Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

[lwd]

A bit of a quibble.

... The Germans lost the war, so naturally the end casualties were much higher than anyone except for the Russians, who lost by far the most.

The Chinese lost about the same number of people as the Soviets. Note that according to wike Poland lost almost as many people as Germany from an initial population that was half of Germany's.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

[Bgile]

I stand corrected. :)

[VeenenbergR]

Bgile. True!

Still the early campaings of WWII were seldom very bloody or very intense fighting occurred somewhere:

- Poland: the Bzura outbreak attempt perhaps,
- Norway: the sinking of the Blücher (1 incident) and some desperate fighting for Narvik, but only minor units involved
- Netherlands: in Rotterdam was some intense fighting for the bridges by minor units.
- Belgium: none
- France: none, perhaps the German 2nd offensive after reaching the Sea met stiff resistance by the defenders of Dunkirk and the French line north of Paris. In 1942: Dieppe!
- Balcans: none except for the heavy fighting for Maleme on Crete and in 1944 the battle for Belgrado;
- North Africa: none, except for El Alamein (the British attack) and the really tough battles for a dozen passes and hills in Tunesia, which were feared objects!
- Italy: a long list (at least 100) of viscious fights for some hills, mountains, fortified villages and towns all involving minor units except for Anzio and Cassino.
- France 44: a really long list for many villages in Normandy (at least 100) and severe fighting in breakout battles like Falaise, Valence and Mons, or fortified ports like: Cherbourg, Brest, Toulon, Dunkirk/Boulogne
- Netherlands and Belgium: the rivers (Arnhem) and Ardennes saw some heavy fighting for a dozen towns.....
- Russia: at least 1000-1500 places were extremely heavy fighting took place: even underground! Mostly by (many) major combat units too: near Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, in the Caucasus, Ukraine, Crimea and Carpathians (Dukla Pass). Cherkassy/Korsun, Sevastopol, Stalingrad, Brody and Kursk were among the most notorious places......
- Rumania & Moldavia: terrible fighting in august 1944 with skyhigh casualties in a short period of time.
- Austria, Tjecho-slovakia and Hungary: some less than Germany but also quite intensive (along lake Balaton, around Prague, Ostrava) with many very ugly and desperate fighting (Budapest)
- Germany (& former Poland): along the borders: terrible fighting on a massive scale and with enormous high casualties (especially in the East: East Prussia, Pommerania, Silesia, Warswa, Breslau)!!
In the interior:virtually no fighting or resistance except for Berlin.
- Oceans: the sinking of the Royal Oak, Glorious, Hood, Bismarck, Barham, Scharnhorst and Tirpitz.
- Air: the mass air battles over Germany and the destruction of big historic cities like Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden and Magdeburg,
but also Pforzheim, Darmstadt, Kassel, Mainz, Würzburg and Halberstadt with terrible firestorm attacks.

[Bgile]

I think one thing that often gets overlooked is the huge air attacks involving thousands of heavy bombers over Germany day and night helped the Russians. It affected German industrial production, fuel availability, and tied up large numbers of German fighters which could have been used against Russia.

I wonder how numbers of aircraft compare between the East and West fronts?

[VeenenbergR]

Bgile: if you mean the numbers of VVS and USAAF and RAF: they were roughly the same, with the difference the Germans could easily fly over the Eastfront
with bombers up to the end, while in the West they were intercepted..........at ve-day both had 17.000 aircraft (total 34.000) against 8000 of the Luftwaffe (most without fuel).

The Luftwaffe increasingly devoted more Jagdgeschwader in the West than the East and kept all Kampf (Bomber) geschwader, Stürzkampf-Geschwader and Schlachtgeschwader in the East,
because they were not intercepted.
Their HE177, Do217K , Ju188's and Arado Blitz were the bombers deployed in the West; the He111H's, Do217E's, Ju88's were deployed in the East.
The Luftwaffe had 50% in the West (1500 fighters and 500 bombers) and 50% in the East (500 fighters and 1500 bombers)

[boredatwork]

Was not in excess of 50% of German munition manufacture being spent on AA shells by war's end?

[mkenny]

June 1944 Luftwaffe numbers.

West 3636 (1400 single engine fighters)
East 2395 (560 single engine fighters)

12174 German A/C lost in 1944. East 2406, West 9768. Ratio 4:1 West/East
20% of German ammo produced in 1944 was for AA use

[boredatwork]

Hmm... I must of mis-remembered what I had read somewhere (or the source was woefully unreliable)

[mkenny]

Hmm... I must of mis-remembered what I had read somewhere (or the source was woefully unreliable)

It all depends on what you count. If you are just counting bombers and single engine day Fighters then you lose 1000 Night Fighters/twin engine fighters from the Western totals. Also my numbers are specific to June 1944. Other monthly totals were a lot different.
As with any statistic you can make it mean anything you want. Do not use them as absolute numbers either, they are estimates-good estimates!

[boredatwork]

I was reffering to the % of munitions being diverted to home defense. I thought I remembered reading at some point that the shortages of artillery munitions at the front was due to the increasing % being diverted to home defense... though that might have been from an Osprey book and my memory isn't that great... either way I wouldn't bet money on it.

[VeenenbergR]

mkenny: THX, I omitted the twin engine fighters, nightfighters, ground attack planes, recce, transport, sea-planes from my totals. Which were also rounded.
Your total is about 6000 A/C and these refer to all fighters and bombers I suppose, excluding trainers, ground attack planes, recce, transport and sea-planes.
Grand total of the Luftwaffe mid 44 (and mid 45) was around 8000 planes.

Clearly the LW had more planes based in the West than in the East, primary because a shift of single engine fighters (ME109, FW190) to the defense of the Reich (Blue/red stripings)

[VeenenbergR]

Anybody already read latest books of Glantz about Stalingrad (2 volumes out of 3) and the very latest about Barbarossa Derailed???
Glantz is brilliant!!! The no1

Furthermore more books are pouring out of Rolf Hinze which is virtually (next to Alex Buchner) the only German author which describes the huge 1944
battles on the Eastern Front. I find Glantz and Hinze good authors, only their books don't read easily like those of Carell, Stephen Newton or Reynolds.

The books of Ziemke add Erickson rank high on the list of best authors. How do you value the mentioned authors?

Then on the German side 2 other authors wrote impressive books: Tieke and Maier.

Ziemke
Erickson
Hinze
Glantz
Reynolds
Newton
Tieke
Maier

[VeenenbergR]

Why Germany lost WWII:

Barbarossa derailed:
Heeregruppe Mitte advanced 500 kilometers within 3 weeks after the start of Barbarossa and captured nearly 500.000 prisoners.
Once across the Dvina and the Dnepr Heersgruppe Mitte encountered surprisingly 5 fresh Soviet Armies and Soviet forces in Mogilev and Smolensk stubbornly refused to surrender.......The Wehrmacht destroyed 2 of them and almost destroyed another 2 of them but it brought them not any further. The Wehrmacht fought them in July, August and September: thirst 5 and then a total of another 7 Armies which launched counterattack after counterattack time went by and Hitler postponed the drive on Moscow to go for the softer targets around Kiev.
The Wehrmacht succeeded to eliminate this threat of about 750.000 men but returned rather late to resume the offensive on its main axis.
In October the Wehrmacht resumed its drive, destroyed another 1.000.000 men outright, but the weather changed adversely and new Soviet reinforcements arrived in masses in November from
seemingly nowhere....Barbarbarossa failed at the gates of Leningrad and Moscow and Germany lost the war, because she was as a major power not prepared for the upcoming attrition against 2 major powers and 1 (good) medior power and a lot of interior resistance.
The pivotal battle for Smolensk was the turning point of WWII for Germany like Midway was that for Japan.

Glantz

[mkenny]

Reynolds may be British but he is definately a pro-German author. Look at the titles he picked for his books 'Men Of Steel'/'Sons Of The Reich'/'Steel Inferno'/'Devils Adjutant'. They give the game away.
If you want a non 'German' way of looking at things someone like Terry Coop or John Buckley is needed. I bet there are those here who will have to do a Google just to find out who they are!

[Byron Angel]

Anybody already read latest books of Glantz about Stalingrad (2 volumes out of 3) and the very latest about Barbarossa Derailed???

..... I just finished Volume 2 of Glantz's Stalingrad trilogy. It is rather dry reading, but serves as an excellent reference work on the progress of the fighting in and around the city. The most interesting point I took away from the book was Glantz's assertion that the Soviets held ample reserves of men and material and were probably never truly in danger of actually losing the city. The Soviet high command opted to carefully ration the commitment of reserves to the Stalingrad fighting, providing only sufficient reinforcements to Chuikov to keep the German 6th Army committed in the immediate Stalingrad battle area, grind up German fighting strength and reserves and prevent an outright German capture the city, while they themselves assembled forces for their planned major counter-offensive.


Byron