HAPPENING: /Ourguys/ Burning Federal Buildings and Degenerate Art Museums In France

[StCapps]

On the one hand you could say defensive war was the best option.

On the other hand everybody who tried to defend in WWII got beat.

The whole time the Soviets were on the defensive, they were losing.

Soon as the Soviets switched over to the offensive, they won the war in relatively short order.

Like you say though, if Germany had General Motors supplying them, they would have won, not allying with Italy and Japan would have done them a world of good towards that end.

[Smitty-48]

It was all about the tank.

This was the moment before anybody had a solution to the tank.

Everybody who tried to defend with infantry got encircled by the tanks.

[StCapps]

It was all about the tank.

This was the moment before anybody had a solution to the tank.

Everybody who tried to defend with infantry got encircled by the tanks.

GM could have saved Germany, but Germany had to go and piss off both the British and the Americans with their idiotic choice of allies, and made that a non-starter.

[Smitty-48]

Even in Italy, in the mountains, the tank was king, the Canadians for instance, got nowhere, until they brought an amored division to bear, then they started to overrun Kesselring's Falschirmjager.

[Smitty-48]

Even the Sherman.

Yeah, it wasn't good for going up against Tiger tanks.

But most of the time, the enemy didn't have Tiger tanks, Tiger tanks were rare.

[Smitty-48]

The main thing was encirclement.

Didn't matter if your tanks weren't the best tanks.

All that mattered was that they got there first, and so cut the enemy off from his lines of communication.

Once he was cut off, he was forced to surrender in a matter of hours.

Hundreds of thousands of troops could be taken out, in one fell swoop.

[Smitty-48]

The Nazis liquidated hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops, by exposure to the elements alone.

They get it chalked up on their ticket as an ideological atrocity.

Reality was tho, they encircled so many troops so fast, they had no resources to deal with them.

[Smitty-48]

Why tho?

Why so many troops encircled so fast?

Because Stalin was poised to invade Germany.

So the Soviet troops were in an attack formation and not prepared to defend in depth.

The Germans actually didn't have enough tanks, but in their preemption, they planned for that.

They took the tanks which were supposed to invade Germany, painted an Iron Cross on them, and then turned them back against Moscow.

Fun fact; the Germans used lots of T-34's against their own makers.

They were called "Beutepanzer". Captured Tank.

[StCapps]

Why tho?

Why so many troops encircled so fast?

Because Stalin was poised to invade Germany.

So the Soviet troops were in an attack formation and not prepared to defend in depth.

The Germans actually didn't have enough tanks, but in their preemption, they planned for that.

They took the tanks which were supposed to invade Germany, painted an Iron Cross on them, and then turned them back against Moscow.

Fun fact; the Germans used lots of T-34's against their own makers.

They were called "Beutepanzer". Captured Tank.

How close was Russia to invading Germany at the time of Barbarossa in your estimation? Like how much longer could Germany have waited before the Russians pre-empted their pre-emption?

[Smitty-48]

Why tho?

Why so many troops encircled so fast?

Because Stalin was poised to invade Germany.

So the Soviet troops were in an attack formation and not prepared to defend in depth.

The Germans actually didn't have enough tanks, but in their preemption, they planned for that.

They took the tanks which were supposed to invade Germany, painted an Iron Cross on them, and then turned them back against Moscow.

Fun fact; the Germans used lots of T-34's against their own makers.

They were called "Beutepanzer". Captured Tank.

How close was Russia to invading Germany at the time of Barbarossa in your estimation? Like how much longer could Germany have waited before the Russians pre-empted their pre-emption?

Hard to say.

Basically Stalin was preparing for the last war.

He was expecting the Germans and the French to bleed each other dry like World War One.

How long he expected this to take is not recorded.

None the less one assumes he was expecting it to take a heck of a lot longer than six weeks.

One things for sure, he had all his best troops,armor and combat aircraft, stacked up right on the frontier with Germany.