StarDestroyer.Net BBS

It's an old project, but still a magnificent one. The entire war, day by day, from its infamous beginning to the glorious conclusion. Plus, the names of every single veteran still alive when it was done.

Ladies and gentlemen, in honor of the 63rd Anniversary of the Great Victory, I present you with Pobediteli: the Soldiers of the Great War

Happy Victory Day!
-fgalkin

Me humble entry for commemoration will also be my old recolor series. Sadly, work is overwhelming and I didn't make new ones.

I'd also note everyone can visit the following great photodocumental collections, to feel a recap:

Victory Day. 09 May 1945. Moscow. Red Square. Anatoly Garanin
Russian State Archives - The Great Patriotic War Victory Photo Exposition


1942. A downed Ju-88 burns at the feet of a Soviet soldier. Author unknown.
The finest Soviet war photographers in the 1418 days expo - a staggering 1418 photos, the same number as the number of days in the war - depicting the entirety of the Great Patriotic War from 1941 to 1945.

Probably the two largest photorepositories of excellent Soviet war photography. Use online translators, the wording is rather simple.

P.S. And this picture is considered now almost mandatory in the way of internet commemorations, at least in Russia.

And so,the guns fell silent for the first time in years
Leaving ruined lands and shattered lives behind


Church of the Holy Cross, Warsaw 1945


Ruins of the Jewish Ghetto


Sigismund's Collumn, 1944


...and today, reconstructed

Jewish Ghetto "ruins" look more like "ground level razing" Man. So totally razed. Though I guess after Minsk and Smolensk, they had plenty of time to practice city razing.

Stas Bush wrote:Jewish Ghetto "ruins" look more like "ground level razing" Man. So totally razed. Though I guess after Minsk and Smolensk, they had plenty of time to practice city razing.

The Nazis were pretty goddamned vindictive, weren't they?

It's like they wanted to take revenge on the very stone which made up Jewish Ghetto buildings. As if it was somehow guilty of fostering rebellious thoughts itself.

They did the same after the Warsaw Uprising: They decided to burn the uppity rebelious quarters to the ground.

I sometimes joke that if they had enough salt, we'd see them walking around the rubble, rubbing it into the ground.

fgalkin wrote:It's an old project, but still a magnificent one. The entire war, day by day, from its infamous beginning to the glorious conclusion. Plus, the names of every single veteran still alive when it was done.

Ladies and gentlemen, in honor of the 63rd Anniversary of the Great Victory, I present you with Pobediteli: the Soldiers of the Great War

Happy Victory Day!
-fgalkin

Happy Victory Day.

That's a fabulous sight. The animated maps of the war as it progressed are incredible; they bring the ebb and flow of the fighting much more vividly. I'd never realized quite how great were the Soviet advances in early 1943 before. Static maps just don't drive it home.

If anybody ever doubts it was the Russian Army that broke the Heer, they should be referred to this site.

Thank's Fgalkin for referencing it. This post should be stickied.

Stas Bush wrote:Jewish Ghetto "ruins" look more like "ground level razing" :shock: Man. So totally razed. Though I guess after Minsk and Smolensk, they had plenty of time to practice city razing.

I believe you had commented one important reason the Red Army suffered greater casualties than the US Army in the European theater was because the Nazis were actively killing POWs and civilians. I think that's evidence of how fucking pathetic the German military was during WWII, that they killed those who can't (effectively) fight back to pad their kill ratios and say, "We're great warriors!" (Of course, the same accusation has been made against the US military during the Vietnam War.)

Damn that animated map is awesome as are the details and the recounts from people who fought the war.
I wonder what, after all the destruction and killings they caused in occupied parts of USSR, German leaders thought when they saw the Red juggernaut unstoppably sweeping to the west? I hope they pissed their pants.

Anyway Happy Victory Day!

Stuart wrote:

fgalkin wrote:It's an old project, but still a magnificent one. The entire war, day by day, from its infamous beginning to the glorious conclusion. Plus, the names of every single veteran still alive when it was done.

Ladies and gentlemen, in honor of the 63rd Anniversary of the Great Victory, I present you with Pobediteli: the Soldiers of the Great War

Happy Victory Day!
-fgalkin

Happy Victory Day.

That's a fabulous sight. The animated maps of the war as it progressed are incredible; they bring the ebb and flow of the fighting much more vividly. I'd never realized quite how great were the Soviet advances in early 1943 before. Static maps just don't drive it home.

If anybody ever doubts it was the Russian Army that broke the Heer, they should be referred to this site.

Thank's Fgalkin for referencing it. This post should be stickied.

Not only that, but the creators of the project tracked down every surviving veteran, over a million of them, and included their names in the final credits (which are something like 5 hours long) and in a searchable database.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Sidewinder wrote: I believe you had commented one important reason the Red Army suffered greater casualties than the US Army in the European theater was because the Nazis were actively killing POWs and civilians.

A chilling thought for you. A Russian soldier stood a better chance of survival as a front-line infantryman than he did as a PoW held by the Germans

Kane Starkiller wrote:I wonder what, after all the destruction and killings they caused in occupied parts of USSR, German leaders thought when they saw the Red juggernaut unstoppably sweeping to the west?

March 18, 1945, A.Hitler to A.Speer wrote:If the war is lost, the German nation must die. Fate is relentless. It is totally pointless to waste our attention at things that the people require for their daily most primitive substience. Instead, we better destroy all of it ourselves, for our nation turned out to be the weaker, and the future belongs to the stronger eastern nation

Soon therafter, in a little more than 1 month, Hitler shot himself. He did not face trial.

January, 1945, H. Himmler wrote:Those who abandon their duties do not deserve from the native land even a piece of bread. The German women and adolescents are invited to receive them, not with compassion, but instead with depreciation and ridicule, and especially heavy, vigilant blows to their foreheads with broomsticks.

Caught, Himmler commited suicide by poisoning. He did not face trial.

Sidewinder wrote: I think that's evidence of how fucking pathetic the German military was during WWII, that they killed those who can't (effectively) fight back to pad their kill ratios and say, "We're great warriors!"

Yeah, it was so easy to defeat that pathetic military.

Jeremy wrote: Yeah, it was so easy to defeat that pathetic military.

It was certainly not the invincible juggernaut superior to everybody else, as it is often painted. Citing those casualty statistics for the Eastern Front is pathetic, since as Stas shown, the disparity is created mostly by murdering Soviet POWs.

Jeremy wrote:

Sidewinder wrote: I think that's evidence of how fucking pathetic the German military was during WWII, that they killed those who can't (effectively) fight back to pad their kill ratios and say, "We're great warriors!"

Yeah, it was so easy to defeat that pathetic military.

The German military in World War II was really good at one thing: Striking rapidly at an enemy and gaining massive amounts of ground in the initial campaign. It's how they won in France, the Low Countries, the Balkans, etc. because there wasn't that much ground to capture. But when it came to Russia, after the initial assault, it really wasn't the military juggernaut people like to imagine it as. After 1942 it consistently failed to stop the Red Army (a very capable force at the end of the war, but one which was starved for manpower and material) in the East and almost completely collapsed in the West. (Something which is both a testament to the mis-management of the German Military and the juggernaut that was America when militarily aroused.)

Stas Bush wrote:A total of 34 000 000 men passed through the Soviet Army during World War II. 8 668 400 of them died in the war with Germany.

In war, they killed 7 818 100 German soldiers and SS-men, in total killing 8 649 900 men from the armies of the Reich and its Nazi satellites, defeating all of them and then Germany, with the capture of Berlin.

That's basically a 1-1 exchange rate, and the Soviets didn't deliberately kill German POWs, though they didn't exactly treat them nicely either.

Adrian Laguna wrote:That's basically a 1-1 exchange rate

Well, often the issue is ignored by simply excluding the mobilized Austrians, all Nazi satellite states, who lost ~1 725 800 men, and the SS units, including foreign ones, as well as all other Nazi volunteer and paramilitary formations. Then citing lesser losses of the Wehrmacht alone. Obviously ignoring this fact would lead to massive disparities.

I think the Soviet count for irrecoverable loss would be increased if we include dead partisans, POWs and mobilized men not included into the army, but a rough comparison shows that the rate is around 1:1 to 1:1,5.

Straha wrote:But when it came to Russia, after the initial assault, it really wasn't the military juggernaut people like to imagine it as.

Well, actually Germany's main advantage was it's tactical prowess. And the army was a juggernaut, but only as far as it was a concentrated strike force - which steamrolled over un-deployed units in the first war days - but when it spread thin and logistics started creaking, it soon has demonstrated that it's possible to defeat, and many times so.

The Germans were, even at the end, the undisputed world masters of the tactical art of war. The problem is that you can't win a war with just good tactics, at both the operational and strategic levels, the Soviets were simply better. I dare say that in the case of the operational art of war, the Soviets were the best.

Stas Bush wrote:

Straha wrote:But when it came to Russia, after the initial assault, it really wasn't the military juggernaut people like to imagine it as.

Well, actually Germany's main advantage was it's tactical prowess. And the army was a juggernaut, but only as far as it was a concentrated strike force - which steamrolled over un-deployed units in the first war days - but when it spread thin and logistics started creaking, it soon has demonstrated that it's possible to defeat, and many times so.

As I said, "after the initial assault" it wasn't a juggernaut. The German army was a truly impressive striking force, it just couldn't hold ground against any other decent army, especially not when it was overextended the way it was.

Really, the German gains in 1941 are amazing. I don't think any other force was ever able to capture as much ground as the Germans did. But after that initial strike, it really wasn't anything that special.

I don't think any other force was ever able to capture as much ground as the Germans did.

Attack an army undeployed with a deployed army, watch the enemy's half-assed defense and overtake him. If the USSR's leadership did not launch industrial programs in the Urals, Siberia and evacuate a good deal of old industry into farther eastern regions, the nation would've fallen just like France did.