This comment from another topic piqued my interest:
Person A wrote:And even that was move against Soviet union rather than German. Fact lost not by either side. German was already crushed so it was just question of what will Europe look like after it's over.
Person B wrote:Anti West revisionism without a shred of historical underpinning.
Is this Anti-West revisionism? In 1944, the writing was on the wall for Germany. the threat of invasion was de facto the same as invasion, in terms of keeping Nazi forces on the west coast of Europe and away from the Eastern Front.
Without the Western Front, the Soviet forces could have rolled all the way over Europe, and the forces of Oceania vs Eurasia (from 1984)could have been a reality.
feeder wrote: This comment from another topic piqued my interest:
Person A wrote:And even that was move against Soviet union rather than German. Fact lost not by either side. German was already crushed so it was just question of what will Europe look like after it's over.
Person B wrote:Anti West revisionism without a shred of historical underpinning.
Is this Anti-West revisionism? In 1944, the writing was on the wall for Germany. the threat of invasion was de facto the same as invasion, in terms of keeping Nazi forces on the west coast of Europe and away from the Eastern Front.
Without the Western Front, the Soviet forces could have rolled all the way over Europe, and the forces of Oceania vs Eurasia (from 1984)could have been a reality.
As person B I was trying to be polite and not say that Poster A was more dumb than a box of rocks.
1. The USSR had been screaming for a second front since the hour after the artillery started on the Eastern Front.
2. When you're at war and the other side is bombing your country (remember Germany was still attacking Britain) you tend to take that personally and try to stop it.
3. Normandy was the best site given geography and defenses. They studied multiple locations down to taking soil samples.
4. Landing in Germany in June 1944 is not sane but anyone who's not a blithering idiot. incredibly long and hazardous supply line while the Germans were close to theirs. No way to bring in sufficient diesel and gas. No hospitable landing site. Locations in Occupied Europe and Norway would have given away the landing fleet.
5. Even with Normandy the US thought it vitally important to have a second invasion in Southern France set up.
The Russians were fighting an ideological battle with revenge at its heart. Germany was also well up for the ideological struggle.
Some would have seen it as ideal if the Western allies joined with the remaining forces to take on Stalins Soviet bolshevik Russia.
The western allies strategy was purely based upon fighting a war and not political. Berlin was really a political target and was a secondary consideration to holding and consolidating territorial gains along with neutralising the German forces.
What exactly is the question? Did Overlord helped end the war? Was Overlord a targeted move to curtail Soviet occupation of Western Europe?
Threat of Invasion is not de facto the same as invasion. The threat of invasion will tie down resources of course, but no where near as many as an actual invasion. That's evident enough with how Germany transferred units to the Western Front following the landings at Salerno and the landings at Normandy. It's not really a question of did the Invasion forces a split in resources (it did) but where that split was meaningful towards ended the war (sort of).
History isn't usually A or B, but "a little A and a little B." Overlord was part "curtail the Soviet Union now when they have to work with us rather than after the war when they don't" and part of it was "defeat Germany and defeat Germany now." Even after the D-Day invasion, at least for contemporaries the writing wasn't on the wall. We can see that in hindsight, but that's the benefit of 20/20 historical vision. Up until the Crossing of the Rhine, nothing was really certain for war planners in the west.
Whether or not the Soviet Union would have occupied all of Europe as some in the west feared is a murkey and hotly debated issue. It did inform their decision making, and Western planners did get support for Overlord by selling it as "we liberate Europe before the Russians. (this was especially popular as an idea with the French and the Polish forces in exile)" There is a line of thought that the Soviet response in the aftermath of WWII, and the formation of the Warsaw Pact, was nothing more than a natural response to the obvious passive aggression of the Western Allies, and that if these powers had been more accommodating the USSR would have been as well.
I view it as an inevitability, so questions about what one might have done is kind of moot to me as a historical question. The paranoia and fear that drove the Allies into the Cold War was so strong, and so much older than WWII itself that questions about "if so so had done X at the end of WWII" is just wishful thinking. The cultural and economic factors were set long by a completely different collection of players, and everyone in 1945 was just stuck with the pieces as they were.
In terms of being critical to the ultimate outcome of the war, the Normandy invasions weren't going to change anything. They did however speed up the conclusion and radically change the way the postwar world would have looked otherwise.
Vaktathi wrote: In terms of being critical to the ultimate outcome of the war, the Normandy invasions weren't going to change anything. They did however speed up the conclusion and radically change the way the postwar world would have looked otherwise.
This is essentially my position. Once Operation Bagration found it's feet, nothing was going to stop the Soviet war machine. They were out-producing the Nazi tanks and men at hundreds to one.
Vaktathi wrote: In terms of being critical to the ultimate outcome of the war, the Normandy invasions weren't going to change anything. They did however speed up the conclusion and radically change the way the postwar world would have looked otherwise.
Incorrect. Without Normandy the Nazis might have had sufficient capacity to effectively stalemate the East for several years, potentially long enough to get the bomb. With a little extra time they could have regained complete air control (via the 262, Heinkel, Arado, etc.) then all bets are off.
The Soviets beat the Germans, but without the Allies the Germans might have been able to put it into a stalemate and then a negotiated truce.
Vaktathi wrote: In terms of being critical to the ultimate outcome of the war, the Normandy invasions weren't going to change anything. They did however speed up the conclusion and radically change the way the postwar world would have looked otherwise.
This is essentially my position. Once Operation Bagration found it's feet, nothing was going to stop the Soviet war machine. They were out-producing the Nazi tanks and men at hundreds to one.
Ah. yes. It was only when not not if.
A lot of things needed to change or not have happened for Germany to have any chance at that stage of the war.
Frazzled wrote: Incorrect. Without Normandy the Nazis might have had sufficient capacity to effectively stalemate
Them and what army? At best, the opening of the Western Front in France pulled 20 or so Divisions off the Eastern Front out of an army of 150 divisions. Sure half those divisions only existed on paper, but that only makes it worse because less than half the divisions on the Western Front were actually properly trained or equipped at any given time. 1 out of every 5 Tigers produced in 1944 went West. The other 4 went East.
It made a difference sure, but Germany's fate was sealed. The claims that they could have "held the line" fall deaf, because Germany kept telling itself that but they couldn't even hold the line in 1943 at Kurks, and they certainly weren't going to do in in 1944. How much the Allies understood the reality on the ground in 1944 is up for debate, but today there is no question that Germany's fate was sealed. There was never going to be a stalemate. Just a slower retreat, and by all accounts not that much slower. 1946 at best.
potentially long enough to get the bomb.
And another myth. Germany was never going to get the bomb. They didn't have the raw materials. Even if they had the materials they didn't have a delivery system.
With a little extra time they could have regained complete air control (via the 262, Heinkel, Arado, etc.) then all bets are off.
No they couldn't have. The Luftwaffe was dead in 1943 and was never going to recover.
Vaktathi wrote: In terms of being critical to the ultimate outcome of the war, the Normandy invasions weren't going to change anything. They did however speed up the conclusion and radically change the way the postwar world would have looked otherwise.
Incorrect. Without Normandy the Nazis might have had sufficient capacity to effectively stalemate the East for several years, potentially long enough to get the bomb.
Bagration a couple weeks later obliterated the Eastern front lines (and inflicted much more harm than Overlord did), the Germans werent going to stalemate at that point, especially not with Hitler countermanding field commanders with insane and self destructive orders. The Red Army was finally in proper gear and the Wehrmacht could no longer replace the personnel losses they were taking. As for the bomb, the German program neither had access to the materials nor proper facilities to make any such thing a reality in any reasonable timespan, the German program was years from any sort of deployabke weapon, not having to deal with Overlord may have saved Germany a few months, maybe a year. The allies were already on the continent in Italy and the Red Army was really findings its groove right when the Wehrmacht was losing its own.
The scenario you envisio could have been a reality potentially following Kursk had German defenses been allowed to operate as field commanders wanted, but by mid '44 it was too late.
With a little extra time they could have regained complete air control (via the 262, Heinkel, Arado, etc.) then all bets are off.
the Luftwaffe was in a very poor state and mostly concentrated on air defense, german strategic air capability had been long since crushed by this point and production of aircraft and munitions nowhere near required levels, even with German industrial output at its peak.
The Soviets beat the Germans, but without the Allies the Germans might have been able to put it into a stalemate and then a negotiated truce.
a true statement, but only in regards to the overall conflict, by mid 1944 the Germans werent going to fight the Red Army to a standstill. They were outnumbered, rapidly decreasing in quality of fighting units, unable to replace losses, running out of vital strategic materials, and had an actively counterproductive leader meddling detrimentally in not only strategic but operational level details.
Bagration a couple weeks later obliterated the Eastern front lines (and inflicted much more harm than Overlord did), the Germans werent going to stalemate at that point, especially not with Hitler countermanding field commanders with insane and self destructive orders. The Red Army was finally in proper gear and the Wehrmacht could no longer replace the personnel losses they were taking. As for the bomb, the German program neither had access to the materials nor proper facilities to make any such thing a reality in any reasonable timespan, the German program was years from any sort of deployabke weapon, not having to deal with Overlord may have saved Germany a few months, maybe a year. The allies were already on the continent in Italy and the Red Army was really findings its groove right when the Wehrmacht was losing its own.
The scenario you envisio could have been a reality potentially following Kursk had German defenses been allowed to operate as field commanders wanted, but by mid '44 it was too late.
Agreed. But if there's no plans for Normandy we don't know what the situation is. That would effectively have required the US or GB not to be in the war, which means everything changes, including the air war.
Nobody doubts the role the Soviet Union played in defeating Nazi Germany, but in recent years, IMO, I think we've also downplayed the role of the Normandy Campaign in defeating the Nazis.
And yet, the Battle of Normandy, and the Liberation of France, was arguably the most crushing defeat the German Army faced in WW2.
50 German divisions were ground to dust. An enitire OKW theatre swept from the board. Panzer Lehr, probably the most elite formation the Germans put in the field during the war, was reduced to 10 panzers, 3 drivers and a dachund! The Germans lost around 400,000 - 500,000 men, give or take a few thousand, plus thousands of tanks,hal-tracks, SPGs, trucks etc etc and were chased all the way back to the German border.
And the Allies did this with 30 divisions. Plus a few naval guns and air superiority.
In comparison, Bagration cost the Germans around 30 divisions, but the Red Army needed 100 divisions to win that one.
At Stalingrad, the Germans lost 6th army, around 15 divisions. These defeats should never be downplayed.
But pound for pound, I would argue Normandy figres higher than Stalingrad or Bagration.
The Allies didn't have the benifet of the vast expanse of Russia to move around in, they faced the Bocage, which gave the Germans every advanatge, but still they won.
We should never downplay the sacrifice the Red Army made during the WW2, but I wouldn't write off the Normandy battle, either.
Nobody doubts the role the Soviet Union played in defeating Nazi Germany, but in recent years, IMO, I think we've also downplayed the role of the Normandy Campaign in defeating the Nazis.
And yet, the Battle of Normandy, and the Liberation of France, was arguably the most crushing defeat the German Army faced in WW2.
50 German divisions were ground to dust. An enitire OKW theatre swept from the board. Panzer Lehr, probably the most elite formation the Germans put in the field during the war, was reduced to 10 panzers, 3 drivers and a dachund! The Germans lost around 400,000 - 500,000 men, give or take a few thousand, plus thousands of tanks,hal-tracks, SPGs, trucks etc etc and were chased all the way back to the German border.
And the Allies did this with 30 divisions. Plus a few naval guns and air superiority.
In comparison, Bagration cost the Germans around 30 divisions, but the Red Army needed 100 divisions to win that one.
At Stalingrad, the Germans lost 6th army, around 15 divisions. These defeats should never be downplayed.
But pound for pound, I would argue Normandy figres higher than Stalingrad or Bagration.
The Allies didn't have the benifet of the vast expanse of Russia to move around in, they faced the Bocage, which gave the Germans every advanatge, but still they won.
We should never downplay the sacrifice the Red Army made during the WW2, but I wouldn't write off the Normandy battle, either.
More adavanced combined warfare.
any man with a radio could call on all manner of backup from bombers, to artillary and close to shore mighty naval artially
only takes a single man to wipe out a tiger, destroy a bunker etc
50 German divisions were ground to dust. An enitire OKW theatre swept from the board. Panzer Lehr, probably the most elite formation the Germans put in the field during the war, was reduced to 10 panzers, 3 drivers and a dachund!
Sounds like they still had their most powerful weapon intact.
Nobody doubts the role the Soviet Union played in defeating Nazi Germany, but in recent years, IMO, I think we've also downplayed the role of the Normandy Campaign in defeating the Nazis.
And yet, the Battle of Normandy, and the Liberation of France, was arguably the most crushing defeat the German Army faced in WW2.
50 German divisions were ground to dust. An enitire OKW theatre swept from the board. Panzer Lehr, probably the most elite formation the Germans put in the field during the war, was reduced to 10 panzers, 3 drivers and a dachund! The Germans lost around 400,000 - 500,000 men, give or take a few thousand, plus thousands of tanks,hal-tracks, SPGs, trucks etc etc and were chased all the way back to the German border.
And the Allies did this with 30 divisions. Plus a few naval guns and air superiority.
In comparison, Bagration cost the Germans around 30 divisions, but the Red Army needed 100 divisions to win that one.
At Stalingrad, the Germans lost 6th army, around 15 divisions. These defeats should never be downplayed.
But pound for pound, I would argue Normandy figres higher than Stalingrad or Bagration.
The Allies didn't have the benifet of the vast expanse of Russia to move around in, they faced the Bocage, which gave the Germans every advanatge, but still they won.
We should never downplay the sacrifice the Red Army made during the WW2, but I wouldn't write off the Normandy battle, either.
More adavanced combined warfare.
any man with a radio could call on all manner of backup from bombers, to artillary and close to shore mighty naval artially
only takes a single man to wipe out a tiger, destroy a bunker etc
Which neatly follows on to my next point. People rightly talk about the numerical superiority of the Red Army, but they often overlook the material and technological superiority of the Allies.
The American army is a good example. The number of radios it had was mind-boggling. The amount of shells it fired during the Battle of the Bulge was just
and because of this, American artillery was highly effective during that Battle.
The USA was suppling the Red Army, had massive forces deployed against Japan, a massive navy in the Pacfic, major forces in Europe and so on and so on...
That too, should never be underestimated or overlooked.
50 German divisions were ground to dust. An enitire OKW theatre swept from the board. Panzer Lehr, probably the most elite formation the Germans put in the field during the war, was reduced to 10 panzers, 3 drivers and a dachund!
Sounds like they still had their most powerful weapon intact.
Due to the American bombing campaign, factories producing prime steak were knocked out, thus reducing its combat effectiveness.
Sadly, the dachund was a shadow of its former self by 1944
The UK, US and allied armies had high level of intergration above the soviets. Smaller forces could still be hightly dangerous long as had a radio man.
No man was operating alone.
The soviets had massive firepower though.
Many thousands of guns, tanks and rocket systems.
People make a lot of Panzer Lehr, it was one division. Multiple similarly equipped divisons like Grossdeutschland or the LSSAH fought and were destroyed on the Eastern Front. Likewise, while Overlord was a mighty defeat for the Germans, they had already been crippled by the fighting on the Eastern Front, like hopping into a fight after the bad guy already dislocated a kneecap and jammed his gun. the Luftwaffe was already broken, the Germans had already lost most of the armor they made during the war, fuel was becoming critical, and losses among experienced command personnel critical.
The big statistic that always stands out to me is that 90% of German casualties amongst ground forces of all types were sustained on the Eastern Front, and 75% of all German casualties (including Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine) were on the Eastern Front. By the time Overlord rolled around, the Germans had already had their backs broken.
This is not to say that the western allied war effort was irrelevant, it wasnt, and the USSR relied heavily on US and UK logistical support to achieve victory, but Overlord was not critical to the wars outcome.
The Normandy landings and subsequent campaigns certainly hastened the defeat of Nazi Germany but they were not a decisive factor. The Germans at this point had long lost the initiative to the "Soviet steamroller" and it was a matter of time before the Wehrmacht capitulated. But Western allied efforts including their devastating bombing campaign played a significant role in the defeat of Hitler's armies and should never be discounted. Let us not forget that if it were not for the Commonwealth and US forces threatening Japan the IJA would've been free to invade the USSR during a critical point in early WW2.
I think what the Normandy campaign accomplished was that it saved Western Europe including, ironically, Germany. Without the presence of the Western allied armies the Soviets would've been free to "liberate" the rest of Europe and make them share the fate of so many other countries finding themselves under the red banner.
Vaktathi wrote: People make a lot of Panzer Lehr, it was one division. Multiple similarly equipped divisons like Grossdeutschland or the LSSAH fought and were destroyed on the Eastern Front. Likewise, while Overlord was a mighty defeat for the Germans, they had already been crippled by the fighting on the Eastern Front, like hopping into a fight after the bad guy already dislocated a kneecap and jammed his gun. the Luftwaffe was already broken, the Germans had already lost most of the armor they made during the war, fuel was becoming critical, and losses among experienced command personnel critical.
The big statistic that always stands out to me is that 90% of German casualties amongst ground forces of all types were sustained on the Eastern Front, and 75% of all German casualties (including Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine) were on the Eastern Front. By the time Overlord rolled around, the Germans had already had their backs broken.
This is not to say that the western allied war effort was irrelevant, it wasnt, and the USSR relied heavily on US and UK logistical support to achieve victory, but Overlord was not critical to the wars outcome.
Depends on how you define that. In terms of fighter aircraft, yes, the Western allies destroyed many more of them than on the Eastern Front. In terms of strike aircraft (things like Stukas) then the Germans lost a whole lot more of those on the Eastern Front. Im not sure about heavier bombers like He-111's.
Vaktathi wrote: People make a lot of Panzer Lehr, it was one division. Multiple similarly equipped divisons like Grossdeutschland or the LSSAH fought and were destroyed on the Eastern Front. Likewise, while Overlord was a mighty defeat for the Germans, they had already been crippled by the fighting on the Eastern Front, like hopping into a fight after the bad guy already dislocated a kneecap and jammed his gun. the Luftwaffe was already broken, the Germans had already lost most of the armor they made during the war, fuel was becoming critical, and losses among experienced command personnel critical.
The big statistic that always stands out to me is that 90% of German casualties amongst ground forces of all types were sustained on the Eastern Front, and 75% of all German casualties (including Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine) were on the Eastern Front. By the time Overlord rolled around, the Germans had already had their backs broken.
This is not to say that the western allied war effort was irrelevant, it wasnt, and the USSR relied heavily on US and UK logistical support to achieve victory, but Overlord was not critical to the wars outcome.
But who broke the Luftwaffe, though? It certainly wasn't the Red Air Force.
As for Panzer Lehr, I'm no expert, but I cannot think of a more elite German formation. All their best tank crews, veterans, and instructors all under one banner...in Panthers
And another point I forgot to make: 30 Allied Divisions defeat 50 German Divisions, almost twice their number. Despite being outnumbered, the Allies inflict a crushing blow against the Germans...
I think there's something to be said for that.
And one final point, and it's a point I've made before: the Germans and the Russians lost vast amounts of men on the Eastern front, becuase they were technically inferior. Manpower was the one resource they could draw on. Both sides lacked motor transport, and were forced to rely mostly on horse drawn transport, plus poor Soviet infastructure, road and rail, made this even more difficult.
Compare this to the Allies: smaller divisions, but technologically far superior. The fiepower an average American division could churn out was astonishing. The shells they could waste, the material they could waste, the 50,000 Shermans they produced and so on...
Its interesting to note, that later in the War, the Red Army, having lost millions of men in the earlier days, were forced to rely on smaller, but better equipped armoured divisions, which were much more effective than the mass infantry divisions they were relying on in 41' and 42.'
Due to the American trucks, jeeps and half-tracks, they were making deeper penetrations than before.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: IMO, I think we've also downplayed the role of the Normandy Campaign in defeating the Nazis.
Bagration cost the Germans around 30 division
Germany had over 1,000,000 men defending the front at Bagration. They had about 500,000 on the Front at Normandy, and eventually brought up another 500,000 from deeper in France as part of their defense plan. The Normandy battle involved 2,000,000 men on the side of the allies by August. Bagration involved about 2,400,000 Soviet troops. In terms of real scale, Normandy and Bagration were quite similar, except Bagration was a little bit more costly in terms of men lost for Germany, and quite a lot more costly for Russia. The difference is that losing 800,000 men would of have been a monumental disaster for the Western Allies, but for the USSR it was just a statistic (so to speak ). How many divisions the Russians needed to achieve a major strategic goal like Bagration is kind of just stroking ego. Functionally, all that matters is that they had the resources to do it and they did it.
I think we can totally make an argument that in 1944, the Western Allies were much better organized operationally than the Red Army was in 1943 (or 1944 arguably), but that's not really relevant to the grand scheme of the war. The Eastern Front went from being a game of leap frog to a crashing line of dominoes, and it's a victory that wasn't wholly dependent on Normandy anymore than Normandy was wholly dependent on Bagration. The big difference between the two is that after Bagration, Germany did nothing but lose more and more at increasingly alarming rates. The Western front meanwhile became a ground pounding slog, and was hugely set back by the lack luster achievements of Operation Market Garden. In the grand scheme of the war, Bagration produced more tangible results than Normandy did, and that isn't really a downplay on Normandy. Logistically and operational it is easily one of the wars most awe inspiring achievements. It's just an acknowledgment of a reality that Bagration ended up being a fair bit more meaningful on ground level. Germany actually did manage to hold a line against the Western Allies, who eventually lost their taste for the carnage and resolved themselves to letting the USSR finish Germany at the very end (the Race to Berlin that is).
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welshhoppo wrote: Also, D-Day was the third front, everyone seems to forget that Italy was invaded in 1943.
North and Central Italy are natural fortresses. Yeah but Italy was a front with literally little tangible progress being made. In fact, Germany was so certain they could hold it that they transferred most of their forces from the region to shore up the East after Bagration, and they did indeed manage to hold it (up until complete collapse that is).
But who broke the Luftwaffe, though? It certainly wasn't the Red Air Force.
As above, depends on how you define it. The western allies destroyed more fighters, but far more ground attack aircraft were lost on the Eastern Front.
As for Panzer Lehr, I'm no expert, but I cannot think of a more elite German formation. All their best tank crews, veterans, and instructors all under one banner...in Panthers
It was well equipped but other divisions were as well. Grossdeutschland was historically the best equipped German Heer division with its pick of new recruits, Lehr was a relatively new formation.
And another point I forgot to make: 30 Allied Divisions defeat 50 German Divisions, almost twice their number. Despite being outnumbered, the Allies inflict a crushing blow against the Germans...
I think there's something to be said for that.
with air supremacy, knowing almost the entire enemy order of battle, enjoying support from the local population, with probably the greatest logistical train in history up to that point, and an opponent increasingly short on supplies and little ability to replace losses, who had already lost millions of men and tens of thousands of aircraft and vehicles on the east, on what ultimately was a secondary front for the enemy with lots of 2nd rate units.
Not that I want to make such a victory out to be meaningless, but with such advantages victory, while bloody, shouldn't be surprising.
And one final point, and it's a point I've made before: the Germans and the Russians lost vast amounts of men on the Eastern front, becuase they were technically inferior. Manpower was the one resource they could draw on. Both sides lacked motor transport, and were forced to rely mostly on horse drawn transport, plus poor Soviet infastructure, road and rail, made this even more difficult.
Compare this to the Allies: smaller divisions, but technologically far superior. The fiepower an average American division could churn out was astonishing. The shells they could waste, the material they could waste, the 50,000 Shermans they produced and so on...
I dont think anyone would deny most of that (except the part about manpower as it relates to the Germans, they lost because they couldnt sustain those losses). However it should also be noted that this is variable depending on the scale as well. A German infantry platoon for instance could generally outshoot a platoon from any other nation, as they integrated machine guns and mortars in much greater levels and numbers at the squad level than their opponents.
When look at the German Divisions, don't forget that by 1944 the average German Division was only at 50% strength. So really the Allies were only fighting about 25 full division. Also the Germans had this wonderful idea to increase the amount of panzer divisions, they did this by making them smaller and therefore having more of them.
Also, the Germans did surprisingly well for being such a haphazard force. You had some HitlerJugen SS divisions lying around as well, literally 16 year old boys. Even with Air Supremacy, excellent recon, and more man power, the Germans held back for a good six months. Only really collapsing at the start of 1945.
Lehr gets a lot of talk, but think gor a moment about what Lehr was; all the tank instructors in Germany. So, who the feth is teaching people how to drive tanks if all your best instructors are now off on the front line dying? It's no coincidence that the quality of German tank crews, one of the main strenghts of the German military in the war, hit the absolute gakker in the aftermath of this absolutely foolish decision.
People might accuse me of bias, but Britain's victory in WW2 was probably the greatest achivement in the whole war.
Why? Well, of the 3 nations that started the war in 1939, Britain was the last man standing in 1945.
It achived victory with significantly less losses than the Germans or the Russians, or Japan, who suffered horrendous losses.
Britain in comparison got off lightly. Britain also got other nations such as Russia, and the USA to do most of the fighting for them.
By Sun Tzu's principal rule, Britain got the maximum gain, with the minimum effort.
That in itself, is one hell of an achivement...
Sun Tzu would be impressed...
In many ways yes, I would agree. However, Britain also didnt have the means to engage the Germans on their own in full scale continental warfare that would result in taking the kinds of casualties suffered by other nations.
Additionally, the cost if the conflict did make the maintenance of the British Empire untenable for much longer, the Germans did basically break the "Empire" indirectly. The first and second world wars drained Britain of an enormous amount of wealth and influence, mostly off to the US.
LordofHats wrote: Lehr gets a lot of talk, but think gor a moment about what Lehr was; all the tank instructors in Germany. So, who the feth is teaching people how to drive tanks if all your best instructors are now off on the front line dying? It's no coincidence that the quality of German tank crews, one of the main strenghts of the German military in the war, hit the absolute gakker in the aftermath of this absolutely foolish decision.
IT was quite literally a case of putting all your eggs in one panzer.
I would agree, but also the Germans actually stopped producing tanks that went along with their doctrine. They were supposed to be quick and powerful attacking tanks, designed to outflank and surround their opponents.
But by the end of the war, many of the German tanks were defensively minded. Like the Stug III and IV, along with the heavier tiger and King tiger tanks. Even the Panther was overweight.
While obviously to be taken with a grain of salt, reading Heinz Guderians memoirs one gets the impression of a man banging his head against a desk at the sea of stupidity he's powerless to do anything about
LordofHats wrote: Lehr gets a lot of talk, but think gor a moment about what Lehr was; all the tank instructors in Germany. So, who the feth is teaching people how to drive tanks if all your best instructors are now off on the front line dying? It's no coincidence that the quality of German tank crews, one of the main strenghts of the German military in the war, hit the absolute gakker in the aftermath of this absolutely foolish decision.
It was a decision born out of desperation. Germany had lost countless experienced tank commanders and could not replace them by this point. They needed quality panzer commanders and the men of Panzer lehr was all they had left. It was an excellent division and they fought well. But ultimately Allied airpower and fuel shortages took their toll and by late 44 the division was all but destroyed.
LordofHats wrote: Lehr gets a lot of talk, but think gor a moment about what Lehr was; all the tank instructors in Germany. So, who the feth is teaching people how to drive tanks if all your best instructors are now off on the front line dying? It's no coincidence that the quality of German tank crews, one of the main strenghts of the German military in the war, hit the absolute gakker in the aftermath of this absolutely foolish decision.
It was a decision born out of desperation. Germany had lost countless experienced tank commanders and could not replace them by this point. They needed quality panzer commanders and the men of Panzer lehr was all they had left. It was an excellent division and they fought well. But ultimately Allied airpower and fuel shortages took their toll and by late 44 the division was all but destroyed.
Yeah, being an excellent tank crew means bugger all when the enemy has Hawker Typoons and P-47 Thunderbolts flying around unopposed.
welshhoppo wrote: That's because Guderian and Hitler didn't get on. He called him out a few times for being an idiot. Hitler fired him twice.
Then again, there is a debate over how many of his ideas were actually his own. Especially if you ask a few British Tank theorists....
IIRC I dont think he ever claimed to be the sole originator of his theories on armored warfare, rather he was the one to put them into practice and effective use first.
welshhoppo wrote: That's because Guderian and Hitler didn't get on. He called him out a few times for being an idiot. Hitler fired him twice.
Then again, there is a debate over how many of his ideas were actually his own. Especially if you ask a few British Tank theorists....
IIRC I dont think he ever claimed to be the sole originator of his theories on armored warfare, rather he was the one to put them into practice and effective use first.
That's because the British had no real intention of ever actually putting their theories put forward into practice. At least Guderian had some swing in the German high command.
Vaktathi wrote: While obviously to be taken with a grain of salt, reading Heinz Guderians memoirs one gets the impression of a man banging his head against a desk at the sea of stupidity he's powerless to do anything about
LordofHats wrote: Lehr gets a lot of talk, but think gor a moment about what Lehr was; all the tank instructors in Germany. So, who the feth is teaching people how to drive tanks if all your best instructors are now off on the front line dying? It's no coincidence that the quality of German tank crews, one of the main strenghts of the German military in the war, hit the absolute gakker in the aftermath of this absolutely foolish decision.
It was a decision born out of desperation. Germany had lost countless experienced tank commanders and could not replace them by this point. They needed quality panzer commanders and the men of Panzer lehr was all they had left. It was an excellent division and they fought well. But ultimately Allied airpower and fuel shortages took their toll and by late 44 the division was all but destroyed.
Yeah, being an excellent tank crew means bugger all when the enemy has Hawker Typoons and P-47 Thunderbolts flying around unopposed.
As the French found out in 1940, when German planes smashed their tanks.
Vaktathi wrote: In terms of being critical to the ultimate outcome of the war, the Normandy invasions weren't going to change anything. They did however speed up the conclusion and radically change the way the postwar world would have looked otherwise.
This is essentially my position. Once Operation Bagration found it's feet, nothing was going to stop the Soviet war machine. They were out-producing the Nazi tanks and men at hundreds to one.
Ah. yes. It was only when not not if.
A lot of things needed to change or not have happened for Germany to have any chance at that stage of the war.
This is true but it is also unrealistic to talk about WW2 as if the Soviets were fighting it on their own. The Western Allies not only sent a massive amount of aid to the USSR, they also carried out important campaigns in North Africa, Italy, France and the air (strategic bombing.) All of this contributed to the eventual victory over Germany. Ask yourself if the USSR could have beaten the Germans starting from Operation Barbarossa with absolutely no intervention anywhere from the UK or USA. In other words, if the UK had already concluded a separate peace treaty with Germany.
This is true but it is also unrealistic to talk about WW2 as if the Soviets were fighting it on their own. The Western Allies not only sent a massive amount of aid to the USSR, they also carried out important campaigns in North Africa, Italy, France and the air (strategic bombing.) All of this contributed to the eventual victory over Germany. Ask yourself if the USSR could have beaten the Germans starting from Operation Barbarossa with absolutely no intervention anywhere from the UK or USA. In other words, if the UK had already concluded a separate peace treaty with Germany.
That's a fair point but not really the thrust of this discussion. Assume the war went as normal up until June '44, then Operation Overlord just never happens. We still get the Lend-Lease Act, and still have the 24 hour bombing and Allied blockade of Germany.
I think the fall of Nazi Germany is assured, regardless of Normandy landings or not.
Does Stalin stop going west with the fall of Germany? Does the Nazi high command flee Berlin for Vichy France or another occupied territory?
This is true but it is also unrealistic to talk about WW2 as if the Soviets were fighting it on their own. The Western Allies not only sent a massive amount of aid to the USSR, they also carried out important campaigns in North Africa, Italy, France and the air (strategic bombing.) All of this contributed to the eventual victory over Germany. Ask yourself if the USSR could have beaten the Germans starting from Operation Barbarossa with absolutely no intervention anywhere from the UK or USA. In other words, if the UK had already concluded a separate peace treaty with Germany.
That's a fair point but not really the thrust of this discussion. Assume the war went as normal up until June '44, then Operation Overlord just never happens. We still get the Lend-Lease Act, and still have the 24 hour bombing and Allied blockade of Germany.
I think the fall of Nazi Germany is assured, regardless of Normandy landings or not.
Does Stalin stop going west with the fall of Germany? Does the Nazi high command flee Berlin for Vichy France or another occupied territory?
By the time of Bagration Stalin's main goal was no longer defeating the Nazis. That was already assured. It was the spread of communism. And how convenient that there were German divisions in France...
Who knows? As stated earlier, Stalin had been crying out for a second front for years. It's a bit difficult to imagine the western allies doing all the preparation for D Day and then not doing the actual operation. It really can't have done the Germans any good to be attacked from the west and south as well as the east.
feeder wrote: This is essentially my position. Once Operation Bagration found it's feet, nothing was going to stop the Soviet war machine. They were out-producing the Nazi tanks and men at hundreds to one.
It's important to remember that D-Day and Operation Bagration were planned to coincide. Bagration started 16 days after D-Day and it wasn't a coincidence. It was an agreed plan between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.
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Frazzled wrote: Incorrect. Without Normandy the Nazis might have had sufficient capacity to effectively stalemate the East for several years, potentially long enough to get the bomb. With a little extra time they could have regained complete air control (via the 262, Heinkel, Arado, etc.) then all bets are off.
Germany's actual chance of developing a working bomb were about as likely as an occult spell giving Germany a new army of zombie wehrmacht.
And yeah, they had some nice planes developing, but they'd always had nice planes, certainly planes that were significantly better than their Soviet counterparts. But as with all things WWII, it is about production, production, production.
The Soviets beat the Germans, but without the Allies the Germans might have been able to put it into a stalemate and then a negotiated truce.
A truce might have been negotiated for the simple reality that Soviet Russia could have gotten nervous about an America that was growing its military strength exponentially, while taking no part in the war. That had been Stalin's plan in the first place, afterall, for Germany, France and the UK to batter themselves to the point of collapse, at which point Stalin could swoop in. It's likely he would have suspected it of someone else.
Remember there were peace talks before Kursk. But even still, this is dealing with a very unlikely thing.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: But pound for pound, I would argue Normandy figres higher than Stalingrad or Bagration.
There is no amount of squinting or rationalising that will make the 2,000,000 troops lost through Bagration to be somehow less than the 500,000 lost in Overlord.
I mean, yeah, Panzer Lehr was good, but it wasn't equivalent to 1,500,000 other German troops.
We should never downplay the sacrifice the Red Army made during the WW2, but I wouldn't write off the Normandy battle, either.
Saying one thing is bigger than another is not downplaying the smaller thing. It is simply noting the actual scale of the two things. Concluding that Overlord was one of the greatest victories against Nazi Germany, but not the greatest, is not paying it any disrespect.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Which neatly follows on to my next point. People rightly talk about the numerical superiority of the Red Army, but they often overlook the material and technological superiority of the Allies.
This really asks a different kind of question. I mean sure, if the question was who've overall military organisation I'd like to have, who had the most advanced technology in support of the best doctrine, I'd pick the US army every time. They were fighting a truly modern war.
If the question is who has the sweet weapon platforms, the best pointy edge of the sword, I would personally like to take control of, well give me a German Panther every time.
But if the question is what army I would most like to have in order to win an engagement, well give me the army with by far the most stuff, the Soviets.
The USA was suppling the Red Army, had massive forces deployed against Japan, a massive navy in the Pacfic, major forces in Europe and so on and so on...
Lendlease matters, but to give it a sense of scale note that the UK received many times what the Soviets did in aid. It didn't turn the British in to a Soviet style juggernaut, because lendlease was never on that scale.
SImply put, the overwhelmingly dominant reason that Russia had way more stuff than anyone else is because they made way more stuff than anyone else.
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TheCustomLime wrote: Let us not forget that if it were not for the Commonwealth and US forces threatening Japan the IJA would've been free to invade the USSR during a critical point in early WW2.
This isn't true. The Japanese already tried it on against the Russians in 1939 in the battle of Khalkhin Gol. The Japanese were stomped, and made the decision there and then to not mess with the Soviets anymore. The Germans tried to get the Japanese to try again, but they knew that while they had a disciplined and well trained army, they lacked the industrial capacity to match the major industrial powers.
They instead backed their navy against the US... with results that were initially more successful, but ultimately ran in to the same reality that Japan was completely outmatched in industrial production.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: And another point I forgot to make: 30 Allied Divisions defeat 50 German Divisions, almost twice their number. Despite being outnumbered, the Allies inflict a crushing blow against the Germans...
YOu have to remember that not everyone recorded a division in the same way. By that late stage of the war, a German division was a fraction of the size of their allied counterpart, even if the German division was close to full strength (and few were).
For example, a German tank division would nominally have something around 200 tanks, but the actual number in the division, let alone actually field capable at any given moment was typically less than 100. In contrast, a US infantry company would have 113 tanks as standard.
When your infantry divisions have more tanks than the enemy's tank divisions, then something is not equal in the division vs division comparisons.
And one final point, and it's a point I've made before: the Germans and the Russians lost vast amounts of men on the Eastern front, becuase they were technically inferior. Manpower was the one resource they could draw on.
There is a lot of stereotyping there. Sure neither the Germans nor Soviets had the full motor capacity and high levels of aircraft and artillery support of the Western allies, but they were still cutting edge armies for the time.
Its interesting to note, that later in the War, the Red Army, having lost millions of men in the earlier days, were forced to rely on smaller, but better equipped armoured divisions
They weren't forced to rely on smaller units. The Red Army in 1941 had 4.8 million troops. Near the end of the war this number grew in excess of 10 million. The reason the Soviets moved to smaller units was because four years of fighting had greatly increased the quality of their officer corps, so that they were able to use more sophisticated doctrine.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Britain in comparison got off lightly. Britain also got other nations such as Russia, and the USA to do most of the fighting for them.
By Sun Tzu's principal rule, Britain got the maximum gain, with the minimum effort.
The war started with Britain as one of the great powers of the world. They spend the war dependent on US aid, and ended the war completely shut out of the new power structure based around the two super powers.
That is not called winning in anyone's book.
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welshhoppo wrote: That's because Guderian and Hitler didn't get on. He called him out a few times for being an idiot. Hitler fired him twice.
There's also a fairly weird blindspot where the surviving German generals say all the blunders were forced on themselves by the guy who shot himself in the bunker, and for some reason we just believed those generals.
Years later as we've gone and looked at the actual memos of the time, it turns out all those logistical mistakes weren't Hitler over-riding his generals. It turns out for all their expertise in maneuver warfare, the German high command really sucked at logistics.
welshhoppo wrote: When look at the German Divisions, don't forget that by 1944 the average German Division was only at 50% strength. So really the Allies were only fighting about 25 full division. Also the Germans had this wonderful idea to increase the amount of panzer divisions, they did this by making them smaller and therefore having more of them.
Also, the Germans did surprisingly well for being such a haphazard force. You had some HitlerJugen SS divisions lying around as well, literally 16 year old boys. Even with Air Supremacy, excellent recon, and more man power, the Germans held back for a good six months. Only really collapsing at the start of 1945.
Lehr was fully equipped. 2nd and 17th SS Panzer divisions were also fully equipped. I'm not buying this under-strength divisions theory. Eastern Front, yeah, but not on the West.
A lot of Germany's effectiveness during Normandy was due to the fact that it's easier to defend than attack. When the situation was reversed during the battle of the Bulge, the Germans had a tough time trying to shift dug in American infantry.
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LordofHats wrote: Lehr gets a lot of talk, but think gor a moment about what Lehr was; all the tank instructors in Germany. So, who the feth is teaching people how to drive tanks if all your best instructors are now off on the front line dying? It's no coincidence that the quality of German tank crews, one of the main strenghts of the German military in the war, hit the absolute gakker in the aftermath of this absolutely foolish decision.
Time to unleash some historical perspective
As Sun Tzu once said: one man hardened to the ways of war is worth 10 men who are not.
In other words, don't underestimate veterans in warfare. History is full of this example. Roman Legions were usually outnumbered, but better training, equipment and experience was almost always enough to win them the day.
Building an elite fomration like Lehr carries on this maxim, and fits in with the German doctrine of focusing maximum strength on one point, and a war of manouvere.
Vaktathi wrote: In terms of being critical to the ultimate outcome of the war, the Normandy invasions weren't going to change anything. They did however speed up the conclusion and radically change the way the postwar world would have looked otherwise.
This is essentially my position. Once Operation Bagration found it's feet, nothing was going to stop the Soviet war machine. They were out-producing the Nazi tanks and men at hundreds to one.
Ah. yes. It was only when not not if.
A lot of things needed to change or not have happened for Germany to have any chance at that stage of the war.
This is true but it is also unrealistic to talk about WW2 as if the Soviets were fighting it on their own. The Western Allies not only sent a massive amount of aid to the USSR, they also carried out important campaigns in North Africa, Italy, France and the air (strategic bombing.) All of this contributed to the eventual victory over Germany. Ask yourself if the USSR could have beaten the Germans starting from Operation Barbarossa with absolutely no intervention anywhere from the UK or USA. In other words, if the UK had already concluded a separate peace treaty with Germany.
This is exactly what I'm trying to say. During the Battle of Moscow in 1941, 40% of Russian tanks were British - Matildas, Valentines etc etc
40% of the Red Air Force were Hurricanes. Even during 1942, the Red Army was using Matildas and Churchills, due to their tank shortage.
And a lack of radios in their tanks hamstrung the Red Army during the early days. Russia did not act alone.
People may overlook the role of the West, but the invasion of Italy prompted Hitler to Withdraw 20 divisions from the east, that could have been used at Kursk, plus a few others that were tied down in the Balkans...
feeder wrote: This is essentially my position. Once Operation Bagration found it's feet, nothing was going to stop the Soviet war machine. They were out-producing the Nazi tanks and men at hundreds to one.
It's important to remember that D-Day and Operation Bagration were planned to coincide. Bagration started 16 days after D-Day and it wasn't a coincidence. It was an agreed plan between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.
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Frazzled wrote: Incorrect. Without Normandy the Nazis might have had sufficient capacity to effectively stalemate the East for several years, potentially long enough to get the bomb. With a little extra time they could have regained complete air control (via the 262, Heinkel, Arado, etc.) then all bets are off.
Germany's actual chance of developing a working bomb were about as likely as an occult spell giving Germany a new army of zombie wehrmacht.
And yeah, they had some nice planes developing, but they'd always had nice planes, certainly planes that were significantly better than their Soviet counterparts. But as with all things WWII, it is about production, production, production.
The Soviets beat the Germans, but without the Allies the Germans might have been able to put it into a stalemate and then a negotiated truce.
A truce might have been negotiated for the simple reality that Soviet Russia could have gotten nervous about an America that was growing its military strength exponentially, while taking no part in the war. That had been Stalin's plan in the first place, afterall, for Germany, France and the UK to batter themselves to the point of collapse, at which point Stalin could swoop in. It's likely he would have suspected it of someone else.
Remember there were peace talks before Kursk. But even still, this is dealing with a very unlikely thing.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: But pound for pound, I would argue Normandy figres higher than Stalingrad or Bagration.
There is no amount of squinting or rationalising that will make the 2,000,000 troops lost through Bagration to be somehow less than the 500,000 lost in Overlord.
I mean, yeah, Panzer Lehr was good, but it wasn't equivalent to 1,500,000 other German troops.
We should never downplay the sacrifice the Red Army made during the WW2, but I wouldn't write off the Normandy battle, either.
Saying one thing is bigger than another is not downplaying the smaller thing. It is simply noting the actual scale of the two things. Concluding that Overlord was one of the greatest victories against Nazi Germany, but not the greatest, is not paying it any disrespect.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Which neatly follows on to my next point. People rightly talk about the numerical superiority of the Red Army, but they often overlook the material and technological superiority of the Allies.
This really asks a different kind of question. I mean sure, if the question was who've overall military organisation I'd like to have, who had the most advanced technology in support of the best doctrine, I'd pick the US army every time. They were fighting a truly modern war.
If the question is who has the sweet weapon platforms, the best pointy edge of the sword, I would personally like to take control of, well give me a German Panther every time.
But if the question is what army I would most like to have in order to win an engagement, well give me the army with by far the most stuff, the Soviets.
The USA was suppling the Red Army, had massive forces deployed against Japan, a massive navy in the Pacfic, major forces in Europe and so on and so on...
Lendlease matters, but to give it a sense of scale note that the UK received many times what the Soviets did in aid. It didn't turn the British in to a Soviet style juggernaut, because lendlease was never on that scale.
SImply put, the overwhelmingly dominant reason that Russia had way more stuff than anyone else is because they made way more stuff than anyone else.
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TheCustomLime wrote: Let us not forget that if it were not for the Commonwealth and US forces threatening Japan the IJA would've been free to invade the USSR during a critical point in early WW2.
This isn't true. The Japanese already tried it on against the Russians in 1939 in the battle of Khalkhin Gol. The Japanese were stomped, and made the decision there and then to not mess with the Soviets anymore. The Germans tried to get the Japanese to try again, but they knew that while they had a disciplined and well trained army, they lacked the industrial capacity to match the major industrial powers.
They instead backed their navy against the US... with results that were initially more successful, but ultimately ran in to the same reality that Japan was completely outmatched in industrial production.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: And another point I forgot to make: 30 Allied Divisions defeat 50 German Divisions, almost twice their number. Despite being outnumbered, the Allies inflict a crushing blow against the Germans...
YOu have to remember that not everyone recorded a division in the same way. By that late stage of the war, a German division was a fraction of the size of their allied counterpart, even if the German division was close to full strength (and few were).
For example, a German tank division would nominally have something around 200 tanks, but the actual number in the division, let alone actually field capable at any given moment was typically less than 100. In contrast, a US infantry company would have 113 tanks as standard.
When your infantry divisions have more tanks than the enemy's tank divisions, then something is not equal in the division vs division comparisons.
And one final point, and it's a point I've made before: the Germans and the Russians lost vast amounts of men on the Eastern front, becuase they were technically inferior. Manpower was the one resource they could draw on.
There is a lot of stereotyping there. Sure neither the Germans nor Soviets had the full motor capacity and high levels of aircraft and artillery support of the Western allies, but they were still cutting edge armies for the time.
Its interesting to note, that later in the War, the Red Army, having lost millions of men in the earlier days, were forced to rely on smaller, but better equipped armoured divisions
They weren't forced to rely on smaller units. The Red Army in 1941 had 4.8 million troops. Near the end of the war this number grew in excess of 10 million. The reason the Soviets moved to smaller units was because four years of fighting had greatly increased the quality of their officer corps, so that they were able to use more sophisticated doctrine.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Britain in comparison got off lightly. Britain also got other nations such as Russia, and the USA to do most of the fighting for them.
By Sun Tzu's principal rule, Britain got the maximum gain, with the minimum effort.
The war started with Britain as one of the great powers of the world. They spend the war dependent on US aid, and ended the war completely shut out of the new power structure based around the two super powers.
That is not called winning in anyone's book.
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welshhoppo wrote: That's because Guderian and Hitler didn't get on. He called him out a few times for being an idiot. Hitler fired him twice.
There's also a fairly weird blindspot where the surviving German generals say all the blunders were forced on themselves by the guy who shot himself in the bunker, and for some reason we just believed those generals.
Years later as we've gone and looked at the actual memos of the time, it turns out all those logistical mistakes weren't Hitler over-riding his generals. It turns out for all their expertise in maneuver warfare, the German high command really sucked at logistics.
Sir John Keegan, respected military historian, has the German loses at Bagration as around 400,000. Still a massive defeat, but nowhere near the scale of Normandy.
As for technology, I stand by my point about the Allies fighting a modern war. I don't deny Panzer Divisions were fully equipped with the best the Germans had, but the bulk of the infantry had to walk. Did they do that because they enjoyed walking? Of course not, the motor vehicles were not there for them.
The BEF was fully mechanized in 1940, and at the fall of Dunkirk, the Germans were astounded at how much trucks and vehicles they salvaged.
Arguably, the invasion of Russia was made possible by the vast number of vehicles captured from the British, the French, and the Czechs.
This lack of vehicles, technology, et al, is why the Germans and Russians had to fight a WW1 style war of attrition and rely heavily on manpower.
The Western allies, with an abundance of vehicles, shells, tanks, radios, etc etc got off more lightly...
Ask yourself if the USSR could have beaten the Germans starting from Operation Barbarossa with absolutely no intervention anywhere from the UK or USA. In other words, if the UK had already concluded a separate peace treaty with Germany.
Spoiler:
1944 was too late in the war for Germany and their allies to do much against their eventual fate, as has been said, the Western allies contributions in Europe just sped things up. By that point in the war the Germans had already shelved their nuclear bomb as being unfeasible within the timescale before they lost the war. If we're pushing things back a few years then the Germans would have probably stalemated the Soviets, had Britain pulled out (and with that no US intervention), though I'm not sure how sustainable a Nazi occupied Europe would be in the long term (well, unless Heydrich's plan was put in place possibly).
One of the soldiers involved in Market Garden did lament though, that had the Western allies campaign been more successful (which it wouldn't had the Germans put anywhere near the forces they had in the East in their way) that the modern world would have looked a lot different. Though again, as has been said here, the war for them wasn't the political crusade the Communists and Soviets obsessed over, they were more pragmatic. We could go into a whole other thread about the Allies coming in on the Nazi's side, but we'd be pushing the time period way back and taking quite a few stretches (more likely they'd let the Nazis/ Soviets drain themselves fighting one another and then sit back and threaten the victor with nuclear bombs ...though that's supposing the stalemate didn't kick the German nuclear program back into gear / sans sabotage).
It's an old argument: what would have happened if the Germans could have put the 4 million men they needed in Russia, and instead, transfered them to the Western Front? Would the war have been different?
I would argue no.
Germany: Here's 4 million men and thousands of extra tanks. Take that allies!
Allies: Here's round the clock bombing raids from 1000+ British and American bombers. Let's see how long your men and tanks last. And forget about another Dunkirk, as we have complete air superiority, and if your tiger tanks get to close to the coast, our battleships will pulverise them with 17 inch guns...
Oh, and here's a few atomic bombs for German cities...
The Germans were bringing a knife to a gun fight...
Frazzled wrote: As person B I was trying to be polite and not say that Poster A was more dumb than a box of rocks.
1. The USSR had been screaming for a second front since the hour after the artillery started on the Eastern Front.
2. When you're at war and the other side is bombing your country (remember Germany was still attacking Britain) you tend to take that personally and try to stop it.
3. Normandy was the best site given geography and defenses. They studied multiple locations down to taking soil samples.
4. Landing in Germany in June 1944 is not sane but anyone who's not a blithering idiot. incredibly long and hazardous supply line while the Germans were close to theirs. No way to bring in sufficient diesel and gas. No hospitable landing site. Locations in Occupied Europe and Norway would have given away the landing fleet.
5. Even with Normandy the US thought it vitally important to have a second invasion in Southern France set up.
Well good you didn't since you are the one dead wrong here.
USSR was screaming at first. At the end they were winning and they knew it. German was doomed. The second front had tiny number of German divisions in numbers AND in quality. Best of Germans were on eastern front. And most numbers,. This is undeniable fact. Soviets were outproducing and outgunning German to the level it wasn't anymore even close to being fair. German was running out of raw materials with no ways to get more. Simple LOGISTICS. It's been very long time if ever where individual quality mattered more than numbers and logistics.
And yeah obviously german wasn't going to be chosen for landing site. Who claimed they should land there? Logistics dictate you go to french and then move toward Berlin. While straight to German might be good in terms that you get further to German to face the Soviets it means you are putting you in sandwich between german forces with even longer supply lines to begin with(logistics, logistics, logistics. That's what win wars) with incoming Soviets to worry either. That could have risked war with soviets as it was. Pretty much only reason that prevented US/Brit vs Soviets was logistical trouble US/Brits had(they weren't ready for large scale fight with Soviets right off the bat) and Soviets were worried about the A-bomb(as it is dropping those to Japan was deterrant for Soviets to keep them from getting funny ideas about Europe).
Did war end faster due to Overlord? Obviously. Was it needed to defeat German? Absolutely not. It would have taken somewhat longer, cost SU more forces but resulted in red europe. Being Finnish I'm happy US/Brits did it but I don't hold illusions about why they did that. They didn't it to beat German(particularly US who frankly had no real need. They weren't getting killed by Germans until they got involved. They could have kept out of it and not have to worry about Germans and let Soviets do the dirty work. Of course that would have meant red europe which was very much against their policy so...) but to ensure they don't have to face Europe ruled by Soviets.
Anybody thinking US did that out of good will and selflessness is kidding themselves. No country does that. US came here because it suited their politics to not have red europe and for that I'm thankful. While not quaranteed it's likely my life wouldn't be as nice now as it is had they not come(then again...Me now wouldn't exists in that case so hard to compare).
Just because real goal was different than stated goal doesn't mean it was bad. Nor am I claiming US/Brits didn't do good job at the Normandy. They did. Good casualties and they were pretty damn effective. By all accounts their attack was good success. But they weren't REQUIRED to defeat German. Hastened the end yes but more essentially it prevented Soviets from swallowing literally entire Europe at their will.
I didn't say they wouldn't have theoretically been very good soldiers.
I said it's absolutely foolish to gut your own training programs to build such an elite unit, as the training of new recruits is far more important. It's a move you make because your stupid, or because you're losing that badly and you're running out of men, let alone good ones.
Japan made the same mistake in the Pacific with its naval air corp. They rarely sent good pilots back to Japan to train new pilots, so experienced Japanese aviators were gradually ground down and killed, leaving no one who actually knew what they were doing to train recruits. Part of why Japan switch to Kamikaze attacks was because it was about all their poorly and rushly trained pilots could do. Many of them by 1944 completely lacked any real training in air to air combat tactics. By 1945, almost no Japanese pilot was trained beyond crashing into something that might blow up.
Roman Legions were usually outnumbered, but better training, equipment and experience was almost always enough to win them the day.
World War Two wasn't waged in 66 BC. That style of military came with a lot of prestige because training a guy to use a sword effectively in combat is hard. There's a reason warrior classes used to exist; being a good soldier took a lifetime of dedication to the task. Comparatively, training a guy to use a M1 Garand and some frag grenades is simple enough you can take just about anyone and teach them how to do it in a few hours. Throw in a few weeks for all the other stuff they have to learn and you've got yourself a soldier, but someone who knows what they're talking about actually has to teach that guy anything.
Not a single mention of the first allied invasion of Europe and all the underpinning politics of the war.
The allies invaded Sicily in July of 1943. This started a campaign that tied up over a million and an half men until April of 1945 and pulled a lot of forces from the eastern and western front from both the allies and the Axis. And contrary to popular belief, the surrender of Italy in 43 didn't mean all the Italian divisions stopped fighting the allies.
Further Stalin wanted D-Day to happen. Sure it opened up a third front but he didn't care about that. His forces were already pushing the Germans back foot by foot and he had the man power. At the treaty of Cairo he and the other world leaders agreed upon not only the third front in Normandy but a fourth front that never happened in Southern France. Conversely, the British wanted to assault Greece in force and push into the Balkans. Having more allied troops from the Western countries in areas he wanted to conquer did not sit well with him and he lobbied hard for both Italy and south France and the US president bowed to his will and veto'd the British plan. However the Southern France invasion never occurred because they expected easy rollover of Italy(they expected to have Rome by Christmas of 1943) and that never happened.
As for the Lehr thing. Very over rated. Yes they were good. So were the Fallshirmjagers. Both did extremely well initially. But when they did start losing people and the vet pool for replacements dried up they started getting new guys like everyone else and quality of training deteriorated as well. By the end they were as good as any other Panzergrenadier regiment.
In battle the vast majority of casualties are new guys, that's why in Viet Nam many time the vets never bothered learning the new guys names until after a few fights. Every now and then you lose a vet. There is something to be said for veteran formations, they can be very nasty as the Lehr proved in Normandy and across France, but in an all vet unit, the only people you can lose are vets.
In Italy, aside from a Panzer Grenadier unit or two, almost the entire German 10th army were veterans of Africa or the Eastern front. In the multi-year campaign that followed those that were not initially either died or became experienced vets. Compared to the allies who had virtually unlimited re-enforcements who always went in relatively fresh and got mauled repeatedly. Granted the Germans were defending and odds usually favor the defenders three to one but there are many instances of the German troops, especially the Fallshirmjagers beating up superior forces that should have been able to walk over them. Point 593 on Snakeshead Ridge for example 800 FJs took on two Polish Infantry Divisions and eviscerated them killing 281 officers and 3500 enlisted. You can say artillery helped and it did but the allies had far more artillery available.
The Germans were not getting any replacements for their losses either as the expected Normandy invasion and the eastern front were tying up their manpower. Kesselring managed with two veteran army groups to hold out and fight versus a numerically far superior force for the rest of the war. Just the final battle of Cassino was six emaciated(most battalions had companies of less than 40 guys) divisions of hardened vets versus 13 relatively new full strength allied divisions plus air support and after 6 months or so of constant artillery and bombings and assault after assault, the final battle for this one point still took 6 days before the Germans withdrew only to push back to even better defenses farther North.
The Lehr while originally all vets and instructors with awesome equipment, got watered down over time as did Fallshirmjager units fighting in central Europe to be a pale shadow of their former ability. Compare this to the remnants of the Fallshirmjagers division in Italy that didn't get replacements that just got better and tougher, albeit smaller and smaller.
Col. Dash wrote: Not a single mention of the first allied invasion of Europe and all the underpinning politics of the war.
The allies invaded Sicily in July of 1943. This started a campaign that tied up over a million and an half men until April of 1945 and pulled a lot of forces from the eastern and western front from both the allies and the Axis. And contrary to popular belief, the surrender of Italy in 43 didn't mean all the Italian divisions stopped fighting the allies.
Further Stalin wanted D-Day to happen. Sure it opened up a third front but he didn't care about that. His forces were already pushing the Germans back foot by foot and he had the man power. At the treaty of Cairo he and the other world leaders agreed upon not only the third front in Normandy but a fourth front that never happened in Southern France. Conversely, the British wanted to assault Greece in force and push into the Balkans. Having more allied troops from the Western countries in areas he wanted to conquer did not sit well with him and he lobbied hard for both Italy and south France and the US president bowed to his will and veto'd the British plan. However the Southern France invasion never occurred because they expected easy rollover of Italy(they expected to have Rome by Christmas of 1943) and that never happened.
As for the Lehr thing. Very over rated. Yes they were good. So were the Fallshirmjagers. Both did extremely well initially. But when they did start losing people and the vet pool for replacements dried up they started getting new guys like everyone else and quality of training deteriorated as well. By the end they were as good as any other Panzergrenadier regiment.
In battle the vast majority of casualties are new guys, that's why in Viet Nam many time the vets never bothered learning the new guys names until after a few fights. Every now and then you lose a vet. There is something to be said for veteran formations, they can be very nasty as the Lehr proved in Normandy and across France, but in an all vet unit, the only people you can lose are vets.
In Italy, aside from a Panzer Grenadier unit or two, almost the entire German 10th army were veterans of Africa or the Eastern front. In the multi-year campaign that followed those that were not initially either died or became experienced vets. Compared to the allies who had virtually unlimited re-enforcements who always went in relatively fresh and got mauled repeatedly. Granted the Germans were defending and odds usually favor the defenders three to one but there are many instances of the German troops, especially the Fallshirmjagers beating up superior forces that should have been able to walk over them. Point 593 on Snakeshead Ridge for example 800 FJs took on two Polish Infantry Divisions and eviscerated them killing 281 officers and 3500 enlisted. You can say artillery helped and it did but the allies had far more artillery available.
The Germans were not getting any replacements for their losses either as the expected Normandy invasion and the eastern front were tying up their manpower. Kesselring managed with two veteran army groups to hold out and fight versus a numerically far superior force for the rest of the war. Just the final battle of Cassino was six emaciated(most battalions had companies of less than 40 guys) divisions of hardened vets versus 13 relatively new full strength allied divisions plus air support and after 6 months or so of constant artillery and bombings and assault after assault, the final battle for this one point still took 6 days before the Germans withdrew only to push back to even better defenses farther North.
The Lehr while originally all vets and instructors with awesome equipment, got watered down over time as did Fallshirmjager units fighting in central Europe to be a pale shadow of their former ability. Compare this to the remnants of the Fallshirmjagers division in Italy that didn't get replacements that just got better and tougher, albeit smaller and smaller.
Something else to consider is the attitude and technique of the western allies, particularly in Normandy and western Europe.
The western allies rarely performed manoeuvres in the dark, didn't harrass sentries or perform much scouting during nighttime - This allowed under strength Germans to reform, redeploy,rest and resist much larger formations of American and British troops till the end of hostilities.
Citizen soldiery was pretty damned scared. and Command was reluctant to sacrifice manpower for gains. An over reliance on artillery bombardment saw actions halted whilst large formations refuse to move or move reluctantly until they saw 'enough' softening up being done.
Combined arms manoeuvres were in their infancy. Tank crews complained that infantry refused to move up and flush anti tank guns or deal with pockets of enemy. Infantry often saw tanks halt at the first sign of shots being fired, regardless of what was incoming.
Above all the allies were most hampered by having fairly rigid planning with little tactical leeway for local commanders. German planning allowed small unit leaders to decide how to achieve their objectives under an overall battle plan.
Stalin wanted the invasion of Normandy more than anyone else, and even launched attacks in the east to ensure the Germans couldn't swing reinforcements from there to France.
Everyone should read up more on Tehran Conference in 1943.
"Without American production the United Nations could never have won the war."
— Joseph Stalin, during the dinner at the Tehran Conference
Col. Dash wrote: At the treaty of Cairo he and the other world leaders agreed upon not only the third front in Normandy but a fourth front that never happened in Southern France. . .However the Southern France invasion never occurred because they expected easy rollover of Italy(they expected to have Rome by Christmas of 1943) and that never happened.
The allies did invade Southern France. It was called Operation Dragoon.
As far as the USSR winning without Normandy, I don't think they would have taken Berlin. The Soviets were bled pretty badly too and people seem to miss that. Many of their divisions were in the same mess as the Germans, and the Soviets were anything but surgical in their strategy. On a shorter front without extended supply lines, and 140 divisions freed up from France and maybe even more from Norway, I think the Germans could have held out for a number of years. But with allied bombing and control of the seas, yes the ending was inevitable. But to say the Russians could do all that on their own is nonsense.
Tehran? I thought it was the treaty of Cairo. Going from memory there. I just remember the end results and Stalin's politicking with the campaign.
KTG-You are correct, it did happen. For some reason in all my work I never noticed it. But quick reading makes it look almost like a half hearted measure and the Germans already knew the south couldn't be held. It was kind of pointless. The Germans should have either pulled a Kesselring and had defensive lines already built waiting for occupation or withdrawn to help in Italy or driven into the Northern France salient. Same for the Allies, those troops should have been used to push Italy or Normandy.
It could have been discussed at Cairo, not sure. I was just saying everyone should read up on the Tehran one because it was in 1943 when Normandy was being decided, and had Stalin thought he was going to win without Western intervention he would have told them not to bother. The fact he was asking for it is telling.
As far as Dragoon, it was pushed for by the US and Churchill opposed. Dragoon was meant to be a play on he was 'dragooned' into supporting it. Either way it seemed like a good idea, even if late in the war. It isnt like the US didn't have the men and means to pull it off.
Which goes to further the point how much the US was capable of doing not just in the European theater but at the same time in the Pacific. European Theater fanboys focus on Stalingrad and Kursk so much, and it isnt like those arent great battles and interesting reading, but the production output of the US and its mobility to choose when and where it wanted to fight is pretty impressive.
The US started out with 3 aircraft carriers and ended the war with 27 I think. That by itself is pretty insane.
KTG17 wrote: It could have been discussed at Cairo, not sure. I was just saying everyone should read up on the Tehran one because it was in 1943 when Normandy was being decided, and had Stalin thought he was going to win without Western intervention he would have told them not to bother. The fact he was asking for it is telling.
As far as Dragoon, it was pushed for by the US and Churchill opposed. Dragoon was meant to be a play on he was 'dragooned' into supporting it. Either way it seemed like a good idea, even if late in the war. It isnt like the US didn't have the men and means to pull it off.
Which goes to further the point how much the US was capable of doing not just in the European theater but at the same time in the Pacific. European Theater fanboys focus on Stalingrad and Kursk so much, and it isnt like those arent great battles and interesting reading, but the production output of the US and its mobility to choose when and where it wanted to fight is pretty impressive.
The US started out with 3 aircraft carriers and ended the war with 27 I think. That by itself is pretty insane.
Exactly. People always say that the Allies were lucky the Germans were unable to transfer 4 million men from the East to the West, and if they did, the Allies would never have succeeded, which overlooks the fact that the US Army and US Navy, had dozens of Marine Divisions and Army Divisions in the Pacific.
Col. Dash wrote: Not a single mention of the first allied invasion of Europe and all the underpinning politics of the war.
The allies invaded Sicily in July of 1943. This started a campaign that tied up over a million and an half men until April of 1945 and pulled a lot of forces from the eastern and western front from both the allies and the Axis. And contrary to popular belief, the surrender of Italy in 43 didn't mean all the Italian divisions stopped fighting the allies.
Further Stalin wanted D-Day to happen. Sure it opened up a third front but he didn't care about that. His forces were already pushing the Germans back foot by foot and he had the man power. At the treaty of Cairo he and the other world leaders agreed upon not only the third front in Normandy but a fourth front that never happened in Southern France. Conversely, the British wanted to assault Greece in force and push into the Balkans. Having more allied troops from the Western countries in areas he wanted to conquer did not sit well with him and he lobbied hard for both Italy and south France and the US president bowed to his will and veto'd the British plan. However the Southern France invasion never occurred because they expected easy rollover of Italy(they expected to have Rome by Christmas of 1943) and that never happened.
As for the Lehr thing. Very over rated. Yes they were good. So were the Fallshirmjagers. Both did extremely well initially. But when they did start losing people and the vet pool for replacements dried up they started getting new guys like everyone else and quality of training deteriorated as well. By the end they were as good as any other Panzergrenadier regiment.
In battle the vast majority of casualties are new guys, that's why in Viet Nam many time the vets never bothered learning the new guys names until after a few fights. Every now and then you lose a vet. There is something to be said for veteran formations, they can be very nasty as the Lehr proved in Normandy and across France, but in an all vet unit, the only people you can lose are vets.
In Italy, aside from a Panzer Grenadier unit or two, almost the entire German 10th army were veterans of Africa or the Eastern front. In the multi-year campaign that followed those that were not initially either died or became experienced vets. Compared to the allies who had virtually unlimited re-enforcements who always went in relatively fresh and got mauled repeatedly. Granted the Germans were defending and odds usually favor the defenders three to one but there are many instances of the German troops, especially the Fallshirmjagers beating up superior forces that should have been able to walk over them. Point 593 on Snakeshead Ridge for example 800 FJs took on two Polish Infantry Divisions and eviscerated them killing 281 officers and 3500 enlisted. You can say artillery helped and it did but the allies had far more artillery available.
The Germans were not getting any replacements for their losses either as the expected Normandy invasion and the eastern front were tying up their manpower. Kesselring managed with two veteran army groups to hold out and fight versus a numerically far superior force for the rest of the war. Just the final battle of Cassino was six emaciated(most battalions had companies of less than 40 guys) divisions of hardened vets versus 13 relatively new full strength allied divisions plus air support and after 6 months or so of constant artillery and bombings and assault after assault, the final battle for this one point still took 6 days before the Germans withdrew only to push back to even better defenses farther North.
The Lehr while originally all vets and instructors with awesome equipment, got watered down over time as did Fallshirmjager units fighting in central Europe to be a pale shadow of their former ability. Compare this to the remnants of the Fallshirmjagers division in Italy that didn't get replacements that just got better and tougher, albeit smaller and smaller.
Something else to consider is the attitude and technique of the western allies, particularly in Normandy and western Europe.
The western allies rarely performed manoeuvres in the dark, didn't harrass sentries or perform much scouting during nighttime - This allowed under strength Germans to reform, redeploy,rest and resist much larger formations of American and British troops till the end of hostilities.
Citizen soldiery was pretty damned scared. and Command was reluctant to sacrifice manpower for gains. An over reliance on artillery bombardment saw actions halted whilst large formations refuse to move or move reluctantly until they saw 'enough' softening up being done.
Combined arms manoeuvres were in their infancy. Tank crews complained that infantry refused to move up and flush anti tank guns or deal with pockets of enemy. Infantry often saw tanks halt at the first sign of shots being fired, regardless of what was incoming.
Above all the allies were most hampered by having fairly rigid planning with little tactical leeway for local commanders. German planning allowed small unit leaders to decide how to achieve their objectives under an overall battle plan.
It's important to note that for most of the war, the Germans were on the defensive. Excellent troops as they were, its much easier to defend than to attack, and far more effective. Italy and Normandy being prime examples of this.
But when the tables were turned, Germans counter-attacking at Normandy, then the Germans suffered against dug in infantry.
During the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans could not shift the dug in 101st, or other US infantry divisions that stubbornly hung on, and yet, the Germans had every advantage during the first days of the Battle of the Bulge.
As a result, the German advance stalled, American artillery absolutely hammered them, and the Battle came to an end...
KTG17 wrote: It could have been discussed at Cairo, not sure. I was just saying everyone should read up on the Tehran one because it was in 1943 when Normandy was being decided, and had Stalin thought he was going to win without Western intervention he would have told them not to bother. The fact he was asking for it is telling.
As far as Dragoon, it was pushed for by the US and Churchill opposed. Dragoon was meant to be a play on he was 'dragooned' into supporting it. Either way it seemed like a good idea, even if late in the war. It isnt like the US didn't have the men and means to pull it off.
Which goes to further the point how much the US was capable of doing not just in the European theater but at the same time in the Pacific. European Theater fanboys focus on Stalingrad and Kursk so much, and it isnt like those arent great battles and interesting reading, but the production output of the US and its mobility to choose when and where it wanted to fight is pretty impressive.
The US started out with 3 aircraft carriers and ended the war with 27 I think. That by itself is pretty insane.
Casablanca-class (45 total) Casablanca (CVE-55) Anzio (CVE-57) Corregidor (CVE-58) Mission Bay (CVE-59) Guadalcanal (CVE-60) Manila Bay (CVE-61) Natoma Bay (CVE-62) Tripoli (CVE-64) Wake Island (CVE-65) White Plains (CVE-66) Solomons (CVE-67) Kalinin Bay (CVE-68) Kasaan Bay (CVE-69) Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70) Kitkun Bay (CVE-71) Tulagi (CVE-72) Nehenta Bay (CVE-74) Hoggatt Bay (CVE-75) Kadashan Bay (CVE-76) Marcus Island (CVE-77) Savo Island (CVE-78) Petrof Bay (CVE-80) Rudyerd Bay (CVE-81) Saginaw Bay (CVE-82) Sargent Bay (CVE-83) Shamrock Bay (CVE-84) Shipley Bay (CVE-85) Sitkoh Bay (CVE-86) Steamer Bay (CVE-87) Cape Esperance (CVE-88) Takanis Bay (CVE-89) Thetis Bay (CVE-90) Makassar Straight (CVE-91) Wyndham Bay (CVE-92) Makin Island (CVE-93) Lunga Point (CVE-94) Salamaua (CVE-96) Hollandia (CVE-97) Kwajalein (CVE-98) Admirality Islands (CVE-99) Bougainville (CVE-100) Matanikau (CVE-101) Attu (CVE-102) Roi (CVE-103) Munda (CVE-104)
Commencement Bay-Class (10 total) Commencement Bay (CVE-105) Block Island (CVE-106) Gilbert Islands (CVE-107) Kula Bay (CVE-108) Cape Glouchester (CVE-109) Salerno Bay (CVE-110) Vella Gulf (CVE-111) Siboney (CVE-112) Puget Sound (CVE-113) Bairoko (CVE-115)
welshhoppo wrote: When look at the German Divisions, don't forget that by 1944 the average German Division was only at 50% strength. So really the Allies were only fighting about 25 full division. Also the Germans had this wonderful idea to increase the amount of panzer divisions, they did this by making them smaller and therefore having more of them.
Also, the Germans did surprisingly well for being such a haphazard force. You had some HitlerJugen SS divisions lying around as well, literally 16 year old boys. Even with Air Supremacy, excellent recon, and more man power, the Germans held back for a good six months. Only really collapsing at the start of 1945.
Lehr was fully equipped. 2nd and 17th SS Panzer divisions were also fully equipped. I'm not buying this under-strength divisions theory. Eastern Front, yeah, but not on the West.
these are a small number of the divisions involved. Very few German divisions on either front were at anything near full strength, and many, if not most of the divisions in France were 2nd line units, only a very small number were fully equipped and at full strength. Even the full strength units were pretty easy pickings lacking any sort of air cover and effective intelligence on allied forces who enjoyed air supremacy and knew almost the entire German order of battle facing them.
A lot of Germany's effectiveness during Normandy was due to the fact that it's easier to defend than attack. When the situation was reversed during the battle of the Bulge, the Germans had a tough time trying to shift dug in American infantry.
well, during the Bulge (where a great uncle of mine was killed stepping on a German landmine), the Germans literally didnt have adequate supplies, particularly fuel, to conduct the operations assigned and were ordered to do so on the assumption (that most of the field commanders knew was absurd) that they would use captured enemy stockpiles to continue their advance. They also lacked air support and suffered from munitions shortages and intelligence gaps. A huge number of German vehicles were lost due to logistical issues, often more than enemy action.
Time to unleash some historical perspective
As Sun Tzu once said: one man hardened to the ways of war is worth 10 men who are not.
In other words, don't underestimate veterans in warfare. History is full of this example. Roman Legions were usually outnumbered, but better training, equipment and experience was almost always enough to win them the day.
Building an elite fomration like Lehr carries on this maxim, and fits in with the German doctrine of focusing maximum strength on one point, and a war of manouvere.
So, IMO, Lehr makes perfect sense to the Germans.
In a short, decisive war, yes. In the end stages of a total war of attrition, not as much. The Germans developed issues with their best pilots and crews staying on the frontlines forever and getting killed and not having experienced people there to teach the new recruits who by the end of the war were getting to be pretty inept.
From the four devisioms stationed at Normandy, one was declared "unfit for active duty." And one other was comprised entirely of Russian and Eastern Prisioners of war.
welshhoppo wrote: From the four devisioms stationed at Normandy, one was declared "unfit for active duty." And one other was comprised entirely of Russian and Eastern Prisioners of war.
Yep. They were speedbumps for the divisions behind them.
Well the prisoners of war were being used as labor to beef up defenses. It's not surprising they were there, given that at the time German command thought that an attack further up the coast was more likely.
Coincidentally this is where Yang Kyoungjong was stationed, supposedly. Assuming he isn't just another thing Stephen Ambrose made up out of his ass
To return to the original point of the thread, IDK if it really is "anti-western revisionism" but the Soviet Union probably could have beaten Germany after May 1944 without further help from the western allies. It would have taken them a lot longer, of course.
However it is a completely unrealistic scenario given (A) the western allies' commitment to a second (or actually a third) front in Europe and (B) the previous history of the war, during which the western allies not only supplied a lot of materiel to the SU but also gave the Axis several varieties of good kickings.
Thus I would say on the whole that the scenario has been chosen to present the SU in a good light.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Sir John Keegan, respected military historian, has the German loses at Bagration as around 400,000. Still a massive defeat, but nowhere near the scale of Normandy.
Where the hell did I get 2 million from? I was not well on Friday
As for technology, I stand by my point about the Allies fighting a modern war.
Why are you "standing by it"? It is a basic reality of the war that no-one in this thread is challenging. I think you've misread somethings and likely misunderstood the counterpoints being raised against you.
This is why it is generally better to quote individual blocks of text you are debating, rather than block quoting everything and dropping a general summary response.
Arguably, the invasion of Russia was made possible by the vast number of vehicles captured from the British, the French, and the Czechs.
The captured vehicles gave the German army a massive increase in mobility. The only reason your claim would be 'arguable' is that even with the captured vehicles the invasion of Russia was still impossible.
Anyhow, you seem to have narrowed your argument down to defending a point that no-one is actually arguing against. The Western Allies had modern, fully mobilised armies, this is a basic fact that everyone agrees with. It is your other claims, that Britain somehow 'got off lightly' in the war, that the Soviet and Germans armies could be simplified down to be crude, brute force armies, that Russia ran smaller units at the end of the war because they had run out of troops... these are all claims you made that are just wrong.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: It's an old argument: what would have happened if the Germans could have put the 4 million men they needed in Russia, and instead, transfered them to the Western Front? Would the war have been different?
I would argue no.
Germany: Here's 4 million men and thousands of extra tanks. Take that allies!
Allies: Here's round the clock bombing raids from 1000+ British and American bombers. Let's see how long your men and tanks last. And forget about another Dunkirk, as we have complete air superiority, and if your tiger tanks get to close to the coast, our battleships will pulverise them with 17 inch guns...
Oh, and here's a few atomic bombs for German cities...
The Germans were bringing a knife to a gun fight...
You are chronically underestimating the difficulty the Allies already had in combating the Germans troops that were present. Go read about the operations in Normandy. It eventually broke into a nice encirclement for the Allies, but the fighting before then was incredibly brutal and included many bloody repulses and reversals of fortune.
You seem to have taken some ideas about the problems the Germans had on strategic and logistical levels and passed those all the way down through the ranks. But while those issues still remained, on a tactical level the Wehrmacht was excellent - they had a command structure that allowed for rapid adaptation to battlefield circumstances, they had excellent discipline, and they had excellent machine guns and anti-tank weapons in large numbers.
You can't just dismiss the hypothetical of adding another 4 million troops to that kind of war machine.
Although you are right that any hypothetical German hold out only lasts until the US has the bomb.
Without the western allies, the soviets would have hit the floor like a cheap prom dress, without the soviets, there is likely not much that could have saved the western allies. the nazis were not defeated by either of them, it took both and it took a hell of a lot to pull it off. the allies needed time, the soviets needed lend lease. and alot of those soviet divisions werent available until it was clear the japanese were not gonna take siberia from them. there were alot of mistakes and miscalculations on both sides.
tneva82 wrote: USSR was screaming at first. At the end they were winning and they knew it. German was doomed. The second front had tiny number of German divisions in numbers AND in quality. Best of Germans were on eastern front. And most numbers.
You shouldn't make the mistake of thinking what is known now was known by everyone at the time. Remember, we know now that the war was well and truly lost for Germany by 1943, but the Soviets and Germans still engaged in serious peacetalks that might have worked if, funnily enough, the Germans had been a bit more serious in their demands.
Pretty much only reason that prevented US/Brit vs Soviets was logistical trouble US/Brits had(they weren't ready for large scale fight with Soviets right off the bat) and Soviets were worried about the A-bomb(as it is dropping those to Japan was deterrant for Soviets to keep them from getting funny ideas about Europe).
And you know, there is a natural reluctance to send more men off in to a meatgrinder, when you're winding up one of the most brutal conflicts in human history.
This isn't fething Risk.
Anybody thinking US did that out of good will and selflessness is kidding themselves. No country does that. US came here because it suited their politics to not have red europe and for that I'm thankful. While not quaranteed it's likely my life wouldn't be as nice now as it is had they not come(then again...Me now wouldn't exists in that case so hard to compare).
That's a fairly contrived kind of cynicism. The US didn't do it out of goodwill, they just did it to suit their own politics, which just happened to be to create free and democratic countries instead of socialist dicatorships. Which is basically the closest thing you will ever get to goodwill in international politics.
But on your overall point about Overlord, you are absolutely right. Overlord didn't change the outcome of the war, merely helped hasten the end. This shouldn't diminish the strategic and operational excellence of the campaign, nor the skill and bravery of the soldiers who fought.
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Col. Dash wrote: Granted the Germans were defending and odds usually favor the defenders three to one but there are many instances of the German troops, especially the Fallshirmjagers beating up superior forces that should have been able to walk over them.
People often look at the early stages of the war with its dramatic breakthroughs and big encirclements and think WWII favoured the attacker throughout. But new strategies were quickly developed to overcome blitz style operations, and meanwhile a machine gun was still a machine gun, pre-sighted artillery was murderous and a guy hiding in a foxhole was still an absolute bitch to clear out.
The Germans adapted over the war, moving from mobile warfare to dogged inch by inch defence, and in doing so were able to grind Allied offensives to a halt. But make no mistake this merely meant changing from 'losing' to 'losing a bit more slowly'. The Germans were rapidly losing the ability to launch counter-offensives, let alone an actual offensive of their own.
You can see this with their one last offensive in the Ardennes. The strategic circumstances couldn't have better suited the Germans - they got the weather they needed, and the Allies were as unprepared as you could ever hope for. It was still ended as a debacle for the Germans. And a look at Bastogne will tell you why - the troops there were of course of the highest quality and incredibly heroic, but it was also a case of the Germans now experiencing what the Allies had been experiencing since 1943. Dislodging well prepared troops was extremely difficult, and this meant the old freewheeling offensives of 1939-41 the Germans had relied on were now all but impossible.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Lehr was fully equipped. 2nd and 17th SS Panzer divisions were also fully equipped. I'm not buying this under-strength divisions theory.
It's not a theory for you to buy or not. It is what it is. The Germans had some favoured units that were better supplied than others, and so it is pretty silly to look just at the favoured units and ignore the shortages across all divisions, East and West.
And what's more - the size of German divisions isn't just about whether they were at full strength. As I already said, even at full strength a German tank division had less tanks in it than an American infantry division. The Germans in the latter war just had smaller divisions on paper than other armies. That their divisions were frequently a long way from their paper strength adds to that.
Building an elite fomration like Lehr carries on this maxim, and fits in with the German doctrine of focusing maximum strength on one point, and a war of manouvere.
So, IMO, Lehr makes perfect sense to the Germans.
If Lehr suited the German dictum of maneuver warfare so well... why didn't it engage in any actual breakthrough operations? That's the issue with making a handful of very elite units - sure they're more capable than anything of ripping a whole in the enemy and punching through it, but they never get used for that.
Maneuverability requires a measure of expendability - when you push a unit through a breakthrough it might achieve, but it might also get swallowed up. When you make divisions that are too precious to lose, you lose the ability to use them in breakthrough operations.
sebster wrote: You can't just dismiss the hypothetical of adding another 4 million troops to that kind of war machine.
Although you are right that any hypothetical German hold out only lasts until the US has the bomb.
The second part is why you can dismiss the hypothetical. Adding another 4 million troops to that war machine just means another 4 million troops to kill, whether through continued conventional bombing or an eventual nuclear attack. Germany can't take the permanent aircraft carrier floating just off the coast or attack the factories out-producing them at obscene rates, so the only real question is whether the US can grind down German forces to the point where an invasion at a somewhat later date becomes possible or if the war drags on to the "screw it, turn Germany into a radioactive wasteland and buffer against the Soviets".
thekingofkings wrote: Without the western allies, the soviets would have hit the floor like a cheap prom dress, without the soviets, there is likely not much that could have saved the western allies. the nazis were not defeated by either of them, it took both and it took a hell of a lot to pull it off. the allies needed time, the soviets needed lend lease. and alot of those soviet divisions werent available until it was clear the japanese were not gonna take siberia from them. there were alot of mistakes and miscalculations on both sides.
Once again, the British received vastly more lendlease aid than the Soviets did. This didn't turn the British into a Berlin conquering juggernaught, because that is just not the scale that lendlease operates at. It was supplemental aid - it supported domestic production, it didn't take over for it. The trucks and railway carriages the Soviets received were excellent and made many offensives more effective than they would otherwise have been, but they weren't transformative. As I said earlier, the dominant reason the Soviets had so much stuff is because they made so much stuff.
To look at 1943 for instance, we have 11,750 German tanks and self-propelled guns produced in total. That includes just 740 Tigers and 1,849 Panthers. Almost half are variants based on the light Panzer II, III and 38(t) chassis. In comparison, the Soviets built 24,162 tanks. This included more than 15,000 T-34s. The Soviets were outproducing Germany at a rate of more than 2:1, and that gets more severe when you look at medium and heavy tanks - the ratio is 3:1.
Peregrine wrote: The second part is why you can dismiss the hypothetical. Adding another 4 million troops to that war machine just means another 4 million troops to kill, whether through continued conventional bombing or an eventual nuclear attack.
At this point I'm not even sure what the hypothetical is. Is there a ceasefire in the East, or was there never any war at all? Are the Soviets still supplying raw materials to the Nazis?
All of those things will impact greatly on the quality of the army Germany is fielding. And yeah, none of it will matter one bit once the US turns up with nukes.
But if we're talking about what happens before the nukes then we're looking the bloody grind of stuff like the Caen campaign, and you then extend it to every French town, and multiply it by a couple of orders of magnitude for Paris. With an extra 4 million German soldiers, the breakthrough of Operation Cobra isn't possible, and without that then the Normandy campaign and capture of France becomes a bloody grind, town to town.
Germany can't take the permanent aircraft carrier floating just off the coast or attack the factories out-producing them at obscene rates, so the only real question is whether the US can grind down German forces to the point where an invasion at a somewhat later date becomes possible or if the war drags on to the "screw it, turn Germany into a radioactive wasteland and buffer against the Soviets".
I don't think there'd be any delay in using nukes once they're available. They were originally intended for Germany, afterall. When you are losing whole divisions as a matter of routine, and then you get a war ending weapon then you use it straight away.
sebster wrote: But if we're talking about what happens before the nukes then we're looking the bloody grind of stuff like the Caen campaign, and you then extend it to every French town, and multiply it by a couple of orders of magnitude for Paris. With an extra 4 million German soldiers, the breakthrough of Operation Cobra isn't possible, and without that then the Normandy campaign and capture of France becomes a bloody grind, town to town.
Yeah, but what I'm saying is that it doesn't matter if it becomes a bloody grind. The allies have more men and more industry, by ridiculous margins, and their supply of men and equipment is immune to (meaningful) German attacks. Even taking nukes out of the scenario a war of attrition is inevitable defeat for Germany, outside of the unlikely possibility of allied leadership giving up and letting Germany keep their conquered territory. An extra 4 million men makes the war uglier for the allies, it doesn't make the scenario any better for Germany.
And then of course there's the option of delaying the invasion and implementing a "bomb them to rubble, then bomb the rubble" plan until those extra 4 million men are either dead or out of supplies. Adding extra men with rifles watching the heavy bombers fly overhead doesn't solve Germany's problems with aircraft production and fuel supplies, and rescheduling Normandy by a year or two doesn't change the outcome of the war.
I don't think there'd be any delay in using nukes once they're available. They were originally intended for Germany, afterall. When you are losing whole divisions as a matter of routine, and then you get a war ending weapon then you use it straight away.
Well, even assuming there's no reluctance to use nukes immediately for political reasons there's still a production issue. Do you attack Germany immediately with the two bombs you have ready and try to intimidate them into surrendering, knowing that if they refuse you won't have your next bombs ready for a while, or do you wait and accumulate nukes for a single massive attack on multiple targets that erases Germany from the map before they have any idea how the war has changed? In this case there would be no "use it now, before the Soviets get into the war" pressure like with Japan.
thekingofkings wrote: Without the western allies, the soviets would have hit the floor like a cheap prom dress, without the soviets, there is likely not much that could have saved the western allies. the nazis were not defeated by either of them, it took both and it took a hell of a lot to pull it off. the allies needed time, the soviets needed lend lease. and alot of those soviet divisions werent available until it was clear the japanese were not gonna take siberia from them. there were alot of mistakes and miscalculations on both sides.
Once again, the British received vastly more lendlease aid than the Soviets did. This didn't turn the British into a Berlin conquering juggernaught, because that is just not the scale that lendlease operates at. It was supplemental aid - it supported domestic production, it didn't take over for it. The trucks and railway carriages the Soviets received were excellent and made many offensives more effective than they would otherwise have been, but they weren't transformative. As I said earlier, the dominant reason the Soviets had so much stuff is because they made so much stuff.
To look at 1943 for instance, we have 11,750 German tanks and self-propelled guns produced in total. That includes just 740 Tigers and 1,849 Panthers. Almost half are variants based on the light Panzer II, III and 38(t) chassis. In comparison, the Soviets built 24,162 tanks. This included more than 15,000 T-34s. The Soviets were outproducing Germany at a rate of more than 2:1, and that gets more severe when you look at medium and heavy tanks - the ratio is 3:1.
Peregrine wrote: The second part is why you can dismiss the hypothetical. Adding another 4 million troops to that war machine just means another 4 million troops to kill, whether through continued conventional bombing or an eventual nuclear attack.
At this point I'm not even sure what the hypothetical is. Is there a ceasefire in the East, or was there never any war at all? Are the Soviets still supplying raw materials to the Nazis?
All of those things will impact greatly on the quality of the army Germany is fielding. And yeah, none of it will matter one bit once the US turns up with nukes.
But if we're talking about what happens before the nukes then we're looking the bloody grind of stuff like the Caen campaign, and you then extend it to every French town, and multiply it by a couple of orders of magnitude for Paris. With an extra 4 million German soldiers, the breakthrough of Operation Cobra isn't possible, and without that then the Normandy campaign and capture of France becomes a bloody grind, town to town.
Germany can't take the permanent aircraft carrier floating just off the coast or attack the factories out-producing them at obscene rates, so the only real question is whether the US can grind down German forces to the point where an invasion at a somewhat later date becomes possible or if the war drags on to the "screw it, turn Germany into a radioactive wasteland and buffer against the Soviets".
I don't think there'd be any delay in using nukes once they're available. They were originally intended for Germany, afterall. When you are losing whole divisions as a matter of routine, and then you get a war ending weapon then you use it straight away.
there was a distinct difference in the type of aid to the soviets and british, the soviets did not have an inexhaustable pool of manpower or resources. They were heavily reliant on aid. there is a reason their casualties were greater than anyone elses, they were never a prosperous nation to begin with. with most of their best land already in german hands, they werent doing themselves alot of favors.
Peregrine wrote: Yeah, but what I'm saying is that it doesn't matter if it becomes a bloody grind. The allies have more men and more industry, by ridiculous margins, and their supply of men and equipment is immune to (meaningful) German attacks. Even taking nukes out of the scenario a war of attrition is inevitable defeat for Germany, outside of the unlikely possibility of allied leadership giving up and letting Germany keep their conquered territory. An extra 4 million men makes the war uglier for the allies, it doesn't make the scenario any better for Germany.
No argument there. With allied air dominance then German offensive power becomes close to zero, and it is just a case of a bloody grind.
I was really countering the idea that the Normandy campaign was such a clear win for the Allied war machine that adding another 4 million troops wouldn't have changed anything. That was ignoring that most of the Allied gains came from the encirclement of Cobra, and Cobra isn't possible if the Germans had another 4 million troops. Instead if becomes a bloody, town to town grind.
And then of course there's the option of delaying the invasion and implementing a "bomb them to rubble, then bomb the rubble" plan until those extra 4 million men are either dead or out of supplies. Adding extra men with rifles watching the heavy bombers fly overhead doesn't solve Germany's problems with aircraft production and fuel supplies, and rescheduling Normandy by a year or two doesn't change the outcome of the war.
Yeah, these are all considerations I don't know if we can account for because I have no idea what actual hypothetical we're discussing here
Well, even assuming there's no reluctance to use nukes immediately for political reasons there's still a production issue. Do you attack Germany immediately with the two bombs you have ready and try to intimidate them into surrendering, knowing that if they refuse you won't have your next bombs ready for a while, or do you wait and accumulate nukes for a single massive attack on multiple targets that erases Germany from the map before they have any idea how the war has changed? In this case there would be no "use it now, before the Soviets get into the war" pressure like with Japan.
A production issue and a reliability issue. They weren't 100% certain the bombs would go off - you can't ever be certain the first time you use anything. In a live war against an enemy that still has a competitive army that becomes a much bigger risk.
But again, a lot of this depends on where the Soviet Union is in all this. Are they out of the war because they signed a peace agreement pre-Kursk. Were they ever invaded? Are they taking a threatening stance (they'd be spending big on military expansion no matter what, but is it on fixed defences or force projection?)
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thekingofkings wrote: there was a distinct difference in the type of aid to the soviets and british, the soviets did not have an inexhaustable pool of manpower or resources. They were heavily reliant on aid. there is a reason their casualties were greater than anyone elses, they were never a prosperous nation to begin with. with most of their best land already in german hands, they werent doing themselves alot of favors.
None of this means anything when we have the actual production numbers.
They didn't produce as much as they could have if they had their best land... they still massively outproduced Germany.
They were never a prosperous nation to begin with.. they still massively outproduced Germany.
They got a lot of aid. But most of it came from 1943 onwards, when the war was moving in to its grinding endphase. The contribution of lend lease the Soviet war effort in 1941 was less than 1% of Soviet war production, for instance. It helped, but to claim it save the Soviets, or changed the course of the war is just wrong. It is impossible to look at figures that show the Soviets outproducing the Germans in tanks in a ratio of 2:1 and conclude that the Soviets were saved because they got some M3 Lee tanks they used for training purposes.
You can see this with their one last offensive in the Ardennes. The strategic circumstances couldn't have better suited the Germans - they got the weather they needed, and the Allies were as unprepared as you could ever hope for. It was still ended as a debacle for the Germans. And a look at Bastogne will tell you why - the troops there were of course of the highest quality and incredibly heroic, but it was also a case of the Germans now experiencing what the Allies had been experiencing since 1943. Dislodging well prepared troops was extremely difficult, and this meant the old freewheeling offensives of 1939-41 the Germans had relied on were now all but impossible.
I liked to point out in a paper once the number of German tanks involved in the Battle of France to the number of AFVs in the Battle of the Buldge; 3000 to 600. By mid 1944, German industry completely was insufficient. they weren't keeping up, and most of what they made went East, not West. They were a lot more scared of the Soviets than the Western Allies.
the soviets did not have an inexhaustable pool of manpower or resources
Except comparatively speaking inexhaustable pool of manpower and resources is exactly what they had. A lot of the high material and manpower loses of the Red Army in the later stages of the war are explained much more by a recognition that "we have reserves" than incompetence or general inferiority. The Soviets had numbers in spades, and much like Ulysses Grant and Publius Decius Mus , they abused that advantage all the way to winning. The US did it in the Pacific with the US Navy. It's not like we were that much better than the Japanese Navy. The Japanese Navy was extremely professional, well trained, well built, and well equipped. We just swarmed them down with carriers, planes, and battleships. We were churning out boats by the dozen daily. We literally built faster than they could sink.
Turns out Zerg Rushing is an age old and much maligned (pretty much any General who ever got nicknamed "Butcher" was nicknamed such for employing this strategy) but no the less effective means of waging war.
these great soviet advances were not made by the t-34 or by the hordes of infantry, they were made possible by trucks. those trucks all had their most critical components made in the US midwest,
AMO vehicles - Moscow plant - assistance through Brandt.
GAZ vehicles - Molotov Nr. 1, Gorky plant - assistance through Austin and Ford.
GAZ vehicles - Nizhni-Novgorod plant - assistance through Austin and Ford.
YAZ vehicles - Yaroslav plant - assistance through Hercules.
ZIS vehicles - Kuznetsk plant - assistance through Autocar and Brandt.
simply put it was decisive. The t-34 was pretty good, but the soviets still nearly lost the battle of kursk, they had terrible time trying to work their will on army group courland, an essentially already beaten force. There is a glaring myth of soviet military prowess that simply was not there. They lost nearly a generation of young men, these guys were near;ly 50 years behind western europe technologically and prior to ww2 were basically a peasant agrarian culture. They learned alot during the war years, but they didnt do it on their own. just 46 ships from seattle brought them in 1944
22.000 tons of steel provided by U.S. Steel.
3.000 truck chassis, by Ford (the Soviets also assembled U.S. trucks from parts).
3.000 truck differentials from Thornton Tandem Co.
2.000 tractors by Allis Chalmers Co. (agricultural and military use)
1.500 automotive batteries from the Price Battery Corp.
1.000 aircraft provided by the North American Aviation Co.
612 airplanes from the Douglas Aircraft Co.
600 trucks from Mack.
500 Allison aircraft engines.
500 half-tracks from Minneapolis Moline Co.
400 airplanes from Bell Aircraft
400 electric motors from Wagner Electric Co.
400 truck chassis by GM (see Ford above)
310 tons of ball bearings from the Fafnir Company.
200 aircraft provided by the U.S. Navy
200 aircraft engines by Aeromarine
100 tractor-trailer units by GM (trucks)
70 aircraft engines by Pratt & Whitney
that was 1 convoy, there were many more like it.
They didn't even come close to losing the Battle of Kursk.
They lost nearly a generation of young men, these guys were near;ly 50 years behind western europe technologically
That'll depend on what kind of technology we're talking about. In terms of tanks, the Soviets were ahead of pretty much everyone. Massive investment was put into tanks by the Red Army. In 1941 the KV-1 and T-34 were the most advanced tanks in the world (there just weren't a lot of them until 1942). By 1945, they'd long surpassed the tanks being made by the US and UK. There was nothing in the arsenal of the western allies that could compete with IS-2s and IS-3s, and the T34-85 was still a damn good tank. The west wouldn't match Soviet tank quality until the sixties.
They didn't even come close to losing the Battle of Kursk.
They lost nearly a generation of young men, these guys were near;ly 50 years behind western europe technologically
That'll depend on what kind of technology we're talking about. In terms of tanks, the Soviets were ahead of pretty much everyone. Massive investment was put into tanks by the Red Army. In 1941 the KV-1 and T-34 were the most advanced tanks in the world (there just weren't a lot of them until 1942). By 1945, they'd long surpassed the tanks being made by the US and UK. There was nothing in the arsenal of the western allies that could compete with IS-2s and IS-3s, and the T34-85 was still a damn good tank. The west wouldn't match Soviet tank quality until the sixties.
yeah pretty much disagree with everything you said, especially since the centurion made the t-34 extinct in korea. the king tiger was considerably better than the kv1 which was little better than a pillbox. the a-34 comet was far better than the t-34 and the pershing could kill pretty much any of them nearly at will. though to be fair, usually the western allies simply killed tanks with the mustang and hurricane
thekingofkings wrote: especially since the centurion made the t-34 extinct in korea.
Well yeah, but by then the Soviets were pawning off their t-34s to make room for the T54s, and no sooner were Western armored vehicles matching the T54 than the T55 rolled out. The West spent a good 20 years playing catch up on tank development after WWII. You can grab up a bunch of tanks from the post war years and compare them to wartime vehicles, but that's a rather dull attempt at dismissing reality. The post-war Victory Parade held in Berlin on 7 September 1945 saw the US bring forth some Shermans, the UK bring out some Cromwells and Comets, and the Soviets roll down the street in brand new IS-3s. The bulk of the Western Allies' armor arsenal was so insufficient in that moment Truman and Churchhill both commented on. It was no coincidence that Stalin was the one who proposed the parade. It was a purposeful show of force, and it worked because the force was conventionally far greater than what the Western Allies were at the time capable of handling.
kv1 which was little better than a pillbox.
Which is probably why the it gave the Germans so much trouble during Barbarossa. A single KV held up the 7th Panzer for three days, because even though its tracks were shot, nothing in the German arsenal at the time could penetrate its armor. They eventually hammered the tank with so much artillery the crew was killed by the shock waves.
The King Tiger while technically impressive, came down the line much later than the KV-1, so its not really an apt comparison. By 1944 the Soviets were phasing the KV line of tanks out. They were too slow, and too costly. The IS series of heavy tanks were poised to replace them, and the IS tanks chewed through both variations of Tiger and were more numerous. The Pershing meanwhile was the product of WWII's very own F35 development disaster. It was a terrible vehicle that looked great on paper, but was hard to use in the field. A small incline was sufficient to destroy its suspension. We phased that thing out so fast in part because of the Berlin Victory Parade and the realization that it was woefully inferior. The resulting M46 wasn't much better though. And a hearty chunk of our tank force in the Korean War was still Shermans, which to be fair are sadly underrated tank.
But yes. In terms of aviation the West was way ahead, and the Soviets spent a good 15 years playing catch up.
thekingofkings wrote: the pershing was in service in WW2 and was superior to the is-3 and is-2
There were 20 Pershings in Europe in 1945 (22 if we count the really silly looking Super Pershing). Only two of them actually fired any rounds before the war ended. The war was over before the Pershing had a chance to serve. The US had largely allowed its heavy tank program to start languishing in 1943*, and rushed the Pershing out in response to the Battle of Buldge (because the U.S. initially learned the wrong lessons from that battle, but don't worry we'd figured it out by 1946!). The IS-2 was woefully superior to the Pershing. About the only parity between the two was similar top speed, despite the IS-2 being 10 tons heavier! Larger gun, thicker armor, (on top of more advanced armor technology), better range, and in terms of usability, the IS-2 didn't risk tear itself apart just driving over rough terrain.
The IS-3 blew it out of the water. There's a reason the Western Allies rapidly cycled through a number of armored vehicles in the late 40s and 50s while the Soviets didn't.
*A very good book about the US Tank Development programs is Faint Praise by Charles Baily. The book is nominally about the failure of the US military to produce a replacement for the Sherman (and whether or not it really was a failure), but it goes into great detail about the botched development of America's heavy tank program and the production of tank destroyers for the US Army Tank Destroyer Force.
thekingofkings wrote: these great soviet advances were not made by the t-34 or by the hordes of infantry, they were made possible by trucks. those trucks all had their most critical components made in the US midwest,
I'm all for talking about the importance of the non-glamorous logistics stuff, and as I already said the trucks and railway carriages provided by the US played a huge role in ending the war sooner.
I think it all comes down to a basic failure in how many people start to address the question of whether lendlease was decisive. They just look at the scale of lendlease, note that it involves some stupendously big numbers and then conclude that it must have been essential. That's basically what you did - you look at this big list of numbers, lendlease was huge... therefore it was essential.
But having extra help isn't decisive when the situation without that help was already massively in your favour. So let's just look at what the Soviets were making compared to the Germans, without any lendlease considerations. We'll use 1942 as that's before Lendlease really kicked in to gear.
The Germans produced 1,370,000 rifles and carbines. The Soviets produced 4,049,000 rifles and carbines.
The Germans produced 117,000 machine guns. The Soviets produced 356,000 machine guns.
The Germans produced 9,800 mortars. The Soviets produced 230,000.
The Germans produced 41,000 guns and artillery pieces. The Soviets produced 128,000.
The Germans produced 6,200 tanks and SPG. The Soviets produced 24,700 tanks and SPG.
The Germans produced 11,600 combat aircraft. The Soviets produced 21,700.
Only rifles and mortars are unusual figures for 1942, in all other categories the results are fairly consistent with following years (in those two categories the Soviets were rebuilding lost basic weaponry). The point being, as the figures should clearly show, whatever impact lendlease might have had, things were already massively in favour of the Soviets.
but the soviets still nearly lost the battle of kursk
That is just not a very sensible thing to say. It was certainly a brutal fight, and one in which the Germans showed they still had significant technical and doctrinal advantages over the Soviets, but they got nowhere close to completing the encirclement. And from there you have to remember that past German campaigns involved many successful encirclement and breakthroughs, and still hadn't done enough to actually defeat the Soviets, and this time around the Germans had enough strength for just one major operation, and couldn't even complete that one.
thekingofkings wrote: these great soviet advances were not made by the t-34 or by the hordes of infantry, they were made possible by trucks. those trucks all had their most critical components made in the US midwest,
I'm all for talking about the importance of the non-glamorous logistics stuff, and as I already said the trucks and railway carriages provided by the US played a huge role in ending the war sooner.
I think it all comes down to a basic failure in how many people start to address the question of whether lendlease was decisive. They just look at the scale of lendlease, note that it involves some stupendously big numbers and then conclude that it must have been essential. That's basically what you did - you look at this big list of numbers, lendlease was huge... therefore it was essential.
But having extra help isn't decisive when the situation without that help was already massively in your favour. So let's just look at what the Soviets were making compared to the Germans, without any lendlease considerations. We'll use 1942 as that's before Lendlease really kicked in to gear.
The Germans produced 1,370,000 rifles and carbines. The Soviets produced 4,049,000 rifles and carbines.
The Germans produced 117,000 machine guns. The Soviets produced 356,000 machine guns.
The Germans produced 9,800 mortars. The Soviets produced 230,000.
The Germans produced 41,000 guns and artillery pieces. The Soviets produced 128,000.
The Germans produced 6,200 tanks and SPG. The Soviets produced 24,700 tanks and SPG.
The Germans produced 11,600 combat aircraft. The Soviets produced 21,700.
Only rifles and mortars are unusual figures for 1942, in all other categories the results are fairly consistent with following years (in those two categories the Soviets were rebuilding lost basic weaponry). The point being, as the figures should clearly show, whatever impact lendlease might have had, things were already massively in favour of the Soviets.
but the soviets still nearly lost the battle of kursk
That is just not a very sensible thing to say. It was certainly a brutal fight, and one in which the Germans showed they still had significant technical and doctrinal advantages over the Soviets, but they got nowhere close to completing the encirclement. And from there you have to remember that past German campaigns involved many successful encirclement and breakthroughs, and still hadn't done enough to actually defeat the Soviets, and this time around the Germans had enough strength for just one major operation, and couldn't even complete that one.
we are not going to agree, and since I am not gonna sit and trade barbs with you, I will leave it at yeah, it was essential, materially and morale wise. you are also assuming that all the soviet production was soviet alone, it was not. out of those near 25k tanks and spgs, how many of those pistons were made in the ussr? few, very few, they assembled them in the ussr, but you will find "made in detroit" on alot of those engines.
The USSR had very few vibrant industires when it first formed in the 1920s, but there was one that was already well established; Tractors. When Mikhail Tukhachevsky did his first calculations for the Soviet Union's industrial potential in wartime, he used the growing Soviet tractor industry as a basis for how many tanks the USSR could produce. Turns out tractor engines have a lot of the qualities you want in a tank engine; hearty, durable, and a lot of horse power. Pretty much all the powers in WWII struggled with engine limitations in tank design. The Germans never managed to field a good diesel engine. The US had good ones, but ours had a tendency too... um catch fire. The Soviets on the other hand had some great engines owing to earlier developments in their domestic tractor industry. Turns out that when a country recklessly pursues industrial capability to the point of not caring that people are starving to death down the street, they can make a lot of gak.
The funny thing about facts is that you don't agree with them. You either acknowledge them, or ignore them because facts can be inconvenient.
The USSR had very few vibrant industires when it first formed in the 1920s, but there was one that was already well established; Tractors. When Mikhail Tukhachevsky did his first calculations for the Soviet Union's industrial potential in wartime, he used the growing Soviet tractor industry as a basis for how many tanks the USSR could produce. Turns out tractor engines have a lot of the qualities you want in a tank engine; hearty, durable, and a lot of horse power. Pretty much all the powers in WWII struggled with engine limitations in tank design. The Germans never managed to field a good diesel engine. The US had good ones, but ours had a tendency too... um catch fire. The Soviets on the other hand had some great engines owing to earlier developments in their domestic tractor industry. Turns out that when a country recklessly pursues industrial capability to the point of not caring that people are starving to death down the street, they can make a lot of gak.
The funny thing about facts is that you don't agree with them. You either acknowledge them, or ignore them because facts can be inconvenient.
the thing about "facts" is when they are either in direct disagreement with each other. then it remains debatable as to the truth of said "fact"
thekingofkings wrote: we are not going to agree, and since I am not gonna sit and trade barbs with you, I will leave it at yeah, it was essential, materially and morale wise. you are also assuming that all the soviet production was soviet alone, it was not. out of those near 25k tanks and spgs, how many of those pistons were made in the ussr? few, very few, they assembled them in the ussr, but you will find "made in detroit" on alot of those engines.
They're 1942 figures. Before lendlease scaled up. We've been over this.
thekingofkings wrote: we are not going to agree, and since I am not gonna sit and trade barbs with you, I will leave it at yeah, it was essential, materially and morale wise. you are also assuming that all the soviet production was soviet alone, it was not. out of those near 25k tanks and spgs, how many of those pistons were made in the ussr? few, very few, they assembled them in the ussr, but you will find "made in detroit" on alot of those engines.
They're 1942 figures. Before lendlease scaled up. We've been over this.
US companies were in the ussr well before the 40's providing and selling, it wasnt called "lend lease" at the time but that was what it was.
thekingofkings wrote: US companies were in the ussr well before the 40's providing and selling, it wasnt called "lend lease" at the time but that was what it was.
So now you're arguing not for the policy of lendlease, but for international trade in any form?
thekingofkings wrote: US companies were in the ussr well before the 40's providing and selling, it wasnt called "lend lease" at the time but that was what it was.
So now you're arguing not for the policy of lendlease, but for international trade in any form?
The Soviets were selling to Germany, so...
To get back to the original point i was making afore this got derailed it is this : "The soviets did not win ww2 alone, they did need the western allies." every bit of aid was needed, it could be considered decisive. There are too many myths of soviet invincibillity and thats all they are, myths.
thekingofkings wrote: the thing about "facts" is when they are either in direct disagreement with each other. then it remains debatable as to the truth of said "fact"
Sentiments are in disagreement, not facts.
The closest you ever actually got to arguing based on facts was your list of the contents of a lend lease convoy, which was rather effectively replied to, and to which you simply respond with one of the most bold face asspulls I've seen in awhile.
I'll try putting it another way; between 1941 and 1945 the US provided the USSR with 2.3 million tons of steel via Lend Lease. The USSR produced 14.5 million tons of steel in 1941 alone. Drop -> Bucket.
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thekingofkings wrote: There are too many myths of soviet invincibillity and thats all they are, myths.
I don't think anyone is really arguing for Soviet invincibility so much as they're arguing against a myth invented by Cold War propaganda to allow the US to claim credit for the Soviet i"ndustrial miracle."
thekingofkings wrote: the thing about "facts" is when they are either in direct disagreement with each other. then it remains debatable as to the truth of said "fact"
Sentiments are in disagreement, not facts.
The closest you ever actually got to arguing based on facts was your list of the contents of a lend lease convoy, which was rather effectively replied to, and to which you simply respond with one of the most bold face asspulls I've seen in awhile.
I'll try putting it another way; between 1941 and 1945 the US provided the USSR with 2.3 million tons of steel via Lend Lease. The USSR produced 14.5 million tons of steel in 1941 alone. Drop -> Bucket.
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thekingofkings wrote: There are too many myths of soviet invincibillity and thats all they are, myths.
I don't think anyone is really arguing for Soviet invincibility so much as they're arguing against a myth invented by Cold War propaganda to allow the US to claim credit for the Soviet i"ndustrial miracle."
that and i am saying you are full of ...that goes in said bucket,
Remember to be polite guys, we're discussing details behind WW2 on a forum dedicated to toy soldiers. Just chill with your responses a bit, no one wins if it gets nasty
thekingofkings wrote: To get back to the original point i was making afore this got derailed it is this : "The soviets did not win ww2 alone, they did need the western allies." every bit of aid was needed, it could be considered decisive. There are too many myths of soviet invincibillity and thats all they are, myths.
You're not so much getting back to your original point, as much as restating the claim in order to avoid responding to all the ways in which it has been shown as false. You claim the aid was needed and could be considered decisive... but I've shown you production advantaged the Soviets on a rate of 2:1 or higher before lendlease meaningfully started.
The Soviets were, of course, not invincible. But Germany was not capable of a sustained war of production against a country with the resources and brute force industry of Soviet Russia. Once they lost their fast war the game was over, and that happened long before lendlease really kicked in to gear.
thekingofkings wrote: To get back to the original point i was making afore this got derailed it is this : "The soviets did not win ww2 alone, they did need the western allies." every bit of aid was needed, it could be considered decisive. There are too many myths of soviet invincibillity and thats all they are, myths.
You're not so much getting back to your original point, as much as restating the claim in order to avoid responding to all the ways in which it has been shown as false. You claim the aid was needed and could be considered decisive... but I've shown you production advantaged the Soviets on a rate of 2:1 or higher before lendlease meaningfully started.
The Soviets were, of course, not invincible. But Germany was not capable of a sustained war of production against a country with the resources and brute force industry of Soviet Russia. Once they lost their fast war the game was over, and that happened long before lendlease really kicked in to gear.
We'll use 1942 as that's before Lendlease really kicked in to gear.
The Germans produced 1,370,000 rifles and carbines. The Soviets produced 4,049,000 rifles and carbines.
The Germans produced 117,000 machine guns. The Soviets produced 356,000 machine guns.
The Germans produced 9,800 mortars. The Soviets produced 230,000.
The Germans produced 41,000 guns and artillery pieces. The Soviets produced 128,000.
The Germans produced 6,200 tanks and SPG. The Soviets produced 24,700 tanks and SPG.
The Germans produced 11,600 combat aircraft. The Soviets produced 21,700.
Look dude, you might want to think about walking away from this thread. You came in with a strong opinion and it hasn't gone well for you. That's okay, it happens to everyone on the internet sooner or later. It's happened to me more times than I care to remember. No need to take it as a big ego hit and start getting pissy and negative. If you've got too much ego caught up in your opinion so that it isnt possible to learn something, maybe at the very least don't dig yourself a big hole, and just walk away?
We'll use 1942 as that's before Lendlease really kicked in to gear.
The Germans produced 1,370,000 rifles and carbines. The Soviets produced 4,049,000 rifles and carbines.
The Germans produced 117,000 machine guns. The Soviets produced 356,000 machine guns.
The Germans produced 9,800 mortars. The Soviets produced 230,000.
The Germans produced 41,000 guns and artillery pieces. The Soviets produced 128,000.
The Germans produced 6,200 tanks and SPG. The Soviets produced 24,700 tanks and SPG.
The Germans produced 11,600 combat aircraft. The Soviets produced 21,700.
Look dude, you might want to think about walking away from this thread. You came in with a strong opinion and it hasn't gone well for you. That's okay, it happens to everyone on the internet sooner or later. It's happened to me more times than I care to remember. No need to take it as a big ego hit and start getting pissy and negative. If you've got too much ego caught up in your opinion so that it isnt possible to learn something, maybe at the very least don't dig yourself a big hole, and just walk away?
The IS-3 blew it out of the water. There's a reason the Western Allies rapidly cycled through a number of armored vehicles in the late 40s and 50s while the Soviets didn't.
Actually Zaloga did an intensive study of comparisons between versions of the Panther, Sherman, T34, Pershing - M48 in WWII and Korea. The Pershing, while underpowered engine wise, was the equal to the IS 2- its optics, loading, and 90mm gun were superior.
Bu you are correct in that very few Pershings made it to Europe.
The argument about the truck is a strong one. Without that logistics, the Russians would not have been able to build so many tanks and maintain their troops. We have proof-just look at the Germans. If your army is fueled by horses, you can't maintain modern warfare over time.
The IS-3 blew it out of the water. There's a reason the Western Allies rapidly cycled through a number of armored vehicles in the late 40s and 50s while the Soviets didn't.
Actually Zaloga did an intensive study of comparisons between versions of the Panther, Sherman, T34, Pershing - M48 in WWII and Korea. The Pershing, while underpowered engine wise, was the equal to the IS 2- its optics, loading, and 90mm gun were superior.
Bu you are correct in that very few Pershings made it to Europe.
The argument about the truck is a strong one. Without that logistics, the Russians would not have been able to build so many tanks and maintain their troops. We have proof-just look at the Germans. If your army is fueled by horses, you can't maintain modern warfare over time.
There were over 2000 of them built by the end of 45'. The need for them in Europe significantly less by the end of the 44-45 winter, so there wasn't a huge rush to ship them over. Had hostilities with Russia looked likely, you could bet there would have been much more shipped over.
I should also note that comparing the Pershing and IS-2 is not great.
The Pershing was effectively a panther sized MBT. Its gun was designed for both HE but also antitank applications (I believe its the same 90mm as found on the Jackson Tank Destroyer).
The IS-2 (one of my personal favorites) was a heavy tank designed for infantry assault. Its gun is effectively long barreled artillery, somewhat similar in function and use to an SU or IS -152. Its a 5 inch artillery gun. Its loaded in two parts and designed for HE (personnel and blowing bunkers). Its effective anti-armor by having enough power to blow off the turret. BOOOM! but thats a very secondary role.
Its interesting that both the IS-2 and Pershing were able to have tanks with similar armor protection and BOOM power to a Tiger but substantially less weight.
To really compare you have to look to the T34s successor: the T54.
The Soviets were, of course, not invincible. But Germany was not capable of a sustained war of production against a country with the resources and brute force industry of Soviet Russia. Once they lost their fast war the game was over, and that happened long before lendlease really kicked in to gear.
I broadly agree with your argument but it's worth bearing in mind a couple of points:
1: British bombing, despite ongoing debate, had a huge strategic effect. Steel, synthetic oil, etc etc production was hugely affected, for instance, and Speer details how by 43 it was essentially wiping out his efficiency increases. A million personnel were tied up in AA activities.
2: Soviet production was incredibly effective. It's actually amazing to what extent some of the Five Year Plans actually worked and transformed the USSR into a major industrial power.
But a key architect (in every sense) of the Five Year Plan was actually American. Albert Kahn's company designed just about every single tractor and tank factory that powered their industrialisation.
We'll use 1942 as that's before Lendlease really kicked in to gear.
The Germans produced 1,370,000 rifles and carbines. The Soviets produced 4,049,000 rifles and carbines.
The Germans produced 117,000 machine guns. The Soviets produced 356,000 machine guns.
The Germans produced 9,800 mortars. The Soviets produced 230,000.
The Germans produced 41,000 guns and artillery pieces. The Soviets produced 128,000.
The Germans produced 6,200 tanks and SPG. The Soviets produced 24,700 tanks and SPG.
The Germans produced 11,600 combat aircraft. The Soviets produced 21,700.
Look dude, you might want to think about walking away from this thread. You came in with a strong opinion and it hasn't gone well for you. That's okay, it happens to everyone on the internet sooner or later. It's happened to me more times than I care to remember. No need to take it as a big ego hit and start getting pissy and negative. If you've got too much ego caught up in your opinion so that it isnt possible to learn something, maybe at the very least don't dig yourself a big hole, and just walk away?
This reply has nothing to do with this comment, but with a previous comment. I forgot to reply the other day
When I talk about technology, I'm not saying that the Germans didn't have trucks or the Russians didn't have trucks, that would be silly.
The point I'm trying to make is that technology drove the type of war the Germans and Russians fought on the Eastern Front.
Some German soldiers marched all the way to Stalingrad from Poland. Did they do that because they fancied a long walk? Of course not. They marched because there wasn't enough trucks for all of them.
In order to increase the panzer divisions pre-Barbarossa, Hitler halved the existing divisions, due to a lack of tanks. If the trucks had been there, if the tanks had been there, this would not have happened in both examples.
Similary the lack of trucks and tanks forced the Red Army to draw upon a resource that it did not lack for - manpower.
So now you have two armies, forced by technological constraints, to engage in a war of attrition similar to the battles of the Great War, which is why the casualty rate was so high IMO.
That's another reason why German infantry had to be so good - they can't win a resource war, a war of attrition.
This the British Army. Condensed milk is what you'll get and you'll like it whether you like it or not!!! And you WILL like it.
Yeah, if you're in Salisbury plain in the middle of November, condensed milk is fine, but if you're posted to Cyprus, then it's the Mediterranean diet all the way
Frazzled wrote: The argument about the truck is a strong one. Without that logistics, the Russians would not have been able to build so many tanks and maintain their troops. We have proof-just look at the Germans.
The argument that trucks made a big difference is a good and fair argument, and no-one is arguing against it. Here's me earlier in the thread;
"The trucks and railway carriages the Soviets received were excellent and made many offensives more effective than they would otherwise have been, but they weren't transformative."
"as I already said the trucks and railway carriages provided by the US played a huge role in ending the war sooner"
The point in dispute is whether lendlease changed the war from one the Soviets would have lost to one they would have won. And the answer there is pretty clear.
If your army is fueled by horses, you can't maintain modern warfare over time.
Or you can just go with the Russian model of putting the men on horseback and hoping they advance fast enough to loot enough food and ammo to keep going. The horses eat grass, and if there's no grass they eat the straw from the roofs of peasant huts. If things go wrong the unit will probably starve and die, but oh well that's life in Soviet Russia.
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Frazzled wrote: Its interesting that both the IS-2 and Pershing were able to have tanks with similar armor protection and BOOM power to a Tiger but substantially less weight.
The Tiger was a 1930s design afterall. It's reputation is really driven by it being the first heavy tank on the scene to carry a gun worthy of a heavy tank. But in most respects, armour to weight, reliability etc its 1930s design showed through. There are reasons the Germans stopped making them in 1944.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hivefleet Oblivion wrote: 1: British bombing, despite ongoing debate, had a huge strategic effect. Steel, synthetic oil, etc etc production was hugely affected, for instance, and Speer details how by 43 it was essentially wiping out his efficiency increases. A million personnel were tied up in AA activities.
It wasn't just British bombing, they only started a few months before the Americans. And neither the British nor the US started delivering real results until mid 43, by which time we're looking at the Germans being stuck in an inevitable losing position.
Probably the biggest factor before '43 was the British blockade, which gave the Germans some very acute shortages.
2: Soviet production was incredibly effective. It's actually amazing to what extent some of the Five Year Plans actually worked and transformed the USSR into a major industrial power.
But a key architect (in every sense) of the Five Year Plan was actually American. Albert Kahn's company designed just about every single tractor and tank factory that powered their industrialisation.
Kahn should be a lot more famous as one of the creators of the industrial age.
Anyhow, while I think it is interesting to talk about Kahn and other very important American individuals to the development of Soviet industry and armaments (Christie is another worth mentioning), I think there's a very big difference between the actions of private individuals, and government policies.
Afterall, Einstein was born in Germany. But we don't credit Germany with developing the bomb that defeated the Japanese
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: When I talk about technology, I'm not saying that the Germans didn't have trucks or the Russians didn't have trucks, that would be silly.
The point I'm trying to make is that technology drove the type of war the Germans and Russians fought on the Eastern Front.
I don't think anyone is arguing otherwise.
In order to increase the panzer divisions pre-Barbarossa, Hitler halved the existing divisions, due to a lack of tanks. If the trucks had been there, if the tanks had been there, this would not have happened in both examples.
Actually, the Fall of France, start of Barbarossa was basically the peak time for trucks in the German army. They took a crazy number from the French. This was probably one reason for the increase in the number of panzer divisions - given the resources they now had it made sense to move to more divisions with less tanks but supplemented by a lot more motorised men, guns and artillery.
Similary the lack of trucks and tanks forced the Red Army to draw upon a resource that it did not lack for - manpower.
So now you have two armies, forced by technological constraints, to engage in a war of attrition similar to the battles of the Great War, which is why the casualty rate was so high IMO.
Not really though. The war in the east remained highly mobile with many big encircling maneuvers. Remember the Fall of France happened in six weeks, with most German infantry marching from the border to Paris. Meanwhile the Allies Normandy campaign, fighting over the same ground, were in bogged down grind with a couple of breakthroughs. Mechanisation and motorisation was a huge benefit to the western allies, but it wasn't the only factor at play. The Germans were more hardened and deployment reflected the hard won lessons from the early stages of the war.
That's another reason why German infantry had to be so good - they can't win a resource war, a war of attrition.
That doesn't really make a lot of sense. You don't make a strategic decision to maybe have more elite troops, or maybe have less elite troops. No-one would ever think 'oh we've got lots of troops so lets just let them be gak'. You try and make your troops as good as you can, and then come up against whatever political and infrastructure limitations your country might have. The Germans troops were excellent because they had high quality officers and excellent doctrines.
There was certainly a resource war of attrition, but that was more a product of both sides dealing with the armies and strategic circumstances they had. Both sides were always looking for decision breakthroughs.
That doesn't really make a lot of sense. You don't make a strategic decision to maybe have more elite troops, or maybe have less elite troops. No-one would ever think 'oh we've got lots of troops so lets just let them be gak'. You try and make your troops as good as you can, and then come up against whatever political and infrastructure limitations your country might have. The Germans troops were excellent because they had high quality officers and excellent doctrines.
I don't deny the skill of the average German soldier, but for most of the latter end of the war, the Germans were on the defensive, and defence is easier than attack. The terrain in Italy and Normandy was a massive boost to the defending Germans, but when the situation was reversed, battle of the bulge, the Germans had a hell of a time trying to shift dug in American infantry, and ultimately, the delays cost them...
Automatically Appended Next Post: You also overlook the fact that one of the reasons why the Germans attacked France in 1940 was becuase they couldn't play the long game.
They couldn't match the resources of the British Empire, the British blockade and its effects from the Great War were still remembered in Germany, and long term, the allies superior resources would win the day. So again, German doctrine is driven by industrial and technological constraints.
If they don't defeat France quickly, they don't win the war and we're back to 1914 again for the Germans...
A lot of that comes from the fact that Germany went to war about four years too early. They were hoping no one would kick up a fuss about them invading Poland....
I'm not quite sure how they thought no one would, but hey they already had Austria and Czechoslovakia by then.
Or you can just go with the Russian model of putting the men on horseback and hoping they advance fast enough to loot enough food and ammo to keep going. The horses eat grass, and if there's no grass they eat the straw from the roofs of peasant huts. If things go wrong the unit will probably starve and die, but oh well that's life in Soviet Russia.{/quote]
Disagree. Soviet forces had a substantial train and truck logistical tail. While they had beaucoup infantry formations initially their logistics were mechanized (after 1941). By 1943 they had substantial mechanized formations as well, which increased through the war. Of course they paled next to the US, but the US intentionally kept the number of their divisions limited so they could focus on that.
The Tiger was a 1930s design afterall. It's reputation is really driven by it being the first heavy tank on the scene to carry a gun worthy of a heavy tank. But in most respects, armour to weight, reliability etc its 1930s design showed through. There are reasons the Germans stopped making them in 1944{/quote]
Agreed that its development had started pre-war.
Hardly.
1. The French Char would be considered the first heavy in WWII. Its armor and firepower was substantially heavier than German armor-thus advancing driving the development of the PZIV.
2. Inversely the Soviets started the war with two heavies for their time: the T34 and the KV1. The KV1 was effectively the Tiger of 1941 and early 1942. The German shock at the T34 drove the PZVI.
Afterall, Einstein was born in Germany. But we don't credit Germany with developing the bomb that defeated the Japanese
Well, Einstein wasn't actively involved in the development of the Atomic bomb. His discovery revealed the physical process which allowed for the release of the energy contained in an atom but that discovery was in 1905. His recommendation for the US to begin a nuclear weapons programme and meetings with Roosevelt probably started the Manhattan project but apart from that, his input was non-existent.
So whats the overall point of this thread? That Russia had it covered, no one else needed to get involved because their contribution was negligible? Cause thats all I'm reading from some people.
I doubt that Russia could have really won this on its own.
WrentheFaceless wrote: So whats the overall point of this thread? That Russia had it covered, no one else needed to get involved because their contribution was negligible? Cause thats all I'm reading from some people.
I doubt that Russia could have really won this on its own.
I started the thread with the contention that Operation Overlord was unnecessary, if the only end game was defeat Nazi Germany. The Soviets could have defeated the Nazis without D-Day.
Whether that would have been good for Europe is another matter.
The start of the thread was to consider the Russian nationalist claims that the Soviet Union could have won the war by themselves from mid-1944 if D-Day had not happened.
This may be true however it ignores the fact that everything up to D-Day did happen, and naturally affected the course of the war to that point. So then the discussion broadened to whether the Soviets could have won the war by themselves entirely, presumably assuming that Germany successfully invaded the UK in 1940-41 and pacified their western front. Or perhaps the Germans never invaded France, and concentrated their efforts completely on the Soviet Union.
Frazzled wrote: BY mid 1944 the Allies also could have defeated Germany without the USSR's help, so its kind of a stupid argument.
Without the USSR involved you would still need a change in the aims of invasion, highly unlikely given the hypothetical of German manpower and resources not squandered away in the East to bolster the western approaches.
Atomic weapons would also be no guarantee surrender or change of attitude to Germans opposed to the terms of allied surrender at the time.
Without an ideological war in the east you may have seen a regime change, but again, total capitulation was unpalatable to a lot of Germans.
Frazzled wrote: BY mid 1944 the Allies also could have defeated Germany without the USSR's help, so its kind of a stupid argument.
That's pushing it. If Germany had the Eastern Front resources on hand to guard the French shores, we'd never have cracked that nut.
Eeeeh... We still could by using our vastly superior intelligence warfare. We managed to make German High Command believe the real invasion was happening in Calais even after we had already landed forces in Normandy. All we'd need to do is spread some more disinformation about a second main invasion force coming in from the south of France (or some other location like that) as well to divert German forces there.
Frazzled wrote: BY mid 1944 the Allies also could have defeated Germany without the USSR's help, so its kind of a stupid argument.
That's pushing it. If Germany had the Eastern Front resources on hand to guard the French shores, we'd never have cracked that nut.
Its the same argument. By mid 1944 they were a broken force. It would have been much harder, but still do-able. Also if its delayed until 1945 and Germany is now radioactive is extraordinarily easier.
Frazzled wrote: BY mid 1944 the Allies also could have defeated Germany without the USSR's help, so its kind of a stupid argument.
That's pushing it. If Germany had the Eastern Front resources on hand to guard the French shores, we'd never have cracked that nut.
Eeeeh... We still could by using our vastly superior intelligence warfare. We managed to make German High Command believe the real invasion was happening in Calais even after we had already landed forces in Normandy. All we'd need to do is spread some more disinformation about a second main invasion force coming in from the south of France (or some other location like that) as well to divert German forces there.
Don't forget we did actually invade through Southern France. That gets forgotten a lot. (Operation Dragoon).
If the USSR is no longer fighting Germany -through some sort of truce I guess the Russians stop at the border or something its hard to envision- then Germany still has to station large formations there, plus they would not have been able to move substantial quantities west in time.
I do remember. However I meant we could pull some forces away from Northern France for D-Day.
Later, when they realise Normandy is the actual main invasion (we give them information saying that the south invasion has been cancelled or something), the germans pull some of those southern forces north to try to push us back, at which point we hit them from behind with the southern france invasion and catch them between two fronts.
Ah got it, kind of like what the Germans thought Normandy was. vs. an expected Calais attack. That was kidnof the idea of Dragoon. We have to remember the Allies launched multiple sequential amphibious landings in Italy. Its one reason Normandy went so well-they paid a bloody price to learn the lessons.
Frazzled wrote: Ah got it, kind of like what the Germans thought Normandy was. vs. an expected Calais attack. That was kidnof the idea of Dragoon. We have to remember the Allies launched multiple sequential amphibious landings in Italy. Its one reason Normandy went so well-they paid a bloody price to learn the lessons.
Dragoon took place 2 months after Normandy. It had almost no play in the Normandy planning. Years before, in the initial planning stages, it was meant that way, but when the leadership realized they wouldn't have the logisitical capability to do both invasions simultaneously, that planning changed.
Now with Dragoon, they did many diversionary tactics, keeping the Germans guessing along the entire southern coast of France where the main thrust would be. They attacked Islands, did naval raids, even dropped dummy paratroop units, all over the southern coastline. The German forces in that army was more confused about what was going on, then in Normandy.
Japan doesn't occupy Indo-China, and thus head to a confrontation with Britain and the USA.
The Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, and the United States took very great exception. The course for war in the Pacific is complimentary but distinct from that of Europe, and arguably Historians have been remiss in continually thinking that WWII began with the Invasion of Poland (a byproduct of the generally European focus of the war itself), rather than the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Japan doesn't occupy Indo-China, and thus head to a confrontation with Britain and the USA.
The Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, and the United States took very great exception. The course for war in the Pacific is complimentary but distinct from that of Europe, and arguably Historians have been remiss in continually thinking that WWII began with the Invasion of Poland (a byproduct of the generally European focus of the war itself), rather than the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
But it was only after the occupation of Indo-China that FDR started slapping embargoes on Japan for things like Oil.
Another aspect which needs consideration, I think, is that whilst the west may not have been required for its material by the USSR, we were definitely important for our information sources.
Without our codebreakers and the transferal of information gained from our intelligence gathering activites to the Russians (albeit sometimes due to their spy at Bletchley), they may have been less able to prepare for German attacks, such as the previously mentioned Battle of Kursk. Whether this would have tipped the war enough to make a difference, I don't know, but it should be considered.
Japan doesn't occupy Indo-China, and thus head to a confrontation with Britain and the USA.
The Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, and the United States took very great exception. The course for war in the Pacific is complimentary but distinct from that of Europe, and arguably Historians have been remiss in continually thinking that WWII began with the Invasion of Poland (a byproduct of the generally European focus of the war itself), rather than the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
But it was only after the occupation of Indo-China that FDR started slapping embargoes on Japan for things like Oil.
True without IndoChina the embargoes wouldn't have have been triggered thus starting the clock to war.
I would agree though that WWII really starts with Japan and Manchuria.
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A Town Called Malus wrote: Another aspect which needs consideration, I think, is that whilst the west may not have been required for its material by the USSR, we were definitely vital for our information sources.
Without our codebreakers and the transferal of information gained from our intelligence gathering activites to the Russians (albeit sometimes due to their spy at Bletchley), they may have been less able to prepare for German attacks, such as the previously mentioned Battle of Kursk. Whether this would have tipped the war enough to make a difference, I don't know, but it should be considered.
Thats why I find these slightly revisionist arguments to be stupid. It took the US, Britain, Free French, and the USSR to beat the hell out of Germany. Could the USSR have driven Germany back out? Potentially. Did the Russians take and cause the vast majority of casualties against Germany?-you betcha. Are the T34s and IS-2s badass tanks (know one tanlks about the unsung STG and SU 100-nothing says F you like mounting a naval gun on a tank...) Could Germany have potentially beaten the USSR? -yes. Were all the allies instrumental in defeating Germany? yes. Is SPAM awesome with pineapple? OH YEA.
I can understand different scenarios etc. but the "who had the biggest " arguments are meh.
Hitler stays East, and from 1940 ramps up plans to invade Russia in a crusade against Bolshevism.
The Phony war is as was except that, Hitler forces concentrating on Russia also means little threat to France and Britain.
Aside from stern words, the Poles are beyond help at this stage.
France can secure terms with Hitler, a non aggression pact for example.
Can Germany expect an armistice with the Brits and maybe help against the Soviets -many would remember the revolution, the Whites and the murder of the Tsars family.
Could Britain side with Germany in a fight against communism?
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: But it was only after the occupation of Indo-China that FDR started slapping embargoes on Japan for things like Oil.
The invasion prompted the action, but the Japanese war in China had been the primary source of tension leading to it. Conflict between the US and Japan in the Pacific was not dependent on the events of the war in Europe. The rapid defeat of France offered an opportunity, but did not cause any significant shift in Japanese grand strategy. They'd already decided on a southern course of action when it became apparent a northern one was untenable. The USSR beat Japan bad at the battles of Khalkhin Gol, and the tension between the US and Japan had been high for the past twenty years. The course was set for war in the pacific before the war began in Europe.
Hitler stays East, and from 1940 ramps up plans to invade Russia in a crusade against Bolshevism.
The Phony war is as was except that, Hitler forces concentrating on Russia also means little threat to France and Britain.
Aside from stern words, the Poles are beyond help at this stage.
France can secure terms with Hitler, a non aggression pact for example.
Can Germany expect an armistice with the Brits and maybe help against the Soviets -many would remember the revolution, the Whites and the murder of the Tsars family.
Could Britain side with Germany in a fight against communism?
Alternatively, what if Poland grants Germany corridor access to Prussia and Danzig?
Even more interestingly, what if Poland gets in bed with Germany like Romania?
Mr. Burning wrote: Sino jaoaense war excepted didnt Japans expansion and belligerence in the pacific region run counter to Americas Desires anyway?
Wasn't some kind of conflict in the pacific between Japan and the US inevitable, even without Pearl? The Philippines for example?
Yes to the first question. To the second, the only thing that staved off war between the Empire of Japan and the United States of America in the 1930s was Japan's pursuit of a Northern Expansion strategy. Japan and Russia were regional rivals since the turn of the century, and the invasion of Manchuria was in part to gain a regional advantage to strengthen Japan and to deny it to Russia/USSR. However the crushing defeat given Japan by the USSR in 1939 at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol forced a change in Japanese Grand Strategy. Their army was incapable of defeating the Red Army, and they realized this very quickly. The focus shifted south, towards Indo-China and the islands of the South Pacific. This strategy had been avoided because it meant an unavoidable war with America, but when the North cut off, Japan put their money on a climatic naval conflict with the US that could force a settlement before a prolonged war began. Thus Pearl Harbor was planned to cripple the Pacific Fleet and set the stage for Japan to win a large sea battle. Fortunately for us, the war didn't remotely go as Japan planned.
Hitler stays East, and from 1940 ramps up plans to invade Russia in a crusade against Bolshevism.
The Phony war is as was except that, Hitler forces concentrating on Russia also means little threat to France and Britain.
Aside from stern words, the Poles are beyond help at this stage.
France can secure terms with Hitler, a non aggression pact for example.
Can Germany expect an armistice with the Brits and maybe help against the Soviets -many would remember the revolution, the Whites and the murder of the Tsars family.
Could Britain side with Germany in a fight against communism?
Alternatively, what if Poland grants Germany corridor access to Prussia and Danzig?
Even more interestingly, what if Poland gets in bed with Germany like Romania?
Hitlers gonna Hitler you know.
Poland had to be burnt to cinders. So long as ole one ball is in power I don't think there is any alternate history where Poland and Germany buddy up.
Yeah I think Frazz's scenario ignores the strength of feeling in Poland at the time.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I like the scenario that Churchill pushed for, which was the landing of the Anvil (nee Dragoon) force in the Balkans rather than France once it was realised it would be delayed/less necessary.
How much would this have affected the End/Post War dispositions and would this have ignited an East vs West war there and then.
Regarding Russia sweeping all before it. 1941 was a pivotal year for Stalin and the conflict
He was probably certain he was due a bullet in the back of the skull and an un-marked grave but his deputies decided to bend their knees and beg him to lead them. (very un-soviet).
A strengthened Stalin, more bullet proof even by the standards of a dictator could bend his people to stopping the German advance and then to fighting back.
LordofHats wrote: Thus Pearl Harbor was planned to cripple the Pacific Fleet and set the stage for Japan to win a large sea battle. Fortunately for us, the war didn't remotely go as Japan planned.
Japan's war plans always baffled me. Didn't they already know the US was a manufacturing colossus with vast resources? They must have known that the US could replace it's material losses very quickly. I don't see how the War in the Pacific could have gone any differently, even if Pearl Harbour had been successful (sank carriers too), it only would have dragged out the end result a few more years.
notprop wrote: Yeah I think Frazz's scenario ignores the strength of feeling in Poland at the time.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I like the scenario that Churchill pushed for, which was the landing of the Anvil (nee Dragoon) force in the Balkans rather than France once it was realised it would be delayed/less necessary.
How much would this have affected the End/Post War dispositions and would this have ignited an East vs West war there and then.
What was the felling in Poland? Question -not criticism.
Alternatively what if Hitler begins buddying up to Poland early on (like in early 1930s)?
LordofHats wrote: Thus Pearl Harbor was planned to cripple the Pacific Fleet and set the stage for Japan to win a large sea battle. Fortunately for us, the war didn't remotely go as Japan planned.
Japan's war plans always baffled me. Didn't they already know the US was a manufacturing colossus with vast resources? They must have known that the US could replace it's material losses very quickly. I don't see how the War in the Pacific could have gone any differently, even if Pearl Harbour had been successful (sank carriers too), it only would have dragged out the end result a few more years.
Their naval history was one of a major victory against a major foe that drove them to the table.
As may have been noted, the navy was very against it. The army, like good politicians, volunteered someone else for the war.
Considering the army was sucking wind in China, one might have thought they would have lost power vs. the navy. Thats an interesting discussion in itself.
Alternatively what if Hitler begins buddying up to Poland early on (like in early 1930s)?
'Hey, Polish those communists sure hate ubermencsch like us'
'Do they?'
'yeah, hey, here's an idea, lets invade, we'll divvy up the spoils'
'Okay....'
.......
'Hey, German, why are you massing on our border'
'Subhuman says what'
BLAM!
Isn't this whole thread basically moot? The allies had been taxing the Germans the whole war while Russia built up it's industry. Plus - if not for truly idiotic decisions in the Russian campaign by Hilter Moscow would have Fallen within the first 3 months of the campaign. By all means that is what should have happend - but alas - Hitler was a Lunatic after all.
notprop wrote: Yeah I think Frazz's scenario ignores the strength of feeling in Poland at the time.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I like the scenario that Churchill pushed for, which was the landing of the Anvil (nee Dragoon) force in the Balkans rather than France once it was realised it would be delayed/less necessary.
How much would this have affected the End/Post War dispositions and would this have ignited an East vs West war there and then.
What was the felling in Poland? Question -not criticism.
Alternatively what if Hitler begins buddying up to Poland early on (like in early 1930s)?
They has this weird sort of leftist democratic authoritarian regime thing going on (if that makes sense) created out out the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Discrimination against mnotities was a big thing there including against ethinic Germans. It was a pretty popular set up (unless you were a minority I guess) that had redistributed lands (as I say leftist) but done so with out much/any blood letting etc and without removing the wealthy so reasonable stable. People were comparitively well off and happy that there was a Polish state. They were well aware of the Nazi and rightly wary of both Gernam and Soviet Nationalism.
They had Alliances and assurances with Britain amoungst other for defence and also had a fair sized standing army that they believed were up to the job - though it later proved had fallen behind in terms of equipment and we all now know how books the assurances of Briatin and France turned out to be.
So all in all I dont think the Poles would have had any truck with Hitler. The were making a decent fist of battling the Germans albeit on the back foot until to Soviets attacked their rear and engaged their reserves.
feeder wrote: Japan's war plans always baffled me. Didn't they already know the US was a manufacturing colossus with vast resources? They must have known that the US could replace it's material losses very quickly. I don't see how the War in the Pacific could have gone any differently, even if Pearl Harbour had been successful (sank carriers too), it only would have dragged out the end result a few more years.
The plan was "the US has a lot of support for isolationist policies, if we cripple their navy and stop the immediate threat we can force them to agree to a peace treaty that gives us the territory we want without US interference". Japan (or at least some of Japanese leadership) knew that a long war would be bad, the idea was that it would be a short war where US production advantages don't matter. Unfortunately for Japan they completely misjudged US reactions to the attack on Pearl Harbor and got stuck with the long war they couldn't win.
Frazzled wrote: Their naval history was one of a major victory against a major foe that drove them to the table.
This. The Battle of Tsushima was a defining moment for the Imperial Japanese Navy, and shaped much of their future outlook.
As may have been noted, the navy was very against it. The army, like good politicians, volunteered someone else for the war.
Depends. Some in the Army still favored the Northern Strategy, while the Imperial Navy always favored the Southern Strategy. The Navy itself was divided over whether or not the United States could be defeated. They all recognized the Imperial Navy could not endure a long war, but the Imperial Navy understood Democracy's core weakness in war time; while the leaders of a democracy may want to go on, if the people don't they will cave. The hope was that a decisive battle would turn the public against war and force the government to the negotiating table, to which Japan would offer what they considered generous terms highly favorable to the US.
The Imperial military machine sorely underestimated how galvanizing a direct (and undeclared) attack on the United States would be. Further they continually failed to force a decisive battle that they desired. Midway and Coral Sea were attempts at doing so, but both times the Imperial Navy failed. Further, the Navy at the time still believed in the Battleship heavily, realizing far too late in the war that Carriers were the new kings of the sea, and the US sank most of Japan's by the end of 1943 while churning out floating airfields at an alarming rate.
feeder wrote: Japan's war plans always baffled me. Didn't they already know the US was a manufacturing colossus with vast resources? They must have known that the US could replace it's material losses very quickly. I don't see how the War in the Pacific could have gone any differently, even if Pearl Harbour had been successful (sank carriers too), it only would have dragged out the end result a few more years.
The plan was "the US has a lot of support for isolationist policies, if we cripple their navy and stop the immediate threat we can force them to agree to a peace treaty that gives us the territory we want without US interference". Japan (or at least some of Japanese leadership) knew that a long war would be bad, the idea was that it would be a short war where US production advantages don't matter. Unfortunately for Japan they completely misjudged US reactions to the attack on Pearl Harbor and got stuck with the long war they couldn't win.
They wanted to move fast, take as much as possible before the US could rebuild. Minus carriers they had free reign for 6-12 months to consolidate and take land and rescources. By time done they hopes to force US to tolerate it.
But...that failed badly.
There fact of keeping veteran air crew in action vs US pulling to training ment the air units lost the elite.
The US wwhere improving training, and general quality.
Lots of things like that tilted againt a a long war win for Japan.
You only need to read the production stats to realise that neither Germany nor Japan nor the two in combination could survive a long war against the combined output of the Allies. Admiral Yamamoto knew this in 1940, that is why he was pessimistic about the war.
Dickering about minor differences in quality of individual weapons, vehicles and troops is a distraction from the fact that western and Soviet industry massively outproduced the Axis with competitive equipment, and also manned these guns, planes, tanks and ships with decently trained crews.
welshhoppo wrote: And the Battle of Tsushima also spelt the downfall of the Japanese in WW2, it taught them a smaller force could take down a larger one with speed.
Which only goes so far once the USA starts spewing capital ships over the Pacific.
Tsushima taught lots of people lots of things. The only previous naval engagement in memory at the time was Austria-Hungary v Italy, the results of which led to a lot of senior naval commanders advocating the ram, of all things. Virtually all the heavier ships in the IJN came from British shipyards and were built from RN templates. Even the ones that weren't used British equipment (the Barr and Stroud rangefinder or Marconi wireless, for example). Naturally, everyone was desperate to see what would happen, it's why we pushed so hard to get RN observers on board.
It was the first modern fleet action, and informed naval strategy for the better part of the next two decades.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: I don't deny the skill of the average German soldier, but for most of the latter end of the war, the Germans were on the defensive, and defence is easier than attack. The terrain in Italy and Normandy was a massive boost to the defending Germans, but when the situation was reversed, battle of the bulge, the Germans had a hell of a time trying to shift dug in American infantry, and ultimately, the delays cost them...
No argument there. The Germans in large part benefited from being on the offensive early in the war when the advantages lay with the attacker, and on the defensive late in the war when the natural advantages lay with the defender.
But none of that had anything to do with the comment you made. You said "That's another reason why German infantry had to be so good - they can't win a resource war, a war of attrition." That argument seems to rely on some kind of strange decision making process in which a country might decide their troops are good enough, they recognise that because they've got lots of them they won't bother to, you know, train them and stuff. It's very weird.
You also overlook the fact that one of the reasons why the Germans attacked France in 1940 was becuase they couldn't play the long game.
I didn't overlook it. The hell man? Here's fething me, fething posting in this fething thread; "Probably the biggest factor before '43 was the British blockade, which gave the Germans some very acute shortages."
It wasn't raised in my response to you because it was completely irrelevant to the issues I was discussing with you.
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welshhoppo wrote: A lot of that comes from the fact that Germany went to war about four years too early. They were hoping no one would kick up a fuss about them invading Poland....
I'm not quite sure how they thought no one would, but hey they already had Austria and Czechoslovakia by then.
It was Hitler that left Munich furious. He expected it to give him the war he wanted, and was furious when he ended up instead getting all the stuff he wanted but no war.
Sure, Germany would be much better prepared in 4 years. But so would Britain and France, Germany had caught them on the hop, but they were playing catch up big time. Then there's Soviet Russia, who's delayed program of modernisation would have actually been in place (assuming Stalin didn't decide to kill everyone again). That would have given Russia the most modern army in the world, as well as the biggest.
It isn't so much about your own preparedness, but your preparedness relative to your enemies. 1940 was pretty much the best year for Hitler to go to war. That was the great bungle of Britain and France - they got walked in to the war, instead of realising that they should have fought earlier, before Germany's re-armament was in place, or later, when their own re-armament operations were in effect.
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Frazzled wrote: 1. The French Char would be considered the first heavy in WWII. Its armor and firepower was substantially heavier than German armor-thus advancing driving the development of the PZIV. 2. Inversely the Soviets started the war with two heavies for their time: the T34 and the KV1. The KV1 was effectively the Tiger of 1941 and early 1942.
Read the sentence I actually wrote; "It's reputation is really driven by it being the first heavy tank on the scene to carry a gun worthy of a heavy tank."
If I was stupid enough to think it was the first heavy tank, I would have written 'the first heavy tank'. But instead I wrote 'to carry a gun worthy of a heavy tank'... because that's the important distinction.
The KV-1 carried a 76mm gun that was very slightly modified and functionally identical to the 76mm in the T-34. The major variant carried a 152mm howitzer, which is scary if you're trying to hide in a foxhole, but it isn't a dedicated tank killer.
The French Char B1 carried a 75mm howitzer. For tank killing it had a 47mm gun.
You will notice that all of the above armaments are absolutely nothing like the 88mm gun carried by the German Tiger. You will now understand what I meant when I said "It's reputation is really driven by it being the first heavy tank on the scene to carry a gun worthy of a heavy tank."
The German shock at the T34 drove the PZVI.
The T-34 isn't a heavy tank. It weighed 26 tons. Come on.
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A Town Called Malus wrote: Well, Einstein wasn't actively involved in the development of the Atomic bomb. His discovery revealed the physical process which allowed for the release of the energy contained in an atom but that discovery was in 1905. His recommendation for the US to begin a nuclear weapons programme and meetings with Roosevelt probably started the Manhattan project but apart from that, his input was non-existent.
You've missed the point of the analogy. The claim was made that Americans played a part in tooling up the Soviet Union, because private Americans did things in Soviet Russia in the decades before the war.
And the point then, is if it would be very silly to claim Germany played a part in the atomic bombing of Japan (because Einstein was crucial to the theoretical framework and Einstein is German), then it is an equal stretch the claim that the US played a role in the defense of Russia because Kahn and some other gave them technical assistance before the war.
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A Town Called Malus wrote: Without our codebreakers and the transferal of information gained from our intelligence gathering activites to the Russians (albeit sometimes due to their spy at Bletchley), they may have been less able to prepare for German attacks, such as the previously mentioned Battle of Kursk. Whether this would have tipped the war enough to make a difference, I don't know, but it should be considered.
While the Allies did give some information, it certainly played no part in the Russians knowing about Kursk. Sure, 'Lucy" gave her tip-off, but the build up around Kursk was staggeringly, painfully obvious, everyone on both sides knew it was happening. It'd be a bit like getting a hot tip 'Apple is a profitable tech company'...
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Mr. Burning wrote: Could Britain side with Germany in a fight against communism?
Did you ever read about the original British and French plans to aid Finland in the Winter War? The British wanted to have 100,000 troops aiding the Finnish against the Soviets, and France was going to send another 35,000. It came scarily close to actually happening, and if it did happen it could well have produced a wholly different set of alliances. It was actually the starting point for the eventual bungled Narvik campaign.
I can't even begin to figure out how that might have played out. If the British and French had gotten 135,000 caught up in a bloody stalemate with Russia, what would it have meant for later engagements. Could it have meant, for instance, that following the Fall of France, that Britain didn't insist on staying in the war, but instead would be happy to relax the blockade and let the Nazis and Soviets duke it out?
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feeder wrote: Japan's war plans always baffled me. Didn't they already know the US was a manufacturing colossus with vast resources? They must have known that the US could replace it's material losses very quickly. I don't see how the War in the Pacific could have gone any differently, even if Pearl Harbour had been successful (sank carriers too), it only would have dragged out the end result a few more years.
Russia vastly outproduced Japan in 1905. But one swift tactical victory sent the Russians to the table looking for a peace treaty. The Japanese didn't underestimate the capability of the Americans, they underestimated their resolve.
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Xenomancers wrote: Isn't this whole thread basically moot? The allies had been taxing the Germans the whole war while Russia built up it's industry.
Sbuh? The Allies had been taxing... Russia built up its industry? Basic timeline of the war in Europe for you-
September 1939 Britain and France declare war on Germany.
May 1940 Germany invades France.
June 1940 France is done. British forces retreat from the continent.
June 1941 Germany invades the Soviet Union.
September 1943 US and UK forces return to continental Europe in Italy.
June 1944 US and British forces invade Nazi controlled France, to open a true second front.
Do you see how it actually worked? The period in which Britain and France were fighting, giving Russia a chance to build up its industry, was six weeks. It was 13 months if we pretend the continuing fighting in Africa was more than a distraction. Meanwhile, the period in which the only opposition to Nazi Germany on land in Europe is from June 1941 to September 1943, two and a half years (and the real second front didn't open until Overlord, making the difference an even three years).
Plus - if not for truly idiotic decisions in the Russian campaign by Hilter Moscow would have Fallen within the first 3 months of the campaign. By all means that is what should have happend - but alas - Hitler was a Lunatic after all.
This is one of those never dying myths of the war, that Hitler screwed everything up. It's a total fantasy. What happened is that after the war the Nazi High Command all wrote books in which they blamed every single mistake on Hitler. Hitler wasn't able to write his own version of events, on account of being dead. For lots of weird reasons, we just accepted what the German commanders told us.
Years later, not until the fall of the Soviet Union, basically, we started going back and looking at the actual memos and papers written by everyone during the war. Turns out the German High Command was flattering themselves. Their real resistance was to things like the Ardennes campaign, which turned out rather well for Germany. On Barbarossa the logistical impossibility was basically ignored by the High Command, which was completely in-line with the logistical neglect that is characteristic of German/Prussian command.
German strategic decision making during the war was a mixed bag. It is totally false that the bad bits were all down to Hitler.
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notprop wrote: So all in all I dont think the Poles would have had any truck with Hitler. The were making a decent fist of battling the Germans albeit on the back foot until to Soviets attacked their rear and engaged their reserves.
Nah, they were totally fethed before Stalin turned up. They'd basically been completely encircled.
Russia vastly outproduced Japan in 1905. But one swift tactical victory sent the Russians to the table looking for a peace treaty. The Japanese didn't underestimate the capability of the Americans, they underestimated their resolve.
I'd take issue with this, actually. The Japanese launched a surprise attack initially at the start of the war, which damaged the local Russian fleet, followed by the first Russian naval Commander, Makarov being killed by a mine early on. His subordinates were overcome with fear at the mines and torpedoes launched thus far (not insensible, see Jellicoe's response to the first submarine-battleship sinking) and kept the fleet bottled up in Port Arthur until Makarov's replacement, Vitgeft arrived.
You then had the Battle of the Yellow Sea when the Russians sallied out. They could be plausibly described as winning the encounter until Vitgeft got hit in the face personally with a battleship salvo and killed, resulting in the chain of command breaking down (Russian WT was not very good). The IJN pushed their advantage home, and only half the (damaged) Russian fleet made it back to Port Arthur.
You then had a pause in naval hostilities whilst the Russian fleet from the opposite side of Russia had to sail halfway around the world to engage, which was then followed in turn by the Battle of Tsushima. After the destruction of that fleet, the Russians had no fleet capable of challenging the IJN. Their home shipbuilding industry wasn't capable of replenishing their losses (seriously, Russia naval procurement pre WW1 was a total mess), and Britain, allied to Japan, wasn't going to sell them the ships. It would have taken the Russians two years at a minimum to try and construct and man a second fleet, and the Japanese Army was still undertaking operations (see the occupation of Sakhalin).
So in short, it wasn't so much a question of 'willpower', and it wasn't /one swift victory that sent them to the negotiating table. It was a fairly continued set of hostilities, followed by the destruction of their mobile assets. Their army had taken huge losses at Mukden leaving their defence incoherent and incapable on land (they'd lost access to the local railroad), and the loss of the fleet meant they had no way of retaliating against Japanese supply lines and home bases even if that wasn't the case. Without the industry required to build a new fleet and the difficulty and expense in trying to source one from three other countries (they'd have needed private industry from France, Germany and the US working in concert and would have had massive training problems), it was more of a fait accompli. They could have continued hostilities, but they'd have spent the next two years getting steadily pushed out by the Japanese on land, and the IJN would have heard of their production programme and outnumbered any new Russian fleet by two to one. This is without even contemplating the effect this would have had on the Russian economy, and whether it was capable of affording all this.
Resolve had nothing to do with it. The USA was in an infinitely stronger position than Russia, in munitions, men, and money. Russia quite simply lacked all three, and therefore the means to fight Japan after Tsushima, and folded accordingly.
Resolve had nothing to do with it. The USA was in an infinitely stronger position than Russia, in munitions, men, and money. Russia quite simply lacked all three, and therefore the means to fight Japan after Tsushima, and folded accordingly.
Actually the position on land had stagnated to a bloody stalemate. The early Japanese successes had long faded and there was nothing to stop the Russians continuing that situation indefinitely.
They had no means of victory of their own, but firmly establishing a stalemate is a means in itself - the longer the time from your decisive defeat the better your negotiating position.
But the Russians chose a rapid conclusion instead.
Kilkrazy wrote: You only need to read the production stats to realise that neither Germany nor Japan nor the two in combination could survive a long war against the combined output of the Allies. Admiral Yamamoto knew this in 1940, that is why he was pessimistic about the war.
Dickering about minor differences in quality of individual weapons, vehicles and troops is a distraction from the fact that western and Soviet industry massively outproduced the Axis with competitive equipment, and also manned these guns, planes, tanks and ships with decently trained crews.
Indeed. Just M4 and T34 production alone amounted to over 100,000 tanks. Total German production of all armored vehicles was 50,000.
Actually the position on land had stagnated to a bloody stalemate. The early Japanese successes had long faded and there was nothing to stop the Russians continuing that situation indefinitely.
They had no means of victory of their own, but firmly establishing a stalemate is a means in itself - the longer the time from your decisive defeat the better your negotiating position.
But the Russians chose a rapid conclusion instead.
Yes. It was something of a stalemate, at that precise moment peace was signed on account of the fact the Russians had fallen back to a defensive posture after losing control of the (incomplete) Trans-siberian railroad.
Had the conflict continued, the Russians would have had vast difficulties in bringing up more men and material to replace losses and usage. The conflict was taking place a very long way away from the capital, and rail links weren't exactly good. The Japanese, on the other hand, had ample resupply by sea and could buy from abroad. Had the war carried on, the Russians would have found land supply unreliable and minimal (the IJN was stopping any sort of reliable shipping), and all their manufacturing apparatus was an exceedingly long way away. It's all very well and good to outproduce a foe, but if you can't get it to where it's needed, it's meaningless.
It wasn't 'one swift tactical victory' won by 'resolve'. It was a series of bloody engagements won because the Russian logistical position became untenable.
EDIT:-I feel I should point out quickly here that I'm not asserting the Japanese were in an amazing position financially (they'd already had difficulty paying their loans and incurred substantial losses in manpower). But Russia was no better off in either respect, and had the logistical issues on top that rendered further resistance difficult, to say the least.
Read the sentence I actually wrote; "It's reputation is really driven by it being the first heavy tank on the scene to carry a gun worthy of a heavy tank."
If I was stupid enough to think it was the first heavy tank, I would have written 'the first heavy tank'. But instead I wrote 'to carry a gun worthy of a heavy tank'... because that's the important distinction.
The KV-1 carried a 76mm gun that was very slightly modified and functionally identical to the 76mm in the T-34.
Both of which were more than effective to handle German armor at range in 1941.
The major variant carried a 152mm howitzer, which is scary if you're trying to hide in a foxhole, but it isn't a dedicated tank killer.
The SU-152 was called “beast killer” because it had the ability to blow the turrent right off a PZV. It wasn’t its intended purpose but hey when in Russia blow crap up.
The French Char B1 carried a 75mm howitzer. For tank killing it had a 47mm gun.
Which was viciously effective against PZIs, PZIIs and PZIIIs.
You will notice that all of the above armaments are absolutely nothing like the 88mm gun carried by the German Tiger. You will now understand what I meant when I said "It's reputation is really driven by it being the first heavy tank on the scene to carry a gun worthy of a heavy tank."
As noted above you’re incorrect in that.
The German shock at the T34 drove the PZVI.
The T-34 isn't a heavy tank. It weighed 26 tons. Come on.
Never said it was. The T34’s armor (thickness and angle), good gun and speed made it a real shock in 1941 and early 1942. The Germans themselves said they designed the panther to counter it specifically
"According to Henschel designer Erwin Aders(Tiger I manufacturer): "There was great consternation when it was discovered that the Soviet tanks were superior to anything available to the Heer."[12] The T-34 was almost immune from the front to every gun in German service except the 88 mm Flak gun. Panzer IIIs with the 5 cm KwK 38 L/42 main armament could penetrate the sides of a T-34, but only at short range. The KV-1 was immune to all but the 88 mm Flak gun."
it does not penetrate as much as pummels the utter hell out of whatever it hits. the shell was heavy and had massive amouts of HE vs the norm. it won by shear weight and power.
though a true "beast killer" would be if the took the 203mm B4 and made that a SPG...
8 inchs of tank gun of a claibre normaly reserved for larger cruisers.
ant to show what sheer explosive can do.
Thats a German Ferdiand, a 70ton tank destroyer on a tiger chasias/
The KV-1 carried a 76mm gun that was very slightly modified and functionally identical to the 76mm in the T-34.
And to be OT, the Panther itself in its original proposed design was *very* similar to the T-34. They changed the layout because of recognition issues/ it was a right cop out of a design (not good enough for Hitler).
feeder wrote: Japan's war plans always baffled me. Didn't they already know the US was a manufacturing colossus with vast resources? They must have known that the US could replace it's material losses very quickly. I don't see how the War in the Pacific could have gone any differently, even if Pearl Harbour had been successful (sank carriers too), it only would have dragged out the end result a few more years.
Russia vastly outproduced Japan in 1905. But one swift tactical victory sent the Russians to the table looking for a peace treaty. The Japanese didn't underestimate the capability of the Americans, they underestimated their resolve.
Yes, as a result of this thread I read up on the Battle of Tsushima. Wrecked nearly the entirety of the Russian fleet at the cost of three torpedo boats!
I guess I can see the IJ Command expecting a repeat of events.
feeder wrote: Japan's war plans always baffled me. Didn't they already know the US was a manufacturing colossus with vast resources? They must have known that the US could replace it's material losses very quickly. I don't see how the War in the Pacific could have gone any differently, even if Pearl Harbour had been successful (sank carriers too), it only would have dragged out the end result a few more years.
Russia vastly outproduced Japan in 1905. But one swift tactical victory sent the Russians to the table looking for a peace treaty. The Japanese didn't underestimate the capability of the Americans, they underestimated their resolve.
Yes, as a result of this thread I read up on the Battle of Tsushima. Wrecked nearly the entirety of the Russian fleet at the cost of three torpedo boats!
I guess I can see the IJ Command expecting a repeat of events.
A big difference that should have been considered though, Russia and Japan had been in an open state of hostilities for a while. Compare it to Mogadishu, and 9/11.
Our troops had been in Somalia for some time. While it wasn't exactly mainstream media fare at the time, when the Battle of Mogadishu took place, it wasn't a sucker punch for us. Despite the battle being a "victory" for us, the US population still wanted nothing more to do with it, and demanded a withdrawal. In comparison, 9/11. A swing out of no where, a massive blow none of us were expecting. We got straight sucker punched. That got our blood boiling.
Same thing with Pearl Harbor. There wasn't a conflict going on that we were weary of, or maybe questioning the value of. It was just happy go lucky, and then all of a sudden thousands of dead Soldiers and Sailors to an unprovoked attack. The Japanese failed to account for the anger that such an event would cause, so if they were trying to draw correlations with Tsushima, they were drastically wrong in the results they were expecting.
Ketara wrote: Yes. It was something of a stalemate, at that precise moment peace was signed on account of the fact the Russians had fallen back to a defensive posture after losing control of the (incomplete) Trans-siberian railroad.
Had the conflict continued, the Russians would have had vast difficulties in bringing up more men and material to replace losses and usage. The conflict was taking place a very long way away from the capital, and rail links weren't exactly good. The Japanese, on the other hand, had ample resupply by sea and could buy from abroad. Had the war carried on, the Russians would have found land supply unreliable and minimal (the IJN was stopping any sort of reliable shipping), and all their manufacturing apparatus was an exceedingly long way away. It's all very well and good to outproduce a foe, but if you can't get it to where it's needed, it's meaningless.
Of course, but it wasn't the first time the Russians fought with chronic supply problems, and it was certainly nowhere near the last. For an instance before then look at the impossible position that the troops in the Crimea were left in? And then look at the Winter War, which had a nightmarish line of supply that already caused one disastrous counter punch, and yet the Russians carried on. The point is if the overall cause matters you accept the price and feed whatever men and material in to the grinder that you must.
And it isn't as though the US wasn't faced with an incredible challenge to actually impact Japanese operations in the Pacific and Asia, but they set about building the ships to meet that requirement.
It wasn't 'one swift tactical victory' won by 'resolve'.
I think you need to go back and read my comment again. What you've written there is miles away from what I actually said.
Ketara wrote: Yes. It was something of a stalemate, at that precise moment peace was signed on account of the fact the Russians had fallen back to a defensive posture after losing control of the (incomplete) Trans-siberian railroad.
Had the conflict continued, the Russians would have had vast difficulties in bringing up more men and material to replace losses and usage. The conflict was taking place a very long way away from the capital, and rail links weren't exactly good. The Japanese, on the other hand, had ample resupply by sea and could buy from abroad. Had the war carried on, the Russians would have found land supply unreliable and minimal (the IJN was stopping any sort of reliable shipping), and all their manufacturing apparatus was an exceedingly long way away. It's all very well and good to outproduce a foe, but if you can't get it to where it's needed, it's meaningless.
Of course, but it wasn't the first time the Russians fought with chronic supply problems, and it was certainly nowhere near the last. For an instance before then look at the impossible position that the troops in the Crimea were left in? And then look at the Winter War, which had a nightmarish line of supply that already caused one disastrous counter punch, and yet the Russians carried on. The point is if the overall cause matters you accept the price and feed whatever men and material in to the grinder that you must.
And it isn't as though the US wasn't faced with an incredible challenge to actually impact Japanese operations in the Pacific and Asia, but they set about building the ships to meet that requirement.
It wasn't 'one swift tactical victory' won by 'resolve'.
I think you need to go back and read my comment again. What you've written there is miles away from what I actually said.
USA had a enormous challenge.
However the anger and drive was such that it lit what was a giant furnace of industrial power to direct one of at the time one of largest industrial powers on earth to full war mode.
it took time to build up steam and to engage to full speed but once it gained its momentom there was no stopping it.
Japn, when it built Yamaoto was taxed and tested.
America had 4 -5 such Battleships alone built.
it has carriers coming out by the dozen and hundreds of escorts, thousands of cargo haulers.
it took time but once enraged, its industy stepped up meet the demand.
Frazzled wrote: Both of which were more than effective to handle German armor at range in 1941.
Yeah, effective enough, which is a million miles away from being a seriously deadly AT gun that would truly justify a heavy tank.
The SU-152 was called “beast killer” because it had the ability to blow the turrent right off a PZV. It wasn’t its intended purpose but hey when in Russia blow crap up.
You're getting the KV-152 and the SU-152 confused. Same starting chassis, same gun, but the latter had a fixed casemate and therefore lots more armour. It is also utterly irrelevant to this conversation, as it was first built in 1943.
Which was viciously effective against PZIs, PZIIs and PZIIIs.
Viciously effective is just making things up. It was a small step up in range and penetration from the 2 pounder carried by British 10 ton tanks.
As noted above you’re incorrect in that.
Your answer involves claiming a 47mm gun is the same as a high velocity 88mm. It is very silly. You don't have to do this. You misread my post, didn't see I was making a point about the 88mm on the Tiger being its transformative element, and now you're posting some silly stuff to try and avoid just saying you misread. Please stop.
Never said it was.
You fething did. "Inversely the Soviets started the war with two heavies for their time: the T34 and the KV"
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Wyrmalla wrote: And to be OT, the Panther itself in its original proposed design was *very* similar to the T-34. They changed the layout because of recognition issues/ it was a right cop out of a design (not good enough for Hitler).
And they pushed the weight up so it was touching on the heavy class. And they gave it a gun that was an amazing AT weapon, but only on average quality against other targets. And then they refined the machine so that it took many workhours, and then did nothing to improve factory processes (really workshop practices).
It really left them with an excellent tank killer that had the sloping armour of the T-34 and absolutely none of its other design principles.
Of course, but it wasn't the first time the Russians fought with chronic supply problems, and it was certainly nowhere near the last. For an instance before then look at the impossible position that the troops in the Crimea were left in? And then look at the Winter War, which had a nightmarish line of supply that already caused one disastrous counter punch, and yet the Russians carried on. The point is if the overall cause matters you accept the price and feed whatever men and material in to the grinder that you must.
No. Sorry, but no. You can talk about 'accepting the price and feeding men into the grinder' and 'chronic supply problems', but you're missing the point. You can have all the men in the world to feed into the grinder, but if the grinder is at point A and the troops at point B, and there's no way of getting from them from B to A (or the way is so limited as to be useless), you can be as resolved as you like. It has nothing to do with anything. If Putin decides tomorrow to accept the price of sending his soldiers to attack America by flapping their arms and levitating, he'll get about as far as they will.
At this stage, the Chinese Eastern Railway was single tracked, and the Japanese had effectively captured it as far as Harbin once the Russians finished retreating from the region after the Battle of Mukden.
The Russians lost the large majority of their combat supplies, machine guns and artillery in Mukden. With the rate modern weaponry burns through ammunition (remember the shell scandal in the UK anyone?), if hostilities had continued, the Russians would have been down to rocks and harsh language before much longer. With the IJN free to menace shipping and Vladivostock, there would have been no resupply by sea, meaning everything would have had to come through a single rail line (not even double tracked). Russia also certainly didn't have the spare train stock required to handle that level of resupply.
And it isn't as though the US wasn't faced with an incredible challenge to actually impact Japanese operations in the Pacific and Asia, but they set about building the ships to meet that requirement.
You can 'set about' all you like, but if you have to erect the shipyards, train the workers, import the construction gear and materials and do it en masse before you can even start building the ships, you have problems. The US benefited from the fact that there was already a substantial level of industry that could either transfer directly across to munitions production, or could do it with the minimum of effort.
Russia had neither of those things. Putilov and the backwards nature of Russian munitions production was a joke amongst the West. It didn't have the shipyards to build a fleet in two years, it barely had a functioning ammunition factory. The only way Russia could even begun to have scrape together the munitions would have been to buy abroad. And as mentioned, no matter how much they bought, if you can't get it there, it's pointless. If hostilities hadn't ceased, we'd have been looking at the Japanese sweeping up all remaining local Russian forces in China long before any real Russian resupply or reinforcement could get there, followed by Russia having to launch a massive invasion two years later after they'd scraped the men and material together. They couldn't have done it sooner.
It wasn't 'one swift tactical victory' won by 'resolve'.
I think you need to go back and read my comment again. What you've written there is miles away from what I actually said.
Sure.
Russia vastly outproduced Japan in 1905. But one swift tactical victory sent the Russians to the table looking for a peace treaty. The Japanese didn't underestimate the capability of the Americans, they underestimated their resolve.
The implication in the statement above is that the reason the Russians came to the table after 'one swift tactical victory' of the Japanese, is because of a lack of resolve.
I am pointing out that wasn't 'one swift tactical victory' that sent Russia to the negotiating table. Why? The Russo-Japanese War was a series of conflicts. And it was the complete inability to continue waging warfare that brought them to the negotiating table, as opposed to any individual conflict, or any lack of resolve.
You also said:-
Actually the position on land had stagnated to a bloody stalemate. The early Japanese successes had long faded and there was nothing to stop the Russians continuing that situation indefinitely.
In order to have a stalemate on a field of battle, you need to have two sides unable to defeat each other. Assuming we're looking at this purely from a local ground perspective, the Japanese would have finished the local Russian forces off long before they could rally and resupply. They were out of most weaponry above rifles, low on ammunition for those rifles, and had little hope of resupply. Whilst their supply lines were stretched, the Japanese did not have that issue, and controlled the sea to boot.
Unless the stalemate you are referring to is the inability of Russia to invade Japan, and vice versa? If so, please clarify in that direction.
Ketara wrote: No. Sorry, but no. You can talk about 'accepting the price and feeding men into the grinder' and 'chronic supply problems', but you're missing the point. You can have all the men in the world to feed into the grinder, but if the grinder is at point A and the troops at point B, and there's no way of getting from them from B to A (or the way is so limited as to be useless), you can be as resolved as you like. It has nothing to do with anything. If Putin decides tomorrow to accept the price of sending his soldiers to attack America by flapping their arms and levitating, he'll get about as far as they will.
Ok, fair enough. I didn't understand this conflict that well, and I thank you for the additional information. Russia's position was a lot more hopeless than I had realised. Thanks for the extra information.
That then opens up a few new lines of though on Japan's plans in 1941. Interesting stuff.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Without our codebreakers and the transferal of information gained from our intelligence gathering activites to the Russians (albeit sometimes due to their spy at Bletchley), they may have been less able to prepare for German attacks, such as the previously mentioned Battle of Kursk. Whether this would have tipped the war enough to make a difference, I don't know, but it should be considered.
While the Allies did give some information, it certainly played no part in the Russians knowing about Kursk. Sure, 'Lucy" gave her tip-off, but the build up around Kursk was staggeringly, painfully obvious, everyone on both sides knew it was happening. It'd be a bit like getting a hot tip 'Apple is a profitable tech company'...
Being told exactly where the main offensive pushes were aiming for certainly had an effect on the planning of the defences. Knowing that the Germans were planning something in that area and knowing exactly what their plan is and their estimations of your strength are very different scenarios.
So all in all I dont think the Poles would have had any truck with Hitler. The were making a decent fist of battling the Germans albeit on the back foot until to Soviets attacked their rear and engaged their reserves.
Also remember that the Poles had already cracked the Enigma machine in use at the time. They knew Germany planned to invade and when they were planning to do it.
Any time spent "playing nice" with the Germans would have just been time to bolster their own forces, such as the mass production of their self loading rifle which would have given their infantry a firepower edge over those of the Germans. Meanwhile the Poles keep listening to German secrets so when the inevitable German betrayal comes, they already know.
Ketara wrote: No. Sorry, but no. You can talk about 'accepting the price and feeding men into the grinder' and 'chronic supply problems', but you're missing the point. You can have all the men in the world to feed into the grinder, but if the grinder is at point A and the troops at point B, and there's no way of getting from them from B to A (or the way is so limited as to be useless), you can be as resolved as you like. It has nothing to do with anything. If Putin decides tomorrow to accept the price of sending his soldiers to attack America by flapping their arms and levitating, he'll get about as far as they will.
Ok, fair enough. I didn't understand this conflict that well, and I thank you for the additional information. Russia's position was a lot more hopeless than I had realised. Thanks for the extra information.
That then opens up a few new lines of though on Japan's plans in 1941. Interesting stuff.
My last line there was a little sarky, so I apologise for that. I think I was having a bad morning that day.
Russia's position with regards to munitions production pre-war was actually pretty bad. Throughout the 1800's, Russian production was mostly centred upon state owned facilities (the British parallel would be Woolwich Arsenal or Chatham Dockyard). Russia had little in the way of a domestic private arms industry, if you look at the great arms producers and technological innovators of the time (Vickers, Schneider, Armstrong-Whitworth & Krupp) or even the second ranking ones (Cammell-Laird, Skoda, Bethlehem, John Brown, Schichau, Yarrow and so on) there isn't a single Russian company amongst them.
State facilities began to run into considerable trouble in the last few decades of the nineteenth century, on account of the fact that they didn't retain sufficient production apparatus to supply the armed forces on a wartime footing, and committed little to no funds towards R&D (government purse strings are always tight on seemingly frivolous expenditure). Private companies on the other hand, actuallyneeded to undertake research in order to successfully promote their wares above that of the competitions and force governments to buy the latest version of a piece of kit.
The result was that in most cases, the private sector began to supplant the state owned ones in every regard. Russia's lack of domestic industry however, meant that for the most part pre Russo-Japanese war, they'd bought in a large amount of their armaments over a period of time. If you look through the builders of their ships, there are German and American coimpanies listed, and the Russians were always one of the Cannon King's favorite customers for land artillery.
After the crushing defeat of the Russo-Japanese war, there was a real impetus for the Russians to overhaul their domestic arms industry, and they poured vast sums into new artillery works and shipyards (they went so far as to try and rope Vickers into operating a subsidiary in Russia) because they realised how vulnerable this lack of domestic supply had made them. And even with no war ongoing and that sort of funding available, Russian munitions production was still an ongoing saga of delays, screwups, arbitrary government decisions and suchlike (there was one warship ordered in 1906 that wasn't delivered until 1910 for example; in Britain it would have been on the waves mid-1907).
You also have to look at things in context, there was a failed revolution in Russia the same year the war ended. Had the Russians somehow been able to transport all the men and machinery across to China that had been stationed on their European side, the corollary question must be asked; would that revolution have succeeded in the absence of all that military force? And even if not, would that revolution have crippled any further Russian supply of a war effort? The Putilov works had a particularly vicious strike going on towards the end of 1904, and were famous for their revolutionary sentiment, and the Trans-Baikal railroad fell into revolutionary hands temporarily towards the end of 1905.
Ketara wrote: My last line there was a little sarky, so I apologise for that. I think I was having a bad morning that day.
Nah, it was all on me mate. I was being obstinate.
Thanks for you contribution to this thread, it's been really interesting to read. I thought Vickers did produce arms in Russia, the Maxim machine gun. But that might have been production under license?
Ketara wrote: My last line there was a little sarky, so I apologise for that. I think I was having a bad morning that day.
Nah, it was all on me mate. I was being obstinate.
Thanks for you contribution to this thread, it's been really interesting to read. I thought Vickers did produce arms in Russia, the Maxim machine gun. But that might have been production under license?
The Tsar's government invited Vickers in to set up/collaborate on a limited basis with a number of state owned/pseudo-private companies to a varying extent in the 1907-1914 period. In 1913, they won a contract from the Russian government to help erect a new artillery works, and agreed that the Russians could utilise Vickers' patents, plans and so forth domestically (with their express restricted limitation to Russia, Serbia & Montengro, so no exports). The Russian Artillery Works company (as it was called) turned into something of a clusterfeth however, and was nationalised in 1915.
If the extent of Vickers' dealings with Russia is of particular interest to you, you should consult 'Vickers Limited and the Tsarist Regime' by Edward Goldstein in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol.58, No.4 (1980) pp.561-571
Xenomancers wrote:
Isn't this whole thread basically moot? The allies had been taxing the Germans the whole war while Russia built up it's industry.
sebster wrote:
Sbuh? The Allies had been taxing... Russia built up its industry? Basic timeline of the war in Europe for you-
September 1939 Britain and France declare war on Germany.
May 1940 Germany invades France.
June 1940 France is done. British forces retreat from the continent.
June 1941 Germany invades the Soviet Union.
September 1943 US and UK forces return to continental Europe in Italy.
June 1944 US and British forces invade Nazi controlled France, to open a true second front.
Do you see how it actually worked? The period in which Britain and France were fighting, giving Russia a chance to build up its industry, was six weeks. It was 13 months if we pretend the continuing fighting in Africa was more than a distraction. Meanwhile, the period in which the only opposition to Nazi Germany on land in Europe is from June 1941 to September 1943, two and a half years (and the real second front didn't open until Overlord, making the difference an even three years).
Sebster - you conveniently leave out all the actual taxing that occurred.
You leave out the battle of Brittian which severely depleted the Luftwaffe.
You leave out allied bombing which severely depleted supplies to the Russian front. Not to mention forces that needed to be held at home to prevent allied invasion.
You discount the loss off over 400k Axis soliders 8000 aircraft and 2500 tanks as being a "distraction" in Africa. Without allied intervention where do you think these forces would be going? Not up through turkey breaking the Russians back in Stalingrad?
Come on man. It was a combined effort of all the allies to bring Germany to the point they were on D-Day. Sure the "second" (at this point it's really a 3rd front) front wasn't really essential to victory at that point - but there is no way Russia could have repelled Germany without Allied assistance through out the war. It's pretty safe to say Germany should have taken Moscow anyways - simple tactical blunders by Hitler allowed that to happen.
This is not to say the Russians did not sacrifice - they did more than anyone. It's just that to say the Russians could have defeated Germany on it's own - which is the tone I get from the OP's post...I just have to laugh at that one.
This is not to say the Russians did not sacrifice - they did more than anyone. It's just that to say the Russians could have defeated Germany on it's own - which is the tone I get from the OP's post...I just have to laugh at that one.
No, I specifically said Operation Overlord (D-Day). It's right there in the title. By 1944 Nazi Germany's fate was sealed (in hindsight), and the Allied landings in Normandy, while helpful, were not required to defeat Nazi Germany.
Xenomancers wrote: Sebster - you conveniently leave out all the actual taxing that occurred.
You leave out the battle of Brittian which severely depleted the Luftwaffe.
The Germans lost around 2,000 planes in the Battle of Britain. It was a fair defeat, but when you note they produced 8,000 planes in the year it gives you a context that makes any claim of the losses being strategically significant as quite silly.
You leave out allied bombing which severely depleted supplies to the Russian front. Not to mention forces that needed to be held at home to prevent allied invasion.
As has already been pointed out in this thread several times, the allied bombing only really went in to gear in 1943, and only became really effective in 1944. After Kursk.
You discount the loss off over 400k Axis soliders 8000 aircraft and 2500 tanks as being a "distraction" in Africa.
You're playing a fun game by rolling German and Italian casualties together. The German casualties were just 130,000. That's a lot of people of course, but when you compare it to the 4 million dead Germans and 4 million more Germans captured by the Soviets it is pretty obviously a side theatre.
but there is no way Russia could have repelled Germany without Allied assistance through out the war.
No, you're totally wrong. Once Germany failed to capture Moscow they were logistically fethed. Their troops were now miles from their bases of production, with a hopelessly inadequate system of supply. Their next big offensive was Case Blue, which they could only launch in a single theatre, along a single line of attack. They were lucky that the Soviets had stupidly thrown so many troops away in their own counter offensives, but even with that Case Blue ended in hopeless defeat when the Soviets did the fairly obvious thing of holding then taking the hingepoint in Stalingrad. The year after that the Germans tried for a new offensive, this time it was even in a single theatre, it was just one battle, at Kursk. Big battle, but as far as the Germans being able to mobilise for large scale offensives its a shadow of their former efforts.
And all that was before the western allies really kicked in to high gear.
So I'll repeat my earlier point - the British blockade played a major role. I don't know what German oil supply might have been like if the Brits had struck some kind of deal (it would depend on the nature of that deal). But that would have made a difference. Everything else... just look at the numbers, the Russians had the Germans beat before the rest turned up to fight.
It's pretty safe to say Germany should have taken Moscow anyways - simple tactical blunders by Hitler allowed that to happen.
That's a very bizarre argument, because it took many, many Soviet blunders to let the Germans get as close as they did. Why do people on ever consider what the Germans could have done differently, and treat everyone else as set in stone?
Because we're talking about tactical decisions that cost Hitler an early victory, when it was strategic decisions made long before by the Soviet's that set up the scenario.
If you want to what if about how the Soviets could have changed things, you're going to have to go back to 1930, or even earlier.
djones520 wrote: Because we're talking about tactical decisions that cost Hitler an early victory, when it was strategic decisions made long before by the Soviet's that set up the scenario.
Hitler's interference in Barbarossa was minimal. In fact it's the failure of Barbarossa to swiftly achieve victory that prompted his regular interference into military affairs. The German military machine didn't need his help to come up short at the height of its power.
If you want to what if about how the Soviets could have changed things, you're going to have to go back to 1930, or even earlier.
That's rather obtuse. If we're not treating the political and strategic decisions of Germany as set in stone, it's rather obtuse to demand that we consider Soviet decisions set from 1930 onwards. We could easily say that Germany's course was set in 1932 when Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, but then that wouldn't allow anyone to play silly little "but Germany could have won!" games. It's fun and all to talk about what might have happened, but people seem to get obsessed with talking about what might have happened to the point of utterly forgetting what did happen, which seems more pertinent to this topic.
There is always a danger of a fallacy when looking at history that because we know the result, we tend to see it as inevitable.
The people of the time often did not see the to them future result as inevitable, and in many cases it probably wasn't.
However to expand the theme of causes and results, if we see WW2 as an extension of WW1, we can also see the Cold War as an extension of WW2 resulting from the Western Allies treacherously abandoning their Soviet partners to illegitimately preserve western Germany and Europe with the final objective of overthrowing the Soviet Union.
And it worked. Germany was reunited and integrated into the community of nations, and the SU was destroyed and consigned to history.
Therefore in the fullest historical terms the Germans won WW2.
Kilkrazy wrote: There is always a danger of a fallacy when looking at history that because we know the result, we tend to see it as inevitable.
A lot of things that occurred in the past were inevitable. Contemporary perception is only relevant to the context of the world that contemporaries saw it in, and how that context influenced events. Hindsight affords those in the now a greater capacity to understand that past, if only because we have a lot more time to understand it than those who lived it as a present could.
And I'm not really arguing inevitability anyway, but rather pointing out the absurdity of starting a game of what ifs where one actor acts in a manner completely out of line with their historical character while positing no other actors do the same. If things were different they'd be different, not just for one but for all. The ability to tackle what if scenarios from a historical perspective is extremely limited. The more out of line with what was we get, the more uncertain what could have been becomes. It delves more into the realm of fiction than history. EDIT: And I'll point out there is an entire line of historical thought that says history is inevitable. Human ignorance of the present is simply such, and events unfold as they do because they can unfold no other way given the variables (whether we understand said variables or not).
Therefore in the fullest historical terms the Germans won WW2.
That's not even close to historical terms, but it is a funny happenstance
djones520 wrote: Because we're talking about tactical decisions that cost Hitler an early victory, when it was strategic decisions made long before by the Soviet's that set up the scenario.
If you want to what if about how the Soviets could have changed things, you're going to have to go back to 1930, or even earlier.
You think there is person on Earth who could study the Barbarossa campaign and think all the tactical mistakes were German? What an incredible thing to say.
The forward deployment of so much of the army, leaving it in striking distance of the initial attacks. Especially having so many airfields within striking distance - 3000 planes lost in the first 3 days, almost all of them on the ground. The Soviets unsupported, inadequately prepared counter offensives that drained valuable defensive reserves. Losing 650,000 troops in Kiev through the no retreat order.
The Soviet defence in Barbarossa is the definition of a bungled operation. There is more focus on German mistakes because changing the outcome of the war is inherently more interesting than ending the war sooner. But to see that focus on German errors and conclude they were the only ones who made errors... wow.
djones520 wrote: Because we're talking about tactical decisions that cost Hitler an early victory, when it was strategic decisions made long before by the Soviet's that set up the scenario.
If you want to what if about how the Soviets could have changed things, you're going to have to go back to 1930, or even earlier.
You think there is person on Earth who could study the Barbarossa campaign and think all the tactical mistakes were German? What an incredible thing to say.
The forward deployment of so much of the army, leaving it in striking distance of the initial attacks. Especially having so many airfields within striking distance - 3000 planes lost in the first 3 days, almost all of them on the ground. The Soviets unsupported, inadequately prepared counter offensives that drained valuable defensive reserves. Losing 650,000 troops in Kiev through the no retreat order.
The Soviet defence in Barbarossa is the definition of a bungled operation. There is more focus on German mistakes because changing the outcome of the war is inherently more interesting than ending the war sooner. But to see that focus on German errors and conclude they were the only ones who made errors... wow.
These are all things that having the initiative in a massive invasion cause. You catch units unprepared - capture armies - and achieve massive victory. You can chalk it up to Russian blunders but in the end Stalin had those units there to discourage Hitler from attacking - it had the opposite effect and the Blitzkrieg was yet again seriously underestimated. Now lets get past that - Russian main line completely broken...no suitable force to stop German tanks from Rolling right into Moscow and the German Generals knew it...because they had the intelligence. At this point Hitler orders the Central wedge to support attacks in the south rather than winning the war by taking Moscow without any credible resistance...This isn't a military blunder but an act of sheer insanity. To give the Russians any credit for repelling the Germans is foll hearty - Hilter defeated the Germans. Here is where we can agree - once the Germans were bogged down in a long war against Russia - who had practically unlimited manpower - the war was over.
Xenomancers wrote: To give the Russians any credit for repelling the Germans is foll hearty - Hilter defeated the Germans.
That's looking at the issue to simplistically. The German military machine and Hitler both made the same mistake in 1941 that Napoleon made; they horrible misunderstood how big Russia is. By the end of Barbarossa, the Germans had lost nearly a quarter of their force as casualties. 800k is a paltry sum compared to Russia's 4 million loses, but as has been pointed out numerous times, Russia could afford the loses. The defense was buggered, but it can't be dismissed because the casualties were high. the Red Army simply threw reserves into the line of fire as speed bumps every step of the way, and it hurt the German advance as its supply lines grew longer and longer (and mostly drawn by horse). Meanwhile, Red Army supply lines kept getting shorter and shorter, and the Germans became increasingly bogged down in every town along the way. Before this decision was even made the Germans had in fact suffered a operational failure; Blitzkrieg hadn't worked. Sure they'd slammed through the Soviet defenses and were inflicting huge casualties, but the Red Army kept throwing more men and material at them, and the German military was unable to achieve the operational freedom that had occurred in France. They'd failed at every step to break the Red Army's capacity to operate, which was the entire point of the war doctrine the Germany military had adopted.
Further, there's no reason to see Hitler's decision as actually causing any strategic failure. First off, it's extremely well understood now that losing Moscow would not have resulted in a Soviet capitulation. People get so tied up in "Hitler made bad military decisions" they miss the one that actually made sense. Hitler knew taking Moscow was important but that it wouldn't end the war. Encirclement after encirclement had forced staggering operational loses on the Red Army, but the Soviets just kept sending more. It's not the most brilliant defense, but it worked. Taking the Caucasus, Kharkov, and Donbass on the other hand would cripple Soviet industrial capacity and give it to Germany. Strategically, this was a sensible decision. It failed because again, Russia is a big freaking place. By the time Germany even got close to any of its strategic objectives, the Red Army had gotten its gak together. Of course, the Soviets had begun shipping their industry into the Ural mountains further east, and had achieved a significant amount of the migration before any of this would have mattered but as far as I know the Germans didn't know about this at the time.
Maybe Hitler had made a huge blunder in his decision, but that isn't apparent given what we know and you can't fully account for Barbarossa's failure just looking at the Germans which I'd think would be obvious.
Xenomancers wrote: These are all things that having the initiative in a massive invasion cause. You catch units unprepared - capture armies - and achieve massive victory.
Having the initiative helps, but it doesn't somehow excuse the defender from tactical blunders. Especially when the first response wasn't for consolidation or trading troops and ground for time, but for a general counter-offensive. Especially when so many armies were encircled and lost, gaining little time relative to the value of the unit. These are obvious blunders, which make djones520's comment clearly wrong.
You can chalk it up to Russian blunders but in the end Stalin had those units there to discourage Hitler from attacking - it had the opposite effect and the Blitzkrieg was yet again seriously underestimated.
It wasn't to discourage Hitler from attacking, but because it was standard Russian doctrine to deploy in an offensive formation because Russian doctrine was offense above all else. It was a disastrous policy that gifted countless Russian units to German offensives before it was finally abandoned.
Now lets get past that - Russian main line completely broken...no suitable force to stop German tanks from Rolling right into Moscow and the German Generals knew it...because they had the intelligence. At this point Hitler orders the Central wedge to support attacks in the south rather than winning the war by taking Moscow without any credible resistance...This isn't a military blunder but an act of sheer insanity. To give the Russians any credit for repelling the Germans is foll hearty - Hilter defeated the Germans. Here is where we can agree - once the Germans were bogged down in a long war against Russia - who had practically unlimited manpower - the war was over.
Meh, capturing Moscow was important, but it wasn't the only thing. As LordofHats points out the industrial regions east of Kiev were far more important. And if Army Group Centre had pushed forward, while facing continuing decline in supply, and then with incredibly long flanks, then even with Moscow captured it would have the Germans in a very vulnerable position. Being reluctant to advance on Moscow in that situation is not "sheer insanity". Nah, the Germans made plenty of blunders, but they're the simple ones that the Germans always made - refusing to accept logistical realities, poor intel meaning they were surprised about the quality and quantity of much Russian gear etc...
motyak wrote:Ketara, if you're not going to take this seriously and use God's own referencing system (APA 5th, if you're curious) then just don't bother
All kidding aside, this has been quite the informative thread so far
sebster wrote:
I wouldn't go that far, but what you posted was very interesting. Thanks
I know it's something of a tangent, but our discussion prompted me to delve a little deeper into Russian munitions production at the time, and I found some interesting stuff. Whilst what I knew was broadly correct, I was a little off on some fine detail. I also found one or two other interesting things.
Firstly, on the railway supplies on land, there were large problems for the Russians throughout the conflict. To supply over 200,000 men by October 1904, the Trans-Siberian railway had a limit of ten trains in one direction (single tracked) per day. During the winter, light tracks were laid across Lake Baikal to increase capacity, and they'd managed to double the number of trains on the normal line by modifying the track by the end of the conflict, but there were massive supply issues throughout the conflict. The Russians only managed to even begin to fight their campaign by supplying through Vladivostock (which was effectively cut off after Tsushima). Even then, there were continuous shortages of food for the troops, boots, high explosive shell, and machine guns.
With regards to the Maxim gun (since you were interested), apparently a license was negotiated from Vickers in 1904 to have a single state factory produce them.
Russia did actually have a number of well equipped plants turning out modern munitions, but the war completely overwhelmed their capacity, and they were unable to expand to a war-time footing effectively. Virtually all of them were state controlled, all were absolutely crippled throughout the latter half of the war by strikes, and many simply assembled components made abroad into armaments (meaning without an increased foreign supply, little could be done). Production was initially doubled by the simple expedient of instituting night shifts, but this resulted in much increased wear and tear, which led to another gaping deficiency; namely the fact that the machine tools which manufactured munitions had themselves been bought from abroad, and domestic industry couldn't replace them or manufacture more effectively. They could only be sourced abroad. There were also difficulties in bringing in more staff, due to the fact that the Russian population was poorly educated; unlike Britain or America in latter wars, most Russian labour was highly unskilled and therefore acquiring manpower to increase production was very problematic.
The obvious conclusion reached is that the Tsar's government reached the high point of their munitions manufacture and supply effectively towards the end of 1904, and it was all downhill from there with an increasing reliance upon foreign manufactories. Domestic disturbances, worn out machinery, and insurmountable supply problems dictated that a rapprochement be eventually reached with Japan, because carrying on the conflict was impossible from a logistical perspective alone even had Tsushima not happened. With the subsequent material losses of Mukden, and Vladivostock cut off, there was little Russia could do to carry on operations even in the short term.
With regards to a potential Russian counter-attack two years later, it would appear to be the case that Russia would have had great difficulty doing so, on account of the fact that the Tsar's finances were actually in as bad a state as Japan's due to massive foreign loans incurred. Whilst they could afford a certain level of re-armament post-war, actively carrying on another campaign so soon would have sorely stretched their fiscal capabilities.
With regards to a potential Russian counter-attack two years later, it would appear to be the case that Russia would have had great difficulty doing so, on account of the fact that the Tsar's finances were actually in as bad a state as Japan's due to massive foreign loans incurred. Whilst they could afford a certain level of re-armament post-war, actively carrying on another campaign so soon would have sorely stretched their fiscal capabilities.
Ironically, Japan was one of the sources of Russia's financial woes. You'll find stripper clips for Arisaka's all over Russian WW1 battlefields.
" arguments are meh.
