An interesting take where ultimately what defeated the Germans on the Eastern Front was the Soviet Union's different railroad gauge

[–] ScorpioGlitch 1 points (+1|-0)

Is this guy seriously saying that the Germans tried to bring their own trains and place them on the tracks instead of using or repairing and using existing Russian trains? That they couldn't rig something together quickly? Seriously??

[–] jobes [OP] 0 points (+0|-0)

"a German railway pioneer battahon could replace wide-gauge line with normal at 20 km per day. " from an actual real article discussing this. Also there are mentions of how the soviets often destroyed infrastructure when retreating which slowed down efforts like this, so it certainly was a contributing factor.

[–] ScorpioGlitch 1 points (+1|-0)

Aye, I forgot that. They took a scorched earth approach. Man, that was like one of the biggest talking points about that way back in school.

[–] yeti_forgot_his_name_and_pass 0 points (+0|-0)

Just pull a few spikes and move the rails out of place. Do that once every few miles. Whole system completely useless. So easy and obvious. Who imagines this being something critical or significant?

[–] x0x7 1 points (+1|-0)

Was that an article or a long comment?

[–] jobes [OP] 0 points (+0|-0)

Long comment it seems

[–] yeti_forgot_his_name_and_pass 0 points (+0|-0)

Stupid. NAZIs could have and would have made new axles that fit Russian tracks if it were a big issue deal maker or breaker. I guess you imagine otherwise? Like the Germans couldn't fabricate axles that size? And that's why they lost WW2? The explosives raining down from the sky and the entirety of the Western World shooting bullets at their soldiers had nothing to do with it? Or just a side-issue?

[–] PCaut 1 points (+1|-0)

Edited

No. The author just seems to be rather excited over having found a random factoid that few Americans know about.

The Germans were surprised by two major logistics problems in 1941. The insane amount of prisoners, 3 million over a few weeks, and early autumn rains turning the Russian roads and fields into mud. The latter crippled the strategic and tactical mobility of the Germans and stopped their advance. The Germans were not prepared for a long war, didn't have winter equipment for an entire army, much less for several of them. That's where the eastern front turned nasty for the soldiers.

The western front definitely had the lower priority. The Allies didn't send tank armies that span the entire horizon. During the war against Russia, the Axis forces lost 10 million men on the eastern front, 800k on the western front.

[–] jobes [OP] 0 points (+0|-0)

Mostly they only had a limited window to sac Moscow before Russia could muster all of their resources to stop the nazis. Originally it was predicted aftert the initial invasion of the nazis into russia that Moscow would fall in about a month, but supply lines and holdups in areas like stalingrad delayed them too long so they couldn't take out the Soviet hq before reinforcements arrived

[–] yeti_forgot_his_name_and_pass 1 points (+1|-0)

Edited

I'm not a student of that chapter of history, but the picture I got was that nobody was prepared for how incredibly cold Russian winter actually was.

edit: and that same story played out several times in modern history, as I understand it. Don't send yer guys to the Russian front in windbreakers and t-shirts. The only people who successfully kicked Russian ass in that cold fucking weather were the Finns, not a warmongering culture, but they can definitely do what needs to be done in chest-high show at 20 below zero, because they're used to it.

An interesting take where ultimately what defeated the Germans on the Eastern Front was the Soviet Union's different railroad gauge

10 comments

/s/Whatever