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June 22, 1941 - Germany invades Russia Login/Join 
Fighting the good fight
Picture of RogueJSK
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quote:
Originally posted by Blume9mm:
Look up the Town of Herlong California and see who it is named after. That's where I got my information.


Ah, I see your confusion. Herlong, CA was named after Captain Henry W. Herlong, the first United States Army ordnance officer to die in World War II, when his plane crashed on June 22nd, 1941.

This means that Captain Herlong was the first (specifically) Army Ordnance Officer to die in WW2, not the first US soldier killed in WW2 overall.


Even before the previously mentioned Captain Losey in April 1940, there were two US sailors who it could be argued could be the first US servicemen to die during WW2.

The commonly accepted starting point for WW2 is September 1st, 1939, with the German invasion of Poland, but some historians argue that the start date should be July 7th, 1937, with the Japanese invasion of China.

In that light, the first US servicemen to die in WW2 would be Storekeeper First Class Charles L. Ensminger and Coxswain Edgar C. Hulsebus, US Navy sailors who died on December 12th, 1937, when the US Navy gunboat USS Panay was attacked and sunk by Japanese forces while anchored in the Yangtze River outside Nanking, China.

This was 2.5 years prior to Captain Losey's death, and 4 years prior to Pearl Harbor.
 
Posts: 32429 | Location: Northwest Arkansas | Registered: January 06, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Frangas non Flectes
Picture of P220 Smudge
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Blume9mm:
Look up the Town of Herlong California and see who it is named after. That's where I got my information.


Best to double-check your info before crossing swords with Rogue. The guy knows stuff, and when he doesn't, he knows where to find it. Big Grin


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Carthago delenda est
 
Posts: 17059 | Location: Sonoran Desert | Registered: February 10, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Fighting the good fight
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Posts: 32429 | Location: Northwest Arkansas | Registered: January 06, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of Blume9mm
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Sorry, it seems because Capt. Herlong died on the same day as Germany invading Russia I made an assumption the two were connected.... kind of what we do.
And I wasn't even drinking....

Subject change... kind like what the anti gunners do with a lot of 'facts'.


My Native American Name:
"Runs with Scissors"
 
Posts: 4441 | Location: Greenville, SC | Registered: January 30, 2017Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Instead of starting a new thread, I'll admit that I missed this date three days ago.

Next spring we're doing a Viking river cruise from St Petersburg (once known as Leningrad) to Moscow. During WWII, Leningrad suffered horribly during the siege, here's a book I just read:

https://www.amazon.com/Leningr...98060&s=books&sr=1-2
 
Posts: 15899 | Location: Eastern Iowa | Registered: May 21, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
That rug really tied
the room together.
Picture of bubbatime
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quote:
Originally posted by NK402:
And then, he tops off the year by declaring war on the United States, right after Pearl Harbor. Yep, that Hitler was some kind of military genius.


To be fair, we were not that good. In the beginning. Lots of failures and lessons learned over the years.


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Posts: 6660 | Location: Floriduh | Registered: October 16, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
We gonna get some
oojima in this house!
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quote:
Originally posted by joel9507:
quote:
Originally posted by sigspecops:
I’ve wondered what would have happened if the allied forces had removed Germany from the African continent, the Middle East, secured the safety of the English isles, given no aid to Russia and then let Hitler and Stalin fight until until the bitter end. What would it have looked like much later with the Nazis and Communists ruined by years of war? It’s one of the most interesting what if’s of history.

There were peace overtures from both sides of the Nazi-Soviet conflict - infrequent, and only from the side which, at the time, was almost on the ropes so the other side ignored the tentative feelers.

If the West hadn't helped the Russians out with tanks, planes, trucks, supplies etc. and hadn't created a Western Front, the Russians could well have channeled their inner 1939 and done yet another deal with Hitler/Ribbentrop. We tend to forget or overlook the horrendous losses in personnel the Soviets were enduring. And the Nazis were not looking to take over the whole USSR, just the 'good bits' east of the Urals. A deal giving them the good bits, and letting the rest of the USSR lick its wounds would have been welcomed by the Germans.

And then.....all those hundreds of divisions would have been transferred to the Western front. Festung Europa, on steriods. Not going to crack that nut with a couple divisions on a small stretch of French beach.

As tough as it was booting them out of Western Europe as one of two fronts....imagine the unprettyness of it being the only front - at least twice as many Germans. Eek

If we did prevail (not guaranteed) we would have had a lot more casualties and the war would have lasted far longer. Or, possibly, after the USSR gives up/settles and all the German focus returns to Western Europe making invasion unlikely to succeed or too costly to contemplate (the UK was running out of men by 1944 in the real-life scenario) maybe the remaining Allies say , 'screw that' and don't invade.

Imagine what the Germans could have done with time, and a secure Europe. Mass-produced Tiger and Panther tanks and jet planes, truly submarine-submarines, pulse-jet and rocket powered missiles.

So, yeah, that scenario where we say, "Russia and Germany, you two go fight it out." and we hold off? Smaller USSR, yeah, but ugly, ugly consequences.


Berlin would have had its own fat man/little boy by the end of the year.


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TCB all the time...
 
Posts: 6501 | Location: Cantonment/Perdido Key, Florida | Registered: September 28, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Originally posted by RogueJSK:

...Germany actually had a shot at knocking the Soviet Union out of the war, had they played their cards right. .


Germany never had a shot, they were totally unprepared for the loss of life the Soviets inflicted on them. Up until that invasion Germany had very few casualties. This invasion cost them up to or over 1 million men. They were done by 1943, Officer corps knew it.

quote:
Berlin would have had its own fat man/little boy by the end of the year.


Oddly, Hitler is quoted as calling it the "Jewish bomb" or "Jewish weapon" or something like that. He was not a fan.
 
Posts: 2044 | Registered: September 19, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Just because you can,
doesn't mean you should
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quote:
Berlin would have had its own fat man/little boy by the end of the year.


I've never seen any actual fats to back that up.
They may have wanted one but they were a long way away from having one.


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Posts: 9456 | Location: NE GA | Registered: August 22, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by 220-9er:
quote:
Berlin would have had its own fat man/little boy by the end of the year.


I've never seen any actual fats to back that up.
They may have wanted one but they were a long way away from having one.


This pretty much agrees with you.
 
Posts: 2538 | Location: KY | Registered: October 20, 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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When Mussolini heard about it he said Hitler would be defeated in Russia by only three Generals.
General Distance,General Weather, and General Mud.He was right.
 
Posts: 4472 | Registered: November 30, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Captain Morgan:
Hitler may have saved Europe from communism by invading Russia. Consider where all Russian Armies where at the time of German invasion. The Russian were ready for an invasion of Europe but Hitler beat out Stalin.

This is why pockets 250,000 Russians were captured here and there.


These facets of the German invasion of Russia are not often considered.

Most of the Russian generals wanted the bulk of Russia's defensive resources positioned deeper in the Russian interior. Having them there would give the defense extra time to mobilize during an invasion.

Instead, Stalin had them close to the Russian border. Some historians speculate that these were staging areas for an invasion of Europe, not defensive positions. Hitler could have viewed them the same way.

Then, there was the fact that the Germans didn't think their war production could beat a rearmed, retrained and restructured Russian Army. Russia instituted such a program when the vastly outnumbered Finns gave them a good beating earlier in the war.

There is a lot of evidence that Barbarossa was a spoiling attack.

Also, most historians believe that the Germans lost the war in Russia when they shifted armor formations from one army to another - ad then back again.

V.
 
Posts: 328 | Location: Pacific NW | Registered: April 09, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Fighting the good fight
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quote:
Originally posted by White Phosphorus:
Also, most historians believe that the Germans lost the war in Russia when they shifted armor formations from one army to another - ad then back again.


Yep. Hitler kept changing his mind about where the advance should be focused, and ended up trying to do too many things at once across too broad of a front. This delayed the advance enough to allow the Soviets to bring in reinforcements and evacuate a large portion of their industry to the interior of the country, and caused the Germans to fail to achieve their objectives before the mud and winter set in.

The Germans didn't intend to conquer all of the Soviet Union. They planned to strike quickly, rapidly seize the Western Soviet Union (which is where the vast majority of the agriculture and industry was located), capture Moscow, and force a Soviet surrender, wherein the Russians would becomes an agrarian vassal state confined east of the Ural Mountains. Similar to what they had done in France the year before.

Had they stuck to that plan, and focused on the drive towards Moscow after their initial hugely successful pincer movements against the forces massed at the border, the Germans had a shot.

quote:
Originally posted by Southflorida-law:
Germany never had a shot, they were totally unprepared for the loss of life the Soviets inflicted on them. Up until that invasion Germany had very few casualties. This invasion cost them up to or over 1 million men. They were done by 1943, Officer corps knew it.


The Germans had the ability to absorb heavy casualties for a short time, as evidenced by their ability to remain combat effective for ~2 solid years on the Eastern Front, despite horrific casualties.

Had they been able to knock out the Soviets relatively quickly as planned, their limited population and resources wouldn't have come into play as much. But once it bogged down and became a war of attrition, it was over for the Germans. They couldn't hope to compete against the population and resources of the fully mobilized Soviets.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RogueJSK,
 
Posts: 32429 | Location: Northwest Arkansas | Registered: January 06, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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