I hope this fall's PBS documentary does justice to the war as it was fought in the Soviet Union (although I fear the film will focus on American involvement).
I hope this fall's PBS documentary does justice to the war as it was fought in the Soviet Union (although I fear the film will focus on American involvement).
Agreed. The war between Germany and the Soviet Union really WAS the Second World War. Everything else paled in comparison.
"Agreed. The war between Germany and the Soviet Union really WAS the Second World War. Everything else paled in comparison."
Disagree.
There is no question that the Soviets occupied more land troops than the rest of Germany's enemies combined. There is also no question that the Soviets suffered more from the war than any western ally.
But the Germans lost about as many troops in the surrender of Tunisia as they did at Stalingrad. Huge numbers of troops were tied up in defending the coasts of western Europe. The quantity of manpower and materiel tied up in defending against the air offensives of the western allies was really quite remarkable. (Consider the difference that all the AAA used in that campaign would have made had it been repurposed to AT.) And the Soviets would have lost without the huge quantities of logistical support provided by the US (mostly).
(I could continue at some length, if you wish.)
None of this should be taken to denigrate the contributions made by the Soviets to the war effort when their allies finally stabbed them in the back. Those contributions were integral to the war effort. And the sacrifices of the Soviet people were, in many cases, epic. But "[e]verything else" did not "pale[] in comparison."
Vichy France came into existence after France surrendered--and was never more than a puppet state--although as the Wikipedia article notes, the United States recognized the Vichy government as the government of France.
Sasha, I suppose it's terrible of me but I immediately flashed on:
"They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
"No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
"Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
"They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
The Soviet-Nazi war of 1941-45 is the direct descendant of the Seven Years' War. In both cases, a European land power fought as the armed forces of an island/offshore power, or the island/offshore power fought as the financial backer of the land power. In the Seven Years' War, Prussia and Britain were the two powers, Britain eventually bankrolling Prussia with more than 2 million pounds a year. In the Soviet-Nazi war, it was America using Lend-Lease to back the Soviets.
In both cases, the offshore/island power fought on ancillary fronts (Americas, India, the Mediterranean, Hanover//North Africa, Italy, France), tying up enemy resources that would otherwise have been thrown against their ally, but the major part of the fighting was done by the land ally (akin to the "you hold him down and I'll skin him" offensive launched by Grant and Sherman in 1864 that eventually defeated the Confederacy).
The Napoleonic Wars sort of fit into that paradigm, as Britain once again bankrolled the various anti-Napoleonic alliances while most of the fighting took place between Austrian, Russian, and Prussian troops on the one hand, and French on the other (Spain serving as the ancillary front). Napoleon's first surrender was forced by the Russians and Austrians marching into Paris. Had the war ended there, the ensuing peace would have looked very different. Only Napoleon's return, stopped by Wellington and Blucher, allowed the British to achieve the dominant position they did in the peace.
Doug- you shouldn't look so much to Stalingrad (a pretty stupid blunder on each side, really) as to the destruction of Group Army Center as the turning point of the war in Europe. Probably the most single devestating land battle in history, that was. Certainly the most in modern warfare.
Sasha, How did your mother feel about being bombed?
My friend Byrt was living rough in Berlin on August 24th 1940 when he watched the first RAF night raid on the German capital.
He thought that being bombed was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It established for him that someone was fighting the country that was trying to kill him.
I think the point is that the "scale" of the warfare on the Eastern front dwarfed that of any other strategic theater. Our war with the Japanese did not involve millions of troops across hundreds of divisions, etc.
"Our war with the Japanese did not involve millions of troops across hundreds of divisions, etc."
No, but it did involve the only two instances of nuclear weapons being used in warfare. I disagree that this significant piece of history "pale[s] in comparison".
1. We only think of WWII as something different from WWI bloodlettting because we think of the Western Front.
2. One point: the prewar theories of bombing of areas had been that it would induce a sort of of nervous breakdown. Didn't work. Under attack by enormous outside forces, people come together. London under The Blitz had its lowest recorded rates of mental committments, alcholism, crime, suicide, etc..
Duncan: My mother was four months old this day in 1941, so she didn't think much of anything about the bombing. By the time the war ended, she was four years old and living as an evacuee in Kazakhstan, and my father was six years old and living as a survivor in formerly beseiged Leningrad. I'm sure both were happy in May 1945.
They were bombing my mum, too, when they bombed yours, Sasha. My mum ran home from work as bombs rained down in the fields around her in Manchester, England. She often took my sister and me to air raid shelters, though we were too young to understand anything but the urgency of it. Eight years after war's end when we emigrated to Canada, we were still on rations (fried bread for breakfast and lettuce sandwiches for tea), I still played in bomb craters and large sections of Manchester were still rubble. But our sufferings were trivial compared to those of the peoples of the Soviet Union, and we knew that.
My mother was born in Königsberg, East Prussia in 1917. She came to this country in 1924. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad
A famous math problem was the 7 bridges of Königsberg. See http://mathforum.org/isaac/problems/bridges1.html
The turning point of the war in Europe was the Battle of the Atlantic, particularly that part from mid 1942 to early 1943. Or perhaps it was Hitler's decision to launch Barbarossa, or to attack the Balkans first. Or perhaps it was Hitler's decision to declare war on the US. Or perhaps it was the decision to go south in the USSR in 1942 or to divide the attack in 1941.
No, it was definitely the decision to not invade Malta.
Wait, it was actually the decision to spend too much on Germany's surface fleet while neglecting the submarine fleet.
Sorry, the concept of "the turning point of the war" is not one that I find useful for WWII in Europe.
In William Manchester's biography on Winston Churchill, "The Last Lion," Manchester implies, if not downright expresses (it has been several years since I read the biography), that the British "ruling class" encouraged Hitler to break treaties and rearm the Wehrmacht so that Nazi Germany would invade and destroy the USSR. Apparently, the British "ruling class" feared communism more than Nazi Germany.
Apparently, the British "ruling class" feared communism more than Nazi Germany.
Why not? Who'd demonstrated the greater threat to human life at that point? Stalin had already made the Ukraine a dying place.
And for that matter, which of the two ended up killing more people by far?
It would have been great to have those two bottled up solely with each other, if it could have been arranged, and no worse than what did happen in the first place.
And much better for the Italian, French, and Austrian populations--and their synagogues.
And frankly, of the two, the Sov Union had the greater strategic depth. We are fortunate Hitler decided on Barbarossa before crossing the Channel.
And that not for Soviet preparation, skill, or even sacrifice, but purely from the emphasis taken off of Operation Lion.
It would have sucked to have Iceland as the easternmost jumping off point.
Actually, the Soviet KGB played quite an impressive role in the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany on the battlefields of the USSR. If I recall, the Wehrmacht swept through the Ukraine and other eastern Soviets in the early months of Operation Barbarossa because 1) the population welcomed the Wehrmacht as liberators and 2) anti-communist commanders of the eastern Soviet armies defected thereby surrendering their armies en masse to the Wehrmacht. However, Hitler never fully utilized the defecting Soviet commanders and their armies against the USSR because the KGB had infiltrated the German High Command ("OKW") and successfully convinced OKW that the defecting Soviet commanders were in fact still loyal to Stalin and that their defection was merely a ruse.
And for that matter, which of the two ended up killing more people by far?
Well, considering the war against fascism cost at least 50 million lives and the Nazis directly and deliberately murdered upwards of 9 million people in a space of about three years (the main work of the extermination camps was carried out mostly between 1942 and late 1944, when the killing was curtailed because of the need for slave labor and the loss of territory), and the death toll of communism highly speculative, this point is open to debate.
Besides, if we are going to count everyone who died of disease, starvation, or overwork in Stalin's Russia as a "victim" of communism, does that mean we are to count every American or Asian Indian, Zulu, Boer (after all the phrase "concentration camp" was invented by the British in the Boer War) who died of disease, starvation, or warfare resisting the domination of the Americans or British as a victim of capitalism. How about all the African slaves who died in their anonymous millions (somewhere between 10--15 million) as they were shipped from Africa to the new world to labor and often die quickly on the plantations?
1) the population welcomed the Wehrmacht as liberators and 2) anti-communist commanders of the eastern Soviet armies defected thereby surrendering their armies en masse to the Wehrmacht.
While the parts of the local population did initially greet the Germans and liberators, believing they would be an improvement over the Soviets, they quickly learned that there were indeed much worse things than Stalinist Communism. The Germans were not interested in liberating the people of the Soviet Union (they considered the Slavs untermenschen, not much better than Jews). They were there to obtain Lebensraum for the German people and slave labor for German factories. If the local people starved or died or entire villages needed to be liquidated to keep the peace, they could care less.
As for number 2. I have no idea where you read your history.
FRANCE:
June 22 - France signs armistice with Nazi Germany (from wikipedia article on Petain):
"On June 22 [General Petain] signed an armistice with Germany that gave Nazi Germany control over the north and west of the country, including Paris and all of the Atlantic coastline, but left the rest, around two-fifths of France's prewar territory, unoccupied, with its administrative centre in the resort town of Vichy."
It is a shame that French, Japanese, Croatian fascists never were subjected to Nuremberg process, just like Germans.
Two of the most murderous regimes the world has ever seen at each other's throats - as someone whose central European grandparents were overrun by both, a certain "pox on both your houses" schadenfreude is the dominant emotion whenever I contemplate the "Great Patriotic War"... too bad only one of them came out of the fight crushed.
In fact they were--though perhaps not as deeply as they should have gone. Japan had specific trials. Among the French, the Vichy head of state, Marshal Petain, was sentenced to life imprisonment (instead of death because he was a major hero in World War I) and his fascist premier, Pierra Laval was executed.
As for the Croats, I auspect justice was more summary--but I could be wrong.
the British "ruling class" encouraged Hitler to break treaties and rearm the Wehrmacht so that Nazi Germany would invade and destroy the USSR. Apparently, the British "ruling class" feared communism more than Nazi Germany.
When describing the motives of fellow travelers to these large political movements, most people get it wrong. It was the days of "better Living through government", wherein the needs of the many as promulgated by the chosen were the way to run society. Overlay it with some sort of misguided Turnerism bringing rational order to society and you have the single dominant view of politics post World War I.
If we extract the word Fascism from its unique representation in Italy as well as from its lurid use as a curse word in American politics, one would have to say that Fascism had a remarkable hold on the intelligentsia of the world.
Wilson was enthralled with this notion, and it was probably much of what he wanted out of the League of Nations. Is this evidence that it held sway at Princeton, or at other college campuses, I think so, but really do not know. British upper classes admired the fascism of Germany, as it brought order and reason to a troubled anarchic country. Fascism was used to justify the "excesses" of Stalin. Roosevelt's family, confidantes, and cabinet members regularly reported back from Italy on "the good things that are going on over here." The major Depression-era government programs speak for themselves.
Many don't get this because they see everything through some sort of gloss of the arts, particularly cinematic arts. Nazi's are some sort of cartoon S&M dream, with a heavy emphasis on black leather boots, black uniforms, and swastikas as some sort of sex jewel, OK in their way, but meant to Jews. Italian Fascism is seen as Nazi wanna-be's, not quite cool enough to change from brown to black.
A more edifying way to look at this through art is to examine the similarities between the major “non-decadent” art produced during the thirties. The similarities between the paintings of Soviet Union, and those of Nazi propaganda, and those of the WPA, perhaps still on view in your local post office are striking and instructive.
In either case, both words are reduced to ritual deprecations used to fling at someone who creates some minor government-imposed annoyance, or perhaps is in any way judgemental.
"...the Soviet KGB played quite an impressive role in the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany on the battlefields of the USSR."
Some, but unlike other intelligence operations, their role was mostly directed against their OWN people... and the KGB were a bunch of murdering freaks as we know.
My Soviet history instructor was in the Red Army in WWII, and fought his way across to Germany with them. At the end of the war, he and the rest of the Russian jews under his command were sitting around eating one day, and suddenly the NKVD (as the KGB was known at this time) surrounded them, and disarmed them at gunpoint. After spending years risking their neck in battle, they were sent off to camps, from which he escaped and taught school on the perimeter of the Soviet empire for a number of years, before somehow emigrating to the US, to one day teach a certain 17-year old dumb kid at Western Michigan University. He once spotted me in the classroom reading the campus newspaper at the start of class, which annoyed him, so he (somewhat) jokingly said "Young man if you don't put that newspaper away I'm going to purge you." The whole room broke up laughing... it was a great line. One of the best and most enjoyable classes I've ever participated in... that guy had some great stories.
Reminds me, I should look him up and see what he published, and I'm sure there musta been something.
'"concentration camp" was invented by the British in the Boer War': oh no it wasn't. They were first used by the Spanish in Cuba and then by the USA in the Phillipines. And none of those countries - Spain, USA or UK - used them in the way the Nazis did. In other words, for the Nazis to adopt the term "concentration camp" was just a clever bit of propaganda to snare gullible idiots. Still working, I see.
Turning points: Ian Kershaw has a new book out, Fateful Choices, on precisely that subject: 1940-41.
I think Hitler was screwed as soon as he invaded Russia. John Lukacs argues, somewhat persuasively, that Hitler's natural inclination to conquer Russia -- one of the two linchpins of his policy, the other being the extermination of the Jews -- combined with the inability to knock the UK out of the war to prod him into a premature attack in 1941. The Germans didn't have nearly the armor or the supply arm to conquer Russia then.
So on Lukacs' theory -- Five Days in London -- the decision in the UK against suing for peace terms was the "turning point."
Admittedly, all this is big-picture; it looked to people in 1941 as tho Hitler might win. I do think however that people familiar with the Soviet Union knew better.
Two of the most murderous regimes the world has ever seen at each other's throats - as someone whose central European grandparents were overrun by both, a certain "pox on both your houses" schadenfreude is the dominant emotion whenever I contemplate the "Great Patriotic War"... too bad only one of them came out of the fight crushed.
I endorse Affe's comments wholeheartedly. This "Great Patriotic War" stuff is for the birds. Stalin was AT LEAST as much a butcher as Hitler. Stalin's genocide was directed at EVERYBODY... including his own armed forces. He cared not who died... or how many.
And no, he was not our "ally". This butcher teamed with Hitler at the start of the war, slaughtered countless many in Poland, Finland and the Baltic states he conquered, and made firm commitments with Japan that allowed them to prosecute the Pacific War against the US. Referencing a passage from Edwin T. Layton's book "AND I WAS THERE", which ironically I read for the first time just this morning, re Stalin's negotiations with Japan in the months before Pearl Harbor, Stalin was quoted telling foreign minister Matsuoka (the guy who negotiated the Tripartite Pact... The Axis... with Germany) as he was returning from Berlin... here's Matsuoka quoting Stalin:
"Japan can straighten out the Far East and Germany will handle Europe," Stalin had promised the diminutive Matsuoka at Moscow's central station. "Later, together all of us will deal with America."
This position allowed Japan a secure front to their North, and enabled them to move South and East against the US and our allies, assisting Hitler and relieving some of the pressure against him in the Atlantic and Europe and the Med. If Stalin had been our "ally", he would have pressured Japan. He didn't. He was a manipulative despot, building an empire, and didn't care whose corpses he had to step over to do it.
All due respect to the Russian people, but they were victims... not patriots.
When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, the USSR had already invaded every single one of its European neighbors:
Poland
Finland
Lithuania
Latvia
Estonia
Romania
The Bolsheviks had already murdered millions, maybe tens of millions of people. Stalin had assembled an army four or five times the size of Germany's. The USSR had world ambitions which dwarfed those of Nazi Germany.
Looking back on it, I can't see how the West decided to back Stalin over Hitler with what they knew at the time.
Looking back on it, I can't see how the West decided to back Stalin over Hitler with what they knew at the time.
Really? You really can't understand this point? I find that rather remarkable. Perhaps you could apply your own first test -- invading one's neighbors -- and see how that works out.
Admittedly, all this is big-picture; it looked to people in 1941 as tho Hitler might win. I do think however that people familiar with the Soviet Union knew better.
I think you are right. If I remember Antony Beevor's book correctly, the German high command had concluded by 1941 that the war in the East was unwinnable unless the Germans failed to incite a major civil war in the Soviet Union. Note that "German high command" in this instance does not include Hitler...
Um, replace "failed" with "managed" in that last post of mine. Is there any way I can plausibly claim that was a typo, rather than just a total brain breakdown?
In either case, both words are reduced to ritual deprecations used to fling at someone who creates some minor government-imposed annoyance, or perhaps is in any way judgemental.
In fact, "fascist" and "communist" (depending on the speaker's politics) are both semantically identical to "bastard." And just like "bastard," the literal meaning of the words has been overwhelmed by their common usage... a point to which the fussy have not quite yet resigned themselves.
Besides, if we are going to count everyone who died of disease, starvation, or overwork in Stalin's Russia as a "victim" of communism, does that mean we are to count every American or Asian Indian, Zulu, Boer (after all the phrase "concentration camp" was invented by the British in the Boer War) who died of disease, starvation, or warfare resisting the domination of the Americans or British as a victim of capitalism.
That would be a terribly dishonest thing to claim, since much of that activity took place under an explicitly mercantilist and imperialist outlook, and has little direct connection to anything like capitalism.
Of course I can't expect much better from someone who hasn't acknowledged that the deaths resulting from deliberate consequences of policy, when tallied for communist regimes, numbers 100 million as a floor figure.
And yes the Sovs made a great many tanks, and the wonderful Il-2. They did so in factories the transport for which consisted of Packard trucks with new paint and the serial numbers/idenifying marks chiseled or ground out.
Stalin didn't want his people to know the extent to which they were relying on America's efforts.
I will say the Sovs absorbed a lot of lead for us, though.
"concentration camp" was invented by the British in the Boer War':
I clearly said the phrase, not the concept (actually the U.S. used concentration camps to defeat the Apaches in the 1880s). And at least 35,000 Boers, mostly women, children, and old men died in British Concentration Camps in the second Boer War.
There is little difference between the private ownership socialism of Hilary Clinton and that of Il Duce.
What everybody's missing in this enjoyable jaunt OT is that Fascism, Communism, Puritanism and Liberalism at their best all stem from the determination of an Elect to drive wicked, greedy, slothful, stupid, naive etc. Common Man to virtue at bayonet's point. The differences are important -- Massachusetts isn't East-Germany-that-was -- but the contempt each shows for ordinary people is important, too.
And of course, once the leaders discover the joys and uses of centralized power these 'isms' don't stay "at their best" very long.
Looking back on it, I can't see how the West decided to back Stalin over Hitler with what they knew at the time.
Are you really saying that the Nazis were preferable to the Soviets? Remember before you answer, for all its faults, the Soviet Union never had a policy of genocide designed (and very nearly succeeding) to wipe entire ethnic groups from the face of the earth because they considered them genetically inferior.
The link, they started bombing my mom, in Wikepedia includes at 3.1 of the heading outline a link to a plan for the Soviets to begin an offensive against the Nazis on July 6th. This had been put back based on the quixotic flight of the hapless Nazi figurehead Rudolf Hess to Britain. Like a paranoid, Stalin took this as possibly pressaging a union of Britain with Germany against 'him' and had put back the date of the planned Soviet attack originally scheduled before this Jahrzeit. 'If it weren't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all' applied to the Jews generally in the 1940s.
Affe:
Two of the most murderous regimes the world has ever seen at each other's throats - as someone whose central European grandparents were overrun by both, a certain "pox on both your houses" schadenfreude is the dominant emotion whenever I contemplate the "Great Patriotic War"... too bad only one of them came out of the fight crushed.
I endorse Affe's comments wholeheartedly.
Me too (I am curious though about Affe's moniker: is it from German, and if yes, why that one?). As someone brought up under one of those regimes, I invite all the doubters back in time to compare big things as well as small ones to see how close they really were. I was struck speechless when I had a chance to discuss and contrast Hitlerjugend with Young Pioneers. Veterans of both were participating. There was nothing to contrast beyond the color of the uniform. After a very recent comment by Putin that 1937 was a year of some mistakes, but really no worse than what other countries did, an opportunity to revisit Stalinjugend and its equivalents for other age groups may soon present itself without the need for time travel. I would be reluctant to travel to Russia now, even if I had to.
Incidentally, my family has been given equal opportunity by both sides: from Auschwitz, to the Eastern Front, to the siege of Leningrad to the Gulag - it had both victims and survivors. As a popular underground Soviet song of the Khrushchev time said: "We were provided special accomodations - some by Stalin, some by Hitler"
It would have been ideal for the lessons WWI mistaught to have never been learned, but granted that, it would have been better by far if in 1945 Patton had been give leave to take the 3rd Army East to the Pacific.
And what's screwier? The same people who are saying the choice should obvious when choosing whether the Soviets or the Nazi were worse, and who pick the Nazi as the "worst" of the two--they say that now that AlQaeda is determined to get the bomb, we should ignore the Islamist' Mein Kampf statements and talk to our enemies.
Are you really saying that the Nazis were preferable to the Soviets? Remember before you answer, for all its faults, the Soviet Union never had a policy of genocide designed (and very nearly succeeding) to wipe entire ethnic groups from the face of the earth because they considered them genetically inferior.
It's true. They were more like Khmer Rouge in that their parameters were your social class, education, and whether there was anybody who took the trouble to report on you. Alhtough the absence of any of the above was not necessarily an obstacle.
With one caveat, of course, that envious of Hitler's simpler approach, Stalin, in his last years, decided to explore a final solution for Jews as well.
Okay. Okay. She won't be any worse than Peron if she gets a chance.
Totally on a tangent: we may yet see how Cristina Fernández de Kirchner becomes president of the republic succeeding her husband, something Evita Peron never got to do. I think it's very likely to happen this year.
They were more like Khmer Rouge in that their parameters were your social class, education, and whether there was anybody who took the trouble to report on you.
I guess I am put in the very uncomfortable position here of defending Stalin. But let's be as reasonable as we can with homicidal megalomaniacs. Stalin was no Pol Pot (heck Hitler wasn't even a Pol Pot). Stalin wasn't Hitler either. The Gulags were never set up as extermination centers. They were always meant to extract work from the prisoners. Granted, Stalin used famine as a weapon to bring to heel parts of his empire he feared. But so, to a lesser degree, did the U.S. after the Civil War when we deliberately slaughtered the bison herds on the Great Plains to force the Indian tribes onto reservations.
I don't know how you are counting your 100 million victims of communism, but the majority is from Mao, not the Soviet Union. The toll from the Soviet Union, which conservative scholars put at somewhere over 25 million people, mostly from the engineered famines and purges before World War II, is probably overstated, simply because if it was that high they would not have been able to muster the manpower they did to fight the Nazis.
I'm amazed some on here are defending Hitler, while others are defending Stalin. Both regimes were evil, and had they been at war with each other on an exclusive basis, I would have danced a jig of glee to see them destroy each other.
We allied with Stalin b/c Britain was already at war with Germany when Hitler tried to conquer the Soviet Union. That whole "enemy of my enemy thing."
Or as Churchill put so eloquently when quizzed about it - "If Hitler had invaded Hell, Satan would have at least gotten a favourable mention on the floor of the House of Commons.
it would have been better by far if in 1945 Patton had been give leave to take the 3rd Army East to the Pacific.
There is little doubt who would have won that fight (and it wouldn't have been us). The Russians had better tanks (and unlike the Germans they had just as many as us), more and more experienced troops, and they were in no mood to lose the ground they had spilled so much blood for.
J F Thomas
""concentration camp" was invented by the British in the Boer War':
I clearly said the phrase, not the concept"
And still you are wrong. Once allowance is made for the Spanish speaking Spanish and the British English, you'll find the phrase comes from the Spanish in Cuba. And you'll also find that the reality of Concentration Camps as developed by Spain and the USA had no resemblance to the Nazis' reality, so your reference to the "concept" is wrong too. You still seem to be peddling Hitler's line on this one.
Precisely, because compared to Stalin's body count, Hitler was a piker. And by the way, it was Stalin who engineered Mao into power, and set the stage for all of his wonderful works.
I too would question whether we could have driven all the way to the Pacific, even using the threat of nuclear weapons, but there's no doubt we coulda kicked the commies back out of central Europe if we'd wanted to. Like the Nazis, they could not have withstood the merciless air warfare we'd perfected by that time (and we'd have benefitted from the contributions of our newly found "allies", the guys with clean spaces on their uniforms where the swastikas used to be).
However, FDR had ceded Eastern Europe to Stalin's tender mercies long before that time, and the rest is history.
Well let's see, since they both invaded POLAND, I guess there really isn't any "which" to consider, is there?
Perhaps you should stop now.
ROFLMAO. If only Churchill had had your keen powers of observation, he would have known that the Red Army -- busy running east from the Vistula -- posed a greater danger to the existence of the British Empire than did the Wehrmacht at Calais and Tobruk. Silly, silly British man.
I will say the Sovs absorbed a lot of lead for us, though.
That's something they were good at.
And then he later wrote:
I suppose it must come across as an afterthought by me at this point, but I'm glad they missed.
These two evaluations of the worth of the lives of the Soviets seem a bit contradictory to me.
As one born in England during the Second Great War, I express my admiration for and gratitude to the Soviet peoples of the time for all they did to defeat Nazi Germany. Collectively, they were heroic, and no punk's armchair revisionism more than 60 years later can take away from that.
ROFLMAO. If only Churchill had had your keen powers of observation, he would have known that the Red Army -- busy running east from the Vistula -- posed a greater danger to the existence of the British Empire than did the Wehrmacht at Calais and Tobruk. Silly, silly British man.
Actually, Churchill had my keen powers of observation re the Soviets... as he saw them for the barbarians that they were. And actually, with our support, the Brits were well on their way to beating down the Nazis at Tobruk, and FDR would have never allowed the sea lanes to be permanently closed from Calais or anywhere else, thus allowing the Brits to be cut off. The US was in fact in a shooting war with the Kreigsmarine, long before Pearl Harbor.
However, the "West" that you were speaking of earlier, in the context of a political decision whether or not to support Stalin... well, that "West" was pretty much defined as the UNITED STATES... and not the declining British Empire (which we here in this country had little stomach for as you should know... particularly in India and a few other places.).
So then, the question.. properly defined... is whether the United States should have supported the butcher Stalin. And given the 1/2 century of totalitarianism and murder that followed that war... it's clear that we should not have supported that butcher.
And Mr. Young, you and the rest of the Brits can give thanks to the people of the United States of America for your deliverance from the Nazis... because without us... you would not have been delivered.
On behalf of Affe, who has authorized me to respond to your question on his name, it is indeed from the German for "monkey." Affe is intrigued by monkeys.
And Mr. Young, you and the rest of the Brits can give thanks to the people of the United States of America for your deliverance from the Nazis... because without us... you would not have been delivered.
What relevance does this have to my message, which expressed admiration and gratitude for the heroic efforts of the Soviet peoples in defeating Nazi Germany? Are you saying that they do not deserve gratitude and admiration? Are you saying that gratitude and admiration are only due to the people of the USA? What's your point, whackjobbb?
I am glad the USA belatedly (and reluctantly in many quarters) entered the war more than two years after it started and several months after the Soviet Union entered it. What would have happened had the USA remained relatively aloof is not as clear as you apparently think it is.
By the way, it may please you to call me a Brit, but I wager I have lived in the USA and been a citizen of the USA for a lot longer than most of the U.S.A.-born contributors to this forum.
Precisely, because compared to Stalin's body count, Hitler was a piker.
Even at the highest estimate (some 25 million), which is probably much too high probably by a factor of two, Stalin and Lenin combined took some 35 years to kill maybe twice as many people as Hitler managed in about about four (Hitler really didn't get started until 1941). Even if you limit the mass killings in the Soviet Union to the period before World War II, that is still is some twenty plus years to Hitler's four. And again the motivation behind the slaughter was on a whole different level. Hitler meant to perfect mankind by eliminating the weak and undesirable elements of it. Stalin, as deluded and evil as he was, sought to perfect humankind through a evolutionary process.
Everybody should be clear about one thing: The United States had nothing to do with beating Germany. Germany was beaten before we got in.
Nor did we contribute to the Russians' beating Germany. That happened sometime in September or October 1941, when Germany counted one more casualty than it could replace.
At that point, US aid to the USSR was nil.
By the end of 1941, German casualties in Russia were around 900K. Russian casualties were maybe 4 or 5 times as big.
The difference was, in the summer of 1942, the Russian army was bigger than ever, the German army smaller than the year before.
My grandfather was bombed by the Japanese while on a submarine in WWII. On the other hand he wasn't tortured, assaulted, etc. So in the grand scheme of things he is braver than some, but not braver than others.
I am about as proud an American as you will find, maybe even to the point of annoyance to some at times, but there is really no need to shout that to the British. All you do is confirm the stereotype of the "ugly American." As Lewis Black pointed out, there is something a bit annoying about somebody who walks into the room and constantly exclaims, "I'm the greatest person here!!!!"
The British were likely too strong to be defeated on their own, even if they may have been too weak militarily to win on their own.
By the same token, we couldn't have helped beat the Germans w/o basing support in England. Germany would have been beaten, but by the Soviets exclusively, thereby condemning all of Europe to communist oppression.
I'm still stunned some here are defending Adolph Hitler, while others are saying Stalin was the best(or maybe not the worst). Can't we simply be happy that Germany got beaten - I mean, it was over 60 years ago. And the Soviets eventually collapsed...yet another good thing(and that collapse is approaching 20).
Sasha, I'm glad your mom survived Barbarossa. Maybe that's what we should focus on rather than rehash battles we can't influence, and were over 60 years ago.
Everybody should be clear about one thing: The United States had nothing to do with beating Germany. Germany was beaten before we got in.
Nor did we contribute to the Russians' beating Germany. That happened sometime in September or October 1941, when Germany counted one more casualty than it could replace.
Well now I guess I have to come to the defense of the good 'ol U. S. of A.
In the abstract I guess it is possible that without the contribution of the U.S., Great Britain and the U.S.S.R,, could have beat the Germans, but the cost, especially to the Russians, would have been even more horrendous than it was. Britain, for one, would have had to been willing to accept casualty rates like those it suffered in World War I. Which very likely would have led to the kind of world wide revolution that the Soviets wanted any way.
There is no doubt that Lend-lease to the Russians was invaluable. Early on even the meager influx of armor was critical. Later on as the Russians were able to concentrate on producing there superior tank designs, the simple shipments of trucks and food were absolutely vital to keep the Russian army from starving and supplies running to the front.
To claim that anyone but Stalin would have suffered the onslaught from the Germans and not capitulated is just bizarre. By the same token, to claim that anyone except Stalin would be so unprepared for war in June of 1941 and would bungle the initial onslaught so badly with such an advantage in both men and materiel is also bizarre.
And actually, with our support, the Brits were well on their way to beating down the Nazis at Tobruk
Your chronology is no better than your history. In 1941 (not '42), the Brits were "well on their way" to barely holding on to Tobruk, only to end up retreating from there to El Alamein in early 1942. You've confused the events of 1942 with those of 1941.
What relevance does this have to my message, which expressed admiration and gratitude for the heroic efforts of the Soviet peoples in defeating Nazi Germany?
Sure I admire their ability to the meet the need for extraordinary self sacrifice made neccessary by their putting up with the Bolsheviks in the first place.
The point is, they'd have never got to Berlin from the East without our tolerating their doing so, and amking that possible with logistical support.
And certainly Patton could have driven East to the Pacific in 1945, he had the Pershing and better command and control of every aspect of war. Zhukov wouldn't have had time to turn around an run.
And Mark Field, knowing of Katyn didn't take foresight.
Can't we simply be happy that Germany got beaten - I mean, it was over 60 years ago. And the Soviets eventually collapsed...yet another good thing(and that collapse is approaching 20).
Sure I'm happry Germany was defeated.
In fact I'm ecstatic.
I'd be positively euphoric if it had been done by the SovUnion in such a way both systems destroyed themselves.
I didn't realize that historians now recognized buffoonery as a subdiscipline. Your great insight is based on 50 years of hindsight. Awesome.
It's more than buffoonery, although there's a lot of that. It's also perverse historical revisionism motivated by political extremism. Apparently a considerable number of the contributors here have a view of history, indeed, a world view, that is so distorted by their political agendas that they can't even bring themselves to recognize that the Soviet peoples made valiant sacrifices during the Second World War.
I truly have difficulty controlling my temper when someone dismisses the efforts of the Soviet peoples during the war with the observation that they were good at stopping lead and when someone else, in the face of appreciation expressed for the efforts of the Soviet peoples, demands that the gratitude be directed to the people of the U.S.A.
I think of the hundreds of thousands if not millions of Soviet civilians who starved and froze to death in their own homes, the millions on millions of Soviet soldiers who were killed on battlefields, and I wonder what breeds such profound disrespect and even contempt for human life among privileged and cocksure young twits pounding away at their computer keyboards in comparative comfort on a Saturday night 60-plus years later.
"I truly have difficulty controlling my temper when someone dismisses the efforts of the Soviet peoples during the war with the observation that they were good at stopping lead and when someone else, in the face of appreciation expressed for the efforts of the Soviet peoples, demands that the gratitude be directed to the people of the U.S.A."
Given Molotov/Ribbentrop, all I have to say is, if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. I'll save my appreciation, thanks...
Perkins, the Russians had 3 army groups in central Europe, each one about twice as powerful as the British-US-Canadian armies.
Patton was an incompetent army commander. He might have been an average corps commander. He understood little about logistics, which gave Eisenhower and Bradley, who did, fits.
As a poster way back noted, during the summer of 1944, while the western Allies were having difficulty pushing 40 German divisions back a few hundred miles, the Russians annilhilated a similar formation (Army Group Center).
During the war, the US formed about 90 big divisions, with around 20 sent to the Pacific and others scattered around where they weren't any threat to Germany.
The Russians seem to have fielded something like 360 small divisions. In other words, about twice the total American effort and around 3 times what the US directed at Germany.
Rightwing fantasies about unleashing Patton against the Bolshevik menace are just that -- fantasies. Patton shared them, which is an indication of what an incompetent he was.
It'd be pretty silly to say that the Western Allies would have walked over the Soviets, but it's equally silly to say that the Soviets could have won any drawn-out conflict if it started in 1945. Russian manpower was simply too depleted and the supply lines too vulnerable to the Western air superiority that would have manifested itself within weeks of the opening of hostilities, whatever the apparent Soviet advantage in fighter planes. It took four Russians to kill a German and four Germans to kill an American, and Russia was out of young men-- you do the math. And I don't have to mention the atomic bomb, do I?
The big problem with a 1945 offensive is, of course, Japan, which never would have surrendered while the Allies and the Soviets were still going at it. That, and many of the "Western" forces actually thought they were fighting for world communism and, like a lot of leftists today, would jump at the chance to turn their guns on their capitalist countrymen...
No, though I can't remember offhand whether Churchill and Roosevelt had actual knowledge of it before June 22, 1941. Whether they did or not, the military case for allying with Stalin was overwhelming.
The point is, they'd have never got to Berlin from the East without our tolerating their doing so, and amking that possible with logistical support.
That is rather a bizarre interpretation of the last year of the war in Europe. The truer interpretation is that neither us or the British were willing to suffer the kind of casualties that would have been required to quickly eliminate the Germans in Western Europe and race to Berlin. The Americans and British were more than willing to let the Russians do the vast majority of the killing and dying in the east while the western allies cautiously and carefully advanced in the west. The British especially were loathe to suffer the kinds of casualty rates they suffered in World War I (and at the end of World War II had suffered less than a third of the battlefield deaths they had a generation earlier in a war that lasted 50% longer) and when faced with serious German resistance would pull back and wait for air or artillery support rather than risk an assault. The Russians on the other hand, had more military personnel killed in World War II than all the combatants in the previous war. The Germans lost about twice as many troops as they did in World War I.
J.F. is right. Eisenhower explicitly said he preferred to let the Russians take Berlin, and suffer the 100K casualties that required, than take 100,000 casualties himself.
rlb, we didn't have any A-bombs until August, and after we used those, again until (don't recall the exact date) around November.
It isn't so obvious where we could have used one. Moscow? Russia had already had all its other big cities demolished.
The Russians had huge tank armies in central Germany, and the US had its armies advancing in southeastern Germany, Austria. A tank thrust of just a few score miles would have cut off those American divisions. It would have been another Stalingrad.
The SovUnion accomplished little own it's own but to run in front of the Wehrmacht.
Wow, those trucks, P-39s, and cans of Spam really did the trick, single-handedly turning millions of retreating cowards into a fighting force effective enough to chase the Germans all the way to Berlin.
Really, you're just trolling with that line, right? No sane person could think that.
that is so distorted by their political agendas that they can't even bring themselves to recognize that the Soviet peoples made valiant sacrifices during the Second World War.
And the sarifices were made so much more numerous by their acceptance of the Communist Party and it's Stalin--by for 80 years always letting the midnight knocking men go home to their families--that the relative worth of their sacrifice pales far from the esteem you unjustly hold it in.
You also have to wonder how much of that sacrifice any one would have had to make had Stalin and Hitler not buddied up? How much of the sacrifice of the American and genuinely Allied people do you dismiss as being of relatively small import, when the Soviets in fact helped make it neccessary?
Perkins, the Russians had 3 army groups in central Europe, each one about twice as powerful as the British-US-Canadian armies.
Patton was an incompetent army commander. He might have been an average corps commander. He understood little about logistics, which gave Eisenhower and Bradley, who did, fits.
1) You should not conflate numerical superiority with power.
2) They needed all that manpower because they were prolifigately spending their men's lives.
3) Patton was not incompetent, he was risk-taking, and when he took risks, he generally won--in contrast say, to Montgomery, who was quite conservative, and when he took a risk, it was a bridge too far. There is a good reason the Germans were so concerned with where Patton was.
4) Although you didn't make the relevant claim, someone else did, if Patton were to have continued east, he would not have done so with Sherman's, but with Pershing's--more than an equal for a T-34, and nearly an equal to a slower moving IS-2. And the "nearly" equal part would have been no great matter because the USAAF would have been a competent adversary for the Sovs air corps--better planes and frequently better pilots, and the Sovs at that point would have had no Murmansk convoys.
That is rather a bizarre interpretation of the last year of the war in Europe. The truer interpretation is that neither us or the British were willing to suffer the kind of casualties that would have been required to quickly eliminate the Germans in Western Europe and race to Berlin.
It had already been decided the Soviets would be given eastern europe. Once that sort of insanity has become policy, why would you spend any effort taking territory you'd have to hand over?
"J.F. is right. Eisenhower explicitly said he preferred to let the Russians take Berlin, and suffer the 100K casualties that required, than take 100,000 casualties himself. "
Eager, your post proves my point.
I am condemning the decision which lead to the cold war as opposed to ending the war with communism in 1946 or 1947.
What relevance does this have to my message, which expressed admiration and gratitude for the heroic efforts of the Soviet peoples in defeating Nazi Germany? Are you saying that they do not deserve gratitude and admiration? Are you saying that gratitude and admiration are only due to the people of the USA? What's your point, whackjobbb?
Mr. Young,
As previously mentioned, the point is that the deliverance of the British from the Nazis was due to the good people of the United States of America... and nobody else. Absent their deliverance of you, you'd likely be typing your post in German.
As for the Russian people, and also as previously mentioned, they were VICTIMS... of the brutal murderer Stalin. He murdered millions... Russians who were "helping" him, and anybody else that stood in his way of expanding his murderous regime. I have empathy for the Russians Stalin murdered in his various wars of conquest, fighting on whichever side he found expedient that day... but nothing beyond that. As another mentioned, it would have been best if Hitler and Stalin had destroyed each other... and no other outcome was preferable to that one. Pity that the US did not work to bring that about.
I am glad the USA belatedly (and reluctantly in many quarters) entered the war more than two years after it started and several months after the Soviet Union entered it. What would have happened had the USA remained relatively aloof is not as clear as you apparently think it is.
Actually, we were involved, and also as previously mentioned, the US was in a full shooting war with the Kreigsmarine in the Atlantic, and our US NAVY sailors as well as merchantmen were dying in that war... this in addition to the massive armaments shipments, massive credit extended, and full military cooperation on all fronts. GB wsa not allowed to fall... because of the good people of the United States of America.
And again the motivation behind the slaughter was on a whole different level. Hitler meant to perfect mankind by eliminating the weak and undesirable elements of it. Stalin, as deluded and evil as he was, sought to perfect humankind through a evolutionary process.
Yes, Mr. Thomas, I can see that you're one of those who somehow invents complicated machinations to distinguish between the various types of mass murderers. Like most other civilized people, I pretty much stick to the body count totaled by the various mass murderers... and your buddy Stalin's was FAR greater than Hitler's... and this doesn't include your buddy Stalin's contributions to the butchery in China. Aiding that butcher was a travesty.
Your chronology is no better than your history. In 1941 (not '42), the Brits were "well on their way" to barely holding on to Tobruk, only to end up retreating from there to El Alamein in early 1942. You've confused the events of 1942 with those of 1941.
No, actually my chronology is based upon history. After Hitler conquered Western Europe and it was made plain that the US was not going to allow GB to fall... Hitler was left with a large military machine dressed up with no place to go... so he went off to North Africa... to help his buddy the Duce and engage the Brits SOMEWHERE. However, there was never a chance that they could supply a force across the Med with the Royal Navy on the job. That was no more likely than him supplying deep into Russia as we know... particularly since the Brits were reading his frickin e-mails... as they had been for some years... as you should know if you knew anything about history, and Enigma. Even a lunkhead like Montgomery was smart enough to eventually get around to rounding up thirsty Germans into holding pens. It might have taken another year without the US arriving as the other pincer, but it would have happened, and there was nothing Hitler could have done to prevent it.
Perhaps the lucky ones wound up picking cotton in Oklahoma, but the Afrika Corps was sent off to die. This was foreordained.
"And again...Hitler meant to perfect mankind by eliminating the weak and undesirable elements of it. Stalin, as deluded and evil...a evolutionary process."
whackjobbb wrote some very pertinent remarks, concluding with:
You too may want to quit now.
To which I add in comment to Peter Young, in Thomas you find the buffoon reworking history to fit his politics.
and your buddy Stalin's was FAR greater than Hitler's... and this doesn't include your buddy Stalin's contributions to the butchery in China. Aiding that butcher was a travesty.
Let's get this straight. Stalin is not my buddy. I hate that I am forced to defend the Soviet Union and Stalin's (as if saying Stalin was not as bad is Hitler is defending him) actions in this thread. I am merely contending that when it comes to mass murderers of the 20th Century, to say that Stalin was worse than Hitler is to ignore both the purpose and efficiency of Hitler's killing machine. Pol Pot (and possibly Mao--if the truth is ever revealed about his atrocities) and a few others like Idi Amin (who was put in place with the full support of the British) are the only butchers of the 20th Century that come close to Hitler.
Now come on, by the time Mao really got rolling with his Great Leaps Forward and Cultural Revolutions Stalin was dead and relations with the Soviet Union had chilled. If you are talking about Mao's initial rise to power, we had as much to do with that as Stalin did. We weren't too picky about who we shipped arms to in World War II as long as they were fighting the Japanese. Much as we weren't too picky about who we shipped arms to forty years later in Afghanistan as long as they were fighting the Russians.
It took four Russians to kill a German and four Germans to kill an American, and Russia was out of young men-- you do the math. And I don't have to mention the atomic bomb, do I?
Yes, the statistics show that Stalin was a brutal murderer of his own people... the most of his victims... as well as of anybody else he decided to murder. The casualty statistics bear this out only too well.
And no doubt, had FDR not signed away Central Europe, the US could have kicked the commies back to Moscow.
At the close of the war, the United States had more warmaking power than ALL OF THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED. Yes, this would be hard to document conclusively... but measuring tons of steel produced... coal... grain... petroleum supply and refining capacity... transport... shipping of all types... naval power... aircraft... any and all logistics... the US was the greatest military dog on the block, at least... and this not including atomic weapons (and the guy who claimed that we didn't have any in the pipeline until November is flat wrong... those things were in the hopper and ready to party).
All this not to mention the overwhelming US military power available in Europe... and not a power based on barbaric mass attacks as Stalin's, but on manuever and equipment. Stalin fielded many untrained bodies to take lead, no doubt, but so did those in Napoleon's day. The Nazis were not capable of dealing with the mass of bodies Stalin threw into the mideval-like killboxes... but the US was. The US perfected coordinated artillery use in the late 30's, the Nazis never did... and were stunned that we could bring such massed firepower onto them (particularly useful after the US brought on sophisticated proximity fusing, around the Battle of the Bulge). Stalin had to mass his artillery hub-to-hub to operate... just as Napoleon did... and the Russians were still doing so into the 60's... long after the US' methods had been adopted into NATO. That "idiot" Patton would have encircled Stalin's poorly trained conscripts and annihilated them, with manuever, and with massed firepower devastating that encirclement. Zhukov would have been as a child.
And then, we get to aerial warfare. Forget these vaunted Sturmiviks... they would be outnumbered by far... and by planes controlled by and many equipped with radar. I shouldn't have to explain to you the reasoning here as to why this would be so one-sided. Stalin would have wound up with many chockfull killboxes, unlike his barbaric war agsint the Nazis, who warred with him on their terms. And again, we have our newly found grey-suited "allies" to assist matters.
It's too bad FDR didn't think to play these cards... as Churchill wanted to do... but he didn't.
The big problem with a 1945 offensive is, of course, Japan, which never would have surrendered while the Allies and the Soviets were still going at it.
Perhaps, but the people of Central Europe might have a different answer for you, after suffering the 1/2 century of enslavement and murder Stalin imposed on them.
You also have to wonder how much of that sacrifice any one would have had to make had Stalin and Hitler not buddied up? How much of the sacrifice of the American and genuinely Allied people do you dismiss as being of relatively small import, when the Soviets in fact helped make it neccessary?
This is it in a nutshell, Perkins. Stalin buddied up with his brother mass murderer Hitler, and cozied up with his Japanese mass-murdering buddies, at least until it became time for him to swallow up some more empire in 1945.
And again, we have our newly found grey-suited "allies" to assist matters.
You really are a whackjob, aren't you? Do you really think that the American people, let alone the war-weary British or Germans, would have been willing to turn their guns on the Russians. We barely had enough money to finance the rest of the war against Japan. Where on earth would we have gotten the money for another major offensive in Europe? Our allies were already broke (The UK just retired the last of its WWII debt to us just a couple months ago). As it was, a major famine in Europe was just barely averted in the winter of 1945--'46. Imagine what it would have been like if the Americans, instead of concentrating on feeding Europe were instead chasing the Russians back to Moscow.
Harry Eagar
...the Russians had 3 army groups in central Europe, each one about twice as powerful as the British-US-Canadian armies... ...Patton was an incompetent army commander... during the summer of 1944, while the western Allies were having difficulty pushing 40 German divisions back a few hundred miles, the Russians annilhilated a similar formation (Army Group Center).
So your point appears to be that Patton was 'incompetent' because he had some difficulty in pushing back a German force ''a few hundred miles.'' FYI, ''a few hundred miles'' in Europe is a huge amount of territory. Patton routed a German force and chased it for hundreds of miles with his 3rd Army, which was less than one-sixth what the Russians needed to do the same thing.
I would suggest to Harry that he should read Patton's War As I Knew It, before making the incompetent statement that Patton was incompetent.
...based on their body counts... would be true, Thomas.
And again, this doesn't include your buddy Stalin's contributions to Mao's festivities. And yes, your buddy Stalin was the prime driver in Mao's rise to power, your nonsense notwithstanding.
Plenty of blood on your buddy's hands... but you keep apologizing. And we the civilized will keep calling you out for it.
Imagine what it would have been like if the Americans, instead of concentrating on feeding Europe were instead chasing the Russians back to Moscow.
Yes, I can imagine... and it wouldn't have been much of a fight.
And you're a blustering buffoon, with little historical knowledge apparent in your blusterings. Perhaps you should at least ATTEMPT to sprinkle in something that lets the reader think you have at least some knowledge of history... and you show very little. Try Wikipedia... they might give you some tidbits.
We barely had enough money to finance the rest of the war against Japan. Where on earth would we have gotten the money for another major offensive in Europe? Our allies were already broke...
Absurd argument. Before calling annother poster an idiot, try asking yourself: Where would the Russians have gotten money to fight another war? They certainly had zero credit after repudiating the Czarist debt. And where would they get the supply convoys? And who would be allies of the Russians, willing to fight with them? The Russians had already made enemies of every bordering country. Furthermore, war production in the U.S. was at its peak, with most of our supplies and materiel intact. And we had access to raw materials that the Russians did not have. And are you seriously claiming that there was no threat of famine in Russia?
If you're a lawyer, some friendly advice: stick to wills and trusts.
Where would the Russians have gotten money to fight another war?
Well of course the Russians didn't need money, the state and the economy were one and the same. The U.S. had to pay Ford, Chrysler, Studebaker and all the other companies for all those planes, tanks and ships. You do realize that most of the money the U.S. borrowed for the war was borrowed from the U.S. citizens in the form of war bonds, don't you. Man, you really should think before you post.
Patton were to have continued east, he would not have done so with Sherman's, but with Pershing's--more than an equal for a T-34, and nearly an equal to a slower moving IS-2.
IIRC, about 220 Pershing tanks had been shipped to Europe by April 1945. I suspect that production had been greatly slowed or halted.
IIRC (again) war production in the United States peaked in 1944. By fall 1944 the U.S. administration was working on the problem of "reconversion." What civil applications are there for a half-mile long room optimized for production of B-24 bombers? By late '44 the pipeline was full of enough supplies to win the war.
Absent extensive use of nuclear weapons, going east the 4500 miles to Russia's pacific coast would have been beyond the capacity of the U.S. and the U.K. combined. And, of course, there would have been no political support for such an expensive bloodletting.
I think I can agree with all that. FDR had ceded Central Europe to Stalin by 1943, basically, agsinst Churchill's strong advice. Advancing to the Pacific would have been senseless, in any event, but as for kicking a bunch of uneducated hooligans back to Moscow, dolts many of whom were busy packing Berliners' light bulbs and faucets into their knapsacks so as to take light and water back to mother Russia, well, I'd say we had enough there to do the job.
What civil applications are there for a half-mile long room optimized for production of B-24 bombers?
Well, let's see. That B-24 facility in Ypsilanti is about 3.5 miles from my computer here, a site still in use today as a matter of fact, and had been converted from an automotive manufacturing facility before and was quickly serving in that same campacity shortly following the war.
However, the bombers used to devastate Stalin would have likely come out of Kansas, as I recall.
FDR had ceded Central Europe to Stalin by 1943, basically, agsinst Churchill's strong advice.
And Churchill (responsible for the debacles of Gallipoli and the collapse of France in 1940) could do exactly what to prevent the Russians from taking Central Europe? The British were even more casualty averse than the Americans.
What the following number do not really show is that the U.S. was on much less of an economic war footing then the other countries and could have more then doubled armaments production.
Given the long supply lines I suspect a Russian invasion initially would have favored an air war with ground troops facilitating the construction of forward air bases. How much Russian industry would have been in range of air strikes from the U.S. Pacific fleets?
Armaments production in 1943 measured in 1944 dollars:
And Churchill (responsible for... the collapse of France in 1940)
Actually no, Thomas, that would be the French who laid down in 1940.
Churchill... could do exactly what to prevent the Russians from taking Central Europe?
Well, likely no more than he was able to do against the Nazis in 1940, absent the people of the United States of America then.
However, Churchill recognized your mass-murdering buddy Stalin as the butcher that he was, and advocated policy to cage in your buddy... which FDR ignored as we know. Pity that.
The British were even more casualty averse than the Americans.
I wouldn't say that either was "casualty averse", at least that's what their clear acceptance of "unconditional surrender" would indicate.
Mind you, they were not on the same murderous level as your buddy Stalin, who cared NOT how many millions of comrades were slaughtered while building his empire as we know... but the Allies definitely took some casualties.
Harry, I'm not certain the Allies would have never been in France. There was a great deal of talk in 1942-43 about jumping off THEN... and many thought that the best path. The Nazis weren't sitting around drinking vino for the next year as we know. The Atlantic Wall didn't exist then... nor anything close to it. Very difficult for the US Navy to project power until that 2-ocean navy came down the ways, I'll grant you... but it could possibly have been done... and many uniforms advocated it... and no Croatian/Latvian/Lithuanian/Estonian/Polish fascists signed up and in uniform with Hitler then, either.
That reminds me of my old neighbor... an old transmission engineer, a gearhead type guy, always in the garage pulling engines and such. After I lived next door a few years and we got to know each other, he explained to me that he was Latvian and had served in the SS. Seems when Thomas' buddy Stalin grabbed those Baltic states in 1939, my buddy Ilmars and his family and everybody else were put straight under Uncle Joe's jackboot, much persecution and other niceties. So along come the Germans in 1941, blasting the idiot commies out of town... and next thing you know there's an SS recruiting sergeant in the town square unfolding his card table saying "Who wants to kill some commies?" The kids practically ran this guy over to sign up. So would you have, I suspect (not comrade Thomas, of course).
After I lived next door a few years and we got to know each other, he explained to me that he was Latvian and had served in the SS.
You do realize that membership in the SS made him ineligible for immigration to the U.S., and that he lied on his immigration form to get into the U.S. You should have turned him in so he could have been deported and prosecuted. Did you ask him how many Jews he murdered?
Actually no, Thomas, that would be the French who laid down in 1940.
Actually, that's what Churchill would have you believe. If there was one thing Churchill was good at it was shifting the blame of his debacles to others. He pulled the British from the middle of the line in 1940 when there was absolutely no reason to panic. Both the British and the French (and the Belgians) for that matter were in much better shape than they were in in 1914 and the Germans were in a much more precarious situation. The French had won one of the major tank battles with the Germans and had fought the Germans to a draw in the only other one fought. But most importantly, the losses suffered by the Germans were much more serious to their position than to the Allies. The French while retreating, were not routing. Only when the British pulled their troops from the center of the line did the situation become hopeless. Churchill would later claim, falsely, that the French turned tail and he had no choice but to pull the BEF to Dunkirk to save it. This of course was entirely untrue.
IIRC Balts in the SS have generally not been regarded as "criminal," under the (mostly fictional) theory that they were conscripted by the Germans. People tend not to question it because of the impossible situation they were in during the war.
Also, like most of the Waffen SS, the Latvians didn't take part in the Holocaust.
Lots of crazy stuff on this thread, but this caught my eye:
Hitler was left with a large military machine dressed up with no place to go... so he went off to North Africa... to help his buddy the Duce and engage the Brits SOMEWHERE.
For most of the campaign the Afrika Corps consisted of two divisions. Hitler sent the first in early 1941 after a small British force crushed a much larger Italian one. By no means did Hitler commit any sizeable element of his war machine to Africa. Unfortunately for him, he sent more troops to Tunisia just when things were hopeless.
A British writer described the Africa campaign as "a knights' tournament in empty space." It was one of the more interesting struggles of the war. But it was a sideshow.
Also, like most of the Waffen SS, the Latvians didn't take part in the Holocaust.
Are you serious? Because Eastern Europeans were more suspect than native Germans, they were more, not less, likely, to be used as guards and rear echelon troops by the SS, i.e., exactly the troops that were responsible for the worst atrocities. IIRC, membership in the SS was never conscripted (the Wehrmacht of course was), but was voluntary and rigorously screened. U.S. citizenship applications specifically ask about membership in the Nazi party and SS.
You do realize that membership in the SS made him ineligible for immigration to the U.S., and that he lied on his immigration form to get into the U.S. You should have turned him in so he could have been deported and prosecuted. Did you ask him how many Jews he murdered?
As the other guy mentioned, you seem to be inventing your facts again, Thomas. Ilmars was quite a clever engineer, and undoubtedly not foolish enough to expose a past history to me that would have exposed him as illegal. But continue on with your fantasies, I guess...
And no, I never spoke with him about murdering jews. I have spoken to many Russian jews here in the Detroit area, who have volunteered to me information about your buddy Stalin's slaughter of their families... and the constant persecutions and shakedowns. These guys are very prevalent in the IT and automotive industries here. I can give you some contacts, if you'd like, and you do appear to be in serious need of some education on these topics.
I can also give you some contacts with some Chinese folks (admittedly and understandably, they're more circumspect), who can set you straight on your buddy Stalin's role in Mao's rise to the Mass Murderers Hall of Fame, if you'd like.
--
Oh and the French laid down in 1940, despite Churchill's attempts to buck them up and continue the fight. Let's do what you seem incapable of doing, and call up some Wiki info. The invasion began on May 10, 1940 and on May 15, 1940 the French Prime Minister telephoned Churchill to say:
We have been defeated. We are beaten; we have lost the battle." . Churchill, attempting to console Reynaud, reminded the Prime Minister of the times the Germans had broken through Allied lines in World War I only to be stopped. However, Reynaud was inconsolable.
Churchill flew to Paris on 16 May. He immediately recognized the gravity of the situation when he observed that the French government was already burning its archives and preparing for an evacuation of the capital. In a sombre meeting with the French commanders, Churchill asked General Gamelin, "Ou est la masse de manoeuvre?" ["Where is the strategic reserve?"] which had saved Paris in the First World War. "Aucune" ["There is none,"] Gamelin replied. Later, Churchill described hearing this as the single most shocking moment in his life. Churchill asked Gamelin when and where the general proposed to launch a counterattack against the flanks of the German bulge. Gamelin simply replied "inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of methods".[26]
The French laid down... were frantically preparing to flee... busily packing their satchels with gold 5 days into the battle. If you're gonna engage in revisionism, you better try a little harder than this, good buddy.
No doubt, Harry, but that didn't last long, as you well know.
Early on, the US had already mounted several long range operations: North Africa, Guadalcanal in the Pacific, and soon enough Sicily and Italy (in addition to the European air war, the North Atlantic festivities, and that in the Pacific). As mentioned, many advocated one stroke to the Continent, in place of much of these efforts. Were they wrong to do so? Perhaps, but that doesn't change the fact that they drew it up, as mentioned, and many advocated just that, before Rommel could lay out the dragon's teeth.
Ran like rabbits all the way to Rome. By the end of 1943 the Western Allies had killed, wounded or captured more than 1,500,000 Axis soldiers in North Africa, Sicily and Italy.
But I do agree with you about the void of historical knowledge displayed by some here...
A British writer described the Africa campaign as "a knights' tournament in empty space." It was one of the more interesting struggles of the war. But it was a sideshow.
keypusher,
I've often thought this same thing... that North Africa was a real nice cheap POW camp, and we shoulda just left the Afrika Corps alone. However, if you're gonna open up another air front, and drive up through Italy, I guess Africa was necessary.
Sure, some laid it out, without a thought about landing craft or other logistical concerns. Marshall (who was one of those pushing for a '42 invasion of the Continent) said a little later that before the war he had never thought about landing craft, but now he worried about them constantly.
It was all the US could do to land 1 Marine division on Guadalcanal in August 1942, and a smallish, ill-led and inexperienced army in North Africa by November.
Well-lodged ashore in N. Africa, when the American Army broke and ran at Kasserine it was able to retrieve itself with artillery and air from its rear area, and help from the British advancing from Libya.
That same army, magically lifted to France, would have encountered a much larger German army in France. If it had run there, assuming it could even had gained a lodgment, it would have been lucky to have managed another Dunkirk.
By 1942, the Germans had been fighting the British for three years and the Russians for a year and a half and had learned a thing or two.
It took a long, long time for the Americans to become competent fighters. Patton, your hero, was made to look like a monkey by a much smaller force in Sicily, which got away, defeated but almost untouched.
JF Thomas: You need to read a real account of the Battle of France. Your version is completely fantastic.
The Germans surprised the Allies by attacking in the center (the Ardennes) rather than northern Belgium: they smashed through French 9th Army. They raced across France to the Channel behind the BEF - and two more French armies, and the Belgian army. All these troops were cut off and had to withdraw by sea (if they could). During the retreat to the coast, the demoralized Belgians surrendered, and the pocket nearly collapsed. Somehow the British and French held off the Germans long enough for the Royal Navy to evacuate 220,000 British and 120,000 French troops via Dunkirk, though they lost all equipment.
Churchill had nothing to do with this defeat; the Germans broke through 9th Army two days after he became PM, and reached the Channel a week later.
The French tried to form a new front further south, and Churchill sent several divisions of British reserves. But the Germans easily broke through, and the French collapsed. Churchill begged the French to fight on, and offered everything he dared, but they gave up and "capitulated."
Waldensian: Are you asserting there was no war in the Pacific, or in China, or between September 1939 and June 1941? The millions of soldiers, sailors, and airmen killed and wounded in those campaigns might disagree.
When the US Army did actually meet some Germans -- not many of them, either -- in 1942-3, the Americans ran like rabbits.
Bull$hit, in exactly one area of front in one period of pushing (about two weeks). It all occurred in Feb.,'43, and prior to that there were no land engagements with Americans of any size. The Afrika Korps broke the Americans facing them, who were variously routed or retreated in varying degrees of order.
The Germans did not make it into rear areas, and the American HQ was not threatened (though that might have helped more than anything). American cmdr. Fedendall was replaced by Patton, who in spite of the incompetence some idiots here have said he showed, turned performance around smartly.
I am left wondering if you have even read a WWII oriented history book?
"It took a long, long time for the Americans to become competent fighters. Patton, your hero, was made to look like a monkey by a much smaller force in Sicily, which got away, defeated but almost untouched."
Harry, Patton no chance--and neither did Montgomery, who agreed Patton should take it because he was in a better position--to get to Messina faster than the Germans could leave it. You simply have no idea what you're talking about.
'It all occurred in Feb.,'43, and prior to that there were no land engagements with Americans of any size. The Afrika Korps broke the Americans facing them, who were variously routed'
Like I said, the Americans ran. That's what routed means.
That wasn't the only time, either, but American-written history books don't dwell on those incidents.
Like I said, the Americans ran. That's what routed means.
You screwed up the year, you screwed up the duration, you screwed up the significance.
That wasn't the only time, either, but American-written history books don't dwell on those incidents.
There were no other incidents of note. All other occaissions involved much smaller commands and were turned around handily by the commanders in place, in some cases with a great strategic victory for the Allies--a la The Battle Of The Bulge.
You continually affirm your ignorance.
I presume you place equal significance on how far the Russians had to advance to the west before they left Russia?
...Kiev bombili, nam obyavili...
Agreed. The war between Germany and the Soviet Union really WAS the Second World War. Everything else paled in comparison.
Vichy France never surrendered, it was a sovereign French fascist state, established in 1940. I wish the DID surrender.
The war between Germany and the Soviet Union really WAS the Second World War.
Only if you don't believe in economics.
Disagree.
There is no question that the Soviets occupied more land troops than the rest of Germany's enemies combined. There is also no question that the Soviets suffered more from the war than any western ally.
But the Germans lost about as many troops in the surrender of Tunisia as they did at Stalingrad. Huge numbers of troops were tied up in defending the coasts of western Europe. The quantity of manpower and materiel tied up in defending against the air offensives of the western allies was really quite remarkable. (Consider the difference that all the AAA used in that campaign would have made had it been repurposed to AT.) And the Soviets would have lost without the huge quantities of logistical support provided by the US (mostly).
(I could continue at some length, if you wish.)
None of this should be taken to denigrate the contributions made by the Soviets to the war effort when their allies finally stabbed them in the back. Those contributions were integral to the war effort. And the sacrifices of the Soviet people were, in many cases, epic. But "[e]verything else" did not "pale[] in comparison."
I second PatHMV's comment, though.
In both cases, the offshore/island power fought on ancillary fronts (Americas, India, the Mediterranean, Hanover//North Africa, Italy, France), tying up enemy resources that would otherwise have been thrown against their ally, but the major part of the fighting was done by the land ally (akin to the "you hold him down and I'll skin him" offensive launched by Grant and Sherman in 1864 that eventually defeated the Confederacy).
The Napoleonic Wars sort of fit into that paradigm, as Britain once again bankrolled the various anti-Napoleonic alliances while most of the fighting took place between Austrian, Russian, and Prussian troops on the one hand, and French on the other (Spain serving as the ancillary front). Napoleon's first surrender was forced by the Russians and Austrians marching into Paris. Had the war ended there, the ensuing peace would have looked very different. Only Napoleon's return, stopped by Wellington and Blucher, allowed the British to achieve the dominant position they did in the peace.
My friend Byrt was living rough in Berlin on August 24th 1940 when he watched the first RAF night raid on the German capital.
He thought that being bombed was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It established for him that someone was fighting the country that was trying to kill him.
Wasn't there also something pretty horrific going on in the Pacific Ocean?
I think the point is that the "scale" of the warfare on the Eastern front dwarfed that of any other strategic theater. Our war with the Japanese did not involve millions of troops across hundreds of divisions, etc.
No, but it did involve the only two instances of nuclear weapons being used in warfare. I disagree that this significant piece of history "pale[s] in comparison".
2. One point: the prewar theories of bombing of areas had been that it would induce a sort of of nervous breakdown. Didn't work. Under attack by enormous outside forces, people come together. London under The Blitz had its lowest recorded rates of mental committments, alcholism, crime, suicide, etc..
Sasha's mom was bombed. At my age, my grandfather was a refugee in Salzburg, Austria. I'm sitting here drinking a really fantastic cocktail.
Its all quite awful.
A famous math problem was the 7 bridges of Königsberg. See http://mathforum.org/isaac/problems/bridges1.html
No, it was definitely the decision to not invade Malta.
Wait, it was actually the decision to spend too much on Germany's surface fleet while neglecting the submarine fleet.
Sorry, the concept of "the turning point of the war" is not one that I find useful for WWII in Europe.
It's not like Stalin moved all those troops and what food he did get to them on American trucks overwatched by P-39's.
The SovUnion accomplished little own it's own but to run in front of the Wehrmacht.
And also nevermind that all that sacrifice was largely compelled by the existence of the Ribbentrop pact in the first place.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Why not? Who'd demonstrated the greater threat to human life at that point? Stalin had already made the Ukraine a dying place.
And for that matter, which of the two ended up killing more people by far?
It would have been great to have those two bottled up solely with each other, if it could have been arranged, and no worse than what did happen in the first place.
And much better for the Italian, French, and Austrian populations--and their synagogues.
And frankly, of the two, the Sov Union had the greater strategic depth. We are fortunate Hitler decided on Barbarossa before crossing the Channel.
And that not for Soviet preparation, skill, or even sacrifice, but purely from the emphasis taken off of Operation Lion.
It would have sucked to have Iceland as the easternmost jumping off point.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Well, considering the war against fascism cost at least 50 million lives and the Nazis directly and deliberately murdered upwards of 9 million people in a space of about three years (the main work of the extermination camps was carried out mostly between 1942 and late 1944, when the killing was curtailed because of the need for slave labor and the loss of territory), and the death toll of communism highly speculative, this point is open to debate.
Besides, if we are going to count everyone who died of disease, starvation, or overwork in Stalin's Russia as a "victim" of communism, does that mean we are to count every American or Asian Indian, Zulu, Boer (after all the phrase "concentration camp" was invented by the British in the Boer War) who died of disease, starvation, or warfare resisting the domination of the Americans or British as a victim of capitalism. How about all the African slaves who died in their anonymous millions (somewhere between 10--15 million) as they were shipped from Africa to the new world to labor and often die quickly on the plantations?
While the parts of the local population did initially greet the Germans and liberators, believing they would be an improvement over the Soviets, they quickly learned that there were indeed much worse things than Stalinist Communism. The Germans were not interested in liberating the people of the Soviet Union (they considered the Slavs untermenschen, not much better than Jews). They were there to obtain Lebensraum for the German people and slave labor for German factories. If the local people starved or died or entire villages needed to be liquidated to keep the peace, they could care less.
As for number 2. I have no idea where you read your history.
Except manage to manufacture more tanks than the U.S.
June 22 - France signs armistice with Nazi Germany (from wikipedia article on Petain):
"On June 22 [General Petain] signed an armistice with Germany that gave Nazi Germany control over the north and west of the country, including Paris and all of the Atlantic coastline, but left the rest, around two-fifths of France's prewar territory, unoccupied, with its administrative centre in the resort town of Vichy."
It is a shame that French, Japanese, Croatian fascists never were subjected to Nuremberg process, just like Germans.
In fact they were--though perhaps not as deeply as they should have gone. Japan had specific trials. Among the French, the Vichy head of state, Marshal Petain, was sentenced to life imprisonment (instead of death because he was a major hero in World War I) and his fascist premier, Pierra Laval was executed.
As for the Croats, I auspect justice was more summary--but I could be wrong.
When describing the motives of fellow travelers to these large political movements, most people get it wrong. It was the days of "better Living through government", wherein the needs of the many as promulgated by the chosen were the way to run society. Overlay it with some sort of misguided Turnerism bringing rational order to society and you have the single dominant view of politics post World War I.
If we extract the word Fascism from its unique representation in Italy as well as from its lurid use as a curse word in American politics, one would have to say that Fascism had a remarkable hold on the intelligentsia of the world.
Wilson was enthralled with this notion, and it was probably much of what he wanted out of the League of Nations. Is this evidence that it held sway at Princeton, or at other college campuses, I think so, but really do not know. British upper classes admired the fascism of Germany, as it brought order and reason to a troubled anarchic country. Fascism was used to justify the "excesses" of Stalin. Roosevelt's family, confidantes, and cabinet members regularly reported back from Italy on "the good things that are going on over here." The major Depression-era government programs speak for themselves.
Many don't get this because they see everything through some sort of gloss of the arts, particularly cinematic arts. Nazi's are some sort of cartoon S&M dream, with a heavy emphasis on black leather boots, black uniforms, and swastikas as some sort of sex jewel, OK in their way, but meant to Jews. Italian Fascism is seen as Nazi wanna-be's, not quite cool enough to change from brown to black.
A more edifying way to look at this through art is to examine the similarities between the major “non-decadent” art produced during the thirties. The similarities between the paintings of Soviet Union, and those of Nazi propaganda, and those of the WPA, perhaps still on view in your local post office are striking and instructive.
In either case, both words are reduced to ritual deprecations used to fling at someone who creates some minor government-imposed annoyance, or perhaps is in any way judgemental.
Some, but unlike other intelligence operations, their role was mostly directed against their OWN people... and the KGB were a bunch of murdering freaks as we know.
My Soviet history instructor was in the Red Army in WWII, and fought his way across to Germany with them. At the end of the war, he and the rest of the Russian jews under his command were sitting around eating one day, and suddenly the NKVD (as the KGB was known at this time) surrounded them, and disarmed them at gunpoint. After spending years risking their neck in battle, they were sent off to camps, from which he escaped and taught school on the perimeter of the Soviet empire for a number of years, before somehow emigrating to the US, to one day teach a certain 17-year old dumb kid at Western Michigan University. He once spotted me in the classroom reading the campus newspaper at the start of class, which annoyed him, so he (somewhat) jokingly said "Young man if you don't put that newspaper away I'm going to purge you." The whole room broke up laughing... it was a great line. One of the best and most enjoyable classes I've ever participated in... that guy had some great stories.
Reminds me, I should look him up and see what he published, and I'm sure there musta been something.
I think Hitler was screwed as soon as he invaded Russia. John Lukacs argues, somewhat persuasively, that Hitler's natural inclination to conquer Russia -- one of the two linchpins of his policy, the other being the extermination of the Jews -- combined with the inability to knock the UK out of the war to prod him into a premature attack in 1941. The Germans didn't have nearly the armor or the supply arm to conquer Russia then.
So on Lukacs' theory -- Five Days in London -- the decision in the UK against suing for peace terms was the "turning point."
Admittedly, all this is big-picture; it looked to people in 1941 as tho Hitler might win. I do think however that people familiar with the Soviet Union knew better.
I endorse Affe's comments wholeheartedly. This "Great Patriotic War" stuff is for the birds. Stalin was AT LEAST as much a butcher as Hitler. Stalin's genocide was directed at EVERYBODY... including his own armed forces. He cared not who died... or how many.
And no, he was not our "ally". This butcher teamed with Hitler at the start of the war, slaughtered countless many in Poland, Finland and the Baltic states he conquered, and made firm commitments with Japan that allowed them to prosecute the Pacific War against the US. Referencing a passage from Edwin T. Layton's book "AND I WAS THERE", which ironically I read for the first time just this morning, re Stalin's negotiations with Japan in the months before Pearl Harbor, Stalin was quoted telling foreign minister Matsuoka (the guy who negotiated the Tripartite Pact... The Axis... with Germany) as he was returning from Berlin... here's Matsuoka quoting Stalin:
This position allowed Japan a secure front to their North, and enabled them to move South and East against the US and our allies, assisting Hitler and relieving some of the pressure against him in the Atlantic and Europe and the Med. If Stalin had been our "ally", he would have pressured Japan. He didn't. He was a manipulative despot, building an empire, and didn't care whose corpses he had to step over to do it.
All due respect to the Russian people, but they were victims... not patriots.
Poland
Finland
Lithuania
Latvia
Estonia
Romania
The Bolsheviks had already murdered millions, maybe tens of millions of people. Stalin had assembled an army four or five times the size of Germany's. The USSR had world ambitions which dwarfed those of Nazi Germany.
Looking back on it, I can't see how the West decided to back Stalin over Hitler with what they knew at the time.
Really? You really can't understand this point? I find that rather remarkable. Perhaps you could apply your own first test -- invading one's neighbors -- and see how that works out.
I think you are right. If I remember Antony Beevor's book correctly, the German high command had concluded by 1941 that the war in the East was unwinnable unless the Germans failed to incite a major civil war in the Soviet Union. Note that "German high command" in this instance does not include Hitler...
In fact, "fascist" and "communist" (depending on the speaker's politics) are both semantically identical to "bastard." And just like "bastard," the literal meaning of the words has been overwhelmed by their common usage... a point to which the fussy have not quite yet resigned themselves.
That would be a terribly dishonest thing to claim, since much of that activity took place under an explicitly mercantilist and imperialist outlook, and has little direct connection to anything like capitalism.
Of course I can't expect much better from someone who hasn't acknowledged that the deaths resulting from deliberate consequences of policy, when tallied for communist regimes, numbers 100 million as a floor figure.
And yes the Sovs made a great many tanks, and the wonderful Il-2. They did so in factories the transport for which consisted of Packard trucks with new paint and the serial numbers/idenifying marks chiseled or ground out.
Stalin didn't want his people to know the extent to which they were relying on America's efforts.
I will say the Sovs absorbed a lot of lead for us, though.
That's something they were good at.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Why the past tense? There is little difference between the private ownership socialism of Hilary Clinton and that of Il Duce.
"we are going to be taking things away from you for the common good"
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
You don't think "the West" might have cared which neighbors were invaded?
Perhaps you should stop now.
I clearly said the phrase, not the concept (actually the U.S. used concentration camps to defeat the Apaches in the 1880s). And at least 35,000 Boers, mostly women, children, and old men died in British Concentration Camps in the second Boer War.
There is little difference between the private ownership socialism of Hilary Clinton and that of Il Duce.
Oh give me a freaking break.
Okay. Okay. She won't be any worse than Peron if she gets a chance.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
And of course, once the leaders discover the joys and uses of centralized power these 'isms' don't stay "at their best" very long.
Are you really saying that the Nazis were preferable to the Soviets? Remember before you answer, for all its faults, the Soviet Union never had a policy of genocide designed (and very nearly succeeding) to wipe entire ethnic groups from the face of the earth because they considered them genetically inferior.
Me too (I am curious though about Affe's moniker: is it from German, and if yes, why that one?). As someone brought up under one of those regimes, I invite all the doubters back in time to compare big things as well as small ones to see how close they really were. I was struck speechless when I had a chance to discuss and contrast Hitlerjugend with Young Pioneers. Veterans of both were participating. There was nothing to contrast beyond the color of the uniform. After a very recent comment by Putin that 1937 was a year of some mistakes, but really no worse than what other countries did, an opportunity to revisit Stalinjugend and its equivalents for other age groups may soon present itself without the need for time travel. I would be reluctant to travel to Russia now, even if I had to.
Incidentally, my family has been given equal opportunity by both sides: from Auschwitz, to the Eastern Front, to the siege of Leningrad to the Gulag - it had both victims and survivors. As a popular underground Soviet song of the Khrushchev time said: "We were provided special accomodations - some by Stalin, some by Hitler"
Emphasis mine.
Who know in 1933 to take Main Kampf seriously? It was Stalin who was already a mass murderer.
Differing flavors of the same poison, the difference between them to that date Stalin had delivered the greater dose.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
They can't possibly mean it.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
It's true. They were more like Khmer Rouge in that their parameters were your social class, education, and whether there was anybody who took the trouble to report on you. Alhtough the absence of any of the above was not necessarily an obstacle.
With one caveat, of course, that envious of Hitler's simpler approach, Stalin, in his last years, decided to explore a final solution for Jews as well.
I suppose it must come across as an afterthought by me at this point, but I'm glad they missed.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Totally on a tangent: we may yet see how Cristina Fernández de Kirchner becomes president of the republic succeeding her husband, something Evita Peron never got to do. I think it's very likely to happen this year.
I guess I am put in the very uncomfortable position here of defending Stalin. But let's be as reasonable as we can with homicidal megalomaniacs. Stalin was no Pol Pot (heck Hitler wasn't even a Pol Pot). Stalin wasn't Hitler either. The Gulags were never set up as extermination centers. They were always meant to extract work from the prisoners. Granted, Stalin used famine as a weapon to bring to heel parts of his empire he feared. But so, to a lesser degree, did the U.S. after the Civil War when we deliberately slaughtered the bison herds on the Great Plains to force the Indian tribes onto reservations.
I don't know how you are counting your 100 million victims of communism, but the majority is from Mao, not the Soviet Union. The toll from the Soviet Union, which conservative scholars put at somewhere over 25 million people, mostly from the engineered famines and purges before World War II, is probably overstated, simply because if it was that high they would not have been able to muster the manpower they did to fight the Nazis.
We allied with Stalin b/c Britain was already at war with Germany when Hitler tried to conquer the Soviet Union. That whole "enemy of my enemy thing."
Or as Churchill put so eloquently when quizzed about it - "If Hitler had invaded Hell, Satan would have at least gotten a favourable mention on the floor of the House of Commons.
There is little doubt who would have won that fight (and it wouldn't have been us). The Russians had better tanks (and unlike the Germans they had just as many as us), more and more experienced troops, and they were in no mood to lose the ground they had spilled so much blood for.
""concentration camp" was invented by the British in the Boer War':
I clearly said the phrase, not the concept"
And still you are wrong. Once allowance is made for the Spanish speaking Spanish and the British English, you'll find the phrase comes from the Spanish in Cuba. And you'll also find that the reality of Concentration Camps as developed by Spain and the USA had no resemblance to the Nazis' reality, so your reference to the "concept" is wrong too. You still seem to be peddling Hitler's line on this one.
Precisely, because compared to Stalin's body count, Hitler was a piker. And by the way, it was Stalin who engineered Mao into power, and set the stage for all of his wonderful works.
I too would question whether we could have driven all the way to the Pacific, even using the threat of nuclear weapons, but there's no doubt we coulda kicked the commies back out of central Europe if we'd wanted to. Like the Nazis, they could not have withstood the merciless air warfare we'd perfected by that time (and we'd have benefitted from the contributions of our newly found "allies", the guys with clean spaces on their uniforms where the swastikas used to be).
However, FDR had ceded Eastern Europe to Stalin's tender mercies long before that time, and the rest is history.
Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. That is flat-out false. Not one reputable historian buys that.
ROFLMAO. If only Churchill had had your keen powers of observation, he would have known that the Red Army -- busy running east from the Vistula -- posed a greater danger to the existence of the British Empire than did the Wehrmacht at Calais and Tobruk. Silly, silly British man.
I will say the Sovs absorbed a lot of lead for us, though.
That's something they were good at.
And then he later wrote:
I suppose it must come across as an afterthought by me at this point, but I'm glad they missed.
These two evaluations of the worth of the lives of the Soviets seem a bit contradictory to me.
As one born in England during the Second Great War, I express my admiration for and gratitude to the Soviet peoples of the time for all they did to defeat Nazi Germany. Collectively, they were heroic, and no punk's armchair revisionism more than 60 years later can take away from that.
And then he later wrote of the effort to bomb Sasha's mom,
I suppose it must come across as an afterthought by me at this point, but I'm glad they missed.
Actually, Churchill had my keen powers of observation re the Soviets... as he saw them for the barbarians that they were. And actually, with our support, the Brits were well on their way to beating down the Nazis at Tobruk, and FDR would have never allowed the sea lanes to be permanently closed from Calais or anywhere else, thus allowing the Brits to be cut off. The US was in fact in a shooting war with the Kreigsmarine, long before Pearl Harbor.
However, the "West" that you were speaking of earlier, in the context of a political decision whether or not to support Stalin... well, that "West" was pretty much defined as the UNITED STATES... and not the declining British Empire (which we here in this country had little stomach for as you should know... particularly in India and a few other places.).
So then, the question.. properly defined... is whether the United States should have supported the butcher Stalin. And given the 1/2 century of totalitarianism and murder that followed that war... it's clear that we should not have supported that butcher.
You should stop now... really.
On behalf of Affe, who has authorized me to respond to your question on his name, it is indeed from the German for "monkey." Affe is intrigued by monkeys.
What relevance does this have to my message, which expressed admiration and gratitude for the heroic efforts of the Soviet peoples in defeating Nazi Germany? Are you saying that they do not deserve gratitude and admiration? Are you saying that gratitude and admiration are only due to the people of the USA? What's your point, whackjobbb?
I am glad the USA belatedly (and reluctantly in many quarters) entered the war more than two years after it started and several months after the Soviet Union entered it. What would have happened had the USA remained relatively aloof is not as clear as you apparently think it is.
By the way, it may please you to call me a Brit, but I wager I have lived in the USA and been a citizen of the USA for a lot longer than most of the U.S.A.-born contributors to this forum.
Even at the highest estimate (some 25 million), which is probably much too high probably by a factor of two, Stalin and Lenin combined took some 35 years to kill maybe twice as many people as Hitler managed in about about four (Hitler really didn't get started until 1941). Even if you limit the mass killings in the Soviet Union to the period before World War II, that is still is some twenty plus years to Hitler's four. And again the motivation behind the slaughter was on a whole different level. Hitler meant to perfect mankind by eliminating the weak and undesirable elements of it. Stalin, as deluded and evil as he was, sought to perfect humankind through a evolutionary process.
Nor did we contribute to the Russians' beating Germany. That happened sometime in September or October 1941, when Germany counted one more casualty than it could replace.
At that point, US aid to the USSR was nil.
By the end of 1941, German casualties in Russia were around 900K. Russian casualties were maybe 4 or 5 times as big.
The difference was, in the summer of 1942, the Russian army was bigger than ever, the German army smaller than the year before.
The rest was anticlimax.
I am about as proud an American as you will find, maybe even to the point of annoyance to some at times, but there is really no need to shout that to the British. All you do is confirm the stereotype of the "ugly American." As Lewis Black pointed out, there is something a bit annoying about somebody who walks into the room and constantly exclaims, "I'm the greatest person here!!!!"
The British were likely too strong to be defeated on their own, even if they may have been too weak militarily to win on their own.
By the same token, we couldn't have helped beat the Germans w/o basing support in England. Germany would have been beaten, but by the Soviets exclusively, thereby condemning all of Europe to communist oppression.
I'm still stunned some here are defending Adolph Hitler, while others are saying Stalin was the best(or maybe not the worst). Can't we simply be happy that Germany got beaten - I mean, it was over 60 years ago. And the Soviets eventually collapsed...yet another good thing(and that collapse is approaching 20).
Sasha, I'm glad your mom survived Barbarossa. Maybe that's what we should focus on rather than rehash battles we can't influence, and were over 60 years ago.
Nor did we contribute to the Russians' beating Germany. That happened sometime in September or October 1941, when Germany counted one more casualty than it could replace.
Well now I guess I have to come to the defense of the good 'ol U. S. of A.
In the abstract I guess it is possible that without the contribution of the U.S., Great Britain and the U.S.S.R,, could have beat the Germans, but the cost, especially to the Russians, would have been even more horrendous than it was. Britain, for one, would have had to been willing to accept casualty rates like those it suffered in World War I. Which very likely would have led to the kind of world wide revolution that the Soviets wanted any way.
There is no doubt that Lend-lease to the Russians was invaluable. Early on even the meager influx of armor was critical. Later on as the Russians were able to concentrate on producing there superior tank designs, the simple shipments of trucks and food were absolutely vital to keep the Russian army from starving and supplies running to the front.
To claim that anyone but Stalin would have suffered the onslaught from the Germans and not capitulated is just bizarre. By the same token, to claim that anyone except Stalin would be so unprepared for war in June of 1941 and would bungle the initial onslaught so badly with such an advantage in both men and materiel is also bizarre.
I didn't realize that historians now recognized buffoonery as a subdiscipline. Your great insight is based on 50 years of hindsight. Awesome.
Your chronology is no better than your history. In 1941 (not '42), the Brits were "well on their way" to barely holding on to Tobruk, only to end up retreating from there to El Alamein in early 1942. You've confused the events of 1942 with those of 1941.
Sure I admire their ability to the meet the need for extraordinary self sacrifice made neccessary by their putting up with the Bolsheviks in the first place.
The point is, they'd have never got to Berlin from the East without our tolerating their doing so, and amking that possible with logistical support.
And certainly Patton could have driven East to the Pacific in 1945, he had the Pershing and better command and control of every aspect of war. Zhukov wouldn't have had time to turn around an run.
And Mark Field, knowing of Katyn didn't take foresight.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Sure I'm happry Germany was defeated.
In fact I'm ecstatic.
I'd be positively euphoric if it had been done by the SovUnion in such a way both systems destroyed themselves.
But C'est la guerre.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
It's more than buffoonery, although there's a lot of that. It's also perverse historical revisionism motivated by political extremism. Apparently a considerable number of the contributors here have a view of history, indeed, a world view, that is so distorted by their political agendas that they can't even bring themselves to recognize that the Soviet peoples made valiant sacrifices during the Second World War.
I truly have difficulty controlling my temper when someone dismisses the efforts of the Soviet peoples during the war with the observation that they were good at stopping lead and when someone else, in the face of appreciation expressed for the efforts of the Soviet peoples, demands that the gratitude be directed to the people of the U.S.A.
I think of the hundreds of thousands if not millions of Soviet civilians who starved and froze to death in their own homes, the millions on millions of Soviet soldiers who were killed on battlefields, and I wonder what breeds such profound disrespect and even contempt for human life among privileged and cocksure young twits pounding away at their computer keyboards in comparative comfort on a Saturday night 60-plus years later.
Given Molotov/Ribbentrop, all I have to say is, if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. I'll save my appreciation, thanks...
Patton was an incompetent army commander. He might have been an average corps commander. He understood little about logistics, which gave Eisenhower and Bradley, who did, fits.
As a poster way back noted, during the summer of 1944, while the western Allies were having difficulty pushing 40 German divisions back a few hundred miles, the Russians annilhilated a similar formation (Army Group Center).
During the war, the US formed about 90 big divisions, with around 20 sent to the Pacific and others scattered around where they weren't any threat to Germany.
The Russians seem to have fielded something like 360 small divisions. In other words, about twice the total American effort and around 3 times what the US directed at Germany.
Rightwing fantasies about unleashing Patton against the Bolshevik menace are just that -- fantasies. Patton shared them, which is an indication of what an incompetent he was.
The big problem with a 1945 offensive is, of course, Japan, which never would have surrendered while the Allies and the Soviets were still going at it. That, and many of the "Western" forces actually thought they were fighting for world communism and, like a lot of leftists today, would jump at the chance to turn their guns on their capitalist countrymen...
I've misplaced my atlas. How far is it, exactly, from Berlin to the Pacific?
No, though I can't remember offhand whether Churchill and Roosevelt had actual knowledge of it before June 22, 1941. Whether they did or not, the military case for allying with Stalin was overwhelming.
That is rather a bizarre interpretation of the last year of the war in Europe. The truer interpretation is that neither us or the British were willing to suffer the kind of casualties that would have been required to quickly eliminate the Germans in Western Europe and race to Berlin. The Americans and British were more than willing to let the Russians do the vast majority of the killing and dying in the east while the western allies cautiously and carefully advanced in the west. The British especially were loathe to suffer the kinds of casualty rates they suffered in World War I (and at the end of World War II had suffered less than a third of the battlefield deaths they had a generation earlier in a war that lasted 50% longer) and when faced with serious German resistance would pull back and wait for air or artillery support rather than risk an assault. The Russians on the other hand, had more military personnel killed in World War II than all the combatants in the previous war. The Germans lost about twice as many troops as they did in World War I.
rlb, we didn't have any A-bombs until August, and after we used those, again until (don't recall the exact date) around November.
It isn't so obvious where we could have used one. Moscow? Russia had already had all its other big cities demolished.
The Russians had huge tank armies in central Germany, and the US had its armies advancing in southeastern Germany, Austria. A tank thrust of just a few score miles would have cut off those American divisions. It would have been another Stalingrad.
Wow, those trucks, P-39s, and cans of Spam really did the trick, single-handedly turning millions of retreating cowards into a fighting force effective enough to chase the Germans all the way to Berlin.
Really, you're just trolling with that line, right? No sane person could think that.
And the sarifices were made so much more numerous by their acceptance of the Communist Party and it's Stalin--by for 80 years always letting the midnight knocking men go home to their families--that the relative worth of their sacrifice pales far from the esteem you unjustly hold it in.
You also have to wonder how much of that sacrifice any one would have had to make had Stalin and Hitler not buddied up? How much of the sacrifice of the American and genuinely Allied people do you dismiss as being of relatively small import, when the Soviets in fact helped make it neccessary?
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
The Soviets entering Berlin were in good measure fed, moved, and overflown by American produced goods. Do you dispute this?
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
1) You should not conflate numerical superiority with power.
2) They needed all that manpower because they were prolifigately spending their men's lives.
3) Patton was not incompetent, he was risk-taking, and when he took risks, he generally won--in contrast say, to Montgomery, who was quite conservative, and when he took a risk, it was a bridge too far. There is a good reason the Germans were so concerned with where Patton was.
4) Although you didn't make the relevant claim, someone else did, if Patton were to have continued east, he would not have done so with Sherman's, but with Pershing's--more than an equal for a T-34, and nearly an equal to a slower moving IS-2. And the "nearly" equal part would have been no great matter because the USAAF would have been a competent adversary for the Sovs air corps--better planes and frequently better pilots, and the Sovs at that point would have had no Murmansk convoys.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
It had already been decided the Soviets would be given eastern europe. Once that sort of insanity has become policy, why would you spend any effort taking territory you'd have to hand over?
"J.F. is right. Eisenhower explicitly said he preferred to let the Russians take Berlin, and suffer the 100K casualties that required, than take 100,000 casualties himself. "
Eager, your post proves my point.
I am condemning the decision which lead to the cold war as opposed to ending the war with communism in 1946 or 1947.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
If they could magically have avoided the USAAF, yes.
Yours, TDP, ml msl, &pfpp
Does it really matter if you've killed those between them who stand against you?
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Mr. Young,
As previously mentioned, the point is that the deliverance of the British from the Nazis was due to the good people of the United States of America... and nobody else. Absent their deliverance of you, you'd likely be typing your post in German.
As for the Russian people, and also as previously mentioned, they were VICTIMS... of the brutal murderer Stalin. He murdered millions... Russians who were "helping" him, and anybody else that stood in his way of expanding his murderous regime. I have empathy for the Russians Stalin murdered in his various wars of conquest, fighting on whichever side he found expedient that day... but nothing beyond that. As another mentioned, it would have been best if Hitler and Stalin had destroyed each other... and no other outcome was preferable to that one. Pity that the US did not work to bring that about.
Actually, we were involved, and also as previously mentioned, the US was in a full shooting war with the Kreigsmarine in the Atlantic, and our US NAVY sailors as well as merchantmen were dying in that war... this in addition to the massive armaments shipments, massive credit extended, and full military cooperation on all fronts. GB wsa not allowed to fall... because of the good people of the United States of America.
You're welcome.
Yes, Mr. Thomas, I can see that you're one of those who somehow invents complicated machinations to distinguish between the various types of mass murderers. Like most other civilized people, I pretty much stick to the body count totaled by the various mass murderers... and your buddy Stalin's was FAR greater than Hitler's... and this doesn't include your buddy Stalin's contributions to the butchery in China. Aiding that butcher was a travesty.
You too may want to quit now.
No, actually my chronology is based upon history. After Hitler conquered Western Europe and it was made plain that the US was not going to allow GB to fall... Hitler was left with a large military machine dressed up with no place to go... so he went off to North Africa... to help his buddy the Duce and engage the Brits SOMEWHERE. However, there was never a chance that they could supply a force across the Med with the Royal Navy on the job. That was no more likely than him supplying deep into Russia as we know... particularly since the Brits were reading his frickin e-mails... as they had been for some years... as you should know if you knew anything about history, and Enigma. Even a lunkhead like Montgomery was smart enough to eventually get around to rounding up thirsty Germans into holding pens. It might have taken another year without the US arriving as the other pincer, but it would have happened, and there was nothing Hitler could have done to prevent it.
Perhaps the lucky ones wound up picking cotton in Oklahoma, but the Afrika Corps was sent off to die. This was foreordained.
whackjobbb wrote some very pertinent remarks, concluding with:
To which I add in comment to Peter Young, in Thomas you find the buffoon reworking history to fit his politics.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Let's get this straight. Stalin is not my buddy. I hate that I am forced to defend the Soviet Union and Stalin's (as if saying Stalin was not as bad is Hitler is defending him) actions in this thread. I am merely contending that when it comes to mass murderers of the 20th Century, to say that Stalin was worse than Hitler is to ignore both the purpose and efficiency of Hitler's killing machine. Pol Pot (and possibly Mao--if the truth is ever revealed about his atrocities) and a few others like Idi Amin (who was put in place with the full support of the British) are the only butchers of the 20th Century that come close to Hitler.
Now come on, by the time Mao really got rolling with his Great Leaps Forward and Cultural Revolutions Stalin was dead and relations with the Soviet Union had chilled. If you are talking about Mao's initial rise to power, we had as much to do with that as Stalin did. We weren't too picky about who we shipped arms to in World War II as long as they were fighting the Japanese. Much as we weren't too picky about who we shipped arms to forty years later in Afghanistan as long as they were fighting the Russians.
Yes, the statistics show that Stalin was a brutal murderer of his own people... the most of his victims... as well as of anybody else he decided to murder. The casualty statistics bear this out only too well.
And no doubt, had FDR not signed away Central Europe, the US could have kicked the commies back to Moscow.
At the close of the war, the United States had more warmaking power than ALL OF THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED. Yes, this would be hard to document conclusively... but measuring tons of steel produced... coal... grain... petroleum supply and refining capacity... transport... shipping of all types... naval power... aircraft... any and all logistics... the US was the greatest military dog on the block, at least... and this not including atomic weapons (and the guy who claimed that we didn't have any in the pipeline until November is flat wrong... those things were in the hopper and ready to party).
All this not to mention the overwhelming US military power available in Europe... and not a power based on barbaric mass attacks as Stalin's, but on manuever and equipment. Stalin fielded many untrained bodies to take lead, no doubt, but so did those in Napoleon's day. The Nazis were not capable of dealing with the mass of bodies Stalin threw into the mideval-like killboxes... but the US was. The US perfected coordinated artillery use in the late 30's, the Nazis never did... and were stunned that we could bring such massed firepower onto them (particularly useful after the US brought on sophisticated proximity fusing, around the Battle of the Bulge). Stalin had to mass his artillery hub-to-hub to operate... just as Napoleon did... and the Russians were still doing so into the 60's... long after the US' methods had been adopted into NATO. That "idiot" Patton would have encircled Stalin's poorly trained conscripts and annihilated them, with manuever, and with massed firepower devastating that encirclement. Zhukov would have been as a child.
And then, we get to aerial warfare. Forget these vaunted Sturmiviks... they would be outnumbered by far... and by planes controlled by and many equipped with radar. I shouldn't have to explain to you the reasoning here as to why this would be so one-sided. Stalin would have wound up with many chockfull killboxes, unlike his barbaric war agsint the Nazis, who warred with him on their terms. And again, we have our newly found grey-suited "allies" to assist matters.
It's too bad FDR didn't think to play these cards... as Churchill wanted to do... but he didn't.
Perhaps, but the people of Central Europe might have a different answer for you, after suffering the 1/2 century of enslavement and murder Stalin imposed on them.
This is it in a nutshell, Perkins. Stalin buddied up with his brother mass murderer Hitler, and cozied up with his Japanese mass-murdering buddies, at least until it became time for him to swallow up some more empire in 1945.
You really are a whackjob, aren't you? Do you really think that the American people, let alone the war-weary British or Germans, would have been willing to turn their guns on the Russians. We barely had enough money to finance the rest of the war against Japan. Where on earth would we have gotten the money for another major offensive in Europe? Our allies were already broke (The UK just retired the last of its WWII debt to us just a couple months ago). As it was, a major famine in Europe was just barely averted in the winter of 1945--'46. Imagine what it would have been like if the Americans, instead of concentrating on feeding Europe were instead chasing the Russians back to Moscow.
You are really quite an idiot.
So your point appears to be that Patton was 'incompetent' because he had some difficulty in pushing back a German force ''a few hundred miles.'' FYI, ''a few hundred miles'' in Europe is a huge amount of territory. Patton routed a German force and chased it for hundreds of miles with his 3rd Army, which was less than one-sixth what the Russians needed to do the same thing.
I would suggest to Harry that he should read Patton's War As I Knew It, before making the incompetent statement that Patton was incompetent.
...based on their body counts... would be true, Thomas.
And again, this doesn't include your buddy Stalin's contributions to Mao's festivities. And yes, your buddy Stalin was the prime driver in Mao's rise to power, your nonsense notwithstanding.
Plenty of blood on your buddy's hands... but you keep apologizing. And we the civilized will keep calling you out for it.
Yes, I can imagine... and it wouldn't have been much of a fight.
And you're a blustering buffoon, with little historical knowledge apparent in your blusterings. Perhaps you should at least ATTEMPT to sprinkle in something that lets the reader think you have at least some knowledge of history... and you show very little. Try Wikipedia... they might give you some tidbits.
I think we're all best off leaving the whacky one to contemplate Job 15:6.
Absurd argument. Before calling annother poster an idiot, try asking yourself: Where would the Russians have gotten money to fight another war? They certainly had zero credit after repudiating the Czarist debt. And where would they get the supply convoys? And who would be allies of the Russians, willing to fight with them? The Russians had already made enemies of every bordering country. Furthermore, war production in the U.S. was at its peak, with most of our supplies and materiel intact. And we had access to raw materials that the Russians did not have. And are you seriously claiming that there was no threat of famine in Russia?
If you're a lawyer, some friendly advice: stick to wills and trusts.
Well of course the Russians didn't need money, the state and the economy were one and the same. The U.S. had to pay Ford, Chrysler, Studebaker and all the other companies for all those planes, tanks and ships. You do realize that most of the money the U.S. borrowed for the war was borrowed from the U.S. citizens in the form of war bonds, don't you. Man, you really should think before you post.
Patton were to have continued east, he would not have done so with Sherman's, but with Pershing's--more than an equal for a T-34, and nearly an equal to a slower moving IS-2.
IIRC, about 220 Pershing tanks had been shipped to Europe by April 1945. I suspect that production had been greatly slowed or halted.
IIRC (again) war production in the United States peaked in 1944. By fall 1944 the U.S. administration was working on the problem of "reconversion." What civil applications are there for a half-mile long room optimized for production of B-24 bombers? By late '44 the pipeline was full of enough supplies to win the war.
Absent extensive use of nuclear weapons, going east the 4500 miles to Russia's pacific coast would have been beyond the capacity of the U.S. and the U.K. combined. And, of course, there would have been no political support for such an expensive bloodletting.
Well, let's see. That B-24 facility in Ypsilanti is about 3.5 miles from my computer here, a site still in use today as a matter of fact, and had been converted from an automotive manufacturing facility before and was quickly serving in that same campacity shortly following the war.
However, the bombers used to devastate Stalin would have likely come out of Kansas, as I recall.
And Churchill (responsible for the debacles of Gallipoli and the collapse of France in 1940) could do exactly what to prevent the Russians from taking Central Europe? The British were even more casualty averse than the Americans.
Given the long supply lines I suspect a Russian invasion initially would have favored an air war with ground troops facilitating the construction of forward air bases. How much Russian industry would have been in range of air strikes from the U.S. Pacific fleets?
Armaments production in 1943 measured in 1944 dollars:
U.S.: 37.5 Billion
Russia: 13.9 Billion
U.K.: 11.1 Billion
Germany: 13.8 Billion
Japan: 4.5 Billion
Aircraft production in 1943:
U.S.:85,898
Russia:34,900
U.K.:30,963
Germany:39,807
Japan:28,180
Total GDP in 1950 measured in 1964 dollars (per Capita):
United States: 381 Billion (2,536)
USSR: 126 Billion (699)
U.K.: 71 Billion (1393 in 1951)
France: 50 Billion (1172)
West Germany: 48 Billion (1001)
Japan: 32 Billion (382)
Italy: 29 Billion (626 in 1951)
The invasion of France was a sideshow. The Russians would be been in Berlin anyway. Later, but anyway.
However, without the Red Army having already reduced the German army by about half, the western allies would never have landed in France.
Actually no, Thomas, that would be the French who laid down in 1940.
Well, likely no more than he was able to do against the Nazis in 1940, absent the people of the United States of America then.
However, Churchill recognized your mass-murdering buddy Stalin as the butcher that he was, and advocated policy to cage in your buddy... which FDR ignored as we know. Pity that.
I wouldn't say that either was "casualty averse", at least that's what their clear acceptance of "unconditional surrender" would indicate.
Mind you, they were not on the same murderous level as your buddy Stalin, who cared NOT how many millions of comrades were slaughtered while building his empire as we know... but the Allies definitely took some casualties.
You do realize that membership in the SS made him ineligible for immigration to the U.S., and that he lied on his immigration form to get into the U.S. You should have turned him in so he could have been deported and prosecuted. Did you ask him how many Jews he murdered?
Actually no, Thomas, that would be the French who laid down in 1940.
Actually, that's what Churchill would have you believe. If there was one thing Churchill was good at it was shifting the blame of his debacles to others. He pulled the British from the middle of the line in 1940 when there was absolutely no reason to panic. Both the British and the French (and the Belgians) for that matter were in much better shape than they were in in 1914 and the Germans were in a much more precarious situation. The French had won one of the major tank battles with the Germans and had fought the Germans to a draw in the only other one fought. But most importantly, the losses suffered by the Germans were much more serious to their position than to the Allies. The French while retreating, were not routing. Only when the British pulled their troops from the center of the line did the situation become hopeless. Churchill would later claim, falsely, that the French turned tail and he had no choice but to pull the BEF to Dunkirk to save it. This of course was entirely untrue.
Also, like most of the Waffen SS, the Latvians didn't take part in the Holocaust.
Hitler was left with a large military machine dressed up with no place to go... so he went off to North Africa... to help his buddy the Duce and engage the Brits SOMEWHERE.
For most of the campaign the Afrika Corps consisted of two divisions. Hitler sent the first in early 1941 after a small British force crushed a much larger Italian one. By no means did Hitler commit any sizeable element of his war machine to Africa. Unfortunately for him, he sent more troops to Tunisia just when things were hopeless.
A British writer described the Africa campaign as "a knights' tournament in empty space." It was one of the more interesting struggles of the war. But it was a sideshow.
Are you serious? Because Eastern Europeans were more suspect than native Germans, they were more, not less, likely, to be used as guards and rear echelon troops by the SS, i.e., exactly the troops that were responsible for the worst atrocities. IIRC, membership in the SS was never conscripted (the Wehrmacht of course was), but was voluntary and rigorously screened. U.S. citizenship applications specifically ask about membership in the Nazi party and SS.
As the other guy mentioned, you seem to be inventing your facts again, Thomas. Ilmars was quite a clever engineer, and undoubtedly not foolish enough to expose a past history to me that would have exposed him as illegal. But continue on with your fantasies, I guess...
And no, I never spoke with him about murdering jews. I have spoken to many Russian jews here in the Detroit area, who have volunteered to me information about your buddy Stalin's slaughter of their families... and the constant persecutions and shakedowns. These guys are very prevalent in the IT and automotive industries here. I can give you some contacts, if you'd like, and you do appear to be in serious need of some education on these topics.
I can also give you some contacts with some Chinese folks (admittedly and understandably, they're more circumspect), who can set you straight on your buddy Stalin's role in Mao's rise to the Mass Murderers Hall of Fame, if you'd like.
--
Oh and the French laid down in 1940, despite Churchill's attempts to buck them up and continue the fight. Let's do what you seem incapable of doing, and call up some Wiki info. The invasion began on May 10, 1940 and on May 15, 1940 the French Prime Minister telephoned Churchill to say:
The French laid down... were frantically preparing to flee... busily packing their satchels with gold 5 days into the battle. If you're gonna engage in revisionism, you better try a little harder than this, good buddy.
Carry on...
Thus, whack: 'There was a great deal of talk in 1942-43 about jumping off THEN... and many thought that the best path'
When the US Army did actually meet some Germans -- not many of them, either -- in 1942-3, the Americans ran like rabbits.
Early on, the US had already mounted several long range operations: North Africa, Guadalcanal in the Pacific, and soon enough Sicily and Italy (in addition to the European air war, the North Atlantic festivities, and that in the Pacific). As mentioned, many advocated one stroke to the Continent, in place of much of these efforts. Were they wrong to do so? Perhaps, but that doesn't change the fact that they drew it up, as mentioned, and many advocated just that, before Rommel could lay out the dragon's teeth.
But I do agree with you about the void of historical knowledge displayed by some here...
keypusher,
I've often thought this same thing... that North Africa was a real nice cheap POW camp, and we shoulda just left the Afrika Corps alone. However, if you're gonna open up another air front, and drive up through Italy, I guess Africa was necessary.
And leave out the Ukraine. After all, they were just Kulaks.
Sure, some laid it out, without a thought about landing craft or other logistical concerns. Marshall (who was one of those pushing for a '42 invasion of the Continent) said a little later that before the war he had never thought about landing craft, but now he worried about them constantly.
It was all the US could do to land 1 Marine division on Guadalcanal in August 1942, and a smallish, ill-led and inexperienced army in North Africa by November.
Well-lodged ashore in N. Africa, when the American Army broke and ran at Kasserine it was able to retrieve itself with artillery and air from its rear area, and help from the British advancing from Libya.
That same army, magically lifted to France, would have encountered a much larger German army in France. If it had run there, assuming it could even had gained a lodgment, it would have been lucky to have managed another Dunkirk.
By 1942, the Germans had been fighting the British for three years and the Russians for a year and a half and had learned a thing or two.
It took a long, long time for the Americans to become competent fighters. Patton, your hero, was made to look like a monkey by a much smaller force in Sicily, which got away, defeated but almost untouched.
The Germans surprised the Allies by attacking in the center (the Ardennes) rather than northern Belgium: they smashed through French 9th Army. They raced across France to the Channel behind the BEF - and two more French armies, and the Belgian army. All these troops were cut off and had to withdraw by sea (if they could). During the retreat to the coast, the demoralized Belgians surrendered, and the pocket nearly collapsed. Somehow the British and French held off the Germans long enough for the Royal Navy to evacuate 220,000 British and 120,000 French troops via Dunkirk, though they lost all equipment.
Churchill had nothing to do with this defeat; the Germans broke through 9th Army two days after he became PM, and reached the Channel a week later.
The French tried to form a new front further south, and Churchill sent several divisions of British reserves. But the Germans easily broke through, and the French collapsed. Churchill begged the French to fight on, and offered everything he dared, but they gave up and "capitulated."
Waldensian: Are you asserting there was no war in the Pacific, or in China, or between September 1939 and June 1941? The millions of soldiers, sailors, and airmen killed and wounded in those campaigns might disagree.
Bull$hit, in exactly one area of front in one period of pushing (about two weeks). It all occurred in Feb.,'43, and prior to that there were no land engagements with Americans of any size. The Afrika Korps broke the Americans facing them, who were variously routed or retreated in varying degrees of order.
The Germans did not make it into rear areas, and the American HQ was not threatened (though that might have helped more than anything). American cmdr. Fedendall was replaced by Patton, who in spite of the incompetence some idiots here have said he showed, turned performance around smartly.
I am left wondering if you have even read a WWII oriented history book?
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Harry, Patton no chance--and neither did Montgomery, who agreed Patton should take it because he was in a better position--to get to Messina faster than the Germans could leave it. You simply have no idea what you're talking about.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Everyone who fought for Hitler took part in the Holocaust. Period.
Like I said, the Americans ran. That's what routed means.
That wasn't the only time, either, but American-written history books don't dwell on those incidents.
If your point is that the US lost some battles in that war... well... it don't take much to find those for sure... but thanks for the obvious.
And I'll leave you to the rest of this discussion... now that Stalin's apologists have been routed and fled the battlefield.
You screwed up the year, you screwed up the duration, you screwed up the significance.
There were no other incidents of note. All other occaissions involved much smaller commands and were turned around handily by the commanders in place, in some cases with a great strategic victory for the Allies--a la The Battle Of The Bulge.
You continually affirm your ignorance.
I presume you place equal significance on how far the Russians had to advance to the west before they left Russia?
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp