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15th May 2017, 03:22 AM | #81 |
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Quite so. In early 1943, the Germans began to withdraw and consolidate their positions in the (Caucusus) region due to setbacks elsewhere. They established a defensive line (Kuban bridgehead) in the Taman Peninsula from which they hoped to eventually launch new operations in the Caucasus. The fighting remained reasonably static until September 1943 when the Germans ordered fresh withdrawals which effectively ended the period of fighting in the Caucasus.See Battle of the CaucasusWP. |
15th May 2017, 06:50 AM | #82 |
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Here is what was happening in the Caucasus in early 1943.
3 January 1943 - Red Army retake Mozdok |
15th May 2017, 07:56 AM | #83 |
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There was a clip on that World at War documentary on British TV from 1973, which keeps being repeated, of Sir Stafford Cripps, British ambassador to Russia 1940-42, saying to the camera that the Russians don't want to interfere in the affairs of other countries and he has heard that from the lips of Stalin himself. That was being a bit naïve as subsequent events have proven. That's a bit like Bush in America saying watch my lips. The Russians prefer plain speaking.
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15th May 2017, 08:27 AM | #84 |
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Which Russians have you been watching or listening too? The ones who developed the Potemkin Village, or the ones who airbrush people out of photographs after they have been purged and alter the record to claim they were never there?
Stalin may very well have said such a thing - the actions of the USSR speak a lot louder then those words and their actions in Spain, Finland, the Baltics, and Manchuria drown out that statement. Mr. Cripps' statement may simply have been what is commonly referred to as a "polite fiction." |
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15th May 2017, 08:57 AM | #85 |
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You may be right there. All this is getting into dangerous waters and we don't know what was discussed behind closed doors. There have been several mentions in the past that Stalin might have threatened to make a separate peace with the Germans if Britain and America didn't launch a cross-channel invasion at the time. I don't know if that is just politics by Stalin.
The diaries of Field-Marshal Alanbrooke give an insight into the situation in the Caucasus on August 22nd 1942:
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15th May 2017, 09:01 AM | #86 |
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Seriously, have a look at the map of the front in May 1943 compared with August 1942, when Alan Brooke made that comment in his diary.
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16th May 2017, 08:42 AM | #87 |
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The map of the front in Russia was constantly changing every day at the time. The fact remains that Alan Brooke, who didn't suffer from a lack of vision, had strenuous business worries that our defences in Iraq and Persia were lamentably weak against any German attack through the Caucasus. These strenuous business worries continued until after the battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. The Americans tried to help out at the time by suggesting American air bases in Russia, which Stalin refused, presumably for political reasons.
It's a bit like dealing with the half-mad North Koreans now. Hitler has been described mockingly on TV in the past as Corporal Hitler. There is a bit of background waffle about all this in that Russian Outlook book published in 1947 by Lieutenant-General Sir Giffard Martel:
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16th May 2017, 09:15 AM | #88 |
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No Brooke's worries didn't continue until after the Battle of Kursk.
They continued until the German withdrawal in early 1943, caused by Zhukov's massive counterattck in late 1942 that isolated Stalingrad (Uranus) and finalised by Saturn in early 1943, which pretty much sealed off the Caucasus. Months before Kursk. |
16th May 2017, 02:34 PM | #89 |
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16th May 2017, 04:02 PM | #90 |
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The USA did in fact have air bases in the USSR.
Poltava was designated as USAAF Station 559 and became headquarters, Eastern Command, headed by General Alfred Kessler. Two smaller nearby U.S. fields, also along the Kiev railway, were Mirgorod and Piryatin (Stations 561 and 560).Their main purpose was to facilitate shuttle bombing. Operation Frantic began with 325th Reconnaissance Wing flights from England and Italy in late May 1944, and a photo lab and reconnaissance detachment with a few F-5 Lightnings were based at Poltava. Bombing runs (FRANTIC-1) began from Italy (15th Air Force) on 2 June 1944, returning four days later. The concept of operations was for American aircraft to use England (8th Air Force), Italy, and the Ukrainian bases as vertices of a triangular bombing campaign against Axis targets in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. |
16th May 2017, 05:33 PM | #91 |
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17th May 2017, 12:54 AM | #92 |
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17th May 2017, 02:30 AM | #93 |
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The thing is Churchill and Eden were amateur strategists, like Trump and Mrs. May now, and Cameron and Tony Blair. Churchill was continually trying to invade Norway during the war, and he tried to get the Canadians to do it, but they refused.
It's true that the Russians were not fighting the war on our behalf. They despised us. They had their own political plans for Eastern Europe, and the Baltic states. It's just that the oil from Iraq and Persia was vital because the Americans could not replace that oil supply due to the U-boat menace, and any German attack through the Caucasus could have linked up with the Japanese and threatened India. There is a bit about the insincerity of politicians in the diaries of Alan Brooke. It's a bit like Chamberlain's spooferies piece of paper saying it showed the determination of our two peoples never to go to war again:
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17th May 2017, 02:37 AM | #94 |
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Posted in error.
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17th May 2017, 02:40 AM | #95 |
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17th May 2017, 03:00 AM | #96 |
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17th May 2017, 03:08 AM | #97 |
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No doubt it was, but the uninformed reader of your
The Americans tried to help out at the time by suggesting American air bases in Russia, which Stalin refused, presumably for political reasons.would be surprised to learn that such bases were permitted by Stalin a year later, at a time when the danger to his regime had abated, or even been dispelled, post Stalingrad and Kursk. Your comment would indicate an perpetual unyielding refusal by Stalin, but it could be and was temporarily overcome. That is not to argue that Stalin was motivated by sincere friendliness towards the Western Allies. He certainly was not. |
17th May 2017, 03:30 AM | #98 |
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I agree with you that after Stalingrad that the Caucasus was not a priority for the Germans. The point I am trying to make is that an attack in the Caucasus by the Germans was still a threat to the British in 1943 until after the battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. It was touch and go in Russia at the time and territory was constantly being taken and retaken, a bit like Syria now. It was not like the static warfare of the 1914-18 war.
There is a bit about this matter on the internet which I can't seem to link to this forum:
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17th May 2017, 04:24 AM | #99 |
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They simply didn't have the forces to do that, or the logistics.
The forces put into the Caucasus were in no way strong enough to get over the mountains and into Iraq. The big fear was a rebellion (again)...and that still wouldn't have provided enough to threaten India. And, again, that wasn't the situation at all. Post Uranus and Saturn there was no threat to Iraq. None. And the British knew it. No it wasn't "touch and go". Post Stalingrad the Germans were in no position to win. |
17th May 2017, 05:12 AM | #100 |
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I'm not saying that at all. In early 1943 the Causasus was indeed an urgent priority.
Meanwhile, early in January 1943, only just in time, Hitler acknowledged that the encirclement of the Germans in Stalingrad would lead to an even worse disaster unless he extricated his forces from the Caucasus. Kleist was therefore ordered to retreat, while his northern flank of 600 miles was still protected by the desperate resistance of the encircled Paulus. Kleist’s forces were making their way back across the Don at Rostov when Paulus at last surrendered. Had Paulus surrendered three weeks earlier (after seven weeks of isolation), Kleist’s escape would have been impossible.(From Britannica.) What I am saying is that a German breakthrough, link up with Japan, occupation of Iran and invasion of British India were completely out of the question. It was not a non-priority, it was a fantasy. German troops were being pulled out of the Caucasus as speedily as possible, lest they be overwhelmed by the Red Army. |
17th May 2017, 08:01 AM | #101 |
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17th May 2017, 08:20 AM | #102 |
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Oh yes, oops.
Replace Iraq above, with Iran, in my posts. Except where I talk about rebellion, which was in Iraq. |
18th May 2017, 02:16 AM | #103 |
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That's official complacency and wishful thinking. There was no guarantee the Russians would come out on top at the battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943 and that the Germans could then be able to try again through the Caucasus. That was a serious matter for the British, and even for the Americans.
The Germans made inroads of about 20 miles at Kursk. It was only when Hitler heard that the Allies had landed in Sicily, and on to Italy, that Hitler abandoned his offensive at Kursk because that news put him in to a bit of a panic. Hitler then diverted troops and military equipment away from the Russian front to Italy, and even to Greece, in a dangerous dispersal for him. There is a bit of information about the lamentably weak military situation in Persia and Iraq for the British in a book called The Turn of the Tide by Arthur Bryant published in 1957:
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18th May 2017, 02:46 AM | #104 |
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I'm going to hazard a guess that you haven't actually studied Kursk.
There was no chance of any meaningful breakthrough. They only achieved 20 miles in the south of the salient...the salient was over 100 miles wide. The north achieved less than 10 miles. Overall they covered less than a quarter of the distance they need to to cut it off, and even had that succeeded, there were insufficient forces to exploit it. It was at this point that OKH start to count divisions with little regard to how strong they actually were. So the units deployed for Kursk were woefully understrength. |
18th May 2017, 04:30 AM | #105 |
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So you take the view that the Germans were doing fine at Kursk, and abandoned the offensive solely to confront the Allied landings in Sicily. I've never been convinced by that. But let me have a look at the evidence. Up to now your various statements haven't been holding up well in the face of evidence.
ETA The Allies landed in Sicily on 9 July 1943. On that same day on the Kursk front ... a meeting between Kluge, Model, Joachim Lemelsen and Josef Harpe was held at the headquarters of the XLVII Panzer Corps. It had become clear to the German commanders that the 9th Army lacked the strength to obtain a breakthrough, and their Soviet counterparts had also realized this ...See Battle of KurskWP |
18th May 2017, 09:02 AM | #106 |
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I have never made a profound study of Kursk. Much of my information in the past about it has come from TV documentaries, and books, and stuff on the internet. It's just it's patently obvious that landings were not an easy task as the Americans found out fighting to the death in their island hopping in the Pacific, and nearly another year's hard fighting after the landings in Normandy.
Amateur strategists like Churchill and Eden thought these landings were easy. Blue collar workers in the UK were only interested in beer, cigarettes and football, and not far off countries like the Czechs, of which few people had ever heard. Chamberlain was right. Kursk was a big battle and it was important to Britain and America that the Russians were not defeated there. There is information about this at this website: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...attle-of-kursk
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19th May 2017, 01:28 AM | #107 |
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What have landings got to do with Kursk??
That's a complete non-sequitur! Are you sure you're not some AI? And that link pretty much aligns with what I said...the Soviet defences were formidable, and backed by a massive reserve. All it misses is the bit that the units those 900,000 German troops came from were almost 500,000 under strength. |
19th May 2017, 02:20 AM | #108 |
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19th May 2017, 02:51 AM | #109 |
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Isn't Kursk where brave Tommy Atkins sent his men over the top with a kick of a football into No Man's Land?
Oh hang on, wrong war. |
19th May 2017, 03:16 AM | #110 |
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19th May 2017, 07:12 AM | #111 |
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19th May 2017, 07:23 AM | #112 |
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Churchill was not a strategic genius, as TV documentaries now portray him, and neither was Eden. After the war Churchill allowed German war criminals to advise the Egyptians, which was approved by the Nazi civil servants and lawyers who had carried on as normal after the war, so that they could compete with British manufacturing.
The Americans by then thought those war criminals were on our side, while the Germans proposed an amnesty for German war criminals, and Interpol did nothing about it, like they do nothing about internet fraud now. It's like the appeasement of Saudi Arabia now for 9/11, and the lack of respect for international law by Saudi Arabia and Israel, and the support for Al Qaeda groups in Syria by Trump and Mrs. May and the CIA and FBI. |
19th May 2017, 07:48 AM | #113 |
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I don't think Eisenhower was a strategic genius either. His theory of a small bridgehead on the north-west coast of France would have been a ghastly failure on the beaches, a bit like the Dieppe raid.
From Eisenhower's book Crusade in Europe:
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19th May 2017, 07:56 AM | #114 |
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19th May 2017, 07:59 AM | #115 |
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Is anyone arguing that Churchill was a strategic genius?
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20th May 2017, 02:16 AM | #116 |
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It's just that we are not being told the pure unadulterated historical truth. It's like bugging is never reported by the mainstream media.
As I have said before there was a recent TV documentary with an American commentary saying that Churchill won the war on his own, and that Churchill would have intervened when Hitler took over the Rhineland in 1936, and Austria in March 1938. With what? The United States recognized the German occupation of Austria. Recently, also, there was an American goon on TV who quoted Churchill as saying Chamberlain had a choice between war and dishonour and Chamberlain chose dishonour. That was a silly remark. |
20th May 2017, 03:04 AM | #117 |
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20th May 2017, 07:47 AM | #118 |
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21st May 2017, 04:23 AM | #119 |
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21st May 2017, 09:18 AM | #120 |
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It's not just me who thinks this about Churchill. This is Peter Hitchens writing in the Mail on Sunday today about the matter:
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