Ostkreig

[PzKpfw 1]

Thought i'd pass on an excelent book on the Ostkreig:

Fritz Stephen. Ostkreig Hitlers War of Extermination in the East

Below is an excelent review IMHO for those interested that relates it better then i could:

WWII -- How and Where It Was Won and Lost, November 19, 2011

By Robert T. OKEEFFE (Orangeburg, Rockland County, New York) - See all my reviews

(REAL NAME) This review is from: Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East (Hardcover)

Fritz's book is probably the best recent summary of WWII on the Eastern Front for the general reader interested in the history of the war. It combines discussions of the three major streams of events - military, political, and economic - that combine to determine the always narrowing range of choices and policies that occurs during wartime. Fritz's synthetic approach is not a new one, as it replicates much of the ground covered in Richard Overy's excellent, compact "Russia's War", published in 1997. His basic argument, also not a new one and one for which the evidence is very persuasive, is that the USSR was the primary enemy of the Third Reich (an honor unfortunately shared by all of Europe's Jews), with the Anglo-American alliance being displaced to the "back-burner" when it came to Hitler's most important decisions during 1941-1945 (excepting the Ardennes offensive of Dec. 1944), and was, in both military and political terms the primary victor of the conflict. As an overall history of this front's role in WWII it supplies necessary supplementary information to very good synoptic histories such as Gerhard Weinberg's "A World at Arms". From the military history point of view the book is, for instance, better than anything written by John Keegan (who skirts political and economic factors as if they were insignificant to the outcome of battles and campaigns).

While Fritz's book does not go into a level of operational detail seen in works on individual battles and campaigns (e.g., Anthony Beevor's books on the battles of Stalingrad and Berlin) or the even more extreme level of operational detail (down to the battalion and company level) given in John Erickson's books ("The Road to Stalingrad" and "The Road to Berlin"), it supplies sufficient operational information to allow judgments about just how well- or poorly-founded the decisions made by Hitler and his General Staff (OKW and OKH) and by Stalin and the Stavka were. With respect to general staffs it can be said that the combination of Shaposhnikov-Vasilevsky-Zhukov was always steadier and more realistic than Brauchitsch-Halder-Bock and their replacement by the yes-men Jodl-Keitel-Zeitzler, a fact both surprising and unwelcome to admirers of the "great German general staff" tradition and its self-promoting legends.

Neither side was especially irrational in their decisions but both sides seriously underestimated the capacities of their enemies up until 1943. Hitler's mistakes in this respect were far more damning, because they were at the level of overall strategy and formed the basis for his initial assault in June 1941 and for the quandaries into which he led himself and Germany when Barbarossa began to stall and fall apart in the Fall and early Winter of 1941. Rather than sacrificing any particular front or major operation (e.g., North Africa, the garrisoning of Norway, bypassing Stalingrad after its early bombardment and gutting and switching the Sixth Army to the Caucasian campaign in 1942) by shutting it down and relocating and conserving Germany's limited resources, Hitler constantly went for broke on all fronts simultaneously, thereby dispersing his forces against constantly growing Soviet power and abilities. He ignored his own doctrine of concentrating forces on the most promising objective ("Schwerpunkt" or "heavy blow") in order to achieve a breakthrough. He often did this for vague reasons of "political prestige" that should have been a minor rather than a major consideration. Stalin's mistakes did not jeopardize the eventual outcome of the war, but they were responsible for many lost campaigns (which could have been avoided defensively or should not have been undertaken offensively) and for the extremely high death-rate of Soviet soldiers throughout the war.

The attitudes of the two leaders toward their military specialists followed opposite trajectories and "criss-crossed" by the summer of 1943: Hitler developed a hatred and contempt for the majority of his generals and military advisers while Stalin "came back to earth" and relied on the professionalism of his best generals after overruling their recommendations often during 1941-43. While Hitler never begrudged his field marshals glory or the other tributes of success during the period of smashing victories in 1939-41, after the stalemates and losses of 1942-43 and the attempt on his life in July 1944 he began to see the professional military caste as a cesspool of defeatism and treachery, allocating commands to only the "new" Nazi-oriented and Waffen-SS generals. While eventually conceding to the planning of his generals, Stalin's paranoia about political challengers from the army grew with the Soviet successes of 1943-45, as can be seen by his immediate post-war treatment of Zhukov and by his liquidation of many of the talented men who ran the party apparatus in the besieged Leningrad during the three years' of its incredible suffering.

Fritz's interpretation of military events on this front is straightforward: once Hitler did not win the war he envisioned in 1941 (the destruction of the Soviet army and the collapse of Stalin's regime and its withdrawal to the Urals), he could never see his way clear to a "total victory" and was always unwilling to negotiate a settlement that might require a partial or nearly full withdrawal to the borders of 1939, therefore his escalating "all or nothing" gambles on operations that the German army was too exhausted and too poorly supplied to ever complete (the fact that the Russians did not "co-operate" with Hitler's perceptions and plans and that even during their darkest days ran constant counteroffensives at many points on the northern, central, and southern fronts always threw a monkey-wrench into major German offensives, which already stretched his armies to their limits). Even Germany's most spectacular victories (Kiev, Smolensk, Rostov, the Crimea, three out of five big battles for Kharkov) resulted in irreplaceable losses of manpower and equipment. In each case Hitler's military-political objectives seemed sensible, but he was never able to resist supporting ancillary projects that detracted from the main thrust of major operations. Stalin fell victim to this way of thinking immediately after the victory at Stalingrad, in a belief that a series of major operations would roll up the whole German army during the Winter and Spring of 1943 - he vastly underestimated German morale and the Wehrmacht's ability to construct strong tactical defenses and inflict heavy casualties as his own troops were running out of steam. So much for the two leaders and their respective psychologies and flaws - Fritz covers a great deal of other territory deftly.

For instance, the idea of a "war of extermination" is fully fleshed out in a way that shows the interdependency of the policies of extreme brutality toward Soviet soldiers, the mass starvation of Slavic civilians, and the accelerating campaign of mass-murder of Europe's Jews (each of these policies was a form of mass-murder, in fact). The implementation of the Final Solution (i.e., extermination of Europe's Jewish population, to be "combed from west to east") resulted in burdens on the rail transportation system to the disadvantage of the armies in Russia which always needed more supply trains; in this case ideology trumped reason and shows that for much of the Nazi leadership the war against the (unarmed) Jews was as important as the war against Russia. The original policy of letting all Soviet POWs die through exposure and malnutrition was reversed once it was understood that they had to be used to replace lost German manpower in the industrial and agricultural sectors of the economy; they were kept alive on the lowest level of rations possible, as were the vast numbers of Ukrainian and Polish captives rounded up in periodic "labor manhunts". The harsh "anti-partisan" policies of Germany (implemented by the army as much as by the SS, despite numerous post-war disclaimers of German officers) that burned villages and executed whole town populations actually turned much of the population of the Ukraine and Belarus toward increased guerilla activity, especially damaging to the transit and supply systems of the armies in the east. Hitler had entered a "no win" situation without any notion of how to conduct affairs in the face of an inability to defeat the USSR. At some point his misplaced self-confidence and his lack of understanding about the way that total-war-mobilization (never implemented in Germany) had turned the Russian armaments industry into a powerhouse of production that dwarfed Germany's output made him oblivious to the obvious; or perhaps he understood it but knew that, having burned all of his political bridges through criminal activity on a huge scale, his "all or nothing" policies were the only way forward. After all 1943 was the year in which Himmler revealed the "secret" of the death camps and extermination units ("Einsatzgruppen") to the assembled Gauleiters in Posen, and it was also the year of this entry in Goebbels' wartime diaries:

"On the Jewish question, especially, we are in so deeply that there is no getting out any longer. And that is a good thing. Experience teaches that a movement and a people who have burned their bridges fight with a much greater determination and fewer constraints than those still have a chance of retreat."

This is obviously a veiled reference to the ongoing program of mass murder of the Jews, something periodically discussed between Hitler and Goebbels, the most vocal proponent of total war with its harsh domestic prescriptions (death sentences for war profiteers, grumblers, and ration violaters) as well as for the people of the occupied countries. The German leadership's awareness of just how unsavory and criminal its policies had been led to an increasing radicalization of the war effort, including its annihilationist aspects and its efforts to amass slave labor on an immense scale (8.5 million impressed laborers were in Germany at the end of the war). As Hitler had noted at the outset, "If we win no one will question our means." By 1944 this came to mean that, with defeat impending in the minds of many Germans, the regime's only alternative was to go down in flames and take as many of its domestic and foreign enemies with it as possible, a "twilight of the Gods" ending that evidenced the full blossoming of Hitler's nihilistic outlook on life.

"Extermination" is part of the book's title, and, for Germany, its targets embraced the groups noted above: Jews, Soviet commissars, soldiers and POWs, partisans, and, if things had gone according to plan, a large portion of the Slavic population of the conquered territories (when things were looking rosy for the Germans in 1941-42, Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, and Himmler often blithely stated that eventually 30 or 40 million "useless eaters" -- the Slavic population -- would have to go by means of malnutrition and "death through labor", policies they had developed first in Poland and also used against the Jews before deciding on the industrial death-camp approach (which had been anticipated and rehearsed by the T4 euthanasia program directed against "defective" Germans in 1939-40). Mirroring Hitler's approach toward Poland immediately after that country's joint conquest by Germany and the USSR, Stalin also had his captured portion of Poland's leadership class executed in the Katyn forest murders. When Germany invaded Russia in 1941 there were also murders of all prisoners held by the NKVD as they evacuated the zones the Germans were rushing into. However, Stalin's exterminations during the war (a continuation of "class-warfare" programs of arbitrary death sentences directed against kulaks, non-Russian minorities, and imaginary political factions during the mid- and late 1930s) were never on the scale of the Germans' systematic murder programs (and were never intended to be on that scale - they were "functionally" related to maintaining his regime through selective and exemplary punishment; and, like the punitive Nazi policies, Stalin's efforts secured a large army of domestic slave labor in the GULAG system). As Fritz notes the only brake on German massacres (always exempting the Jews, who had the highest priority as targets in Hitler's mind) was the increasing need for slave labor to keep to the war going, leading to an uneasy and always shifting balance between rationality and ideology in the Third Reich.

There are some interesting emphases and factual revelations in Fritz's book that amount to new information about old matters that historians thought they had exhausted: (1) As early as 1943 Hitler commented that if the Germans were unwilling to make the blood sacrifices needed on the Eastern Front, then they deserved to "go under" as a nation and people - this attitude has usually been attributed to his final nihilistic months. (2) Speer's observation that if the allies had immediately destroyed five or six more cities in the fashion of the fire-bombing of Hamburg in the summer of 1943, then the regime would have collapsed - the Hamburg bombing led to 500,000 people fleeing the city, and this put an immense strain on the Party's ability to feed and house them. The bombing produced chaos, disrupted all types of services, and lowered civilian morale (this fulfilled the dream of the urban carpet-bombing campaign's originator, Arthur Harris, who believed that a sustained campaign of terror bombing could end the war). (3) A very interesting re-evaluation of the actual statistical evidence concerning casualties and equipment losses in the July 1943 Kursk campaign. Historians usually refer to this as the final straw that broke the German army's ability to resist by gutting its tank corps and its tank reserves. Fritz supplies the evidence that this is a gross overstatement - the ratio of combat deaths and casualties was six Russians to every German killed or wounded, and the ratio of armored vehicle, artillery, and aircraft losses was eight-to-one in favor of Germany. These immense Russian losses in fact prevented the planned "rolling up" of the German armies in Russia during the remainder of 1943. In spite of this favorable "kill ratio" and only modest losses, the Germans could never keep up with the ability of the Russians to quickly replace men and equipment, and even a German victory in the battle of Kursk would not have improved their general position (von Manstein's wing of the operation was headed toward final success when Hitler pulled the plug in order to transfer men and equipment to Italy due to the impending Anglo-American landings in that country, another instance of a bad decision that detracted from completing a more important operation, made because Hitler believed he had to maintain the prestige of Mussolini's regime). The real problems with Germany's tank armies were high breakdown and slow repair rates for the new Tigers and Panther IVs, which in themselves devastated the Russian T34s, hitherto the best tanks in the war. (4) The switch from "positive" to "negative" propaganda about the eastern front as the situation got worse for the Germans. Early in the war everything had been upbeat - Germany was acquiring vast economic assets and "Lebensraum" for German citizens at a very reasonable price; this would be Germany's prosperous "America" and "India" for centuries to come and the first step in world domination. As these prospects dimmed and the German army suffered increasing reverses the propaganda line shifted to portraying Germany as Europe's bulwark and last best hope for defending the continent against the depredations of the advancing "Jewish-Bolshevist Asiatic hordes" - Hitler had a vague, unrealistic idea that this might influence the western allies to make a separate peace and join him against Russia. (5) As in point (3) above, the reader will come to a different conclusion than, say, Richard Overy's, about the purely military abilities of the German and Soviet armies when he digests the narrative that covers the "lost year" of the war, Fall 1943 through Summer 1944 (it is "lost "due to its quick glossing over by most historians, except for cursory treatments of Operation Bagration). Looking at the battle-by-battle statistics for comparative casualties and losses of armored vehicles, artillery pieces, and airplanes, the Germans were still able to maintain a very favorable "kill ratio" during this period of retreats, small counteroffensives and break-outs from "Kessels" (surrounded pockets of men and equipment). The Soviets had given up on the idea of quick encirclements spearheaded by their tank armies and reverted to brutal frontal assaults that resulted in high death rates of their infantry troops and great losses of equipment. The Germans, given their shortages of manpower and equipment, demonstrated great tactical skills in the series of defensive battles that took place as they withdrew from and were pushed out of Russian lands. The "superiority" of the Red Army at this point consisted solely of the USSR's ability to keep armaments production high, delivery fast (much of this due to their huge Lend-Lease truck fleet), and manpower reserves growing (and the more of Ukraine and Belarus they recaptured, the bigger their conscript pool). It might be said that Russian superiority was not due to the fighting skill of its men or the tactical and strategic abilities of its military leaders, but was one of social organization and mobilization (and of Stalin's willingness to sacrifice millions of troops and civilians in poorly planned operations and inflexible policies, right up to the capture of Berlin in May 1945). (6) The utter strangeness of the way in which Hitler switched his attention to the prospective western fronts in late 1943 and the real front that developed after June, 1944. He constantly stripped his eastern armies of troops for this theater (and for other operations, such as in Hungary and the Balkans) because he believed that the large areas still occupied by German troops in early 1944 would yield him "defensive time" to switch troops to the west, thrash the Anglo-American armies, and then move them back to the east. Given low manpower and increasingly disrupted internal lines of communication, this was an obvious fantasy. He never, for instance, moved the substantial army in the Courland pocket (they could have been easily moved by troop ships right up until the last months of the war) or the 300,000 troops in Norway into areas where they were needed, primarily in the east. Hitler still believed that the Soviets were "at the end of their tether" and would collapse at a single blow, despite all evidence and intelligence to the contrary.

Some of the above points make the German army look very good - from a purely military standpoint - in retrospect. However, as Fritz demonstrates, the armies operating on the Eastern Front were complicit in extermination policies carried out by the SS and, on occasion, were directly involved in local massacres of civilians (Jews and other high-priority targets of the regime), so their reputation has been justifiably tarnished in the minds of many historians. They were extremely brutal to civilians in their "scorched earth" policies as they withdrew (just as the Red Army had been when being driven out of the same areas in 1941-42). Hitler's military decisions leave a mixed record - he was often right in pointing out that "stand fast" policies made sense because, given Soviet manpower, withdrawal to more defensible positions would yield the same results, so the idea was to make the Russians pay dearly for every advance, to grind them down more than they were grinding the Germans down. However, he was strategically off the mark in 1943, moving troops out of the Eastern fronts for action in Italy and the Balkans, and for beefing up the army in France because he was certain that the British and Americans would invade during the summer or fall of that year. These decisions depleted the already shaky strength of the eastern armies.

This book should be read, I believe, in tandem with Norman Davies' excellent "No Simple Victory". The emphasis of Davies' book, with its numerous charts and tables regarding military manpower equipment use and losses, is on the unavoidable fact that the Wehrmacht was irreparably broken by the Red Army and that therefore the Anglo-American contribution to the final victory over Germany was an ancillary one (if you quantify something like this, you might say that the Western allies were responsible for something like 20 per-cent of the victory, and UK and US losses in men and machines were very small in comparison to those of the Russians and Germans). This viewpoint does not dismiss the Anglo-American contribution to the war in Europe but puts it into a more accurate perspective than that celebrated in Western Europe and the US, where the Normandy operation is perceived as the real "final blow" and the military action that led to the defeat of Germany. Compared to a typical day or week on the Eastern Front, the Allies' losses on D-day and the following weeks were quite small. Davies does acknowledge the value of Lend-Lease (nearly half a million trucks and jeeps to the Russians, which made them far more mobile and elastic than the Germans after 1943) and the role that the bombing campaign played in the ultimate outcome, but, like Fritz, he's committed to the idea that the daily armor-plus-artillery-plus-infantry grind-it out approach of the Russians exhausted the Germans' chance of achieving even a stalemate with a compromise political solution. By the time the Soviets approached Berlin, there were no real army units of significant strength left to defend the city, a job undertaken by scratch units, Hitler Youth, ill-prepared Volksturm fighters, and Waffen-SS units composed primarily of non-Germans. As much as Americans (who, after all can be accorded the honor of having won the Pacific war on mostly their own efforts) and the British may chafe against this conclusion, the evidence seems clear that the European war was won by the USSR, and the pain, suffering, and losses it endured guaranteed in the mind of its people that Stalin's regime, no matter how much detested, had won the right to settle the political affairs of Eastern and Central Europe, making him the winner of the peace as well. There is a faint whiff of the repetition of history in the way the war ended in this part of the world. The equally destructive Thirty-Years' War that came to a close in 1648 had a peace built upon the notion "whoever rules, his religion prevails" in the territory where he or she ruled (leaving northern Europe Protestant, southern Europe Catholic, and the contested lands of central Europe a checkerboard of religious preference). In 1945 Stalin's dictum was, "whoever has troops on the ground in a specific place, there his social system will prevail," not all that different from 1648's organizing principle, given the quasi-religious nature of Stalin's version of communism.

I can also reccomend Fritz's Frontsoldaten as well, great books.

Regards, John Waters

[Vanir Ausf B]

These two contentions alone would annoy a lot of people. Sounds like my kind of book. Thanks for the review.

Speer's observation that if the allies had immediately destroyed five or six more cities in the fashion of the fire-bombing of Hamburg in the summer of 1943, then the regime would have collapsed - the Hamburg bombing led to 500,000 people fleeing the city, and this put an immense strain on the Party's ability to feed and house them. The bombing produced chaos, disrupted all types of services, and lowered civilian morale (this fulfilled the dream of the urban carpet-bombing campaign's originator, Arthur Harris, who believed that a sustained campaign of terror bombing could end the war).

The Soviets had given up on the idea of quick encirclements spearheaded by their tank armies and reverted to brutal frontal assaults that resulted in high death rates of their infantry troops and great losses of equipment. The Germans, given their shortages of manpower and equipment, demonstrated great tactical skills in the series of defensive battles that took place as they withdrew from and were pushed out of Russian lands. The "superiority" of the Red Army at this point consisted solely of the USSR's ability to keep armaments production high, delivery fast (much of this due to their huge Lend-Lease truck fleet), and manpower reserves growing (and the more of Ukraine and Belarus they recaptured, the bigger their conscript pool). It might be said that Russian superiority was not due to the fighting skill of its men or the tactical and strategic abilities of its military leaders, but was one of social organization and mobilization (and of Stalin's willingness to sacrifice millions of troops and civilians in poorly planned operations and inflexible policies, right up to the capture of Berlin in May 1945).

[JonS]

"Rather than sacrificing any particular front or major operation (e.g., North Africa, the garrisoning of Norway, bypassing Stalingrad after its early bombardment and gutting and switching the Sixth Army to the Caucasian campaign in 1942) by shutting it down and relocating and conserving Germany's limited resources, Hitler constantly went for broke on all fronts simultaneously, thereby dispersing his forces against constantly growing Soviet power and abilities."

That's not really true. The 1942 campaign towards the Caucasus and Stalingrad, for example, was an explicit example of sacrificing other fronts and campaigns. The rest of the Russian front was shut down, and forces there pillaged, in order to beef up the stength of the forces conducting Op BLAU (although ... after Sevastopol 17th(?) Army was sent from the Crimea all the way up to Leningrad rather than hanging about and getting involved in BLAU).

The same thing happened the following year, on a bigger (or smaller, depending on your POV) scale; the rest of the front was all but shut down in order to mount the comparatively modest CITADEL.

1941: Op BARBAROSSA, Baltic to the Black Sea (1400km)

1942: Op BLAU, Voronezh to the Black Sea (600km)

1943: Op CITADEL, Orel to Belgorod (300km)

[PzKpfw 1]

These two contentions alone would annoy a lot of people. Sounds like my kind of book. Thanks for the review.

No problem Vanir, the book is to good not to tell y'all about. Just remember i did not write the review. JonS you might want to contact the reviewer on your corrections. All i can say is read the book you wont be dissapointed, realy opens your eyes to a few myths perpetuated in German memoirs after the war as well.

Regards, John Waters

[JonS]

you might want to contact the reviewer on your corrections.

Probably not a correction, more a point of emphasis. Reviews tend to be black and white, rather than shades of grey, because they typically don't have a lot of time or effort put into them, or into qualifying in fine detail themes that are broadly correct.

And it is broadly correct that the Germans tried to do everything, all the time, everywhere, rather than concentrating on one important thing at a time and seeing each through to conclusion.

(The same could be said about the Allies, to a degree. Despite 'Germany First' being official policy, the war in the Pacific was never really closed down or even starved of resources to any great degree. To the extent that the amount of resources allocated to the Pacific had significant - and negative - impacts on the war in Europe. See, especially; landing craft. But in general terms the Allies were rich enough to get away with pushing strongly in multiple areas simultaneaously, while the Germans weren't)

really opens your eyes to a few myths perpetuated in German memoirs after the war as well.

I'd like to think my eyes are already well open to that

[sburke]

I'd like to think my eyes are already well open to that

Well then wtf did you do that quote in your sig? LOL

[PzKpfw 1]

Probably not a correction, more a point of emphasis. Reviews tend to be black and white, rather than shades of grey, because they typically don't have a lot of time or effort put into them, or into qualifying in fine detail themes that are broadly correct.

And it is broadly correct that the Germans tried to do everything, all the time, everywhere, rather than concentrating on one important thing at a time and seeing each through to conclusion.

(The same could be said about the Allies, to a degree. Despite 'Germany First' being official policy, the war in the Pacific was never really closed down or even starved of resources to any great degree. To the extent that the amount of resources allocated to the Pacific had significant - and negative - impacts on the war in Europe. See, especially; landing craft. But in general terms the Allies were rich enough to get away with pushing strongly in multiple areas simultaneaously, while the Germans weren't)

Agreed Jon, it's pretty amazeing what the US did do in the PTO with only like 15% of the resources allocated to the war effort their. Its pretty amazeing now to look back & see how Roosevelt ever got the Europe first agreed to I know many US Staff, & in congress etc, all wanted a Pacific first policy, King & others were still pushing for the Pacific first after North Africa was concluded.

I'd like to think my eyes are already well open to that

Yes, while that was a general statement 8P, many do not like that point being made. I saw alot of that after Frontsoldaten came out in the Historical forums, alot of German forum members & German WW2 buffs jumped all over the content of the German soldiers letters to home as they supported the Nazi policy's even into 1945. Still happens now when user groups discuss the war in the east Waffen SS gets full blame for the actions their, while Wermact is painted as clean of any wrong doing, as we are now learning that just wasnt the case, they were knee deep in it to. Now those same ppl refer to this as the new popular revisionism etc, despite all the new archival primary source material showing otherwise.

Regards, John Waters

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Agreed Jon, it's pretty amazeing what the US did do in the PTO with only like 15% of the resources allocated to the war effort their. Its pretty amazeing now to look back & see how Roosevelt ever got the Europe first agreed to I know many US Staff, & in congress etc, all wanted a Pacific first policy, King & others were still pushing for the Pacific first after North Africa was concluded.

I assume you're not referring to the King in that reference!

Regards

KR

[LukeFF]

Umm, I'm pretty sure he means Ernest King, COMINCH.

[PzKpfw 1]

I assume you're not referring to the King in that reference!

Regards

KR

No KR, i was not refering to Elvis . I was refering to the US Chief of Naval Operations, in WW2 Admiral Ernest j King.

Regards, John Waters

[LongLeftFlank]

PzKw, it does seem like the review in the OP could have been written by any number of grog posters here, (and possibly was). As I haven't read the book, it's unclear to me whether this reviewer is accurately summarizing the author's thesis here or cherry-picking to push his own particular pet theories.

I'm prsonally dubious about the practicality of conducting a world war by focusing on one front at a time once you've started one. The schwerpunkt analogy is misplaced at a grand strategic scale. Not that Hitler didn't waste resources on marginal causes; he surely did. But I don't find this to be the Rosetta stone for a "Lost victory" (and I'm not suggesting you do either, of course :-)

[PzKpfw 1]

PzKw, it does seem like the review in the OP could have been written by any number of grog posters here, (and possibly was). As I haven't read the book, it's unclear to me whether this reviewer is accurately summarizing the author's thesis here or cherry-picking to push his own particular pet theories.

I'm prsonally dubious about the practicality of conducting a world war by focusing on one front at a time once you've started one. The schwerpunkt analogy is misplaced at a grand strategic scale. Not that Hitler didn't waste resources on marginal causes; he surely did. But I don't find this to be the Rosetta stone for a "Lost victory" (and I'm not suggesting you do either, of course :-)

Hi Longleft, yes their is cherrypicking the summerization is near, but he added his own views to alot of it while touching on the main parts, that took away from from it as well if you know what i meen i cant seem to figure out the right words to explain it. I enjoy his reviews perhaphs because he is groggy or perhaphs because he does expounge on wider area subjects, which IMHO makes his reviews more intersting as it encourages further study on other events.

Anyway i can't say it enough, read the book ...

Regards, John Waters

[Sgt Joch]

Agreed Jon, it's pretty amazeing what the US did do in the PTO with only like 15% of the resources allocated to the war effort their. Its pretty amazeing now to look back & see how Roosevelt ever got the Europe first agreed to I know many US Staff, & in congress etc, all wanted a Pacific first policy, King & others were still pushing for the Pacific first after North Africa was concluded.

The 15% was only at a particular point in time. As I recall, at one point in mid-42, the War Department determined that only 15% of global U.S. resources were allocated to the PTO, but that was quickly ramped up to a more reasonable level.

[sburke]

The 15% was only at a particular point in time. As I recall, at one point in mid-42, the War Department determined that only 15% of global U.S. resources were allocated to the PTO, but that was quickly ramped up to a more reasonable level.

There is a reason they called it Operation Shoestring.