godofthunder9010 said:
Doppleganger said:
Hi, these are Russian sources so can't vouch for authenticity. They appear to be fairly accurate but who can tell:
http://www.battlefield.ru/library/battles/battle12_04.html
As well as listing Operation Mars this site has a lot of different data regarding Soviet losses in WW2.
http://pkka.narod.ru/h-ind.htm
They are useful because they are coming from the Soviet perspective. They have lots of facts and figures but have to be weighed up from the location of their source.
Already read the first link through previously. Second one seems to fit, as ridiculous as losing 83,500 tanks throughout the war seems. So now all we need is a site listing German tanks lost and we can make the comparison.
Hello Guys!
this is my first post in your forum, and I hope you find my post useful.
I want to look at the links that were quoted as Russian sources, with a caution warning regarding their authenticity by their poser.
Rkka website - uses the summary sections of " [Cloak of] Secrecy Lost: Soviet casualties 1917-1989" book.
The battlefield link above leads to david glanz's intro written for the US audiences.
My comments on both of them:
First of all, both websites aim at being accepted by the western military buff community.
Second, the RKKA site does not bother giving the explanations and pitfalls pointed out by the authors of the original book.
Third, David Glantz made his fame by marrying the successfully set stereotypes with a Russian twist "well, lets hear their view", like Erickson and many lesser known career historians who get a paycheck when their work goes to print for the western military buffs.
On German losses, the only books I know that published authentic, full reports on German military losses came out in USSR (!) in 1967 and 1973, a total of 3 volumes by Dashichev, totaling about 2500 pages. The losses are covered with actual reports of the German army. Again, the only place I have seen data like that in any language.
On Soviet losses there are two serious studies, including the one RKKA website uses, and a a St. Petersburg University work. Unfortunately in the first study they did not publish any primary sources, only their analysis of them, hence it not open source, but I feel the authors did not BS about how they made it. The book’s early version was reprinted in USA by Greenhill books. The only full wartime reports I have seen are from my own research in the Russian archives.
There are books published by schiffer - panzertruppen and german orderpolice, which are translations of german works and have german documents, some of them published in full - reports from the front regarding the so popular term “small unit combat.”
Photographs. This issue was not mentioned yet here, but there is a vast amount of photography available from the eastern front. From the german side i have seen many Propaganda Kompanie photos, as well as private soldier/officer photos. The latter appear to capture both: the regular day-to-day and the unusual.
Lastly, I want to mention the “Soviet side”, “German side” quotes. Russia is a multicultural and open society, like Germany, so the division between German – Russian sources may not represent an ideological front. There is plenty of ambiguous, fluffy literature in both languages, there are also publications that aim at educating the reader through full, which I believe is done through full, uncensored documents. An example of this is “Der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941-1945: Eine Dokumentation.” It is the single most balanced, documentary source book on the Eastern front in any language. I have not seen many books that cover such an enormous topic, as academically as they do. I feel it is a better representative of the “Russian” point of view than either of the websites mentioned earlier in this post.
fftopic: 