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Thanks for the VfZ. Will take a look when I have some freetime...
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People often stare blindly at military matters and forget political ones. Kiev is my favourite one.
600 000 losses for the RKKA that could have been pulled out sounds like shit decision making.
Or abandon the 3rd city of the country and the historical cradle of your civilization without firing a shot? Good luck maintaining morale and trust in the government by regular people. Especially in that region of the country if you ever manage to get it back. "Hi, we kinda left you to fend for yourself for two years under occupation, hope you don't have any grudges against us, anyway we want you to listen to us again now"
Much better to try to fight and loose horribly in military terms, but using it to get people on your side; than it would be to retreat the army intact and loose the people.
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My intention was to clarify the problem of the wide field of various numbers with an russian scientist, before the western phobia and propaganda punshes.
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IMO, the Soviet claims of enemy force strength & destruction in operations are usually worthless and not even close to the actual numbers. The Wehr reporting system in operations usually closer to the mark, but still with discrepancies.
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'Kursk', for instance, gets lots of coverage but is still considered isolated from the related, massive, and ultimately more decisive Izyum/Mius River and Belgorod-Kharkov battles. In older texts like Rolf Hinze, the Soviet units are often not even identified and are depicted in maps as merely arrows.
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(...)I think the archives have been open for a long time. It's just that historians that master both russian and german research and want to be productive are quite few. Colonel Glantz is probably the best eastern front historian alive and working in the US. Also apparently the German universities don't take military history seriously and are more interested in researching WW2 social aspects and war crimes- which is too bad.
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Why doesn't the p4 have a nickname while the elephant tiger etc do?
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Subscribed.
There are only a few universities in germany that are researching the field of strategic military history. The german army universities in Hamburg and Munich and some military institutes in Potsdam come to my mind.
I don´t know if LeYawn is an educated lecturer of history now and works at a german university. I know he studied history as well and I guess he wrote his master thesis some time ago, but I am sure he knows a bit more about the historical research of military warfare at german universities then I do from my exams.
Edit: But the topic of social aspects and war-crimes at university is still an important aspect to me.
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I think the archives have been open for a long time. It's just that historians that master both russian and german research and want to be productive are quite few. Colonel Glantz is probably the best eastern front historian alive and working in the US. Also apparently the German universities don't take military history seriously and are more interested in researching WW2 social aspects and war crimes- which is too bad.
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I have a sneaking suspicion that the Kursk Operation should cover more than just Operation Zitadelle, certainly operation Kutuzov at the very least...
Would this idea be correct or would Kutuzov be its own "battle" (though where campaign ends and battle begins becomes a bit more blurry these days) go elsewhere do you think?
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As far as classical, operational military history is concerned, the discipline unsurprisingly took an utter nosedive post war; in fact, to say it was not en vogue would be to understate the matter considerably. Topics [Edit] such as these not only received little to no funding, but were also considered politically sensitive - as in: outright tainted - and considered a career dead end - they still are, to a point. Making a heartfelt interest in military matters known would be a very unwise move to say the least if you wanted to ever receive tenure.
A very far cry ie. from US (or in fact, anglo in general) university culture, where military history chairs are par from the course even in provincial unis. In consequence, the overwhelming majority of scholarship and expertise concerning "German" 20th century military issues came out of the Anglo world, and this is still where some of the leading authorities reside. (Zuber, Citino, etc etc)
That being said, even throughout the 60s/70s/80s where the tendencies I described were at their zenith, their still always was at least a trickle of quality germanophone scholarship, however, this tended to come from outside the academic "establishment", was published in very limited numbers, was rarely if ever translated, and therefore received very little international - or domestic - exposure. The Zeitgeist, if you will, clearly frowned on the matter.
Nowadays the situation has actually greatly improved, to the point where "German" scholarship has pulled considerably ahead in some respects, the PoW question being a case in point, but this still is very insular and has a very limited audience; as evidenced by the fact that you will not find ie. a German Stephen Ambrose/Hastings/Glantz etc. whose reach not only greatly transcends academia, but whose publications are actually more geared towards the broader public.
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Whilst I understand what you say, I doubt if the position was very different in UK until the early 90s (but I do not work in academia). The UK military had their military historians at Sandhurst - I was always of the impression (probably wrongly) that they were slightly frowned upon by the UK academic history establishment.' (One of our university tutors on British Empire history was ex-Sandhurst history staff - he seemed to have bridged the gap).
From my limited recollection, Fritz Fischer was an historian who commanded international respect - but that was for WW1. A brief google suggests that both Zuber and Citino are comparatively 'modern'.
Which pulls me in another direction and off-topic,but how far can Hastings/Ambrose /Beevor be regarded as mainstream academic historians?
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Given that my intention when I'm older is to become a professional military historian, this is an interesting discussion.
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Can someone explain why the soviets suffered so many wounded? Looking at the statistics, the casaulty ratio for millitary deaths on the eastern front was almost 1:1 with a slight advantage for the axis.
However, the soviets , atleast from the statistics suffered disproportionaly high wounded...
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