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Soviet tactical doctrine focused on air support of ground assets almost exclusively. It was almost a liability. Had effort been made to expand the mission of the Red Air Force things would have been much better all around. It was one of those systemic maladies they seem to have and only solved later. Planes such as the Il-4 were doing raids as far away as Romania and Bulgaria after the fall of the Crimea but they were little more than harassment. Nothing like what the US and Britain did.
1941 was chaos as you know. 9 air raids on Berlin did nothing but lose the majority of bombers sent with no results because they were mostly at night. Lesson was learned. Once the US was in the war, we told the Soviets to stick with attacking the German army and leave the strategic bombing to us. The Brits were supposed to stop Germany in Africa and attack their navy on all fronts. This was discussed at length during the 2nd Moscow conference (it makes sense doesn't it?). Stalin knew at worst all he had to do was buy time. Bombers were easier to transport and deploy from Britain than army on the ground. 3 million tonnes of bombs, with help of the Norden sight laid waste to German production. Britain and the US lost over 20,000 bombers and 160,000 men doing this (not counting action against Japan).
1941 was chaos as you know. 9 air raids on Berlin did nothing but lose the majority of bombers sent with no results because they were mostly at night. Lesson was learned. Once the US was in the war, we told the Soviets to stick with attacking the German army and leave the strategic bombing to us. The Brits were supposed to stop Germany in Africa and attack their navy on all fronts. This was discussed at length during the 2nd Moscow conference (it makes sense doesn't it?). Stalin knew at worst all he had to do was buy time. Bombers were easier to transport and deploy from Britain than army on the ground. 3 million tonnes of bombs, with help of the Norden sight laid waste to German production. Britain and the US lost over 20,000 bombers and 160,000 men doing this (not counting action against Japan).
American troops on board a landing craft going in to land at Oran. November 1942. The United States entered the war in the west with Operation Torch on 8 November 1942, after their Soviet allies had pushed for a second front against the Germans. General Dwight Eisenhower commanded the assault on North Africa, and Major General George Patton struck at Casablanca."
Lo and behold, here comes the "second front against Germans..."
Operation Torch (initially called Operation Gymnast) was the British-United States invasion of French North Africa during the North African Campaign of the Second World War which started on 8 November 1942. It is the first major operation that US troops undertook in the European / North African theatre of World War II.[4]
And how many lives he saved when the Soviet Union won the war? What would have happened if the Soviet Union had lost?
I was only talking about death toll, but as I pointed out to Erasure multiple times that alone should not be the singular basis by which we evaluate leaders and their policies. If numbers were all that mattered we would end up with the peculiar notion that North Korea is more peaceful than Russia and we both know that that's totally bogus.
Stalin deserves credit for essentially turning the Soviet Union from an agricultural society to an industrial power that could compete with the West. That doesn't negate the fact that many of his policies had disastrous repercussions on the populace.
I was only talking about death toll, but as I pointed out to Erasure multiple times that alone should not be the singular basis by which we evaluate leaders and their policies. If numbers were all that mattered we would end up with the peculiar notion that North Korea is more peaceful than Russia and we both know that that's totally bogus.
Stalin deserves credit for essentially turning the Soviet Union from an agricultural society to an industrial power that could compete with the West. That doesn't negate the fact that many of his policies had disastrous repercussions on the populace.
Of course not. That's why I pointed to you the essential difference between Hitler and Stalin, and why the end goal of the former one brought much higher death toll.
When the leader is smart and needs soldiers and laborers for his projects, do you think he will be KNOWINGLY set to destroy 20 million of his people?
Of course not. That's why I've said that people who died as the result of the GREAT TERROR specifically, were not more than circa 600,000. The innocent people that died as the result of it, is what I actually consider to be Stalin's deliberate crime. But millions that died as the result of the collectivization - that was not his intention; that much is clear from his conversation with Churchill. And yet again - the collectivization was unavoidable, since it was an inseparable part of industrialization.
All those imaginable "20 million people" that "Stalin killed" are yet again - a result of pure speculations, based on god knows what. And that's why historians Arch Getty and Robert Conquest found the lower estimates vindicated by the "recently opened archives."
You can look at those archives yourself now;
Intent and outcome are two different things though. Bush and Blair never intended to get half a million Iraqi's killed, yet their disastrous approach led to a power vacuum in Iraq that enabled those events to take place.
Quote:
Apparently you've totally missed the two links I've left in the previous post.
What Hitler ultimately wanted, was the RACIAL MAKEOVER of European continent, and extermination of Jews was only part of it.
Now compare it with Stalin, who was simply preoccupied with security of his state.
I'm in full agreement with you here. By the time WW2 started he wanted to dominate the world by shaping it in his favor.
Right.
Yet Americans were telling Russians what to do)))
You clearly are misunderstanding my posts with a typical Russian flair. Nobody was telling them what to do, we were telling them what they don't need to do. Our main job was to lure back the Luftwaffe from Russia and attack its factories while shooting down its planes. Russians had the task of fighting the army since they had no choice, it was in Russia. Britain had to fight off the Axis Navy (reducing the navy had 3 goals: allow Americans to bring and supply its army to Europe, allow allies to supply Russians up north and allow Africa and then Italy to be taken). Italy was important not only because of their troops fighting Russian partisans but also the way we could bomb those oilfields in Romania. This was the general idea of the 2nd Moscow conference, which Stalin was part of, in August of 1942. This goal was more or less accomplished by the time of the Tehran conference 16 months later.
You clearly are misunderstanding my posts with a typical Russian flair. Nobody was telling them what to do, we were telling them what they don't need to do. Our main job was to lure back the Luftwaffe from Russia and attack its factories while shooting down its planes. Russians had the task of fighting the army since they had no choice, it was in Russia. Britain had to fight off the Axis Navy (reducing the navy had 3 goals: allow Americans to bring and supply its army to Europe, allow allies to supply Russians up north and allow Africa and then Italy to be taken). Italy was important not only because of their troops fighting Russian partisans but also the way we could bomb those oilfields in Romania. This was the general idea of the 2nd Moscow conference, which Stalin was part of, in August of 1942. This goal was more or less accomplished by the time of the Tehran conference 16 months later.
Then you probably need to to arrange your sentences better)))
"Once the US was in the war, we told the Soviets to stick with attacking the German army and leave the strategic bombing to us."
Well they had no choice but to fight with the German army... In normal English what I meant was we were telling them to stick with it as in they don't need to do other things like build a navy and clear the shipping lanes for our supply to Murmansk or start sending bombers to Hanover...
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