Barbarossa and Enduring Freedom

You know, I went back to Operation Barbarossa this week, and noticed that it made the same mistake as Operation Enduring Freedom. Barbarossa, for those who don’t know (and there’s no reason why they should), was the Nazi invasion of the USSR in World War II, in June 1941

It didn’t end well, now, did it? The Germans were beaten out of the USSR and lost millions of men, thousands of tanks and guns, and in fact the whole war, for the Russians didn’t stop after expelling the Germans from their own territory, but only did so when they met up with the US-British force that had come up from the Normandy beaches after D-Day.

Enduring Freedom was launched by the USA and Israel to bring about regime change into Iran, and to force it to end its nuclear programme. Just as the Germans failed to occupy large swatches of Soviet territory, so the USA failed in its objectives, unless you count the long list of Iranian leaders killed, starting with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. As a matter of fact, the Red Army had already undergone a self-administered decapitation strike through the 1937-8 purge of the party, which included the upper echelons of the officer corps, leaving the Red Army in 1942 with much more inexperienced leadership than Iran after the Israeli strikes,

Barbarossa made two assumptions which were among the assumptions of Enduring Freedom. One was that the defenders would simply fold up before a vastly superior military machine. Well, at least the Wehrmacht had broken the French Army, but the US Army’s most recent outing had  een against Iraq. True, the Iraqi military would not really bear comparison with the French Army, so the US armed forces might be very good, but battle-tested is not the right word for them. Well, the Red Army did not collapse, and nor did the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Also, the Germans expected the USSR’s subject peoples to rise, and the Russians as well; the USA expected the Iranian people to rise too. They didn’t, in either case. Actually, the Germans had a greater right to expect an uprising. The regime had just presided over a horrible famine in the early 1930s, and then there was the party purge in which the regime consumed the new elite. However, while some Ukrainians rose, and collaborationists were led by Lt Gen Andrei Valsov, who defected to the Third Reich after being captured in 1942, and who headed the so-called Russian Liberation Army. The USA and Mossad could not capture anyone to turn, and Reza Cyrus, the Pahlavi standardbearer, proved a broken reed, having neither support among the Iranian diaspora, nor among the regime’s opponents in the country.

But frankly, I wasn’t only thinking about Barbarossa’s similarity to Enduring Freedom. There was also the vexed question of whether the monsoon had failed or not. Its failure is expected, and what some said was its beginning was so mild as for it to be confused with premonsoonal rain. The monsoon arrives with panache, a deluge that makes oldsters like me frightened, and youngsters fo dancing in the rain. If the monsoon has started, then there was no flood. The Indian and Sri Lankan cricket boards must hope the monsoon fails, for they’ve scheduled two Tests in Sri Lanka in August, which is the height of the monsoon season in Sri Lanka. If both Tests are abandoned without a ball being bowled, will the ICC Test Championships needs be satisfied?

August is so late for even the English season that Pakistan will have reached the second Test when the second India-Sri Lanka Test ends. I see that Shan Masood is not taking out the side, which is a bit of a disappointment for England, which has seen Ben Stokes retire.

There seems to be no one to replace him. For decades, England has been well served by a fast bowling allrounder, starting with |Ian Bothan, continuing with ‘Freddy’ Flintofff and now with Ben Stokes.

Speaking of sports, the football World Cup seems in turmoil, with Germany knocked out by  Paraguay and the Netherlands by Morocco. It’s not so much that they are former multiple champions, but who has been doing the elimination. Well, perhaps only to be expected in a world where the USA could not pummel Iran into submission.