Soviet-Romanian War-June 1940

I know about that but thats hardly in the term of popular use of "hostage". If that was so no nation would like their troops to surrender but in fact only the Japanese were serious about this (and then you may cite a number of instaces but speaking in general terms) and I don't think Britain or the US thought of their POWs as hostages.

When were POWs used as a bargaining counter to have their state abstain from doing something specific as ordered by the State holding the POWs? And I'm not talking about Vichy or other occupied countries.
 
I know about that but thats hardly in the term of popular use of "hostage". If that was so no nation would like their troops to surrender but in fact only the Japanese were serious about this (and then you may cite a number of instaces but speaking in general terms) and I don't think Britain or the US thought of their POWs as hostages.

When were POWs used as a bargaining counter to have their state abstain from doing something specific as ordered by the State holding the POWs? And I'm not talking about Vichy or other occupied countries.

The closest thing I can come up with would be when the Japanese used the hopeless position of the US troops on Corregidor as leverage to get the US to surrender troops in other Philippines Islands--which they did formally, though a lot of the individual troops took to the hills.
 
The closest thing I can come up with would be when the Japanese used the hopeless position of the US troops on Corregidor as leverage to get the US to surrender troops in other Philippines Islands--which they did formally, though a lot of the individual troops took to the hills.

Pointing to futility in continued fighting would hardly fit. And as you say the troops on Corregidor were in a bad position though not yet prisoners so wouldn't be termed hostages.
 

Tellus

Banned
Slightly off topic, of course, but I can't help but post this here. :D

HoI3_4.JPG


Weird ass result of a hands-off game. Moral of the story: Dont underestimate the 1940 Romanians.

(The UK surrendered to SIAM in the same game... :p )
 
I don't know what is meant with the boldened part, do you mean trucks etc?

Those would be (mostly) irrelevant.
Moving of troops is done by rail.

Trucks are only used for the max. 500 km or so the German WWII army can fight away from it's railheads and that will take every last truck Germany can lay it's hands on in entire Europe!

Even in WWI, when Romania joined the Entente on 27 August 1916, the Central Powers were able to move 200.000+ troops to Romania by the third week of September, when the railnetwork was worse then during WWII; which means within 3 weeks.
Yes, I was refering to trucks. The Wehrmacht's general paucity of trucks (and technical/logistical issues, ex. on some trucks screw threads were left-, as opposed to right-handed) was a constant limiting factor to their post-rail dispersal. Moldova's hilly terrain and poorly-developed narrow meandering roads would've also slowed dispersal by truck.

As for rail, Moldova (the Eastern area in particular) had a poor rail network even by Great War standards (the interwar gov't did little to improve the situation). Adding to this, several parts had Imperial Russian gauge, as opposed to European Standard, so you needed either transfer stations or regauging. The first thing Germans did in 1941 after taking back control was to regauge the network (along with extensive tracklaying), and it took quite a while to finish it.

Given all these, troop transports would have been a relatively arduous affair.

the USSR would have taken Besserebia , Bukovina and maybe some extra bits of Moldavia
Why the hell would the Germans accept that? Having Soviet forces 150 km away from their precious oilfields would give Hitler et. al. the shits. Not to mention the threat of bomber sorties from a more than confortable (for the Soviets) distance.

If the Ploiesti oil wells had been destroyed in the fighting , the Germans would have continued to buy oil from the Soviet Union until the Romanian wells are repaired.
Honestly, folks. Stop applying contemporary pseudo-axioms to past situations. One, Soviet deliveries were at best unreliable (at worst, you could suspect the Soviets were deliberately withholding transports). Two, the Romanian oilfields (as per Axworthy) supplied all (since 94% is basically all) the oil needs of Germany in 1940 and the vast majority (75%) of them in 1941; there was no way such percentages could've been covered from other sources, even just for the short term. Three, before, during and for a bit after the war, the Americans held a virtual monopoly on petroleum prospecting and extraction equipment (Romania's wells were completely rebuilt after the Great War <when the BEF blew them sky-high> through a deal with the USA, which also included the Ford factory). And they had placed a total embargo on the sale of such equipment to the Axis. Any and all damage to wells (and, to a lesser extent, refineries) would've been unrepairable.

These combined meant that a sufficiently large amount of boom would've dealt a deathblow to Germany (and Italy too).
 
Last edited:
Top