World War 2

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
111

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]0mar wrote:

The Pacific Front was nearly 100% America, yes, but the European front was 95% Russia…
[/quote]

The North Sea, North Atlantic, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Italy, Sicily, Greece, North Africa, Yugoslavia and the Balkans, do not equal 5%.[/quote]

Those fronts only opened up because the Eastern Front demanded more and more resources. Like I said before, we faced less than 25% of the Wehrmacht, 10% of the Waffen-SS and less than 5% of the Luftwaffe. Every single available resource was shipped to the Eastern Front as a priority. We fought rest/refit units throughout the Western front.

The best way to look at it is this way. Without Russia, Germany wins, no matter what. Without the Western Allies, Germany still loses, no matter what.

113

[quote]0mar wrote:

The best way to look at it is this way. Without Russia, Germany wins, no matter what. Without the Western Allies, Germany still loses, no matter what.[/quote]

You have no idea what you’re talking about. Who destroyed the Luftwaffe completely? Was it the feared Russian air force? I think not.

Who firebombed the shit out of German cities and completely destroyed their capacity to build the tools of war? The russians? I think not.

1.5 million Germans fought on the Western front, and about 3.3 million on the Eastern front. And that’s not counting the number of Germans who we fought in Italy and North Africa.

So while the Soviet Union did it’s part, and certainly faced more Nazi troops, without the other countries tieing up Germany’s resources, bombing their cities, and crippling them from within, they would not have won.

The Soviet Union was the headhunter- we however, were delivering all of the body blows. All the while fighting a war by ourselves in the Pacific.

And if you still think Germany would win, look at Nagasaki. That would have been Hamburg. And then, we would have won.

114

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Curtis P-40 Flying Tiger Squadron. The Flying Tigers Were Credited With Destroying Nearly 300 Enemy Aircraft While Losing Only 14 Pilots on Combat Missions
[/quote]

A relative of mine was in the Flying Tigers.

Some great pictures Push. Especially the soviet flag over the city. That’s pretty intense.

115

[quote]0mar wrote:

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:

[quote]0mar wrote:

[quote]Rational Gaze wrote:
Why would the Germans have to invade Britain at all? They could’ve crippled us if they deployed more U-Boats, and made more sensible attacks on our airfields. If they fitted their fighter escorts with drop tanks, they could’ve stayed in our airspace for more than 15mins. The list goes on.[/quote]

They didn’t even need to do that. For one thing, Hitler should have listened to Goering and unleashed the Luftwaffe on the retreating Brits after the disasterous Battle of Dunkirk. Basically, it was the death blow for Great Britain. They had to retreat on whatever could float because all their equipment was destroyed.

600,000 British soldiers were easy pickings for the Luftwaffe; they had no air cover, no sea cover, nothing at all. If Goering had his way, the Luftwaffe would have utterly decimated every British soldier. Hitler thought the conclusion of the battle was self-evident, and Britain would surrender.

Secondly, the Battle of Britain was technically a draw, but the advantage went to the Nazis. If they had kept up their air campaign, Britain would have eventually faltered.

It was a case of simply numbers, for every airplane the Brits had, the Germans had 2. German pilots were better trained, better prepared and had access to more advanced technology. It was only Hitler’s insistence that Operation Barbarossa take place in June of '41 that saved Britain.

With respect to Barbarossa, Hitler overrode the OKC (German High Command) and demanded that the oil fields in the south and Stalingrad/Leningrad be taken as well as Moscow. This effectively split his army into three pieces instead of the concentrated push the OKC wanted to take towards Russia.

The plan was to take Moscow, sever Soviet High Command into two pieces (East and West) and systematically conquer each army group. Instead, Hitler forced this decision and ended up with the disastrous Stalingrad and Leningrad battles. Even after all that, if Hitler allowed his army groups to retreat from those two Waterloos, he could have salvaged some sort of stalemate.

America drastically overplays how much we contributed to Germany’s defeat. The defeat was already written in stone long before D-Day happened. The Western Allies faced less than 25% of the Wehrmacht, less than 10% of the Waffen-SS and less than 10% of the Luftwaffe.

They had less ground to cover than the Russians with respect to Berlin. Despite all that, the Russians still reached Berlin weeks before the best Allied estimates. All the Western Allies did was speed the war’s conclusion by a few weeks.[/quote]

Wow. Talk about revisionist history at its finest.

Well, even the French will admit what we did in that war was instrumental. It would not have been won without us.

And besides that, we secured the future of Europe by being in it- had the the US not gone in, but the USSR had beaten Germany, all the Europeans would have had another 50 years of Soviet dominated misery to add, just like the Poles and other Eastern European countries.

Our affect on history with that war, in fact, cannot be UNDER stated.[/quote]

The Pacific Front was nearly 100% America, yes, but the European front was 95% Russia.

France is thankful because, as you said, they weren’t washed away by the Soviet tide.
[/quote]

Your ignorance smells.

116

As an armchair historian i cant pass on a thread like that without making a humble contribution…

[quote]

You have no idea what you’re talking about. Who destroyed the Luftwaffe completely? Was it the feared Russian air force? I think not. [/quote]

It was the war of attrition on 2 fronts against 3 superpowers.

“completely destroyed their capacity to build the tools of war”, nonsense. The production losses caused by the bombings were never truly significant. Between early 1942 and the time the first allied soldiers reached German territory war production increased by almost 400%. The bombing campaign was just part of the overall war of attrition, and never war decisive as it had been intended. In particular the British terror bombings against the inner cities did close to 0% to shorten the war.

[quote]1.5 million Germans fought on the Western front, and about 3.3 million on the Eastern front. And that’s not counting the number of Germans who we fought in Italy and North Africa.

So while the Soviet Union did it’s part, and certainly faced more Nazi troops, without the other countries tieing up Germany’s resources, bombing their cities, and crippling them from within, they would not have won.

The Soviet Union was the headhunter- we however, were delivering all of the body blows. All the while fighting a war by ourselves in the Pacific. [/quote]

Losses per theater & year German armed forces

Eastern front Dead
1941 302.495
1942 506.815
1943 700.653
1944 1.232.946
Total 2.742.909

Germany Dead
1945 1.230.045
Total 1.230.045

West Dead
1939 - 1940 61.033
1941 11.033
1942 12.000
1943 11.000
1944 244.891
Total 339.957

Source: “Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg” by Rüdiger Overmans

So 0mar is more or less right, no matter how much you dislike it.

When the US entered the war in December 1941, Hitler had already lost it. With attacking the Soviet Union and failing to eliminate it, it was a mathematic certainty that Germany was going to lose the war. Not only was the general allied superiority in numbers and economic strength devastating, neither the German armed forces nor the war industry were at all prepared in 1941 for a permanent war with the entire army, for various reasons.

118

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]0mar wrote:

The Pacific Front was nearly 100% America, yes, but the European front was 95% Russia…
[/quote]

The North Sea, North Atlantic, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Italy, Sicily, Greece, North Africa, Yugoslavia and the Balkans, do not equal 5%.[/quote]

This doesn’t make any sense. For starters, Sicily is part of Italy, and due to the nightmarish terrain on the Italian mainland, the Germans were able to delay the Allied progress until basically the last days of the war.

While first US Army units reached Czechoslovakia, Mark Clark was still stuck in Italy.

Luxembourg wasn’t a country that required any “occupation troops”. As a matter of fact, they were incorporated into the Reich and through forced draft contributed over 12 000 men to the Wehrmacht.

Belgium and France, despite the latter’s effort to erase the shameful 1940 defeat with stories about the “La resistance”, were rest-and-refit areas for ground troops and recruiting grounds for local Nazis and right wingers (Milice in France, and the SS divisions Wallonien and Charlemange)

Please educate yourself about the disposition of Wehrmacht troops and locations of elite divisions, before making such sweeping, incorrect statements.

120

[quote]pushharder wrote:

Despite the fact that you stated true information above the North Sea, North Atlantic, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Italy, Sicily, Greece, North Africa, Yugoslavia and the Balkans, do not equal 5%. Please educate yourself about fractions before making such sweeping, incorrect statements.

BTW, although Sicily is part of Italy it is not part of the mainland and required a different approach and a different campaign hence my reason for listing it separately. Similarly the North Sea is part of the North Atlantic but I still distinguished it separately.

Also, the North Atlantic was indeed a front in the war and is part of the equation. The number of troops on the ground in any given place does not a war make in terms of totality.

Again, the Soviet Union does not ever leave the Motherland on its trip westward without being provisioned by the American taxpayer.

I started another thread on this issue last year and made the point that had Adolf and Joe remained buds they would have ruled Europe for sure. So there is no doubt the campaign into the USSR was the back breaker for the Nazis. It was indeed a foolish move. But that takes into account all the support the USSR got from the West.[/quote]

Nobody is disputing American involvement. The post war Soviet historians tried to hide the fact that the drive westwards occurred on Studebaker trucks. Which enabled the Soviets to produce weaponry they we’re good at - tanks. Not to mention absurdly high levels of other equipment received through lend lease. US was to a large extent subsidizing the Soviets with materiel to do the fighting for them.

But the fact remains, that on the ground the victory against the Reich was achieved through Soviet blood. The fact is, that with some notable exceptions, western Allies never engaged Wehrmacht in full force.

Just compare troop involvements for major battles in the West and East.

As far as the Bomber offensive is concerned, the majority of historians agree about it’s ineffectualness. The Germans produced the highest number of tanks in 1945.

The exhaustion of Luftwaffe fighter squadrons was much more important. However, people tend to forget that the Bomber offensive was created out of necessity - of “doing something” and showing Stalin that UK and US are actively doing something actively, not just fighting the Atlantic battle and clearing the minor North African theater.

As far as fractions are concerned, I’m very well versed in mathematics, thank you. However, one thing is looking at certain geographical area in terms of square miles, and another in terms of German combat troops involvement. So please heed from my previous post.