The Rise of Hitler and the Foundations of Antisemitism

First topic message reminder :

After reading Greg's post I've decided to start posting chronologically.
As he rightly said it is a journey.
If journeys are to have an end then surely they must first have a beginning; why not then start at the beginning?
It's as good a place as any.
With Roosevelt's death, the end of the war and disintegration of the wartime alliance and the start of the Cold War.
Everyone here has accepted the truth about the Cold War.
It was a mostly fictive construct.
A refinement of a concept as old as human civilization.
A modernist riff, -a little habanera perhaps? with a sombre jazzy tinge, A Rhapsody in Red White and Blue, the opening note soaring, twisting chameleon like. First its a train clanking downtown, then across the vast plains of America, only to grow wings to burst rocket-likethrough the clouds.
Into the atmosphere beyond.
For we are all human and we all breathe the same air.- on the ageless melody.
The cosmetic clash of civilisations refined for the post modern, post atomic age.
Roosevelt's death was one of the turning points of the century.
He had built up a genuine rapport with Stalin. Stalin trusted him( whatever trust meant to Stalin) Stalin actually liked Roosevelt. A strange pair. The cultured blueblood from the Social Register and the cunning Georgian revolutionary.
If Stalin liked Roosevelt, he respected Churchill. Churchill the adventurer, the old anti Communist , who had called for " Bolshevism to be strangled in its cradle" who had sent British men, tanks, guns and money to aid the White counter-revolutionaries.
Who had sent the British destroyer HMS Marlborough to the Crimea in 1921 to rescue the surviving Romanovs.
Churchill wanted to preserve the British Empire.
Roosevelt didn't. Although vaguely worded the United Nations charter spoke of self determination.
The Age of the European Colonial Empires was past 
Roosevelt accepted this. Many historians, many observers, many people who were actually there genuinely believed Roosevelt was serious.
Working with the Soviet Union to build a new world, not just out the ashes of the old, but one worthy of those ashes.
A new world to justify the ruins of the old.
Then Roosevelt died. Truman turned up to Potsdam. The haberdasher from Missouri.
The Senator from Pendergast. Who'd met Roosevelt all of two times as VP, Jimmy Byrne's having to hurriedly brief the new President on the Manhattan Project.
Then Atlee won the British Election 
He came to power wanting to build a new Britain. Fiercely unsentimental, unromantic and even though a product of the British public school system that had built duty to the Empire up into a religion unto itself he was an avowed anti Imperialist.
He was more concerned with nationalisation at home than with keeping distant far flung nations under the British flag 
All Stalin wanted was security.
Stalin was probably one of the least sentimental humans ever, he was fully cognizant of the vast American superiority. America was the colossus of the world .The only nuclear power. While Stalin presided over a virtual wasteland.
The richest most industrialised, parts of the Soviet Union were in ruins 
He wanted a cordon sanitaire. With friendly governments. Poland most of all. It was through Poland that both Napoleon and Hitler had invaded 
It's still a matter of fierce controversy but I think it's certainly a possibility that Stalin and Roosevelt could have worked together, probably under the aegis of the United Nations.
The Cold War as we know it was created by hawkish elements in Truman's cabinet, allied with militarists and big business.
The birth of the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.
Keenans long telegram. Nitzes memorandum, the Greek Civil War.. Churchill's Iron Curtain speech in Fulton Missouri ( Churchill didn't coin the phrase. That particular honour went to Goebbels. In a diary entry frightening in both it's cynical tone and its prescience)
The zombie corpse of the Cold War was conjured to life by Washington powerbrokers using the bones of Old Europe.
Using fear , institutional paranoia and other psy ops techniques it cemented the East West divide into the consciousness of at least 3 maybe 4 generations.
When the wall came crumbling down they took the bricks and moved on, refining the process, safe in the knowledge that internal walls are infinitely more durable.
The tin foil fantasies of Rothschild puppeteers crouched on top of the Capitol building and the Kremlin is all just bullshit
Could the Cold War have been avoided?
Possibly.
Despite the very real tensions that emerged in 44 and 45 it certainly wasn't inevitable.

My pleasure Vinny. 

I hope you, our fellow ROKCers and long-term lurkers enjoy reading the posts, I hope my numerous careless errors( that I will eventually get round to fixing) and my sometimes eccentric, over descriptive style don't spoil the overall narrative flow.

It was incredibly reckless, arrogant, not to mention disrespectful to attempt a series of posts on such an immense subject working purely from memory, and posting directly without first taking notes, formulating a cohesive structure and making at least one preliminary draft...

Lesson ( hopefully) learned. I'll endeavour to make the future posts more cogent, structured , while adhering to a strict narrative, avoiding wandering off on endless tangents...

After my coffee and after the missus has finished her ZOOM yoga session downstairs(!!!!!!).....  for one heartstopping moment I thought the instructor was prognathic ponytailed Sanibelite with pendelous manboobs, broadcasting from some tin foil papered man cave in his mommies basement... instructing his students to adopt a series of quite eyewateringly improbable postures...( Pretend you're an obese 300lb woman slipping sinuously across the shadowy portal of a Texas book depository doorway....and James Gordon is a cowardly British bastard) that a super flexible steroid enhanced teenage gymnast from the former Eastern Bloc would have trouble accomplishing...... I'll try to complete the next post on Operation Citadel..

The next two posts will concentrate on the Battle of Kursk. Starting with the initial German offensive, and the two subsequent Soviet counter offensives; Kutuzov in the northern salient , and Rumyantsev in the southern salient.

 ( The Soviets called both phases of the operation the Kursk Strategic Offensive)

Named after two decidedly unproletarian heroes of the Tsarist era, (normally derided as bewigged bemedalled effigies , or lascivious drunken buffoons... giving barely coherent orders to their bemused staff with straw still sticking out of the front of their breeches , red faced and wheezing from their tumble with a serving wench in an adjacent barn) a small but telling insight into the mindset of the Boss. Post Stalingrad the canny Stalin was quick to heap praise upon the now ascendant Red Army, carefully associating himself with them in the propaganda images,and, much to the chagrin of Beria, the " security organs" and the party hardliners, he emphasized the shifting power dynamic by readopting the once hated shoulderboards ( once a  symbol of the Imperial Army, indeed many officers had them nailed to their bare shoulders prior to their execution) , the abolishment of the system of " dual command", the commissars were now subservient to the army commanders, a situation unthinkable pre Stalingrad, new medals named for Kutuzov and Suvorov and the re establishment of pre Revolutionary rank structure( much to the horror of more militant communists the newly created Lieutenant Generals, Generals, Colonel Generals and Marshals( with their one diamond embossed Marshal's Star) , swaggered about draped in  gold braid, supplied by the British under Lend Lease!)

However in true Stalinist fashion this realignment was purely temporary. Lasting until spring 1945, when the now victorious Red Army became, in Stalin's morbidly paranoid sclerotic view, a threat. Soon Lavrentii Pavlovich was strutting around in a Marshal's tunic, and his minions were back in charge, with his protégé Abumakov's SMERSH ( Literally Death to Spies) purging, if not partying ,like it was 1937.. the returning heroes were viewed with particular suspicion...having seen first hand how far behind the Worker's Paradise truly was. The young impressionable conscripts, and even the not so young and not so impressionable, passing through the rolling countryside with the neat well tended farmhouses, not to mention cities like Budapest, Vienna, even Bucharest... always the question was:" What did they want with us?"

A certain Captain Solzhenitsyn of the Red Artillery was arrested in Germany, for the heinous crime of repeating a non flattering anecdote about Ioseb Vissarionovich. He received 10 years hard labour. Then internal exile , to one of the ominously named " closed cities" 

But back in the late spring, early summer of 1943, it was, in every conceivable sense a " new" Red Army that now faced the Wehrmacht over the steppes, now shimmering in the spring time sunshine, a vast undulating sea of burnished earth and brightly coloured blooms.

The German plan, initially authorised on March 13th, with Operational Order no 15, was brutal in its simplicity.

Two powerful spearheads , on either side of the Kursk " bulge"( Kursk itself being just under 300 miles , southwest of Moscow), would first neutralise the salient itself, recapture the ground ceded  in the early spring battles before driving towards Moscow itself.

Not even the most fervent Hitler loyalist believed the ultimate goal was in any way attainable.

Guderian, now back in favour as Inspector General of the entire Panzerwaffen, in conjunction with the dynamic Speer ( his much lauded " industrial miracle" relied heavily on slave labour, a fact that consigned his deputy, Sauckel, to the gallows at Nuremberg. Speer, playing the role of the repentant Nazi to the hilt, told his accusers, who could perhaps allow themselves to empathise with this suave, relatively apolitical artist turned bureaucrat ,rather than the stiff necked Prussian generals, the party hacks,  porcine snouted nonentities to a man, or a  sinister degenerate ,like the towering Kaltenbrunner, exactly what they wanted to hear. And what he himself wanted to believe. It was an utter lie, he knew damn well what was going on, in retrospect it seems utterly incredible that the Allied prosecutors bought his fable of wide eyed innocence. Believing one of the most high ranking officials, a man widely acknowledged as Hitler's only real friend, could have been so naïve and so incurious; and completely unaware as to the inner workings and the true nature of the regime he served so assiduously, and with such efficiency.) totally reinvigorated  Armaments production , allowing both the Panther medium and Tiger heavy tanks, plus the Ferdinand Self propelled gun , to be available in some considerable for the upcoming offensive.

However Guderian, and many other leading generals viewed the proposed offensive with horror. Believing the carefully rebuilt Panzerwaffen would be sacrificed for nothing. Forthright as always ,Guderian implored Hitler to at the very least postpone the offensive indefinitely. Preferring instead to adopt a flexible defensive strategy. Like Von Manstein had done

Anticipate ,then defeat any Soviet offensives and turn them into counter offensives. Hitting them in the flanks

" Who cares about Kursk?" was the notoriously brusque Panzer General's characteristically pithy rejoinder.

" When I think of this offensive it makes my stomach churn!!" Hitler himself was by no means convinced , regarding the viability of the proposed offensive..but yet he issued the orders....after much delay( due to supply and logistics issues) the offensive was set to commence on the morning of the 4th July 1943

With Zhukov, now Deputy Supreme Commander and Stalin's de facto no 2 , and Chief of Staff Vasilievsky in control, and relying upon their excellent intelligence sources, the Soviets set about preparing for the onslaught.

Creating three separate ( at crucial points  it increased to five) defensive belts. Each with a seperate command infrastructure. As well as static defensive fortifications: vast minefields, literally thousands of concealed machine gun emplacements and strong points , the Soviets also deployed the Pakfront mobile anti tank defence. The seperate anti tank guns would combine and concentrate their fire on one tank.

The sheer size of the forces involved gives you an idea of how much both sides had invested in the offensive.

For Hitler it was more a political statement than a simple military operation. After the tragedy at Stalingrad; a whole army lost and the myth of invulnerable Wehrmacht  shattered once and for all, it was imperative he show his Allies( especially the jittery Duce, facing an imminent invasion) and to a certain degree, the Anglo Americans too, that the Wehrmacht was still a fearsome fighting machine. Already amongst certain circles in Berlin, aside from the various resistance groups( the Kreisau circle, the Von Moltke group and the Army resistance, supposedly led by Generaloberst Beck, but in reality by Henning Von Tresckow, now a Generalmajor) there was much talk of a seperate peace. Before the Anglo Americans opened up a Western Front. These groups, meeting in drawing rooms or well appointed offices, reclining on comfortable chairs and sipping cognac , indulged their various fantasies. Speaking wistfully of holding onto most of Hitler's gains( Poland, Austria, the Sudetenland and Alsace-Lorraine at the very least) perhaps even giving voice to a delusion that would become wide spread as the war came closer to home. The Allies joining forces with the Wehrmacht against their common enemy to the East!!

It was something Stalin feared greatly. And certain individuals in London, Washington and in the field( especially in the American 3rd Army) thought seriously about. 

The STAVKA, on the other hand, already planning ahead, understood if they could smash the offensive, perhaps breaking the once invincible Panzerwaffen for good, not only could they think in terms of liberating the Motherland, but they could begin thinking about conquest. About paying the Fascist invaders back in kind . About the glorious day when the first Red Army man wipes his boots in the " Lair of the Fascist Beast"

The opposing forces were as follows:

Wehrmacht

Northern Pincer

Army Group Centre( Von Kluge)

3rd Panzer Army ( Classner) 3 Army Korps ( XXXV, LIII, LV) 12 divisions including 1 panzergrenadier with 1 infantry division in reserve

9th Army( Model) the key attacking force 5 Korps ( XLI XLVI XLVII PanzerKorps XX XXIII Armee Korps) 18 divisions including 4 Panzer and 1 assault ( a new combined arms formation with a company of panzers and a company of panzergrenadiers and a battalion of self propelled artillery)

Model had the 4th and 12th Panzer divisions and the 15th division in reserve

2nd Army( Weiss) 2 Korps( VII XVI) 7 divisions with the 5th and 8th in reserve

Southern Pincer

Army Group South( Von Manstein)

4th Army( Hoth) 3 Korps( II SS PanzerKorps- 1st SS Panzergrenadier Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, 2nd SS Panzergrenadier Das Reich , 3rd SS Panzergrenadier Totenkopf. Commanded by Ogrf Hausser. Despite being classified as Panzergrenadier divisions the SS formations with nearly 500 tanks and self propelled guns were far better equipped than the standard Wehrmacht Panzer divisions. XLVII PanzerKorps LII ArmeeKorps)

Army Detachment Kempf( Kempf) ( under the command of Hoth. An Army Detachment was an intermediary formation. More than a single Korps but considered less than an Army. In the latter part of the war the discrepancy between formations " on paper" and the actual reality on the ground grew ever wider. Culminating in such fantasical aggregations as Army Group Vistula and most famously Steiner's " 12th Army" and Wenck's " 9th Army"; ramshackle units, barely more than a reinforced regiment, made up of stragglers, Hitlerjugend and Volksturm. In the paroxsyms of his final tantrum ( as depicted in Der Untergang, a scene that spawned countless gifs and parodies) Hitler expected these two ragtag formations to counterattack a Soviet Front over 2 million strong!

3 Korps ( III PanzerKorps XII XLII ArmeeKorps)

A combined total of 19 divisions, including 5 Panzer and 5 Panzergrenadier ( including 3 SS and the elite GrossDeutschland)

Army Reserve - XXIV PanzerKorps 5th SS Wiking Panzergrenadier division and 17th infantry division

Air Support came from the 4th and 6th Luftflottes

Red Army

Western Front( Sokolovsky) 50th Army, 11th Guards Army( commanded by Bagramyan) 1st Air Corps

The Guards designation was awarded to formations ( above divisions) who had distinguished itself in battle( for example the 62nd Army was rechristened the 8th Guards Army)

Bryansk Front( Popov) 30th, 61st, 63rd Armies. 15th Air Army

Central Front( Rokossovsky) key formation
15th, 48th, 60th, 65th, 70th Armies 2nd Tank Army 26th Air Army

Voronezh Front( Vatutin)
6th and 7th Guards Armies( the 7th Guards Army was Shulimov's old 64th Army ) 38th , 40th , 69th Armies 1st Tank Army 2nd Air Army

Steppe Front( Konev) ( kept in reserve until the counterattack phase)
5th Guards Army 5th Guards Tank Army 8th Air Army

I'll leave it there today.

Sorry for not including the individual Soviet Corps... I just can't remember them all!!!!