Subhash C. Baru
World War II’s victory celebrations were held in Moscow on ninth May when Hitler led Nazi Germany was defeated seventy years ago in 1945. Few years back the British elite troops had participated in these celebrations now shun by the western powers. However, India and China’s heads of the state and the UN Sec. Gen. participated this time joined by Germany’s chancellor Angela Markel the next day to pay tribute to twenty seven million Russians who died defending their proud country so effectively that for Germany the battle to win Moscow became a graveyard for her soldiers, heavy artillery and tanks. It proved to be a strong reason for the fall of the mighty Germany army and the nation.
Had the Russians not adopted the ‘scorched earth’ policy while retreating, the Germans could have captured the armament factories on the way along and the food so badly needed by them. The covered shelter of Moscow and food when the Germans were hardly thirty kilometers away before onset of rains and snow halting completely the German armour would have saved the Germans. The course of world war would have changed. The Germany would have been saved from the huge losses it suffered. Instead the losses would have been borne by the Russians forces to a possible retreat to the east of Moscow in jungles. It was a great sacrifice by the Russians for their ‘fatherland’ and the world.
Those who know the warfare would aver that planning and success of such a large attack which undertook against Russia should have been immaculate. Did something go wrong in German Army’s planning, then? The study of rise and fall of Hitler’s Germany is one of the most astonishing stories of the world history. Hitler had worked as a corporal in world war I. He was an ordinary man. Germany was in distress due to the heaviest sanctions imposed against her by England and France as reparations. He was a good orator who successfully beguiled disciplined Germans to submit to his megalomaniac ideals of cleansing Germany and making her greatest nation of the world. The British diplomacy failed miserably to stop Hitler’s bluff as she did not want to enter into war with Germany again. The British PM Chamberlain is accused of a sell out of Czechoslovakia and let Hitler taste blood!
Why German planning failed so miserably to have stuck in very large steppes (in European Russia) having become wet due to snow thousands of kilometers away from German supply lines? The records of the German war office captured after her surrender in weigh in thousands of tonnes. Every minute detail is available of the German war efforts. one and a half century earlier Napoleon too had suffered a defeat on the same wet muddy plains in bitter cold weather trying to conquer Russia!
In fact, it was Hitler’s petty mind that delayed the well planned attack by the German Generals on which was to begin originally in mid May 1941. Hitler had called Yugoslavian premier to sign a friendship treaty on March 25th to secure his south-eastern front. No sooner the treaty was signed there was a coup in Yugoslavia the next day and the government was overthrown. It sent Hitler into a maddening rage to declare that the Balkan nation would be crushed with ‘unmerciful harshness’. He ordered Goering to completely “destroy Belgrade in air attacks”. As this operation would delay by a month his planned attack on Russia called ‘operation Barbarossa”, Hitler announced the changed date of beginning of attack on Russia to be 22nd June, 1941 as some more time would be needed to relocate the army on the very long Russian front. It took Hitler nearly one month to capture Yugoslavia.
The legendary British PM Winston Churchill would often say that the wars ‘are won’ by capable minds. Hitler need not have wasted four weeks to teach a lesson to Yugoslavia! His attack on Russian front was three pronged. The South-eastern flank had advanced up to river Volga. It could have easily spared a couple of armoured divisions back south to capture Yugoslavia thus saving the precious time lost in April. It would have given the Germany army few weeks before onset of winter rains and saved the German army from the deadly Russian snow east of Moscow in 1945 to capture it and be master of whole of Europe for all times to come.
It transpires that small timers at the helm of affairs are a loss to the nations.Even cruelty meted out to the defeated subjects causes great loss to the victors as had been proven with the rapid fall of the Mughal empire after death of Aurangzeb in 1707 and that of Mehmud Gazani in the beginning of the last millennium.
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