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Assuming you’ve got permission to stay long term:Don’t talk about religion uninvited, or assume other people are church-goers. Religion here is private.Cider is “hard” - often extremely so.In general you will find there is a lot less bureaucracy than in the US, but you may find there is more when it comes to altering the structure of your house, changing a building from residential to commercial or back (because it affects your local taxes) and buying a gun, should you wish to do so.You can cross most roads (except motorways) wherever you like, but since we drive on the left remember to look *right* as you set out to cross. Americans have been killed here by stepping off the pavement (sidewalk) while looking left.Unless you are going by motorway all the way, it will take you much longer to drive, say, 100 miles than it would in the US - the roads are narrower and twistier and there’s more traffic.Nearly all cars are stick-shift.Many older houses have a standing water tank. The water from the cold tap in the kitchen is always straight from the mains and “potable” - if in doubt, don’t drink from other taps.We tend not to put much ice in drinks, as that dilutes the drink. Instead, we chill the drink itself.British food is generally less sweet than in the US, and unless you are into hot chilis it will often be spicier than you’re used to. In particular, beware of English mustard. Half a teaspoon is enough to sand-blast your sinuses.Whatever you may be told, the haggis is a sausage, not an animal.More will be added as I think of them:British people, especially men, often use what sounds like quite insulting language to their friends. If you hear a guy say “There you are, yah mangy cunt!” they are probably the best of friends, whereas rigid politeness suggests either that they are strangers or that they dislike each other. If British people are rude to you, in a jokey not-very-aggressive way, that means that you’ve been accepted as one of us.Politics: the monarch (currently Elizabeth II) is a ceremonial head of state. Patriotic enthusiasm is invested in the Royal Family but they do not have any official political power. However, they are immensely hard-working, acting as trade ambassadors and running charities, and the Queen has soft influence in politics owing to her decades of expertise and commonsense, and being the Prime Minister’s nominal boss. No, they’re not expensive, as they generate huge tourist income and improved trade deals. Depending on how you view the ownership of the Crown Estates, the Royal Family is either a net generator of money, or they cost us about $1.50 per head per year.Overt, flag-waving patriotism is sometimes seen in Scotland but is frowned on in the rest of the UK, except when we’re in the finals of some international sporting event. The British army is divided into regiments. Soldiers fight and die as members of their regiment, and the quasi-magical power which Americans invest in the Stars and Stripes is here invested in regimental flags. The Union Jack is just our logo, with little more magic or import than the Nike symbol, but regimental flags are never destroyed - the old ones are hung up in the rafters of old churches and pubs and allowed to rot away over centuries. [And by the way, any house less than 100 years old counts as modern.]The UK as a whole has a parliament. Scotland has a parliament, although some functions in Scotland are carried out by the UK parliament, and it has two tiers of MP, with MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament) sitting at home and MPs representing Scotland in the UK parliament. Northern Ireland has an Assembly, and Wales has a Parliament. England has nothing of its own, but the UK parliament is based there.When we have an election - which takes six weeks from calling an election to voting - we vote for local Members of Parliament who will represent our local area, and most of whom will belong to a political party. The party which ends up with the highest number of elected MPs forms the next government - although if they have less than 50% of the available seats they may form a coalition with a smaller party. The Prime Minister is simply the leader of the party in power, and can at any time be unseated by a parliamentary vote of No Confidence, and replaced, the new party leader then becoming PM. It is also possible to have a vote of No Confidence in the entire government, in which case a new election will be called - otherwise elections are held every five years, or whenever the current government feels a need to test its own level of support.There are no limits on how many times a PM can be PM, and almost no limits on who can be PM, so long as they can get a party to appoint them as its leader. It is customary, although not mandatory, for a PM to also be an MP, and to be an MP you just have to be at least 18, be a born or naturalised citizen of the UK, any Commonwealth country or the Republic of Ireland, and persuade some constituency to elect you.The PM appoints senior MPs to be Ministers in the ruling committee called the Cabinet, with each Minister overseeing a particular aspect of government such as transport, agriculture etc. The leader of the second-largest party is called The Leader of the Opposition and appoints a Shadow Cabinet of Opposition Ministers, who pay special attention to the decisions of their opposite number in the real cabinet, and are ready to take over real Ministerial roles if their party wins the next election.As a new but long-term resident you will iirc be required to pay £700 for the use of the NHS every 30 months for the first five years, over and above your regular taxes, to make up for the fact that you don’t have a lifetime of contributions behind you. This will give you full access to the NHS.Some hospitals have “walk in” clinics for some things, that you can just turn up to, and most hospitals have an Accident & Emergency or a Minor Injuries department which you can just go to if you are hurt. If you have a serious emergency you just call an ambulance. But for most things you go first to see your GP (General Practitioner/family doctor), who will assess you and arrange an appointment with a hospital specialist if needed. In most places you can get an urgent appointment with your GP on the same day and a non-urgent one in about a week.If you need medical advice when your GP is shut, can’t get to A&E but don’t think you are sick enough for an ambulance, there is a 24-hour NHS hotline on 111, who will advise you and if necessary send someone out to you with medication.Aside from spectacles, and a few things like health MOTs for insurance purposes and purely elective cosmetic surgery, the NHS covers everything and the standard is world class, except for mental health which is badly overstretched. There are no charges over your regular taxes, except for a moderate co-pay for dentistry, and £9.50 per prescription in England only. Both of these only apply if you are between 18 and 59 and your income is over a certain level, and there are special concessions for people with certain underlying conditions. If you have to pay for prescriptions you can get a prescription pass which covers you for a whole year for about £106. If you are poor, under 18 or 60+, you can also get a £67 grant towards the cost of spectacles every two years.The NHS is usually blisteringly fast for any urgent problems (you can go to your GP with a suspicious breast lump at 9am and be out of surgery by 5pm on the same day), but there can be a long wait for things like varicose vein surgery or fertility treatment. You have the option of going to a private hospital for faster care for non-urgent problems, and/or for better hospital food and a private room, and it is often better to go private for mental health. Private hospitals are competing with the NHS - they know their patients could just wait longer and get seen free at point of use - so they have to provide a good service at a reasonable price. But note they do not have ICUs or deal with emergencies, except for the sort of super-expensive private hospital patronised by Russian oligarchs.The minimum legal age for drinking alcohol, in private, in moderation and under parental supervision, is five. At sixteen you can drink in a pub provided food is being served, and at eighteen all restrictions are off, aside from the “Don’t get so drunk you make a nuisance of yourself” which applies to everyone.

The German Army was designed around a mobile attack strategy that used flank counterattack as a defensive strategy. They never considered a fighting withdrawal or static defense line and were often surprised to find themselves on the defensive in Russia. What made the German Army so effective was that every soldier was expected to think, not just follow orders, and take effective independent action to achieve a goal. The Russian Army was exactly the opposite. The Russian soldier was expected to do nothing more than follow orders, even to his detriment and was punished severely for independent thinking. As a result, the Germans were able to accomplish astounding feats, because everyone was thinking, not just the commander who might have limited situational awareness. In addition, German commanders were unique in that they lead from the front. They saw what the men saw, and were able to make instant, good decisions without the lag of communication and analysis. No other army had the casualty rate of senior officers, even Generals, that the Germans experienced. This would hurt them more and more as the war went on and experienced leaders (especially sergeants) were killed or wounded.The Germans never could have won a protracted war and were never geared up to wage such a war. They didn't go to 24 hour shifts at their industrial plants til well into the war; they never were more than a few weeks from running out of fuel; they never were as mechanized as people believe. They didn't even have a 4-wheel drive truck as a main piece of equipment. As for numbers, the US manufactured 800,000 2 1/2 ton trucks to 100,000 of the German equivalent truck. And the Germans never made a heavy bomber that could attack Russian industrial centers far from the front.On the plus side, the German Army was centered around the MG34 and MG42 machine guns, the most advanced machine gun in the world, so powerful it could cut a man in half. It was lightweight, barrels changed fast and as defensive operations became more important, it used a specialized lafette that made it effective at long ranges. The entire German unit was designed to support this machine gun and everyone was required to carry extra ammunition for it. You will often see photos of German soldiers with a belt of machine gun ammunition around their necks. The Russians would charge this machine gun with abandon, and it so sickened many German machine gunners that they would vomit after the battle, having killed hundreds of Russians before they got close. (In the photo below is an MG42 machine gun and lafette. The lafette was light enough to be man-carried and contained a sight and could even be operated by a crank. Short bursts were ideal, but in heavy combat, constant shooting was possible, but the barrel would eventually melt. Asbestos gloves were part of the standard kit, along with two spare barrels.)On the other hand, the Germans were carrying the KAR98 five shot rifle, the absolute best rifle in the world - in 1905. Every other army had a better standard rifle than the Germans. The American M1 so empowered the American infantry that the Germans saw the need to create the Gewehr 43, a similar self-loading long arm, however, by the time it was perfected it was too late for the Germans, though in defensive operations, it, along with the Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifle did make up for lost manpower somewhat. The Germans didn't even possess a powerful infantry mortar, using instead a man-portable 56mm mortar and other light mortars. However, they captured so many bigger mortars from the Russians on such a regular basis that they were able to distribute them throughout the various fronts and simply manufacture ammunition. (In the top photo below is the Granatwerfer 36, the main German infantry mortar at the start of the war. It was easily man portable and the only mortar ever made to use a trigger. However, it was very short ranged and the rounds were not powerful enough to destroy even lightly armored vehicles so as the war progressed it migrated more to the Volkssturm as the Germans turned to captured Russian mortars more and more often. The second photo is the Gewehr 43, an auto-loading rifle similar to the American M1 Garand but with various improvements. It had a removable box magazine that could hold more ammo than the M1, was lighter because it used the KAR98 cartridge and was organically able to fire on automatic as well as semi-automatic. American GIs often converted the M1 to full auto in the field, but because of the size of the 30-06 cartridge (selected by Douglas MacArthur over the .30 cal because the US had so much left over from WW1), the cycle rate was very, very slow. It took the Germans over 18 months to perfect their version and the soldiers hated it at first, so by the time it was a good weapon, it was too late to make a difference. The third photo is of the Sturmgewehr 44, the first "assault rifle", coined so by Hitler. This gun was revolutionary. What made it special was the "kurz cartridge", a cross between a pistol and rifle bullet still used in assualt weapons today. The banana magazine was also new. This gun gave the Germans superior, reliable firepower for any situation but by the time it came out Germany was already on the ropes. Captured copies were not appreciated by the Americans because of the sloppy workmanship, but this weapon influenced every single assault rifle since then)As German fortunes waned, the Germans were hampered by many things: Hitler refused permission for the Germans to retreat, crippling their ability to reduce salients. Secondly, they never had the equipment to move their men from battle in a fighting withdrawal -- everything was horse drawn or on foot except for critical equipment. This slowed down any defensive maneuver. And horses take time to breed and train. At the beginning of the war the life span of a horse in the service of the German army was about 6 months. By the end of the war, that number had been reduced to about 6 weeks, and they ended their lives in the stew pot. At Stalingrad the going price for a horse was one house beam, which was used for firewood since the temps were often -30C or colder. Europe was depopulated of horses, and it takes a team of up to six and even ten horses to move a single artillery piece. Horses died by the millions and in this way, Germany lost almost all of its critically needed heavy artillery even before the pocket closed at Stalingrad because they didn't have the horses or the motorized prime movers to bring them into the pocket and into position. This was an enormous blow. And as always, the Germans were short of gasoline and artillery shells, two of the most important things in warfare. As a result, the Germans were frequently cut off and surrounded by the Russians who would then reduce the "Kessels", or pockets of surrounded troops. After Stalingrad, the biggest Kessel of them all, the average German troop was terrified of being cut off - and it happened a great deal because of Hitler's stubbornness. A condition called "Kessel Fever" would set in where the troops would feel doomed. No one wanted to be captured by the Russians. The German leadership spent a great deal of effort to keep morale up and truth be told, the Luftwaffe performed miracles supplying surrounded German troops. After Stalingrad, the Luftwaffe never wanted to feel the heat of blame again and went to extraordinary efforts to airlift the wounded and bring in supplies and gasoline. The Germans were extremely innovative and while the JU52 remained the backbone of the German supply fleet and the HE 111 was often used as a transport instead of a bomber, the Germans tried many, many things including building the biggest and heaviest seaplane of the war, the BV238, and the first cargo planes using principles still in use today, the Arado 232 and the Messerschmitt "Gigant", an impressivebut slow plane that could carry an enormous amount of equipment but was slow and clumsy. A quarter of the entire fleet was shot down in one sortie attempting to resupply Rommel. After that, they were dispersed to the Eastern front. (In the photos above is the BV 238, the heaviest plane of the war and the second largest. It was a supply seaplane designed to re-supply the Germans on the Eastern front. It went nowhere. The second photo is the Messchershmitt "Gigant", a massive transport plane that could carry an enormous amount of equipment and had many defensive guns, but was very slow and unable to maneuver so unless the Germans had absolute air superiority, it was always a sitting duck. As can be shown in this photo, it was very, very easy to shoot down.)When trapped in the Kessel, defensive operations centered around a few key goals: stopping the Russians from penetrating and splitting the surrounded army; maintaining the high ground; finding the Russian weak spot; and fighting through the weak spot to German forces outside the Kessel. All of these efforts were extremely arduous and wasted significant men and materiel, something the Germans could not afford and would not have had to do if Hitler had allowed his generals more freedom of movement - the Germans lost fully 25 percent of all German equipment at Stalingrad. It would take six months of production to replace it. At Cherkassy, the trapped German divisions lost almost 100 percent of their tanks, trucks and equipment in the break out. This pattern would be repeated over and over. Hube's Pocket, Tarnopol, Sevastopol, Jassy, and dozens of others became tragic killing grounds as the pace of the German collapse increased, and tens of thousands of desperate German soldiers, backed up against wide rivers in freezing weather, were abandoned to their fates, and the Russians showed no mercy. Early in the war the Luftwaffe had experienced a spectacular victory supplying the Demyansk pocket and allowing the Germans to crush a massively superior Russian army while experiencing relatively few casualties of their own. It was because of this that Goring thought he could supply Stalingrad but Stalingrad was on an entirely different scale and required four times the supplies and ended up receiving less than ten percent of what was required. Of 90,000 soldiers who surrendered at Stalingrad out of an original force exceeding 170,000, only 6000 ever made it home.(The photo below shows the Arado 232, which was the first to use cargo plane principles still in used today - boxcar-car like design, low center of gravity, many short landing wheels, a raised rear end with a high tail and ramp. This plane was much appreciated by troops for its ability to rapidly deploy equipment but it had the unfortunate design of sharing engines with the JU52 which meant that plane was always prioritized during construction, so very few of this plane was made. The Arado 232 was the last plane to leave Stalingrad.)As time went on, finding generals with defensive skills became a priority. Previously these men had mostly been hidden in the shadows because defensive skills were ridiculed by the Germans. The Germans didn't even believe in snipers until Stalingrad because they believed snipers to be cowardly weapons of defense, not offense. However, they learned that a single sniper can hold up an entire division or break up an army's advance and after Stalingrad much emphasis was put on using snipers for defensive purposes. The best German snipers either used captured Russian sniping equipment with explosive bullets or oftentimes used very expensive long range hunting weapons not designed for military use. It was only towards the end of the war that the Germans developed their own purpose-built sniping guns, including infra-red night scopes, but by that time it was too late to change the course of battle. A favorite tactic of Generals like Heinrici as described in "The Last Battle" and other sources was to use his intelligence resources and instincts to determine when the Russians would attack, then pull all resources back and let the Russians hammer empty ground with their artillery, then in the lull after the softening up phase, rush back to the front. This technique was extremely effective. As the war progressed, the Russians had more and more artillery until they could batter German positions into the dirt. This strategy was so effective that post-war strategy of the Russians centered around artillery bombardment. At one point in 1945 the Germans, commanded by a nameless, clueless German general, sent an entire division into attack against prepared Russian positions. The Russian artillery destroyed the entire German division to a man, not a single survivor. Heinrici swore this would never happen to his men and it was his efforts the made things so difficult for the Russians at the Seelow Heights. When things got really grim, he took it upon himself to send his men home, knowing the war would be over in days and not wanting them to be the last to die.At the time of Operation Bagration in July 1944, the writing was on the walls and the High Command knew it was over. Bagration, the Russian attack in the East, was the most successful offensive operation along a long front in the history of warfare. Despite warnings from Gehlen and German Generals such as Kietel that the entire Eastern Front was a house of cards, Hitler wouldn't let the Germans retreat and the Russians cut through them like a knife through butter. They traveled hundreds of kilometers the first day alone and only stopped because their supply trains could not keep up. Entire German armies and divisions were now trapped behind Russian lines. Many German generals such as Walter Nehring earned enormous kudos for keeping the desperate armies together after this enormous debacle and fighting through the Russian lines from behind simply to get back into German held territory. It was extremely costly and exhausting -- and the men who made it back onto German territory had to be thrown right back into battle. There was little respite. For a gripping account of the Germans trapped behind enemy lines and fighting to get back, read "Red Storm on the Reich", one of the best sources on German combined arms efforts in defensive fighting that I have ever read.(This is a photo of German General Walter Nehring who, along with General Breith and a few others, saved German Army Group Centre after Operation Bagration forced much of the battered army behind enemy lines. In a feat of arms rarely equaled, they fought the Russians from behind to get through the lines and link up with the main German armies still fighting the Russians. In what became known as "Nehring's Roving Cauldron", this was an unheard of event, but the German high command was still upset with his inability to stop the entire Russian army in the first place).As the war ground on, more and more resources were diverted from offensive weapons like the Tiger 1 and Tiger 2 and Panther tanks to defensive weapons like tank destroyers and mobile artillery. The Germans became expert and developed the Sturmgescheutz class of tank destroyers that was without doubt the finest weapon in its class of the war, with many still being used by other nations up until the 1960s. The Hetzer class of tank destroyers was the apotheosis of this type of vehicle - fast, powerful, low profile, cheap to make, reliable, easy on gas, even though it was built on a Czech 38T chassis. There were still a few in use up to the 1990s. Other series, such as the Marder and Wespe, were not as good and the crews suffered but they offered the Germans some level of defense and were a stopgap. The crews using the Marder faced a certain death sentence since they were open and employed light armor and were susceptible to indirect fire, hand grenades and molotov cocktails and the like. They were supposed to be used as mobile howitzers or stand-off artillery but were thrust into the role of tank destroyer and the crews died in droves. Only a few survived the war. Some were mounted with left-over World War 1 guns. Tanks like the massive Elefant were useless in offense and easily destroyed but placed in a defensive role were surprisingly effective. The kill rate for the Elephant was 350 enemy tanks for every Elefant killed, as reported in the book "German Heavy Tank Unit 653: A History". Only 80 were made and more than half were destroyed before seeing combat of any kind, and they would spontaneously catch fire or break down, but when used by the right crews, they made a difference. Another weapon of desperation that was far more effective as both self-propelled artillery and in an anti-tank role and made a difference was the Nashorn, a long range tank killer that held the record for destroying an enemy tank at 5000 meters, a record held until the end of the 20th Century. But the Germans, even with their kill rates, still could not match the unstoppable industrial might of the Allies and they never had the fuel to maneuver as they needed.(In this photo at the top is the Sturmgeschutz 3 tank destroyer. As the war went on, the Germans moved towards more and more defensive weapons. This tank was much cheaper to produce than the Tiger and as a result, this was the most prolific tank destroyer of the war and the second most frequently built tank by the Germans (after the Panzer 4). It had a low profile, an enormously powerful gun, two machine guns, radios to both ground and the air, and fans for evacuating smoke. It also had bolt-on armor decades before any future tank. This allowed easier repairs and reduced weight for rapid movement in rear areas. It was very successful and could be used against vehicles and as mobile artillery. It's drawback was that the whole tank had to be turned to move the gun, and elevation was weak. This tank continued to be manufactured even after the war. The second photo is the Hetzer, a word that means "Hunter". This was another advance of tank destroyer technology borne of desperation and built on the reliable Czech 38T chassis. This tank could be manufactured quickly, was hard to hit, moved very fast, was reliable and easy to repair and had a powerful gun. Notice it has road wheels similar to the Russian T-34. Overlapping wheels as the Tiger used were problematic in bad terrain, froze together in winter or got rocks stuck between them. It was time-consuming and difficult repair them in the field. The Hetzer was in production up to the 1960s. I think Switzerland was the last country to still be using it, even up til the 1990s.)As things got bad for the Germans, more and more of the Luftwaffe had to be spent defending the Reich against American and British air raids to the point where 1/2 the German air force was on the defense in Germany and no longer supporting the ground armies in Russia. This was a major contributor to the collapse of the German armies because the German air forces, which maintained a higher level of skill than the Russians right up to the end of the war, were not available and the loss of this air power was keenly felt. The value of air attacks was destroying rear areas and marshaling yards, railroads, locomotives and supply trains and breaking up ground formations. When this was not done the brunt of the Russian attack fell on the increasingly weakened German ground forces who were forced into defensive positions and local counter-attacks rather than long range movement and flanking attacks that previously had been so successful, especially at Kharkov. Without this ability, the Germans were essentially doomed. No matter how effective their defensive abilities, and they were valiant, it was a battle of time and attrition, something the Germans could never win. The other point of having the air forces on the eastern front was to counter the ever-increasing numbers of Russian ground attack fighters. It cannot be stressed enough how demoralizing it was for retreating German troops to be attacked by Russian aircraft. There are countless references to the destruction of machines, supply columns, troop trains - and spirit - in the literature. Many German soldiers were so emotionally impacted by the constant attacks that for years after the war whenever they heard a low flying plane, they would throw themselves to the ground and seek cover. Nevertheless, when the Germans did appear in the skies, they posted unheard of kill rates. On the ground, especially against Russian armor and heroes like Wittman and Knispel (in tanks) and Rudel (in the air) were easily made. On the ground and from a defensive standpoint the Germans were again at a disadvantage because they could no longer recover their damaged heavy tanks and had to abandon them in the field. In the past, the Germans had been able to rescue and repair up to 75 percent of their damaged tanks, vastly supplementing whatever they got from Germany. Now, because it took three prime movers to tow a single Tiger Tank, they had to destroy them in place. Additionally, because the Germans were unable to standardize on any TOE there was often a shortage of spare parts for the large number of captured, jury-rigged and one-off pieces of equipment. For example, the Germans captured so many British Bren Gun carriers that they simply repainted them in German colors, mounted rocket launchers on them and formed purpose built units of them against the Russians. But when one broke down or was damaged, either parts had to be cannibalized from another damaged unit, or it had to be burned. It's not a path to victory to be forced to depend on captured equipment to supply your army, although the Germans were very successful mounting an entire division of captured Russian T-34s against the Russians at Kursk, probably the last time so much captured equipment was used in one place at one time.(In this photo we see a large number of captured British Bren Gun carriers repainted in German colors. They have three barrel rocket launchers attached and used Nebelwerfer ammunition. The Nebelwerfer was a light, cheap to make indirect fire rocket launcher with six barrels that caused great havoc among the Russians. It was not accurate but it could be towed by the smallest vehicle and still deliver hard-hitting force into a general vicinity. Every German unit was assigned at least one battery of three of these weapons, and over the course of the war they fired over 2 million rounds. This weapon was so effective that the factories making the ammunition were specifically targeted by the Western Allies at the request of the Russians. The Germans even mounted these on an armored Maultier tractor.The Bren Gun Carrier holds the record for most widely manufactured armored vehicle of all time, with over 600,000 made by the British during its 40 year lifespan. The Germans captured so many of these vehicles and they were so reliable and effective that it made perfect sense to re-use them. In the bottom photo we see a captured B-17 Flying Fortress wearing Luftwaffe markings. The Germans had an entire squadron of captured Allied planes and used them either for reconnaissance or to supply their forces on the Eastern Front. No hard evidence exists that they were used to carry out combat missions.)The invasion of Normandy caught the Germans by surprise. They knew the invasion was coming, but not when and the Allies did an excellent job sowing misinformation about where the main thrust would take place. As a result, the Germans refused to move powerful divisions against Normandy because they expected a larger invasion somewhere else. And the Germans could have prevailed had they been quick. They had 50 divisions available in the vicinity, only one of which was completely intact, the powerful Panzer Lehr division, but Hitler's stubborness and infighting between the Generals resulted in static emplacements that eventually doomed the Germans. When asked his advice about the strategy the Germans should employ to thwart the Allies, von Rundstedt yelled to Guderian, "Sue for peace, you idiot!". He was replaced by von Kluge, a brilliant tactitian and General who engineered the conquering of southern Russia early in the war. Within a month, he killed himself, unable to stem the Allied advance.Despite their indecision the Germans were able to upset the Allied timetable so significantly that Eisenhower demanded a full-out assault called "Operation Goodwood" to break through the German lines. In two days of vicious combat the Germans destroyed almost 500 British and American tanks and shattered the confidence of Allied armor troops for much of the remainder of the war. In addition, they killed or wounded over 10,000 Allied troops, at the loss of about 100 German tanks and 4000 German killed or captured. Although a tactical success for the Germans, in the end the Germans were forced to pull back under cover of artillery fire and the Allies followed up with the much more successful Operation Cobra involving 1000s of fighter bombers destroying German trucks and tanks that dared to show themselves in the open. It was in this battle that German tank ace Michael Wittman destroyed dozens of Allied tanks and vehicles single-handedly and halted a major Allied advance. In the end, it was Allied air power that doomed the Germans in France. Fully 10 percent of all German equipment was lost before it ever reached the front and in support of the Allied armies, their air power destroyed German supply trains before they even got close to their freight yards. In one raid, over 2000 boxcars in a French freight yard were destroyed causing significant hardship to the German Army on the ground.Because the Germans were adept at using the terrain and anything available in defense, once the Allies attacked at D-Day the Germans were able to cause great consternation, at first with hedgerows in France, and later by blowing up the dams in Holland to make the ground too wet for Allied advances. It's important to note that the Germans broke troop units into 4 classes - Class 1 was "sufficient for all military operations"; Class 2 was "sufficient for limited offensive operations"; Class 3 "sufficient for all defensive operations" and Class 4, "limited defensive operations only". As the war progressed it became increasingly difficult to ever find a unit or division that was Class 1, Panzer Lehr being the exception. In any case, the entire 7th German Armee, including Panzer Lehr, was destroyed in Falaise, mostly by Allied air power.The Germans were amazed at how tentative the Americans and British were in offense, and how incredibly myopic they were. The Western Allies would launch an attack, achieve the objective and then stop, even when unopposed. Germans had been taught to keep attacking beyond objectives. Had they been well supplied and manned, the Germans could have held off the Allies indefinitely, but their shortages kept them on the run and the decisive factor was the overwhelming air power of the Allies that prevented the Germans from hiding or moving during the day. At this point it is critical to point out the debacle of the Falaise Gap in France. Against all common sense and the strident recommendations of his Generals, Hitler ordered an all out attack by the entire German Army in western France to push the Allies off the continent. The entire army was caught in a small pocket about 5 kilometers wide and was wiped out by American and British air power. There was next to nothing left in that part of Europe to stop the Allies from rolling right to Berlin and many German Generals expected to see the Americans in Berlin by September, 1944. However, inexplicably, the Americans and British did not follow up. This time it was British General Montgomery who went apoplectic trying to convince Eisenhower that the way to victory was open, but the Allies didn't budge and the German high command moved in an experienced Panzer army from the east to shore up the line. By that time the opportunity for a quick end to the war had passed. Nevertheless, the Falaise Gap represented a loss of enormous amount of men and materiel the Germans could never make up.By the time D-Day occurred, the defending Germans were mostly "Class 4", garrison troops. That they were able to hold the Allies as long as they did was a miracle. Rommel was nominally in charge of defense, but von Rundstedt had overall control and both men did not like or trust each other. Rommel's strategy was to crush the Allies before they made a beach head; von Rundstedt wanted to let them beach, then destroy them. However, unlike Rommel, von Runstedt had always enjoyed air superiority. As a result, Rommel was not allowed to move the men and materiel into position that could have affected the outcome and von Rundstedt's philosophy was wrong -- it was predicated on the notion that the Allies could never mount a major assault on the beaches when in fact the Allies had virtually limitless resources (almost 7000 ships participated in the invasion) and the Luftwaffe was unavailable. Karl Doenitz had positioned U-boats and ordered them to make suicide attacks if necessary and stop the Allied invasion at all costs, but they were spectacularly unsuccessful. A few troop ships were lost but the Royal Navy bombed the U-boats enough to keep them at bay. Since most of the Luftwaffe was deep in Germany defending it from air attacks, there were only a handful of sorties managed against the Allies and these were completely ineffective.According to General Meier in "Drama Between Budapest and Vienna", Hitler launched the last major offensive of the war, "Operation Spring Awakening" with the last battle-worthy German Armies, the 6th Armee and the 6th Panzer Armee, consisting of a handful of major armored divisions such as Das Reich and Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, none of whom was Class 1 ready at the time. (Most Westerners are taught that the "Battle of the Bulge" (Ardennes Offensive) was the last major German offensive of the war, but this is wrong. The attack to relieve the 9th Mountain Division in Budapest was really the last serious offensive made with powerful armies and supported by the remaining offensive power of the Luftwaffe, such as it was.) The battle to relieve Budapest failed despite three major attempts to relieve the garrison there, called "Operation Konrad" and what's more, the German army had to retreat into Vienna to Hitler's disgust. He made his astounding "battle cuff" order so shaming the German Army, telling his SS men that they were no longer worthy of wearing a divisional battle cuff. For men fighting to the last man despite being severely wounded, with no equipment and for a lost cause, this was not a good morale builder. The overall commander, General Balck, refused to implement the order at risk to his own life, but by then, it was just a few days before the end. It's important to note that the Germans who retreated and fought in Vienna were in bitter combat til the very last day of the war, and they won a few scattered engagements and re-took some towns from the Russians. In his memoirs Balck reports the heartbreak of his men as they watched from hilltops as the Russians assembled and his men no longer had the artillery to break up the attack that they would later have to repel with their blood. That was on April 30. The very last supply train arrived on April 8; the very last reinforcements, a pitiful half battalion, showed up in the middle of April. In the end, the 6th Armee and 6th Panzer Armee, despite being in hard, constant combat with the Russians since February, wheeled about and surrendered to the Americans outside Vienna. A strong rear-guard regiment volunteered to hold off the Russians, and then surrender to the Russians to allow the rest of the army to surrender to the western allies where they thought they would get better treatment. Most of the sacrificial force, as well as the men of the 9th Mountain Division, Feldernhalle and Maria Teresa divisions captured in Budapest never returned home from Russian PoW camps.In Italy one of the fastest retreats in history occurred in the Po Valley as the German army, still about 600,000 men strong, raced to cross the Po River and escape to Germany. General Field Marshall Al Kesselring did nothing to stop them -- organized resistance was no longer possible. The American 5th Army chased the Germans from Florence to the end in just 19 days. When the Americans arrived at the Po they were amazed to find mountains of German equipment in flames as the German army swam across the river to supposed safety. Eventually, more than half million men surrendered to the Americans a few days before Germany capitulated.The German Luftwaffe and anti-aircraft corps were more effective in destroying Allied planes than they are ever given credit. Something like 75,000 Allied aircraft were destroyed by the Germans during the war and proportionally more Allied men died in the air than in any other branch of combat. Towards the end of the war the Germans were able to launch a single thousand plane raid against the Allies (Operation Baseplate) but it was a miserable failure. They lost 273 planes and only destroyed an equivalent number of Allied planes on the ground, but they lost too many experienced pilots and the Allies only lost planes that they could easily replace. The Germans never achieved their objective and wasted an enormous amount of fuel and materiel and especially pilots. This attack would have been better served holding back the Russians, but instead is was in support of the futile Ardennes offensive. The Luftwaffe never recovered from this debacle, but the war was just a few months from ending by that time anyway.(This photo shows the 88mm gun being used in a ground support role. It took 8 men to serve this gun, but it had a unique capability that similar Allied weapons didn't have -- it could fire at a 0 degree angle making it ideal for ground support. A similar version in 128mm was also made, with special ammunition, that could shoot down Allied planes at 20,000 feet. It was unparalleled technology that was never further improved. Not many of these guns were made and most of them ringed Berlin from large, indestructible flak towers and rained destruction on the Russians until the very last minute of the war.)As far as the war at sea was concerned, the war in the West was lost for Germany probably by late 1942 and perhaps earlier. A titanic struggle between Admiral Doenitz and Raeder delayed the production and introduction of critically needed U-boats at a time when they could have tipped the scale. Raeder was a surface navy man, but the Germans never developed effective fleet tactics, as seen by the loss of the Graf Spee and Bismarck. Doenitz believed that U-boats were the key, but he only was able to put 12 on station at any time at the beginning of the war (12 on station; 12 returning; 12 heading out) and these still brought England to its knees. By the time Doenitz took control of the Navy, the Allies had been able to develop convoy tactics and air cover that decimated the U-boat fleet. By the end of the war, there was an 80 percent chance that crews leaving port would never return. By that time, it was almost impossible just to leave the bay without being attacked by British ships. The captain of the U-505, the German U-boat captured off Bermuda and now sitting in Chicago, blew his brains out with a pistol in the middle of a sustained depth charger attack, cracking under the strain. His under-trained lieutenant took over for him. That crew was lucky -- they were captured and survived. The greatest success for the Germans was destruction of the Russian-bound convoy PQ17 by U-boats and combined German forces. Twenty four of 35 ships were sunk. Stalin had depended on the equipment on the ships, the loss of which caused severe hardship. He could not believe anyone could lose so many ships and accused the Americans of perfidy. Nevertheless, for the Germans, U-boat service after 1942 was tantamount to a death sentence.(Here is a photo of three Type 21 submarines captured by the Americans after the war. When the war ended, Karl Doenitz tried to get his navy to scuttle their ships but many did not do so and many subs fell into the hands of the Allies. They were examined and most of them were scuttled or blown up at once during Operation Deadlight. Some, such as the Type 21 "William Bauer" (named for the German who invented one of the first subs in history) went on to other nations for military or research and are now museums. The Type 21 sub was far and away the best sub of the war with too many new innovations to mention. It arrived too late to make a difference and never saw combat though 2 years earlier it would have changed the outcome of the war in the West. The nuclear sub "Nautilus" built by the Americans used many of the principles developed for this sub.As things got worse for the Germans, a large piece of Hitler's strategy was centered around "tying down" Russian or Allied forces. When it became clear that Stalingrad was lost, Hitler reduced the efforts to relieve the garrison but ordered them to fight hard anyway because the battle tied down three Russian armies and von Manstein was in the fight of his life for the very survival of the German army outside Moscow. If Stalingrad simply surrendered as von Paulus wanted, the Russians could have moved their armies decisively against Manstein. Similarly, even though Hitler and Doenitz had lost all respect and interest in the German surface navy, they kept them in operation as much as possible because big ships like the Tirpitz tied down a great deal of English resources. Meanwhile, although it was kept secret for many years, a German E-boat attack on English and American troops practicing for D-Day in Lyme Bay killed more men than the Germans killed at Utah Beach on D-Day. English inattentiveness was the cause -- tasked with protecting the troop ships, they didn't believe the Germans could ever manage to enter the bay with such a large force.(As an aside, the S130, a German E-boat that took part in the attack is the last surviving example of its type and is owned by a rich Englishman. It had a wide and varied combat history and is shown below. This E-boat was still being used by the Allies for intelligence and secret attacks against the Russians in the Black Sea up until the 1950s, crewed by the same German sailors who fought in the war. By coincidence, E-boats were almost identical to US PT boats used in the Pacific).Similarly, the German attack at Bari, in Italy, is called the "Little Pearl Harbor". The English said the Germans, who were in retreat and in dire straits, were incapable of launching a single bomber against the critical supply harbor. Generalfieldmarschall Al Kesselring rounded up 186 bombers and fighters and made a night attack. To the pilot's amazement, the entire harbor was lit up -- they didn't even have to light flares. The Allies were completely unprepared. There was no anti-aircraft fire and no fighter defense. The Germans not only wreaked incredible havoc, but they blew up American ships secretly carrying poison gas, causing a large number of casualties. This was kept secret for decades after the war.Along the same lines, the Germans took great advantage of Allied blind spots in planning. In a daring defensive move, Kesselring was able to evacuate his entire army from Sicily including the rear-guard troops who were to have been sacrificed. The Allies didn't even mount air or naval assaults to hinder them. From a purely defensive standpoint, this was one of the biggest coups of the war and cost the Allies dearly in casualties later when they faced these men in Italy.Once it was clear the war was lost the German defense became more tenacious and easier to manage. First, because they knew what awaited them when the Russians came and if they surrendered; Secondly, it became easier to supply them and communicate with their armies as their territory shrunk and thirdly the mistaken "unconditional surrender" policy of the Allies left the Germans no choice but to fight, especially when they got hold of the secret Morgenthau documents that outlined how Germany would be reduced to a vassal agrarian state after the war. In addition, there were excellent roads, rail lines and concrete surfaced runways. The Russians were denied these things until they were very close to Berlin. Even to the very end of the war the Germans were dependent on train service to move their troops and many strategic decisions were made around holding, keeping or re-taking important rail junctions or yards. It also dictated the size of the tanks that could be moved. A major problem with the Tiger Tank series was that with their combat tracks they were too wide to fit on even specialized tank carrying flat cars and had to have special narrow tracks installed to fit on the cars. It took a great deal of time, often under fire, to change the tracks at the marshaling yard and often, things were so bad the tanks had to go into combat with the inferior narrow tracks, something that caused breakdowns and tank losses when they could least be afforded. Albert Speer realized the importance of the Reichbahn and invested heavily in a standardized locomotive called the "Type 50" and made them in the thousands. Even at the end of the war there were still a large number of locomotives available to the Germans. This provided them the ability to move troops right up until the very end of the war despite the air campaign against trains. The Germans became expert at restoring main rail lines very quickly.As time went on the Germans faced the same situations over and over that hampered their ability to achieve momentum: the Russian terrain or weather would result in either a muddy morass that effectively halted blitzkrieg or the cold would make it impossible for the men and machines to function. On top of that the Germans were always short of gasoline and artillery shells, two factors that made it impossible for them to ever overcome any other factor. From the beginning of the war the Germans knew gasoline was a factor and their main southern strategy was to capture six major Russian oil fields, but they succeeded in only getting one. In Romania they had other fields, but these were bombed into submission, reducing their output to about 20 percent of optimal. In the Ruhr the Germans had unlimited coal supply and developed synthetic fuels such that almost half of all German fuel was derived in this fashion, but it was extremely complicated to make and used hard to get materials in the refining process and was low octane, not really fit for planes. On the other hand, the Germans were well known as having the best and most effective artillery in the world and they stocked up on shells. Nevertheless, the artillery was mostly moved by horses and German commanders complained that the most important guns took a day to move the same distance a tank moved in hour. As the pace of war picked up and became less static, horse drawn artillery became more of a problem, and the Germans began running out of shells and materials to make casings. It was so bad that divisional commanders had to provide permission in writing for artillery batteries to fire even five rounds, where at the beginning of the war they would saturate the enemy with hundreds of rounds. Five rounds aren't even enough to register the target, let alone fire for effect. The classic example of all this coming together is Operation Konrad, the battle to relieve Budapest and re-capture the oil fields. The Germans assembled a remarkably large combat force in the last months of the war but when the operation began, after surprising the Russians and making considerable headway, the tanks got stuck in spring mud and ran out of fuel, and the cannons were abandoned in the ensuing retreat for lack of means to move them, and they ran out of shells anyway. By the end, the Germans were reduced to classifying captured Russian mortars as "heavy artillery".The Germans were put into a position where they could not surrender. Instead they held out hope for super weapons, which even when they came, were never as effective as was hoped. The ME-262 jet fighter was revolutionary and highly advanced, but could only be in the air a short while and had a short engine life of about 25 hours. It was also susceptible at take-offs and landings and required fighter protection at those times. The Allies launched a desperation attack on the ME 262 plant at Regensburg in 1943 but the Germans shot down or damaged almost 3/4 of the 250 planes taking part in the raid, what would normally be considered a decisive defeat for the Allies -- but the planes that made it destroyed the targets and set back the ME-262 program six months. The V2 was expensive to build and its fields were often targeted or captured before it could be used (though the Germans used 5500 on England and Holland). They would have been better served building many more V1s and simply launching them en masse. The Jagdtiger was the biggest tank of the war, so powerful it could destroy any tank even after shooting through another tank in its way, but it was so heavy, slow and underpowered that most of them were abandoned for lack of fuel or broken transmissions. Much has been written about the cost of diverting limited resources to more and more crazy ideas and weapons. Ridiculous giant tanks like the Maus; incredible planes like the Dornier 335, the fastest piston engine plane of the war and for decades afterwards; huge siege guns and rail guns like Morser Karl of which 8 were made, the biggest self-propelled gun ever built and the massive rail gun Gustav and so on just siphoned off resources from things that really worked and could have been made in larger numbers. Karl did indeed assist in the capture of Sevastopol and participated in the Battle of the Bulge and the the Warsaw Uprising, but it required enormous support and resources. The rail gun Dora, for example, required a staff of 1500 soldiers and the Germans had 2 of these guns, which required custom built rail systems and had to move in a circle to change gun position since the gun itself could only be elevated or depressed, not rotated. Anzio Annie, stationed in Italy was another huge rail gun, but still smaller than Dora, had more success since 25 or so were made, used mostly for shooting at shipping in the English channel.The Luftwaffe never ran out of planes, but ran out of pilots and fuel. In the book "German Boy" the author describes growing up at an abandoned German airfield after the war and for three years German fighters and bombers sat abandoned on the tarmac until an American bulldozer crushed them into a pile of aluminum. By Sept 1944, Hitler's plan centered around ground attack fighters like the HE Salamander, an early jet that went from design to production in just 90 days, but had no pilots. The plan was to pilot them with Hitler youth who would receive 4 hours of training in unpowered gliders - and were to complete their training in combat. Only 200 saw service and they made no impact, though 600 were captured intact after the war. In fact, by then all bomber production ceased so that the Luftwaffe could prioritize fighters to defend the Reich. Crazy plans like an assassination attempt on Stalin were put in place, using the Arado 232 to drop off a commando team. Unfortunately the plane crashed outside Moscow, although some of the strike team actually made it back to Germany on foot, almost 2000 miles. Operation Leonidas was a plan to have kamikaze pilots sacrifice their lives or engage in almost suicidal behavior to explode their plane near American bombers. Finally, in April of 1945 a last-gasp attack was made on the US 8th Air Force where German pilots would ram American planes. It was a major attack, but it was so ineffective that the Americans didn't even notice it. Suicide planes were not going to turn the tide against the Allies. The Luftwaffe was so badly managed that there was a mutiny of the senior officers striving to get rid of Goering and replace him with Milch or Adolf Galland, but he prevailed. In another time, the mutineers would have been hung but Germany was so desperate for pilots, and many of them, such as air ace Galland, were so highly skilled that they could not be punished too harshly and instead were sent back into combat, which by that time was very close to a death sentence.At one point near the end in the West, a panzer leader in a German Hanomag half track realized it was futile to continue fighting when he realized his main fuel supply source was the abandoned drop tanks from American fighters, still containing fifteen or twenty gallons of aviation fuel. In Berlin, troop carriers were often seen pulling a small trailer that contained a small stove that heated wood causing it to give off methane that was piped to the engine. These vehicles had a top speed of 20 MPH. Most of Germany's synthetic fuel came from the Ruhr and when the Americans captured that source, it was the end of the German air force. There simply was no more aviation fuel, let alone supplies of specialized fuels for jets and missiles. Also, unlike the Americans and English who had access to unlimited quantities of 100 octane aviation fuel, the Germans had to make do with 87 or 90 octane as a result of the limitations of synthetic fuel distillation. It was possible to get high octane, but the quantities were low, something like 40,000 gallons per day and the results showed up in the poor performance of even the best fighters, something that could only be made up by the skill of the pilot and that declined as time went on and pilots were killed. This drove Hitler's decision to fight in Hungary and Budapest. Without those oil fields, the war was over. Albert Speer said something to this effect in 1941, foreseeing the future.Here I will make a couple of asides at the risk of boring the reader. As mentioned, the German half track, or SPC, was called a Hanomag and it was a flexible vehicle that enabled blitzkrieg because it enabled the infantry to move rapidly alongside the Panzers. It was inexpensive to make and reasonably well armored and provided a level of speed and protection needed by the German troops. Something like 15,000 were made and as time went on, the Germans learned that they could easily make many variations to support their efforts, even in the field. There were something like 40 or 50 different versions, some with rockets, some with radios, some as command cars, some with artillery added and so on. The downside was that as German fortunes declined, these SPCs ended up often being the main weapon on the line in lieu of tanks and were destroyed easily. Nevertheless, many survived the war and were used for many purposes, such as plow tractors in France.(In the photos below, is an ME262, the first operational jet fighter. This advanced fighter was made in a rush and many of the parts were made of wood and the cockpit workmanship was very crude. The fuel was extremely volatile and hard to come by, but the plane handled like a dream and armed with the MK108 30mm autocannon was a devastating weapon, but it came too late. The next photo shows the V2, an absolutely frightening advance at the time and the worlds first ballistic missile. The alternating color scheme is so ground telemetry can track altitude, attitude and speed. Werhner von Braun made it and later put Americans on the moon. When asked how the Germans became so advanced in rocketry, he told them he learned everything he knew from American Robert Goddard, the pioneer in rocket development in the 1920s, dismissed as a crank by the US government. The third photo show the "Fritz X", the first radio controlled bomb. The Allies were horrified when, instead of just falling to the earth, these massive bombs started following ships and exploding on them. One of these bombs sunk the Italian battleship Roma with enormous loss of life. The Germans added rockets to a similar device and called it the HS 293, and towards the end, even added television cameras to attack Russian tanks, but the quality of the image was too poor to be effective. Nevertheless, it was the forerunner of the precision missiles we saw blowing up buildings in Iraq in the 199os.)As time went on more conventional defensive weapons such as the Wirbelwind and the Ostwind Flakpanzers became unexpected boons. These were 4 barrel Flakvierling antiaircraft guns mounted on the bodies of damaged Panzer 4 tanks and used against soft Russian targets with incredible effectiveness. But again, the numbers were too small to make a difference.(In this photo we see a Mobelwagen, a Panzer 4 chassis with a Flakvierling attached. This weapon came later in the war and combined two excellent technologies -- the reliable Panzer 4 with the devastating, high cycle 4 barrel anti-aircraft gun. This photo show the weapon in the AA position, but in a time before rotary mini-guns, the cycle rate of this weapon devastated ground targets and could single-handedly break up infantry attacks. It was a desperation weapon because every single one made meant one less heavy tank for offense. Nevertheless, German troops loved the protection it afforded. The drawback, of course, is the open turret, which was necessary because there was no way to evacuate the huge amount of smoke generated when it fired. During operations, the vehicle looked like it was on fire because of the quantity of smoke it generated. It also required a large crew. The 37mm Flak 38 autocannon used on this weapon was so effective that the French and Danish standardized on captured guns for their armies after the war.)As the war wound down the Germans found themselves increasingly short of manpower. As the Navy became less important, sailors were transferred to the Army. As there was no fuel for the German Air Force, large numbers of Luftwaffe personnel were transferred to the Army. As numbers dwindled, the restrictions on age were loosened again and again until even men in their 60s and children in their early teens were sent off to battle -- still with their school book bags. While veteran German troops were horrified by seeing these aged men and small children in combat, they often did a phenomenal job. The Germans invented one of the most effective defensive weapons of the war -- the Panzerfaust, a disposable, one shot shaped charge that could destroy even the most powerful Russian tank. The drawback was that one had to be very close to use the weapon, and children were particularly good at this task. When the Russians invaded Berlin, they were initially brought to a standstill by children with Panzerfausts.(In this photo a German "Landser" is preparing to fire a Panzerfaust. This was one of the most simple yet effective defensive weapons of the war. It was a one shot launcher that fired a shape charge. It was extremely cheap to make and very effective at close range. The Germans made them by the 1000s and placed them everywhere. This concept contributed to the design of the Russian RPG after the war and still used today.)As the numbers of soldiers became harder to find, decimated German divisions were remade in "kampfgruppen" or "battle groups" and named after their leaders. Nevertheless, even divisions or regiments or battalions that were reduced to nothing remained nominally at full strength on maps, giving the German high command the illusion that a division was holding a particular strong point, even when the battle reports submitted daily showed that these divisions were no larger than companies in some cases. Nevertheless, they were given the missions of full strength divisions and destined to fail. The German 6th Army was a case in point. It surrendered at Stalingrad, was reconstituted and was wiped out in eastern europe, was reconstituted again and fought the last battles of the war around Budapest. It was the only army in history to be totally destroyed three times. It was an absolute waste and insanity because of the number of men tied up in logistics and administration. In this way, Hitler thought that Shorner, Steiner, Wenck or Busse could relieve Berlin, refusing to remember that he had already stripped their armies and divisions to outfit the 6th Armee and 6th Panzer Armee in Budapest and as a result, they were fighting for their lives when Berlin was surrounded. Incredibly, the German 9th Armee broke out of Halbe against all odds and linked up with Wenck's 12th Armee in the last days of the war, but instead of moving to relieve Berlin, they surrendered both armies to the Americans, about 100,000 men in total and a significant amount of equipment.To make up for the irreversible lack of men, the Germans developed a new kind of division, called the "Volksgrenadier Division". Today we would call this type of division "Special Forces". Many people confuse Volksgrenadier with Volkssturm -- the US and England made this mistake to their detriment. Volkssturm units were untrained or retired or severely crippled men and children suitable only for strongpoint defensive warfare. The VG divisions were real soldiers, admittedly many taken from admin units, navy and luftwaffe units, but provided with many more machine guns, more mortars and panzerfausts and more jeeps and trucks along with light artillery. The extra firepower made up for the lack of men; their mobility made them capable of moving to weak spots; their artillery allowed them to target supply columns. In one instance, a foolish American order required all men near the Hurtgen forest to assemble for a hot Thanksgiving dinner. The VG couldn't believe their eyes - the American army, disarmed, was assembling en masse in the open. The VG unloaded as much artillery on the American positions as they could, inflicting serious casualties. After the war, the Germans questioned the Americans as how they could have been so stupid as to have fought through the Hurtgen forest in the first place -- it was an ideal killing zone for the defense and it cost the Americans something like 25,000 men over the course of four months of bitter fighting. A unique account of the formation and use of the Volksgrenadier division is described in minute detail in "Victory was Beyond Their Grasp" based on the lucky find of the entire war diary, a large library of documents stashed in a basement at the end of the war and recently re-discovered.In the end, an enormous German paperwork mistake doomed the Germans in the West -- with the capture of the Remagen bridge, the Allies also captured the last German supply depot in the west which had been left undefended as a result of a paperwork snafu. It was where the Germans had stockpiled critically needed artillery ammunition. Without it, the German Army could no longer fight, and General Model, knowing he was a war criminal, went into the woods and blew his brains out, and 600,000 German soldiers in the Ruhr surrendered. In the East it was not as easy. Germans had to fight increasingly desperate defensive battles to allow German refugees and civilians to retreat to the West away from Russian atrocities. In supporting these battles the German Navy really shined. The Prinz Eugen still holds the record for most action by any capital ship, firing so many rounds at Russian ground targets that the massive 10 and 12 inch barrels wore out. They halted Russian advances again and again. (As an unrelated aside, the PE survived the war and was towed to Bikini and survived multiple A-bomb tests without sinking, but while being towed back to harbor, it capsized in a storm. Not very long ago, one of the props was liberated and returned to Kiel, the home of the German Navy and sits as a memorial. This photo shows the Prinz Eugen today, capsized off Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific with its one remaining propellor.)German E boats, minesweepers and destroyers evacuated thousands of wounded German soldiers, civilians and supplies to Hela in Poland, then hopscotching to other ports and even Denmark. It was in this area that the worst maritime disaster in history occurred when the Russians torpedoed and sank the German liner "Wilhelm Gustloff" which was carrying wounded German soldiers, female nurses, children and other refugees from besieged areas. As many as 10,000 people died when the ship sank. The W. Gustloff was one of over 1000 ships that participated in the 15 week evacuation of civilians and troops caught in the path of advancing Russian troops as part of "Operation Hannibal", the largest evacuation in history. Although the Russians sank over 160 of the ships, killing 3000 soldiers on one ship alone, over 1 million civilians and 350,000 soldiers were evacuated. This operation continued for a week after the war ended and was undertaken by orders from Karl Doenitz, who hid the ongoing evacuation from Hitler.(This is a photo of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a luxury liner turned troop ship. It was evacuating wounded German soldiers, women, children and other refugees when it was torpedoed four times by a Russian submarine. Panic ensued. The ship rolled over after 38 minutes and 10,000 people died in the freezing water or trapped in the ship. It remains the worst maritime tragedy in history. The Russian sub captain was made "Hero of the Soviet Union" in the 1960s for his exploits.)At Monte Cassino the Germans fought the Allies to a standstill for six months at the abbey using primarily a single German paratrooper division and inflicting more casualties on the Allies than were experienced at D-Day, in bitter hand to hand fighting. They retreated, undefeated, in good order when it was time to go as the Allies' focus turned to Rome. Monte Cassino was part of a strong defensive belt that held up the Allies, but it was a valiant and brilliant defense by professional soldiers who still maintained good morale and elan.Not enough can be said about the German defense at Memel and in the fortress cities like Breslau where even citizens were pressed into service as ammunition carriers and fire fighters. Almost all of the defenders died, either at these battles, or in Russian PoW camps. At one point, a German Panzer 4 was pushed into battle by a truck because its engine had been shot out. Even in this fashion it held off multiple Russian attacks. Many German soldiers report in various accounts that these battles were the worst, bloodiest and most desperate battles ever fought on Earth and that they saw things they can never describe or speak of. The Kourland Armies having been on the retreat from Leningrad for months, never lost a single defensive battle, and despite being surrounded, never surrendered until the war was over. A few lucky units were drawn off to defend Berlin, if you can call that luck. When they did surrender, there were many, many suicides among the German officers. Some organized units even escaped into the woods to form "Wolf Brigades" and fought the Russians for a few years after the war until the Russians finally rounded them up and shot them. In the book "In Deadly Combat" the author tells of a rapid retreat into Kourland and how a massive PoW camp of Russian soldiers had to be abandoned in the retreat. Unable to move or care for the Russian soldiers, the German high command simply shrugged and told them to wait for their own lines to catch up. The Russian prisoners, despite years of extremely harsh treatment at the hands of the Germans, refused to leave the Germans. Many even offered to take up arms with them. As much as 30 percent of German fighting units were made up of these "Hiwis", Russian trustee prisoners who did the administrative, scut work, laundry, stretcher bearing and so on. They were so afraid of their own forces that they chose to stay with the Germans to the bitter end. Russian prisoners fared poorly when returned to Russian control.It's interesting to note that when the Americans invaded Southern France, the German nerve in that part of the country snapped and many German soldiers made for the Swiss border and were machine gunned by their own SS and Military Police struggling to escape to Switzerland until order could be restored. These were men who never really expected to fight, occupation troops with wounds from other theaters, or with influential parents protecting them. They spent the war drinking wine and bedding willing French women and when the invasion occurred, they simply wanted to escape. Nevertheless, there were still strong German units who held up the Allies and did serious damage. A story of valor of the soldiers on both sides is that of the American 141st Infantry, surrounded by the Germans and rescued by the 442nd, the famous, highly decorated Japanese regiment that lost most of its men in the rescue and earned so much respect. The Germans were short of everything but launched many bruising counterattacks, the most famous being the Colmar Pocket where the 19th Army suffered almost 35,000 casualties at the hands of the Americans and French very near the end of the war.The last battles in the west included the Battle of Heilbronn where the fanatical 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division, combined with the remnants of a half dozen other burned out divisions, still held serious fighting potential and held up the Allies for a week. Although it was clear the war was over and there was no hope for the Germans, somehow this area and division were earmarked for men, supplies and vehicles by what was left of German logistical command. The results were uniformly bad for the Germans who lost ten times as many men in the pointless ensuing combat as the Americans. In the end, the last battle was for Iter castle, where German regular army troops joined with American troops to fight off the crumbling remains of the hardcore Nazi SS seeking hostages.After Hitler killed himself, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz took command of what was left of the Third Reich and formed the Flensburg Government. His orders were, wherever possible, lay down arms to the Western Allies, but fight hard against the Russians so that refuges and soldiers could escape to the West. He played a very dangerous game buying time this way, but he saved the lives of tens of thousands of German soldiers and millions of German civilians who escaped to the West. The final defensive battles were at Halbe where the German 9th Armee fought its way out of a kessel and into the hands of the Americans, where 40,000 were killed or captured by the Russians and about 30,000 escaped to the Americans and British to live another day. The battle continued for two days after the German surrender in an attempt to allow as many people as possible to escape to the West. The 9th Armee commander, Theodor Busse, went on to become the first post-war leader of the German Army. It was the last of many vicious defensive battles.In the aftermath, Nazi and military leaders scurried for cover like rats leaving a sinking ship. Brilliant commando Otto Skorzeny organized the escape of many high ranking Germans. Some escaped in the remaining planes and fled to Spain where they were interned and protected. Some escaped to Switzerland. One U-boat, U-971, generated the world record for staying submerged escaping from Germany to Argentina and using its snorkel to avoid surface ships. Himmler was arrested trying to escape dressed as a Wehrmacht Sergeant. Many Gaultiers who had harangued the civilian population to fight to the last man put on disguises and tried to slip away. Martin Bormann was killed fleeing the Furher Bunker. Goebbels killed his wife and his entire family. Many, like Jodl and Keitel, were tried, convicted and executed. Many, such as Josef Mengele, the butcher-doctor of the concentration camps, escaped and lived a good life in exile. Some, like Adolf Eichmann were hunted down by the Israelis and brought to justice. Some changed their identities in the chaos and escaped to America, and some, with the help of brilliant German intelligence general Richard Gehlen, offered their services to the Americans in exchange for new lives and they came to the US as part of Operation Paperclip to continue their fight against the Russians. But for millions, the war was over. The Western Allies repatriated their prisoners within five years or so. The Russians were not so generous and it took the efforts of Konrad Adenauer, the first post-war German leader to secure their release by 1959. Many hundreds of thousands of German prisoners died in Russian PoW slave labor camps. Within ten years of the war ending, half of the German high command had committed suicide.I know this is miserably long and that no one will ever read it but I hope it answers the question.

teens 12–18 (or graduating highschool, whichever comes first.)Clothingyou can wear what you like as long as it abides by your school’s dress code.if i see any of your clothes being too tight, i’ll take you out to buy new ones. (chances are, if said child has my genes, this won’t be a problem, small bones tings)please. please don’t wear nikes, jeans, and a gap hoodie. i- i will literally not allow you to leave the house that wayif you want to dress feminine as a male, go right ahead. i’ll even buy you the clothing.if you want to dress masculine as a female, go right ahead. i’ll buy you the clothing.from personal experience, i won’t be offended if you don’t like the clothes i offer you. if you tell me you like techwear, great! i’ll buy you some. you like lolita? amazing. i gotchu. just communicate. i don’t bite.nothing promoting any of the belowsupremacyviolencesexual contentsexismableismreligionSchoolit is up to you to ask me for help. i won’t stick my nose in your business and make a fuss to the school if you’re failing.that being said, i will contact your teachers if i see you blatantly not attempting to raise your gradesi won’t sit with you at the dining table and scream at you because you don’t know 2 + 3. i’ll help you.i recommend mathway, desmos and http://scholar.google.com for any questions you don’t feel like answering!looking at your social life, if you need a break from school, i will take you out for a day and excuse your absence. i know what it’s like. i will never pressure you.you check your grades. i won’t. except in elementary school.i’ll pay for your college tuition. if you flunk, you pay for your next years.oh and as a rule i don’t do grounding.Datingyou may begin dating in eighth grade. don’t expect me to cry over some middle school guy breaking up with you because you don’t like takis. i’ll laugh and take you out for ice cream and a movie, make sure it’s known that love is not required.in freshman/sophomore year, you can have your s/o in your room. door must not be latched.later years of highschool, do what you want. keep it down though.love is love. i’ll accept anyone you wish to devote yourself to.if you come out as trans, please tell me your new name so i can use that instead of your deadname. and your preferred pronouns no matter what sexuality.if you didn’t use protection, and you got pregnant, fine. if you want an abortion, okay. i’ll support you.Drugs/addictive substancesyou can smoke. just not in the house. if you do, man i’m snatching those puffs. i won’t have my house smelling like cig smoke, thank you very much.if i see you coughing more than usual, uh uh. it’s over for you. do what you like, but if my child’s health is in danger, that is going to go.you can have small amounts of alcohol in highschool. small.no coffee until eighth grade.oh and porn. you can watch it, just don’t let me see it. you may be my child but i don’t need to know that muchElectronicsi’ll buy you your first phone in seventh grade. i’ll keep some sort of parental controls on it with your full knowledge until highschool. then you have free reign.your phone, your choices. i will only check it if i feel you’re hiding something.in middle school, electronics down at 8.you can have your own netflix account. just be sure to recommend shows :)yes, you may have electronics in your bedroom.Electronics pt.2 (Socials)instagram, facebook, twitter, snapchat, etc. are allowed. if you have a personal account, i will follow it. if you have a fan account/writing account/side account, i won’t. that is yours to express yourself on. i won’t shadow it.don’t send pics to anyone except a trusted boyfriend/girlfriend. unless it’s memes.mutuals are allowed. however, you must tell me about them once you reach the point of face reveals.online relationships are allowed. however, you must tell me about them and if they’re using you. i’ve been used in those before and i’ll be here to let you cry.you NEED to tell me all about them. until i am satisfied that they’re not a forty year old man sitting in his parent’s basement, i don’t feel comfortable.you may post your political opinionsMental Healthi know what it’s like. self harm, tell me. i promise i won’t get mad. if you say you have depression, i will believe you but i’ll take you to get a professional diagnosis.if you need time to yourself, or if i hear you crying, i’ll let you be. although sometimes i may come into your room and hold you close if i hear you crying.if it’s a quiet day and you’re under a lot of stress, feel free to scream, throw things. just be aware that if you break anything overly valuable, you replace it.therapists.Music Tasteyou like kpop? smooth, i’ll jam with you. alternative? okay. rock? nice. rap? lit. drill? okay sure. lofi? jazz? oldies? waltz? trap? instrumentals? whatever, anything goes.yes you may have the aux.i will never shame you for the music you like. never.Learning Disabilities/Other Disabilitieslearning disabilities are apparently common in my genetics and my birthmom’s genetics. that being said, adhd/add/executive function disorder or any others will be treated the second it’s found out about.this is because i won’t allow you to be traumatized in elementary school because you didn’t know better. because you couldn’t control yourself.i also understand the terrible pain you feel knowing you’re “messed up”. you are beautiful.Religionyou may practice any religion you wish, except satanic beliefs.if i catch you with ANYTHING remotely satanic/ritualistic/etc, i’m taking you to a priest, and properly disposing of the item.you may not press your beliefs on me or the rest of the family. keep it to yourself if it’s different, and we’ll keep to ourselves.if the majority of our home is catholic/christian, we will pray at dinner. you are not obligated to join us, just please don’t start eating until we finishCommon House Rulesmiddle school, lights out at 9. fall asleep whenever you wish.you’ll be raised listening to ATEEZ, sorry not sorry. however, you are not required to like them, just politely excuse yourself if you don’t wish to listenpets will be allowed in your room.cursing is allowed, please keep it to a minimum.you may not in any way, shape, or form abuse your siblings, younger or older. if you’re being targeted, i give you full permission to defend yourself.for me, it’s gotten to the extreme where i’ve had to carry around a knife to defend myself from my older brother.my word is final. no means no. we’ll see does not.i will never lay a hand on you. no spanking, slapping or anything. just words.i am the head of the house. you will follow my word until you are 18 or older, at which point you may leave, or i have all rights to kick you out.if you become a threat to any of your siblings or become physically aggressive, punishment will be harsh.please please clean your room of dishes. i don’t want to mine dried salsa from a bowl.you’ll be raised on the Lord of the Rings. suck it up.your room is your room. i will always knock first. decorate how you wish.i will not entertain any talk of politics unless it is for a course.Petswe will have one cat, one dog. the cat reigns superior, the dog is the lesser. however, you may baby whichever one you wish.if you want a personal pet, like a gecko, turtle, fish, snake, etc., you MUST prove to me you can take care of it.when an animal dies, we choose the next one together. pick a kitten, a puppy. whichever.you will take the dog for a walk, though. and you will play with the cat. good social timeSleep(Ages 0–10) You will go to bed, and you will sleep. No question about it, and I will check in on you before I retire.(Ages 10–13) Bedtime is at 10. You may sleep, no all nighters. You may stay up, but you MUST be asleep by 2 am.(Ages past) Do what you want. But you must sleep in on the weekends. Don’t pull too many all nighters. And don’t depend on coffee.If you have a nightmare, come to me. We can talk about it, puzzle it out or just, let it out.If you have a good dream, great. Feel free to talk about it or not.Unlike my parents, if you get scared of thunderstorms, I will hold you until the storm passes.Yes, I will play Lothlorien ambience for you as a child to help you fall asleep. No complaints (that music is beautiful.)HobbiesAnything is welcome.DrawingDigital, hand, paint. Whatever it is, I support it and I will supply resourcesDancingIt is your choice whether you want studio lessons or private lessons.That being said, you must decide the type of dance you wish to do.If you choose ballet, I will fuss over your feet for a while. Especially when you reach pointe. If you begin limping, you’re seeing the doctor.SingingYou can sing in public, whatever. I’ll appreciate it, but I also understand being shy.Producing/songwritingplease please don’t make tracks like the “producers” on soundcloud doWritingI’ll want to see what you’re writing. If you say smut, I’ll back off.Etc.Just tell me and I’ll judge if I’ll support you or not. Chances are that I will.Misc.If you ask politely, I’ll be very lenient with hanging out. Freedom is important in a childs life.I will never constrain you. Or pressure you.You need to let me know of a sleepover a couple days in advance.unless it’s that friend, then sure. go right ahead.Yes, you may have a balloon and a cookie from the grocery store.We travel every summer. You are expected to join us until you reach 18 or your senior year of highschool. Whichever comes last.Languages are important. You’ll learn a few, and I’ll require a foreign language in highschool, if not middle school.I will teach you the basics of buying a house, maintaining a job, paying taxes, filling out ballots, paying mortgage, budgeting, monitoring your spendings, and how to properly withdrawal/deposit money in your bank.MONEY.On your birthday you will receive 30 dollars.On Christmas you will receive 20.Santa does not exist.Neither does the Great Pumpkin.You will be required to read the Trilogy of the Ring, and the Hobbit. Harry Potter is a choice.We will watch the Lord of the Rings yearly. And the Hobbit. You may not slander one or the other.And you will appreciate Haldir and Eomer. Or per- nothing.Depending on how many children, the choice of movie rotates each week.Christmas Eve will be spent going to Midnight Mass, then coming home and opening your stocking gifts. We’ll play Bing Crosby and some other classics, then you go to bed.Christmas Morning, you will not TOUCH the presents until you’ve eaten breakfast.Then you can go crazyWatch all the Christmas shows you like. If you ever act like the Grinch though,,I’ll monitor your Halloween costumes until the age of 15.You can celebrate any holiday you wish, if it is within your chosen religion.We visit Colorado every other year. No buts.I’ll edit as I think of some!Also, I’m a teenager right now. These are my current views, and they are susceptible to change.Any hate comments or unsavory comments will be deleted <3Thank you!~bella