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Extra Credits - The Battle of Kursk II with The Challenger as a special guest speaker. This episode seems a lot better than the previous one.
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Feb 29, 2016 20:07
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Raenir Salazar posted:Extra Credits - The Battle of Kursk II with The Challenger as a special guest speaker. This episode seems a lot better than the previous one. And yet it still follows the myth that the Panthers/Tigers/Ferdinands had >10:1 kill ratios at Kursk. While the Soviets lost a ton of tanks at Kursk, you should never take German big cat claimed kill at face value. That's doubly true for SS big cat claimed kill.
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Feb 29, 2016 21:08
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But the history channel told me the soviets made up all their kill/loss counts because stalin told them to 
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Feb 29, 2016 21:15
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I hope I'm not too late for buttstroke chat. During my year in the Finnish army I didn't see a single bayonet, and we got taught some rifle melee stuff in a single afternoon. The moves were: A) stab face with muzzle B) jab face with magazine C) buttstroke face D) slash face with muzzle You could even do all four in a row in a cool routine.
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Feb 29, 2016 23:36
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Hazzard posted:Wasn't the French plan in the Revolutionary Wars to close to bayonet fighting as far as possible? I thought this was something that Napoleon had continued, hence the column formation, which is better for bayonet charges than a line. The French Army goes through phases. Broad strokes: in the early phases of the revolutionary war the Levée en masse results in a huge army of totally untrained conscripts - French Generals reasonably decide that rather than trying to get these conscripts to fight in the line against the regular troops of their enemies, they'll take advantage of the sudden numerical advantage they have and pack them into tight formations that try to carry fights with the bayonet. After the early emergencies the French army tries to professionalise and fight as it 'should', after Moscow suddenly experienced troops are nowhere to be fought and there's a drift back. The thing about bayonet attacks is that they hardly ever made contact with the enemy - the point is to get the other side to turn and run away. Once they start running then the enemy line is broken and things will naturally progress from there. So the thing is - you don't actually need to get your guys good at bayonet fighting at all, you just have to get them into a block of men that will move with enough momentum at the enemy that they'll run before it stops. And that is just a matter of having enough warm bodies. PS. Napoleon was not a cold steel guy. He was an artilleryman, he remained an artilleryman when he became a general, he never stopped believing in the power of the artillery to win battles.
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Feb 29, 2016 23:59
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I'm curious: who decided which soldier went where when a maneuver was ordered during the age of the battle line? Was every soldier expected to know exactly how many steps to take when the unit was ordered to turn 90 degrees or form a square? And how was it decided who went into the first rank/second rank/third rank? I would assume that the first rank was really unpopular due to having no chance whatsoever to escape the bullets (unlike the rear ranks who had nice and big meatshields in front of them).
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Mar 1, 2016 00:10
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This seems like something this thread would enjoy:
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Mar 1, 2016 00:29
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Posted months ago, but still good.
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Mar 1, 2016 01:07
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WW2 Data It's time we started looking at the Imperial Japanese Navy Explosives, starting out with some Land and Ordinary bombs. Which bomb has a very strange explosive inside and how was it discovered? Which bombs had hinged doors to access the fuze pocket? Which bomb has the lowest explosive-to-weight ratio, sitting at 13%? All that and more in the update! Sorry for the late update, it's been a busy day
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Mar 1, 2016 01:41
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Squalid posted:Siad Barre done hosed up. Do you know why he attacked Ethiopia first instead of Kenya or Dijbouti? Granted he wasn't likely to ever see a weaker Ethiopia, but it seems odd he didn't pick on his smaller neighbors first before taking on the largest neighboring state.
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Mar 1, 2016 01:46
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Alchenar posted:The French Army goes through phases. Broad strokes: in the early phases of the revolutionary war the Levée en masse results in a huge army of totally untrained conscripts - French Generals reasonably decide that rather than trying to get these conscripts to fight in the line against the regular troops of their enemies, they'll take advantage of the sudden numerical advantage they have and pack them into tight formations that try to carry fights with the bayonet. After the early emergencies the French army tries to professionalise and fight as it 'should', after Moscow suddenly experienced troops are nowhere to be fought and there's a drift back. Also, the attacking formation was not the same as a road column- it was actually more like a series of battalions attacking in line, one after another. The main advantage was that it was easier to maintain cohesion and cohesion was the name of the game in this kind of warfare.
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Mar 1, 2016 02:34
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Cornelius Schinding
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Mar 1, 2016 02:41
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HEY GAL posted:Cornelius Schinding Gesundheit.
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Mar 1, 2016 02:52
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LLSix posted:I really like the images you embedded. The maps are very helpful. I've never read anything that tried to explain it, but I'm willing to speculate wildly!  France continued to administer Djibouti until 1977, and that alone was probably enough to keep Barre away. After 1977 it will be ruled by an ethnic Somali party and President but I'm not sure why it didn't willingly submit to anschluss like British Somaliland, considering it was popular among Dijbouti's Somalis in the 1960s. Maybe it was anti-communism, maybe it was due to opposition from the minority Afar people, maybe it was petty personal or tribal differences. The failure of the Ogaden War will rapidly lead to a spiral of internecine violence, very likely Djiboutians looked at Somalia after 1978 and said yeah, gently caress that. Kenya meanwhile was led by the ardently anti-communist Jomo Kenyatta until 1978, which means the US probably would have had his back. The anticommunism thing might also be why they didn't honor their defense pact with Ethiopia, or maybe it was just because Kenyatta was old and dying in 1977. In general African leaders really like signing international treaties but are often loath to follow through, as I'll get into when I come to the AMISOM mission. Prior to Kenyan independence the British promised a referendum for Somali territories to decide what country they'd join, but Kenyan leaders said lol no as soon as they were in charge. Britain just shrugged. It's also possible Barre was extra into invading Ethiopia because his mom was a member of the Ogaden Clan from, get this, the Ogaden plateau in Ethiopia! Ethiopian rule was always very unpopular because unlike European powers that could subsidize local administration through the colonial office, the feudal Ethiopian state had to fund itself locally. I've seen this described as gangs of government thugs roaming the countryside seizing whatever wealth and cattle they could grab, and one source refers to the despoiling of the Ogaden by the Ethiopian armies. These sources probably have a pro-Somali bias, but they should at least show Somali attitudes towards Ethiopian rule. Various Somali groups have waged an insurgency against Ethiopia nearly continuously since the 1960s.  Members of the Ogaden National Liberation Front on patrol; 2006 Squalid fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Mar 1, 2016 |
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Mar 1, 2016 04:40
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Thanks for all the kind words about the posts - glad they're enjoyable! Going to have to break up the Baker stuff a bit more than otherwise would, cramming writing time in between writing about other conscientious objectors - 100 years tomorrow since the first few were arrested as absentees from the Army. Then next week the dam breaks and it's a couple of hundred COs a week for the next three months. Busy times... Private George Baker We left George in the tender embrace of the Army, having been broken on the wheel of his father’s emotion, and uncharacteristically angry about it to boot. Having been escorted to barracks with no official record of his Conscientious Objection, only for a routine transfer to dig up some of his (substantial) paper trail, he’s officially in the Non-Combatant Corps, and has accepted a medical, the King’s shilling and his first military orders. George’s time in the NCC gives us one of the best records of the awkward position alternativist COs found themselves in. Unlike the memoirs of the committed Absolutist, it isn’t a record of abuse, refusal to obey orders and a rapid court martial, but it’s equally unlike the (rare) memoirs of those who were happy with the NCC and served quietly in labour and logistic support in France and the UK. Instead, it gives us a look at the kind of internal and external tumult that NCC COs had to deal with as they tried to strike a precarious balance between Army and Conscience. Of course, this being George, this largely takes the form of him pointing out the logical errors and idiosyncrasies of everyone else’s position, while he tortures himself with allusions to his political and literary heroes and wrestles with his own senses of shame and pride. Most importantly, it shows us that Conscience is a real, living thing, not a set of principles blindly stuck to, but an evolving sense of what is right and wrong. May 1916 sees George at the Shoreham Camp, a major training and marshalling depot that CO and soldier alike would transit through on a regular basis. Arriving with a group of other COs supposed to transfer to the Non-Combatant Corps, he encounters a group of actively resisting men - Absolutists - who would refuse any compromise with military authority. In the regular Army, a group of COs under guard is a nuisance, in the NCC they’re an active inspiration for disobedience, and George finds that “the sight of them made my heart ache. I was in khaki, which I considered as a dishonour to me, they were about to exchange their honourable civilian clothes for the still more honourable broad arrows of Lewes county gaol”* Men like these served as an inspiration to others to disobey - or, as in George's case, a realisation that honour and principle supposedly demanded nothing less than total resistance. By the end of 1916 the practice of having Absolutists undergo short sentences in barracks would be ended - too much of a bad influence on NCC and fighting soldier alike. As the 16 men are marched off to prison, George gives them a “heavy-hearted cheer” and tries: “to forget my miserable sense of dishonour in the composition of a few verses, lauding their faithfullness to peace and the true ideals of peace-loving England, which the Old Men had led her young men to betray. The verses were thoroughly wretched, but not so thoroughly wretched as I” (Oh George. Miraculously, we have some of his wartime poetry, and although he's very self deprecating, there's good reason it doesn't appear in any anthology...) At Shoreham he runs into the two key figures that would dominate his year with the NCC. (The second will be in the next post) The first was the Plymouth Brethren, a dissenting Christian sect that produced hundreds of COs - many of whom found their way into the NCC. George, man that he is, doesn’t like them at all, accusing them of “Humpty-Dumptyism” in their dedication to their own particular views and, continually throughout the entire year they: “Evening after evening they would pray audibly that I might see the light, and abandon the wickedness of my unbelievers ways - might turn my back on Hell, might turn my face towards Heaven... Horrified and genuinely solicitous for my eternal welfare, they organized a kind of relay team which pursued me remorselessly from retreat to last post and lights out.” This continues to a ludicrous degree: “they would continue to whisper in the darkness, against Army orders: those would go whispering text after text, exhortation after exhortation, prayer after prayer, until they or I fell asleep” They’re also offensive to George’s conflicted views on militarism and army orders. George is obeying his superior officers, but under duress - they seem more eager than any soldier to follow a legal (non-combatant) order. They have decided to “render unto Caesar those things that were Caesar’s” with a “consistent zeal to obey all military orders that would have put the Guards themselves to shame”. They hound him more than combatant soldiers and military police - and everywhere he goes he’s accompanied by this “relay-team” of whispering, praying men. I like to imagine he must have looked a bit like a prophet accompanied by worshippers. When the 3rd NCC is slated to ship to France, George admits that he would like to see the defining moment of his generation, the “Potter’s Field of Blood”, but one of the Brethren has Measles, and his hut is quarantined - “just the drat fool thing a Plymouth Brethren brother would do”. By the time his group is free of measles, something big has happened in France. *The nice thing about George is that he gives enough detail for us to be able to identify these men. He says that there were 16, court martialled together and sentenced to four months in Lewes. I can, with hopefully a fair degree of accuracy, work out who they were from National Archives service records. lenoon fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Mar 1, 2016 |
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Mar 1, 2016 17:53
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golden bubble posted:And yet it still follows the myth that the Panthers/Tigers/Ferdinands had >10:1 kill ratios at Kursk. While the Soviets lost a ton of tanks at Kursk, you should never take German big cat claimed kill at face value. That's doubly true for SS big cat claimed kill. Did the video actually claim it was 10:1? I don't recall that claim being repeated; only a vague notion that under ideal circumstances the Panther had a good K/D ratio.
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Mar 1, 2016 19:47
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Today I learned that Germans were still suing one another for insults to their honor in the late 19th century. In fact, they began doing so more and more. As my advisor said, "It's nothing but lawsuits and everyone was in them. It's great."
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Mar 1, 2016 23:11
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HEY GAL posted:Today I learned that Germans were still suing one another for insults to their honor in the late 19th century. In fact, they began doing so more and more. As my advisor said, "It's nothing but lawsuits and everyone was in them. It's great." You can still sue for insults in Germany. Not sure if it is exactly the same as suing for libel, but I do remember learning that calling the bride a whore at her own wedding could get you into legal trouble even if it was in fact true.
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Mar 1, 2016 23:38
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ArchangeI posted:You can still sue for insults in Germany. Not sure if it is exactly the same as suing for libel, but I do remember learning that calling the bride a whore at her own wedding could get you into legal trouble even if it was in fact true.
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Mar 1, 2016 23:40
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HEY GAL posted:It's in your constitution--all Germans have "the right to honor." It's one of your civil rights. drat, you're right, it's right there in the article for freedom of speech. Literally "Freedom of speech is limited only by...the right of personal honor."
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Mar 1, 2016 23:43
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Semi-relevant side question. In Germany, has the Basic Law ever been given constitutional-level entrenched status, or will reunified Germany ever get around to writing a proper Constitution someday?
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Mar 1, 2016 23:52
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Spacewolf posted:Semi-relevant side question. In Germany, has the Basic Law ever been given constitutional-level entrenched status, or will reunified Germany ever get around to writing a proper Constitution someday? Wasn't the DDR being pretty much subsumed by the BRD part-justified by "neat! This way we don't have to start looking at thorny constitutional issues again"?
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Mar 2, 2016 00:13
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Spacewolf posted:Semi-relevant side question. In Germany, has the Basic Law ever been given constitutional-level entrenched status, or will reunified Germany ever get around to writing a proper Constitution someday? Basic Law is just another word for constitution, Denmark and Hungary use the same term for theirs. The court that judges whether or not a law violates the Basic Law is literally called the Federal Constitutional Court. The domestic intelligence service tasked with observing and investigating activities aimed at abolishing the Basic Law by violent or undemocratic means is called the Constitution Protection Service. By any definition except by name the Basic Law is a constitution. Anyone who tells you otherwise is insane. As in, literally not of sound mind. There was some talk about writing a proper constitution right after reunification, and there is still an article (146) that stipulates that the Grundgesetz may be replaced by a proper constitution, but there is literally no drive whatsoever to do that. I can't imagine what would be changed, either. The Basic Law as it stands is a very well designed document, any constitution would be different only in a handful of articles no one cares about or that are obsolete (there is poo poo near the end about states that no longer exist like Würtemberg-Hohenzollern). Well, I guess there is always the possibility of bringing back the Kaiser, which would require a new constitution (since republicanism is one of the unchangeable parts of the Basic Law)
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Mar 2, 2016 00:28
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Duly noted, thanks for the answer Archangel!
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Mar 2, 2016 00:31
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Spacewolf posted:ever get around to writing a proper Constitution someday? 
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Mar 2, 2016 00:38
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ArchangeI posted:drat, you're right, it's right there in the article for freedom of speech. Literally "Freedom of speech is limited only by...the right of personal honor."
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Mar 2, 2016 00:47
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ArchangeI posted:The domestic intelligence service tasked with observing and investigating activities aimed at abolishing the Basic Law by violent or undemocratic means is called the Constitution Protection Service. Wait, wait. Is bribery undemocratic? It would be so sweet if Germany has secret police who spend most of their time arresting lobbyists and CEOs for advocating unconstitutional laws. ... I wish we had that 
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Mar 2, 2016 01:01
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I logged into my Flickr account and found the pictures I took of last year's renaissance festival of the landsknecht dagger training. Here's the whole set. You can see where one of the lessons given was "Grab his dagger by the blade and stab him in the back with it while wrestling." IMG_1849 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1850 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1851 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1852 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1853 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1858 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1860 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1861 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1863 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1865 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1871 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1872 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1873 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1874 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1875 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1876 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1877 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1878 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1879 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1880 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1881 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1882 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1883 by chitoryu15, on Flickr IMG_1884 by chitoryu15, on Flickr
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Mar 2, 2016 01:12
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ArchangeI posted:drat, you're right, it's right there in the article for freedom of speech. Literally "Freedom of speech is limited only by...the right of personal honor." 
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Mar 2, 2016 01:26
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HEY GAL posted:See, you have the right to honor, but I have the right to be really loving violent, so in the end, who has it better? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCr72GOsq8c
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Mar 2, 2016 01:51
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I was reading through the Alexander Stephens speech to the Georgia legislature regarding his doubts about secession and found this towards the end: It takes a lot of balls to say that if only the South will stand together then all the other states will surely side with them and they can kick out those emancipation favoring states in New England. Alexander Stephens posted:In this way, our sister Southern States can be induced to act with us; and I have but little doubt, that the States of New York, and Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and the other Western States, will compel their Legislatures to recede from their hostile attitude, if the others do not. Then, with these, we would go on without New England, if she chose to stay out.
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Mar 2, 2016 02:29
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Raenir Salazar posted:Did the video actually claim it was 10:1? I don't recall that claim being repeated; only a vague notion that under ideal circumstances the Panther had a good K/D ratio. Watching it again, extra credits actually claims that Panther had an above average K/D ratio at Kursk. So it is vague enough to be accurate. I'm just kinda urked that they focus on the technical aspects of German tanks over their training and leadership advantages. Though I shouldn't have expected anything less from an episode sponsored by World of Tanks.
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Mar 2, 2016 08:02
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Armyman25 posted:I was reading through the Alexander Stephens speech to the Georgia legislature regarding his doubts about secession and found this towards the end: Something of the sort (well New England secession) waa mooted in 1815.
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Mar 2, 2016 11:23
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LLSix posted:Wait, wait. Is bribery undemocratic? It would be so sweet if Germany has secret police who spend most of their time arresting lobbyists and CEOs for advocating unconstitutional laws. Actual money-for-votes is handled by the German equivalent of the FBI. Wining and dining politicians is legal. It's not undemocratic if the elected representatives vote their consciousness, no matter how they made that decision. The decision whether a law is unconstitutional is made by the court, which can be called upon by any citizen who is directly infringed upon by the new law (and usually there are a number of opposition politicians who will sue very quickly). The domestic intelligence handles everything that aims at attacking the core values of the republic, usually by trying to seize power in an undemocratic act (insurrection, massive voter intimidation campaigns, terrorism etc.) or by working to deny basic human rights to certain groups (foreigners, muslims, muslim foreigners, foreigners who are not from around here). And the CPS arrests nobody. If an organization is found to be working against the constitution, it is banned. If its a party, the ban has to come from the Federal Constitutional Court, which has happened exactly twice so far (once for the KPD, once for a party that literally billed itself as a continuation of the NSDAP).
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Mar 2, 2016 12:52
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Armyman25 posted:I was reading through the Alexander Stephens speech to the Georgia legislature regarding his doubts about secession and found this towards the end:
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Mar 2, 2016 14:36
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100 Years Ago, Sort Of Yeah, it's another two-for-one catching-up day. Twice the war! Twice the genocide! Twice the suffering! Yesterday: Everyone and his mother is bitching about General von Falkenhayn not attacking the west bank at Verdun; the Tsar and General Cadorna trip over themselves preparing urgent offensives in support of their French allies; the BEF begins an extremely sneaky plot to recapture The Bluff of which Bugs Bunny would be proud; Grigoris Balakian talks some of his comrades down from jumping into the river to escape their death march; Edward Mousley gets shelled a lot; and Evelyn Southwell fails at the extremely complicated military manoeuvre "marching a battalion out into the road". Today: Some obscure army captain called Charles de Gaulle takes his first shot at the history books at Douaumont village; the BEF's sneakiness at The Bluff concludes successfully, if not without heavy casualties; Corporal Flora Sandes goes moonlighting as a docker; Louis Barthas squelches around some flooded trenches trying to avoid getting trench foot; and we get to see what counts as a "good day" when the Ottoman government is trying to genocide you.
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Mar 2, 2016 14:43
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The guys that went to war to preserve the Union aren't going to deconstruct the Union themselves just because some states have too many abolitionists in them.
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Mar 2, 2016 14:43
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golden bubble posted:Watching it again, extra credits actually claims that Panther had an above average K/D ratio at Kursk. So it is vague enough to be accurate. I'm just kinda urked that they focus on the technical aspects of German tanks over their training and leadership advantages. Though I shouldn't have expected anything less from an episode sponsored by World of Tanks. Um why? The Chieftain also works for World of Tanks and generally represents a huge effort at primary research to make the game more accurate. As is The Challenger, the guest speaker in question. They also did mention that the Germans managed to do so well in 1941 was mainly because of tactics, training, and leadership.
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Mar 2, 2016 15:29
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Besides the Revolutions/History of Rome and Dan Carlin's podcasts, are there any other (military) history podcasts you people can recommend?
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Mar 2, 2016 15:31
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Bij bolszewika! Episode 4: Diplomatic Implausibility Episode 0 Episode 1Episode 2 Episode 3 Last time we talked about the direct consequences of the Polish capture of Vilnius and the failure of Soviet counterattacks. Today, we will discuss - briefly - the break in major operations that followed, and how it ties in with the international situation at the time. As you may have inferred, both sides stopped after the Vilnius campaign, preferring instead to reorganize. However, that was not due to solely military reasons - or, at least, not entirely. The Soviets had redubbed their Western Army the Belarussian-Ukrainian Army, sacked its commanders... and told it to rest, build up rear echelons and reinforce. This stoppage came about because of the increasingly unsteady situation on other fronts. The Soviet 2nd Army, pushed back from Estonia since February, was now digging in at Petrograd and waiting for general Yudenich to strike. 7th Army was driven out of Riga by the Latvians and Whites and was now struggling. 12th Army, which took Kiev from the Ukrainian Directorate, was attacked by Denikin, and the Urals were threatened by Kolchak. Whatever the Poles did, they could not represent half the threat those others were, and the Polish front dropped in priority even further. The Poles, meanwhile, were nearing the end of their campaigns in Galicia and Volhynia, where they shattered the Western Ukrainian People's Republic by late June, reaching the Zbruch River. They also got into a border conflict with the Lithuanians, who held some Polish-populated areas and refused to give up on Vilnius. Pilsudski's old underground organization, the POW, started to plan uprisings in contested territories, and even held pipe dreams of causing a coup in Vilnius, replacing the government there with one more friendly to the Marshal's ambitions. He supported those actions, but when the Sejny uprising started early, Lithuanian police cracked down on the plotters, revealing the kinda-sorta attempted coup and causing a huge scandal, leading to border fights, where Lithuanians failed to accomplish anything of note and cementing the rift between the two countries. From this point on, the Lithuanians, having lost German support after the rest of Ober-Ost went home, started to seek closer ties with the Soviets, while also asking the entente to delineate new Polish-Lithuanian borders - at least temporarily. Most importantly, however, the Polish operations were held back by the German rumbling over the Versailles Treaty. It should not come as a surprise that the Germans were not at all accepting of the huge concessions that were asked of them. However, their signing of the Treaty was not a foregone conclusion. They could, and would, threaten war, and even the revolutionary movements did not mean they were incapable of waging it. This was not much of a threat for the Western Powers, but for Poland, a war with Germany breaking out in the middle of a war with Soviet Russia would be disastrous. Therefore, Pilsudski banned all offensive operations on the newly-christened Lithuanian-Belarussian Front (under Szeptycki), while also creating the Anti-German Front, which ate up most of Szeptycki's reserves. The Reichswehr was more interested and involved in the goings-on east of the German border than most other German institutions. It had realised very, very quickly that a Soviet success in Poland could lead to a collapse of the Entente's hold on Germany, and so it sought to bring it about. On June 17, eleven days before the signing of the Versailles Treaty, the Germans and Soviets conducted talks that led to 3 500 German officers and NCOs being detailed as advisors and cadres for the Red Army, with additional secret provisions saying that should the Germans reject the terms of the Entente, the Soviets would start a general offensive against Poland. The threat was definitely real, even if improbable. What we should stop for here for a second is a brief description of the German attitudes towards the Polish-Soviet war. Right now, they are not at the forefront of most people's minds. But in 1920, when Soviet victory will seem very, very realistic - if not certain - it will unite pretty much everyone. The socialists will hope for the Soviet revolution to bring down bourgeois Poland. The Freikorps will hate both sides and hope that it will bring about a collapse of the Versailles system. The government will declare neutrality and help the Soviets while no-one is looking. Pilsudski forbid offensive operations against the Soviets already in April, and, as we could see, with good reason. However, he was not obeyed. Polish commanders below front level were extremely aggressive, even if their movements were small in scale. They routinely conducted "mobile defence", disrupting and routing Soviet troops they were in contact with and slowly pushing the frontline East, until it reached the line of WWI German trenches, considered a powerful defensive position and definitely worth securing. Rydz-Smigly was one of the most prominent "pushers" of the line. Finally, on June 28, the Germans finally agreed to the Versailles Treaty and signed it. Already on July 1, Szeptycki ordered a major move towards the important rail hub of Maladzyechna (Molodeczno). Next time: Minsk falls, Lit-Bel dies
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