J A C K P O T
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Sunday, April 13, 2025
Saturday, April 12, 2025
Cold War
Distrust.
Stalin's allies, Britain and the U.S., couldn't give him
a straight answer on when they would open up a
second front by invading France. They didn't know
themselves. Stalin wasn't buying it. Russia's friends
were content to let the Soviets take the brunt of the war.
Stalin's story. What else would you expect from
the capitalists?
The alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union and the
United States no longer made sense once Hitler
was gone. National interests overrode cooperation.
Suspicions rose with the mounting tension.
Germany's collapse enabled Stalin to fill the power
vacuum in Eastern Europe. The new rule for these
countries would be Kremlin friendly. These satellites
would provide a strong buffer to prevent future
invasions of the Soviet Union.
Roosevelt's death early in his fourth term gave
Truman the reigns of government. Up until
this moment the Vice President got his news
about the White House from the newspapers,
like everyone else.
Suddenly it's 'welcome to the White House'.
What do we to do with this atomic bomb?
For starts, the U.S. had its hands on 'the Bomb'.
Churchill and Roosevelt felt it best Stalin didn't know.
But he did. That's what spies are for.
Stalin's response - we need that bomb.
Do what you can to make this happen,
as soon as possible.
The alliance wasn't based on friendship.
France belonged among the great global powers.
With the war over it was time Southeast Asia
be returned to France as its colony. Despite U.S.
aid, the French colony was lost to the backers of
the communist leader, Ho Chi Minh.
The war left much of western Europe with devastated
economies atop the destroyed infrastructure of entire
nations. Millions of people were displaced, clogging
the roads as refugees, looking for a place to call home.
Germany was crushed. Their enemies occupied the
land and called the shots. Konrad Adenauer became
a rallying point for those wanting Germany rebuilt
into a strong democracy.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, April 6, 2025
Saturday, April 5, 2025
Objective
Center of the Soviet universe.
Located here is the vast bureaucracy that enables
Stalin's rule. Communications are governed from here.
Moscow is the nation's transportation hub. It harbors
many industries. German generals believe Russia's
capitol is indispensable to communist rule.
Take it and your other objectives fall into place.
You win.
Not so fast. Napoleon captured Moscow and still lost
the war because he had not destroyed the Russian army.
This was Hitler's rebuttal to his generals' focus on Moscow.
The Fuhrer's strategy was to encircle the Russian army
nearby and then quickly destroy it. Moscow and Hitler's
other objectives would be left relatively undefended.
It takes a lot of troops to restrain a couple of hundred
thousand armed enemy soldiers. The biggest problem
was there weren't enough Germans to close the noose
because most Nazi soldiers traveled on foot.
They couldn't keep up with their tank force up front.
Rich in mineral wealth, industry and agriculture,
Ukraine was a treasure for resource poor Germany
to acquire. Here was Hitler's lebensraum - true
living space for an expansive Third Reich.
Where does the Russian navy go when the Soviets
lose this vital Baltic port? What does Moscow do
when it loses the defense industries centered in
Leningrad? The Nazis lay siege to the city when it
became clear their army couldn't capture it.
Leningrad's population became the bull's eye
in a years long battle.
Energy problem solved. A gusher of oil for thirsty Germany.
The area is a peninsula of petroleum products located
on the western coast of the Caspian Sea, just beyond
the Caucasus mountains. Follow the Volga River south.
You can't miss it.
Kick in the door and Stalin's whole rotten structure
collapses like a house of cards. That was the fantasy
Hitler counted upon to conquer Russia in eight weeks.
Baku supplied Stalin over seventy percent of his oil.
If Germany captured Baku then Russia was hard up
for fuel while Hitler became a screaming dynamo.
Defeat Russia and Germany became a continental
power, like the United States. Hitler's power would
span Europe, from the Urals of Asia to Gibraltar,
guarding the Mediterranean Sea. Here was
Nazi power capable of taking on Roosevelt,
anywhere across the globe. Equals. A fair fight.
It was just a matter of time.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Barbarossa
History's largest invasion.
Three million German soldiers began their attack
on Russia with an artillery barrage all along the
1,200 mile front. It was 3 am, June 22, 1941;
the first days of summer.
There was no better time than now to battle Russia.
Germany was at the height of its military power, having
just defeated the British and French in a matter of weeks.
Stalin was startled by this demonstration of blitzkrieg.
He made urgent demands on his generals and industrialists,
to grow him the most powerful and modern of armies.
Hitler believed Russia to be vulnerable and the time
he had to take advantage of this would be brief.
German troops overwhelmed Russia's defense.
Stalin was blind to the immediacy of Hitler's threat.
So long as Britain remained undefeated, the Germans
would not open up a second front by attacking Russia.
The order of the day had been 'don't antagonize Hitler'.
The Russian troops facing the Nazis weren't ready.
The military was still recovering from Stalin's purge
of the officer corps two years previous. Most of his
top generals were executed. Uncle Joe had
paranoid tendencies. It came with the job.
It was quickly made clear they were not your friends.
The Germans were your conquerors.
They behaved accordingly.
Russian guerillas sabotaged German efforts behind the lines.
There were those among the Russian population that were
ready to welcome German troops as liberators from Stalin's
ruthless rule. Instead they became lethal enemies of
Hitler's forces. The Nazis couldn't tolerate help coming
from the Slavs.
Allies. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
It's politics. You succeed with what you have.
Hitler gambled that he could defeat the Soviet Union
by year's end or lose everything.
What Germany and Hitler feared most, would
come to pass. This alliance of industrial behemoths
could only crush the Third Reich.
And at its leisure.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, March 23, 2025
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Mussolini
The Individual dies and becomes nothing.
The State is eternal. It is everything.
Charismatic. A born leader. A man of destiny.
The people sweep him into power.
Mussolini is now the State.
Junior partner to the Nazi next door.
Near war's end Mussolini and entourage are captured
attempting an escape to Austria. Italian partisans
shot them on the spot and strung them up for
all the world to see.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Saturday, March 15, 2025
Paper Tiger
It was a long trail of defeat for Rommel
ever since the loss at Alamein four months previous.
His troops fled the pursuing Eighth Army across
Libya, giving up the major port of Tripoli with
very little fight.
Hitler and Mussolini were furious
with their rogue commander.
No one cheers a loser.
Field Marshall Kesselring, Smiling Al to the troops,
was Hitler's man running the Mediterranean, and
Erwin Rommel's boss in North Africa.
Rommel thought he was finally head honcho in Tunisia.
Then he got word of a battle underway that he knew
nothing about. Smiling Al and Rommel's rival,
General Arnim, schemed together a battleplan without
letting Rommel in on the planning.
Kesselring supported Arnim's insubordination.
Rommel's authority now resembled the thin gloss
of a dime store badge.
Surprise.
General Montgomery, Monty to most everyone,
knew he had a two to one advantage over Rommel
in most every factor that mattered on the battlefield -
firepower. Yet it was Rommel's forces that charged
the Brits at Medenine without any hope of winning.
Rommel could only stir things up to buy time.
In the picture above Monty is the cat that just ate
the canary. He knew Rommel's plan right down
to the when and where. So much for the surprise
Rommel counted on to win. It was the Tommy cyphers
that stole German secrets from the Enigma machine.
They were 'listening' in as Rommel gave a detailed
explanation of his plan to his superiors in Rome.
Monty stuffed the area around Rommel's objective
with as much artillery, tanks and anti-tank weapons
as the terrain would allow.
Rommel's three undernourished Panzer divisions
walked into a lights-out experience. A third of his
tanks were lost in this useless effort to slow Monty.
From here on Axis troops could only back up.
This tactic might be called stretching out defeat.
The plan to attack Medenine was not Rommel's.
His men no longer listened to him. He was on
borrowed time. Rommel was not a military genius.
He'd become a has-been.
The Field Marshal flew to Rome three days
following the battle. He made his case for
evacuating Africa with both Mussolini and Hitler.
Neither man could tolerate this embrace of defeat.
Hitler hospitalized Rommel for a needed rest.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
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