Switch to the monumental follies of war. I am stuck that when ruminating on the incompetent leadership in my organisation... it's really not. Not at all. I learn about the terrible lemming-like destruction happening in Ukraine and Russia from the Summer of 1941 to the winter of 1042 and think my lot are angels...
Take two evil megalomaniacs and set them against each other. Stalin did not believe Hitler would attack the Soviet Union. Many thought that armies massing in the Ukraine were to distract British attention away from an invasion of Britain. Then on the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the Germans launched their attack. With a massive preemptive strike, they reduced the Soviet air force by 95%. Their army was well supplied. Their tanks were fine examples of high precision engineering. Their soldiers included Romanians and Hungarians who felt less Slavs in their neck of the woods would not be a bad thing. Even Russians joined the Nazi machine.
The Soviet army was hamstrung. It wasn't allowed to act independently. All authorisation came from the top. Commanders risked being accused of treachery if they questioned Stalin. They were caught between two enemies. Thousands of Soviet officers will executed from the orders of Stalin. The death toll of 20 million Russians is complex.
Two things held up the Germans. 1) the lack of roads. Mud tracks turned to quagmires. The German army had to make it's own roads with birch tree trunks. The second was the tensity of the Russian fighters, who never gave up. This held up the German advance, slowly, slowly into the Russian winter. It was the winter that changed the appearance of German soldiers into deaths heads. The German uniforms were not designed for hash winters. Hitler did not seem to care that these soldiers were dying needlessly. May Germans took the clothes off Russian peasants and left them to die. When the trees were all cut down, they used bodies to make their roadways. The whole place had turned into hell itself. When Hitler relented, Germans sent gifts of fur coats to the front. Soldiers marveled at the smells of luxury in these gifts. I remembered the vagrant men I worked with London being given Armani suits; smart for a day.
What the Russians had was many, many people. They also, with time, resupplied their army from factories set far away in the Urals. They even produced the T34 tank that German Panzars found hard to destroy. They were also prepared for harsh weather. History was repeating itself, and Hitler knew it. This made it worse, he tried so hard not to allow the inevitable to happen, and it did.
As Spring 1942 thawed the German armies, new orders turned the assault towards Stalingrad. Officers described the journey as riding across a vast ocean, with the Russian step is so vast and endlessly flat. Stalin refused to believe Hitler wasn't come back to have another go at Moscow. It is thought the move to Stalingrad was to secure vital oil supplies in the Caucuses. Romania had oil, but it was fast running out. Some tanks in the East were even adapted to run on wood, with the gases collected from wood fires strapped to the back of tanks and half tracks.
An examination of Volgograd now shows it to be a dull formless place full of characterless tower blocks. And of course the incredible statue that dwarfs all around it, 'call of the motherland'.
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