From: dxb105@huxley.anu.edu.au (David Bofinger)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: _Target Hitler_ a book review
Date: 12 Jan 1993 01:38:49 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.3.32

In article <1993Jan11.174319.3559@island.COM>, fester@island.COM (Mike Fester) writes:
|> According to several sources (ie, myabe true, maybe not), Stalin was considering
|> giving the Germans territorial concessions if Hitler had taken Moscow.

I wouldn't have expected Hitler to accept unless the concessions were truly
huge. Out of curiosity, you don't have references for this, do you? There's
also an interesting debate as to whether Stalin ever left Moscow at the end
of '41, he always claimed he didn't and you can't trust the people who say
he did either. :-)

> Also, Hitler might have made it within bomber range of the Ural factories
> Stalin had had built earlier, making the war/winter that much easier for
> the Wehrmacht.

I wouldn't think this was significant. The Germans had better uses for their
air power, and it wasn't optimised for strategic bombing anyway. The effort
couldn't have been within an order of magnitude of the one the allies could
put into bombing Germany, which had a pretty limited effect. Anyway, they'd
tried it and failed against Britain.

> It is difficult to imagine [a combined Greek-Yugoslav-Commonwealth thrust
> out of the Balkans], given that it took the Germans only a month to take
> Greece.

I'm not sure if I made myself clear here, this was if the Germans _didn't_
try to take Greece or Yugoslavia but instead went into Russia immediately.

> And one would have to suppose that such a combined effort GREATLY exceeded
> previous efforts by those countries in (esp the British) to counter the
> Germans.

There's something in this, but I don't think I've assumed a great deal of
energy on the part of the allies, just enough to tie down the Rumanian,
Hungarian and Bulgarian armies with maybe a few token German units, some
Luftwaffe or at least a German general to stiffen them. And I'm assuming the
RAF would give Ploesti a good pounding. I can easily imagine the Yugoslavs
would have taken a few months to sort themselves out, and the Greeks might
have started cautiously.

The Germans believed they could knock the Russians out before winter, and in
that case ignoring the Balkans might make some sense. Otherwise, though, the
Germans were going to have to squash them eventually, and it would never be
easier than May 1941. They certainly didn't want to have to take time out
from Russia to do it.

>> the Greek army was misplaced

> Again, the Italians weren't able to do much, even against such misplaced
> troops.

Well, no, that was the way in which they were misplaced, they were set up to
fight the Italians. The Bulgarian front was pretty open. Considering how
brilliant a job Papagos did against the Italians he does seem to have gone
to sleep a little slightly later. Or was this someone else's fault?

> Well, an interview with a general who survived Stalin's purges cannot (IMO)
> be taken as proof of the Russians' willingness to fight for Stalin.

Agreed, I already remarked that the general's statements seemed odd to me.
I'm quite sure the Russians fought for the Rodina, not the Politburo. I just
thought the story was interesting, not particularly strong evidence.

> Remember, in the early stages (ie, before the Germans started their roundups
> of citizens) people were throwing flowers to the Wehrmacht forces entering
> their towns. That would soon change.

Was this in Russia? Or in Byelorussia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,
Bessarabia, Karelia, etc.?
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David Bofinger                                           dxb105@phys.anu.edu.au