Verbalism Personified

Pop Up Conversations Part 2

Over sumptuous Indian food from The Frontier, Siva and I got down to some serious discussion about Hitler and the German Army's tactics during World War II.

Done more in an attempt to clear some misconceptions about Hitler's alleged Jewish ancestry, I explained that...

There were some rumors hinting that Hitler's grandfather was Jewish. Few reputable historians on the Holocaust believe that this is so. It is more likely that Hitler tried to keep the murky history of his family quite secret because there was a high incidence of insanity and feeble-mindedness in his ancestors.

However rumors die hard.

One of Hitler's lieutenants, Hans Frank, declared during the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-46, that Hitler's grandmother had worked in the town of Graz as a servant in the home of a Jewish family named Frankenberger. He further claimed that she was seduced by the head of the household and that Hitler's grandfather was the result of that liaison.

A subsequent analysis of Frank's statement by Simon Wiesenthal disclosed that there was no evidence of any Jewish family named Frankenberger ever living in Graz. In addition, Jews had been driven out of Graz in the 15th century and had not been allowed to return until 1856, nearly twenty years after Hitler's grandfather had been born.


Blitzkrieg

Or Lightning war.

Hitler had seen for himself and experienced the costly effects of trench warfare during World War I. Blunt frontal assaults served little or no gain while racking up a butcher's bargain of dead and dying.

In the closing days of the war, the German high command was employing an embryonic form of "shock" warfare by utilizing "shock troops" to flank static Allied trenches. The results were promising. However non-existent supply lines hampered and limited what such tactics could achieve.

After the armistice at Versailles, the Germany army was limited to one hundred thousand men. But lessons learned in World War I and Prussian esprit-de-corps provided visionary Germany commanders the flexibility in experimenting with a different form of warfare.

In the interim years before Hitler came to power, the new German army was highly mobile and trained to fight a war on two fronts. After assuming power, Hitler, who had long seen the benefits, ordered the continued development of such tactics.

Pioneering generals like Eric von Manstein, Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian, took the opportunity to perfect Blitzkrieg on training bases in Russia.

The concept employs mass divisions of tanks penetrating a weak point in enemy defenses, with motorized infantry exploiting and pouring through the gap. Enemy positions would be isolated and destroyed with the bulk of the invading force racing to towards the enemy capital.

Simultaneously, air attacks would be launched against the enemy’s rear and its air force would be neutralized. This would be supported with airborne troops dropped inside enemy territory to secure airfields or bridges, for example.

Another deciding factor is the close coordination between ground and air forces for simultaneous attacks against the enemy. Difficult pockets of resistance would be bombed from the air.

So although the armies of the day were evenly matched, it was the doctrine and tactics employed which set the German army far ahead of the Poles, French and the central European countries.

Britain was saved by the English Channel and the Royal Air Force, while Russia suffered a huge blood-letting before they too, improvised and revamped the way they waged war.

posted by Teutoburg @ 1:48 AM