Feldgrau.net

Willie (The Cross of Iron) Heinrich's "Crack of Doom" was about the destruction of a German infantry division around Kosice in the early winter of 1945. Although out of print, used copies are easily obtained. It will not answer your questions from a factual, but if like me, you have some f...

Dduff... Regarding your contention that Hitler's adoption of Manstein's plan......"This makes the 'Hitler's errors cost Germany the war' argument at best half true" I cannot agree with that, because he didn't stick to the plan, and by not sticking with the execution of Manstein's plan, he ...

I thought it was only later in the war, especially in 1944/45 that due to manpower shortages, infantry divisions went down to 6 infantry battalions. Are you sure this occured in late 1940? It is my guess that the vast majority of infantry divisions that participated in early Barbarossa had 9 infantr...

At a time when German infantry formations were being bled white, and many were being reduced from 9 to 6 infantry battalions, a frantic serch was made to see where additional manpower could be found. The Luftwaffe, with about 5,000 aircraft, had well over 2,000,000 men in its organization. It was va...

A single post cannot adequately cover the topic as it is an enormously complex issue. Some of the issues are: Early in the 1942 Summer campaign, Hoth claims he could have taken Stalingrad on the fly with his motorized units at the end of July. There was little organized resistance in front of the Ge...

Most of my information comes from Manstein's "lost Victories", in which more detail is given to this campaign than perhaps any of Manstein's others. Some people question his statistics and conclusions. In general, especially about the Crimean Campaign I find little to quibble with. I think...

Kramer, It was a constant mantra that Hitler needed the oil. Why was capturing Stalingrad vital to obtaining that? Once Grozny and Baku were in German hands oil would no longer reach Stalingrad. In fact just cutting the railroad and river south of Stalingrad would effectively cut off most of the oil...

You could be right, and thank you for your reply. It just seems like an average strength of about 16,000 men per Axis division (900,000 divided by 56) is very high for this time in the War. That would mean that every division was basically at their full strenth. It was just a few months earlier that...

I'm just wondering what was the source of your statistics regarding the strengths of the respective opponents? It's interesting that in completely destroying Amy Goup Center, approximately 300,000 Germans were killed or captured. I understand that there were some relatively weak allied units in AGNU...

I've read over the link you included in your post. Good discussion. It was interesting, but certainly doesn't prove or disprove the majority of Stolfi's contentions. One poster, T71herb, seems to hold the exact views I do (including his opinion of Glantz). The arguments he states would be the same o...

...you mean that Hitler could not possibly have knocked Russia out of the war in 1941, then I completely agree with you. However, if you mean that the German Army could not have taken Moscow in 1941 then I disagree. I see absolutely no way they could have captured the city by the end of August as St...

I don't blame you for having reservations about Stolfi. What he writes is controversial and provocative. As other historians are moving away from the "German viewpoint" of the war in Russia and embracing Russian sources, Stolfi is being somewhat of a revisionist in what he is writing, and ...

Stolfi, a credible American historian who taught at an American Military College, has created a bit of cntroversy with what he wrote in "Hitler's Panzers East", WWII reinterpreted. His conclusions, based on exhausting and extensively documented research, have led him to state that it was o...

I think we are splitting hairs here.

Reb, I know that conventional wisdom states that the Panther was the superior tank. It had beautifully sloped armor, enhancing it's effectiveness, and it's L70 75MM gun had about the same penetrative capability as the 88MM L56 gun of the Tiger. It was also fast than the Tiger, and possibly a bit mor...