Katya/Svoboda seems to work for Zaitsev.
She is in a place which Stalin has renamed in his own honour and, at the end of the chapter, she refers to Stalingrad, the City of Steel.
The Four Horsemen on p. 361 are a Biblical reference.
Katya invokes:
There are other historical references but anyone can read the chapter and google!
See also Judgment Day.
11 comments:
Hitler had WW1 reflexes a lot of the time; it drove German generals nuts. Getting into toe-to-toe attritional fights, for example.
I should have added that toe-to-toe attritional fights were to the Russians' advantage -- they minimized German advantages, which were related to maneuver, initiative and flexibility.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I've also thought Hitler should have allowed Gen. Paulus to withdraw the VI Army from Stalingrad before it was trapped and surrounded by the Russians.
Ad astra! Sean
I have seen it claimed that one dispute between Hitler & the German generals was that Hitler wanted priority to go to taking Ukraine for the food & the Caucasus region for the petroleum, while at least some of the generals wanted priority to go to taking Moscow. The person making the claim thought Hitler was right on that particular issue. Petroleum & food being essential for keeping the armies going.
Does anyone have information that would point either way on that?
Well, the fall of Moscow in 1941 might well have destroyed Stalin politically -- he wasn't popular, to put it mildly, and the Germans hadn't yet made it plain what they had planned for the Russians. That's speculative, of course.
Kaor, Jim and Mr. Stirling!
Jim: Hard to say. From the Germans POV there were good arguments for either focusing on getting to Moscow (as the generals wished) or reaching the Volga river and Stalingrad, as Hitler wanted.
Mr. Stirling: I tend to agree, toppling Stalin and the Soviet regime, or at least forcing them to scuttle east of the Urals might have made other objectives, like the line of the Volga, achievable.
It was sheer stupidity of the Nazis to let their idiot ideas about "race" enable them to treat the Ukrainians like "sub-humans." The Soviet regime was so bitterly hated in Ukraine that if the Nazis had been even half way decent to them the Ukrainians would have been glad to accept German rule.
Ad astra! Sean
The irony being that Slavs are actually genetically closer to the Proto-Indo-Europeans than Germanics... not all that much, granted, but they are. Balts are closest of all.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
All those blond blue eyed Slavs and Balts sure seems to fit Nazi stereotypes of the ideal "Aryan"! (Sardonic snort)
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the irony is that the -original- Aryans almost certainly -did- include a lot of blonds with grey, blue or green eyes. But they were very far to the east.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I think Himmler, of all people, even sent "scientific" expeditions to investigate such issues.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yes, he did. Of course, if they'd known about DNA they'd have had to hush a lot up!
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