Dimitri > Recent Status Updates

"All battles are chaos to the participants, but Crusader takes the Oscar gold"

You haven't mastered the art of combining tanks, anti-tank guns and tactical air support yet. Your tanks are inferior. Yet you try to encircle a German Army ? THEIR speciality is Enkreisung and interior line defence !

The British won by weight, tough. Rommel escaped but Tobruk was relieved.

Force recognisition of a nationalised Anglo-Persian Oil (and its revenue) by starving the world market of Iranian oil. And play the U.S. against Britain. An audacious plan, wìth Ayatollah support. But the world was bigger than 3 countries and 1 oil company.

Force recognisition of a nationalised Anglo-Persian Oil (and its revenue) by starving the world market of Iranian oil. And play the U.S. against Britain. An audacious plan, wìth Ayatollah support. But the world was bigger than 3 countries and 1 oil company.

he knows the necessity of mounted infantry firepower & quick artillery dominance...is this a South African cavalry donkey ?

I'm not saying Greece could've repelled a German invasion, but repelling the Italians had already worn'em out. And a beaten Yugoslavia hung over it like a railroad spike.
Funny how Crete has this *Cool ! it had loads of Fallshirmjäger !* vibe now, Until 30.04.41, nobody knew what to do with it.
Then it suddenly became interesting to attack/defend
A) the Ploesti oilfields
B) Suez Canal

After Beda Fomm the route to Tripoli lay open : an opportunity for control over North Africa lost until '43 . Or was it a false opportunity and the Afrika Korps a necessary learning curve ?

Sure. Nobody adds 2 years to a a war just to learn how to win!

"The attack [at Bardia] launched on 3 january 1941 was reminiscent of a dusty Somme."

Nothing stirs my blood like the cultural trauma of the British officer corps which hung over WWII operational art. As their dust-faced, unblooded Australians grimly went forward with fixed bayonets, loaded with wire cutters, it's easy to picture their commanders muttering "I'm too old for this shit" like so many Dany Glovers.

In the Meditteranean, the shores are islands, the countries separated from Europe by their mountains.

the battle of the Frontiers was over in 2 weeks: the German right wing, reinforced by those discounted reserves & ever so slowly revealing its extent, had pushed Joffre's revolving door open. But the deployment by Plan XVII stretched to the sea, with the BEF plugging the last gap. Two days of carnage revealed the flaws in French tactics, but for now "prepare attacks better with artillery" was as inspired as it got.

the invasion of Iraq, Khadaffi warned, signalled the end of the NATO-sanctioned anti-communist Strongman.

if the army has no investment in either state or regime, it crumbles. if it sees itself as an instrument of state it wlll ditch the regime for the people; if it helped build the regime's state, it will kill the people.

When a revolver appeared, a Jew became a human being to be reckoned with.

March '42: schocked stories from Einsatzgruppen refugees, the testimony an escaped inmate from Chełmno death camp & the debut of Aktion Reinhardt in the Lublin ghetto pushed the underground steadily towards the organisation of armed resistance.

Riot police can't police a riot with one hand behind its back because it can't kill. And the USA keeps misidentifying Khomeini as a non-political central figure, rather than very political but still on the margin of the religious Left, like the Bolsheviks.

the fire at the Rex Cinema was only 1 incident in a wave of Khomeini-orchestrated terrorism. I still can't fully grasp how the Iranian people could put the blame on the Shah ?

Trash-talking your opponent in a country where the most moronic imam is still widely held to be beyond reproach. Smart move with that 7 January 1978 newspaper letter, Savat.

Joffre expected the Germans through Belgium & extended his deployment accordingly...just not in such numbers & on the left bank of the Meuse! ... using their reserve formations & dangerously thinning the defences of both East Prussia & Alsace-Lorraine.

Don't lose that common touch when yes-men isolate you...

12 pages and sleep overowers me. Goodnight all my timezones!

the clergy has always been a spokesman for popular discontent. Protests surrending the US-backed coup against Mossadeq in '53 shaped a precedent for the revolution.

France cleans up its act with better machine-guns

1880s: France cleans up its act with better machine-guns.

I never knew Constantinople was a predecessor to 1945 Berlin, with a French, an Italian, a Greek and a British zone of occupation. Or that even Greece could be a 'decent' occupier. But nobody foresaw that an Armenian army might commit vengeful attrocities ?

Kerensky doesn't pass the smell test. A priceless expression!

Alexandretta was a better amphibious target to "split the Ottomans in two", but for a while, Gallipoli was the only positive outlook in a 1915 filled with Allied stalemate and retreat.
There is too much Gallipoli in this book.

It's not enough to have an army. Inherit a decent government apparatus & don't be a Grinch. That's why Kemalism wasn't finished my an Islamist revolution.

A third of the V-1's to London was exploded in mid-air by AA guns ?
Funny, in popular lore they either hit, are wing-tipped into the water by a brave RAF pilot...or simply break down.

It earned its German nickname: Versager-1 [Quitter]

Suez: spotted & shot at the first step.
Christmas in the Caucasus: 3000m and 2m of snow. just as bad to attack in winter as Russia. ESpecially without good shoes or greatcoats
Not a good start...

Fortress Cherbourg. Where fathers of three (36) who never saw battle before are obliterated by Monty's WWI-style barrages. So much for the survival of good Germans.

OI! There's a war going on here!
I know, mate. So it's now or never, isn't it

It's always a good time for a snog with Emma Watson :-D