Ashes said:Hi doppleganger, back at last.
Just a few points on your post of April 8th.
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Firstly, where did you get those figures from? There are numerous sources for troop numbers for the Eastern Front, not all of them correct.
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Those pesky figures.
I think we hammered this out some time back, and as I said at the time, what figures do you believe?
I notice one of your sites seem to have gotten the figures from.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad.
This site states total Axis casualties as 850,000.
You mention William Craig, author of Enemy at the Gates (1973), he states total casualties as.......
Soviets: 750,000 killed, wounded, missing.
[Plus 100,000 civilians.]
German: 400,000
Italian: 130,000
Romanian: 120,000
Hungarian: 120,000
total Axis: 770;000
[Slightly less then wikipedia.]
Not sure about the numbers of Hoths 4th Panzer army, or the Hungarian 2nd army, but the Italian 8th army figures in November '42 were a total of 230,000 men, and the Romanian 3rd and 4th army's were about the same.
Ashes said:The following link, among others, where I got my figures from, would probably be close to the mark.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/battle_of_stalingrad.htm
Hit up the main page and then ''Stalingrad''
Also the ''Cambridge History of Warfare'' states........
''In all the battle of Stalingrad may have cost the Axis armies nearly a million men killed, wounded, missing and captured. Nearly one quarter of their strength on the Eastern front.''
Ashes said:____________________________________________________________________________________________
The Battle of Moscow represented the first time in 1941 that the Red Army had material and troop superiority in numbers.
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I dont understand this statement, it seems to contradict what you've been saying, that the Russians always had superior material and numbers?
Although I think you said on another post that the numbers at Moscow were about even.
Does that mean My Leningrad figures are right?
For Moscow, my figures are from, among others, "The Road to Stalingrad" by John Erickson.
The Germans, as you've said before, were handicapped, but to be fair, don't you think that the Russians were too?
Erickson says that after Briansk/Vyazma,they were scrapping the bottom of the barrel.
By then, virtually the whole of the Russian standing army facing the Germans at the beginning of Barbarossa was eliminated.
They'd lost about 3,335,000 men in prisoners alone in '41.
Untrained, undermanned divisions were rushed to the front, on average a battalion of about 675 men, had less then 300 rifles.
Their was only 600 tanks on the whole Moscow front.
Until more of the Siberian divisions arrived,[18 Divisions and 9 tank Brigades], the Russians were outnumbered.
Ashes said:On Stalingrad.
According to Alan Clarkes ''Barbarossa'' [which I highly recommend]...........
''The initial attacks by Paulis on Stalingrad, [August] was with 9 infantry divisions in the center, 2 panzer and 2 motorised divisions on the North flank, and 3 panzer 2 motorized divisions on the South flank.
A total of 18 divisions.
Chuikov had 11 understrength divisions.
''There's no doubt the Germans had superior men and material at Stalingrad''
And.........
''During the first days of the September offensive the Germans enjoyed a superiority of 3 to 1 in men, over 6 to 1 in tanks and the Luftwaffe held complete domination of the air''
From then on each side kept feeding in more men. For most of the fighting in the city, the Russians were outnumbered, but Chuikov kept Paulis occupied while massive reserves were secretly built up on the flanks for the Classic ''Cannae'' maneuver Operation Uranus, and that was the end of the 6th Army, elements of 4th Panzer army, Romanian 3rd and 4th armies, Italian 8th army, Hungarian 2nd army and various other units, with the casualties stated above.
After the catastrophic disasters of the first months of Barbarossa in '41, and again after Kharkov in '42, and fighting in the Don Basin, the Russians were in dire straights and hanging on at Leningrad, Moscow and later, Stalingrad, but fought the Germans to a standstill until reserves were built up to counter attack.
Cheers Ashes.
I'll post a few names here which perhaps help you rethink your opinion:clark130 said:Ike is the best General in history
Whispering Death said:I definately disagree with Zukov as the best general. His tactic of double envelopment combined with a frontal assault worked, but at such a rediculously high cost he would have been quickly tossed in any modern democratic government. Remeber that the high losses where not just in the desperate battles for stalingrad and lenningrad where they could be rationalized, but they continued all the way until the end of the war with especially extreme losses in and around Berlin even when at that point the war was decided.
I decided to go with Ike, traditionally I've gone with manstein but recently I've been rediscovering how important for the war Ike was. Like everyone else I like Rommel but I think he's been mythicised in American storytelling as the "noble nazi" and, like Patton, has been portrayed as a slightly better man than he was.
I definately disagree with Zukov as the best general. His tactic of double envelopment combined with a frontal assault worked, but at such a rediculously high cost he would have been quickly tossed in any modern democratic government. Remeber that the high losses where not just in the desperate battles for stalingrad and lenningrad where they could be rationalized, but they continued all the way until the end of the war with especially extreme losses in and around Berlin even when at that point the war was decided.
melkor the first said:Since Ike took control of the Allied Ground Forces after the liberation of France,he can't be described as just an administrator but he didn't micromanage his subordinate generals to a great degree.
Doppleganger said:Farseer said:Very hard to choose between four brilliant commanders:
-Mannerheim, only leader eligible to stop Russians in 1939-40 and 1944
-Rommel, definitely best tactician of war, could change any situation into victory.
-Manstein, brilliant strategist in Eastern front
-Guderian, mainly remembered as outstanding theorist but also able field commander.
Well, with small home ground support I have to give my vote to Mannerheim at this poll.
Good choices! You overrate Rommel a bit, underrate Guderian as a field commander and I wouldn't agree that Mannerheim was the only leader eligible to stop the Russians though he was an excellent commander agreed.
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