'Aussie Rick'’s Comments (group member since Jun 12, 2009)

'Aussie Rick'’s comments from the THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP group.

Lee wrote: "A birthday present for me: I'm looking forward to this!"

Nice birthday present Lee!

fourtriplezed wrote: "WWII RAAF bomber and crew discovered in PNG

https://asiapacificdefencereporter.co..."

Good news that they finally located the plane and its crew!

Jonny wrote: "Well, there's no such thing as enough books I guess... so here's today's haul...

[book:Mosquito: ..."

Some very good books there Jonny, nicely done!

Same here Derek :)

"The Reckoning: The Final Defeat of Army Group South, 1944" - The Soviets are still on the offensive and are now pushing the remnants of the German forces out of Ukraine during the Lviv-Sandomierz operation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lvov-Sa...

"The Reckoning: The Final Defeat of Army Group South, 1944" - The author mentioned the Second Battle of Târgu Frumos which saw heavy fighting involving the German Grossdeutschland Division:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_...#

It would be interesting to hear what they say if you offer the material.

Nice find MR9, would that material be of interest to a local museum?

A new book coming out on a different aspect of D-Day; "Normandy: the Sailors' Story: A Naval History of D-Day and the Battle for France" by Nick Hewitt.


Normandy: the Sailors' Story: A Naval History of D-Day and the Battle for France by Nick Hewitt
Description:
The first account of the Allied navies' vital contribution to the success of the D-Day landings and the Normandy campaign

The Allied liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe is one of the most widely recognised events of modern history. The assault phase, Operation Neptune, began with the D-Day landings in Normandy―one of the most complex amphibious operations in history, involving 7,000 ships and nearly 200,000 men. But despite this immense effort, the wider naval campaign has been broadly forgotten.

Nick Hewitt draws on fascinating new material to describe the violent sea battle which mirrored the fighting on land, and the complex campaign at sea which enabled the Allied assault. Aboard ships ranging from frail plywood landing craft to sleek destroyers, sailors were active combatants in the operation of June 1944, and had worked tirelessly to secure the Seine Bay in the months preceding it. They fought battles against German submarines, aircraft, and warships, and maintained careful watch to keep control of the English Channel.

Hewitt recounts these sailors' stories for the first time―and shows how, without their efforts, D-Day would have failed.

A bit of history there MR9!

"The Reckoning: The Final Defeat of Army Group South, 1944" - The aftermath of the Soviet occupation of the Crimean peninsula:

" ... the NKVD moved in with about 32,000 men. The forcible roundup of Tatars and others began on 18 May, and within three days about 150,000 people had been arrested. Thousands of Tatars serving in the Red Army were also arrested and dispatched to prison camps, even those who had spent the entire war in uniform and far from the peninsula. Over 6,000 Crimean Tatars died while travelling to Uzbekistan in crowded trains, and another 30,000 died there before the end of the Second World War. By the end of 1954, more than half the Crimean Tatars who had been deported were dead. Nor were they the only victims. Stalin intended to 'Russify' Crimea and the arrest and deportation of non-Russians followed the departure of the Tatars. The Tatars of one village on the Arabat spit were overlooked; when they realised this, NKVD officials rounded up all the Tatars and forced them aboard a small vessel. This was towed into the Sea of Azov, where it was scuttled. Machine-gunners waited on the shore in case any of the Tatars attempted to swim to safety."

The Crimean Tatars Deportation and Exile:
https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violen...

"The Reckoning: The Final Defeat of Army Group South, 1944" - Just finished reading the chapter covering the Soviet offensives to recapture the Crimean peninsula during 1944:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean...

James wrote: "Now churning through EMBERS OF WAR: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam (2012) by Fredrick Logevall.

A great read so far, it is easy to see how it won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize..."

A good book indeed, glad to hear you are enjoying it!

"The Reckoning: The Final Defeat of Army Group South, 1944" - The author provided this bit of detail on Field Marshal Kleist:

"He did a great deal to try and recruit genuinely voluntary helpers for the German forces, and as a result about 850,000 men from the Soviet Union joined the German cause. He ignored the protests of civilian authorities like Gauleiter Erick Koch, Reichkommissar for Ukraine and Fritz Sauckel, Generalbevollmachtigter fur den Arbeitseinsatz ('General Plenipotentiary for Labour Redeployment', effectively in charge of forcible deportation of slave labour), and summoned SS and police commanders to his headquarters, telling them bluntly that any mistreatment or mass killings in his area would not be tolerated and any officer ordering such acts would be arrested and executed. When one SS officer retorted that the Fuhrer would take a dim view of this, Kleist replied that this would be of little consolation to the SS officer, as he would already have been executed."

After the war Kleist would be handed over to the Russians where he was convicted of the crime of 'alienating through mildness and kindness the population of the Soviet Union'.

Field Marshal Kleist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Lu...#

Group member Scott has posted this request:

Hello. I have been searching for an English-language biography about the WWII era Soviet Marshal, Semyon Timoshenko. The only thing I've found so far is a panegyric from 1942 by Walter Mehring, an obvious propaganda piece. But there's nothing I can find along the line of Stalin's General about Georgi Zhukov.
Anyone have any suggestions?

Indeed Mike!

"The Reckoning: The Final Defeat of Army Group South, 1944" - A German account covering one of the many retreats during 1944 on the Eastern Front:

"And when the long columns of the squadrons wound their way uphill through the snow and rain, wrapped up in coats and camouflage jackets, scrubby packhorses on lead rains, we were involuntarily reminded of scenes from1812. Nothing seemed to have changed since then. No vehicles, no radios, no tanks, and no planes helped these men in these desperate hours. Only courage ad self-sacrifice could ward off the worst. And there was growing bitterness at the manufacturers who seemed unable to construct vehicles that could cope with these conditions. Bitterness at the incompetence of the high command that, despite knowing about such conditions in the third Russian winter of the war, had not taken the necessary measures and hid behind the strategy of holding on at all costs. The cost was the destruction of entire armies!"

The Reckoning: The Final Defeat of Army Group South, 1944 by Prit Buttar

Tony wrote: "I finished Max Hastings’s Abyss this evening. Definitely recommended for anyone after an introduction to the Missile Crisis, or just after a good read.

[bookcover:Ab..."

Sounds good Tony as I have an unread copy in my library.

"The Reckoning: The Final Defeat of Army Group South, 1944" - A German first-hand account from the fighting around Kamanets-Podolski - The encirclement of the First Panzer Army:

"In the early hours the alarm sounded. We readied all the vehicles for movement. That was rather difficult process, for reasons mainly stemming from the Italian-made Bianchi and OM trucks.

All of a sudden, Russian tanks broke through and fired upon the town. All the vehicles belonging to the ration supply team, the bakery company, and the division supply unit drove off immediately, and almost all of them got away. Every man available, mostly from the bakery company, was put into action as infantry. The subsequent defensive combat lasted several days. Four or five of the days qualified as hand-to-hand combat ...

All hell broke loose ... At the height of the fighting, our old comrade Haupsturmfuhrer Graetz [commander of an anti-tank company in one of the division's panzergrenadier regiments] showed up. At the time, he was serving as part of the officer reserve. He had pulled together the men of the bakery company and retreating soldiers from other units to form a fighting force. Supported by just two broken-down tanks stuck in Manatshin, Graetz was able not only to repulse this attack, but to lead his 'Kampfgruppe Graetz' in a counterattack ... For his actions, he received the Knight's Cross."

The Kamenets–Podolsky Pocket:
https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/2...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamenet...

Tony wrote: "A linked point Hastings makes (and repeats, as is his way) is how poor communication resulted in quite junior officers having a scary degree of autonomy."

I suppose we should count our lucky stars that we are still alive :)