Posted on 06/22/2017 1:41:55 PM PDT by Bull Snipe
Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. Four million German, Finn, Slovak, Hungarian, Italian, and Romanian soldiers in 180 divisions attacked the Soviet Union along 1800 miles of border. Supporting the German invasion were 3,350 tanks, 17,000 artillery pieces, 2,770 aircraft, 565,000 motor vehicles and 700,000 horses.
My dad was in Okinawa. They were prepping to invade Japan. I have always been grateful to HST.
The Russian Front is lovely this time of year.
October-April, not so much.
After the Trinity test succeeded, Truman didn't have a choice.
If he went ahead with the invasion with 500,000 casualties without dropping it, the democrat party would have been exterminated in the 46' elections.
“I’ve sometimes wondered what would have happened if Hitler hadn’t moved east.”
Some thought the Soviets would eventually have invaded Germany. Think of what happens if either or both the Germans and Soviets have a nuclear bomb in 1948 and at war? In addition, both the Nazis and Soviets didn’t have a succession plans. Hitler’s health was poor. It would have really been destabilizing if Hitler and Stalin both died in 1953 of natural causes.
Is there a specific story behind that picture? Are the women wearing some kind of uniform?
My father served in the 3rd Army under Patton and 7th under Patch. He was in Belgium, Germany, and CZ. When the bomb was dropped on Japan, he was training for the invasion.
Needless to say, he was relieved.
In this day in 1941, the Demonrat Party officially broke off their long lived friendship with Adolf Hitler. All because he dared to attack their homeland.
On this date in 1941 a lot of young men had no idea about where they would end up being in the years that followed.
0312 June 22 1941. It was not the huge mistake we were led to believe in school in the '50s-mid '90s. It was an economic war fought ideologically. In fact my belief the reason for the attacks on Greece, Crete, and Russia was economic: oil, especially Ploesti in Romania and food and raw materials Germany did not have. The Soviets were at their weakest in June 1941 and already had plans in the works to attack in June 1942. This was the "we should win now but will lose later" roll of the dice much like Pearl Harbor. Hitler has been used by the German high command as an excuse for all of their mistakes.
The Nazi invasion was one of the worst betrayals the world has ever seen. The USSR, and Ukraine in particular had suffered a decade of Stalin’s worst imaginable depredations.
There are numerous accounts that people in Belarus, Ukraine, etc briefly saw them as liberators. They knew the Germans to be educated and decent and thought finally Stalin’s terrors would end. They were shocked to find the Germans even worse.
That kind of betrayal of normal people would be like a rape victim seeing a cop shoot her rapist, and think she is saved, only to see the cop unbuckling his belt. It was a shame that fair or not, Germany will never fully shake.
One of the reasons Ukrainians welcomed the Germans so heartily was because, on top of the terrors wrought by Stalin, they figured the Germans would help them purge Jews, Romas, and Tatars from the country. Unfortunately the Nazis weren't substantially more impressed with ethnic Ukrainians than they were with the above mentioned groups, them being "inferior slavs" and all.
Before any other reason, they'd been starved by Stalin in the 1930s. If you lived through that, you might welcome any change of government yourself.
i agree, Stalin knew Hitler hated Slavs, Jews, and Communists. Stalin was playing for time until 1942. This is one reason he was so adamant about not doing anything to provoke a German attack in ‘41 which led to a very poor defensive posture.
Bob Dole would take offense at your assessment.
Only because they thought of the Germans as traditional Germans rather than Nazis.
No story. It’s just a picture I found when I searhed for Barbarossa. Caught my attention because I never seen that one before.
Bad planning if you cannot win with four million German, Finn, Slovak, Hungarian, Italian, and Romanian soldiers in 180 divisions attacked the Soviet Union along 1800 miles of border. Supporting the German invasion were 3,350 tanks, 17,000 artillery pieces, 2,770 aircraft, 565,000 motor vehicles and 700,000 horses.
Additional resources subsequently devoted to his three pronged drive, combined with the reduction in allied support to Russia that loss of the Med would have caused, could well have meant the deposing of the Moscow government and the occupation of Russia west of the Urals. The world might still be very different today but for his impulsiveness
Hitler's failure to secure his southern flank before launching Barbarossa reflected his obsession with taking on Russia and conquering the vast lands to the East as his primary objective.
the plan for the invasion was sound. Hitler delayed the invasion by 6 weeks so he could overrun Greece. This 6 week delay deprived the German Army of 6 weeks of good campaigning weather before the Russian winter set in. Had the senior officers of OKW and OKH been allowed to execute the plan as written, the German’s would have most likely been in Moscow before winter hit them. Hitler’s constant interference in the execution of the invasion proved to be fatal to that operation. JMO
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