Feldgrau.net

Well, the ability to replace casualties is part of the general robustness of the state. The idea of Barbarossa was that the USSR would simply collapse after their armies in the West were defeated and there would be no need to advance on Moscow, Leningrad or anywhere else because they'd be a 'windfal...

I always thought that the Soviet government admitted this in 1990 and Gorbachev apologised for it. A brief search turned this up from Hoover Digest... "On April 13, 1990, the Soviet authorities at last admitted responsibility for the massacres at Katyn and elsewhere, although the figure cited i...

OTOH it was the Irish Meteorological Service that supplied weather reports to SHAEF including the one that Eisenhower used to give the 'go' for Overlord.

http://www.met.ie/aboutus/weatherobserv ... istory.asp

A couple of things could explain it... 1. Maybe they were patriots who want to free their land from an invader no matter what the cost. or 2. Maybe your stereotype is derived entirely from the post war apologia of German Generals written in captivity for their new masters and is, like all stereotype...

You could ask here...

http://www.rothwell.force9.co.uk/11th.htm

There's not much detail but it would be somewhere to start.

There is much more to Czechoslovakia over 1938-45 than is generally known in the English-speaking world. Agree totally, Sid. I'm only just getting into it and deliberately restricting myself to the first republic & fortifications for now but you invariably come across other stuff & think 'o...

Calling the Czech defences a 'Maginot Line' is misleading. Although the earliest structures in the Czech defences are based on Maginot line designs they were soon working on their own and developed, amongst others, what we usually call the 'Skoda bunker' that the Germans copied and installed in the ...

Talking specifically about the Czechoslovakians they were faced with two choices in the 1930's. 1. Build a large mobile army to resist the Germans 2. Build border fortifications to try and hold them off long enough for their alliances to count. They took the view that 1 wasn't really an option becau...

Some small points in defence of the 'Fast' type divisions. They were developed by many Central and East European countries because they couldn't afford to fully mechanise their formations not because they didn't understand manouevre warfare. Also it was an attempt to give these nascent armoured unit...

More of the CSI books are available at their home site.

http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp

However, O'Duffy's Blueshirts are the Free State's very own fascist organisation aren't they? :D Sent a brigade off to fight for Franco (not that they did much fighting being assigned to a quiet sector) containing both Protestant & Catholic from both sides of the border united in their anti-Comm...

They formed Fast Divisions, like all European countries who used this concept they were a mix of tanks/motorised units & cavalry units. On top of that they had one infantry division fully motorised and one partially in 1939.

http://www.geocities.com/kumbayaaa/czechoreparmy.html

Alex

No, it looks like one of the 'leaf' patterns.

The various types of Soviet camouflage bear no resemblance to any of the German ones.

There are some good pictures in Shalito et al 'Red Army Uniforms 1918-45'

They had camouflage uniforms from 1938. By 1945 there were several different patterns for different seasons & terrain and very effective they are too, I've been ten feet from someone just lying on the ground and remained undetected. They were never in general issue but were used by razvedchik, e...