Churchill's letter to Stalin asking him to speed up the Soviet offensive 1945. (1 Viewer)

[tank]

On the night of January 12-13, Soviet troops began the East Prussian strategic offensive operation

/TASS/. At the end of 1944, when the Red Army began the liberation of Europe, Anglo-American troops approached the German borders from the west. Under these conditions, the Fuhrer of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler, decided to launch a major counter-offensive on the Allied positions. The German command developed a plan according to which 25 divisions, including seven tank divisions, were to strike through the Ardennes to Antwerp and defeat the Anglo-American forces in Belgium and the Netherlands.


On December 16, Army Group B, under the command of Field Marshal Walter Model, began the Ardennes Operation. Using the factor of surprise, Wehrmacht forces broke through the front line and advanced to a depth of 90 km to the west.

By the end of the month, the first wave of German advances was stopped by the American Third Army under the command of George Patton.

At the beginning of January 1945, Wehrmacht forces moved towards Strasbourg. On January 6, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill appealed to the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, Joseph Stalin, with a request to quickly launch an attack on Germany in the east: “I will be grateful if you can tell me whether we can count on a major Russian offensive on the Vistula front or somewhere- elsewhere during January and at any other times you may wish to mention.

The next day, Joseph Stalin replied: “We are preparing for an offensive, but the weather is not the most favorable now. However, taking into account the position of our allies on the western front, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command decided to finish preparations at an accelerated pace and, regardless of the weather, open broad offensive operations against Germans along the entire central front no later than the second half of January."

On the night of January 12–13, Soviet troops launched the East Prussian strategic offensive operation.
On January 16, the German command was forced to begin transferring troops from the western front to the eastern borders of Germany. By the end of January, the Allies had completely restored the front line and began to invade Germany from the west.

 

[tank]

In 1958, the Moscow Gospolitizdat, with a circulation of 150,000 copies, published a 2-volume publication entitled: “Correspondence of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR with the Presidents of the USA and Prime Ministers of Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.”

In the mentioned collection, on pages 298,299, telegrams Nos. 383-385 dated January 06-09, 1945 are published, in which Churchill, clearly and unequivocally, asks Stalin about the possibility of postponing the offensive operation of Soviet troops in the Berlin direction to an earlier date, and Stalin , in a response message, explaining the difficulties of preparing an offensive, nevertheless expresses his readiness to meet the allies’ request!

The 383rd letter dated 6 of January 1945
.
PERSONAL AND MOST SECRET MESSAGE FROM Mr. CHURCHILL TO MARSHAL STALIN.

There are very difficult battles going on in the West, and big decisions may be required from the High Command at any time. You yourself know from your own experience how alarming the situation is when you have to defend a very wide front after a temporary loss of initiative. It is very desirable and necessary for General Eisenhower to know in general terms what you propose to do, since this, of course, will affect all his and our most important decisions. According to the message received, our emissary, Air Chief Marshal Tedder, was in Cairo last evening due to weather conditions. His trip was greatly delayed through no fault of yours. If it has not yet arrived to you, I shall be grateful if you can inform me whether we can count on a major Russian offensive on the Vistula front or elsewhere during January and at any other times that you may be thinking about. , would you like to mention. I will not pass on this highly sensitive information to anyone except Field Marshal Brooke and General Eisenhower, and only on condition that it is kept in the strictest confidence. I consider the matter urgent.
“I consider the matter urgent” is the key point of the letter.

And earlier on January the 4th, Patton wrote in his diary, “We can still lose the war.” At this moment, complete panic reigned in the command of the Western Front. Any news or events that would allow the Germans to transfer 5-6 divisions from the East would inevitably doom many Allied formations to death.

As a result, Red Army will begin the Vistula-Oder operation 2 weeks earlier on January 12, the result of which will be the virtually complete defeat of the Wehrmacht.

https://www.litres.ru/audiobook/min...oveta-ministrov-sssr-s-prezi-67293270/otzivi/


I hope you no longer have any doubts about who saved the Allies from complete defeat at the Ardennes in 1945.

 

[Desertkiwi]

The not do subtle inference of your posts are that Russia alone saved the Allied cause during WW2, which of course is total bumpkin......

Had the Japanese threat to Russia not subsided during the later stages of the war, all those lovely Russian divisions would have continued to languish out east.

Unlike Russia the Allies were fighting 3x foes namely German, Italy and in the Pacific against the incredibly stubborn Japanese.

Had Hitler been allowed to focus entirely on the invasion of the Soviet Union I dare say the world would currently be in a much different place.

 

[tank]

The not do subtle inference of your posts are that Russia alone saved the Allied cause during WW2, which of course is total bumpkin......

Had the Japanese threat to Russia not subsided during the later stages of the war, all those lovely Russian divisions would have continued to languish out east.

Unlike Russia the Allies were fighting 3x foes namely German, Italy and in the Pacific against the incredibly stubborn Japanese.

Had Hitler been allowed to focus entirely on the invasion of the Soviet Union I dare say the world would currently be in a much different place.

It's so tiring... It's always the same thing - Bla, Bla, Bla...
Show us evidence that supports your point of view, or... please stay quiet.




For example, the battle of Stalingrad, some “historians” are trying to put it on a par with much less significant events like the battle of El Alamein, where hostilities were fought by Anglo-American troops.

In the fall of 1942, an important event for the Allies took place in North Africa - the battle of El Alamein ended successfully. Many Western politicians, military leaders and historians try to qualify the victory at El Alamein as a “turn of fate in World War II.”

But neither in terms of the composition of the opposing forces, nor in its scope, nor in its significance for the course of the war as a whole, the battle of El Alamein can be compared with the battle of Stalingrad.

If in the first case the allies (8th British Army) were opposed by the German-Italian tank army "Africa", numbering 80 thousand people, thenthe number of German-Romanian troops in the Stalingrad direction was more than 1 million soldiers and officers.

At the walls of Stalingrad, the Germans lost 32 divisions and 3 brigades, and 16 of its divisions were seriously defeated, while during the battle of El Alamein the enemy had only 12 divisions in North Africa, of which 8 were Italian. ( Everyone knows what kind of soldiers the Italians were.)

The counteroffensive at Stalingrad was an offensive operation of a strategic scale, the results of which had a concrete impact on the situation in all theaters of World War II, and the Allied offensive in the El Alamein area was local in nature and its influence did not extend beyond the Mediterranean theater of operations.

The assessment of the actions of the Allied troops in North Africa, including those planned, made by one of the leaders of the Big Three is noteworthy. “... The scale of these operations, (including the battle of El Alamein)” wrote W. Churchill I.V. about them to Stalin on March 11, 1943, is small compared to the enormous operations that you are leading.”

The events in North Africa did not have a real impact on the military-political situation in the world, and could not have had any.

So, do you have anything to say... Would you like to argue with W. Churchill?



Desertkiwi:
"Unlike Russia the Allies were fighting 3x foes namely German, Italy and in the Pacific against the incredibly stubborn Japanese."



Sure...
Here is an excellent example of a stubborn fight against the Japanese.

Battle of Singapore with the Japanese Army in February 1942

The fall of Singapore, which was captured by the Japanese in 1942, was Britain's biggest defeat in World War II.
The paradox was that the balance of power was 1:3 in favor of the British.


The army in the area was led by Lieutenant General Arthur Percival. There he had 90,000 British, Indian and Australian troops.

General Wavell, the British commander in the region, was ordered by Churchill to fight to save Singapore, and he was ordered by Churchill not to surrender until a "protracted battle" had been fought in an attempt to save the city.

. On February 8,some 23 thousand Japanese soldiers attacked Singapore.
To speed up their progress in Singapore, the Japanese used bicycles as a form of transport.

On 15 February, the British commander in Singapore, General Percival, called for a ceasefire and made the difficult decision to surrender. He signed the document of surrender that evening at the Ford plant on Bukit Timah Road.

After several days of desperate fighting, all British Empire troops were to lay down their arms at 8:30 that night.

defensive battle (from 8 to 15 February 1942)
More than 100,000 military personnel became prisoners of war, along with hundreds of European civilians who were interned.

The head of the Malayan Command of the British Commonwealth Forces, British Lieutenant General Arthur Ernest Percival (Arthur Ernest Percival, 1887-1966) and his staff officers are sent along with representatives of the Japanese army to negotiate the surrender of the garrison in Singapore.

Arthur Percival (with a white flag) was freed from Japanese captivity in August 1945 by Soviet troops and participated in the ceremony of signing the act of surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945.

The head of the Malayan Command of the British Commonwealth forces, British Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, signs the act of surrender of the Singapore garrison.
Sitting opposite Percival is the commander of the Japanese 25th Army, Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita. February 15, 1942

Prisoners of the British Suffolk regiment under escort of Japanese soldiers after the surrender of Singapore. February 1942.

Japanese soldiers shoot Sikhs captured in Singapore. 1942



The Battle of Singapore lasted 7 days, from February 8 to 15, 1942.





Do you want to know what it means to fight hard, to fight until the very end?
Then watch this movie with English subtitles.
This is not a Hollywood nonsense, but a brilliant modern war film.
I think this film is one of the best ever made.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw3mDJ0qdp0&t=2237s




Please note: I, without a doubt, respect every WWII veteran, regardless of nationality, but I believe that distorting and rewriting the history of the Second World War is unacceptable.

Cheers.

 

[Desertkiwi]

Oh I'm not arguing with you, that would be a complete waste of time.

My approach has always been that winning WW2 (if you can call it that) was the result of a combined effort by all the Allies, including Russia. Clearly some allies suffered more than others to achieve that result.

There's no doubt historians are often bias and skew data for their own ends. The same occurs today. The conflict in Ukraine is a prime example.....

You can demean the Allied effort during WW2 all you like, however you won't find many fans here or else where for that matter. You do you cause no good by pursuing that angle.

Most collectors here are more than aware of the enormous sacrifices Russia made during the conflict and that is clearly evident by the figures produced and sold for the eastern theatre of WW2.

My suggestion is that you soften your stance and keep it causal. You may be surprised by the result.

 

[paxtoysoldier]

Oh I'm not arguing with you, that would be a complete waste of time.

My approach has always been that winning WW2 (if you can call it that) was the result of a combined effort by all the Allies, including Russia. Clearly some allies suffered more than others to achieve that result.

There's no doubt historians are often bias and skew data for their own ends. The same occurs today. The conflict in Ukraine is a prime example.....

You can demean the Allied effort during WW2 all you like, however you won't find many fans here or else where for that matter. You do you cause no good by pursuing that angle.

Most collectors here are more than aware of the enormous sacrifices Russia made during the conflict and that is clearly evident by the figures produced and sold for the eastern theatre of WW2.

My suggestion is that you soften your stance and keep it causal. You may be surprised by the result.

Wise words my NZ friend.
Tank, no matter what your views are, we can find some common ground. Such as admiring and appreciating Russian resolve in WW2, and not demonizing Russia. Also, I liked the movie Furious.
But don't think assassination as a tool of statecraft is the way of the West. Don't mention your Tzar. Don't pretend that you don't threaten our European Allies. Don't deny that you back Israel's foes. Don't pretend that you have our Freedoms, which we cherish. And don't pretend that we hate you all. We buy Russian products, we want peace, but what kind of Power lets another Power's illegal and unprovoked aggression stand?
We spend $8 Trillion is the War on Terror.
Ukraine is willing to fight and die, they need our weapons. They will receive them.
Best Wishes for Russia.
Long live Ukraine, Long live the West.
Paddy

 

[tank]

Here is the speech by Andrey Medvedev, VGTRK journalist, in 2017.

"I've seen a miracle...
And this miracle is called Germany. I walked towards you ( a German person) and looked at the beautiful Berlin streets, at the people, at the wonderful architectural monuments, and now I stand here and look at you. And I understand that this is all a miracle. That you were all born and live in Germany.

Why do I consider this a miracle?
Because, given what your soldiers did there, in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, the Red Army soldiers had every moral right to destroy the entire German people. To leave a scorched field, ruins and only paragraphs of textbooks in place of Germany would remind us that such a country once existed.

You ( a German person) probably don't remember all the details of the USSR occupation, but you don't need to. I'll just remind you of what the Wehrmacht and SS soldiers did to Soviet children. They were shot. Often in front of their parents. Or vice versa, first they shot at mom and dad, and then at the children. Your soldiers raped children. Children were burned alive. They were sent to concentration camps. Where they took their blood to make serum for your soldiers. Children were starving. Children were eaten to death by your shepherd dogs. Children were used as targets. Children were brutally tortured just for fun.

Here are two examples.

A Wehrmacht officer was disturbed by a baby from sleeping; he took him by the leg and smashed his head against the corner of the stove.

Your (German) pilots at the Lychkovo station bombed a train on which about 2,000 children were evacuated to a safe place in Russia, and then your( German) aces started a hunt for the terrified children, shooting them from aircraft machine guns in an open field.


Just for what you did to the children, I repeat, the Red Army could have completely destroyed Germany and its inhabitants. She had every moral right.

But the Red Army didn't. Do I regret this? Of course not.
I bow to the steely will of my ancestors, who found some incredible strength within themselves so as not to become the same brutes that the Wehrmacht soldiers were. “God is with us” was written on the buckles of German soldiers. But they were the offspring of hell and brought hell to Russian land.

The soldiers of the Red Army were komsomol members and communists, but the Soviet people turned out to be much more Christian than the inhabitants of enlightened religious Europe.
And Soviet soldiers did not take revenge. We were able to understand that hell cannot be defeated by hell. You should not ask us for forgiveness, because you personally are not to blame for anything. You cannot be responsible for your grandfathers and great-grandfathers. And then, only the Lord forgives.

But I will tell you honestly - for me the Germans are forever a foreign, alien people.
It's not because you. But I will tell you honestly - you ( a German person) personally are not bad. It is the pain of the children burned by the Wehrmacht that screams within me.
And you ( a German person) will have to accept that at least my generation - for whom the memory of the war is the grandfather’s awards, his scars, his front-line friends - will perceive you this way.

You will have to accept one fact: we will never repent for our Great Victory.
And especially for OUR Victory."



Death of Leningrad children at Lychkovo station.

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Гибель_ленинградских_детей_на_станции_Лычково

An eyewitness to these events[, later the famous writer Valentin Dinaburgsky, describes the consequences of the bombing as follows:

Fragments of children's bodies hung on telegraph wires, on tree branches and bushes. Flocks of crows, sensing life, circled with hubbub over the site of the tragedy. The soldiers collected the mutilated bodies, which, under the influence of the heat, quickly began to decompose.

The smell made me feel sick and dizzy.
A couple of days later, mothers of the unfortunate victims poured into Lychkovo. Naked, disheveled, they rushed between paths disfigured by bomb explosions. They wandered blindly through the forest, not paying attention to the minefields, and blew themselves up in them...

No wonder some went crazy.
One woman, smiling, asked me: have I met her Vovochka? She just now took her son from kindergarten and left him here...
A terrible sight: hysteria, screams, crazy eyes, confusion, hopelessness...
V. Dinaburgsky.

Come and See (1985) - DISTURBING Church Scene


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHzYwsi-CRc



List of settlements destroyed in Belarus by the Germans. (1941-1943)
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Список_уничтоженных_населённых_пунктов_Белоруссии_(1941—1943)

Of the 9,200 settlements destroyed and burned during the armed actions of German troops on the territory of Belarus, over 5,295 were destroyed along with all or part of the population during punitive operations.[1][2] (According to other data, 5295 is the number of settlements destroyed, including 628 along with the population. 186 villages could not be revived, as they were destroyed along with all their inhabitants, including mothers and infants, frail old people and the disabled.)[3]

You will most likely never understand Russians for a simple reason;
Simply because there has never been such a brutal war on US territory, up to the complete extermination of your civilian population, and that is why you have no idea what Victory in World War II means for us, Russians.

This war really had a hard impact on every Russian family and brought great losses...
In my family with our relatives, 7 of our grandfathers went to the front and 4 of them died on the battlefield...
We will always be proud of them, they died for OUR Victory and we will never allow our history to be rewritten.




An interesting comparison by an old Russian builder about his impressions of some Western “historians” and their attempts to rewrite the history of World War II:
“The West is becoming more and more like those builders who once built a fence around a house, and then, after a few years, these builders began to tell everyone that they were the only ones who built the house...”

Cheers.

 

[tank]

Wise words my NZ friend.
Tank, no matter what your views are, we can find some common ground. Such as admiring and appreciating Russian resolve in WW2, and not demonizing Russia. Also, I liked the movie Furious.
But don't think assassination as a tool of statecraft is the way of the West. Don't mention your Tzar. Don't pretend that you don't threaten our European Allies. Don't deny that you back Israel's foes. Don't pretend that you have our Freedoms, which we cherish. And don't pretend that we hate you all. We buy Russian products, we want peace, but what kind of Power lets another Power's illegal and unprovoked aggression stand?
We spend $8 Trillion is the War on Terror. - are you sure that only $8 Trillion ???
Ukraine is willing to fight - are you sure about that??? and die - so you saying that Ukrainians wats to die... really??? , they need our weapons. They will receive them.
Best Wishes for Russia.
Long live Ukraine, Long live the West.
Paddy

American Freedoms, which we cherish

Family flees Russia for the USA...

There’s a video going viral.
The video is filmed in an airplane cabin, and is in Russian, but has English subtitles. You can see the video for yourself below (pardon the language in the Tweet, but that’s the original source, so…).
https://twitter.com/BabelHodl/status/1578583611451748352

Since the beginning of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine in 2022, the West has provided Kiev with assistance totaling more than $150.8 billion. Almost a third - $48.5 billion - went to Ukrainian military needs, following TASS calculations based on official statements by the authorities of donor states and media data .


The United States remains the absolute leader in the number of prisoners - about 2.2 million people. The United States accounts for 20 percent of the world's prisoners. And this despite the fact that the US population is only 4 percent of the world's population.
The United States is known not only as the “standard of democracy”, but also as the record holder for the number of prisoners and death penalties.

02/16/2024

The leader of the Ukrainian “Servant of the People” faction, David Arakhamia (who led the Ukrainian delegation in negotiations with the Russian Federation in March 2022), said in an interview with the 1+1 TV channel that during the negotiation process in the spring of 2022, Russia was ready to stop hostilities if Ukraine agreed to neutrality .

“The Russians were ready to end the war if we took neutrality, like Finland, and made a commitment that we would not join NATO. This was the key point,” Arakhamia explained. According to him, upon arriving in Kyiv, Boris Johnson said: “We won’t sign anything with them at all and let’s just fight,” he quoted the British politician as saying.

What wonderful advice... Obviously Boris did not want peace but wanted Ukraine to continue to fight until the last Ukrainian...

At the end of September 2023, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, presented the Atlantic Council Prize to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. On this occasion, von der Leyen gave a speech intended to become an alternative reality in which it was the Russians who dropped atomic bombs on Japan.

The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that Russia is threatening to use nuclear weapons again. “It’s disgusting, it’s dangerous, and in the light of Hiroshima, it’s unforgivable,” are her words. And they sounded as if Russians, and not the Americans, were to blame for the bombing of Japan.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBw5DEjRbgI


The French politician was outraged by the words of the head of the EC about Russia and the nuclear attack on Hiroshima

The leader of the "Patriots party" and former member of the European Parliament, Florian Filippo, said that Ursula von der Leyen is actually shifting the blame for the first use of the atomic bomb from the United States to the Russian Federation.

https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/18820479






Grant Shapps of the UK Ministry of Defence: The tests have confirmed the effectiveness of the British nuclear deterrent, in which we have absolute confidence.
Right, isn't it?

RIA News. The British Navy conducted an unsuccessful launch of the Trident II intercontinental ballistic missile (Trident 2) from the nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard, on board which was the head of the British Ministry of Defense Grant Shapps, the Sun newspaper reports.

"The Trident missile misfired abruptly and crashed into the ocean meters from the British nuclear submarine from which it was launched... the launch failure... occurred while Defense Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to observe the test." , says the publication.
As the newspaper notes, the incident occurred during an exercise on January 30 off the coast of Florida; later a check was initiated into the circumstances of the incident, and the UK began a search operation to remove the missile from the seabed.

"HMS Vanguard and her crew have proven fully prepared to operate the UK's enduring maritime deterrent by passing all tests during recent test launches confirming the submarine can return to service after thorough maintenance. The test confirmed the effectiveness of the UK's nuclear deterrent, which we are absolutely confident in.

An anomaly occurred during the test.
For reasons of national security, we are unable to provide further information on this matter,” the UK Ministry of Defense said in a statement to the Sun.

The previous launch of a Trident 2 intercontinental ballistic missile from a British submarine in 2016 (back in 2016, Karl!!!) ended in failure. The rocket was supposed to fly 9 thousand kilometres from the coast of Florida to a target southeast of Ascension Island, but deviated dangerously from its course and automatically self-destructed.

https://youtu.be/d5nZ-SwngnE

Cheers.

 

[paxtoysoldier]

You once claimed to be Australian. Then you mocked their military. You are clearly a troll.
Thanks for fighting Mongols, Napoleon & Hitler.
And please sod off.
Paddy

 

[The Military Workshop]

This guy is nothing but a Russian propaganda troll and is posting just like he did a few years ago. His posts are predictable in that they praise his Motherland and always make the West look bad. This despite the fact he left his home for NZ.

You will notice zero interest in Toy Soldiers.

 

[DMNamiot]

Politics are not allowed no matter the country do this thread is closed for review.

Dave