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If anyone wants to hear a fascinating account of the ww2's eastern front, you have to listen to dan carlin's ghosts of ostfront series.
I just recently finished his series on WW1. amazing.
will eventually get to Ostfront...
The Russians did pay a heavy price in WW2 and did occupy a very large portion of the German war machine. one wonders what would have happened had German maintained peace with Russia and just fought the west.
The Germans were already stalled before the allies entered the war. There wasn't much of a chance that was going to alter regardless if a second front opened or not.
they may have been stalled, but they were not out of the conflict. hitler made a lot of mistakes in the east that caused his downfall there.
and by the way, the invasion of normandy opened up a THIRD front, remember the allies invaded italy the year before, opening up the second front in southern europe.
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Originally Posted by War Beagle
This correct - the Soviets did the VAST majority of the heavy lifting in Europe. No question about it.
That said, the US should have followed Patton's advice, marched into the USSR and overthrown the Soviet regime when they were completely exhausted. Instead, good old fellow traveler FDR gave Stalin permission to enslave half of Europe for 45 years.
the problem though comes that we had enough troubles handling the german panzer and tiger tanks. had they been produced in greater numbers, and had germany been able to secure fuel for them, it would have been a much different outcome in western europe. and the soviet T-34 was at least equal, and actually slightly superior, to the german tanks, and were made in as great a number as the american sherman tank(nicknamed purple heart boxes).
the allies, the russians included, overwhelmed the axis powers by force of numbers. for instance the US had a 5-1 advantage in numbers of tanks, a huge advantage in long range heavy bombers, a big advantage in fighters, particularly long range fighters, and the US alone had 16 million men under arms by the end of the war. the soviets had similar numbers as well, so no one country did more than another to defeat the germans.
Great idea, nothing like stabbing one of your allies in the back for no apparent reason, and starting World War III in the process.
It is a fact that the Soviets played a far bigger role in the European theater than the Americans. 80% of German casualties took place on the eastern front.
Americans have a hugely inflated sense of their role in Europe in WWII, probably due to Hollywood and our miserable public K-12 educational system.
I fully get the huge price paid and the major role the Russians played in the allied victory, but you cannot downplay the role America played in winning ww2.
In the first place, had America not entered the war, Germany would have cleaned up, then moved all their forces to Russia and annihilated them. They had already gotten access to oil in Africa and the ME. America kicked them out there. Had that not happened, Germany would have had all the natural resources to win.
Had Russia lost early or maintained neutrality with Germany, it remains to be seen what would have happened because America had both the natural resources and the population to outlast Germany.
we did in fact, get to the Abomb before Germany, and would have used it against them if necessary.
Further at the end of the day, as much as winning the war was vital, WINNING THE PEACE was even more critical. America did that with the Marshal Plan. Europe is first world because we paid to make it so.
I think the U.S. and the Soviets share some blame for the war due to their policies towards Hitler in the late 1930s. The Soviets had a pact with the Nazis, and America stayed out of the affair until Pearl Harbor in 1941. The entire thing could have been prevented had the U.S. and the Soviets been tougher on Hitler earlier, up to the possibility of taking him out. However, there would have been serious moral implications in doing so and also, we were in a global economic depression at the time that detracted a lot of focus from foreign affairs.
They were the only ones in the east when their alliance with Germany went bad. No doubt the Russian's paid a huge price in terms of lives and resources, but they were not entirely without guilt.
Although the Us didn't become involved until later in the war, we didn't start it, or have any role in starting it. Something Russia can't say.
Well, maybe if US & BEF hadn't been marching across Russia actively trying to smother the USSR in the crib, as it were. The US contingent fought their way across Russia & out through Vladivostok, as I recall. So the USSR was quite paranoid for a long time, right up through 1991. So Germany & USSR cut various deals in the 1920s & 1930s - among them, USSR sold considerable amounts of POL & food to Germany.
I'm not sure you can categorize these arrangements as an alliance between Germany & USSR. Germany needed the POL & food & ores - & they had a chronic labor shortage. The USSR would likely have abrogated their Non-aggression agreement with Germany themselves, in time. But Stalin wasn't ready - & was quite disbelieving when Germany did invade in June 1941.
& yah, I'm sure that after the fact - in 1941 - the Soviets regretted massacring Polish elites & military when they took their half of Poland in 1939 - those people would have been handy to fill out Soviet military/technical/scientific leadership slots. There are a lot of imponderables in WWII - would Germany have invaded if the Soviets hadn't bungled the Russo-Finnish War so badly? What if Stalin hadn't purged the Soviet military nor massacred so many productive agricultural arrangements - the Kulaks in Ukraine, for instance before the war? Or if the USSR hadn't sold raw materials to Germany? Or leased training & basing & exercise space to the illegal (by treaty) military machine that Germany built up?
We literally outfitted the Russian army with everything from tanks to planes to food and blankets.
THAT was the critical supply convoys in the Atlantic the Germans were trying to stop.
Without that, they are toast IMO.
However, without them the allies are pretty screwed as well.
Make no mistake, they weren't exactly heaping praise on the US for defeating the Germans either.
Well, not tanks. The T-34 (with Christie suspension & drive, a US design that our military rejected) was probably the best tank of WWII. The US supplied all the Allies - armor, jeeps, trucks, aircraft, fighters, arty, ships, food, ammo. Sometimes cash & carry, sometimes Lend-Lease.
We (the US) put in 90 divisions of military in the ETO. The estimated manpower required for Allied victory in ETO (in the early 1930s, I think it was) was for 214 US divisions, plus beefed up air force & navy. We never put in that many people. If you look @ the fighting on the Eastern Front, Germany & USSR were committing 100s of divisions @ a crack to combat.
I think the USSR would have fought on even if they were left the only man standing - because Nazi Germany was committed to genocide in Poland & USSR, & taking the land/crops/cattle/ore/POL for themselves, with the existing people there to be worked to death in labor camps or shot out of hand.
We helped the Soviets, but I don't know that our help was crucial to the outcome. The Soviets bled themselves & the Germans near to death - the USSR did finally stagger off in 1991, dead of its own contradictions - but the Soviets could have pursued the war without us. I don't think we - the West - could have done without the Soviets, unless we had massively distorted our own societies to win the war.
Had Russia lost early or maintained neutrality with Germany, it remains to be seen what would have happened because America had both the natural resources and the population to outlast Germany.
germnay had the same problem japan had, aka the oceans between europe and the US. germany did not have the necessary sea lift capability to invade the US, let alone establish and maintain the long supply lines, and they did not have the capacity to attack the US from the air in any kind of numbers. no long range heavy bombers, and no aircraft carriers to support any invasion, and no plans to build such item of war.
and while japan had the carriers, they didnt have the necessary transport ships, nor the ability to establish and maintain extremely long supply lines. the only reason the US was able to do these things was due to our huge manufacturing capability for all items needed to prosecute a war of attrition around the world. for example, henry kaisers shipyards could build liberty cargo ships at the rate of one every four days. and in late 1942 we had one carrier operating in the pacifc, but by the end of 1943 we had fourteen fleet carrier groups along with a large number of escort carriers, as well as destroyers, submarines, cruisers, etc. and our factories pumped out aircraft of all kinds almost as fast as they did cars during peace time.
one wonders what would have happened had German maintained peace with Russia and just fought the west.
It's interesting speculation, sure, but mostly a moot point. The Nazi ideology was pretty much based on expanding eastwards and gain lebensraum at the cost of the inferior Slavs - going east was the essential purpose of the Wehrmacht.
The Nazis completely expected the UK to settle for peace - the western front (apart from contested territories like the Rheinland etc.) was a preliminary to make sure the eastwards expansion could take place without having to fight on two (major) fronts, not really a goal in itself.
Didn't help that Mussolini got himself into Greece and needed bailing out - I'd love to have heard that phone call.
they may have been stalled, but they were not out of the conflict. hitler made a lot of mistakes in the east that caused his downfall there.
and by the way, the invasion of normandy opened up a THIRD front, remember the allies invaded italy the year before, opening up the second front in southern europe.
the problem though comes that we had enough troubles handling the german panzer and tiger tanks. had they been produced in greater numbers, and had germany been able to secure fuel for them, it would have been a much different outcome in western europe. and the soviet T-34 was at least equal, and actually slightly superior, to the german tanks, and were made in as great a number as the american sherman tank(nicknamed purple heart boxes).
the allies, the russians included, overwhelmed the axis powers by force of numbers. for instance the US had a 5-1 advantage in numbers of tanks, a huge advantage in long range heavy bombers, a big advantage in fighters, particularly long range fighters, and the US alone had 16 million men under arms by the end of the war. the soviets had similar numbers as well, so no one country did more than another to defeat the germans.
No, they weren't out of the conflict at that point. However, it lacks accuracy when people sit around saying that "Hitler could just wait it out." Because the reality is the Russians had a whole lot more manpower to throw at the Germans then the Germans had to throw at the Russians.
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Lots of questions there
