The 'Second D-Day' allied invasion of the south of France was proclaimed a success but [tr]

UK Daily Mail ^ | June 11, 2019 | James Gant

[C19fan]

It is the lesser known allied invasion of southern France - dubbed the 'second D-Day' - that saw 580,000 troops pour on to beaches and swiftly beat back the Nazi forces.

The attack, just five weeks after the hard-fought invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord, was quickly hailed a success with most of southern France liberated in just a month.

However, military historian Anthony Tucker-Jones has now claimed Operation Dragoon was a futile exercise that later allowed Stalin to take over Eastern Europe.

[Future Snake Eater]

Communism should have been destroyed just as Nazism was.

Almost impossible militarily, definitely impossible politically. We just finished a war that cost hundreds of thousands of American lives all over the world and spent God-knows-how-much money and materiel to do it. You really think there was any will left in the US to carry on the war against the fully mobilized USSR forces (that were our allies up to that point) that had spent 20 million lives and were ready/willing to sacrifice far more if needed? Hell no. Fighting the Soviets post-WW2 is a BS fantasy that, thankfully, never happened.

[Future Snake Eater]

Patton wanted to take on the Russians.

Thank God cooler heads prevailed.

[rbmillerjr]

“We get such crappy history education in this country that most people here don’t seem to understand that the USSR is overwhelmingly responsible for the defeat of Nazi Germany.”

Apparently that crappy education also fails to teach that the Soviets signed a Pact with Hitler to carve up Poland, thus emboldening Hitler to continue his Blitzkreig.

The Soviet Russians stand as guilty as the appeasers for the millions of deaths in Europe. There 20 Million killed was richly deserved.

[thoughtomator]

> There 20 Million killed was richly deserved.

I’ve seen some stark examples of despicable character over the 20+ years I’ve been here, and your comment ranks right up there with the worst of them.

It’s perhaps even worse than saying the Jews deserved the Holocaust, given that we are talking over 3x the number of people, and the very same antagonist.

I’d suggest you review your comment and then the contents of your soul.

[Mr Rogers]

“That was one of the stupidest comments I’ve ever seen in over 20 years on FR. Please do not respond to me on any topic ever again.”

Too damn bad. I don’t think much of your opinion, either. Spent 25 years in the military. Worked on war plans. If you don’t understand the role of logistics, you don’t understand squat about wars. And I write that as someone who flew and was shot at (badly). But you don’t fly missions, use artillery or do anything else in war without logistics. Russia would have had their butts whipped without British and US supplies of everything from tools to sheet metal to trucks to tanks.

The Russians fought the Germans on one side. They didn’t help against Japan. They didn’t fight in Africa. They obviously played an important part in the war, which is why we helped them. But they sure as hell didn’t perform without us! And they had the simplest war to fight.

[sparklite2]

+1

[rbmillerjr]

I’m good with the comment.
The Communist Soviets were evil incarnate and they cut a deal with the Nazis. This was to divide up the spoils of Poland and many historians believe to divide up much of Europe.

They not only emboldened Nazi Germany and Hitler they were part of the planned conquest.

[sparklite2]

Yalta was as good for the Allies
as the Versailles Treaty was at
ending wars.

[sparklite2]

Lend Lease

---

Did Russia ever repay any of it?

[Mr Rogers]

“It’s perhaps even worse than saying the Jews deserved the Holocaust, given that we are talking over 3x the number of people, and the very same antagonist.” - thoughtomator

The difference, of course, is that the Soviets were guilty and the Jews were not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Poland_(1939%E2%80%931945)#Treatment_of_Polish_citizens_under_Soviet_occupation

[rbmillerjr]

Exactly.

[DuncanWaring]

By the time Fat Man and Little Boy were available, the Germans had already surrendered.

[DHerion]

Your statement that the soviets were on the border of Germany before June 6, 44...is totally false if you would review a map. Poland, which is part of eastern Europe the last time I checked a map, was not ‘liberated’ until 45.

[dfwgator]

Or as General von Kleist said, invading Russia is like an elephant attacking a bunch of ants, the elephant may kill millions of ants, but in the end the sheer number of ants will overcome the elephant and eat him to the bone.

[dfwgator]

I do like the “Immortal Regiment”, where citizens march carrying the pictures of their relatives who fought.

[dfwgator]

Also, we helped even though our territory wasn’t invaded, we could have sat it out, had Hitler not declared war on us. Although most likely once Germany sank another US vessel, we probably would have declared War on Germany, anyway.

Russia had no choice but to fight because they were invaded.

[Antoninus]

The USSR did almost all the heavy lifting in the European theater. We get such crappy history education in this country that most people here don’t seem to understand that the USSR is overwhelmingly responsible for the defeat of Nazi Germany. The scale of the war on the “eastern front” is unparalleled in history and is very unlikely to ever be repeated again.

They couldn't have done it with out Allied supplies coming in from Murmansk, the drain of Axis forces in the Italian theater, nor without the the threat of a true second front opening in France which also caused a draw-off of German forces. Stalin was screaming for a legitimate second front all through 1942 and 43. The end of the Nazi regime was determined at Stalingrad and Leningrad (St. Petersburg), not on the beaches of France.

[Antoninus]

One could argue that without the material support of the United States Russia would have fallen.

That is pretty much axiomatic. We kept them in the war for three years.

[Antoninus]

By the time we landed in Europe it was a mop-up operation; the Soviets had already cleaned the Germans out of almost all of Eastern Europe and had even crossed the border of Germany proper, before a single Western soldier landed on the continent.

Wrong. US and British forces had been in Italy since late 1943. The Russians didn't actually set foot in Germany until August or September in 1944, after the Normandy invasions had forced the Germans to divert even more military resources west.

[Jim Noble]

Of every 100 German soldiers killed in combat, the UK killed 2, the US killed 2, and the USSR killed 96.