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Schulenburg, a diplomat of the old school who believed in Bismarck’s dictum that Germany should never make war on Russia,
He may also have started to suspect that Hitler’s reckless gamble could turn into the greatest disaster in history.
Ribbentrop hurried after them. ‘Tell them in Moscow’, he whispered urgently, ‘that I was against this attack.’
His succession of obsessive miscalculations offered much material for bitter reflection.
the domestic omnipotence of the Stalinist system
‘The war with Russia will last only four weeks.’
effectively dehumanized the Soviet enemy
we were dominated by the feeling of being part of a tremendous war machine, which was rolling irresistibly to the east against Bolshevism.’
Army Group North under Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb
Army Group Centre under Field Marshal Fedor von Bock
Army Group South under Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, soon supported on his right by a small Hungarian army and two Romanian armies,
‘When it’s a question of action against the Slavs, you can always count on Romania.’
monster KV tank,
T-34 tank,
jibes from the non-Russian population: ‘The Germans are coming to get you.’
Japanese military intelligence took rather a different view. It was about the only foreign service which did not underestimate the Red Army at this time.
It was about the only foreign service which did not underestimate the Red Army at this time.
They quickly found that surrounded or outnumbered Soviet soldiers went on fighting when their counterparts from western armies would have surrendered.
Stalin even disowned his own son, Yakov, captured near Vitebsk on 16 July.
they showed skill in fighting at night and in forests. These two advantages, above all night-fighting, were to prove far more important than the Germans realized.
But Hitler’s plans of subjugation and exploitation could only strengthen the ‘rotten structure’, by forcing even those who loathed the Stalinist regime to support it.
forcing even those who loathed the Stalinist regime to support it.
He addressed the people as ‘brothers and sisters’, and told them that the Motherland was in great danger, with the Germans advancing deep into the Soviet Union.
Four million people volunteered or felt obliged to volunteer for the opolchentsy militia.
Hitler called it ‘the greatest battle in world history’. The Chief of the General Staff, Halder, on the other hand, called it the greatest strategic mistake of the campaign in the east. Like Guderian, he felt that all their energies should have been concentrated on Moscow.
Mass-produced. They typify a new race, a tough race, these corpses of workers killed in an industrial accident.’
patriotism that was somehow both spiritual and visceral.
The railway tracks, which were a slightly broader gauge, had to be relaid, and instead of the highways marked on their maps, the armies found dirt roads which turned to glutinous mud in a brief summer downpour.
Vulkan Sanex condoms,
‘die Schwarze’
typical Hitlerian sop to a disgruntled but necessary general)
This armchair strategist never possessed the qualities for true generalship, because he ignored practical problems.
he set 7 November (the anniversary of the Russian Revolution) as the deadline for surrounding the Soviet capital.
This did not stop Beria from wanting to arrest and interrogate their commander as a ‘panic- monger’, but it finally succeeded in galvanizing the Kremlin.
‘As often as not, we cannot get them out even with flame-throwers, and we have to blow the whole thing to bits.’
‘mine-dogs’,
A Landser would often lose a jackboot, sucked from his leg in the knee-deep mud.
the Japanese planned to strike south into the Pacific against the Americans, not against the Soviet Far East.
Stalin, with his uncanny instinct, soon realized the symbolic importance of the parade in Red Square,
the highly mobile T-34, whose unusually broad tracks coped with the snow and ice far better than German panzers,
‘Christmas’, ran one spoof order, ‘will not take place this year for the following reasons: Joseph has been called up for the army; Mary has joined the Red Cross; Baby Jesus has been sent with other children out into the countryside [to avoid the bombing];
the Three Wise Men could not get visas because they lacked proof of Aryan origin; there will be no star because of the blackout; the shepherds have been made into sentries and the angels have become Blitzmädeln [telephone operators]. Only the donkey is left, and one can’t have Christmas with just a donkey.’2
‘Order of the Frozen Flesh’.
the balance of power - geopolitical, industrial, economic and demographic - swung decisively against the Axis in December 1941, with the Wehrmacht’s failure to capture Moscow and the American entry into the war.
‘more like a scientist than a general, when compared to Rommel or Model’.
Groscurth, the son of a pastor and a convinced anti-Nazi,
‘We cannot and should not be allowed to win this war.’
most natural pity for civilians was transmuted into an incoherent anger based on the feeling that women and children had no business to be in a battle zone.
Operation Northern Light,
Operation Siegfried, renamed Operation Blue—would
