Quote:
Originally Posted by White Out 403
Thanks for posting this thread! WW2 is incredibly interesting, and this military escapade one of the biggest blunders in the history of warfare.
One fascinating story about the invasion was Stalins speech he made to the Soviet Union. He spoke to people plainly and as an equal, in a way people werent used to hearing from Stalin. Things were really really bad for them. Had the Soviets not been able to divert troops from the far east after intelligence showed Japan wasn't really going to invade, that was the beginning of the end.
https://www.tracesofwar.com/articles...k%20battalions.
Christ, I think I remember reading that they moved entire factories out east too? On rail?
EDIT2 My Mom told me some of her families stories. My Baba grew up in Ukraine and in the war, the germans took her and move her to an ammunition factory in Germany somewhere to be a slave laborer (as is tradition for us slavs). She would tell my mom when the germans came they were so happy because the soviets were awful. But the Germans weren't really any better.
Which reminds me of a documentary I watched about the invasion and the time in Ukraine. A nazi general or someone higher up wrote back to command about Ukraine having butter, eggs, wheat, etc etc, and a populace that hated the Soviets. The germans could have had a valuable asset and ally in Ukrainians but, viewed them as subhuman slavs.
God the nazis were pricks.
edit3 added the speech |
First you befriend them, then you kill them later. One of the oldest maxims when your invading a foreign country. Yes the Ukrainians would have certainly helped the Germans when they invaded. They hated Stalin with a passion, he'd bought them nothing but pain. Instead they enslaved and butchered them, and then the German's died in the snow.
In terms of the factories, they moved a lot of production into the Ural mountains. However the tractor works for the T-34 tanks for example stayed close to the front so they could roll the tanks right basically onto the battlefield.