Why is it referred to as "The Great Patriotic War"?

[turniptruck]

The Italian Navy's flagship:



And her illustrious crew:



My guess for Italy's poor performance is too much shore leave but i'm not a military analyst.

[SANDRO43]

You may not be too off the mark, our Naval Academy in Leghorn has been accepting female officer candidates since 2000 .

[tim 360]

What is truly pathetic is your crappy attitude and nasty dispostion.  Here we are having a heartfelt conversation and sharing stories from the heart and then you turn into a big b!itch.  It wasn't a contradiction, you twit, it was a difference of opinion.  Learn the friggen difference.

I disagree with how you tried to make your point, Serebro, deal with it.  A better parallel might have been to say that Russia lost a 100 times as many men in WWII than America did.
KenC

Well Ken, I do admire your attemps to eduate [edited by Mod] but I don't think it will work.  Even Will Rogers would have a problem with her.  Of course there are reasons why Stalin lost so many "Patriots".  So he erected a whole bunch of statues for agiprop.  Quite a few were shot in the back by their Captains or NKVD.  Or perhaps she never heard of it?  Ignorance is bliss.

[Louie]

Tim, I think that would be Mr. Rogers!!!

[2tallbill]

A little off topic from a RW perspective but it should be noted that brutality that the Chinese and others suffered from Japan was pretty amazing as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
China 3,800,000 military deaths and 16,200,000 civilian deaths 20,000,000 total.
Korea 378,000
Philippines 147,000   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women
Estimates of the number of "comfort women" euphemism for women forced into prostitution and sexual slavery for Japanese military brothels during World War II.[1] Around 10,000 - 200,000 are estimated to have been procured, but there is still some disagreement about exact numbers. Historians and researchers have stated that the majority were from Korea and China

Hitler's Nazi's did not have the sole monopoly on evil.

[Serebro]

Well Ken, I do admire your attemps to eduate Mz. Woodenhead but I don't think it will work.  Even Will Rogers would have a problem with her.  Of course there are reasons why Stalin lost so many "Patriots".  So he erected a whole bunch of statues for agiprop.  Quite a few were shot in the back by their Captains or NKVD.  Or perhaps she never heard of it?  Ignorance is bliss.

MzWoodenhead?!
That's something new...
Dan, have I asked you to change my name on the forum?!
tim, I ignored your insults concerning my country, its leaders and myself yesterday but it looked like you don't learn and your "overreact" a little...it's getting worse and worse
I remember there was a warning for misspelling names on purpose, but I don't remember there was the rule that personal insults are ok.

Tim, that's VERY childish and miserable.
My guess is there's no chance to find a RW with this attitude, RW don't like хамов.
Try looking in the USA's bars..your level of intelligence, education and I am sure that AW will like gentlemen like you:)

you see, this lady looks like she loves America so you will spend lovely nights discussing "NKVD and bad communists"

[tim 360]

My apology Serebro that name was not necessary for me to use.

[William3rd]

THere are two highly regarded books out that all of the posters ought to at least glance at before talking too much.

One is called the 900 Days- about the siege of Leningrad. The other is called Stalingrad. 900 Days begins in the months leading up to the war where Stalingrad picks up with the German invasion on that front.

I picked up both books in English in St. Petersburg a couple of years back.

[Shadow]

Now what exactly did we disagree on ?

[SANDRO43]

Now what exactly did we disagree on ?

Your unseeming & offensive innuendos about the courage of Italian Tank forces in WWII . What about the fierce and fearless resistance ??? put up by your Dutch Tank units against Wehrmacht Panzers ?

Take that, you near-sighted, dike-plugging mutt .

[SANDRO43]

What is truly pathetic is your crappy attitude and nasty dispostion...you turn into a big b!itch....you twit

I wouldn't agree that 'pathetic', 'big b!itch' and 'twit' are exactly on the same level of "tone" .

[Shadow]

Your unseeming & offensive innuendos about the courage of Italian Tank forces in WWII . What about the fierce and fearless resistance ??? put up by your Dutch Tank units against Wehrmacht Panzers ?

Take that, you near-sighted, dike-plugging mutt .

Hey both our tank drivers were visiting their relatives when the Germans attacked....the Germans did not give a three-weeks notice, and that was completely against the Dutch War protocols.

[AugustD]

Where else on the freaking internet can you get a discussion about Russia's involvement in WWII started by an American and factually and historically added to by more participating countries than the UN including a playful duel between Holland and Italy???  This is why I read this site.

Actually I took offense to that photo Serebro.  I am not 100% confident that is a woman.  Could be male...could be transitional...not so sure.

"on their soil"  paraphrasing what I think KenC said is the huge difference between what we are taught as little Americans and what is the whole story.  I really enjoy hearing the whole story.  Probably one of the most inspiring museums I visited was in Odessa at the Catacombs and listening about the Partisans.

Final thought...Sandro..thank you for the links.  I enjoyed reading the stories of your father in WWII.

No sniping from me as I dont have the history here to do so and I already did so on my alma maters website about the football coach.

[SANDRO43]

Hey both our tank drivers were visiting their relatives when the Germans attacked....

Did they each drive their own tank, or were they alternate drivers for your one and only tank ?

the Germans did not give a three-weeks notice, and that was completely against the Dutch War protocols.

Damn Krauts know no manners, let's start some German bashing for a change .

[SANDRO43]

Final thought...Sandro..thank you for the links.  I enjoyed reading the stories of your father in WWII.

Glad you liked them, I consider myself fortunate in having had an unusual and interesting family .

[mendeleyev]

Interesting topic!  I second Williams recommendations on the books--excellent reading.

I pulled this old article out of my archives and decided to post it.

Of Mistakes and Blunders

I love to travel to the Russian city of Volgograd.  Many summer days each year are spent at our family dacha there and for a writer who loves history, Volgograd is a famous city not just because of the heroism of it's people, but also because of mistakes and blunders.

For those of you born late in this century, Volgograd is the city in southern Russia formerly known as Tsaritsyn (Цари́цын).  Hmm, still don't recognize it?  Okay, it was also called Stalingrad (Сталингра́д) from 1925 to 1961.  They had a really big battle there during World War II.

As kind of a regional "capitol city" Volgograd is a city and the administrative center of Volgograd Oblast, Russia.  It had a rich history when known as Tsaritsyn but fell into a very unlucky spell during the war.

Consider this:  the battle of Stalingrad, the city's name during the war, was an accident.  It should have never happened except that two very silly overgrown and spoiled children decided to destroy the city.  Most silly children don't have the luxury of destroying a city but these two brats had more influence than the average hooligan.

Their names were Adolf Hitler and Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Josef "Stalin")  These two spoiled children destroyed a beautiful city.  I won't belabour the point here except to say that when the German Sixth Army was first flanking the Volga River, Stalin didn't think the city was worth defending.  He was content to let it fall into German hands as he felt Mosocw, Leningrad and the oil fields in the Soviet far east were higher defensive priorities. 

However a brilliant General named Georgi Zhukov felt differently.  He saw the city's key location on the Volgo river, a transportation link for Russia, as extremely important and for days argued with Stalin and Stalin's confidant Lavrenti Beria that Stalingrad was worth defending.  Finally he used a bit of reverse psychology and reminded Stalin that Hitler would control "STALINgrad" if nothing was done to stop the Sixth Army.  Haunted by the vision of the Germans occupying his namesake, the childish Stalin suddenly saw the wisdom of defending the city and Beria was left out in the cold. 

History teaches us that a very similiar type argument, although in reverse, was going on inside the German camp.  German Field-Marshal Erich von Manstein was trying to convice Hitler that Volgograd, while an important future target, paled in comparison to the rich oil fields in the East.  The German Army needed fuel.  He wanted the Sixth Army to sieze control of the river traffic and then continue it's march East.  But Hilter hated Stalin.  And the city's name was STALINgrad.  So Hitler decided to overrule his commanders and take the city, soon naming Friedrich Paulus as General of the Sixth Army.

Stalin's indecision was so bad that General Paulas's 250,000 man army ran out of gas twice on their final march toward the city, sitting idle for days at a stretch waiting for fuel, and still beat the Russian Army to Volgograd (less than a 24 hour train ride from Moscow).  But once the battle began, the fighting turned deadly and for months control of the city seasawed back and forth between the Russians and the Germans.  It was the single most deadly battle of the Great Patriotic War.  And the second longest, surpassed only by the 900 day siege of Leningrad.

This was not just a battle of soldiers, but like the Leningrad siege, the battle for Stalingrad was fought by women, children and elderly babuskhas.  It was a battle of starvation for both sides. 

In the end the battle was won by the factory workers who continued to roll out Russian tanks while being fired on from less than 100 meters away.

And it was won by crack female snipers (many of the most famous of the Stalingrad snipers were trained Russian female soldiers) who picked off key German officers month after month, many of them on suicide missions.

It was won by the rats and mice who bit off toes of sleeping German soldiers and fed on the bodies of dead German horses, spreading disease like wildfire.

It was lost by the German high command who decided it too risky to fly in reinforcements or food supplies, leaving the Sixth Army to starve.

It was won by the children who scurried back and forth carrying messages for Russian commanders.  When caught by Germans the children were executed.

It was won by Zhukov's ticking clock, broadcast over loudspeakers the final weeks of the battle, a constant 24 hour reminder that time was running out and there was no more food or ammunition for the German Army.

It was won by the brutal Russian winter, unforgiving to foreign generals long before Paulas.  Even great commanders like Napoleon could not beat the brutality of a Russian winter in battle.

It was brillant military thinkers like Marshall Zhukov who won the war, despite being second-guessed by Stalin and Beria even after the campaign had begun.

It was the hardy and brave Russian people who won the battle for Stalingrad.

A paradox:  Germany had brillant commanders but lost because of shoddy national leadership.  Russia had shoddy national leadership but won because of brillant commanders.

Such is the story of mistakes and blunders.

And the story of my beloved Volgograd.

[2tallbill]

Take that, you near-sighted, dike-plugging mutt .

 

I am writing that one down, I doubt I will find the opportunity to use a line
like that one but if and when the time comes I totally plan on stealing it.

[SANDRO43]

I doubt I will find the opportunity to use a line
like that one but if and when the time comes I totally plan on stealing it.

Get yourself a Hollandse Herdershond and you might, since I think they no longer have many sheep there, but still plenty of dikes .

[Shadow]

Get yourself a Hollandse Herdershond and you might, since I think they no longer have many sheep there, but still plenty of dikes .

We put all sheep on an island, to keep them from drowning when the dikes break.

[SANDRO43]

We put all sheep on an island, to keep them from drowning when the dikes break.

With sheep THAT fat and looking like hyppos, how long is Texel going to remain above sea level ?

[Shadow]

With sheep THAT fat and looking like hyppos, how long is Texel going to remain above sea level ?

We could always ship them to America. No problem with a little obesitas there.
Russian sheep would of course be much thinner.   

[Faux Pas]

We could always ship them to America. No problem with a little obesitas there.
Russian sheep would of course be much thinner.   

That remark is uncalled for. Why America? Safe to say your on the bash America bandwagon also?

[KenC]

That remark is uncalled for. Why America? Safe to say your on the bash America bandwagon also?

Dude,
Relax.  This thread has turned into some light hearted kidding from the participants if you haven't noticed.  Go with the flow.
KenC

[Shadow]

That remark is uncalled for. Why America? Safe to say your on the bash America bandwagon also?

So tell me...why are you not looking for a local woman ? 

[Faux Pas]

So tell me...why are you not looking for a local woman ? 

You're answering a question with a question? It is easy enough to retract your tasteless remark and move on. Unless of course that is how you feel