ON THIS DAY IN 1941, THE NAZIS INVADED THE COMMIES

aqnd if it werent for Russia tying up 60% of Germany's army, maybe D Day wouldnt have gone as well as it did.

Yeah, like there might not have been anywhere from which to launch it from.

Aint it amazing how ya cant do just one thing at a time?

I bet HItler had second thoughts about declaring war on us,
during the last year of the war.

U know, it was only 11 months from D-Day to VE Day.

I think that 's pretty impressive.





David

You seem to deny Russias major contribution to the defeat of Germany Dave. Is your hatred of "communism" or "Russians"?

HOW ?


communism.

From John Kegan's "The Second World War":

"Some 50 million people are estimated to have died as a result of the Second World War. By far the most grievous suffering among the comatant states was borne by the Soviet Union, which lost at least 7 million men in battle and a further 7 million civilians....The Western victors suffered proportionately and absolutely much less than any of the major allies...The Americans suffered no direct civilian casualties; their military casualties, which contrast with 1.2 million Japanese battle deathes, were 292,000, including 36,000 from the navy and 19,000 from the Marine corps."

Note: Dr. Keegan includes in the term "Western allies" the U.S., Great Britain and Great Britain's commonwealth (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, S. Africa). His term "major allies" includes not only the Soviet Union and France, but smaller nations which suffered devastating losses: Hungary, Romania, The Baltic States, Yugoslavia, The Netherlands, Belgium.

It is of note, too, that of all the nations involved in the Second World War, only the U.S. came out of it economically wealthier than we went into it, in fact, it was the Second World War that allowed the U.S. to establish global economic dominance.

Perhaps the other allied powers erred in forcing the Soviet Union to be the sole allied combatant for, what was it, 2 or 3 years? Churchill opened the N. Africa front to appease Stalin and keep the Soviet Union in the war, but that was a comparatively small effort which had minimal effect on the Eastern front.

This post is not intended too minimize the efforts of the very courageous U.S. combatants nor the sacrifices made by them and their families. Its purpose is to honor the efforts and sacrifices of ALL combatants and citizens of the nations involved, Germany, Japan, Italy. In Asia, Japan increasingly occupied parts of China, with devastating Chinese casualties, both military and civilian, beginning in 1931 -- most Asian nations teach that WWII began in 1937 with the official Japanese invasion of China.

The Soviet Union had skirmishes with the Japanese, including two major ones, along the Siberia-China (Mongolia?) border. Hitler had expected his Japanese allies to tie up Soviet troops in Siberia after Hitler invaded Russia, but Japan elected not to do so, thus freeing the Siberian troops to reinforce the German front. It is believed by most historians that Japan's decision not to tie up the Soviet Union's Siberian troops was due, in no small part, to the humiliating defeats Japan had previously suffered in border skirmishes with the Soviet Union.

An interesting, unsung hero in this endeavor, one man who may have saved the Eastern Front, and the Allied effort, was Soviet super-spy Richard Sorge. By accounts, Sorge was a bona fide "James Bond" who ingratiated himself in Japanese circles, and was able to communicate to Stalin by early autumn, 1941, that the Japanese military had decided not to attack the Siberian border. Stalin hesitated a short while, then began massive troop and armament transports westward to the German front.

Sorge was not the only "unsung hero" of WWII by any stretch, but he is an interesting and widely unknown character. He was caught and executed by the Japanese in 1944.

rebecca

The point I was making was that the Russian Army absorbed the major forces of the German machine. about 70% of Germany's forces were otherwise preoccupied with dealing with Russia.
The US was mainly the lead fighting force in the Pacific war. The strategy was totally different and was , in opart, responsible for the gearing up a great manufacturing force for the war effort which easily translated into contracting and automobile manufacture after the war.

It was much to our benefit
that Hitler, personally was stupid
qua the Russians, who were his ALLIES
until his Operation Barbarosa on June 22, 1941.

Note that, inter alia, he split his army
immediately before the attack on Stalingrad.

Of course, he also failed to give them anti-freeze and warm clothes.





David

Yes, Russia bore the brunt of much of the ground fighting in Europe.

However, the British (and later American) air war against Germany greatly helped the Russians by diverting German resources to defense. According to Albert Speer who served as the German armaments minister (among other duties):

"Our heaviest expense was in fact the elaborate defensive measures. In the Reich and in the western theaters of war the barrels of ten thousand antiaircraft guns were pointed towards the sky. The same guns could well have been employed in Russia against tanks and other ground targets. Had it not been for this new front, the air front over Germany, our strength against tanks would have about doubled, as far as equipment was concerned. Moreover, the antiaircraft force tied down hundreds of thousands of young soldiers. A third of the optical industry was busy producing gunsights for the flak batteries. About half of the electronics industry was engaged in producing radar and communications networks for defense against bombing. Simply because of this, in spite of the high level of the German electronics and optical industries, the supply of our frontline troops with modern equipment remained far behind that of the Western armies. Thus a serious shortage of army communications equipment developed -- for instance, walkie-talkies for the infantry and sound-ranging apparatus for the artillery. In addition, further development of such devices had to be neglected in favor of antiaircraft weaponry."

The Germans made heavy use of artillery and antiaircraft weapons as anti-tank weapons, particularly against Russian T-34 and KV tanks, which were highly resistant to the guns of German tanks initially. But the Germans made good use of combined arms teams both offensively and defensively on the battlefields of the Eastern Front, and doubling the number of light field howitzers, 88 mm antiaircraft cannons, and other anti-tank guns would have caused substantially increased losses to Soviet tanks of all varieties.

And of course the availability of hundreds of thousands more troops for use against the Russians wouldn't have helped them either.

One final point: some substantial portion of Soviet military casualties must be blamed on their own infantry tactics, particularly early on. One German general reporting from the Eastern Front noted: "...infantry attacking as much as twelve ranks deep without heavy weapons support; the men start hurrahing from far off. Incredibly high Russian losses."

P.S. The same applies also to ammunition. Speer notes that fourteen million rounds of 88 mm or higher ammunition were used for purposes other than anti-tank ammunition, more than were issued as anti-tank ammunition.

The Allies had several chances to win the war fairly painlessly, early on. Albert Speer (German Minister of Armaments et al.) wrote that if instead of area bombing of German cities the Allies had performed concentrated and repeated bombing of certain critical infrastructure, for instance, a handful of ball-bearing factories (in Schweinfurt, Steyr, Erkner, Cannstatt, and in France and Italy), armaments production would have been "crucially weakened" after two months and brought completely to a standstill after four months.

The Allies did hit some of these but only sporadically, not systematically, and the Germans recovered.

Speer notes that after the war he learned the reason for this error: the Allied air staffs "assumed that in Hitler's authoritarian state the important factories would be quickly shifted from the imperiled cities".

But he notes for example that after an Allied bombing of ball-bearing factories in Schweinfurt, the production of ball-bearings dropped by 38%, but "despite the peril to Schweinfurt we had to patch up our facilities there, for to attempt to relocate our ball-bearing industry would have held up production entirely for three or four months".

He also notes that the Gauleiters "did not want the new factories in their districts for fear that the almost peacetime quiet of their small towns would be disturbed. My band of directors for their part did not want to expose themselves to political infighting. The result is that nothing was done." Speer goes on to say that as late as January 1944 the shifting of ball-bearing factories to cave factories was still being discussed.

Meanwhile, they busied themselves with anAirborne Invasion of Crete.