This thing is too big for me to grasp. I'm not suggesting coverups cabals and conspiracies internal, just the usual reserving of information by both sides in the interest of security. "The first casualty of war is truth".

This is how my dad (then a young teen in Rome) describes hearing about the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941: when the radio first reported the declaration of war, my grandfather said "we just lost the war". There were no bullettins for a week or ten days, and then the german high command issued a list of captured cities, personnel, and materiel -- and everyone was in awe at how huge those gains had been and the feeling crept in that the Germans might have a chance after all. After the war, my dad bought several military history books to finally find out how things had actually gone.

Giovanni