07-07-2014: Thoughts of Two Americans on Who Really Beat Hitler in World War Two: Two Quotations from When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler, by military/history professors David M. Glantz, and Jonathan M. House (When Titans Clashed is and has been since its publication in 1995 considered generally the most historically and militarily authoritative single work on the War between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia of 1941-1945, and professor Glantz is considered to be the currently most respected military/historical authority on that War. - Allan Greene): First Quotation: On the 50th anniversary of the Normandy invasion of 1944, a U.S. news magazine featured a cover photo of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was labeled the man who defeated Hitler. If any one man deserved that label, it was not Eisenhower but [Soviet Russian Red Army commander Marshal] Zhukov, [Soviet Russian Red Army commander] Vasilevsky, or possibly [Soviet premier] Stalin himself. More generally, the Red Army and the Soviet citizenry of many nationalities bore the lions share of the struggle against Germany from 1941 to 1945. Only China, which suffered almost continuous Japanese attack from 1931 onward, matched the level of Soviet suffering and effort. In military terms, moreover, the Chinese participation in the war was almost insignificant in comparison with that of the Soviets, who were constantly engaged and absorbed more than half of all German forces. From June through December 1941, only Britain shared with the Soviet Union the trials of war against the Germans. Over three million German troops fought in the East [Soviet Russia], while less than a million struggled elsewhere, attended to occupied Europe, or rested in the homeland. From December 1941 through November 1942, while over nine million troops on both sides struggled in the East, the only significant ground action in the Western Theater took place in North Africa, where relatively small British forces engaged Rommels Afrika Corps and its Italian allies. In November 1942, the British celebrated victory over the Germans at El Alamein, defeating four German divisions and a somewhat larger Italian force, and inflicting 60,000 Axis losses. The same month, at Stalingrad, the Soviets defeated and encircled German Sixth Army, damaged Fourth Panzer Army, and smashed Rumanian Third and Fourth Armies, eradicating over 50 divisions and over 300,000 men from the Axis order of battle. By May 1943, the Allies had pursued [German commander] Rommels Afrika Corps across northern Africa and into Tunisia, where, after heavy fighting, the German and Italian force of 250,000 surrendered. Meanwhile, in the East, another German army (Second) was severely mauled, and Italian Eighth and Hungarian Second Armies were utterly destroyed, exceeding Axis losses in Tunisia. While over two million German and Soviet troops struggled at Kursk and five million later fought on a 600-kilometer front from Smolensk to the Black Sea coast, in July 1943, Allied forces invaded Sicily, and drove 60,000 Germans from the island. In August, the Allies landed on the Italian peninsula. By October, when 2.5 million men of the [German] Wehrmacht faced 6.6 million Soviets, the frontlines had stabilized in Italy south of Rome, as the Germans deployed a much smaller, although significant, number of troops to halt the Allied advance.... By 1 October 1943, 2,565,000 men - representing 63 percent of the Wehrmachts total strength - struggled in the East, together with the bulk of the 300,000 [German Nazi] Waffen SS troops. On 1 June 1944, 230 (62 percent) of the German Armys division equivalents fought in the East. With operations in Italy at a stalemate, until June 1944, the Wehrmacht still considered the West as a semi-reserve.... In August 1944, after the opening of the second front, while 2.1 million Germans fought in the East, 1 million opposed Allied operations in France. Casualty figures underscore this reality.... From September 1939 to September 1942, the bulk of German Armys 922,000 dead, missing, and disabled (14 percent of the total force) could be credited to combat in the East [i.e., against the Soviet Union]. Between 1 September 1942 and 20 November 1943, this grim count rose to 2,077,000 (30 percent of the total force), again primarily in the East. From June through NOvember 1944, after the opening of the second front, the German Army suffered from another 1,457,000 irrevocable losses. Of this number, 903,000 (62 percent) were lost in the East [i.e., in the war with Soviet Russia].... Finally, after losing 120,000 men to the Allies in the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans suffered another 2 million losses, two thirds at Soviet hands from 1 January to 30 April 1945. Total Wehrmacht losses to 30 April 1945 amounted to 11,135,500, including 6,035,000 wounded. Of these, almost 9,000,000 fell in the East. German armed forces losses to wars end numbered 13,488,000 men (75 percent of the mobilized forces and 46 percent of the 1939 male population of Germany). Of these, 10,758,000 fell or were taken prisoner in the East.... Today, the stark inscription died in the East that is carved on countless thousands of headstones in scores of German cemeteries bears mute witness to the carnage in the East, where the will and strength of the [German] Wehrmacht perished. --When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler, by David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, 1995, University Press of Kansas, pages 282 through 284, in the chapter, Conclusion *** Second Quotation: As indicated in Appendix, Table A, the war with Nazi Germany cost the Soviet Union at least 29 million military casualties. The exact numbers can never be established and some revisionists have attempted to put the number as high as 50 million. Uncounted millions of civilians also perished, and wartime population dislocation in the Soviet Union was catastrophic (comparable to an enemy occupation of the United States from the Atlantic coast to beyond the Mississippi River). Millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians disappeared into German detention camps and slave labor factories. Millions more suffered permanent physical and mental damage. Economic dislocation was equally severe. Despite the prodigious feats the Soviets accomplished in moving productive capability deep within the Soviet Union east of the Urals and building a new industrial base in the Urals region and Siberia, the losses in resources and manufacturing capacity in western Russia and the Ukraine were catastrophic.. The heavy industry of the Donbas, Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov, and a host of regions fell under German control, along with key mineral resource deposits and most of the Soviet Unions prime agricultural regions. Again, an equivalent degree of damage to the U.S. economy and military capability would have resulted had German armies conquered the territory from the East Coast to the Mississippi River and into the eastern Great Plains.... Coming on top of World War I, the Civil War, forced collectivization and industrialization, and the purges of the 1930s, this staggering butchers bill and economic cost left the Soviet populace and economy weakened for decades to come. Moreover, the never again attitude of the Soviet populace, characterized by the Soviet Unions constant repetition of the slogan, No one will forget, nothing will be forgotten, fostered a paranoic concern with national security that would contribute, ultimately, to the bankruptcy and destruction of the state. --When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler, by David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, 1995, University Press of Kansas, pages 285 through 286, in the chapter, Conclusion *** powells/biblio/1-9780700608997-0
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 23:48:14 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015