Posted on 06/06/2020 2:13:40 PM PDT by Rummyfan
“It wasn’t until he turned against Russia that the communists decided he wasn’t a “true” socialist and demanded war.”
One of the sillier ideas floating around FR is the idea that the Soviets, or Hitler, ever considered Nazi Germany to be socialist. It’s my bet then no one possessed of that idea has ever read Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or any other serious study of Nazism.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 that set up the invasion of Poland was a pure alliance of conveniece between two gangster regimes. Two weeks after it was signed WWII erupted.
The first WW was so costly to the British and French I don’t blame the former for wanting the Russians to feed themselves to the guns as long as possible before Britain would try to take on the German army one more time. I agree, taking on the Germans in North Africa was necessary practice for the later fighting in Europe. I don’t blame the latter for folding up like a cheap card table in the face of the blitzkrieg.
The idea of the “soft underbelly” was a piece of foolishness of Churchill’s that I think dated back to WWI, and didn’t work worth a dang in either war. Gallipoli chewed up loads of British and British colonial subjects, and overall that war led inexorably to the end of the British Empire.
In WWII, the taking of southern Italy was strategic; there were 13 airfields that were needed to fly long range British bombers across to oilfields in Romania that were ultimately needed by the Reich. But after those objectives were taken and the bombing started, the US finally said enough already and put its foot down for the first time.
The Higgins boats were among the things built in mind-boggling quantities, well beyond what the British thought we could accomplish. If the buildup of that capability had not gone as well as it did, the British would have delayed further, to the point that a 1945 landing would have been demanded.
US manufacture of Liberty boats, all manner of military aircraft (cumulatively well in excess of 100,000 airframes), more than 30,000 Sherman tanks, plus all the helmets, rifles, sidearms, knives, and the training of personnel to something in excess of 10 million — and all while fighting the Pacific War on our own — surprised everyone perhaps apart from Americans. :^)
Stalin kept demanding the second front and knew we were letting the Sovs bleed Hitler and themselves. But, he had no choice. We were not going to open that front until we had an army of sufficient size properly trained and equipped. As it should have been.
I ran across a YouTube series called The Great War. Each episode is about 15 minutes and covers one week. I'm into 1917. The losses were staggering. The stupidity of the leaders was staggering. And the Austrians stood out as idiots by those low standards. But I can't stop watching it! No wonder WWI permanently changed the way Europeans viewed and fought wars. It explains why they tried appeasing Hitler for way too long.
The British could not fight WWII the same way they fought WWI - they simply did not have that kind of manpower to throw away.
When the Americans saw how the Europeans were fighting the war they knew there had to be a better way. The Army adopted fire and maneuver as its basic offensive strategy, discouraging frontal assaults. Between the wars the artillery was reorganized and a new fire control system was adopted. By WWII, US artillery was the deadliest and most accurate in the world - and we deployed plenty of it. Still, in the Army only a few visionaries like Patton anticipated the impact the tank would have and the possibilities for mobile warfare.
Stalin kept demanding the second front and knew we were letting the Sovs bleed Hitler and themselves.
The US wanted to go in, the British didn't. Britain was the staging area, so, we didn't go. Again, the British had bled themselves out in WWI, even though they won't ever quite admit it to this day -- usually the closest they'll get is to claim that the Germans lost because they were running out of men. Had the Germans suffered the KIAs and other casualties at the same rate as the British, they'd never been able to fight WWII.
Between WWI, the Russian civil war (often euphemistically and inaccurately referred to as the Russian Revolution), the purges between the wars, and WWII, the Russian Empire/USSR lost over 38 million (1.5 million WWI, 20-40 million in the civil war and subsequent purges, 16 million WWII). Of course, the Reds are responsible for most of those, plus another 20 million or more in China, millions more in their conflicts around the world, not to mention the fact that they trained up the first generation of 20th c jihadists.
The impression I have is that the Germans probably would have finished off the Allies with one more big push, but the arrival of the Yanks turned that around. But, as I said, I’m doing a deeper dive into WWI now.
Exactly right. The Russians had just left the war and it freed up 70 divisions that had been in the east. The French and British would have been utterly overwhelmed.
The Austrians imho get an unfair shake, "fettered to a corpse" etc -- the big mortars that reduced every then-modern fortification encounted by the Central Powers were Austrian. The Italian attack resulted in a tactical withdrawal (same type of tactic the Germans had used on their western front to reduce manpower requirements), then the terrain became an enemy, then the counterattack pushed them to the brink. By joining the fray, Italy became another victim of "they are running out of men" schtick.
Incredibly brave and courageous undertaking. As well as a monumental logistical achievement. A salute to all the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who go the job done.
Truly incredible.
We have met the enemy, and they is us ...
TCM showed The Longest Day on Memorial Day.
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