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World War II |OT|
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CrazyIvan1978
Member
Grandpa was a an IL-2 rear gunner, was shot down once (had some stories and health issues from it). I lived in USSR for 3 years in the 80's, plenty of Eastern Front WWII (or the Great Patriotic War as the Russians call it) movies on TV back then. There was quite an anti-german (not just anti Nazzi) push via the movies (maybe something I developed naturally, since this was my only experience with anything "german" related) V-day was celebrated quite dramatically in the USSR as well.
I was born in Moscow, Russia in the early eighties. When I lived there, there were concrete "ninja star"anti-tank barriers all over the place. They were left there as a reminder of the war and how close it was to home. Just to give you guys some perspective, EVERY family in Russia lost someone in WW2. It is not a hyperbole. Here are the losses in my family that I know about:
My great grandfather on my mother's side died in Kursk. he was 22.
On my fathers side, there were three brothers (great grand parents), only one came back.
My grand parents on my mother's side met during WW2 (both participated in the war effort). I would not be alive today if WW2 did not occur...
I know for a fact that Russia beat Germany. America was indeed a great help, but by the time they joined, Russia winning was inevitable. Stalingrad pretty much cemented Germany's loss.
FelixOrion
Poet Centuriate
I need a French version too.
Long and an oldie, but a goodie: If WWII was a video game and the commanders had global chat turned on (gif, lots of bad words and stuff to parody inappropriate players online)
You have to realise that America joined the war effort in December 1941, when Russia was fighting in defence of Moscow, not Stalingrad. Stalingrad was the point where Germany's 1942 summer offensive was halted and turned back, this was the latter half of 1942 and early 1943. And while Germany was halted at Moscow in 1941, this was by no means a situation where the USSR could be confident of victory. 1942 would be another incredibly costly year for the Red Army, until they finally managed to turn the tide at Stalingrad.
Of course, I do consider things generally having swung in the Allies' favour in December 1941, but America's entry into the war with its virtually limitless industry and resources was essential for that.
YES.
What I meant was America was providing resources to Russia, but did not open up the front until the summer of 1944. At that point (after Stalingrad), Germany's loss was inevitable. Yet living here in America, everyone thinks that the US won the European theater and it is basically taught in school as such. Um, no -- they certainly helped, but when they got troops on the ground, the outcome of the war was already decided.
Lagspike_exe
Member
America didn't open a front until Normandy happened and war was a done deal by then. The US was just trying to prevent the entire Europe from falling into Russian hands by that point.
The Soviets did all of the legwork for a good year and a half with almost no Allied help. Lend-lease didn't really play a deciding factor until late-1943. By then the Soviets had the initiative on and were advancing all along the Eastern Front. Even then American equipment like trucks and radio only helped the the Soviets advance quicker. They were by no means deciding factors.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Landed in Africa in '42, invaded Italy in '43. Normandy was the big European push but it's not true that they made no moves against the European powers until '44. Air raids on Germany and allies were being run with increasing frequency starting in 1942, damaging industry, supply lines and forcing LW resources to stay in the west.
Lagspike_exe
Member
But they did not expose themselves to any sort of major threat by the Germans until Normandy. The US didn't start the major campaign until German resistance in Europe was almost completely smashed. Wehrmacht was completely shattered by 1944 thanks to the Eastern Front.
Normandy is the only time Allied causalities were even remotely comparable to what the Soviets were experiencing. It's well documented Churchill was content with the Soviets taking on the brunt of the Wehrmacht while the Allies probed the soft underbelly Europe looking for a way in that wouldn't cause massive casualties. Comparing something like Operation Torch with say, the Lower Dnieper Offensive, is just completely laughable.
IMO that was 80% of the decision to open up the front in 1944. As much as the US hated the Nazis, they feared an iron curtain over the entirety of Europe even more. To be fair, I don't really blame the US. Many people in Russia consider Stalin to be worse than Hitler because Stalin murdered way more of his own people.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
We're not comparing casualty counts. Kabouter was in a discussion about, essentially, the utility of the United States with respect to the Eastern front. We know they didn't do very much dying, but this isn't a pissing contest. Anglo-American forces kept Heer units pinned in the West and guarding the Atlantic coast was a manpower drain the WM couldn't afford - not to mention the bunkers, batteries, obstacles and minefields placed along the length of the atlantic wall. Bombers from the UK and America killed Germans and damaged industry (not just factories directly, but electricity generation and so on). The Luftwaffe dedicates resources to protecting itself from Air Raids, and the Mediterranean theater results in the destruction of thousands of aircraft and experienced pilots they can't replace. For 1943, see charts I and II. For '42 see here.
In retrospect it's easy for you to say that the WM was doomed by the end of 1942, but we always have to caution against historical determinism. If Hitler didn't have to fight in Africa or guard his western flank, this means more production, more units to replace losses in the east, and far more air power that can be dedicated to the east. Again, I don't want to seem like I'm dismissing or trivialising the Soviet contributions. They absolutely are the biggest single player in the war. But they were never alone, and the Americans did help, even ignoring LL.
Yeah, but the problem is a lot of Americans gave their lives for those battles and confilcts I mentioned. Is it because it wasn't all single handedly done on their own and they don't want to show joint-Philippine/and or Aussies in the mix?
I like the Spitfire. But the greatest plane of WW II:
A perfect blend of American and British engineering. Body designed in the U.S. but it became devastating to the Germans when the British made, Rolls Royce engine was installed. Also the bubble canopy was a request by RAF pilots when they flew the earlier model.
After Stalingrad the most positive outcome possible for the Germans was forcing the Soviets into a bloody stalemate. That went out the window after the Red Army rolled them in operation Bagration. People should not underestimate what the Red Army had become by then. It wasn't just this mass of poorly armed and trained canon fodder zerging the Germans. Quality wise I would put the Soviets as equals, man to man, canon to canon, tank to tank and plane to plane, to any other force on the field. I've read a lot of military history and the Red Army was one of the most fearsome militaries that ever existed. Ever. And the African front's biggest contribution was burning out Rommel for the Germans. As close as it came to the Africakorps breaking the British Empire's back, they did it with a surprisingly low investment in men and material.
Normandy not happening at all would merely add a few more million to the Eastern Front casualties. For both parties it was a war of extermination. It wouldn't end until one of them was ruined. There weren't any questions on civilian morale, or money running out, or material running out. It was a war to the last man and to the last bullet.
I remember hearing what a German 6th Army commander wrote in his diaries. He, as I recall, had already fought in France. I will paraphrase a little. He starts by saying "This is a walk in the park. The war will be over in no time." As time passes his mood changes, "We keep advancing and beating them but there always seems to be more." After a while "What is wrong with these people? They never stop fighting, they never surrender. I have a bad feeling about this." And ending near Stalingrad, "We're doomed. We're all going to die."
The whole "who did how much" debate is unresolvable to me. We can't quantify how many dead German soldiers equals a lost plane, ship or tank. Nor can we measure the impact of British economic blockade on European economy, the results of the bombing campaign or how much, simply keeping German divisions in occupied countries contributed to victory. For me Soviet Union did most to take out Germany, British the Italians and Americans the Japanese. The detailed weight of each country's contribution is anyone's guess.
Americans were actually pushing hard for the landings to occur in 1942 and 1943. Thankfully operations Roundup and Sledgehammer were stopped by British, who thought them (rightly) impossible to pull off at the time. Roosevelt was far from seeing Stalin as a future enemy.
I love this gif.
I would disagree with that. On the tactical level Soviets were inferior up until the end of the war. Despite having massive numerical superiority on a long front and being able to reap benefits from plethora of encirclements, they still took disproportionately huge losses. IIRC Bagration was the time when the best casualty ratio was achieved and yet Soviets still had more casualties than Germans. ( Though much, much less irrevocable ones.) At Kursk the ratio was about to 3-1 in favor to Germans and they were attacking heavily fortified defense belts. While I think that at operation level Red Army were the best among the major combatants, at tactical level, they were still several steps behind the others..
Americans were actually pushing hard for the landings to occur in 1942 and 1943. Thankfully operations Roundup and Sledgehammer were stopped by British, who thought them (rightly) impossible to pull off at the time. Roosevelt was far from seeing Stalin as a future enemy.
I love this gif.I would disagree with that. On the tactical level Soviets were inferior up until the end of the war. Despite having massive numerical superiority on a long front and being able to reap benefits from plethora of encirclements, they still took disproportionately huge losses. IIRC Bagration was the time when the best casualty ratio was achieved and yet Soviets still had more casualties than Germans. ( Though much, much less irrevocable ones.) At Kursk the ratio was about to 3-1 in favor to Germans and they were attacking heavily fortified defense belts. While I think that at operation level Red Army were the best among the major combatants, at tactical level, they were still several steps behind the others..
A big factor in Soviet losses late in the war was the fact that they mostly didn't care. As long as they had enough men left over to keep their objective they considered a win (even with losses that would cause any commander in the US Army to get dismissed) as a win. If anything their losses were a result of STAVKA's and Stalin's disregard for casualties. Don't forget they were fighting against the best formations of the best army of WW2. For the Red Army it was Omaha beach everywhere, all the time.
I think this is a gross over simplification. Stavka didn't send their soldiers to death just for the kicks of it. There was a continuous effort to improve the efficiency of the army. By 43/44 I regard Soviets as being better in conducting major offensives. They had better method to achieve deep penetrations, (using Shock/Rifle armies to achieve the breakthrough and then having Tank armies exploit them rather than the German manner of having Panzer Divisions do both.) They were much superior in use of artillery and concentrated their forces in shorter breakthrough sectors achieving unparalleled densities of infantry/guns/tanks. All this they cloaked in deception veil that from summer of 1944, continuously misled the WH about the location of main Soviet effort.
The RA could and did push some of their offensives past a reasonable point but they were hardly alone in this. As to the disregard for casualties I would point to calling up able bodied men in freshly liberated territories and sending them to the front units without adequate training. This in turn translated itself into poor tactical showing and large casualties, But tactical deficiency has little to do with operational prowess, the Soviet commanders simple had to make do with what they had.
Doesn't that run counter to this ? ;P
There's a part in Total War: From Stalingrad to Berlin that goes into detail how the Soviets were trying to minimize casualties as much as possible during the final stages of the war. The biggest one was storming German cities using the same tactics they learned in Stalingrad - small squads of heavily armed men clearing each street house by house, blowing holes in each houses' wall in order to move to the next. The siege of Konisberg is basically a textbook example of how to take a large city with minimal casualties. Minimal in the context of the Eastern Front of course.
We didn't want to get involved in another European conflict after WWI. It wasn't really seen as our concern at the time, and bare in mind that the US had been suffering through the Great Depression in the decade leading up to WW2, and wars are costly endeavors. We had no problem supplying the Allied forces, but until Pearl Harbor dragged us into the war we were perfectly fine with letting the Europeans figure their own shit out.
I said that they didn't much care for casualties. Not that the casualties happened because of incompetence. The Red Army just had a culture, set from Stalin through STAVKA, of pushing through no matter what. Or standing their ground. The very large numbers of casualties they took early on were in big part because Soviet units would hold their ground and fight literally to the last bullet.
How? They were up there with everyone else, but the Germans were better. The margin of their superiority was smaller than the one they had over the US Army but they still were superior.
I recently came to realize how little I knew of WWII when I learned the Soviets were Allies and Stalin was Russian (yeah....). I'm certainly fascinated with the German invasion of Russia. This twitter account is the best thing ever. www.twitter.com/realtimewwii The German invasion was 1 month ago and I've been blown away by the insanity in just this one month alone.
That's not entirely true. The US was shipping supplies to allied nations well before actually getting involved in the war. The Japanese had taken over large parts of China in the '30s, which caused concern for European and United States colonies in Southeast Asia. Europe and the US initiated an oil embargo against Japan. Japan had roughly 2 years supply of oil left unless they found a new supply. When negotiations to lift the embargo broke down, Japan bet it all on conquering the oil rich Dutch East indies (present day Indonesia). The attack on Pearl Harbour was an attempt to cripple the pacific fleet and slow the reaction of the US, giving Japan time to take the Philippines which were under US control at the time. Taking the Phillipines placed Japan in an advantageous position as they made their way south toward Indonesia and a new source of oil.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Man for man I don't doubt that a Soviet conscript was just as brave and combat capable as any other man from any other country. But the casualty ratios speak for themselves regarding the overall quality of the armed forces relative to the Wehrmacht, taking into account the quality of leadership, technology, equipment, tactics used and so on. Early in the war obviously the totally unprepared RA is stomped by forces that are technologically superior in some key areas (T34 > anything Germany has in 1941). It stabilizes at greater than 2 : 1 in favor of the Heer and doesn't get close to parity until right near the end. By 1945 the RA is unmatched, but not necessarily in terms of pound-for-pound value.
Keep in mind that by the end of the war, manpower is coming largely from newly liberated or conquered territories and central asian sources. It's not clear if the USSR would have been able to go on and win the war if they were not on the offensive by the time they were and thus able to secure these "new" sources of manpower. I mention this because if a "bloody stalemate" is secured by the Germans, then that is as good as a Soviet Defeat because they have de facto control over so much territory.
The American public was the reason war wasn't declared sooner. The administration was taking steps to be as much of a participant in the war as they could without actually declaring war. Sending US escorts for Allied convoys, taking over occupation duties in Greenland and Iceland from the British, and giving generous trade agreements to the Allies, eventually going as far as just giving them free war materials.
The attitude of the public was that although they favored the French/Commonwealth side, they felt it was a European affair and did not want to send Americans to die in somebody else's war. The Lend Lease act was sold to the public with the simple analogy that if your neighbor's house is on fire, you lend him your hose so he can put it out and you don't expect him to pay you for it - although he might replace it afterwards. This idea that the United States could help out but not have to send people to die was, as I understand it, something that the public was ok with.
It stands to reason that the US would still have gotten involved directly without Pearl Harbour, probably some time in 1942. A couple more accidental attacks on US shipping from the U-Boat fleets would probably have done the trick in the process of drumming up support for an entry.
Dubbedinenglish
Banned
Public was partially a reason. The main point was that post WWI and Great Depression the US military was largely outdated, undermanned, and ill trained. If the US had gotten involved earlier it would have been largely ineffective. WW2 saw the US military at it largest size in "peacetime" and the only draft in peacetime as well. Pearl Harbor got the US involved slightly early but war inevitably in the immediate future when war was declared.
Don't forget that Nazi and Fascist sympathizers were a non trivial force in the US and Europe all through the '30s. From English royals, to industrialists like Ford, to popular figures like Lindbergh. And while in Europe the invasion of Poland changed the outlook from one of politics to one of survival in the US it didn't. It wasn't merely the distance.
MisterFalcon
Member
Why did the Soviets supply the Nazis with all the raw materials they needed to build their armies and let them train in secret in their country ? The whole war could never have started without that.
Why bother? To Americans at the time it seemed like just another chapter in the long, long series of Europeans killing each other that was inevitably going to happen sooner or later.
Boom Boom Pow
Banned
or why did the Soviets start the war in the first place by agreeing to invade Poland with Germany
The Soviet Foreign Ministry files were declassified and released a while ago. Apparently they were convinced from spy reports and data they had that the Western powers' attitude towards Germany wasn't what it appeared to be. It was appeasement only on the surface. The Soviets believed that the West was trying to channel German aggression towards them. So they decided to stab the West in the back first. Hence the Ribbentrop/Molotov pact and the joint invasion of Poland. Katyn was a result of Soviet paranoia too. They were convinced that Poland's anti-Soviet feelings would eventually lead them to joining Germany against them.
I personally feel that they were not completely correct, but that was what they believed at the time.
MisterFalcon
Member
It's hard to imagine that when the 1941 German-Soviet Border and Commercial Agreement was signed in january 1941 the Soviets still thought the invasion of France and the Battle of Britain were some sort of massive ruse. To me it's more likely Stalin was perfectly happy with Hitler waging war in Western Europe and he was in no way acting out of a misplaced sense of fear.
By 1941, Stalin of course knew that eventually there would be war between him and Nazi Germany. It seems most likely he hoped to delay any such invasion until such time as he felt the Red Army was prepared for the task.
I spoke about Ribbentrop/Molotov. And the West's reaction to the invasion of Poland is the main reason I feel the Soviets had it wrong. I said that this was what the Soviets believed not that it was true. Also by 1941 the situation was completely different from mid-1939. I think that after the purges and the disaster in Finland Stalin was desperately trying to stall as much as possible.
Think of it as a bribe more than aid. Also Stalin thought reports of German aggression were nothing more than British attempts to start a war between Germany and the Soviet Union. I think that Stalin knew in his heart of hearts that there would eventually be a war between the two, just not as soon as 1941. Hence the rapid rearmamnent of the Red Army and creation of defense belts on the frontier from 1940 on.
Went to AirVenture 2013 today and they had a few WW2 planes on display, namely a B-17 and a beautiful P-51.
According to the guy who owned the B-17, it's one of only a handful that are still flying; 99% of the B-17's left are grounded and in museums or private collections. I got to climb through the fuselage of it and holy hell is it cramped. It gave me a new-found respect for the guys who had to crew these things.
According to the guy who owned the B-17, it's one of only a handful that are still flying; 99% of the B-17's left are grounded and in museums or private collections. I got to climb through the fuselage of it and holy hell is it cramped. It gave me a new-found respect for the guys who had to crew these things.
Lagspike_exe
Member
Yeah, P-51 is awesome stuff. Really beautiful.
The same approach can be seen in American and German armies. Hitler's insistence on "Festungplatzes" and holding them to the last men or Hodges pushing into the Hurtgen, they hardy differ from Stalin's approach.
N. Krylov "Glory Eternal Defence of Odessa 1941 It's an old one and written from Soviet perspective.
Other than that I think you're largely condemned to a dozen of pages in general accounts on Romanian Army on Eastern Front.
Mark Axworthy "Third Axis Fourth Ally"
Mihai Tone Filipescu "Reluctant Axis: The Romanian Army in Russia
Yeah, but at least they looked cool while doing it. I bet they made the local girls swoon.
Thanks, that is about what I expected.
First rule is to always look cool.
I don't see any swagger, just a bunch of Nazi shit.
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