Kraut Panzers to Ukraine Again
Rode a tank, held a general’s rank, when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank.
– Sympathy for the Devil by the Rolling Stones
Hmmm. Where have we seen this before? German panzers rumbling eastward through Ukraine toward Russia. Let me think. Hmmmm.
How about June 22, 1941 with Operation Barbarossa? The Russians remember the invasion killed 27 million of them. The Germans of that era even signed up some Ukrainians to help them, the remnants of which after the war became the Banderites, who committed massacres, especially of Jews and Poles. The descendants of the Banderites are today’s Right Sector and Azov Brigade.
No wonder today’s successor to the chancellor of 1933-45, Olaf “Sgt.” Scholz, was hesitant to send the Leopard panzers to the Eastern Front, and has been going, “I know nooothing! I see nooooothing! I hear noooothing!”
But he agreed in the end after his actual fuehrer in Washington agreed to send American M1 tanks.
It will take months to send the panzers and tanks to the Ukrainians, train them, and set up a logistics system, especially repairing the machines. My late father was a Captain of Ordnance in the U.S. Army during World War II in the battles in France after D-Day. He remembered how a Sherman tank would be towed to their repair shops after the German shell “penetrated one side of the armor, then bounced around inside. We scraped out what was left of the tank crew, fixed the tank and sent it back into battle with a new crew.”
Tanks have not done well for either side in what has turned out largely to be an artillery war. It’s too easy to spot the lumbering behemoths with recon drones, then hit them with “suicide” drones, missiles or artillery.
And the Russians have far more artillery, some say 10 times as many shells landing every day, than the Ukrainians. The New York Times just headlined, “Pentagon Will Increase Artillery Production Sixfold for Ukraine.” But: “The Army’s top acquisition official says production of the 155-millimeter shells badly needed by Kyiv will rise to 90,000 a month in two years.”
Two years? This thing will be over by then.
Somebody – neocon fools, we’re looking at you – didn’t plan this war correctly. Remember they had Biden say, “The ruble is rubble”? Meaning they were succeeding in destroying Russia’s economy, so they could cause install a new regime in Moscow, break up the giant country, and loot it again as they and their minions did in the 1990s.
Well, Barbarossa 2.0 isn’t turning out any better than Barbarossa 1.0did.
As I’ve said many times, I hate this war and wish Biden hadn’t goaded the Russians into starting it. And I wish Putin had waited until America elected a better president. But reality is what it is. Ukraine could have have stayed neutral, instead of being promised NATO membership, which Russia never would have allowed.
And I really hate seeing the kraut panzers heading eastward again.
The Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” is based on Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita,” written during Stalinism, in which the devil visits Moscow, during a time when the athiests running Soviet Union said he didn’t exist.
The Stones again:
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraintSo if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste.