Know Your WW2 History: The Invasion of Poland

The History and War Blog did an Outstanding Four Part Series on the Invasion of Poland beginning in 1939.

Part 1: The Attack on Poland 1-17 September

Part 2: Soviet Invasion and the Fall of Poland

Part 3: The Exodus

Part 4: The Aftermath

 

Also as a cool supplement, Jeff over at The Inch High Guy Blog  has a really great post:

Invasion of Poland, 1939 Color Photographs, Hugo Jaeger Collection, Part I.

 

For further reading and study I recommend the book:

Case White, the Invasion of Poland 1939

WW2 Books Worth a Damn: Das Boot (The Boat)

 

“The thrilling wartime novel that inspired Wolfgang Petersen’s Academy Award-nominated, blockbuster film! Written by an actual survivor of Germany’s U-boat fleet, Das Boot is one of the most exciting stories of naval warfare ever published, a tale filled with almost unbearable tension and suspense. In autumn 1941, a German U-boat commander and his crew set out on yet another hazardous patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. Over the coming weeks they brave the ocean’s stormy waters and seek out British supply ships to destroy. But their targets travel in well-guarded convoys. When contact finally occurs, the hunter quickly becomes the hunted, and a cat-and-mouse game begins as the U-boat hides deep beneath the surface of the sea. Soon, claustrophobia becomes an enemy almost as frightening as the depth charges exploding around them.”

As far as World War Two Novels go, Das Boot is one of the most thrilling in my opinion. The author, Lothar Gunther Buckheim was a member of the Kriegsmarine during WW2 and survivor of the U-Boat force.

I say “survivor” because of the 40,000 men that served on the U-boat’s, 30,000 did not return home. You read that right. The German U-boat force in WW2 had a 75% casualty rate, the highest of ANY unit during the war, including front line Soviet troops on the Eastern Front and at Stalingrad.

I would also highly recommend the 1981 Movie directed by Wolfgang Petersen and starring Jurgen Prochnow in the lead role as the skipper.

 

Know Your WW2 Weapons: The German K43 Rifle, Deutschland’s DMR

GERMAN K43 RIFLE: DEUTSCHLAND’S DMR

 

K43 is German shorthand for Karabiner 43. The same weapon was also known as the Gewehr 43. A relatively simple gas-operated design, the K43 was the German answer to our M1 Garand. However, manufacturing pressures and a suboptimal design conspired to keep the K43 from reaching its full potential.

The K43 was an evolutionary development of the previous G41. Produced as the G41(M) from Mauser and the G41(W) from Walther, these two rifles suffered from an inexplicable design mandate that German engineers craft the weapons without drilling a gas port in the barrel. The end result was a gas trap design that was front-heavy, cumbersome, heavy and unreliable. About the time the Wehrmacht was convincing itself that the G41 was a dry hole, they encountered the Soviet SVT-38 and SVT-40 self-loaders in combat on the Eastern Front.

The subsequent G43/K43 featured a more conventional short-stroke piston-driven action with a flapper locking mechanism. Much of this rifle’s entrails seem eerily similar to those of the Soviet SVT-40. This system was easier to manufacture, more reliable and fairly robust. The weapon was semi-auto-only and fed from detachable 10-round box magazines that could also be charged from the top via standard stripper clips.

 

 

 

 

Luftwaffe Over The Ardennes – The Forgotten Aerial Battle of the Bulge

VikingLifeBlog

Many people think the only Luftwaffe operation during the Battle of the Bulge was Bodenplatte, but German fighters were very active from the start of the Ardennes Offensive trying to support the ground troops as they advanced from 16 December 1944 onwards.

Mark Felton Productions

The Rainbow Alliance (WWII)

The Rainbow Alliance I &II

Read about WWIIhere

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Luftwaffe

What happened to Germany’s awesome aircraft manufacturers

German World War II aces. The greatest airmen the world have ever seen!

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Ardennes 1944 – The Forgotten FirstBattle

The Battle of Trois-Ponts 1944 | A bridgehead in the Ardennes

Battlegroup Böhm – The Furthest German Advance West, Ardennes 1944

Tank Battles of WW2 – Coo 1944 | When the ambush got ambushed – Battle of the Bulge.

Tank Battles of WW2 – La Gleize 1944

Hell in the Hurtgen Forest

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Know Your WW2 History: The Third Reich’s Biggest Mistake

The Third Reich’s Biggest Mistake

 

The past cannot be changed. Nonetheless, it can be used to learn a valuable lesson: The only possibility to win is to do the right thing; that is, to incorporate all white peoples equally into the Revolution, and the subsequent future White Union, making a clear distinction between the subjugated peoples and the elite that dominates them and to treat all sister ethnicities as what they are. At a time of struggle for the survival of the Race, any past grudges are like arguing about greyhounds and hounds — or, as the Byzantines did, about the sex of angels.