SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
According to the AP, NY Times and a boat load of other AP carriers, the country boasting the loudest about how much of their energy needs are fulfilled by renewable sources, coal may be about to win out over one of the oldest forests still standing in Germany:
BERLIN (AP) — A court in western Germany says an ancient forest near the Belgian border can be chopped down to make way for a coal strip mine.
Cologne's administrative court ruled Friday against a legal complaint brought by the environmental group BUND that wanted to halt the clearance of much of the Hambach forest.
Hambach forest has become a focus of environmental protests against the expansion of a vast mine that supplies much of the coal used in nearby power plants.
The coal, a light brown variety called lignite, is considered one of the most polluting forms of fossil fuel.
Meanwhile their reactors are being systematically shut down and dismantled. But dirty coal use shows almost no decline.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday November 26 2017, @06:14AM (7 children)
We did that to them. Americans should have just scratched our asses and let them win. We'd have better beer, and better schnitzels!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @08:54AM (5 children)
Let them win? The Germans were already losing by the time the US got into it in December of 1941. Granted, Allied material support was a huge help to the Soviets but not essential. Operation Overlord and the subsequent Allied offensives merely accelerated the inevitable.
Even the OKH knew the game was up when the final assault on Moscow failed. It was a very near thing, but the failure of Operation Typhoon was the beginning of the end for the Wehrmacht. Every subsequent German strategic offensive failed, albeit at a huge cost to the Russians.
Hitler was already becoming unhinged when he declared war on the US, but the German generals knew that Russia would always be able to out-produce and out-number them.
Convincing Stalin to "let them win" would have been quite a trick.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 26 2017, @03:00PM (4 children)
Only in hindsight. You're still forgetting Stalingrad, which would have gone different, if Hitler hadn't ordered German forces into terrible strategy (taking the city directly rather than enveloping it), the USSR hadn't picked up a zillion light trucks the US (which played a significant logistics and mobility role in the last years of the war), and the effective espionage of the Allied side (several cases where the Russians were aware of German strategy long before the battle).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @06:00PM (3 children)
No, I haven't forgotten a thing.
While the myth that Stalingrad was really a clever trap set by Stalin has been thoroughly debunked, the reserve forces for Operations Uranus and Mars that sealed the fate of 6th Army, were already being gathered even before Paulus began his actual assault on the city proper. Chuikov's 62nd Army was given just enough to (barely) hold out until the counterstroke could be unleashed.
In fact, even had the city fallen, by November of 1942 the vaunted 6th Army was a spent force and would have still been encircled by the Soviet offensive.
The fact that OKH had to rely on 4th-rate Rumanian and Italian troops to secure their over-extended fronts clearly illustrates the Germans being on the losing end of the numbers game before Case Blue even started.
The professionalism (and wanton brutality) of the Germans could only forestall the inevitable.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 26 2017, @11:44PM (2 children)
That's how reserve forces worked. They would have gotten used one way or another. Operations Uranus and Mars wouldn't even exist, if the Germans hadn't attacked Stalingrad in the way they did.
Let us note, by no coincidence that the battle for Stalingrad had started in August, 1942 and was fully lost by February, 1943 when the German 6th Army surrendered. So your month (when the encirclement of the German army happened under Operation Uranus) is halfway through the battle and the final destruction of the 6th Army.
The Russians lose badly enough and the inevitable could be forestalled forever. The Russians didn't have infinite manpower.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @10:58AM (1 child)
The Russians didn't need infinite manpower, just more than the Germans. It worked.
I'm perfectly aware of the timeline events, unit TO&E's, commander's biographies, and weapon technical specifications. As an armchair general, I can reasonably claim 4-star rank with some justification. I served in the US Army Signal Corps for eight years as a commissioned officer who attended the AWC at Carlisle, and have studied military history from a professional perspective.
I chose November because that was the Germans' last decent chance for an organized strategic withdrawal. After that, not even the great Manstein, albeit with inadequate forces (there's those damned numbers again) could save them.
The timing (the arrival of General Winter) was also critical. To quote my favorite band, history shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man.
Look, there are many "if only x had done y" scenarios that might have led to different tactical outcomes on the chessboard of battle, but ultimately war is economics. Russia had he greater pool of resources, and the will to commit them. Hitler underestimated both.
Strategically, thankfully, the Germans were just plain fucked from the get-go, just as the Japanese had no chance against the US. If only so many millions hadn't had to die to prove it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 27 2017, @04:02PM
What would be the point of withdrawal? Germany didn't have a more defensible border further west. And that would have just given the Soviets more resources and people with which to invade Germany. Germany either defeated the USSR or it would die to the USSR. Such was the nature of the gamble they took when they first invaded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @01:12PM
Don't worry. You'll be shitting black and red any day now.