Ju-87/G Stuka tankbuster info (cross post fm CMAK)

JasonC · February 25, 2007

Fanboy means people whose eyes water when they hear or imagine the panzer song. That is simply what the term means. No, simply citing a German source does not mean one is a fanboy, I do it all the time. German sources are the right sources for German losses, and fine for what German unit went where, when, under what orders or with what intent. But no, German sources are not adequate or believable for allied losses, and anybody citing them for such is making a mistake.

That alone is still not being a fanboy. The determining mark is that after this is pointed out, they never stop, they never say "oh, I see" and look for allied loss reports or otherwise try to get to the bottom of the question. Instead it is all "I still believe the German propaganda, and anyone who doesn't is biased" (or mean, unfair, whatever - they whine more than puppies).

Active brazen defense of knowable false statistics to grind a pro-German ax is fanboyism, and it is rife. Whole bookshelves are full of it, box covers too. It is absurb and mildly obscene, and does not deserve any defense. But just watch - people will defend it anyway, or play smash mouth indirection games (trying to make it a crime to point out they are stupid and biased) to defend it in practice without having to defend it in theory.

And they never stop. No degree of reason, no degree of certainty of argument, no compelling evidence they are missing something, will have the slightest effect. Because the truth is not wanted, not when it gets in the way of the ideology.

Bigduke6 · February 25, 2007

And "fanboyism" is therefore inherently racistic, because the most of the values the panzer fanboys claim to respect - unit loyalty, physical bravery, maximum intelligent use of machinery, battlefield daring, individual combat prowess - were present in the Red Army, in spades.

As the Soviet war hobbyists point out, it does not take a particularly brave man, or brilliant soldier, to sit in an invulnerable tank and pick off clay pigeons that can't hurt you. Get in a T--34 and attack those Tigers: then you are a tanker with big brass ones.

Which the Western fanboy simply does not acknowledge. What he wants - and indeed what the hobby market seems ready and willing to provide him - is stories where cool panzers named after felines polishing off dozens of times their number of nameless Commie Bad Guys, fighting not to defend their country and wives and children, but because their evil commissars have set up machine guns to kill them if they retreat.

It is comic book war literature, and the only reason it isn't particularly insulting to actual war veterans is that the level of intelligence needed to be a fanboy, is on the level of Michael Jackson or Britney Spears fans: it is irrational, immature, silly, and in almost all cases not even worth responding to.

The problem for us hobbyists, and indeed people with pretensions towards responsible historical research into WW2 in general and the East Front in particular, is that the hobby is waist deep in fanboy dreck, and frankly what with computerized book setting reducing the barrier between schlock authors and their schlock seeing print, the level is rising fast.

The solution is not new, it is not clever, and strangely enough it was pretty much systematized and codified by a German: Hans Delbrueck. Military history done correctly requires a responsible, critical reading of as many sources as possible, almost without exception original sources in their original language. It is good to walk the ground and talk to the veterans if you can. But military history - done properly - is a discipline requiring education, practice, and a whole lot more than repeating, uncritically, what some former German field grade officer wrote during the Cold War. Original sources like Meyer and Mellenthin and need to be used with the same skepticism as Leliushenko or Babadzhian. Original sources like the XXXVIII Panzer Korps daily report or the 5th Guards Tank Corps weekly status are more reliable, but not infallible. Both Rokkosovsky and Manstein wrote fine memoires, but both had political axes to grind and the historian forgets that to his peril.

The historian's job is to use his brain to make the best guess he can as to what happened. The people writing for the fanboys may be making a nice livelihood - but they are not historians.

(Apologies for the rant, I am still wading through Nash and if I read another "30 T-34s showed up...after we destroyed 22 the rest retreated", or, "It appeared the Soviets were completely surprised by the daring attack," or "the real enemy was the weather" or "officer such and such....blah blah blah...Ritterkreutz"

It's enough to make you throw the book across the room, and it's not a cheap book.)

Bigduke6 · February 25, 2007