12-31-2010, 07:49 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: East Tennessee, USA
Posts: 2,906
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Quote:
Originally Posted by helbent4
Bob,
Really, did Russian soldiers (or generals) actually do anything significant during WWII? I mean, it was pretty much like winter came to the not-Western Front and all the hundreds of Germans walking across the steppes there froze to death. When he heard the the American were invading Normandy Hitler committed suicide in the bunker. Game over!
Oh wait, there was the single most crucial turning point in the war, the Battle of the Bulge, won single-handedly by Patton and the 82nd Airborne. Other minor things happened, but trust me, they were really unimportant.
Zhukov and Konev were clearly proficient and aggressive generals, effective in all seasons and in offensive operations. By the end of the war, the Soviets had evolved into skilled, experienced and tenacious soldiers, fully skilled in the art of war. Still, it seemslike only General Winter that ever seems to get any the credit.
Tony
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And it does't help that its hard to get English translations of the Russian histories of the Great Patriotic War. After getting torn to pieces by the Germans in the early point of the war, the Russian tactical art got better, a lot better than Western historians acknowledge. But, from the Western viewpoint, the image of massed human wave assaults throwing themselves into the teeth of the German defenses has been an image that is almost impossible to dispel.
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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