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Comrade Gorbash posted:Let's be honest - a lot of the people in this thread were that kid at one point. I wasn't
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Apr 11, 2018 20:53
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Not the Nazi part, the hang out at B&N and delusions of authority part. Oof, yeah. Been there.
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Apr 11, 2018 20:58
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Let's be honest - a lot of the people in this thread were that kid at one point. ahaha. ha. haaaa.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:01
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Cessna posted:Man, I hope not. Well that puts you in your twenties, so plenty of time to be an insufferable teenager like the rest of us. I was definitely that kid, because I read my dad's pop history books and thus was obviously an expert (spoiler, I wasn't)
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Apr 11, 2018 21:05
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What bestselling pophistory book do you think has spread the most misconceptions on WWII?
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Apr 11, 2018 21:07
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A majority of us are still better than this kid though is because (hopefully) we all didn't have a boner for the Nazis.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:07
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:What bestselling pophistory book do you think has spread the most misconceptions on WWII?
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Apr 11, 2018 21:11
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Probably one of David Irving's books. Nope. Ambrose. We can bag on Irving for all of his bullshit all day long, but ultimately even his Dresden book was only read by people with an existing interest in the war. Ambrose's books became a legit pop culture event. Everyone was reading them, the mini series drew more attention, etc. His most active period also coincided with all of the 50th and 60th anniversary hooplah. Christ, he was even instrumental in that museum in New Orleans. And there is SOOOOOO much bullshit in there. None of it as malicious as Irving, but it's probably influenced more people, both for good and ill. I have VERY loving complex feelings about Amrose.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:15
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Cyrano4747 posted:Nope.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:16
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LIke, the fucker had to know that the core thesis of Citizen Soldiers was horseshit, he was educated enough to know better.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:17
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Medal of Honor Allied Assault had a level where you sneak behind enemy lines, hijack a King Tiger, and rampage around the French countryside destroying everything in your path. I’m not ashamed that 12 year old me bought into the hype.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:17
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Cyrano4747 posted:LIke, the fucker had to know that the core thesis of Citizen Soldiers was horseshit, he was educated enough to know better. I only read BoB, what did he do in Citizen Soldiers?
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Apr 11, 2018 21:17
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Edit: No it isnt im thinking of a different book completely.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:18
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Nuclear War posted:Well that puts you in your twenties, so plenty of time to be an insufferable teenager like the rest of us. I was definitely that kid, because I read my dad's pop history books and thus was obviously an expert (spoiler, I wasn't) I wasn't as interested in Mil-Hist until I'd been in the military. Look, I'm not trying to say I wasn't an insufferable teenager - I know I was - but I was on different subjects. When I started reading up on it while I was in and soon after I got out I ran into the Panzer-fans pretty quickly, but again, a look at that suspension made me laugh well before I could become enamored with it.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:22
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I'd put my money on Death Traps. I don't know if Cooper invented the Ronson myth or just popularized it, but I saw it in the war museum in Ottawa of all places. Worst of all, it was on the M4A2E8 Sherman, the one that a) had a wet ammo rack and b) never fought in Europe to begin with.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:22
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Ensign Expendable posted:I'd put my money on Death Traps. I don't know if Cooper invented the Ronson myth or just popularized it, but I saw it in the war museum in Ottawa of all places. Worst of all, it was on the M4A2E8 Sherman, the one that a) had a wet ammo rack and b) never fought in Europe to begin with. Death Traps feels like the single most wrongifying book. A lot of WW2 myths get passed around by multiple sources, but every time the "Shermans burst into flames if you flicked them and only won the war through numbers" myth comes up you see Death Traps cited as the source.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:30
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I only read BoB, what did he do in Citizen Soldiers? Short version? America and England were democracies and so they produced soldiers who were independent and could think for themselves and this core difference in their educational systems and mindset is what enabled them to triumph over totalitarian dictatorships who valued conformity and robbed the soldier in the field of the ability to take initiative, both through institutional means and a lovely upbringing in rigid, ideologically driven schools. The reality is that the Germans more or less loving invented the idea of letting your lowest levels of authority have tactical autonomy (they at least gave it a name - Auftragstaktik, it's taught today as "Mission oriented tactics" the last time I looked up what the US Army calls it) and highly valued extreme tactical flexibility at lower levels of command. The dude was a well educated enough military historian to loving KNOW that the core of his idea was bullshit, but went ahead and hit the  notes to, I presume, sell books to a crowd that was drunk on 50th anniversary nostalgia and "Greatest Generation" circle jerks.edit: oh, and as someone who kind of has done comparative history of early 20th C. American, German, and Russian education as a thing don't even loving get me started on his assertions about "schools of democracies" and "schools of authoritarianism." edit 2: this is also why Russia gets kicked in the teeth so hard and American boys raise on democratic virtues don't.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:35
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Ensign Expendable posted:I'd put my money on Death Traps. I don't know if Cooper invented the Ronson myth or just popularized it, but I saw it in the war museum in Ottawa of all places. Worst of all, it was on the M4A2E8 Sherman, the one that a) had a wet ammo rack and b) never fought in Europe to begin with. What's funny is that the influence of Death Traps can also be traced back to Ambrose, since he promoted it and even wrote a forward for the book.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:36
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I assume any mention of the Soviets, assuming he has any ever, is riddled with “and the hordes of peasant conscripts overwhelmed the Germans by sheer numbers.”
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Apr 11, 2018 21:37
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Acebuckeye13 posted:What's funny is that the influence of Death Traps can also be traced back to Ambrose, since he promoted it and even wrote a forward for the book. No loving kidding? Goddamn, that guy. The worst of it is that ultimately I also have a lot of respect for him in that he was a very public facing historian and I feel VERY loving STRONGLY that historians need to do more of that kind of stuff.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:37
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I assume any mention of the Soviets, assuming he has any ever, is riddled with “and the hordes of peasant conscripts overwhelmed the Germans by sheer numbers.” From my recollection it's less human waves of unwashed muzhiks and more unable to take basic actions to prevent getting overrun or encircled because their officer didn't give the order and you can't act without instructions from higher up, comrade.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:39
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Cyrano4747 posted:No loving kidding? 
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Apr 11, 2018 21:42
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Cyrano4747 posted:Short version? America and England were democracies and so they produced soldiers who were independent and could think for themselves
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Apr 11, 2018 21:43
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There's an argument to be made that S.L.A. Marshall and especially Men Against Fire popularized the most directly impactful misconceptions about World War 2.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:51
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Has anyone read Churchill’s history of WWII? Any awkward gems from that?
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Apr 11, 2018 21:53
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Comrade Gorbash posted:There's an argument to be made that S.L.A. Marshall and especially Men Against Fire popularized the most directly impactful misconceptions about World War 2. Hell, just the other day I had a friend try to cite On Killing (a book which to my understanding is mainly sourced from SLAM's work) in a discussion about police violence.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:54
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chitoryu12 posted:"The USAAF was fighting a totally different war and never coordinated with the ground troops! All their fighters and bombers were in the Pacific!" The vastly superior luftwaffe let them have it to give them a gentlemanly sporting chance, obviously
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Apr 11, 2018 21:57
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Cyrano4747 posted:From my recollection it's less human waves of unwashed muzhiks and more unable to take basic actions to prevent getting overrun or encircled because their officer didn't give the order and you can't act without instructions from higher up, comrade. There is some small smidgen of truth in that the chain of command for the Soviet army was hosed up, but that due to the purges and not some failure of education.
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Apr 11, 2018 21:59
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Comrade Gorbash posted:There's an argument to be made that S.L.A. Marshall and especially Men Against Fire popularized the most directly impactful misconceptions about World War 2. Ambrose pretty much cribs from Against Fire in some huge ways. gently caress it, I need to go find my write up on my love/hate relationship with Ambrose on my work computer.
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Apr 11, 2018 22:01
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Soviet infantry manuals of the lowest level encourage privates to rise up and take command if their commander is killed. I find it hard to believe that these would not have been translated and available in some US army library.
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Apr 11, 2018 22:02
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Has anyone read Churchill’s history of WWII? Any awkward gems from that? I'm just finishing a re-read of it and it's hard to pull real zingers out of it. It's purely autobiographical, so you get the occasional mention of the fearsome Tiger or whatever, but nothing I could call out as bad history. He had some pretty lousy ideas, and there are plenty of things you could call out as bad strategy, and there are places where his account of a conversation or decision is a bit self-aggrandizing, but I think that's the nature of autobiography. Churchill is not the guy to write, "In retrospect, all my ideas about the soft underbelly of Europe were embarrassingly foolish."
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Apr 11, 2018 22:03
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Ensign Expendable posted:Soviet infantry manuals of the lowest level encourage privates to rise up and take command if their commander is killed. I find it hard to believe that these would not have been translated and available in some US army library.
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Apr 11, 2018 22:06
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Hell, just the other day I had a friend try to cite On Killing (a book which to my understanding is mainly sourced from SLAM's work) in a discussion about police violence. the spanish will fine an infantryman for advancing too far and too fast beyond the formation, which gives you an idea of how often they have to deal with that
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Apr 11, 2018 22:07
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Mr Enderby posted:Have you been leafing through Hobson Jobson? Just flicking idly through my copy of Sahib by Richard Holmes doing a break down of 19th century British soldiers in India really. If you really want some hot weird man on man stuff, there apparently was a group of Highlanders during the 1780''s who hit on the Indian fishermen who were hired to help disembark and unload the regiment to shore at Bombay. They assumed they were women?
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Apr 11, 2018 22:13
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Ensign Expendable posted:Soviet infantry manuals of the lowest level encourage privates to rise up and take command if their commander is killed. I find it hard to believe that these would not have been translated and available in some US army library. I have no doubt that they were, but Ambrose pretty willfully ignored a lot of other stuff that didn't fit his specific argument about the virtues of democracies v. totalitarian regimes.
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Apr 11, 2018 22:23
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Anyways, here's my extended take on Ambrose. I've posted variations on it a few times before. It comes up enough that I end up re-reading it and editing it, which means anyone who cares can probably find different versions of it scattered a few years apart in this thread and its predecessors. why I love and hate Stephen Ambrose Eh, it's not just Band of Brothers, it's the whole "Ambrose phenomenon" although the book is certainly emblematic of it. Basically it comes down to three key issues: 1) issues with Ambrose as a historian and what he actually accomplished. 2) issues with Band of Brothers as a work and its relationship to Citizen Soldiers 3) the idiotic way that BoB has been integrated in popular culture The Controversies Let me start off by saying that the plagiarism issue is a big one, but it isn’t the giant, horrible, damning problem that a lot of his detractors make it out to be. The long and the short of it is that he had a nasty habit of footnoting sources, but not adequately indicating what was a quote from that work and what was his own prose. This is an issue that goes back through his entire career. Now, I used to ride him pretty hard for this, but having done a book-length project myself now I am a lot more understanding about how this kind of thing can happen. Put simply, it is really loving easy to write something in your notes and attribute it to a source without noting whether you copied the wording or simply summarized it. If you’re talking about writing history Grandpa Style - no endnote, no electronic markup to highlight that stuff in whatever way fits your system - I can see it happening a lot more easily. I know that I had a few places in my dissertation where I had to go back and re-read books that I had taken notes from years before to make sure that I wasn’t doing the same thing. Frankly I suspect a couple of attribution errors could be found in my dissertation if put under the microscope, and I wrote it feeding drafts to an advisor and taking every pain possible to make sure I produced a clean manuscript. Doing it on your own (well, before handing it over to your editor), as an established academic with an active publishing career? I could see things getting sloppier. I’m not condoning it, I’m not excusing it, but I’m saying that it is somewhat understandable and has answers that go beyond simply copying someone else’s work for his own benefit. Plagiarism isn’t good under any circumstance, but there is a qualitative difference between cynically stealing someone’s work to pass off as your own and loving up an attribution. If anything it indicates a sloppiness in his technique and work habits rather than maliciousness. There are also some factual issues in some of his books. The most notorious is his claim that an American captain had to put a pistol to the head of a British seaman driving a landing craft to get his troops ashore on Omaha, the implication being that the Brit was a coward. The only surviving man from that boat insists it never happened, and as best as anyone can figure out it was either invented for a men’s magazine in the 60s or was a tale that SLA Marshall picked up and that it entered the literature that way (and boy howdy was he famous for taking anecdotes uncritically - SLA Marshall’s problematic place in military history is a whole different issue). Again, there is a generous and a not so generous reading of this. You could argue that Ambrose used a lot of secondary sources very uncritically. On the other hand, he was making a large, synthetic, narrative work and a reliance on those kind of sources is the nature of the beast. A lot of historical work has to rely on a lot of work that has been done before, and these kinds of problems can creep in. It’s unfortunate, but I’m not sure that anyone who has tried to produce something of that scale would be too confident in the infallibility of every anecdote they used if their own work was exposed to the kind of scrutiny that is given to books as popular as the ones Ambrose wrote. Again, if anything it’s probably an indication that he was a bit sloppy in his work and had telling a good story as his chief priority. Remember: these are books being sold to the general population which means that writing an interesting narrative is going to take priority. Ambrose as a historian This is a bit subjective, but in my opinion as a historian he did absolutely nothing of interest from a research point of view - at least with regards to his WW2 books. I’m not familiar with his Eisenhower books so I’m not going to speak on them, and it’s been forever since I read his Lewis and Clark book or his railroad book. Look through all of his books on infantry in the ETO, for example, and you'll find that his general arguments basically boil down to two points - first, that small unit cohesion was key to the success of allied armies, and that the men on the ground were fighting as much for each other and due to the social bonds between them (the "can't let down your buddy" line of thinking) as for any kind of higher ideal. This point is so well worn that it's almost embarrassing to make it the cornerstone of a book in the modern era. poo poo, S.L.A. Marshall wrote about it in Men Under Fire right after WW2, and even then he was more or less just codifying for Pentagon command culture something that was military old wive's wisdom going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This also isn't anything unique to American, Allied, or Western militaries. Second, his arguments about small unit leadership being absolutely crucial to the over-all success of the Allied war effort is beyond lazy, and just as well-worn as his small unit cohesion argument. According to this argument American and British commanders were given objectives rather than specific, rote orders and had the flexibility to respond to situations on the ground as they developed. Given the hypothetical example of an emplaced MG in a hedgerow an American junior officer could decide, on his own initiative, to call in a suppressing company level mortar barrage, flank the emplacement, and keep the advance moving without having to discuss matters with higher command. Again, Marshall wrote about this in the mid-40s, in almost exactly the same terms. What's even more egregious, however, is that Ambrose tried to make the argument that this was a somehow uniquely Anglo-Saxon innovation and held it against a completely imaginary straw man of German, Soviet, and Japanese soldiers who blindly followed precisely the orders given to them - no more, no less. The argument runs that, since they didn't have the flexibility to decide things on the ground and constantly had to seek higher authority, they were consistently out-performed by Americans and Brits who didn't have those strictures and could think for themselves. The really embarrassing part is that he self-consciously ties this supposed freedom of command to democratic traditions and educational systems, and ultimately argues that World War 2 was proof of the superiority of democracy over all other political structures. He casts the conflict as a trial of the fruits of the two systems (represented by the children raised and educated in 1920s-30s USA and Germany) against each other, with the innate strengths of democracy winning out over the illusory benefits of fascism. He makes this almost painfully clear with passages that wax about the triumph of the children of democracy over the children of fascism. This, however, is total bullshit and any second year grad student who works in military history should know better, much less a PhD with a long publication record. What we call "Mission-type tactics" the Germans called "Auftragstaktik." They were thinking and writing about the concept as early as the Prussian military reforms following their initial, catastrophic defeats to Napoleon in the early 19th century. Scharnhorst, Clausewitz, and von Moltke the Elder were all major proponents of it and responsible for instituting it on a systematic basis in first the mid-century Prussian and, later, the early Imperial German army. Far from being subservient worshippers of authority who couldn't do the simplest things without say-so from above, German soldiers in WW2 were trained from day one to exercise maximum individual autonomy and major initiative could be taken by NCOs and junior officers. In this instance he is quite simply arguing counter to well established reality for the sake of making a really sappy patriotic argument. This is my biggest beef with Ambrose There is another side to this, however. As much as I think his actual argument is horse-poo poo, I have a lot of respect for his skill at finding and telling a good story and the actual use that he put those skills to. The man was a popular historian (in the sense of writing for a broad, non-academic audience) and a damned good one. He wrote in a way that non-academics could really sink their teeth into and produced works that made history something that people actually wanted to read. This is something that I feel VERY strongly about and admire him greatly for. Simply put, I think the academy needs to get its head out of its own rear end and that far, FAR more popular histories need to be written in order to get your average non-historian interested in and informed about poo poo that happened before they were born. The approach that Ambrose took in most of his books - narrative history backed up by either interviews or (in the case of his book on Lewis and Clark) diaries - is incredibly well suited to this. Unlike other writers of popular history he didn't shy away from the academic apparatus while doing so, and wasn't condescending enough to think readers would be scared away by footnotes or having a bibliography at the end. Reading Ambrose's books was my own entry point into historical literature that took citation seriously (which is kind of ironic given the subsequent scandals) and they really do a great job at introducing people to the basic structure that an academic monograph will have. Of course that is tempered by the fact that every history book has to have an argument, and his is problematic enough that it has become really unfortunately utilized in popular culture, which I'll get into in a moment. The books themselves Remember where I said that all that plagiarism stuff leveled at him is overblown a bit? There is another academic crime that he's clearly guilty of which goes largely unrecognized, mostly because it isn't a high crime like actual straight up plagiarism. What is this crime? He blatantly recycled previous work when producing new books. This happens to a greater or lesser extent all the time, but generally it is considered poor form to just duplicate text wholesale. A lot of grad students spend a lot of mental energy, for example, trying to figure out if they should submit something for publication as an article or turn it into a chapter of their dissertation. Sure, some crossover happens, but generally you want it to be more that you are using arguments from a paper in a chapter and not just reproducing text wholesale. If you go and read Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers he basically reproduces Band of Brothers in it, in its entirety. By "reproduces" I mean entire 20-30 page swaths are identical, word for word. He also does the same thing with Pegasus Bridge and D-Day. Hell, major chunks of BoB are in both Citizen Soldiers AND D-Day. If you read his books in the order he wrote them (PB, BoB, D-Day, CS) you get some MAJOR loving deja vu towards the end. This is one of the biggest issues I have with him as an academic. It's just lovely practice - even if you want to re-use the research you did in another project because it's pertinent to your current one, you really need to revisit it and rethink it. If you can't find a way to revise the previous work and make it better, why the gently caress do you need to rehash it in this other book? What other reason is there for even doing that 2nd project other than to stretch out your publication list? The real answer probably has something to do with his books being popular and publishers clamoring for more of them. Books are hard to write and squeezing an extra couple out of the same material has to be tempting. He was also in that rarified air of historians who actually get sizable royalties from their writing, so there may have been a personal financial incentive as well. Ambrose and popular culture. As I've said before, I get that he wasn't writing books for the academy. I really, really get this and admire him greatly for it. That said, if you're writing for a non-academic audience you need to be extremely careful with what kind of argument you present, precisely because you are automatically becoming an Authoritative Source and Expert on the subject. Like it or not what you write will probably be taken fairly uncritically. See also: Daniel Goldhagen, hack extraordinaire. Unfortunately for Ambrose he chose to cheap out and go for a really obnoxious “democracy rocks and, in its Anglo-American form is the best thing EVER” thesis for his most popular works. This leads directly to self-identified patriotic Americans holding him up as a great example of how we're just the best country ever, and the second you try to point out that his argument was flawed and WW2 didn't really work like that you immediately become just another of those America-hating intellectuals. Rather than being an argument that can be argued like any other, it them becomes enshrined as some kind of secret capital-T Truth that Ambrose, as apparently the only America-loving historian on the planet, chose to share with the masses. The rest of the academic establishment is meanwhile cast as trying to silence this patriotic message for reasons that probably involve not liking the US. There is a particular kind of person who really latches onto this in an annoying way - self identified conservatives who think that universities are suspiciously full of people who are too liberal for anyone’s good and like to find academics who “tell it like it really is.” If this one guy is maintaining that the US won WW2 because of our innately superior politics and culture, then the people who are denying it must just not like America, right? I can’t completely lay this at Ambrose’s feet, and I’ll admit that I might be overly sensitive to it since I spent a number of years in grad school teaching WW2 and Holocaust classes, but it’s still a product of the Cult of Ambrose that has emerged. If you really want to see it in full bloom go visit the WW2 museum that he opened in New Orleans. I went and saw it ca ~2011, though, so it may have moderated as he’s been dead longer and people are less invested in staying true to whatever his vision was. Then of course you have the miniseries and the whole awkward and bizarre cult of hero worship that rose up around Easy Company of the 506th as a result of all that. The kind of poo poo that leads people to want guns signed by octogenarian war vets, scammers claiming to be selling Dick Winters's personal bringback K98k, and 14 year olds playing online shooters with screen names like ShiftyPowersSniper[101]. As much as I bag on Ambrose's actual argument in BoB and Citizen Soldiers (they're largely the same), at the end it comes down to celebrating the ordinary infantryman. Of course this is really problematic when you're dealing with the 101st, which was as close to an elite or Guard unit as the US military got at the time, but let's just ignore that for now. (Even though the fact that the airborne was better than regular infantry is something that is played up prominently in his work, both through his presentation and the actual comments of the vets themselves.) When you have books that are making the entire point of "these guys were just ordinary dudes and we won the war precisely because this is the material that our entire army was made of" the cult of patriotic hero worship that was generated around a few specific guys 50 years after they did what they did is just bizarre. Again, I can’t really blame Ambrose for this specifically, but it’s part of the larger constellation that he’s created and is due at least in part to how he presented his work and how it was interpreted by the general audience that it was written for. Other issues Ambrose was a shameless self-promoter, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Unfortunately it looks like it also led him to stretch the truth about his own career and the relationships he had with some of the key people featured in his writings. The most egregious example of this is the controversy surrounding his relationship with Eisenhower. He did a lot of early work on Eisenhower's wartime decisions and claimed that Ike himself approached him to write his story. He further claimed that he had a close personal relationship with Eisenhower, and that he met with him frequently at the White House to go over details of his wartime record. This is, unfortunately, pure BS. There is archival evidence for the fact that he approached Eisenhower rather than the other way around and the interview dates that he claims in one of his key books don't line up with the White House visitation records. Rather than the hundreds of hours that Ambrose claimed that he spent talking with Eisenhower it looks like he spent a total of maybe 10 with the man. tl;dr - Goddamnit you were SO on the ball with the popular history angle, why did you have to taint it with actual arguments that are drat near indefensible and some sloppy habits when it came to your actual research and writing?
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Apr 11, 2018 22:24
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Cyrano4747 posted:small unit cohesion was key to the success of allied armies, and that the men on the ground were fighting as much for each other and due to the social bonds between them (the "can't let down your buddy" line of thinking) as for any kind of higher ideal.
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Apr 11, 2018 22:30
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lol I just looked at the edit date on the earliest version of that screed that I have and it looks like I wrote it in a bout of procrastinating actually working on my dissertation.
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Apr 11, 2018 22:33
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Cyrano4747 posted:From my recollection it's less human waves of unwashed muzhiks and more unable to take basic actions to prevent getting overrun or encircled because their officer didn't give the order and you can't act without instructions from higher up, comrade. From being in WW2-fandom-y places I definitely see a lot of "two rifles, one man" stuff at least. Sometimes even from people who quite like the soviets in those games, because they like orks or tyranids or whatever and like the image of sending a horde of expendables in to overwhelm people with sheer numbers. I guess that must be a pop-culture osmosis thing if it's uncommon in academia.
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Apr 11, 2018 22:36
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spectralent posted:From being in WW2-fandom-y places I definitely see a lot of "two rifles, one man" stuff at least. Sometimes even from people who quite like the soviets in those games, because they like orks or tyranids or whatever and like the image of sending a horde of expendables in to overwhelm people with sheer numbers. I guess that must be a pop-culture osmosis thing if it's uncommon in academia. Depends on the era of academia you're talking about. It got played up huge in the cold war through a combination of uncritically accepting accounts of German officers while Soviet sources were mostly locked away and good 'ol fashioned orientalism. Sprinkle on the lingering effects of Nazi propaganda too. Once you get into the 90s, though, that starts fading away. This isn't to say that human wave attacks and awful shortages being overcome through brutally manpower-intensive tactics never happened, but the whole war wasn't the first weeks of Stalingrad.
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Apr 11, 2018 22:37
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