Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

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ljadw
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#256

Post by ljadw » 13 May 2021, 14:51

To protect bombers, to attack the enemy means of communication , to help the ground forces ,and in a defensive situation (1943 and later for Germany ) ,to protect the industry, the means of communications, the population ,etc ...
The mission of fighters is not determined by the fighters, not by Galland,even not by the chief of the air staff, but by the political leaders, by the circumstances,and : BY THE ENEMY .=If the enemy air force is not fighting, there is no need to gain air superiority :if the Red Air Force was not fighting in 1941, there was no need for the LW to gain air superiority .
Besides : having air superiority does not mean winning the war . See Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran .
You can win a war without air superiority and losing him with air superiority .

Nautilus
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#257

Post by Nautilus » 21 Jun 2021, 22:24

ljadw wrote:
12 May 2021, 12:16
Availability is not sufficient ,other things are needed ,as
people who can build these weapons and their ammunition : such people did not exist .
people who can use them : they did not exist
means to transport them : the railways of 1914 could not transport tanks of 40 tons .
Today's weapons can only be used in today's society ,the weapons of the American civil war could not be used in WWI,or WWII,because the technology to build and use them did no longer exist .And the weapons from 2114 can not be used in 2014 .People in 1914 could not use mobile phones or computers or the electronic cars of today ,or missiles,....
You can't go back from 2014 to 1914 ,neither can you jump from 1861 to 1914 .
Not just 1944 to 1914, but, literally, 1942 to 1940 comparisons gave spectacularly poor results for those involved (mostly the Reich): rail transport could easily handle PzKpfw III and IV, but very poorly (and with backbreaking preparations by hand tools) Tiger I. SdKfz 9 and 8 could easily tow a damaged PzKpfw IV to safety, but it took an entire team of SdKfz 9s working in concert (anyone who ever tried to coordinate a few heavy machines in the noise and agitation of a construction site knows how nasty it is) to move a Tiger I. If they were lucky. If the ground was too bad, and in the Russian rainy season it usually was, the poor Tiger was lost. Maybach HL230 engine block was 2.5 times the weight of a HL120 and it needed specific cranes and hand tools to be removed in the field, if possible at all.

When someone tries to build a weapon system from scratch, they need at the same time the factories to make the consumables, spare parts, ammunition, the schools to train the support personnel, the transport system to move them where needed.

(Then Major) Curtis LeMay, who had been a qualified engineer before serving in the USAAF, saw the same thing in late 1942 and early 1943: having a superbly built bomber airplane and bombsight meant quite little if there was no fighter escort in the nastiest place, airmen had only a few months of training, weather was horrible as it usually is over the Northern Europe in the autumn and winter, targets were hard to identify, Flak gnawed at the planes before the first enemy fighter approached. Out of desperation, he gave the order which appeared suicidal for pilots: "no evasive action should be taken" - for long minutes, enemy be damned, the pilot had to fly straight like a sitting duck to allow precise aiming of the bombs. We have to sacrifice ourselves and keep the bombs on target, or keep ourselves healthy and miss the target altogether, leave the bombs fall uselessly over fields.


historygeek2021
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#258

Post by historygeek2021 » 20 Apr 2022, 17:31

Found a free online copy of OP's first source:

https://archive.org/details/populationo ... 3/mode/2up

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TheMarcksPlan
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#259

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 01 May 2022, 07:03

historygeek2021 wrote:
20 Apr 2022, 17:31
Found a free online copy of OP's first source:

https://archive.org/details/populationo ... 3/mode/2up
I should have linked this in the OP, thanks.

The most important on-topic book published since my OP is the excellent Fortress Dark and Stern: The Soviet Homefront during World War II, a free copy of which of which someone can link in 2101 when copyright expires.

I mentioned it already here. Fortress discusses, inter alia, the immense suffering of the Soviet people during WW2.

One of its somewhat innovative themes is the inability of the Soviet state reliably to compel obedience to its dictates: an astoundingly small percentage of "labor deserters" faced actual punishment, for example. I say "somewhat innovative" because in the specialist literature on the SU it is taken for granted that even the maximally-Stalinist state was never the "panopticon" of omnipotent force portrayed in Western propaganda. It always relied on a large core of the population who actually believed in stupid myths like "everyone is equal" and "at least minimal conditions for everyone." That Stalin's regime disappointed those stupid enough to wish for such a world was/is news that took a while to filter out amidst a public whose information environment was Medieval long before the Bolsheviks arrived (and apparently has remained so long after they left).

Anyway the book is both a harrowing paean to Soviet heroism and an acknowledgement that the margin of survival was slim.
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