Feldgrau.net

Off the top of my head, I can't recall whether any Kriegsmarine troops were involved in the Ardennes, but it's not unreasonable. As I recall, some Kriegsmarine units that happened to be in the Arnhem area in Sept '44 were impressed into the fighting there. Not just as individual replacements either,...

Okay, here is a sitmap for 13-14 August (the source is a contemporary sitmap archived in WO 205/1099, reproduced in Michael Swift and Michael Sharpe, Historical Maps of World War II: Europe (PRC Publishing: London, 2005) p 110 -111) http://tactical-airpower.tripod.com/norm1.gif http://tactical-airpo...

I'm still confused. The professional head of the RAF was (and still is) known as the Chief of the Air Staff or "CAS". (also the term here in Canada.) During the war (from Oct 1940) this was Portal. I have never come across the terms "crab" or "top crab," even as slang. ...

Christoph, Fascinating material. I have to say, the relative lack of detailed training material/schedules etc from the German side, compared to the Anglo-American armies, probably says something about the lack of centralization and micromanagment in the German forces. Whereas the Allies would spell ...

What do the denizens of this forum think of the controversy over the Allied failure to close the Falaise gap? This is often framed as a debate over why the US forces stopped at ARGENTAN rather than pushing futher North (and whether Patton was stopped or should have been), whilst the Northern pincer ...

Gents. Yes to Sid's comments, except that, in the secondary literature, what you are really looking for is: German Infantryman (1) 1933-40 David Westwood (ed) (Osprey, 2002) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1841764620/qid=1139617901/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0032386-9459374?s=books&v=glance&n=28...

... if he did take part in the july plot, he would be a hero, and would have been next chancellor or somthing Only if the plot suceeded. I might point out that he did, in fact, take part in the July plot, at least complicitly, or at least the Nazi regime believed he had. Which is precisely why he w...

...from what i can gather if they didn't have Hitler involved in any of this they could have won. Well, yes and no. If Hitler wasn't involved there probably wouldn't have been a war with the USSR in the first place. But even aside from that, its hard to disentagle cause and effect. Some of the effe...

I hear you Reb, but no its not obvious to me that Germany could never have won in the East. First of all, part of the mistakes that led to Germany not being victorious were indeed made in 1941, so perhaps to be clearer what I should have said is that I believe that Germany could in principle have su...

Arguably, Germany's decision to fight Russia made all the difference in the world. With or without Britain - Germany was doomed at that moment. Actually, I would argue you on that one Reb -- I think that the Germans could have won against the USSR. (And this time -- unlike a previous debate of ours...

During the period that the US was expanding but not suffering sig losses ALL trianing boot and spec took place at the div lev. Well, yes but no. I know what you mean. It is true that rather than running "seperate" basic training schools to pump out a stream of individuals to be assigned t...

Gentelmen, Perhaps some "basic training" is required here in basic concepts of military training and service. The following is generally true for all modern militaries, "modern" meaning, national, standing forces that are professionalized and bureaucratized, ie any Western army f...

The same practice applied in the Anglo-American armies. Accounts often refer to "the battle for Hill 142" or such-like. The posters above are absolutely correct that that is simply the height of the hill in question. Military topographic maps mark hills with a triangle symbol (like the Gre...

At the time there was a great deal of contention between the Army and RAF over the question of the effectiveness of air attack, the brunt of which was fought by the Operational Research (OR) scientists from 21st Army Gp. In a nutshell, the OR folks spent a great deal of time crawling over the battle...

Anybody know offhand the %age of air strikes devoted to battlefield support as opposed to supply-line interdiction? Ah-ha! This just happens to be my area of research. The following is from one of my most recent publications ("The Question of British Influence on U.S. Tactical Air Power in Wor...