Posted on 06/08/2019 7:19:06 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Russia should take a lot of credit for victory in the east.
Poor strategy doomed the Germans at Stalingrad. The winter didn't help, but it wasn't the primary reason they defeated the Germans.
That sounds like much but in reality less than 10% of all war material used by the Soviet military in war. That alone shows the scale of fighting on the East Front which is unprecedented by any means.
It doesn’t in any way means lend-lease was insignificant but it wasn’t critical.
The reality is the German military was mostly defeated in the East as early as winter 1941 before most of lend-lease stuff arrived.
In the end it was American know-how, American arms in the lend-lease agreement, and the Russian winter that doomed the Nazis.
The Red Air Force was pretty significant as well.
Plus, Mother Russia had, what IIRC Zhukov said, "lots of sons".
The Germans were ground down in the east by superior numbers.
Now, if the Germans didn't have to deal with the West then the Eastern front has a different outcome.
Convert all the steel of the U-boats into tanks and other AFVs, put the fighters and AAA guns that dealt with the 8th Air Force and Bomber Command into the Eastern Front, take all the resources used to build the Atlantic Wall, and the German's chances of victory increase.
"The German Army in fighting Russia will be like an elephant attacking an army of ants. The elephant will kill thousands, even millions of ants, but he will in the end be overcome by their numbers and be eaten to the bone." - Colonel Berndt von Kleist
You’re blinded by bigotry. There’s no way they could have won the war, at least not nearly as fast without lend lease. But yes, a lot of guys fought very hard for their Homeland against a foreign invader. A brutal one
Who am I bigoted towards?
Not the Americans, that is for sure.
And I am not a German apologist, either.
It isn’t being an apologist that causes me to look at this objectively and see that the Germans were at least partially decimated by the Russian winter and that without that Russian winter and the lend-lease agreement the Russians they would have been toast.
If the Russkies were so awesome they would not have needed the lend-lease.
Russia was too big to fail.
Russia just announce they are moving more troops to Venezuela..
Towards the effort and bravery of the Russian soldiers. They fought damned hard against a flat out evil invader. And did so with a had tied behind their back by Stalin murdering nearly their whole officer corps just before tree festivities. You seem to think it was all weather and American supplies. A lot of the opinions commonly held came straight outta Goebels propaganda, meant to explain the failure of the master race.
They created the narrative that even German superiority could not deal with a giant rabble of humanity.
But the truth is, like our military, by 43, the Red army was a very different animal from what it had been in early 41. And as w both got better, the krauts got less skilled.
That’s gonna be fun for a Russian... going to an equatorial mountainous jungle hell to prop up an idiot socialist.
I’ll watch on TV.
The 450K wheeled transport gave the Red Army an advantage over the horse drawn Wehrmacht that it could never cope with. Without them the Red Army may never have been able to exploit their victories. Also by 1943 40% of German war production was going to air defense of the Reich. A result of the day and night bombings by Bomber Command and 8th Air Force.
Just bringing the American aspect over and dealing with it separately from the Russian winter aspect, why would Goebbels ever say that the greatness of American arms, know-how, the lend-lease agreement and so on if it was not true and he was the source of that argument?
As for me, I just don’t see those commies getting by, much less succeeding, without the Americans and the Russian winter.
Stalin didn't constantly badger and insult the West to open a second front just for the hell of it. The war against the U-boats wasn't enough, the strategic bombing wasn't enough, the lend-lease wasn't enough, and the North Africa/Italy/Middle East efforts weren't enough.
I guess maybe Uncle Joe was finally satisfied after he interned and reverse-engineered the B-29, the UK sold him the Rolls-Royce Nene jet engine and fellow travelers like Klaus Fuchs gave him the bomb.
Nah, not even then.
I do not think antone here has said it was the weather and the Americans and that the Red Army was not crucial to defeating Germany. My posts at least were in response to the Russian myth thar Allied efforts were of little consequence to defeating Hitler. My personal belief is that had Britain been defeated in 1940 there is little likelihood that Russia could have defeated Germany alone.
In previous discussions I highlighted exactly the importance of US auto exports and allied bombing of Germany. It was very valuable for the Soviet effort but not something they couldn’t achieve without.
Any reasonable observations indicate that the Germans were done on the East Front by December 1941. That’s before bombings and before any significant lend-lease supplies arrived.
The victory wasn’t on table for the Germans anymore after about five months into campaign.
Their hope was a separate peace with Western allies and to bring the situation with USSR to a stalemate and put it on ice inflicting as much damage as possible in hope the Soviets wouldn’t follow them back into Germany. More brazen of them believed they would join forces with the West against USSR but both ideas were pipe dreams or purely wishful thinking.
The point German military of the time is heavily overrated. You heard a lot about crazy Hitler and Russian winter only because the same German officers responsible for their own defeat were allowed to write the war history for you.
The reality is that the Germans lost because they weren’t up to task. They were generally an inferior force belonging to a power which was economically and demographically too weak to support an edequate force needed to reach Nazi objectives.
The Germans were smart enough to analyze WWI and to come out with ideas what was wrong with it and how to wage a new war on a new level although it was mostly tactical level observations and not strategic. On top of that they were determined and organized which gave them an edge over the rest of Europeans who were getting ready for another WWI and on top of that were pacifists fearing the war more than they feared defeat. That’s why they were successful in the beginning. They had absolutely inferior opponents.
Objectively speaking the German military footslog and horse-drawn, most of their equipment were dated and inferior. They lacked adequate mobilization processes and enough manpower to cope with so many enemies they were making and also lacked reliable supply of energy and lacked industrial capabilities to support the war of attrition. They generally lacked the understanding of the logistics of a big war living off robbing food from local civilians like an 18th century army and they didn’t understood even the meaning of strategy which was in their thinking a mere end goal and some tactical situations to prevail to get there.
The Germans were generally overconfident and arrogant and their racist theories also didn’t allow them to win heart and minds which is essential to hold territory.
All of the above aren’t Hitler and winter. The entire idea is hogwash. If they like this idea were it Hitler who made all these generals think it is not getting cold in Russia in winter?
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