War Diaries - Advance to Moscow October 1941

Interesting read so far, although I have not gotten through the whole thing yet (the site is huge!). Thanks for sharing.

Good post. However, I would like to make a correction. During WWII, Winston Churchill (later joined by FDR) imposed a food blockade on Germany. The Hunger Plan was the Nazi government’s effort to deal with the resulting food crisis. The Hunger Plan involved the starvation of captured Soviet cities; so that the food which would otherwise have fed those cities could instead be used to prevent starvation elsewhere in the Reich.

The plan had never been to starve Soviet POWs. Those POWs were conscripted to work in German weapons factories. Everyone, from Hitler on down, recognized those POWs were an essential component of Germany’s war machine. That is why Hitler ordered the POWs to be fed.

However, the Reich lacked the manpower necessary to cordon off captured Soviet cities from the Soviet countryside. Due to the lack of that manpower, the Nazis were unable to prevent food from flowing from the captured Soviet countryside to captured Soviet cities. The Hunger Plan mostly failed: the planned starvation in captured Soviet cities mostly did not occur. That failure didn’t result in fewer deaths. Just different deaths than those the Nazi government had envisioned with their Hunger Plan. Due to the failure of the Hunger Plan, the man tasked with feeding the Soviet POWs didn’t have the food he needed to carry out the order Hitler had given to him: the order to feed the Soviet POWs. Because it was physically impossible for that man to carry out his orders, millions of Soviet POWs starved to death while in German captivity.

The Nazi leadership had deep-seated fears about Germany’s food situation. One of the reasons Hitler wanted lebensraum was so that Germany could physically feed itself, even if Britain imposed a food blockade. (As it did in WWI, and as Churchill again did in WWII.) The two most vital resources Hitler required from the western Soviet Union were food and petroleum. For Barbarossa to have been successful from the Nazi perspective, Germany needed to capture a considerable portion of Soviet oilfields, and a considerable portion of Soviet farmland.

To address your question of what Hitler should have done differently: he should have placed von Manstein in charge of Barbarossa in its entirety. Doing so would have resulted in a far greater level of success. Moscow and Leningrad almost certainly would have fallen in 1941, paving the way for additional German successes in 1942.

The Allies didn’t have “a” plan to wage the Battle of the Atlantic, and neither did the Germans.  The Battle of the Atlantic was a complex battle of attrition on a gigantic scale which lasted all the way from September 1939 to May 1945, and it was characterized by constant changes of plans and tactics and weaponry on both sides as it progressed, with each side trying to overcome every new enemy development with a suitable counter-development.  The campaign see-sawed several times, with one side or the other gaining the advantage at various points; some methods of waging the campaign became ineffectual as time progressed, but were highly effective in earlier stages and therefore were entirely correct to use at those points.

How to win it in late 41…  good one.

To begin with I would kill corp. Hitler.  That dumb ass got Germany in the predicament it was in in the first palce.

That being said you keep pushing on Moscow because the logistics of moving troops is what killed Germany.  Is the Caucus a better objective - yes.  But Corp. Hitler didn’t figure that out until it was too late.  Germany may not have gotten the same fruits of capturing the oilfields (which should have been their major objective in 41), but they would have taken Moscow which was the locomotive hub of the USSR (not to mention, the capital.

The logistics of transferring the troops was a stupid play at that point.  He should have kept the focus on Moscow and broke them there, than take his Moscow forces and move them where they needed to go.  At all 3 Russian fronts Corp. Hitler never won… because when he had overwhelming force he never finished the fight.

WW2 history is kind of funny in that you think “thank god Hitler was so crazy that he lost the war”, but at the same time it is also “how did this crazy person get in charge in the first place?”

@Mallery29:

Probably doesn’t help that Isreal ignores treaties and the population builds wherever it wants, forcing the Palestinian further and further out, but I don’t want to get too much into that or we’ll be closed for business.

Not to mention they (Judas) betrayed Jesus.

Israel would not even exist today if not for western powers

I do not have a favorable opinion on Israel.

I can certianly see why Canada would be at the tops of this list, the Canadian assault on Vimy ridge is one that has certianly deserves mention, Epic, simply epic. Of course, their counter attack in Belgium at Ypres in the face of a German gas attack, cant go unmentioned, full credit to them.

I think the German Sturmabteillung, and their descendants the Stormtroopers, were some of the best formations not only in the German amry, but in the world. However, I would be remiss if I did not mention Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck and his determined group of east african (Tanzanian) Askari schutztruppen, who waged a very spirited and determined guerilla campagin against the Allies, and is the only German commander who was never defeated in battle.

Another very impressive allies was the American 93rd division and their black troopers, the Harlem Hellfighters of 369 regiment.

And this really only scratches the surface.

It was not your post that had this. The post in question was removed and totally off topic.

War creates a thousand heroes a day and almost no one ever hears about them. Vernon Buss  of Portland is a hero of the unsung variety, but he never cared about recognition or notice for his actions that day on Samar.

But Irving Saunders  did – and long ago, Buss realized that Saunders was “a stubborn man” and it was pointless to deter him.

At last, the stubbornness paid off. All Buss had to do was show up Tuesday morning at a state office building and accept the thanks of a grateful nation . . . and of a grateful Saunders.

It would not be far wrong to say that Saunders, 87, has thought about Buss, 84, almost daily since Jan. 24, 1945. He gets reminders when he looks in the mirror, when he celebrates a birthday, when he speaks of his wife, Pearl,  his children and grandchildren.

He should have died that day, at 22, but Buss saved his life. For decades, Saunders, then an aircraft ground crewman, never even knew the name of the fellow Marine who had pulled his burning body from the crashed F4-U Corsair  on the speck of an island in the Philippines.

“I wasn’t supposed to live,” Saunders said, “but the Marines had developed this new way to treat burns, and as soon as I could, I asked to go back to my unit, so I could find my rescuer.”

When Cpl. Vernon Buss, a 20-year-old aircraft mechanic, saw the Corsair explode, he raced to the burning aircraft searching for survivors. He scooped up the unconscious Saunders, carried him to an ambulance and returned to the crash site to rescue others.

Nearly a year later, when his tour ended, Buss returned to his hometown of Portland, worked seven years in a rendering plant then joined the Fire Bureau, where he spent 31 years, retired as battalion chief and even had a fire boat named after him. He and Madge  have been married 63 years; they had four children and are great-grandparents.

“I wondered what had happened to him,” Buss said of Saunders. “But there were other things to do.”

Saunders finished his service – never finding his rescuer – and went back home to Southern California. His back, arms and legs carry the scars from third-degree burns he suffered in the aircraft fire. The back brace he wears daily is another reminder.

Saunders went to veterans’ reunions with the No. 1 aim of finding his rescuer. In 1996, he went to an event wearing a T-shirt silkscreened with an image of an F4-U. A woman approached him and complimented the T-shirt; she said her husband would love to see it.

A moment later, the husband appeared and said his name was Vernon Buss. He and Saunders engaged in the veterans’ eternal guessing game: Where did you serve?

In the Pacific – check. Through Guadalcanal  – check. In the Philippines – check. . . On the island of Samar  . . . Jan. 24, 1945 . . .

Saunders had found him. He gave Buss the T-shirt.

They stayed in touch. Saunders carved a plaque from solid basswood with the Marine Corps’ emblem and presented it to Bass. But that wasn’t thanks enough.

So Saunders got stubborn. Three times, he petitioned the Marine Corps to give Buss a medal. But few witnesses were alive to corroborate events. Finally, he contacted a staff member in the office of U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer  because Buss lived in that House district.

After much back and forth, with Saunders pushing hard, Blumenauer’s office worked out a plan for Rep. Darrell Issa,  R-Calif., who represents Saunders, to read a commendation into the Congressional Record on July 29:

“With total disregard for his own safety, Corporal Buss rushed to the side of Staff Sergeant Irving Saunders and carried him away from the burning aircraft, the burning pools of gasoline and the random detonations of .50 caliber ammunition as it ‘cooked off’ from the Corsair’s burning ammunition supply.”

The Marine Corps in Portland and Blumenauer’s staff arranged for the ceremony in Blumenauer’s district office to present Buss with a framed copy of the Congressional Record statement.

The day before the ceremony, Saunders said he wouldn’t make it. He is 87, after all. Then, “My daughter said, ‘Dad, this is what you’ve worked for! You have to be there! I’ve already bought the plane tickets.’ So, here I am.”

Buss never wanted the attention – Madge Buss said, “Vernon is a very, very modest man” – but he didn’t deter Saunders from his quest.

"I didn’t say, ‘Go to it, pal,’ but I didn’t say, ‘Let it rest,’ " Buss said. “It was obviously very important to him.”

Saunders’s son-in-law, Derek Barton, who accompanied Saunders to Portland, said Buss “literally saved Irv twice: One, in the wreckage; two, it kept him going. He had another will to live, to continue to find this man and to recognize him.”

Shortly after 9 a.m., two Marines in dress uniforms arrived. They invited Buss and Saunders to stand before them for the reading of the Congressional Record commendation.

The veterans stood side by side. Saunders put his arm around Buss’s waist.

When it was over, Buss said, “OK, pal.” Saunders said, “OK, pal.”

After the ceremony and handshakes, Saunders plopped down on a soft couch. Buss’s daughter, Jan, sat with him.

“It was so nice of you to persevere,” she said.

“I could not give up,” Saunders replied.

“Well, now you can rest.”

“Yeah,” he said, “now I can rest.”

By Anne Saker, The Oregonian
October 20, 2009, 7:51PM