Stalingrad (1 Viewer)

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US farm produce was estimated to be equivalent to that needed to keep the entire Red army fed and clothed for a full two year period.

Very substantial aid, that allowed substantial diversion of manpower to the armed forces.

The other major contributiuons of US military aid were in trasnport and rolling stock. The US provided more trucks to the Soviets in two years than the Germans produced in 6 years. Domestic Soviet production was also greater than German output of trucks. the other great assistance was in the rail transport area. Britain provided huge amounts of rolling stock, as did the US. The US also provided large numbers of advanced locomotives, that unlike the German types seemed able to cope with the harsh conditions. Soviet locomotives lacked many of the refinements found in German machines, but they were tough, and unlike the Germans machines, able to go from coaling point to coaling point without the need to install interim fuelling and watering stations within the network.

The British rolling stock came mostly from India, where it is thought such transfers of machinery contributed materially to the 1943 famine in Bengal (wheat sat on the docks and could not be transferred to the interior regions for lack of rail transport....it had been transferred to the Soviet Union). There was more rolling stock in India in1939 than the whole of England or Germany, though the individual cars tended to be of lighter lift capacity. The Russians I have read found this rolling stock very useful, being of similar standard to their own existing stock of freight cars.

A very large contingent of US engineers assisted in the conversion of all this hardware. it was a massive boost to Soviet capability, and something the germans had absolutely no hope of matching.

The majority of aid did come via the northern route. That route in fact was less important to the souther route through Iran and the Far eastern routes, wheree the Japanese refused to interdict the large numbers of reflagged US shipping t5ransporting goods to the ports of Vladivostock and Sovietskaya Gavan.

Ive read somewhere that about 14% of Soviet AFVs were of Allied origins, and a significant number of these were British. apparently the Soviets were particaulelry happy with the Canadian built Valentines.
 
That part I understand. Much of the U.S. food shipment consisted of preserved food such as Spam suitable for military field rations.

But what were Soviet civilians eating during 1942?
 
You do realize that something like 20% of the total Soviet population had been mobilized, and about 30% of the population was under occupation. That only leaves about 50% as many mouths to feed in 1942-3 as had been the case two years previously. Of that 30% under occupation some believe that as many as 20 million lost their lives mostly to german brutality....worked to death, starved to death, or just shot.

There are good reasons why even today there are people in the world that do not like Germans for what they did
 
I found a few more pics of Stalingrad.....

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Stalgd-late42.jpg
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Stlaingrd-bldg.jpg
 
and this is Mamayev Kurgan that saw some of the most brutal fighting. The original Mamayev Kurgan was a Tartar burial mound 102 metres high. The current formation is dominated by a memorial complex commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad. At the time of its installation in 1967 the statue named "The Motherland Calls" formed the largest free-standing sculpture in the world.

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Chris, in relation to your post 25, photo number 2, I have seen that photo in my my stepfathers collection. Hes not sure, but it might be the town of kalach,which is a town to the southwest of Stalingrad, about 50 miles distant. There wa fighting in Kalch on the way in, which if Im right this is s photo of, taken roughly August or September, and also as the Russians slammed shut the two arms of the encirclement.

What do your sources say?
 
Just finished reading Enemy At The Gates, about the battle, and the events that led up to it. Great book. I highly recommend it. The details and soldiers accounts of the fighting get pretty gory, and many times shocked me even knowing before hand that the conditions were below human.
Hitler had many high ranking military officers try to change his mind, but he would either berate them, or just flat out ignore them calling them cowards, or throw a tantrum until the officer agreed with him or kept quiet. Goering did nothing to help the situation by promising to fly in amounts of reinforcements that he never could hope to meet or sustain.
 
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Nothing actually. I pulled these pics from a Gaming forum where someone had a thread of WWII pics. Really cool thread as it has alot of pics I haven't seen before.

WW2 Photos


I also posted a bunch of pics here at 'The Few Good Men' forum, scroll down to 'Military History Section' then choose WW2, then choose the nation, then choose its AFV's or Aircraft categories etc-
The Few Good Men

And here's my WW2 Aircraft galleries at the 'Mission 4 Today' forum-
http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=ForumsPro&file=viewforum&f=92
 
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Sunday, 23 August 1942 the first bombs fell on Stalingrad. The Luftwaffe began a systematic block by block destruction of the city that lasted for five days. The city was turned into a pile of rubble that provided cover for defending forces and made the Germans advance all the more difficult.
Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-B0130-0050-004_Russland_Kesselschlacht_Stalingrad-595x342.jpg



A Stuka over the burning city of Stalingrad.
Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-J20510_Russland_Kampf_um_Stalingrad_Luftangriff_crop-595x448.jpg
 
Nothing actually. I pulled these pics from a Gaming forum where someone had a thread of WWII pics. Really cool thread as it has alot of pics I haven't seen before.

Might that be of the Hearts of Iron brand of strategy game...?
I have both 2 3 myself - 3 is really something, much harder and thought inducing gameplay - good for creating alternate what-if scenarios; if you massage the tech trees along the way.

Weather by design, stupidity, ego, or what ever else, the battle for Stalingrad was a meat grinder for all whom were tasked there, it immobilised the Germans mobility even more-so than the environmental conditions did, and it gave the Russians a patriotic southern anvil anchor.

In some sence, were it not for this ill-fated attempted 'siege', the war could have been fairly different in many other ways...
 
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Nothing actually. I pulled these pics from a Gaming forum where someone had a thread of WWII pics. Really cool thread as it has alot of pics I haven't seen before.

WW2 Photos
Thanks for sharing this post,but man I can only waste an hour at a time and I didn't even get half way through
 
Might that be of the Hearts of Iron brand of strategy game...?
I have both 2 3 myself - 3 is really something, much harder and thought inducing gameplay - good for creating alternate what-if scenarios; if you massage the tech trees along the way.

Weather by design, stupidity, ego, or what ever else, the battle for Stalingrad was a meat grinder for all whom were tasked there, it immobilised the Germans mobility even more-so than the environmental conditions did, and it gave the Russians a patriotic southern anvil anchor.

In some sence, were it not for this ill-fated attempted 'siege', the war could have been fairly different in many other ways...


we will never actually know. germany's whole 1942 campaign was dodgy, given the manpower shortages.There have often been claims that the Germans should have renewed their attacks on moscow or even Leningrad, but I disagree. it would have been even worse for the Germans in that direction. in the Moscow MD alone according to Madej and nagorski, there were more than 300 Divs, dug in, of which more than 100 were combat ready and experienced. What these formations lacked in the early months of 1942, was sufficient transport and logistic support to be committed to an offensive battle, but in a defensive situation, they would have been very dangerous to the Germans. The Germans committed to a southern ofensive as much out of expediency as anything. This was where the Russians had done least well in the preceding winter counteroffensive, were not well dug in, and had suffered some serious losses at Kharkov and elsewhere. It was wherer the oil was as well, but this was never a priority for OKH. it was for hitler, but Germany was never going to secure much oil from the caucasus during wartime cnditions.

The germans had suffered serious manpower losses that they had great dificulty in rreplacing. They were beginning to suffer serious tank shortages as well, though to be fair, the artillery ammunition famine was being overcome, finally, not least because large amounts of artillery had been lost over the winter. To kick start the summer offensive, the germans stripped out 2/3 of their front of both manpower and equipment most notably MT for the Infantry. At full dtrength, an Infantry div had 9 combat Infantray Bns, and around 900 trucks, along with about 6500 horses. After the winter and the reassignment of much manpower and equipment to bring AGS up to strength, the majority of Infantry were down to about 40% manpower strength (often reorganised on a 4 bn 2 reegt TOE, with reduced comany strengths for the Inf bns) , about 50-60% artillery strength, and about 20% MT, and around 2000 horses. This robbed about 60% of the german army of much offensive capability, though they remained quite potent defensively. And, on the eastern front, they remained at that level, or even worse as the war progressed.

in my olpinion, the germans desperately needed a rest after the winter 41-2. They needed to start thinking defensively, probably behind the rivers in Western Russia, whilst consentrating on building, or rebuilding their mobile counterattck forces. They never really adopted that strategy, with Hitler always wanting to either attack, and/or, forbidding much in the way of defensive prerations ( referring to the latter as "defeatist"). as always, the whole 1942 offensive was inadequalty resourced, and bore all the typical german hallmerks of opting for optunistic tarets, rather than thinking things through on what actually needed to be done. Stalingrad was one result of that approach,but if the german high command reamned true to form, and played out its typical unthinking opportunism,there would have been a stalingrad played out somewhere.
 
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