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Bookmarked for later reading, thanks for the link. The "informative" is a hopeful thang.
THE diesel tank engine of WWII. Easily the most produced tank engine of all time. I believe the current Russian MBTs use a derivative of this design
Surprisingly sophisticated. Very much constructed like an aero engine, aluminum block, double overhead cams.
Probably you got mixed up - 9 aerial victories with the Fw190 (....The high aerial victory tally generally attributed to him are those of his rear gunners....)I beleive (and this is going by memory) Rudel had 11 aerial victories to his personal credit, two while flying the Ju87 and nine while while flying the Fw190.
The high aerial victory tally generally attributed to him are those of his rear gunners.
It looks very much like an aero engine because in all likelyhood it is based upon one - most likely the Hispano Suiza V12 unit. Many US tanks were also powered by aero engines.THE diesel tank engine of WWII. Easily the most produced tank engine of all time. I believe the current Russian MBTs use a derivative of this design
Surprisingly sophisticated. Very much constructed like an aero engine, aluminum block, double overhead cams.
He was referring to the 51 aerial victories wrote early on the threadProbably you got mixed up - 9 aerial victories with the Fw190 (....The high aerial victory tally generally attributed to him are those of his rear gunners....)
There cannot be enough references to Rudel's political beliefs, he was a dedicated Nazi, even after the war. His record has always been in question because of his close ties with Hitler and Nazism. At his funeral there were over 200 dedicated Nazi believers who gave the Nazi salute. A better man to honour would be Anton Korol, a JU87G ace with a record more genuine.
Like I said:Probably you got mixed up - 9 aerial victories with the Fw190 (....The high aerial victory tally generally attributed to him are those of his rear gunners....)
As it happens, in Germany, after the war started, if you didn't join the Nazi party, you had a very hard time finding food and other basic necessities. That from acquaintances who were there. So, ALL pilots joined the party, as did all soldiers and almost all civilians. The first thing Hitler did was to disarm the populace. It's tough to overthrow a government by charging machine guns emplacements and tanks with pitchforks and mules.
Germany - Deutschland when the Nazi's took over power in 1933 actually had only a population of 66 million, and the NSDAP had 850,000 membersGreg, everything I've read (Shirer and Goldhagen each go into this in some detail) indicates that no more than 10-12% of Germany's 80 million citizens joined the NaZi party.
Germany - Deutschland when the Nazi's took over power in 1933 actually had only a population of 66 million, and the NSDAP had 850,000 members
Greater Germany - Grossdeutschland, included Sudeten, Rest-Czechoslovakia and Austria from 1939 onward accounted for 80 million and 5,400,000 NSDAP members
By wars-end the NSDAP membership had risen to almost 9,000,000.
Whereby according to German historians and researchers around 5 million were "economic inspired" NSDAP members.
But anyway Rudel was known to be a staunch supporter of the NAZI ideology - and that makes him a NAZI indeed, especially since all the issues became publicly known after the war
and him still being an open "admirer&supporter" for non-repented NSDAP members and post war Neo-Nazi organizations.
Yet with the Gleichschaltung laws, if you owned a business, you had to have a Nazi on your board, all social organizations other than those supported by the Nazi Party were banned. Churches were regulated by the Reichsbischof, who was appointed by Hitler.
That depends, since far more citizens were "deployed" into the sub-NSDAP formations, which were only partially voluntary, e.g. the NSFK etc. etc,Right, citizen participation in the party-- for whatever reasons -- was not as widespread as the post I was answering implied. Thanks for fleshing out my briefer reply.
That depends, since far more citizens were "deployed" into the sub-NSDAP formations, which were only partially voluntary, e.g. the NSFK etc. etc,
Whilst HJ, BDM and RAD were compulsory - (around 15 million members) also e.g. to keep ones job as a teacher membership in the NSDAP was compulsory.
E.g. my aunt, got her stipendiary for University cancelled, since she refused to join any Nazi organization.
Basically around half the population were "involved" in NSDAP organizations.
How many of those were actually "committed" to the cause is something we will probably never find out.
The claim that being in the Luftwaffe meant automatically a membership in the NSDAP isn't correct, since IIRC until the failed assassination onto Hitler, Wehrmacht-members were
not even allowed to join any political party. And my father and his two brothers were Luftwaffe members, and a lot of my family served in the Wehrmacht, but none had been a
NSDAP member.