75 years ago today

[howard]

Placeholder for Pearl Harbor Day. But Dec 5, 1941 something really important happened that is little remembered in the West.

This day was the high water mark of the Germany Third Reich. Hitler and his allies controlled virtually all of non-Soviet Europe, excepting the British Isles. And they had conquered most of Soviet Europe, in the now six-month old Operation Barbarossa. A division of Wehrmacht troops were 15 miles from the Moscow city limit. Yeah, it had started to snow, but the Germans were confident that the Russians had no reserve troops available to defend the capital city, and it was just a matter of time until Bolshevism was vanquished, as had France and the rest of western and central Europe.

But, on this date, Stalin counterattacked. Between called up reservist soldiers and Siberian troops who had been in place to counter a possible Japanese attack, Stalin and his commander Georgy Zhucov amassed over a million soldiers, along with thousands of tanks and aircraft to begin the push back against the thus far undefeated Wehrmacht. They struck on this date, and over the next three weeks the Germans were pushed back over 200 miles, ending the Battle of Moscow with a big L for Team Swastika. Aside from Rommel in North Africa and some brief actions on the Russian Front, they would not score another major victory in the short-assed remainder of their regime.

This was one of the most massive and rapid reversals of fortune in the history of warfare. It marked the definite turning point in the war against Naziism. And it created the Eastern Front, the site of the greatest slaughter in the history of mankind as the Soviet Red Army battled the Wehrmacht continuously for the next three and one half years, from Moscow to Berlin, consuming as many as 10 million military lives. Who knows how many civilian deaths, maybe 15 million? So many human beings, snuffed in a four-year period. The world has never seen anything like that, before or since.

Russia looked like it was done. Until this day that year, when they struck back. All downhill for the Nazis after that. The Third Reich officially ended on May 8, 1945. But it began to die on this date, at the hands of the people of the Soviet Union.

[Pruitt]

Wild.

This was one of the most memorable books I've read as an adult.



If there is a hell, it can't be much worse than what went on in Stalingrad, Leningrad and other spots on the Eastern Front.

[howard]

I read that one, and his book on the fall of Berlin. He has an 800 page overview of the entirety of WW2, kind of curious how he wraps it up in such a relatively short volume. He also has a new one on the Battle of the Bulge, which I'll add to the list since my dad was in that one, and I read just about anything on the topic.

Funny story, apologies if I've told it before. My dad was very light skinned, and had grey eyes. So, when drafted he was classified as caucasian, as documented by his dog tags. Had he been correctly profiled as a Negro, he would've been peeling potatoes or some other menial coloured unit job, instead of carrying a rifle across France and Germany in Patton's 3rd Army. So much for passing for white.

[Johnny Carwash]

I remember hearing once that the apparent initial success of Barbarossa convinced the Japanese that Pearl Harbor would be a good idea.

If you're really into this type of thing, here's a good lecture I've watched a couple times by a guy who's considered the preeminent historian of the Eastern Front. He really hammers home the scale of the fighting, and how it was orders of magnitude beyond things in the West.



A few things that have stuck out to me in learning about the war in the East:
-The Eastern Front was the size of the U.S. East Coast from Maine to the tip of Florida.
-27 million Soviet citizens, the majority of whom were civilian, died. Compare this to the US and UK, who lost 400-500k each.
-On an average day of the war, 10,000 Soviet citizens died, over twice as many as the Western Allies lost on D-Day.
-The massive German encirclements in Barbarossa captured over 5 million Soviet POWs. The Nazis, using flimsy excuses about how the Geneva Convention did not apply to the Soviets, killed 3 million of them in a matter of months through starvation and exposure. This was the largest systematic mass murder over such a short period of time in human history, exceeding any period of the Holocaust.

[Johnny Carwash]

Funny story, apologies if I've told it before. My dad was very light skinned, and had grey eyes. So, when drafted he was classified as caucasian, as documented by his dog tags. Had he been correctly profiled as a Negro, he would've been peeling potatoes or some other menial coloured unit job, instead of carrying a rifle across France and Germany in Patton's 3rd Army. So much for passing for white.

Despite the segregation, there actually were a few black combat units. There was the 761st Tank Battalion, who had the retroactively amusing name of "Black Panthers."

[The Sybian]

Very cool history lesson. I've been meaning to read up on the Siege of Leningrad, but maybe I should go a little broader into the Soviets repelling the Nazis. In 1992, the cultural devastation of WWII was still very much apparent. Something like 20 million soviet men, 20% of all men in the USSR during the war. They call it the Lost Generation, and the women took on a large brunt of manual labor to fill the needs in the lacking workforce. I was 10 hours drive East of Moscow, and even that far out, it was apparent. There are WWII monuments and memorials everywhere. The suffering really hit me when I saw hunchbacked elderly women shoveling Red Square, and public places everywhere in the town I stayed, with what looked like wooden pizza paddles. I couldn't find any, but I remember seeing some great b&w pictures of this.

This is the best I could do. Imagine these women, 30 years after this picture, shoveling out Lenin's tomb in a blizzard.

[The Sybian]

And now I know the namesake of a beer on my shortlist of must have someday:

[Steve of phpBB]

Howard probably knows this already, but for some of you who haven't seen it yet, there is a website that provides a daily live blog of the war 75 years ago. They actually did it five years ago, but once they got to the end of the war they just recycled their entries. So the last few days it's been mostly about ships getting sunk, Brits earning the Victoria Cross in Africa (it's a British site), and bombing raids on Britain. And of course the mass murder of the Jews in Lithuania.

I find it worth catching up on every few days.

http://ww2today.com/

[degenerasian]

Howard probably knows this already, but for some of you who haven't seen it yet, there is a website that provides a daily live blog of the war 75 years ago. They actually did it five years ago, but once they got to the end of the war they just recycled their entries. So the last few days it's been mostly about ships getting sunk, Brits earning the Victoria Cross in Africa (it's a British site), and bombing raids on Britain. And of course the mass murder of the Jews in Lithuania.

I find it worth catching up on every few days.

http://ww2today.com/

Wow

Today I can confirm that our objective, to solve the Jewish problem for Lithuania, has been achieved by EK 3. In Lithuania there are no more Jews, apart from Jewish workers and their families. . . I am of the view that the sterilization program of the male worker Jews should be started immediately so that reproduction is prevented. If despite sterilization a Jewess becomes pregnant she will be liquidated. . . .

[howard]

I remember hearing once that the apparent initial success of Barbarossa convinced the Japanese that Pearl Harbor would be a good idea.

I was watching some of the Pearl Harbor stuff on CSPAN over the weekend, and learned some more about this issue, which is quite complex.

There were two events in 1939 that provided context to the Pearl Harbor decision. First, there was a little battle in August on the border of Japanese occupied Manchuria and Soviet occupied Mongolia. Started a series of border skirmishes, ended with a semi-major battle, about 100K troops combined, 40K casualties (including wounded, missing and illness),tanks and aircraft. The Russians kicked ass.

The strategic plan had been, allied Germany and Japan would carve up the Soviet Union from both sides, satisfying the Japanese desire for empire. But, they got whipped by the Russians.

I had never heard of this until this weekend. Learning more history is so cool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol

And a month later, friend Germany signs a non-aggression pact with enemy Russia. These two factors caused them to look south for their empire dreams.

Then, with Barbarossa, friend Germany turns on their new friend Russia. Japan starts to wonder, will they turn on us? Or when? US Sec of State Cordell Hull was said to literally screamed this message to the Japanese ambassador to the US, imploring them to make peace with the US.

But, these things made them look to Indochina, Indonesia and the Phillipines for oil and empire. And the necessity to score a first round KO of the US fleet. Had the carriers been in port and got blasted, it might have worked, for a while at least.

Despite the segregation, there actually were a few black combat units. There was the 761st Tank Battalion, who had the retroactively amusing name of "Black Panthers."

Dad was additionally bitter because, he was a gifted musician, but couldn't get into a band unit. Thinks it would've happened had he been a Negro.

One of his friends in Davis, one of the other couple of dozen black families, was a Tuskegee Airman. A bunch of younger black fliers, Vietnam era, ended up settling in Davis, up the road from Travis AFB. These guys had stories.

While we're here, Dan Carlin's series on the Eastern Front of WW2 is, as usual, awesome.
http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardco ... nt-series/

[Rex]

Howard probably knows this already, but for some of you who haven't seen it yet, there is a website that provides a daily live blog of the war 75 years ago. They actually did it five years ago, but once they got to the end of the war they just recycled their entries. So the last few days it's been mostly about ships getting sunk, Brits earning the Victoria Cross in Africa (it's a British site), and bombing raids on Britain. And of course the mass murder of the Jews in Lithuania.

I find it worth catching up on every few days.

http://ww2today.com/

That's pretty cool, but the lack of pro-Nazi posts in the comments makes me wonder if this is a real blog.

[Rush2112]

83 years from the end of prohibition.

[howard]

http://ww2today.com/

That's pretty cool, but the lack of pro-Nazi posts in the comments makes me wonder if this is a real blog.

I'll try and post there more often. @drgoebbels420

[howard]

Oh, 82 years ago today, this strange wonderful creature was born. Tuttae Frutae, Good Bootay.

[govmentchedda]

And now I know the namesake of a beer on my shortlist of must have someday:

Next time I see this on sale, I'll grab you one (if I can get more than one).

[sancarlos]

I still love Little Richard. They play him fairly often on Underground Garage

[Rush2112]

And now I know the namesake of a beer on my shortlist of must have someday:

Next time I see this on sale, I'll grab you one (if I can get more than one).

A recent bottle release in Denver

[Pruitt]

Here's one from these parts...

[DaveInSeattle]

I still love Little Richard. They play him fairly often on Underground Garage

I saw him play at Bumbershoot about 20 years ago, and it was one of the weirdest shows I've ever seen.

[degenerasian]

I remember hearing once that the apparent initial success of Barbarossa convinced the Japanese that Pearl Harbor would be a good idea.

I was watching some of the Pearl Harbor stuff on CSPAN over the weekend, and learned some more about this issue, which is quite complex.

There were two events in 1939 that provided context to the Pearl Harbor decision. First, there was a little battle in August on the border of Japanese occupied Manchuria and Soviet occupied Mongolia. Started a series of border skirmishes, ended with a semi-major battle, about 100K troops combined, 40K casualties (including wounded, missing and illness),tanks and aircraft. The Russians kicked ass.

The strategic plan had been, allied Germany and Japan would carve up the Soviet Union from both sides, satisfying the Japanese desire for empire. But, they got whipped by the Russians.

I had never heard of this until this weekend. Learning more history is so cool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol

And a month later, friend Germany signs a non-aggression pact with enemy Russia. These two factors caused them to look south for their empire dreams.

Then, with Barbarossa, friend Germany turns on their new friend Russia. Japan starts to wonder, will they turn on us? Or when? US Sec of State Cordell Hull was said to literally screamed this message to the Japanese ambassador to the US, imploring them to make peace with the US.

But, these things made them look to Indochina, Indonesia and the Phillipines for oil and empire. And the necessity to score a first round KO of the US fleet. Had the carriers been in port and got blasted, it might have worked, for a while at least.

If the Japanese had caught the American Pacific Fleet carriers in port at Pearl with their escorts and sank them, there's no question that Japan would have launched an amphibious assault on the Islands.

America would have been caught in a quandary as they would have had to split their Atlantic Fleet that had only 4 carriers. I think that Atlantic Fleet Command had 8 Battleships but half of them were obsolete and would have performed badly against the Japanese Navy.

The devils choice if the Japanese had taken Hawaii and fortified it would be if you shift ships away from the Atlantic and the expected convoy duty and possibly leave the Brits out to hang, or send your Atlantic Carriers into a battle on Japanese terms in one decisive engagement in the Hawaii waters and possibly leave your west coast open to attack if you lose.

[govmentchedda]

How dare you get this thread back on topic!

[Steve of phpBB]

The devils choice if the Japanese had taken Hawaii and fortified it would be if you shift ships away from the Atlantic and the expected convoy duty and possibly leave the Brits out to hang, or send your Atlantic Carriers into a battle on Japanese terms in one decisive engagement in the Hawaii waters and possibly leave your west coast open to attack if you lose.

I wonder ... did the Japanese have plans to head down to the Panama Canal after Hawaii to pick off any Navy ships coming through? Could US Navy ships in WWII make it through the Canal, or were they too big? If not, how did they get from one ocean to the other?

[A_B]

The devils choice if the Japanese had taken Hawaii and fortified it would be if you shift ships away from the Atlantic and the expected convoy duty and possibly leave the Brits out to hang, or send your Atlantic Carriers into a battle on Japanese terms in one decisive engagement in the Hawaii waters and possibly leave your west coast open to attack if you lose.

I wonder ... did the Japanese have plans to head down to the Panama Canal after Hawaii to pick off any Navy ships coming through? Could US Navy ships in WWII make it through the Canal, or were they too big? If not, how did they get from one ocean to the other?

They hired a European to try to find another way around.

[EnochRoot]

The devils choice if the Japanese had taken Hawaii and fortified it would be if you shift ships away from the Atlantic and the expected convoy duty and possibly leave the Brits out to hang, or send your Atlantic Carriers into a battle on Japanese terms in one decisive engagement in the Hawaii waters and possibly leave your west coast open to attack if you lose.

I wonder ... did the Japanese have plans to head down to the Panama Canal after Hawaii to pick off any Navy ships coming through? Could US Navy ships in WWII make it through the Canal, or were they too big? If not, how did they get from one ocean to the other?

The east coast shipyards were building ships to fight the Germans and protect the resources being shipping to England.

The west coast shipyards were building ships to fight Japan.

I'd be shocked to learn if the USN actually tried to send ships through the canal. There were u-boats all over the place.

[degenerasian]

what about these ships?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Missouri_(BB-63)

After trials off New York and shakedown and battle practice in the Chesapeake Bay, Missouri departed Norfolk, Virginia on 11 November 1944, transited the Panama Canal on 18 November and steamed to San Francisco for final fitting out as fleet flagship. She stood out of San Francisco Bay on 14 December and arrived at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 24 December 1944. She departed Hawaii on 2 January 1945 and arrived in Ulithi, West Caroline Islands on 13 January. There she was temporary headquarters ship for Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher. The battleship put to sea on 27 January to serve in the screen of the Lexington carrier task group of Mitscher's TF 58, and on 16 February the task force's aircraft carriers launched the first naval air strikes against Japan since the famed Doolittle raid, which had been launched from the carrier Hornet in April 1942.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wisconsin_(BB-64)

On 24 September 1944, Wisconsin sailed for the west coast, transiting the Panama Canal, and reporting for duty with the Pacific Fleet on 2 October. The battleship later moved to Hawaiian waters for training exercises and then headed for the Western Caroline Islands. Upon reaching the Caroline Island Ulithi she joined Admiral William F. Halsey's 3rd Fleet on 9 December

[Rex]

Was an attack on the US west coast even feasible (assuming that Hawaii had fallen first), and what would have been the objective?

[DC47]

I still love Little Richard. They play him fairly often on Underground Garage

I saw him play at Bumbershoot about 20 years ago, and it was one of the weirdest shows I've ever seen.

How so?

[DC47]

That's pretty cool, but the lack of pro-Nazi posts in the comments makes me wonder if this is a real blog.

They're all busy working on the Trump transition team?

[degenerasian]

Was an attack on the US west coast even feasible (assuming that Hawaii had fallen first), and what would have been the objective?

the objective was not to necessarily attack the West coast but the threat alone would devastate moral and America would have been completely shattered and probably would have negotiated a separate peace with Japan in exchange for the return of Hawaii as a disarmed state.

Japan then would have been content to fold backwards and go after the abandoned fortress islands like Midway which they would have taken because of America's inability to re-enforce them. Then conquer Asia without US interference.

[EnochRoot]

what about these ships?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Missouri_(BB-63)

After trials off New York and shakedown and battle practice in the Chesapeake Bay, Missouri departed Norfolk, Virginia on 11 November 1944, transited the Panama Canal on 18 November and steamed to San Francisco for final fitting out as fleet flagship. She stood out of San Francisco Bay on 14 December and arrived at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 24 December 1944. She departed Hawaii on 2 January 1945 and arrived in Ulithi, West Caroline Islands on 13 January. There she was temporary headquarters ship for Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher. The battleship put to sea on 27 January to serve in the screen of the Lexington carrier task group of Mitscher's TF 58, and on 16 February the task force's aircraft carriers launched the first naval air strikes against Japan since the famed Doolittle raid, which had been launched from the carrier Hornet in April 1942.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wisconsin_(BB-64)

On 24 September 1944, Wisconsin sailed for the west coast, transiting the Panama Canal, and reporting for duty with the Pacific Fleet on 2 October. The battleship later moved to Hawaiian waters for training exercises and then headed for the Western Caroline Islands. Upon reaching the Caroline Island Ulithi she joined Admiral William F. Halsey's 3rd Fleet on 9 December

I was reading yesterday about the Liberty Ships (Merchant Marines?) being built to protect supply runs. I also read how the rail infrastructure helped deliver equipment/parts to be fitted into/onto ships at the varied shipyards, be they in NY, MD, VA, FL, and CA.

After noting your exceptions to my rule (o;, I began looking into the USN battleships of the era and where they were built and their keels placed in the water. Surprisingly, a lot were on the east coast.

[DaveInSeattle]

I still love Little Richard. They play him fairly often on Underground Garage

I saw him play at Bumbershoot about 20 years ago, and it was one of the weirdest shows I've ever seen.

How so?

It was years ago, but I remember that it was totally flamboyant, almost more like a drag show then a concert. He also didn't really ever play a complete song...lots of stopping and starting, where he would talk to the crowd, and then do a teasing/smirking "Oh Shut Up". Very strange...