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 ...
“We should have ave saved eastern Europe! That would have been the moral thing to do.”
Including the Romanians, Hungarians and Croatians who went forces into Operation Barbarossa? Including Ukrainians who ran the eastern extermination camps?
Would it be moral to ask some family from Tennessee to lose their son to save those countries from facing occupation from the people they willingly attacked?
Not worth a single American life.
Actually you make a good point. The Korean war is a good window with which to see how happy the American people were about a brutal land war after going through WWII.
And Korea is teeny compared to what we would have faced taking on the whole USSR.
That also despite Korea being very justified. It was a bald faced invasion of a place where American soldiers were the occupation force. That was not a war of convenience, and everyone still hated it.
Should have teamed up with Germany to stop the red invasion. As Patton said, “we defeated the wrong people.”
“We had no problem bringing them in NATO in 1955.
We had no problems bringing over select Nazis to help in our rocket/missile programs.”
10 years later, the occupation force was a very different animal. The men who fought the Germans were back home. It’s one thing to ask Elvis in the 50s to interact with Germans. Its another to ask some guy who fought nazis in the Bulge, and saw the death camps to join up with nazis in the same force. There was a lot of hatred that isnt so easy to switch off.
Might as well ask the 1st Marine division to join the NVA in attacking China in 1975. Or our men today to have an ISIS platoon in their rifle company.
It’s a retarded idea.
“We had the German military on our side in vast numbers and they wanted the Soviets out of Germany.”
Pretty depraved to kill a single American to ensure the territorial integrity of Germany from the Soviets after what the Germans did in the east.
Not worth a single GI’s life.
“The Germans would have been put in Divisions of their own and given a separate sector.
Remember, Patton was going to make it look like the Soviets started the war. We would have no choice but to fight.”
1) US soldiers and Grunts aren’t stupid.
2) look up “sociopath” in your dictionary.
Pearl Harbor and 9/11 bought about 4 years each of public approval for military action.
Didn't have that for Korea or Vietnam...or a declaration of war on the Soviets in the 40's.
It’s irrelevant if we think the Soviets started the war and they may have if things moved a certain way. We wouldn’t have a choice but to fight. Soviet soldiers had a hard life in the military but they couldn’t surrender to the Germans. They could surrender to us.
Air power alone would have crushed the Soviets in a few weeks as they were not used to dealing with Supply Interdiction.
No but the US did the opposite. FDR was in full Stalin love mode, so much so, it was clear he preferred Stalin to Churchill, whose warnings he ignored. We know now from the Verona papers how the administration was littered with Communists and that if it was not for Communist infiltration of the Manhattan project, that Russia would not have had the bomb.
I don’t know about a few weeks. I do agree that our air power would have been the decisive factor.
Yes, these were the Russians the Democrats and liberals loved - the ones they now hate, strangely.
“Was Patton right? Should we have taken out the Russians when we could?”
We should have instead have focused on getting rid of all the Communists the US and left the Communists in Russia alone.
“Land power: The 76mm Shermans and M-36/M26’s would have given the Soviets a fit. We had several thousand of the newer 90mm tanks”
The Soviets had about 30,000 T-34s with 85mm guns. We had 2200 M26 Pershing with 90mm guns. The Soviets had 6400 IS-2,3 and 4 heavy tanks with 122 mm guns.
“I wouldn’t necessarily have gone into Russia but we could have taken the Satellite countries at least.”
Agree.
Remember, German declared war on the United States. The Soviets did not.
The bottom line is that every war is entered into with how easy it will be, and how quickly the enemy will collapse. This would have been a long bloody brutal two or three years. And for what? To save Germans, from Russians?
Too many people still believe just like Hitler, kick in the door and the whole rotten house will cave in. The Japanese thought a decisive blow at Pearl Harbor might actually make us sue for peace. Both sides in the Civil War thought one good bloody nose and the other side would fold. The North Koreans thought if they could blow us off the peninsula we would accept defeat in South Korea. Osama thought 911 would make America leave the Middle East. For us to start a war and be allies to Nazis in 1945 is the same kind of hubris. The Red Army of 1945 was not the Red Army of 1941. It was tough, hard well equipped, and very angry.
Patton also had a kind of mutual admiration society with the leading German generals. They were both in the forefront of military thought at the time. He respected their innovations and they saw him as a fellow innovator and a skilled commander. Patton didn't have the same experience with the Soviets. There wasn't the kind of clear two-way understanding there, and Patton and the Soviet commanders may not have had much knowledge of or admiration for each other.
Patton understood what Soviet society was all about, but he may have seriously underestimated Soviet military capabilities. And he didn't exactly have his fingers on the pulse of the American public and didn't have much of an idea of what Americans wanted at the end of the war.
And we have a winner
You know also, when your plan begins with “first we form an alliance with the Nazis...” You’re starting down an immoral path.
Of course, I don’t know if the scene in the movie really happened the way it did. But I could see Patton doing what he did with the Russian General: refusing to drink a toast with the Russian general, but respecting the Russian general, after he called him a “Sukin Syn” in return, and agreeing to do through with the toast.
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