. · The Royal Netherlands Air Force had about 200 tactical planes. · At the height of the Cold War, the Netherlands had almost 1,000 battle tanks at its disposal. To compare, West Germany had about 4,907 tanks and France had about 1,868 tanks. To summarize it, I think we did a great job for the size of our country. Our troops were motivated, and like the other answers already stated, the individual quality of our soldiers was at least on par with other conscript armed forces in Europe. If the Cold War had become World War III, the Dutch Armed Forces would have played a considerable role in the defence of West Germany. Anecdotes and silly stories aside: overall, the Dutch army was considered to be as good as other NATO armies, a bit above average perhaps. It was certainly better equipped than most. In 1978 (for example) the army was 75,000 strong, including 43,000 conscripts, with 800 main battle tanks. Conscripts served for 14 months; there were 145,000 army reservists. (Air Force: 17,500 with 162 combat aircraft, Navy: 17,000 incl. 2,900 Marines, Gendarmerie/Marechaussee: 3,800). In case of war the Dutch 1st Army Corps was to defend a sector of the North German Plain, about 100 km wide, with two divisions initially and a third filled out with reservists if there was time to call them up. Some people made the mistake of thinking that soldiers with long hair could not be good soldiers. Apparently they had never heard of Alexander the Great and his Macedonians. Or Napoleon's hussars, who even sported braids. Anyway, the excessively long hair appeared during only a relatively short period in the mid-late 1970s. I might note that the US Army had serious discipline problems in the years after the Vietnam War, when morale was at a low ebb. There was at the time a tank gunnery competition between NATO countries called the Canadian Army Trophy. Tank platoons of moderately long-haired Dutch conscripts won it twice, in 1985 and 1989. The Belgians (another conscript army) also won it twice. America's proud professional soldiers (1 Platoon, D Company, 4/8th Cavalry) only won it once, in 1987, I am sorry to say. British and Canadian professional soldiers were not doing markedly better. And that was not because they weren't trying, this competition received a lot of publicity and had a definite impact on procurement policies worldwide. It is also noteworthy that by the early to mid-1980s the Dutch army was in some respects better equipped than the US Army (Leopard 2 vs M60A3, YPR-765 with 25 mm gun vs M113, twin 35 mm AA guns on tank chassis (Gepard) for which the US Army had no equivalent after the Sergeant York project failed))."

Both Heusinger and Speidel probably worked for the western Allies, hence their reward after the war.

A foreshadowing message, John?