Posted on 06/06/2018 10:44:57 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
This being D-Day, it's inevitable that thoughts turn to WWII. The slaughter. The sacrifices. The magnificent courage of going forward into the teeth of machine gun fire and artillery barrages onto open beaches. In perhaps its only redeeming virtue, war brings out the heroism inherent in the human breast.
You can get into some interesting discussions online, and WWII always comes up. Specifically, the ending of WWII. Patton wanted to take out the Russians while we were already there, and today, a lot of people think he was right. But he wasn't right. At least, not in the sense he meant.
We had the military and economic might to take out Russia but not the political will. Ike knew it, and so did Roosevelt. It would have been a hugely costly continuation of WWII, in both lives and treasure, that Americans would not have supported. The outcome might well not have been the sort of victory Patton sought.
The Russians had learned to fight against the very best German formations led by the very best higher-level German commanders. These formations had the superb lower-level leadership (sergeants and company-grade officers) for which Germany was famous. Most of this lower-level leadership died in the fight with Russia.
In the West, we fought Volksstrum units of teenagers and old men with nothing like the lower-level leadership that the German outfits in the East had had. You rise or stoop to the level of your opposition, such that by 8 May 1945, the Russians were simply better at war than we were, and their supply lines were much closer to the action than ours.
The main thing going for us was that we hadn't lost nearly as many men as Russia had,
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
When the Allies let the Russians come in and do the mopping up at war’s end in Berlin, we gave grudging consideration to Russia for the sheer numbers of troops they sacrificed to combat the German war machine, far more than any other Ally. Stalin regarded his military as merely cannon fodder. The Russian contribution and distraction on the Eastern front allowed the Allies to place priority on the Theatres of Operation on the European/South African Continents. One wonders if all the German materiel/manpower was concentrated on the Allies during WWII (with Hitler saving Russia for a later conquest) if the onslaught of the German war machine in its totality would have caused a different outcome to the war. I believe the with the Allies facing the war with Japan and troops facing battle fatigue, there would have been little stomach to enter war with Russia.
about 16 million Americans served in all services during WWII. The Soviet army drafted 29,500,000 men and women during WWII. While not 5 times a many troops under arms,
the reds had considerably more under arms than we did.
IL-2 and 10’s didn’t have to worry about Mustangs and Spitfires, not to mention P-80’s.
The Soviets were facing a lot fewer tanks by the time they hit Germany.
Most Nazis were gone by then. Remember, the German military tried to kill Hitler late in the war.
This is BS. Patton knew the Russians used up all their resources getting to Berlin and were spent. We could have kicked them back to their borders at a minimum . GIVE ME A BREAK. Air power alone would have devastated them.
The Red Army was spent in 1945. Used up in getting to Berlin. We’d have killed them.
You have it backwards, the Red Army was spent. We were just getting warmed up.
You can’t read.
I just finished reading a history book about from D-Day to the end of the war. In it, it tells of how both the English soldiers and our GI were just wore out from fighting. The Red army had so many men in reserve (millions) plus it was obvious that two people Napoleon and Hitler learned of the vastness of Russia. The US and the UK were just tired of war and we were still fighting in the Pacific until August.
Thus the question that should have been asked is. "Should the US have provided so much aid (that they still will not gratefully acknowledge) to the Soviets that treacherous Stalin was enabled to become an advancing army (getting to Berlin first), rather than just providing humanitarian aid and enough material to enable a stalemate with Germany?"
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