The German-Soviet War was a Total War, with the German state seeking the total destruction of the Soviet state, and the killing or enslavement its inhabitants. Which leads to the question of why was this war so destructive towards the indigenous population when Germany was seeking to gain the maximum resources from the region?
Nationalist China played a major role in the Second World War by engaging the main body of the Japanese Army. This prevented the Japanese Army either attacking the Soviet Union in the rear or reinforcing its defensive island chain in the Pacific and so causing America heavy casualties. In terms of suffering and destruction, China endured 20 million dead, 45 million refugees. Yet the Soviet Union was counted as one of the ‘Big Three’ great powers, while China was not, even though she was the fourth signatory on the Charter of the United Nations.
The Red Army’s ‘Combined-arms Armies’ were the most numerous unit in the operational army and so provide valuable insight into how Soviet forces achieved their mobility during the war. This paper shows that they lacked sufficient transport to both move and supply themselves simulateously and instead did this sequentially, conducting offensives of known duration and distance. Late war advances of great duration were supported either by rapid re-establishment of railway lines or living off captured German stores.
The term ‘Righteous among the Nations’ or העולם אומות חסידי originates from a meeting on 31 December 1941 in Vilnius between some Jews in hiding and their rescuer, Feldwebel Anton Schmid, who was a member of the occupying German army. Although none of the participants survived, a record of the meeting was taken by a courier to Warsaw and was found after the war in the Oneg Shabbat archive.1 The term was resurrected in 1953, when Yad Vashem was created by an Act of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament,) as a memorial to those who died in the Shoah. Included in the Act was a stipulation that it found a way to honour those Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews from death.
The usual epithet applied to the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) is one of defeat as in the first six months of 1944 the Luftwaffe fighter defences were shot out of the skies over the Reich by American long-range fighters. By the time of the Normandy invasion, the Luftwaffe was unable to mount anything other than a token response to Allied air forces which had achieved air supremacy. The underlying causes for this situation were the insufficient numbers of planes, low levels of pilot training and outdated aircraft. The factors behind these causes were long standing and went right back to the formation of the Luftwaffe in 1933 and will be the subject of this essay.
Following on from my Zkn3 English User Manual, this blog will add in more advanced user methods and record my experience of using a Zettelkasten in research and turning the writing cycle.
The Zkn3 programme replicates Niklaus Luhmann’s original paper ‘Zettelkasten’ or Index Card Box. However the original programme was written in German and although both English and Spanish language version are available, ther eis not English language manual or documentation available. So by a system of trial and error I have written one. Any mistakes are mine alone, so please correct them in the comments box below
Soviet tank armies used a form of logistics different from that of Western armies that specifically allowed them a high degree of mobility and the ability to operate deeply behind enemy lines without fear of interruption. The build-up for offensives was provided by railways, and the offensives themselves were time limited, awaiting the arrival of the field armies and restored railway connections.
In September 1944, a major argument broke out between the Allied commanders during the Normandy Campaign. The roots of this argument went back a long way, to the very concept used by the Allies to fight wars, the dysfunctional Allied command structure used in the Mediterranean Campaign, and the assumptions made by COSSAC in the early planing stages of Overlord. The actual arguments may have been about the day to day tactical decisions but these were only a symptom of larger command problems.
Published articles
Logistics in the Soviet-German War
Supply and Transport between 1618 and 1941
Historiography
Digital history
Economics
Book reviews
The defeat of Germany in the Second World War has been a subject that has fascinated historians ever since the events occurred. The reasons behind this have been a hotly debated topic ever since, none more so than the balance between eastern and western theatres and the reasons behind the defeat in the Soviet Union.[1] However this picture has been obscured by two main issues, the extent of the involvement of the German Army (Heer) in atrocities in the USSR, the so called ‘clean Wehrmacht’ myth and Cold War politics.