Mark Solonin - The cask and the hoops

(Stumbling Colussus, page 117-118)
So it's not "rebuild", it's "capital repair" and it's not "major overhaul", it's "lesser maintenance" and it's not the entire Soviet tank park, it's just the older models. If you are quoting, better do it from the actual source, not your interpretation of Solonin. t's not ok to attribute incorrect quotes to an author just to make your point.

I know the actual quote. FYI, capital repair or rebuild is the same thing. All automotive components are taken out of the tank and new ones put in.

I wish you had used the same principles in the past.

Remembe what you said :

You insinuated that the number of combat ready tanks was much smaller than in reality based on Glant'z % that you are now doing a 180 turn.

Division level would mean they could do the repairs in the field.

They had over 2000 T34s and KV1s. Some were in transit and don't appear in the 5 western sectors for a simple reason : their schedule for the end of the deployment was July 5.

Secondly, all of a sudden we have 9500 operable tanks ( what's 1000 tanks between friends, it's not like the Germans had 3400 in total ). How does this go with your previous comments about mech corps battle readiness ?

"A lot" means more than one.

From where to start :
- his view on the purges
- his portrayal of unit manpower, transport and communications ?
- his view on battle performance in Mongolia, Finland
- view on Stalin

I suggest you read other books written by David Glantz (Colossus Reborn, When Titans Clashed, Red Storm over Blakans) to see that this is not the case.

I've read When Titans Clashed, Mars, Operation Barbarossa, Kursk about post June 22 1941 performance. Doesn't change my view.

Wrong. He didn't considered the Soviet Union before the invasion of Basarabia and Bucovina. He left 10, 2nd rate divisions to defend the Eastern Border against the Russian bear which they thought of no threat whatsoever.

The brutal awakening caused by the invasion of the Baltic states ( which he didn't expect to materialize as it did ) + the occupation of Basarabia and the threat to the Romanian oil + taking Bucovina ( which wasn't agreed ! ) forced Hitler to reconsider the East.

So he didn't finish the job in the West and is turning towards the East to be later bombed and invaded from the west? Where's the logic in that ? Hitler always claimed Germany's ww1 mistake was fighting on 2 fronts. Don't you wonder what forced him to go against his thinking ?

They saw only the 1st strategic echelon.

Isn't this a contradiction to what you claim above ?

Germany is bypassing the british blockade with Soviet help. The flow of materials from the Soviet Union is huge and allowed Germany to invade western Europe.
Germany needed oil foremost. What chances did they have to take the Caucasus intact ? 0.

I think he knew better and he expressed it himself why.

Who's talking about PR ? I'm talking about official internal documents and discussions, not for public consumption.

It would be normal to read a book, paper, anything written by him and and then cast judgement. A least do the effort and google him.

I exagerated a little (again) when I wrote I didn't read anything by Glantz; I meant I haven't read a book, like "Stumbling colossus" or "Colossus reborn" or something else like that; I've "looked through" some of the stuff he wrote about "Operation Mars":
Glantz "stuff"
I suppose you do have the "Stumbling Colossus" and agree to it? But we're going off-topic...

Hitler's logic makes perfect sense from a geostrategic point of view.

Finishing the job in the West called for aerial and naval forces Germany didn't have. And Britain was in no position to invade Europe anytime soon because it lacked the necessary land forces. Hence the front in the West was pretty much stalemated. Germany could leave behind only a small number of garrison divisions and focus all of its might on one decisive front - the East.

Isn't this a contradiction to what you claim above ?

No, because I'm talking about their existance, not their deployment. The perceived threat from the Soviet Union stemmed from what the SU was in terms of power, its existing power capabilities, not from where the Soviet Union might have deployed its divisions at one moment. Hitler wanted to eliminate that factor from the "chessboard". Only then could he turn around and build the aerial and naval forces needed for a showdown with UK&US.

Yes, Hitler was happy to obtain Russian resources through trade but he had no intention to become dependent on Russia. Russia was asking for technological (including military technology) goods in exchange for its resources. Russia could also have turned off the tap at any point.

I may hurt some feelings, but I consider that as engineer you can try to be a good historian and hope to succeed, but vice versa is not possible.
More than following a history university, what really matters is how dedicated you are to obtain an equidistant result, and to be willing to expose the truth even when you are not happy with it. Your work is not supposed to be subordinated to partisan interests, or to the times you live in. Of course it also matters how much time and resources you intend to invest in your research work, and how willing you are to modify whole chapters if in the last moment you discover something that contradicts your writings.
An engineer accustomed to do a lousy work in engineering will do of course a lousy work as historian. A historian with strong personal feelings for or against one side of the story will do a lousy job as well.
So the bottom line is the character of the writer... and his ability to write, of course.

This post has been edited by Florin on September 19, 2012 04:24 am

... and, of course, the "interests" of those allowing him archive access (as is Suvorov's theory) for their own inscrutable purposes.
As for the engineer vs. historian stuff, the fact is that technical education cannot be improvised as easy as "humanist disciplines"!

... and, of course, the "interests" of those allowing him archive access (as is Suvorov's theory) for their own inscrutable purposes.
.................

In a documentary kindly highlighted for us by "C-2" some time ago, there was a parallel between Communism and Nazism. You could see there the following:

When at national TV from Moscow they had shown a document with 3 wax seals, and signatures from leaders of Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, promoting total collaboration in all kind of things, including returning the Communist refugees back to Germany (and the pro-Capitalist guys back to Soviet Union), the Putin’s government went berserk. The video recording disappeared from the archive of national Russian TV – but the show was recorded by at least one TV viewer !
Why Putin’s government was mad: they accepted that Soviet Union and Stalin collaborated with Hitler and Nazi Germany, based on verbal agreements, but they already sworn that there was nothing in writing.

... and, of course, the "interests" of those allowing him archive access (as is Suvorov's theory) for their own inscrutable purposes.
.................

In a documentary kindly highlighted for us by "C-2" some time ago, there was a parallel between Communism and Nazism. You could see there the following:

When at national TV from Moscow they had shown a document with 3 wax seals, and signatures from leaders of Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, promoting total collaboration in all kind of things, including returning the Communist refugees back to Germany (and the pro-Capitalist guys back to Soviet Union), the Putin’s government went berserk. The video recording disappeared from the archive of national Russian TV – but the show was recorded by at least one TV viewer !
Why Putin’s government was mad: they accepted that Soviet Union and Stalin collaborated with Hitler and Nazi Germany, based on verbal agreements, but they already sworn that there was nothing in writing.

We were already told be our esteemed forum colleagues that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany weren't de facto ( and de jure based on new documents ) allies in between 1939 and 1941.

Re: documentary: it is an approach deserving consideration, but it is also created by Russo-phobes (from the Baltic states)
Re: "esteemed forum colleagues": who? where?
If necessary, I could post an excerpt form a book which states that there was an offer from USSR to military help Germany in the interval mentioned; there were also German soldiers at a Soviet naval base in the extreme North...

Re: documentary: it is an approach deserving consideration, but it is also created by Russo-phobes (from the Baltic states)
Re: "esteemed forum colleagues": who? where?
If necessary, I could post an excerpt form a book which states that there was an offer from USSR to military help Germany in the interval mentioned; there were also German soldiers at a Soviet naval base in the extreme North...

You mixed together some of my words with PaulC's words, then you gathered them under his name. It would be as bad if you would put everything under my name.
***
Your error is technical, not deliberate, but this happens when we don't check our text.

This post has been edited by Florin on September 19, 2012 10:07 pm

What the esteemed colleagues told you was that for the sake of clarity they personally prefer to use the word alliance strictly for agreements that explicitly include a casus foederis clause that compels the signatories to offer support to each other. Of course you are free to use the very loose definition you prefer. It's not necessarily wrong, it's just too general.

What the esteemed colleagues told you was that for the sake of clarity they personally prefer to use the word alliance strictly for agreements that explicitly include a casus foederis clause that compels the signatories to offer support to each other. Of course you are free to use the very loose definition you prefer. It's not necessarily wrong, it's just too general.

And somehow, using the same logic, you don't see your definition as too restrictive. I mean,dividing Europe into spheres of influence and coordinating to establish those spheres; swapping undesirables, sometimes your own citizens and supplying materials to belligerent Germany to wage war in Europe, to me that's a de facto alliance. Looking at Poland one could say it falls even under casus foederis, but on the aggressor stance. Same situation for Norway, when German navy used Murmansk as a base to conquer the far North.

From the same documentary mentioned before: Admiral Erich Raeder sent a personal letter with thanks, addressed to the commander of the Soviet Fleet, expressing gratefulness for the Soviet help and collaboration during the German fleet operations in Norway, 1940.

I prefer the stricter casus foederis definition because it gives an alliance a degree of intensity/importance above all other forms of cooperation.

For what they did to Poland we already have terms we can use - coalition or simply a partitioning agreement.
The supplying of materials fell under trade agreements.
Basis Nord was certainly a deviation from strict neutrality, but it was nothing major.
All these things could at most turn Russia's position into friendly neutrality towards Germany.

The looser definition can create confusion.
I have to resort to an off-topic contemporary example. For example, although Russia opposes (often with very strong words and shows of force) NATO on certain issues (missile shield, NATO expansion, Middle East) and some NATO members perceive Russia as a competitor or threat, using the looser definition Russia has a de facto alliance with NATO (the 1997 Founding Act on Cooperation and Security, cooperation in Afghanistan, talk of a strategic partnership, trade with NATO countries, including weapons trade).

RE: Glantz being a fraud and stuff like that:
How do we (Romanians which know a bit of WW2 history, to be more accurate) feel reading this phrase?
„Schobert's Eleventh Army penetrated Soviet defences, captured Iassy and reached the Prut river on the first day of action, while foiling counterattacks from” etc. etc. etc.
What would be more appropriate than to suppose there are some other mistakes as blatant as this one?
Does this „capturing Iassy” thing make him a fraud or a serious, well-researched historian? (hint: google these darn Iassy and Prut things and see ) î

Later Edit: the phrase in question is to be found in Glantz - „Barbarossa - Hitler's invasion of Russia”, at page 53.

This post has been edited by MMM on September 02, 2013 02:11 pm