<t>The standard German appologist lines continues to march to the same tune: It was Hitler's fault.<br/>
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"If Hitler hadn't had meddled in this or that important operation, why, we would have...!"<br/>
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Of course, they take the credit for the early success - successes that were made ...

<t>Modern and apolitical historians all pretty much agree that Germany's failure is due to one factor: They couldn't replace their losses.<br/>
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Now, don't get me wrong. The Germans were loaded with mistakes and inneficiencies. But the one, descisive failure was the fact that Germany was a ...

<t>US artillery was mighty and vast.<br/>
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Soviet artillery was that and even more. Major Soviet artillery strikes were nothing less than tactical nukes. We're talking about about hundreds of thousands rounds falling in the space of a few hours. Tens of thousands of guns firing on a defensive ...

In fact, artillery was by far the biggest killer in WW2.

80% of casulties came from artillery fire, including assault guns and AFV cannons. Next comes machineguns and then with a tiny percent going to small arms fire.

Ground-attack aviation had a very small impact.

<t>In fact, Soviet forces in the Winter War were horrbily ill-equiped and poorly orginized. It was this experience that led Stalin to the convinction that the Red Army needed to be re-orginized and better armed.<br/>
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It wasn't until 1944 could Soviet soldeirs enjoy high levels of training ...

<r><QUOTE><s>[QUOTE]</s><I><s>[i]</s>Originally posted by Auslander <e>[/i]</e></I><br/>
<B><s>[B]</s>The Finns fought fanatically against the Russians- it was a personal issue, fought over many years of animosity against the Russians and their desire to take land from Finland. At every turn they ...

<t>You can probably guess by the title of this article that I'm going into it biased. But I can back it up.<br/>
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First of all, let's skip all the nationalistic nonsense and wish-fullfilment and start with pure, hard, researched and accepted historic data:<br/>
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In 1944, the Western Allies ...

<t>There are far too many machine guns and grenades. In 1941, German and Soviet infantry had much fewer machine guns and grenades. In fact, only a few grenades would be allotted to a 10-man squad.<br/>
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And having a machine gun for every 10-man squad is a ratio ONLY achieved by the Soviets LATE ...