djones520 wrote:
They had a lot of stuff going on here at Ft. Campbell yesterday. I wish I hadn't been shackled to the office all day.

I did learn recently that my wifes Grandfather was a Pathfinder with the 101st. I guess he was a replacement who joined just after D-day, fought in Market Garden and Bastogne. He passed away a couple of years ago, so I never spoke to him about his experiences, but my wife tells me her never talked to anyone about them, even his wife of 60ish years. I just read a news paper clipping from just before the war ended though, that was talking about him, how he and another person were the only two men to survive Bastogne, from his "combat unit" (didn't break down if it was a squad, platoon, etc...). After reading that, I could understand why he never wanted to speak of his experiences.

That being said, I want to see what I can find out about his story. I know his name, when he joined the unit, and what regiment he was with, so since I'm here at the home of the 101st, I'm going to see what I can learn.

 Paradigm wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
They had a lot of stuff going on here at Ft. Campbell yesterday. I wish I hadn't been shackled to the office all day.

I did learn recently that my wifes Grandfather was a Pathfinder with the 101st. I guess he was a replacement who joined just after D-day, fought in Market Garden and Bastogne. He passed away a couple of years ago, so I never spoke to him about his experiences, but my wife tells me her never talked to anyone about them, even his wife of 60ish years. I just read a news paper clipping from just before the war ended though, that was talking about him, how he and another person were the only two men to survive Bastogne, from his "combat unit" (didn't break down if it was a squad, platoon, etc...). After reading that, I could understand why he never wanted to speak of his experiences.

That being said, I want to see what I can find out about his story. I know his name, when he joined the unit, and what regiment he was with, so since I'm here at the home of the 101st, I'm going to see what I can learn.

Good luck to you in this effort. A lot of information will be out there somewhere, and with the name and regiment you've got a solid starting point. It might even be worth writing to the regiment itself, they might be willing to share some more information or at least point you in the right direction.

It should be interesting to see what you can dig up. Market Garden and Bastonne were fairly major, so I imagine that a lot of general information about those will be easy to come by.

 Paradigm wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:
Using paper, pencil, rulers, slide rulers, B&W photo's, and guess work. They pulled one amazing operation off that would more likely never be topped. Someone say Operation Barbarossa I would counter with "they cross a Channel"?

To be honest, Barbarossa isn't even in the same league, and when you actually look at it, was destined to fail.

The German logistics were all over the place. They underestimated the overall size of the red army, while overestimating the amount they would encounter immediately, and it was this that gave them the initial advantage; they took far more men and tanks in at the spearhead of the invasion than was actually needed, which seems fine until you consider the size of the Eastern Front. They suddenly found themselves with one army in one place that needed to capture a dozen different objectives across a several-hundred mile front.

Part of the army had to go north, and was stopped at the gates of Moscow and failed to breach Leningrad (although they did set up a 4-year long siege), prompting a second offensive towards Stalingrad while the third part of the army went south to the Caucus oilfields. So the initial advantage of force concentration they had was lost, and the huge manpower of the Red Army could take them apart piecemeal once it massed at Stalingrad. This then left the flank of the southern Army Group open, and from then on the Germans were in full retreat. By the battle of Kursk, there was no going back for them.

A lot of this is down to the simple matter of the geography of Russia; they had the land to spare and concede in a scorched earth policy until the Blitzkrieg ran out of steam at Stalingrad, and were able to hold the line there just long enough to defend the industrial heartland and to allow the troops that had not yet gathered enough to be effective, and from then on, it was a foregone conclusion- the sheer manpower Russia could bring to bear meant it was game over for the Nazis. The Russian winter also helped, as it had against Napoleon in remarkably similarly circumstances. Also, the fact that despite a dozen major victories, Hitler was not able to achieve the defeat of the Red Army in a single pitched battle like he had planned meant that his entire method of waging war on the Western Front in 39-40 simply would not work against Russia.

If anything, I'd say Operation Uranus (the Russian counter-attack after Stalingrad) is closer to D-day in scale, importance and effectiveness, although, as you point out, they didn't have a Channel to cross (that said, from what I've read the crossing of the Volga was pretty rough, all things told).

I definitely think it's in the same league as D-Day though in terms of scale and implication.

 Paradigm wrote:
Ok, scale-wise it was the same, I was more talking about it in terms of what it represented. Barbarossa was the blitzkrieg invasion of a nation, by land, that had already been proven to work in Western Europe. Operation Overlord was an amphibious assault into prepared enemy defences that threw up all kind of problems. More to the point, it was something that had never been attempted before, especially on that scale. That's really what I think makes Overlord so remarkable, it faced so many variables and problems, they had no real parameter (apart from the ill-fated Dieppe raid) to really judge it against, and despite all that, it worked. So scale-wise it's the same, but in terms of what was ultimately achieved I think D-day was far more significant.

I've certainly read several books that state outright that the Germans did over-apply force against the border because they were expecting more troops based on their intelligence reports. You may have just read different stuff, though, and I'm sure there's a lot of conflicting information out there, given the hazy-at-best nature of the German reconnaissance, so there's every chance you're correct there.

As for the 'one army in one place' thing, looking back I sort-of misphrased that. What I meant was that Blitzkrieg tactics they had relied on until Barbarossa and tried to implement against Russia were never going to work, simply because the Eastern front was so massive, and the splitting of the army into the three groups was a large part of what weakened them; three smaller 'blitzkriegs' that took place after the early weeks of the invasion lacked the impetus of the full Wehrmacht operations in Europe, and allowed the Russians to take them apart piecemeal. So it was more an error in the overall strategy that made that style of warfare ineffective; they tried to adapt it to the Eastern Front and failed to really do so.

So Overlord and Barbarossa are comparable in scale, but the difference is, Overlord worked despite myriad setbacks and challenges, Barbarossa ultimately didn't (although in fairness, they did well to get as far as they did given the errors that were made in preparation, strategy and command).

 Paradigm wrote:
Anyone know any good books on it?

 Paradigm wrote:
Operation Overlord was an amphibious assault into prepared enemy defences that threw up all kind of problems. More to the point, it was something that had never been attempted before, especially on that scale. That's really what I think makes Overlord so remarkable, it faced so many variables and problems, they had no real parameter (apart from the ill-fated Dieppe raid) to really judge it against,