Feldgrau.net

This is slightly unrelated but maybe folk will find it interesting. I used to drink in a pub in Edinburgh which was quite an 'old blokes' bar. One aged guy i met told me the quite extraordinary story of how he was one of the MPs tasked to guard Kramer the commandant. According to him Kramer was trea...

The GD question brings up the whole matter of 'elite' units. As a large panzer division the GD would not really be capable of having the best soldiers available to it at all times during the war. Replacements, no matter how motivated would not be up to the standard of older, experienced troops as th...

Well that seems to make sense! No point in giving the Russians an extra excuse to put you in the ground... Thanks for the site info as well. Liam.

Can anyone explain the requirments for earning the Anti-partisan badge (the one with the 'Hydra' design on it). I assume that it was given to troops all troops participating in anti-partisan actions, but it doesn't seem that common in photos . Thanks

I think the raising of the Germans = Nazis question once again fails to make the point that the WWII era German troops were POLITICAL FORCES in a way that the British and American (but not the Soviet) armies were not. They wore the badge of the Nazi party on their uniforms and they took an oath of l...

Don't forget folks: 1. the main goal of the 3 allies was the destruction of the Third Reich, then Japan and that was it. After that everyone wanted to go home and make babies. 2. Public opinion would never have stood for an invasion of the country that since 1941 had been portrayed as (quite rightly...

Well opinions are always going to vary about people like Galland who are good-looking, charismatic and successful (as well as selfish, egotistical and ruthless)! To be honest after he became a General of Fighters his days as a front-line pilot were essentially over except for the last days of the wa...

I'm not sure that extra troops would have made a difference in the Moscow fighting even if they were available. Feeding, clothing and supplying the existing forces was bad enough in the weather conditions of the time so more troops would not have helped matters much - never reinforce failure!

Well they did invade the Channel Islands, which are technically speaking British soil...

One factor that seperated the German Wehrmacht from its opponents during WWII (apart from the Red Army, of course) was the fact that all German troops wore the Nazi party symbol as part of their uniform. It meant that all troops were in some way associated with the party and its ideology. If you com...

As far as i am concerned, there are a wide number of reasons why the Germans were so badly affected by the 1941/42 winter. Some of these cover Hitler and the Heer's blind ignorance and/or callousness regarding their troops survival chances in such extreme conditions (the SS and the Luftwaffe general...

I'm not entirely sure that the WWII era SAS had the same kind of attatched liasion troops as they do today - intelligence, engineers, signals, etc. They may have worked alongside special units like 'Phantom' but otherwise did all the extra work themselves! As for berets - yes, the SAS are most famou...

Surely a tag wrestling match with Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo matched with Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin would be a much more interesting prospect?