The Viaz'ma Catastrophe, 1941: The Red Army's Disastrous Stand against Operation Typhoon, even if 'reading' is a bit much. After the introduction, some chapters and maps I decided to go to 'The Dimensions of the Defeat' as in this month and the next one I won't have time to go through the operations. Still already lots of food for thought.
He, like other Russian authors, seems rather upset that a vast quantity of very important is still practially hidden away and that the official positions are seemingly rather often in conflict with researched facts from other soures. In his words the supporters of 'Mama and borsch' patriotism 'are in agreement that a patriot can only be someone who refuses in principle to to see any flaws in his or her country'. In short the author makes a detailed and very convincing argument, partly based on not offically published work of the TsAMO and other sources that the total irrevocable losses (of the Soviet forces) were 'to the most conservative calculations no less then 14,500,000 people, which is a approximately half of the total number of 29,500,000 who were mobilized throughout the war.' A deeply shocking loss of life, indeed, and impossible to truly comprehend.
I could not resist to look at what the other side lost. The irrevocable losses by the German forces, which obviously had by far the highest share of men and material of the Axis forces are coverd by here by Ruediger Overmans, who published key research in this area. According to his work 'Overall probably 3,5 to 4 million German members of the Wehrmacht* lost their live on the Ostfront or died as Soviet prisoners of war. To this one has to add the casualities of the other Axis forces and those of non-German Soviet origin. According to the Italian Wikipedia, citing quite old research roughly 75,000 Italians lost their lives in the East, the great majority presumably in captivity, a large number which of course pales after the others. Others, like 'Greater Hungary', Finland and the Romania had high absolute losses, roughly 500,000 in all, if Wikipedia is to be believed.
My post took a turn I didn't anticipate and I have to stop. Maybe I will follow it up later.
*of course including Waffen SS, Luftwaffe and Marine
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