[UPDATE: Comments enabled; sorry for the initial glitch that kept them from being open.]
Saturday is the Russian version of V-E Day (known as the Day of Victory there). Friday is of course also the American V-E Day; and I certainly honor the sacrifices of the Americans and the other western Allies, recognize that the west did much to defeat the Nazis, condemn pretty much all the other actions of Soviet Russia, and recognize that the Soviet leadership helped the Nazis in various ways (both through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and through purging some of their leading military men in the years before the war). Still, the fact remains that the Soviets and Soviet soldiers bore the lion's share of the European war's casualties, inflicted the lion's share of the casualties on the Nazis, and should probably be credited with the hardest and most important victories.
In honor, then, of the Day of Victory, I thought I'd blog a link to The Ballad of the Soldier's Wife, by Bertolt Brecht, which starts like this:
What was sent to the soldier's wife
From the ancient city of Prague?
From Prague came a pair of high heeled shoes,
With a kiss or two came the high heeled shoes
From the ancient city of Prague.
I remember hearing this several years ago and being quite struck by it. It's hard to effectively pull off poetry condeming the enemy and praising his death; there's too much of a risk that the tone will come across as too strident. But this seemed to me to work very well. Perhaps it was helped by the direct emphasis on plunder rather on killing (though the killing is of course not far in the background).
Now to turn from honoring the Day of Victory to some thoughts on the poem's history: It turns out that the ballad was first published as a poem in 1943, in a collection of many poems by many authors, called War Poems of the United Nations. The Day of Victory was still far in the future; the Introduction, for instance, spoke of how various 1930s conflicts were "as much part of the great crisis of our time as what is happening today in Africa." The German version of the song was sung by Lotte Lenya on a propaganda shortwave broadcast in 1943; the music was by Paul Dessau, though the later versions of the song were with Kurt Weill's music.
The poem was apparently translated by the editor of the collection, Joy Davidman, and found in reading it that my reactions were subtly different from those on hearing the song. Part of this might have stemmed from the original wording, which didn't strike me as forcefully, whether because Davidman wasn't as good a translator as later translators, or because the cadences expected of written verse might be different from those optimal for the song.
But part, I think, came in seeing the poem from the perspective of 1943, rather than from the perspective of after the war, which is when I had thought it had been written. In 1943, it's still a prophecy, and one with an air of wishful thinking to it. The sense of confident looking back and writing an account of (and judgment on) what had actually happened is missing. I wonder if others share my reaction.
The poem was, of course, written long before Brecht's very late disillusionment with Communism; another poem two pages earlier in the anthology illustrates this, with the stanza about
The bloody foolThere were fools to spare in that time, it appears. But while this tells us something about Brecht, I try to avoid having the author's diminish my enjoyment of his other works.
who did not know the road to Moscow was long,
who did not know the eastern winter was cold,
who did not know the will of workers and peasants
to defend their land, the first of lands
where man is not a wolf to man.
Probably? The Red Army had beaten the Germans before the United States either fought itself or provided any munitions.
Sometime in September or October 1941, the Germans suffered a casualty they could not replace. They might still have won the war with Russia, if Russia had quit fighting or made some catastrophic (new) blunder on the battlefield; but as long as the Russians held out, the outcome was not in doubt after that.
It turned out that God was on the side of the big battalions, again, even if they (officially) didn't believe in him.
С наступающим Днём Победы!
- Михаил Куликов (Москва/Нью-Йорк)
One also has to ask, if the outcome wasn't in doubt, and the West's contribution was so trivial, then why was Stalin was so angry and so insistent that the US and UK get involved sooner. You think he really wanted to split Western Europe with the other allies after the war? It may have had something to do with the Russian manpower crunch, which resulted from Russia's bad strategic choices early on, and willingness to squander troops throughout the conflict.
God may have been on the side of the big battalions but He was more about rewarding smart strategy and the physics of extended supply lines, than He was about sheer numbers.
Further, Harry Eagar says:
That is an insult! Tell that to my father and uncles! One spent 4 1/2 years on foot in the infantry in every major engagement in the European theater, starting in North Africa, through the Italian peninsula, then off to England for D-day, Battle of the Bulge, etc. All of the others thers saw rough action, too. Sister-in-law's dad flew 26 missions in B-17's (co-pilot). Gee, if you make it to heaven, look them up and tell then that Germany was already defeated when they wasted their time over there.
Lend-lease began in March of 1941, resulting in $50 Billion of supplies being donated (in 1941 dollars)!
As to when Germany was tactically busted, that I know so little about I won't comment.
Germany could have beaten Russia but they fought not only in Russia but in Africa, Greece, elsewhere in the Balkans, and in the Atlantic while also keeping garrisons in France and several smaller nations.
But "could have" doesn't count. Germany lost in Russia and the Russians deserve the credit.
After 1942 Stalin probably was not worried about Germany as much as he was paranoid about the West making a deal with Hitler or otherwise turning upon him. He was not a trusting sort of guy.
It's for this that Stalin's war is not to be celebrated. He cared not who was butchered, his or theirs. His forces fought ruthlessly... without ruth... and occupied similarly. And the aftermath, for 50 years on, was an ongoing tragedy for so many.
And from a US perspective, had Stalin made gestures against the Japanese, it would have drastically altered the diplomatic landscape, perhaps deterring them from acting out in the Pacific and saving many lives. Instead, following a minor set-to, he carefully cultivated the relationship, allowing the Japanese Empire to more easily solidy their continental flank, and leaving them free to militarily expand elsewhere.
Honor and memorialize the dead? Certainly. But Stalin's war was a tainted victory, and that taint can't be removed with a few disclaiming sentences.
.
.
.
Volokh, it's good verse, but Brecht was an unapologetic commie, and he here seems not to be memorializing, but rather capering about on some fascist graves:
I think we should designate June 22 Barbarossa day to commemorate Hitler's gravest and most glaring mistake; one which certainly spelled Germany's demise more than any other.
You did not even have to be captured. As people may or may not know, the first surrender was actully signed on May 7 in Rheims at Eisenhower's headquarters at the urgent request of the Germans. The Soviet signatory was a mid-ranking general attached to the headquarters. At Stalin's insistence a second signing took place in Berlin the following day. The Soviet general, who apparently did not have a sufficient authorization, shared the fate of the soldier in the song.
It's a fascinating museum preserving memorabilia and historic rooms, and I recommend it to anybody who visits Rheims.
If the immortal tradition of the internet 'However...', there's a bit of a caveat to the 'The Russian's really beat the German's' line. The Russians stopped the German's offensive push into Russia. This was largely accomplished (outside of terrain/weather factors) but the ruthlessness of the Russian leadership sacrificing large swaths of land and lives. The Russian's figuratively choked the German army with their (Russian) dead. And while Russian shattered the German invasion, it's highly improbable that they could have dislodged the Germans from any of their captured European territory. Only the industrial/technical advantages of the Western allies made that possible.
That would be more like 2 1/2 years . . . Operation Torch (the invasion of North Africa) began on November 8, 1942. The war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945.
It is amazing that so much was accomplished in such a relatively short span of time -- today you would be hard pressed to build an overpass across an Interstate highway in two-and-a-half years.
I dunno what nationality the relative in question was, but Commonwealth forces were fighting in North Africa in 1940.
IIRC, Normandy was selected as the site for D-Day only a few months before the invasion. I always think of that when some software project is years in gestation...sigh.
And Australians and New Zealanders were the bulk of the non-brits fighting in North Africa in the early 40s.
Most poetry is pretty masculine, being written by men and all. Perhaps the stuff you read in school was all chosen by female teachers and therefore on the girlie side, but there's plenty of war poetry out there. Shakespeare plays contain some extremely butch verse. And even most of the love poems in the world are about why men want certain women, not the reverse.
Only the industrial/technical advantages of the Western allies made that possible.
The first statement is true, but over-states the importance of lend-lease. The second is at least a gross over-statement, to the point of being better thought of as false. As Alec Nove puts it in his excellent An Economic History of the U.S.S.R., "It is quite beyond dispute that the vast majority of the best aircraft, tanks and guns were of Soviet manufacture. It is therefore not only a matter of (understandable) national pride, but also fact, that Western aid supplied comparatively few of Russia's armaments." The majority of lend-lease aid was in the form of trucks. These were important and useful, but shouldn't be over-stated. Raw materials and tools were also supplied, but these were less important than domestic supplies. My understanding is that the aid from lend/lease was eventually all repaid as well, making it unreasonable to call it a "donation".
No one likes, of course, to have their side's contribution to great cases down-played. My experience is that Russians often know little about the US role in the war, in particular about the Pacific. But, this ignorance almost always is much less than that of Americans as to the Soviet contribution to the war effort. Perhaps rather than being indignant and making (at best) exaggerated claims, more real study is called for.
Given the various strengths and weaknesses of German, Japanese, American and Russian forces, and the different demands of the conflicts, I contend the Russians might have been underdogs against the Japanese straight up, much less while also taking on the Germans.
Well M, all due respect to Mr. Nove, but he's a bit off. The trucks were extremely important, as were the locomotives sent over. Sov transport was mostly American, and Chrysler was doing fine with the Roooshians as customers. Rail transport was critical, and most rail and rail stock came from the outside as well.
Many thousands of planes were sent over, and hundreds of ships.
Aluminum, aviation gasoline, copper, radios, the Sovs were weak in all of this, and couldn't have fought a war of movement and transport without them.
Some Sov vets have an article in Pravda about this. They still haven't paid back all of the cash, I don't believe. As a matter of fact, I believe the Brits only within the last 8-10 years have paid back the Great War loans!
I'd guess the outcome might have been similar without this aid, as Stalin would have butchered as many as required to get the job done.
Lend-lease wasn't just to the Russians, it was for the British, French, Chinese, and others.
In 2007 dollars, it was close to $700 Billion in value.
Russia repaid? Bullshit. Virtually all of this dept was forgiven, mostly because Russia simply never made good on any negotiated discounted settlements, even into the 1960's.
see:
Russia's life-saver: lend-lease aid to the U.S.S.R. in World War II
By Albert Loren Weeks
Published by Lexington Books, 2004
ISBN 0739107364, 9780739107362
175 pages
Your own medicine:
"Perhaps rather than being indignant and making (at best) exaggerated claims, more real study is called for."
I doubt that. In the 1938 Battle of Khalkhin Gol, the Red Army decisively beat the Japanese to the extent that the Japanese never seriously considered challenging the Russians again.
The Soviets were not equipped to fight a war in the South Pacific, but then they didn't have to -- it would not have threatened their strategic interests.
This enumeration of the weak and unsympathetic, leaves out those still fighting, the British, the Yugoslavs, and typically for its authors, in their comfort along the Hudson, America. Even the poor Poles are forgotten, Warsaw not even worthy of the sack. This for the country that was ostensibly the reason for the war at all, or did that war just begin on 22 June 1941?
In no way am I diminishing the struggle of the peoples of the old Soviet Empire, I am just struck by the classic Russian Imperial rhetoric, even when in this case it is Red Imperialism.
It is not correct to say that it was settled on June 22, 1941, the Red Army did have to fight for its life -- which it did incompetently at first.
jviss need not defend the efforts of his relatives. Mine fought, too, and my father joined up in 1940 because he hated Hitlerism and thought war was inevitable -- and ended up fighting the Japanese.
It doesn't pay to be too choosy about your allies if you are fighting a world war. The Norwegians were admirable in many ways but they weren't much help.
Again, missing the key point that Napoleon understood, particularly after getting his ass kicked in Russia. Weather is tough, muddy terrain is tough, but nothing is tougher than being an invading army on an enemy's home turf, at the end of a vulnerable 2000 mile supply chain, along a front that is in effect an infinitely expanding 'exterior lines' problem. Note that the Russians had a lot of stalling in their offensive in Spring 1945 due to similar supply chain length problems.
Logistics inflicted the decisive wound on the Germans, whether it was the relocation of Russian factories behind the lines, the arrival of American manufacturing equipment, or the failure of the Germans to get enough men and materials to the right place at the right time. You don't need a superior force; a numerically inferior force with superior firepower will generally win. The 'no retreats' policy that squandered German lives in the face of wave after squandered wave of Russian soldiers was the coup de grace that did Germany in, at least on the Ostfront.
The implication in this and similar comments is that the Germans were beaten only because the Soviets had millions of soldiers to sacrifice -- overwhelming the more competent German war machine.
In point of fact, the Soviets learned quickly from their early mistakes and developed sophisticated tactics from 1943 onward. The Red Army' leaders, such as Marshall Georgi Zhukov, were able commanders who not only outfought, but often outsmarted their German counterparts.
I'm no military guy, but every western army, perhaps even today, was using combined arms tactics first developed by the Germans over 100 years ago. Guderian took it to another level of mobility, but I'm not certain the Russians ever even got to the first level. One of the reasons why Franks got to Baghdad in a week was because he was facing Russian style defenses and tactics that were ancient.
My arty buddy tells me that the Russians had to mass artillery hub-to-hub even as late as the 80's. No fire control even close to what the US was using at the end of WWII. No fire control and support = no mobility. Meaning, your army becomes a bludgeon.
I'll let the military guys jump in here, but you'd be the first I've heard crediting the Russians with any military sophistication. How could they? Men of arms require years to learn their craft, and hard to get that experience if your officer corps is constantly being purged. That's why Stalin had to fight as he did, he couldn't overwhelm with equipment, and he couldn't manuever, so he threw bodies at it. He butchered his way to victory.
Eugene, you seem to love words and idions, so please forgive a minor bit of pedantry. Your statement is not true.
"The lion's share" means the whole thing.
If I said lend/lease was only to the Soviets, you'd have a point, but since I didn't say that (or even imply it), you're just blathering. I even said it was important, just not even close to the most important aspect in the war. (For example, some plans were provided to the Soviet Union, but it was a tiny number compared to the domestically produced and usually superior Soviet built planes.) No one here is saying your relatives didn't fight bravely or even importantly, so please calm down. Recognizing that others also fought hard, or even harder, doesn't reduce your relative's accomplishments. Your bluster, though, does them no honor.
As for tactics, the Blitz was worked out in joint training between Soviet and German generals in the 30's. Most of the Soviet generals didn't live long enough to put it into use, but Zhukov was a master. It's really quite silly to argue otherwise.
Uh huh, and it worked real well up in Finland, didn't it? ;-)
The Sovs knew theory, but everybody knows theory. In practice, blood was their favored munition.
You strongly implied lend lease was all to Russia, but I will concede the point. Let's not get too personal here, and try to characterize me as hysterical due to my families legacy of service in WWII.
If we stick to the subject matter, I am attempting to correct the perception that you sow that the aid was inconsequential. It was not. Not only did the US contribute arms and material to the Russians, Britain and Canada did as well. While numerically it may be so that the majority of aid was trucks, in tonnage that's certainly not so. In addition to the approximately 350,000 trucks from the US, Russian received as many as 30,000 armored cars and tanks; not to mention jeeps, and, of course, other supplies. However, if you want to count numbers of things, it was probably boots, or bullets (I don't know if we sent any boots or bullets).
Your assertion that it was paid back was just plain wrong.
That lend-lease was inconsequential is Soviet revisionism, and nationalism at its finest, as exemplified b the enduring joke that all Russians believe that everything was invented in Russia - part of Soviet indoctrination. From an article on the topic on a military history web site (article by Thorleif Olsson):
I wouldn't argue that one side's soldiers fought harder than another's or gave more when they died. My initial beef here was the assertion that it was over, thanks to the Russians, before we showed up. Let me ask - what language do you think they'd be speaking in Paris right now if it wasn't for the rest of the Allies in WWII? I won't dispute strongly that it might be either German or Russian, but it certainly wouldn't be French (if I had to bet, I'd bet German).
But why Bucharest? Romania's Joining of the Axis was at least somewhat voluntary, and they contributed massively to Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. It's not like there was a shortage of other countries that were unambiguously conquered (Denmark, Greece).
Quite obviously they'd be speaking French, just as 50+ years of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe didn't lead those countries to not speak their native languages. (I suspect, or at least hope, you're being a bit silly here for rhetorical effect, but people often seem to make this argument seriously. When it's made seriously it's a clear sign of not being someone who can be talked to. I mean, what language do they speak in Quebec city, after all?
Here's some numbers:
Tanks: Imported- 10,800, built in in Soviet union 102,500
(some of the imported tanks being obsolete, while the T-34 was better than any tank the US would have until 1950, at least.)
Planes: Imported- 18,7000, Built in USSR, 136,800
(many of the imported planes being older models, many of the planes built in USSR being among the best to serve in the war)
Guns: Imported 9,600, Built in USSR 489,900.
(Again, from Alec Nove's excellent Economic History of the Soviet Union.)
Approximately 600,000 trucks came from the US, the majority used by the Soviet Army. That's a big deal, of course, but can't compare to the T-34 in importance.
rosetta's, you and your artillery buddy are just wrong but it is understandable why you should be. Soviet military brilliance in WWII was not appreciated in the West until the 1970s or later. This is chiefly because we only had the self-serving and incomplete accounts of German officers, which portrayed the Soviets as a stumbling horde. We all learned about a caricature.
In fact the Germans were completely outfought at the operational and strategic levels from mid-1942 on. The Soviets didn't have force superiority across the front; through intelligence, planning, and deception they amassed superiority at decisive points and achieved armored breakthroughs at a scale that dwarfs what any other army did. Contrast the Allies' squandering of the pursuit across France with the brilliant series of operations going on the same year in the East, which we refer to simply as the Destruction of Army Group Center.
The works of Col. David M. Glantz, USA (ret.)--an artilleryman himself in Vietnam before he became a military historian and headed up our army's studies of the Red Army in the 80s--are a good entry point for understanding how the Soviets really beat the Germans. Soviet operational art as practiced in the later years of the war is the gold standard. They were the team to beat.
Lend-lease did help the Soviets, largely because their own production was badly disrupted by the invasion. We ought not imagine that Western designs were particularly superior. Soviet T-34s terrified the Germans--the Germans--when first encountered and were far superior to anything the Americans or British could even draw pictures of. Of course the Soviets were willing to use whatever tools were available and took our cast-off tanks: any tank is better than no tank. The trucks of course were extremely helpful to supplying Soviet mechanized offensives.
However they did it, the Allies managed to go from Normandy to Berlin in about 9 months, with a logistical tail stretching across a hostile ocean all the way to Iowa, all while fighting across the globe. The Russians took nearly 4 years, across land, in their backyard, their army marching with a bayonet in its back. And the Nazis covered this same ground in a far shorter time as you know.
The Brits introduced a tank into the late war that was the better of the T-34, as you likely know, and it's still in service in some nations today I believe (Israel still?). The Sovs had little long range air capability, and the vaunted Sturmivik, while potent, may have been the best they put in the skies, as contrasted with the multitude of war winning platforms the allies employed. I don't think you can claim that Sov equipment prevailed here... it was something else.
I'm gonna have to let you argue with my buddy about the Sovs artillery doctrine, and how it compared with NATO's. Hub-to-hub is the quote I remember, and that's not mobile warfare in my mind. Maybe you can expand on this.
Let me ask you. What would have been the outcome of a straight conflict, right then, between the allies and the Sovs? No nukes, just a street fight.
The point of all this study was to figure out how on earth to beat the Soviets if it actually came to it. I have no idea how a real war under controlled "wargame" circumstances (no nukes, no politics) would have played out and I'm glad we'll never have to know. I think the more attritional the war turned out to be, the better it would have been going for NATO; we needed to be killing as many Soviets as possible as far forward as possible without regard for our own losses.
Some retrospective study suggests that out doctrine became increasingly unsuitable as we imagined the contest as NATO smarts against the dumb mass of the Red Army. The Red Army was assuredly very stupid at low levels but its commanders seem to have been pretty smart at directing it toward weak points and creating favorable conditions for breakthroughs. They planned around their weaknesses. A lot of our technological achievements and the doctrine founded on them were dubious. For example, experiences in former Yugoslavia and in the 2003 invasion of Iraq show that attack helicopters are completely useless for operations over enemy-held territory, which is what our doctrine in the 80s increasingly emphasized. Probably the most frustrating things for the Soviets would have been the ease with which modern technologies, particularly man-portable antitank missiles, can blunt armored offensives. The Israelis learned that the hard way in 1973.
Of course the other big thing we learned after the Cold War was that the Soviets had not generated any plans for an invasion of Europe that did not include nukes galore.
The Centurion was a fine heavy tank but most armies regarded that concept as a design dead end by 1950 or so. The South Africans are still using their version of the Centurion. The Soviets also had a good heavy tank in the IS series and I don't know which would be judged better in that category. Only the British and Israelis had much use for heavy tanks after WWII. But everyone else moved on to more mobile tanks quite quickly--the main battle tank concept.
It wasn't the Soviets that placed an onerous peace on Germany at the end of WWI that produced the conditions that led to the rise of the Nazis and Hitler. In fact the capitulation of Russia was complete at the end of WWI. And compare Germany after their defeat in WWI with what happened in West Germany after the much greater humiliation and destruction in WWII. It wasn't the responsibility of the Soviets to enforce the terms of Versailles and ensure that Germany did not rearm, reoccupy the Rheinland, fight a proxy war in Spain annex Austria and the Sudetanland, and invade Poland.
Many in the west, including some who would become Hitlers staunchest enemies and some--including some prominent Americans and members of the British Royal Family, including the former king--who would never lose their admiration for him, welcomed Hitler because he restored order and for his get tough policies on the communists and the Jews. To imply that the Molotov/Von Ribbontrop pact caused the war is revisionism at its very worst.
Quite obviously they'd be speaking French, just as 50+ years of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe didn't lead those countries to not speak their native languages
Really? What language do they speak in Königsberg now? How about Danzig? Do the people of Wilno and Lwow still primarily speak Polish like they used to?
Sov arty doctrine was not much different in kind than at Gettysburg, except longer ranged, equipped with field telephones with easily cut wire, or if they were lucky, with whatever radios that the Allies managed to fight through to them. And this was the limiting factor, forcing them to mass as their doctrine.
They massed, and bludgeoned, because that is what the God of War doctrine they were encumbered with forced them to do. Now, they did have numerical superiority strategically, operationally and tactically, at all times basically, after they were clobbered through 1942. That superiority in numbers, yes coupled with some lessons the Wehrmacht taught them, allowed them to push forward, but it took them 4 years to make that push, and you still haven't responded to that time disparity.
I've read Glantz, and yes he's dispelled the hordes of bareskinned savages myths, but that doesn't mean the fully clothed Sov foot soldiers weren't thrown into the breach in frontal assaults, through holes (sometimes) blown out by fixed and immobile artillery. Remember, it didn't take 4 years because they were racing to Berlin. And I don't recall Glantz ever using the word "brilliant" about the Sovs. To paraphrase, he said they weren't the incompetent peasants they were during the first 2 years of the war, and in Finland. Maturity does not imply sophistication. Stalin butchered his way to Berlin.
To answer my own question, I don't see the Sovs standing up to a combined arms assault from the Allies in 1945. Their tactical air power would soon be nuetralized, not including the strategic force to come. Transport not even close. Artillery in numbers, yes, but that would not last. And then, the logistics start to kick in, as the absence of Allied Lend Lease support begins to show.
Manchuria in '45 don't count, by the way. The IJA was a rabble, and the Sovs sent hardened forces against it... their best of their best, against an ill equipped if brave enemy. I'd love to have seen the Sovs at Okinawa, that woulda been a good test. But Stalin woulda likely just shown the Japanese how he too could fight the kamikaze way, as always. And he waited 'til the conflict was over, and was land grabbing.
You seem to be putting aside the equipment-based arguments, which is a good thing. That didn't bring the Sovs any satisfaction, only blood balanced their weakness on that score. Many are impressed with the T-34, but remember, its significance is that the bare-skinned hordes managed to produce it, against all expectations. In reality, it was an up-armored, up-gunned Sherman. Chassis and powertrain no better than Sherman, but just as easy to manufacture, the real strength of both. And the Sherman too remained in service long after the war, like the Brit tank.
In general, you'll have to respond on a few issues. Given their overwhelming numbers after 1942, the deficient if not suicidal tactics of their enemy, their enemy's fuel shortages and other logistical issues, and the ever present bayonet in Zhukov's back, why did it take them 4 years to get to Berlin?
That sure don't sound like "brilliance".
Only the actual text of the original fable, as translated into modern English.
I don't understand your use of "as opposed to what it might have meant in the original fable" -- might have meant? Not only was this explicitly stated, it was the point of the fable.
OK, it's the old religious controversy of descriptive versus prescriptive, I know ... and your usage is all too common. But as the riddle attributed (probably incorrectly) to Lincoln goes, "If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?"
Would you say that "imply" and "infer" are synonyms? How about "public use" and "public benefit"?
I'd sooner opt for Rupert Brooke, or even Rudyard Kipling. Sigfried Sassoon, or Wilfred Owen are perhaps the best know World War I poets, but even the Bard of the North, Robert Service penned quite a bit - based on his experience as an ambulance driver. I don't have a strong opinion on has done the best poetic take on World War II. But for war in general, I'd go with Brook, or Kipling - or Homer.
Meanwhile, a vote of thanks to all the allied troops on V-E Day.
Were but that soulless commie stooges like Brecht could have such introspection, Volokh.
Umm, right here:
"and should probably be credited with the hardest and most important victories."
How can you claim that the T-34 was an up-armored, up-gunned Sherman, when it predated the Sherman? Don't be ridiculous.
The T-34 was superior in every way including the Christie suspension (which was an American design rejected by the Americans). The Sherman was a poor tank design but made up for its flaws in dependability and sheer numbers. The T-34 was a good design and easy to manufacture and ease of manufacture improved as the war went on.
Thanks for the response.
I don't know about 1945; I hadn't realized that was the hypothetical war toward which you were directing your thoughts. I suspect that's a Western win because the Soviets had longer supply lines and were vulnerable to air interdiction, which we were very good at. The Soviets had very little force projection capability whereas we could launch strategic air and sea operations. We also need to know the political context. If the Soviets had favorable conditions for an initial offensive, they could very well encircle and cut to ribbons entire Western army groups. I tend to doubt we could have achieved that were the situation reversed.
I think that because, if you look at actual Western offensive operations in WWII, they are underwhelming. There is an initial breakthrough but then the Germans get away. There's no deep penetration or high-level encirclement. Look at the aftermath of El Alamein, the Torch landings, Sicily, and the pursuit across France. In each case there was a chance to bag a huge German force but it was squandered due to failure to appreciate the possibilities of operational depth. We were not drawing the right arrows on our maps. Arguably the drive into Germany in late 1945 was competent but the enemy there is easily discountable as a rabble.
My grandfather commanded a U.S. tank battalion in a tank division during that campaign. It is worthwhile to note that our tank divisions were doctrinally oriented toward pursuits and exploitations but really only got to carry out those operations during a single campaign for three months at the very end of the war. Soviet tank corps, the equivalent formation, by 1945 would have had officers who'd been in three or so pursuits spanning much longer and were probably more skilled.
I think I finally understand what were are talking about with artillery and apologize for my denseness. Yes, absolutely, Soviet tactical employment of artillery was inflexible and emphasized concentration. We were quite flexible. If the measure of artillery doctrine is putting rounds on target to help some random captain or colonel win the fight he has stumbled into, no question ours was better. Your friend was surely more technically competent, had better equipment, and was better situated to provide support than his counterpart in the Red Army. No question at all.
But is that really what it's about? The Soviets excelled at developing undetected operational concentrations of strength and unleashing them to create and exploit breakthroughs. Captains and colonels who stumble into fights away from the main effort are not worthy of support. Not being able to send shells to help them is a feature of the Soviet system, not a bug. Soviet officers would wonder why you would even want that capability.
So at the tactical level you get into the question of whether Soviet command-push/detail-orders/Befehlstaktik or German recon-pull/mission-orders/Auftragstaktik is better. That is a bigger argument than can be hashed out here. The Soviets were always in the command-push camp; they knew their company and field officers could not handle recon-pull. We increasingly emphasized recon-pull and junior-leader initiative. You don't hold a particular piece of ground; instead you counterattack to dislocate the Soviet offensive. There is a cogent critique of our tactics and their presentation as part of U.S. Army doctrine from 1982 on (the AirLand Battle era) in Leonhard, The Art of Maneuver Warfare (1991).
You also get into an operational level distinction between American Deep Battle (blasting the enemy with airplanes, missiles, etc. before he has reached the battlefield--the key operational feature of AirLand Battle) and Soviet Operational Maneuver (breakthroughs, encirclements, and exploitations). Writing about 1983, Glantz thought Deep Battle had serious problems and was poorly fitted against Operational Maneuver. He thought NATO was so weak the Soviets wouldn't even need a follow-on echelon to succeed, so Deep Battle was strategically irrelevant. The Soviet nature of the Soviet offensive can't be dislocated by small counterattacks; the WWII Germans had that doctrine and failed miserably. Also look at how Anglo-French penny-packet armored counterattacks failed to blunt the German offensive in 1940. (The British and French had more and better tanks than the Germans in 1940 but had no idea how to use them.)
With hindsight we also see Deep Battle was technically quite optimistic. I mentioned helicopters earlier. If we sent them on interdiction raids as our doctrine required they would never have flown any more missions. One consequence of Deep Battle relevant to the artillery discussion was that artillery was supposed to be interdicting the enemy as he approached the battlefield instead of helping companies and battalions in their tactical engagements. Very scary for our conjectural captains and colonels putting together their scratch counterattacks.
FC, it was a major symptom of the disease, said disease having its origin in both Moscow and Berlin, and fatal for far too many. Quarantine was the appropriate action, but proved unobtainable.
Yes, there is no doubt that the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the fighting in Europe when talking pound for pound for casualties, destruction of infrastructure, etc. But this does not give the Soviets or Soviet apologists (who still exist to this day in Russia) carte blanche to celebrate when all evidence indicates that the Soviets would have remained allies with Hitler for years without it staining their conscience, that their Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 directly helped lead to war once Hitler knew his Eastern flank was secure.
Those who celebrate Victory Day in the East say World War II lasted from 1941-1945, but they conveniently ignore 1939-1941, when their Soviet government was a willing co-conspirator in the wars of aggression. Hitler attacked Poland September 1, 1939, but as stipulated in Hitler's pact with Stalin, the Red Army launched its own invasion of Poland on September 17th and took eastern Poland. Soon afterwards, the Red Army marched into the Baltic states, Bessarabia, etc. Let's no kid ourselves- this was naked invasion, no better than Hitler's. Let's not forget the hundreds of thousands of tons of critical war goods (steel, oil, wheat, etc) the Kremlin was supplying to the Germans right up until Barbarossa in June 1941. Let's recall how the NKVD and Gestapo traded lists of "wanted people" to help each other purge undesirables.
Stalin was so shocked by the German invasion that for several days he did not come out of his room, shocked that his partner had betrayed him. Stalin calculated, and he lost.
Victory over fascism? More like victory over a former ally. And what of the Kremlin's actions after the war, the decades of occupation in Central and Eastern Europe? To this day, Moscow refuses to admit that their 1940 invasion of the Baltic states, for one, was nothing other than a liberation. Let's not forget the Soviet massacre of Polish POWs in the Katyn forest, denied by the Soviets until the 1980s. Let's not forget the millions of Soviet citizens and soldiers, including Red Army POWs who survived Nazi concentration camps, who were forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union after World War II and were then throw into the Gulag or shot for the "crime" of seeing the West.
I'm sorry, I am not going to celebrate "Victory Day." I will use the term I coined when I observed the 50th anniversary "Victory Day" parade in Kiev, Ukraine in 2005, where men dressed up as Red Army soldiers marched under placards of Lenin and, yes, Stalin... May 9th was and remains Occupation Day!
No, they didn't, certainly not as long as the logistical tail back to Iowa. This is one of the things which makes the 4-years to Berlin so inexplicable, even as it's termed brilliant.
The favorable conditions you mention would not arise, as we know historically (see Bulge, Battle of). The Allies would not have given a fixed and immobile target, as Hitler provided so regularly, to be attacked by Sov sluggishness. However, fixed and immobile as they were, the Sovs would have been incinerated in place. The Sovs' offense seems to me more like "defense as offense".
However, I won't disagree with you that the allies would have had difficulty with encirclement themselves, but that wasn't their doctrine or practice, I don't believe, so did that matter? Politics count, too, with the allies, unlike comrade Stalin.
...and it took 9 months, as opposed to 4 years. How much more whelming do you need? ;-)
I also won't disagree with you about the Med campaigns, which in Africa were all about rounding up thirsty Germans, and then we have the wasted effort in Italy, terrain unfriendly. But, none of these took more than a fraction of 4 years, and all involved an amphibious capability that the Sovs could not have dreamed of, as they wheeled their fixed arty into place by horse harness. Berlin was the key, not the Med, which Stalin knew, give him credit for that, and he sacrificed much blood to take it, over that 4 years.
No, it isn't, and I think you know better than this. And if it was rabble, it was the same rabble that was in the East. If the allies had invaded in 1943, they might have fought rabble, but in that next year, our friend Rommel recruited a new force, built the Atlantic Wall and associated speed bumps, and generally found ways to keep the allies from spending Christmas '44 at the Reichstag. As it was, they tied the Sovs, who had 3+ years head start.
Yes, the God of War, artillery, is what it is about. Stalin knew this, as did his generals, but they were encumbered, so they fought as they had to... bloodily. They bludgeoned.
Yes, because if that officer stumbled in an unauthorized direction, he got a 9mm bug (in his head), a well known feature of the Sov system. Forward for the motherland, comrades... or else.
By jove, I think you've got it! But remember, if it took you 10 discussion posts to "get" it in the Red Army command, you were sent to see the 72 comrade virgins in the sky. That's the point of Sov doctrine. Do it, no matter who dies, because we have no other way to do it. And doing Berlin and their virgins was the "it", for Stalin.
This is what gives me the notion of Sov offense as being "defense as offense". It really was that. And chained to such doctrine by necessity, they were stuck with mass attack and mass casualties. Stalin butchered his way to Berlin.
It's the arty, Bama. That's what got Hitler, most of his military was horse drawn, all blitzkrieg talk notwithstanding (and yes, they were the as-practiced innovators here, limited as their overall capability was). Stalin had Studes thanks to LL, but he still fought with a bludgeon, and had to.
Yes, the Soviets saw "offense as defense." They took fewer casualties in offensive than defensive operations. Thus postwar they emphasized the operational and tactical offensive even though their national strategy was essentially defensive. If we thought the Soviets were going to attack us, we would prepare to defend Germany. If the Soviets thought we were going to attack them, they would invade Germany.
Yes, Bama, but "fewer" doesn't imply "few". That was the point of the discussion, and my criticism of the Sovs' approach, that it was slow and bloody of necessity, and not to be praised but rather scorned. The political system begets the approach, in all things, likely.
rosetta, I accuse you of special pleading. 4 years v. 9 months
Sure, but after 3 years and 3 months of softening up, the western allies didn't have to face much.
Almost the same German forces were in Army Group Center and in France/Low Countries in mid-1944. After six months of maximum effort, the western allies had pushed back but not destroyed the nearly 50 divisions they faced. After considerably less time, the Red Army had destroyed Army Group Center -- 30 of (roughly) 46 divisions wiped out, no organized front left.
The time reference is the only apples to apples comparison possible, that and the body count. Both weigh against Stalin's approach. I dig historical revisionism as much as the next geek, but I believe the original take still holds here. Stalin was a butcher of many, including his own soldiers.
Crank that into your calculations.
That's simply an ahistorical statement.
Nazi strategic air defense required upwards of 1,000,000 deployed to it, and associated equipment, none of which was required to defend against strategic air attacks from the East, as we know historically.
Crank that into your non-existent data set.
I can go on, if you'd like additional data. That argument's a dry hole, Eagar.
The Red Army inflicted nearly a million casualties on the Germans before the US entered the war.
...and took many more millions of their own, due to Stalin.
Patton's 3rd army alone inflicted 1,800,000 casualties during the 8 months or so he commanded it in combat in Europe, as I recall, while suffering 140,000 of their own. And he advanced to Czhekoslovakia, even as Hitler mobilized new armies in the West, and sent all freshly manufactured armor there, proof of the threat faced in the West.
The East? Same ol' same ol'. Blood, slog, the Sovs frontal assaults, slow movement. Death in volume. Stalin's casualty ratio was somewhat worse than Patton's, to say no more. And much materiel hand delivered by the Allies at Murmansk, not moved many thousands of miles across hostile ocean.
Allied strategic air attack was about pinning down the enemy, those 1M people and their equipment, and it worked in that regard. And clearly, the 90% figure you invented doesn't stand up. More like 60-40, I'd say, and the fixed fortifications and geographical obstacles in Germany's western wall likely mitigated even this disparity.
9 months as opposed to 4 years. There is no explanation for that disparity. And no explanation for Stalin's butchery over those 4 years.
If you have a comment about spelling, typos, or format errors, please e-mail the poster directly rather than posting a comment.
Comment Policy: We reserve the right to edit or delete comments, and in extreme cases to ban commenters, at our discretion. Comments must be relevant and civil (and, especially, free of name-calling). We think of comment threads like dinner parties at our homes. If you make the party unpleasant for us or for others, we'd rather you went elsewhere. We're happy to see a wide range of viewpoints, but we want all of them to be expressed as politely as possible.
We realize that such a comment policy can never be evenly enforced, because we can't possibly monitor every comment equally well. Hundreds of comments are posted every day here, and we don't read them all. Those we read, we read with different degrees of attention, and in different moods. We try to be fair, but we make no promises.
And remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.