The Classical Music Guide Forums

John Erickson's Road to Berlin & Road to Stalingrad are the standard Eastern front histories

Max Hasting's Armageddon is another good book

My sentiments exactly. And here is why I react strongly. I often get the impression that the people who want to downplay the significance of the US contribution to WWII are often the same people who want to downplay the role that the US played after the war to provide for the security of Western Eu...

?????? I agree that the war in the pacific receives less attention in the US, but it still gets plenty. The battles at Midway, Iwo Jima, Okinawa etc. are just as well known here as many battles in North Africa, Italy and later France and Germany. Please explain what you mean by "the racial undercur...

The point of the "sentimental mini-industry" of "greatest generation" has nothing to do with overemphasizing the US contribution to WWII, or minimizing the Soviet contribution. No, but it maintains the focus soley on the US contribution in the West and it is the only history many are getting. Inter...

Especially today with the mini-industry started by Stephen Ambrose & all the sentimental pieces in the media about the "greatest generation" you hear very little about what was the largest land war in history. This is not to downplay any individual veteran's contribution or experience which is unfat...

The month difference in 41 was critical in the invasion, not for the Winter, but for the Autumn rains which turns the country to mud (there were very few paved roads in the USSR at the time & certainly no highway system). However, Soviet industry had relocated to the Urals and had the Germans taken ...

I think the idea that Britain and the UK would have made a separate peace with Hitler and allowed him to have Europe is wrong. Churchill would NEVER have made peace with Hitler. Also, you have ignored that the US developed the atomic bomb. Why?? That is an absolutely KEY fact in the military balanc...

You seem to be saying that if the Hitler had never gone to way against Russia, he would have ben victorious in Europe. I don't see any reason to think that is true. Notwthstanding his east victoery over France and the rest of Europe, he was still not able to defeat England. And don't forget that th...

I don't see Steve's comment as at all trivializing Normandy I suppose with 25,000,000 Russians dead, Steve has a point; but giving credit where credit is due, the Allied invasion was more than a ancillary component to the German defeat But Normandy would never have been possible had the overwhelmin...

By June 1944 (D-Day) the Germans had already lost the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk and Bagration, the Germans' largest defeat of the war began on June 22, 1944. Roughly 85% of German war casualties during the war were on the Eastern front. In 1944 the Germans had 157 divisions (total manp...

There is not enough appreciation in the West that it was the Russians who defeated Nazi Germany. The war in Western Europe was relatively minor in the whole scheme of things.

His 5 Bagatelles for Guitar, written for Julian Bream are a staple of the repertoire

Don't you mean B, not A? (Math teacher here. Believe me, folks, I am not enjoying this.) That is, we get to ti, or si, or whatever (the note B natural in the C major scale) before we get to its flat. No the overtone series spell (sort of given the questionable intonation of the upper partials) a ly...

Supposedly, if memory serves me right, the sharp 4th comes up more often and sooner in the overtone series. If I am wrong someone please correct me. As I posted before, the first seven unique (ignoring octaves) notes of the overtone series spell the Lydian Dominant scale - 024679A if we use the bas...

Which is nonsense? As far as the Lydian Dominant scale (Lydian with a flat 7) it is often listed in Jazz scale catalogs as the overtone scale as the tones best approximate the series of partials for any given note. I am not claiming that this scale is somehow more "natural" than others, but some do ...

A major scale with a raised 4th and flattened 7th is often purported to be the most "natural" as it most closely resembles the overtone series. As far as the Lydian Chromatic concept, I always understood it to be simply based on extended harmonies and avoiding the minor ninth in a Major 11th chord (...

He wrote some good guitar music

We will definately miss him here

Are American made cars going to become as extinct as dinosaurs? I just read that Standard and Poors Ratings Services have downgraded credit ratings for General Motors and for Ford to junk status. Can companies survive for long with that designation? We still have airlines :) The auto companies cave...

Its a favorite of mine. John O'Connor's recording is quite well done

Why should anyone be surprised at the NY Times botching coverage of the Holocaust when its own pulitzer-prize winning reporter, Walter Duranty was on Stalin's payroll and the paper outright lied about another holocaust in the Ukraine?

http://www.augb.co.uk/Durantyprotest/English.html