Visiting Battlefields

All the sites I find for the book Europa w przededniu wojny only ship in Poland. If you ship to the US, please let me know:

https://lubimyczytac.pl/ksiazka/4984764/europa-w-przededniu-wojny

@Panther Looks cool! Thanks for sharing!

I’ve been researching France in World War 2 recently, and I stumbled upon this article on JSTOR:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/286380?casa_token=HrDISj647xoAAAAA%3A4r0lrbG6dLMbOFV1mHpvWIxLmi5kgJmFmZ_TYY5Ct12HpfBVa87FyqGvcP00vs2G1JuM3ol2qcQ

Unfortunately, my regular free JSTOR account cannot access this.

Please let me know if you have access to this article in any way. Thank you!

@SuperbattleshipYamato

Wow, what a fantastic article, thanks for sharing.

@Lancasterlaw1175

I think your hypothesis is broadly correct.

But I think on a technical and logistical level (not sure about political), it seems to me that it was perfectly possible for the French to mobilize and brings the guns to the front much earlier, before September. This would’ve allowed them to begin attacking almost immediately and shatter the German lines. In retrospect, the French should be at fault for not mobilizing (and preventing the Poles from doing so).

The vast majority of Army Group C divisions were undersized (or even just command headquarters), while only about half of the French ones were deficient in some way (Nafziger’s book also lists the condition of French divisions in September-October 193o).

I got the book online here:

https://www.amazon.com/French-Order-Battle-World-1939-1945/dp/1585450189

If I was going into Tank on Tank combat I’m taking the M4 Sherman. Better sights, better visibility, an actual turret basket, better ergonomics, better mechanical reliability, and with the 76mm variant a very capable anti armor gun. As well as far more reliable armor due to high production quality standards. The M4 armor is reliable face hardened. The T34 could be correctly hardened, too hard so that it’s brittle or too soft.

If I was trying to drive a tank to get into a fight, the M4 is the obvious choice due to the much better reliability.

If I had to pick a tank to work on. M4 again due to its easy to repair design.

If I wanted to drive a comfortable tank well that’s no contest it’s the M4. Also it’s an easier to drive tank due to the vastly superior production quality.

So the M4 is a vastly superior weapons platform the only reason they seem comparable is on paper armor thickness and gun. Off of paper they aren’t close. Like pretty much all Russian military equipment they seem intimidating but ultimately are trash. Like how the T 72 got smashed by the M2 bradely and infantry fighting vehicle not even a tank.

@Narvik:

Born in Austria he was also a passionate mountain climber, and in his later days he build a cottage with view up in the Bergthesgaden mountains. When the Austrian climbers Heinrich Harrer and Heclmeier did the first ascend of Eiger Nordwand in 1934 he would invite them home for dinner just to show his admiration for real heroes. When he arranged the Olympic Games in 1938, no other national leader have ever showed that much enthusiasm as he did, he actually climbed on the chair, jumping up and down yelling RUN RUN RUN to the atleths passing by.

Compared to Churchill he was a saint. He never went to any bordello neither. Churchill on the other hand lived in bordellos instead of hotels when he travelled, he chain smoked as a train, and was always drunk, and would eat nothing but beefs. So basically we got this fat, smoking, drinking, beefeater bordello customer that believed in personal freedom and democracy, and his antagonist the slim, non smoking, non drinking vegetarian athlete with real high morale whos only wish was to enslave the world and subdue every man, except the Jews who he wanted to kill by gas.

Go figure

Indeed, the contrast between Churchill’s hedonism and Hitler’s austere lifestyle was noted by John Keegan in his book The Mask of Command.  Keegan says that unlike Churchill, whose daily breakfasts of pheasant or partridge cheerfully exceeded the weekly wartime protein allwoance of British schoolchildren, Hitler spent the war living on bleak fare (such as mashed apples) in miserable surroundings (such as his isolated headquarters at Rastenburg, which was a pure military facility with no luxuries).  It should also be noted that Hitler, sensitive and artistically-inclined man that he was, admired not just the well-proportioned physiques of Aryan men and women (as widely depicted in German visual arts of the time, though not quite so widely found in the Fuhrer’s immediate entourage, the devilishly handsome Reinhard Heidrich being a notable exception) but also had a keen eye for the beauties of the natural world, as expressed by a popular German song of the time (which can be heard in the documentary series The World at War) whose refrain roughly translates as “Adolf Hitler’s favourite flower is the delicate edelweiss.”