Was the Battle of Moscow the Real Turning Point of the Eastern Front?

[erasure]

Originally Posted by king's highway

"cooks" ?


Speaking of cooks... Vladimir Putin said His grandfather was a cook for both Lenin and Stalin...
which is interesting considering both Lenin and Stalin may have been poisoned.



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Do they have any openings in Putin's kitchen you think?
Coz I would apply...

[king's highway]

.

" Kiss the Son, lest He be angry
and you be destroyed in your way,
for His wrath can flare up in a moment. "

.

[Oleg Bach]

Originally Posted by king's highway

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Thanks for the link.

Many White Russians/Monarchists supported and funded Hitler,
in the hope Germany would destroy bolshevik rule and the
monarchy would be restored. Hitler did entertain the idea of
restoring Romanov rule in Russia.


Here is an interesting book on the subject:

The Russian Roots of Nazism - Cambridge University Press



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My dear old dad dispised the communists - and dispised the Nazis..for a time he was a Captain in the red army..served as an honor guard at the Kremlin - and there was the other side- During the occupation of Paris by the Germans he ended up wearing the other sides uniform - His job was to take care of about 200 Russians soldiers who were promised their lands back if Germany over took the Soviets...an intersting thing resulted..

One young Russian soldier complained to my father that a German officer repeatedly slapped him across the face..My father asked the young man what his side arm was primarily for..the soldier replied.."to protect my honor"...so my dad instructed the soldier - "next time he strikes you - shoot him!" - so the Nazi was shot dead by the young Russian..

Of course the high command in Germany found out that one of their trusted traitors (my father) had given the go ahead on the killing..My dad was staying at the Grand Hotel in Paris..and the Nazis came knocking to drag him off to command head quarters for questioning and execution..

Dear old pops packes his pants with a couple of granades and a fully loaded pistol - They did not search him. He arrived at the office under guard..The story goes from what dad told me was a laundered version..that he shot up the place -- destroying all the portraits of the German generals that hung on the walls...but after my fathers death I learned from his friends that he killed just about everyone in the room - took off the uniform and got lost.

Also it was said by my "aunt" Hellen who is about 95 - that my dad was involved in an undocumented assassination attempt on Hitler. That he had acutually fire a shot at the man...apparently not close enough...as for him being a traitor - He feared leaving Canada and visiting Russia...all I learned from my father was one thing - in war there are no good guys..He had no use for Communists or for Nazis...Later he hid in the centre of the fire storm in Berlin - with my mother - they were blonde and fit in well...eventually they got out and went to England - where I was born...My dad was a sneaky character - a combination of Siberian shaman and orthodox Christian...He was quiet a guy..imprisonment - war - revolution ruined him and he eventaually died a miserable death.

[Oleg Bach]

Originally Posted by king's highway

.

" Kiss the Son, lest He be angry
and you be destroyed in your way,
for His wrath can flare up in a moment. "

.

Wrath in the end game is a very valuable treasure..not to be fleeting or trival..for it is like the worlds stock pile of gold - once temper is lost all is gone and destroyed...in other words..wrath is the final last resort..as for kissing the son...a kiss goes a long way compared to a smite..

[grayrunner]

Tactics and decisions count for a lot. Stalingrad cost a whole army and popped the bubble of wehrmacht invincibility. Once they lost the momentum it became a disorganized streetfight.
There is some possibility that the initial momentum was lost when some units were rerouted back,
If the drive had continued, they would have swept through to Vladivostok and Hitler would have had his one front war.

But do people know what fighting the Russians under Stalin was like? Marshal Zhukov's memoirs defends his use of sending
special battalions (suspected of being less than motivated) through minefields to clear them quickly, saying if they tried to clear minefields conventionally they would just lost more men and perhaps the battle. He personally trained his men to 'hug the enemy' Two-man teams with a grenade in each hand.

In Vietnam the VC commander would lay down a mortar barrage keeping everyone's head down
and lose half his sappers who had to run through it and plant charges on the bunkers.

The much better organized, led and trained wehrmacht could not adjust to this any more than we did in Vietnam.

[erasure]

Originally Posted by grayrunner

But do people know what fighting the Russians under Stalin was like? Marshal Zhukov's memoirs defends his use of sending
special battalions (suspected of being less than motivated) through minefields to clear them quickly, saying if they tried to clear minefields conventionally they would just lost more men and perhaps the battle. He personally trained his men to 'hug the enemy' Two-man teams with a grenade in each hand.

In Vietnam the VC commander would lay down a mortar barrage keeping everyone's head down
and lose half his sappers who had to run through it and plant charges on the bunkers.

The much better organized, led and trained wehrmacht could not adjust to this any more than we did in Vietnam.

Poor Wehrmacht - they've had problems with putting the lives of their soldiers on-line the way Russians did, but they were much less hesitant apparently dealing with lives of women and children on the occupied territories.
I bet their propaganda machine could never create something as powerful as this either;

to Alexei Surkov

Remember, Alyosha, the roads of Smolenshchina,
Remember the rain and the mud and the pain,
The women, exhausted, who brought milk in pitchers,
And clasped them like babies at breast, from the rain.


The whispering words as we passed them - "God bless you!"
The eyes where they secretly wiped away tears!
And how they all promised they would be "soldatki",
- The words of old Russia from earlier years.


The road disappearing past hills in the distance,
Its length that we measured with tears on the run.
And villages, villages, churches and churchyards,
As if all of Russia were gathered in one.


It seemed that in each Russian village we passed through,
The hands of our ancestors under the sod
Were making the sign of the cross and protecting
Their children, no longer believers in god.


You know, I believe that the Russia we fight for
Is not the dull town where I lived at a loss
But those country tracks that our ancestors followed,
The graves where they lie, with the old Russian cross.

I feel that for me, it was countryside Russia
That first made me feel I must truly belong
To the tedious miles between village and village,
The tears of the widow, the women's sad song.


Remember, Alyosha, the hut at Borisov,
The cry of the girl as she mourned, and the sight
Of the grey-haired old woman, her velveteen jacket,
The old man, as if dressed for death, all in white!


And what could we say? With what words could we comfort them?
Yet seeming to gather the sense of our lack,
The old woman said "We shall wait for you, darlings!
Wherever you get to, we know you'll come back!"


"We know you'll come back!" said the fields and the pastures,
"We know you'll come back!" said the woods and the hill.
Alyosha, at nights I can hear them behind me.
Their voices are following after me still.


By old Russian practice, mere fire and destruction
Are all we abandon behind us in war.
We see alongside us the deaths of our comrades,
By old Russian practice, the breast to the fore....


Konstantin Simonov


PS. The battalions you are talking about were called "shtrafbatallions" as in "penalty battalions." They consisted for the most part of the Gulag prisoners from what I remember, who were taking their chance to get out of there and to return to the mainstream life.
If they'd survive that is.

[NJGOAT]

Originally Posted by grayrunner

But do people know what fighting the Russians under Stalin was like? Marshal Zhukov's memoirs defends his use of sending
special battalions (suspected of being less than motivated) through minefields to clear them quickly, saying if they tried to clear minefields conventionally they would just lost more men and perhaps the battle. He personally trained his men to 'hug the enemy' Two-man teams with a grenade in each hand.

In Vietnam the VC commander would lay down a mortar barrage keeping everyone's head down
and lose half his sappers who had to run through it and plant charges on the bunkers.

The much better organized, led and trained wehrmacht could not adjust to this any more than we did in Vietnam.

Originally Posted by erasure

PS. The battalions you are talking about were called "shtrafbatallions" as in "penalty battalions." They consisted for the most part of the Gulag prisoners from what I remember, who were taking their chance to get out of there and to return to the mainstream life.
If they'd survive that is.

It had been discussed before, but the use of "penal batallions" was something that the Russians adopted from the Wehrmacht. The same accusations that grayrunner is leveling against the use of such units by the Soviets are the same tactics the Germans employed these units for. These units were used for everything from clearing minefields, to acting as decoys, to screening a retreat, to spearheading major assaults on heavily defended positions.

The directives issued by the Soviets to create the penal batallions was based on re-instilling discipline in the army and was done directly on the observations of how penal batallions were used by the Germans.

Probably the most famous German penal batallions were the 999th Light Afrika Division and the 36th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division aka the Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger. The 36th Waffen-SS in particular was an extremely heinous unit. It was originally composed of people convicted of poaching and was going to be employed for anti-partisan operations. Eventually it was expanded and contained people convicted of murder, rape, assault, psychiatric patients and even people who volunteered in order to escape concentration camps. They are especially known for the many atrocities they committed.

[erasure]

Originally Posted by NJGOAT

It had been discussed before, but the use of "penal batallions" was something that the Russians adopted from the Wehrmacht. The same accusations that grayrunner is leveling against the use of such units by the Soviets are the same tactics the Germans employed these units for. These units were used for everything from clearing minefields, to acting as decoys, to screening a retreat, to spearheading major assaults on heavily defended positions.

The directives issued by the Soviets to create the penal batallions was based on re-instilling discipline in the army and was done directly on the observations of how penal batallions were used by the Germans.

Thank you for refreshing my memory!! I was pretty sure that I was reading before ( in Russian) that Soviet commandment made review at certain point in time during the war in order to reinforce the discipline in the army and they indeed were making their decisions based on what they've seen has been done in German army. I wish I could have this material in Russian again, because Russians argue sometimes about the cruelty of Stalin's decisions in this respect, but these decisions were clearly made as response to the circumstances.

[PullMyFinger]

I worked with a Russian immigrant briefly in the late 80's. He was getting ready to retire. He was a child during this war but if anyone ever mentioned it, the look on his face says more than all the wordy pontifications on this subject on this forum. I wish I could have taken a picture. The sadness and anger at the same time, all those years later. He would never say a word about it. Otherwise he was a great guy, always laughing and joking.

I saw this same kind of look on my Dad's face when people were talking about the Japanese and the Pacific war, especially if they were saying something good about the Japanese. He also, would never say a word.