Weidling

"Κόκκινος ουρανός. Πυρά απο βαρύ πυροβολικό. Ανήσυχη σιωπή. Μας πυροβολούν απο πολλά σπίτια. Ξένοι εργάτες, δίχως αμφιβολία..."

(απο το ημερολόγιο ενός αξιωματικού της Μεραρχίας Τεθωρακισμένων "Müncheberg" )

Στις 2 του Μαΐου, πριν απο 65 χρόνια, ο διοικητής των δυνάμεων που υπερασπίζονταν το Βερολίνο Αντιστράτηγος (ΠΒ) (General der Artillerie) Helmuth Weidling (Φύλλα Δρυός και Σπαθιά στο Σταυρό του Ιππότη του Τάγματος του Σιδηρού Σταυρού - Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern) έκανε το αυτονόητο για οποιονδήποτε σώφρονα άνθρωπο, πριν ακόμα πάψουν να αχνίζουν τα απανθρακωμένα πτώματα του Χίτλερ και του Γκέμπελς.

Weidling. (πριν την απονομή των Φύλλων Δρυός και των Σπαθιών)

Διέταξε τη γενική και άνευ όρων παύση κάθε αντίστασης κατά των Σοβιετικών, μετά απο συνάντηση που είχε με τον στρατηγό Βασίλι Τσούικοφ (τον υπερασπιστή του Στάλινγκραντ, ήδη δύο φορές παρασημοφορημένο Ήρωα της Σοβιετικής Ένωσης).

Η διαταγή είχε ως εξής:


"Berlin, den 2. Mai 1945.

Am 30. April 1945 hat der Führer Selbstmord begangen und damit alle, die ihm Treue geschworen hatten, im Stich gelassen.

Getreu dem Befehl des Führers wart ihr, deutsche Soldaten, bereit, den Kampf um Berlin fortzusetzen, obwohl eure Munition zur Neige ging und die Gesamtlage den weiteren Widerstand sinnlos machte.

Ich ordne die sofortige Einstellung jeglichen Widerstandes an. Jede Stunde, die ihr weiterkämpft, verlängert die entsetzlichen Leiden der Zivilbevölkerung Berlins und unserer Verwundeten.

Im Einvernehmen mit dem Oberkommando der sowjetischen Truppen fordere ich euch auf, sofort den Kampf einzustellen.

Weidling, General der Artillerie. Ehemaliger Befehlshaber des Verteidigungsbereiches von Berlin"


("Βερολίνο, 2 Μαΐου 1945.

Στις 30 Απριλίου 1945 ο Φύρερ αυτοκτόνησε, εγκαταλείποντας έτσι όλους όσους του είχαν ορκιστεί Πίστη.

Πιστοί στη Διαταγή του Φύρερ, υπήρξατε, Γερμανοί στρατιώτες, έτοιμοι να συνεχίσετε τη Μάχη για το Βερολίνο, παρά το ότι τα πυρομαχικά σας εξαντλούνταν και η γενικότερη κατάσταση καθιστούσε την περαιτέρω αντίσταση δίχως νόημα.

Διατάζω την άμεση πάυση κάθε αντίστασης. Κάθε ώρα που συνεχίζετε να μάχεστε παρατείνει το ανείπωτο μαρτύριο του άμαχου πληθυσμού του Βερολίνου και των τραυματιών μας.

Σε συνεννόηση με την Ανώτατη Διοίκηση των Σοβιετικών Στρατευμάτων, σας καλώ να παύσετε να μάχεστε.

Βάιντλινγκ. Αντιστράτηγος Πυροβολικού, πρώην Διοικητής Περιοχής Άμυνας Βερολίνου.")

Ο Βάιντλινγκ την ημέρα της παράδοσης.

Η ναζιστική φάρσα που οδήγησε τη Γερμανία στον αφανισμό είχε τελειώσει.

Ο στρατηγός Βάιντλινγκ καταδικάστηκε σε 25 χρόνια φυλάκισης επειδή δεν παρέδωσε το Βερολίνο νωρίτερα (παρά το ότι ζούσαν τόσο ο Χίτλερ όσο κι ο Γκέμπελς που δεν δέχονταν συζήτηση για παράδοση).

Πέθανε σε σοβιετική αιχμαλωσία το 1955, απο καρδιακή ανεπάρκεια.

Back! (as in The Empire Strikes....)

Kind readers, the blog is back with a vengeance!

USS Missouri fires her main armament on the heads of some poor communist Korean devils, during the Korean War

Firing the introductory salvo are the breathtaking Iowa-class beauties, the USS Missouri, USS New Jersey and the USS Iowa of the United States Navy, the most fearsome and powerful battleships ever built.

This season will see more frequent posts, better photography (I hope...) and more book and film reviews as well as presentations of past classics.

USS New Jersey

All this of couse will be topped with the usual patronizing, authoritarian (and authoritative), holier-than-thou splenetic posts that I (and you as it seems) have grown so fond of.

Now...

Bring the aft turret about! Prepare for broadside! Range! On my mark!
Fire!

It's good to be back. :)

PS: This post is dedicated to anyone who has still any of the schoolboy left in him. Click to enlarge and notice the water displaced by concussion when each of these beauties fires her broadside.

PS II: To quote Rafael: "Superior Firepower!"


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KMS Bismarck (Schlachtschiff, 1939-1941) "Sink the Bismarck!"

Schlachtschiff KMS Bismarck

The sinking of the Bismarck (May 27, 1941) affirmed the superiority of His Majesty's Navy in the western theatre of operations during WW II and effectively ended any German hopes to implement sea control tactics.

Kriegsmarine WW II poster

The critical point in the Bismarck affair was her sinking of the battlecruiser HMS Hood, in joint action with the KMS Prinz Eugen. Even though the Hood had become obsolete, it was the flagship of the Home Fleet and a ship the british public was very fond of.

Wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill, with his keen wartime instinct (indeed, he was the architect of british sea superiority in the two great wars, when during his term as First Lord of the Admiralty he implemented the switch from coal to oil as fuel for the Fleet and the development of naval aviation) saw that this could be the beginning of a very negative trend.

If any German battleship were allowed to escape, then soon the Kriegsmarine, with the implementation of its shipbuilding program, would be more than a match for Home Fleet.

Churchill, with his "Sink the Bismarck!" directive allocated all the resources of Home Fleet to the chase of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen.

Bismarck, as seen from the deck of KMS Prinz Eugen

Prinz Eugen, a lucky ship to the very end, escaped but Bismarck suffered a lucky hit by an airplane-fired torpedo which jammed her rudder, irreversibly condemning her to a circular course. The british warships closed in and started pounding the Bismarck. After hours of unequal combat she sank, leaving very few survivors.

About 3000 shells and torpedoes were fired against her. About 1/10 hit. The result: Recent investigations by deep sea probes, beginning with Dr. Ballard's expedition show that the most probable cause of Bismarck's sinking was scuttling by her own crew....

Anyway, with the loss of the Graf Spee and the Bismarck the Kriegsmarine was restricted only to sea denial tactics with a fleet in being and unrestricted submarine warfare. The invasion of the Islands became a distant dream, but when, less than a month later, Barbarossa was launched, the German nation was about to discover the really great tragedies and horrors of war.

And since we are in a such a cheerful mood, let us end with a song:

In May of 1941 the war had just begun,
The Germans had the biggest ship,
They had the biggest guns.
The Bismarck was the fastest ship,
That ever sailed the seas,
On her deck were guns as big as steers,
And shells as big as trees.
Out of the cold and foggy night,
Came the British ship the Hood.
And ev'ry British seaman he knew and understood,
They had to sink the Bismarck, the terror of the sea.
Stop those guns as big as steers,
And those shells as big as trees.

We'll find that German battleship,
That's makin' such a fuss.
We gotta sink the Bismarck,
'Cause the world depends on us.
Yay, hit the decks a-runnin' boys,
And spin those guns around.
When we find the Bismarck we gotta cut her down.

The Hood found the Bismarck and on that fatal day.
The Bismarck started firin' fifteen miles away.
"We gotta sink the Bismarck" was the battle sound.
But when the smoke had cleared away,
The mighty Hood went down.
For six long days and weary nights,
They tried to find her trail.
Churchill told the people "Put ev'ry ship a-sail,
'Cause somewhere on that ocean,
I know she's gotta be.
We gotta sink the Bismarck to the bottom of the sea".

We'll find that German battleship,
That's makin' such a fuss.
We gotta sink the Bismarck,
'Cause the world depends on us.
Yay, hit the decks a-runnin' boys,
And spin those guns around.
When we find the Bismarck, we gotta cut her down.

The fog was gone the seventh day,
And they saw the mornin' sun.
Ten hours away from homeland,
The Bismark made its run.
The Admiral of the British fleet said,
Turn those bows around.
We found that German battleship,
And we're gonna cut her down.

The British guns were aimed,
And the shells were comin' fast.
The first shell hit the Bismarck,
They knew she couldn't last.
That mighty German battleship is just a memory.
"Sink the Bismarck!" was the battle cry,
That shook the seven seas.

We found that German battleship,
Was makin' such a fuss.
We had to sink the Bismarck,
'Cause the world depends on us.
We hit the deck a-runnin' and,
We spun those guns around.
We found the mighty Bismarck,
And then we cut her down.

We found that German battleship,
Was makin' such a fuss.
We had to sink the Bismarck,
'Cause the world depends on us.
We hit the deck a-runnin' and,
We spun those guns around.
We found the mighty Bismarck,
And then we cut her down.

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Сталинград ! The Sword of Stalingrad: Paulus kapituliert...!

"Rodina, dorn radnoy..." The statue of Mother Motherland commemorating the Victory

"At midday on 2 February [1943] a Luftwaffe reconnaisance aircraft circled over the city. The pilot's radio message was immediately passed to Field Marshal Milch : 'No more sign of fighting in Stalingrad'. "
(Antony Beevor, Stalingrad, Ch. 23 : 'Stop Dancing! Stalingrad Has Fallen')



It is very difficult to find words for the Stalingrad epic and a simple historical reference goes beyond (and does injustice to) the scope of this blog.

First of all it is difficult to grasp the fact that a city of secondary importance in the Eastern front became the theatre of the biggest, bloodiest and most brutal battle of Human History, an inferno of suffering and slaughter that showed how high and how low human nature can reach.

Adolf Hitler, once more behaving like a deranged cartoon villain, each word and action a caricature of leadership, heavily laden with hubris, split and messed up the advance of Heeresgruppe Süd, commiting the better part of it to the capture of the city of Stalingrad and the securing of the western bank of the Volga river as part of the glorified mess that was codenamed Operation Blue (Fall Blau, "Case: Blue").

The attack was spearheaded by German armour under the command of officers such as the hero of Stalingrad, "der Panzergraf", Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz von Groß-Zauche und Camminetz (who by the end of the war had been awarded Diamonds to his Swords and Oakleaf of his Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross - Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub, Schwerten und Brillanten). Meanwhile the city of Stalingrad was being pummeled to smoking ruins by Wolfram von Richthoffen's Luftflotte 4...

(Panoramic view of Stalingrad, from the eastern bank of the Volga. This was the sight that arriving Soviet troops faced as they were ferried across the waters of the mighty river, to fight in the ruins of Stalingrad and usually die within 24 hours)

Der Panzergraf

Despite the rapid success of the advance because of the ideal conditions of the Kuban steppe, the offensive bogged down in the ruins of the city. And so, the drama began to unfold in all its gruesome splendour....

The task of taking the city itself fell to the German 6th Army, under the command of General der Panzertruppen Friedrich Paulus. Meanwhile the rest of the Heeresgruppe B, as that half of the Heeresgruppe Süd had been renamed manned the Don - Volga front around the siege.

Facing them were the heroic Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, eventually under the command of General Vassily Chuikov, subordinate to the General Who Obviously Won the Second World War By Himself, Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov.

Vassili Chuikov

Four times Hero of the Soviet Union, Marshal Georgy Zhukov

In the city ruins the German Army lost all of the tactical advantages that it had under the Guderian-inspired doctrine of blietzkrig. Instead of that, they became involved in murderous streetfighting (as per Chuikov's plan, the Stalingrad Academy of Streetfighting never left the Germans a moment of respite). In this gruesome slaughterhouse, tanks and aircraft lost their tactical significance. Amidst the ruins of the city the weapons of choice were grenades, bayonets, flamethrowers and spades with sharpened edges, which when wielded properly could literaly hack a man in two.

The Stalingrad Academy of Streetfighting

With suicidal bravery (backed by Chuikov's brutality, who knew that they HAD to keep Stalingrad or die in the attempt and Stalin's order "Not one step back - the Volga has only one bank) the Soviet soldiers turned each and every heap of rubble into a mighty fortress or a deadly trap that had to be reduced at a heavy cost of German casualties. It was usual for an appartment building floor to belong to one side while the top and bottom floors were occupied by the other.


This rats' warfare (Rattenkrieg) wore down the German forces, as the Sovites were slowly readying the axe that was to fall...

On November 19 1942 a massive Soviet counteroffensive (Operation Uranus) broke through the Romanian (who were ill-equipped) and Italian (who honoured their tradition of being weak-kneed and pathetic in combat) armies who "guarded" the German flanks and encircled the 6th Army.

"Wacht im Osten" (Guard in the East) by Emil Dielmann, 1943. "Es steht ein Soldat am Wolgastrand/er wache für sein Vaterland..."

A counteroffensive to relieve the besieger-turned-besieged 6th Army failed and the men under the command of Friedriech Paulus were doomed.

"Errinerung an Stalingrad" (Memory of Stalingrad) by Franz Eichhorst, 1943

The Soviets slowly started to crush the encircled Germans and the remnants of Wehrmacht's largest formation capitulated on February 2 1943.

The Battle of Stalingrad was over.

German prisoners of war, the remnants of the 6th Army, marching to their doom in some Soviet Gulag.

It had lasted almost 200 days claiming the lives of about 2 million soldiers from both sides. But even this figure does scant justice to the ACTUAL suffering.

In the Battle of Stalingrad humanity witnessed its most dire extremes. Bravery mixed with treachery and with lethal cunning, cruelty of unspeakable proportions countenaced with unparalleled self -sacrifice and all this as the stench of the dead and the moans of the thousands of wounded who were piled in makeshift dugouts along the bank of the Volga.

If there has ever been anywhere, anything close to hell,then it was Stalingrad during those days.

And in the icy ruins of the city lay the foundatins for the most total and bloody disaster that Germany would face two years later.

At some point Hitler had publicly declared that he considered the success in Stalingrad vital in avoiding another Verdun. Well, he didn't get his Verdun, all right. Instead, what he got for Germany was fire, rape and death to such an extent that made Verdun look like a slap in the hand.

"Heimkehr" (Homecoming) by Hans Adolf Bühler, 1940. No consolation after Stalingrad....

Oh, the way nations commit themselves to destruction....

The Tragedy of the MS "Wilhelm Gustloff" - ...and Congratulations, Herr Paulus...

The Wilhelm Gustloff was a cruise liner, built and launched specifically for this purpose in 1937 by the Blohm & Voss shipyards in Germany.

As a cruise ship, she served the Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) program of the Nazis, where working-class people were offered luxurious holidays at affordable prices, provided they sit through Nazi propaganda and indoctrination.

However, she was to remain in history as the greatest naval disaster EVER.

Just before the final collapse of the Eastern front in 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff was evacuating civilians and military personnel.

She left the harbour of Gotenhafen, near Danzig, in East Prussia in the afternoon of January 30 1945. She carried about 1500 military personnel and as many as 9000 civilians (estimates vary between ~5000 and 8900+ ).

Because of traffic in the area, it was decided that she leave some navigation lights on.

This proved disastrous. She was spotted later in the evening by S-13 , a Stalinets-class Soviet submarine, commanded by Captain Alexandr Marinesko, without anyone being able to identify the ship by name.

Stalinets-class Submarine

About 21:00 as the submarine log records, the S-13 fired four torpedoes, each marked: FOR THE MOTHERLAND, FOR STALIN, FOR THE SOVIET PEOPLE, FOR LENINGRAD.
The torpedo marked FOR STALIN jammed in the tube but the other 3 were launched and scored direct hits on the Wilhelm Gustloff.

Only about 1230 people were rescued. It was a disaster that claimed at least twice the number of people that died aboard the Titanic and the Lusitania combined.

Interpretation of the Gustloff's final moments by Irwin J. Kappes

Was it a war crime?

Technically, no. The Wilhelm Gustloff did not have the insignia of a hospital-ship, no red cross and she carried military personnel.

In fact IT WAS a war crime, for which the Nazi regime were to blame, since they stubbornly refused to evacuate civilians in time to save them from the unspeakable vengeance that the Red Army soldiers were sure to exact to avenge the brutality of the Germans during Barbarossa.

For this bloody achievement, Captain Marinesko was awarded the order of the Hero of the Soviet Union only posthumously, since at the time he was not a good example of an officer to receive such a decoration...

Marinesko monument at Kaliningrad (Königsberg)

PS: But at night when the waves are near / they whisper and I hear.... (Savatage, The Wake of Magellan)

PS 2: The Third Reich has 2 other important anniversaries this day.

On January 30 1933, Franz von Papen and Paul von Hindenburg, in their good judgement and far-seeing cunning, appoint Adolf Hitler as Reichskanzler in order to tame him...

On January 30 1943, Adolf Hitler promotes the fidgety Generaloberst Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall, expecting that, since no German Field Marshall was taken alive by the enemy, Paulus would commit suicide when the last remains of the German 6th Army would be crushed by the Soviets. Paulus failed him even in that. He was captured alive.

Congratulations on your promotion, Herr General. And congratulations on the whole outcome of the war and the fates of millions of Germans, Herr Hitler....

Friedrich Paulus