Dimitri > Recent Status Updates

Any and all indication of limiting democratic freedoms evoked substantial [intellectual] attention. A crisis of democracy was talked about in general terms. The deepening was confirmed by developments in a number of European states in which totalitarian regimes or even fascist dictatorships were coming to power.

The Epiphany Declaration(6.1.18) arose from deeper issues [inspired] by the mottos of the Russian Revolution on the right of nations for self-determination. It was at least one step ahead of the positions of the Entente at the time, where the notion of maintaining Austria Hungary still survived. The goal was to separate it from Germany, which would then be easier to defeat.

I shall not pester my account or the reader with descriptions of places, journals of our voyages, variations of the compass, latitudes, meridian distances, ports, trade winds and the tlike, such as almost all of the histories of long navigation are full off and which make the reading tiresome enough, and are perfectly unprofitable to all that read, except only to those who are to go to those places themselves.

Far from the rapid exploitation the senior commanders claimed in their memoirs & in many popular narratives, SHAEF had been stricken with nearly 2 weeks of operational indecision & paralysis about what do to with Remagen (because the master plan had been to use the Rhine as a moat to respectively trap German armies on the west bank & barrier their counterattacks on the east bank. Prepare the next big push at ease.

"Tough the Germans were on the run, the cost to those in the spearhead was high. Historians tend to concentrate on the divisional contributions, but the [2 regiments in Third Army] US cavalry are often forgotten. As a former cavalryman, I would be remiss in overlooking the assertation that "the cavalry contributed to a huge victory & helped zthird Army destroy 12 German divisions in its drive to the Rhine"

Thus by '45 the much vaunted Sigfried Line was less a wall than a curtain. More to the point, Hitler misread the utility of fixed defences. They can only DELAY. they cannot halt an opponent unless fully manned & infinitely resourced. Germany had neither the manpower nor the resources for the Westwall to do its job.

All US infantry divisions had independent tank battalions assigned to them, which were usually parcelled up into tank platoons to support regiments. This was against US tank doctrine, which insisted that armour should be deployed en masse... the infantry were [often] the beneficiaries of this slippage of doctrine, knowing they could always rely on immediate armor support.

The deployment of ten infantry divisions* was an acknowledgement that the Siegfried line would be a tough nut to crack.

At the time of this attack on the north side of the Saar Palatinate triangle, the average life expectancy for a junior officer was just 17 days.

*3rd, 36th, 42th Rainbow, 44th, 45th Thunderbird, 63th Blood & Fire, 70th Trailblazers, 100th plus 3rd Algerian.

With the proximity of German forces there was a real fear of friendly fire; so the US armor carried canvas air recognition panels stretched out over their rear engine panels. These came in different shades, a fluorescent red over a white base or garish yellow. Colour codes changed by arrangement with their supporting air cover to prevent the Germans imitating them.

By 26 February, "all our other armies, with the exception of the Seventh and French, were likewise on the attack yesterday." The Wehrmacht was under pressure all along their lines, in vindication of Eisemhower's broad front strategy, which gave the Reich no ability to concentrate their reserves in a single locale. Also,"the Germans are unable to quickly switch divisions because of the present state of their railways"

[Originally planned for december but postponed by 2 months because of the Bulge] The great offensive from the West was stymied yet again. Poor weather, too, prevented air cover, parachute drops or glider assaults. Not until 23 february, when the floodwaters [from the opened Roer dam sluices] had passed on their way to the North Sea, did Ninth army attack, triggering First Army's simultaneous assault.

The Politics is a work whose strength lies in its parts. It is a banquet whose courses, nourishing & succulent though they be, may have come up from the kitchen in the wrong order. Moreover, to a palate unaccustomed to Aristotle's cuisine, the dishes taste a little strange. There seems to be a certain powerful ingredient that gives them all a distinct tang.

The socialists thus entered the First & Second Duma for the explicit purpose of sabotaging legislative work & disseminating revolutionary propaganda under the protection of parliamentary immunity. A new electoral law favored the propertied classes by using assets rather than legal status as the criterion of franchise, in the Russian tradition of integrating every independent institution into the state system.

Despite the awesome Canadian superpower BLOCKBUSTER proved to lack the punch needed to help bring VERITABLE to a hasty conclusion. Due to the weather, close air support wasn't always available & it soon degenerated into a series of infantry assaults over terrain they could not reconnoitre in advance. Roundly condemned: Flooding the Roer had delayed the American southern pinch, but it could've commenced soon enough.

*one of the misleading commonplaces in [Communist historiography] is that Stolypin reforms were meant to promote a class of Kulaks. They had the opposite purpose, to give enterprising peasants an opportunity to enrich themselves by productive work rather than by usury & exploitation.

"How succesful were his reforms?" Here Orlando Figes & other post-Soviet authors might be less undecided....

The agrarian unrest of 1905-06 had 2 consequences. Henceforth the Muzhik no longer looked to the Tsar to give him the land he coveted, but to the Duma and the liberal & radical parties. Second, the peasants of Central Russia succeeded in smoking out many landlords who, frightened of the assault on their property, disposed of their estates & cleared out. The peasantry was now the largest purchaser of land.

The planners of operation ZO, although well aware of the danger posed by the enemy's shore defences to the arriving fleet [10 inch batteries] something of a preoccupation of Keyes & his senior staff, had gravely underestimated their continued threat to the raid's departing survivors.

[..] "As such it was a vital communications link, severing it would significantly delay any enemy reinforcements trying to make their way up to the heavy gun emplacements at the lighthouse end.

If the Mole itself could be seen as a giant arm crooked protectively around Zeebrugge harbour, the idea was now to snap this at the elbow.

Situated some 300y up the Mole, the viaduct was raised up on a trellis of wooden pillings designed to allow a tidal flow to wash through the gaps into the harbour proper, thus prevent it from silting up into a giant sandbar. The structure also served as both a pedestrian overpass & a railway line bringing men & supplies from the mainland to the far extremity.
[He never specifies if the railway was a wartime add]

"Like his elder brother, Richard always took pleasure in blowing things up."

There is nothing like a family connection to inspire a writer's wit.

The elder brother is Francis Sandford, mining enthousiast who stormed Gallipoli & whose semi kamikaze plan is to steer an explosive-brimed submarine into the 300ft railway viaduct supplying the Mole.

Away from the Colmar pocket, Allied offensive plans for 1945 were those of December 1944. They had been dusted off and improved from their predecessors which the Ardennes campaign had interrupted. The immediate strategic aim remained the destruction of German forces west of the Rhine. BLACKCOCK followed by VERITABLE were attacks by Montgomery's army group to clear the Rhineland in the north...

De Gaulle needed the African CEF fighters but was equally determined there could be no hint that France had been rescued by her colonies. Hence the blanchiment of De Lattre's force in winter 44-45 saw many of the battle hardened Goums & Sénégalais hand over their weapons, even their greatcoats, to former fighters of the Résistance. The young teenagers knew no discipline & had little training, but they were white.

It is now assessed that the 16 december assault would have been postponed if not cancelled altogether, had Devers 6th army been allowed to continue... a DUKW assault by the 45& 79 Inf. divisions across the Rhine at Karlsruhe, sealing off German 19 army in Alsace & German First army in Lorraine, cutting opposition to US 7&3 Armies. Enemy formations would've been dispatched from the Ardennes to counter the incursion.

If there was an operational benefit to MARKET GARDEN it was the 60 mile salient carved into German lines which constantly threatened an Allied breakout [because] their opponents never possessed enough combat power to close by land or air. It would prove advantageous subsequently when 21st Army Group launched its operations in 1945.

Thus before a Marxist movement had emerged, the theories of its founders were interpreted, with their sanction, when applied to an autocratic regime in an agrarian country, to mean a revolution brought about, not by the inevitable social consequences of mature capitalism, but by terror and coup d'etat.

The Russian liberals found leverage with the Tsar in this threat, but it was a gross miscalculation in the end.

The danger was in the distribution [superior in the Baltic & Middle Sea]This was no longer a pre-Trafalgar situation where a line ship action could settle the balance of forces. Napoleon's naval acquisitions allowed strong enforcement of his war on commerce. It provided as well the means for harassment & [amphibious?] Deployment in all theatres, something that could stretch British naval resources beyond capability.

[Napoleon on admiral Villeneuve]
"The English would be reduced when France had two or three admirals who were willing to die... Villeneuve was a coward who had no plan, no courage, no insight."

He had no plan provided by you, landrubber First Consul. And shifting troops from Boulougne to the Rhine shows you have no more faith in the crossing.

12.12.1804. Napoleon was now on his 3rd grand scheme within a year for bringing his whole fleet to support the Boulogne armada to enable it to cross the Channel. The shemes all supposed release of the ships blockaded at Brest, Rochefort & Toulon to form a single force. Central to the plan(s) was a divergence to the West Indies to draw Nelson there, the false trail. [This] was wildly ambitious in its supposition.

The defeat of the combined fleet in the straits of Gibraltar (Algericas, 6 july 1801) meant that Napoleon had lost all possibility of further serious naval activity in the Mediterranean in support of the army in Egypt. For him maritime power had meant [exactly that: ] triumph over the British Navy in the Mediterranean & through that holding onto Egypt.

The emergence of the People's Will (1879) marks a watershed in the history of the Russian revolution. For one, It established violence as a legitimate instrument of politics, enlightenment & persuasion were rejected as futile & even counterproductive. But even more important was the arrogation by the revolutionary intelligentia of the right to decide what was good for the people....