Posted on 01/29/2021 7:38:15 AM PST by daniel1212
Hitler had to attack when he did, Stalin was only getting stronger by the day, and many think Stalin would have attacked by 1943.
I would have gone straight to Moscow, and tried to get the Soviet government to collapse. Had Stalin been taken out, there might have even been a civil war between the Soviets, then the Germans could have divided and conquered.
6. American Lend Lease had an enormous impact on the Soviet war effort.
I was about to post the same. Without the U.S. industrial might at the time the Soviets would be speaking German now. The U.S. won the World Wars I and II, now we’re losing World War III
[Japans strike south focus is interesting, and likely deliberate on the part of FDR to draw Japan and US into a war (which we know he wanted). By getting Japan to focus on the pacific, Stalin was free to shift the Siberian divisions to the defense of Moscow, and they arrived in the barest nick of time to save the city.]
Re point 1 - if Japan had merely bided its time and taken the better part of a century to pacify China (i.e. slaughter irreconcilables and mollify assimilables), Japan would today include all of China. That it chose to do otherwise was unwise and perhaps an indication that it was ruled by degenerate gamblers.
Re point 2 - Japan had good reason to avoid triggering a Soviet collapse. If Germany overran Russia, what was to prevent it from overrunning Japan and its possessions?
And Stain is much to be blamed for that for ruthlessly executing generals etc. and not being prepared for war with Germany, and then blaming his leaders for losses.
I think you have to look at how Stalin viewed the value of his own people.
And all the while— Stalin’s agents (for example Philby) had been long ago infiltrated into Whitehall and Home Office, all the way back from before the Spanish Civil War.
Philby was there... and so was Hemingway (who knew Philby was a commie and never outed him to our own intel- wonder why that was— and why he later is an “asset” in Cuba, ostensibly to keep an daiquiri eye on Fidel- what idiocy). Orwell did out these commies, and much more integrity than the propped up hemingway. Quite a lesson there.
FDR’s ‘admin’ was riddled with neo-Marxist Socialist and Progressive fellow travelers, and he had to dump Henry Wallace the “seed baron socialist” as VP- under instruction of the Reds in FDRs inner circle— all of impeccable yale and harvard background full of self righteous indignance as in Alger Hiss and Harry Hopkins— olde school tie Communists. Same as in the UK— the Cambridge 5.
Already posted the continued to this day anti-US propaganda from Russia/Soviets— that FDR manipulated the Red Army into being cannon fodder (not because Stalin was a psychopathic paranoid former Tsarist Ohkrana agent who killed off anyone who could have known this). Cannon fodder to save American soldiers (and Brits) lives.
This was out for quite a while until some sober for once secret police types realized it perpetuated a notion of Stalin’s stupidity (brought to light in the famous Kruschev speech after Stalin’s death- denouncing Stalin, and purging his worst peeps).
Consider though, doing that, may have avoided Stalin being eventually overthrown in a military coup, which would have probably thrown the Soviet Union into total anarchy. I think Khrushchev himself even considered the possibility of leading a coup against Stalin, if the situation deteriorated even further.
You’re right!
The Italians might have won the war for us.
They got bogged down in the Balkans and the Germans had to rescue them, delaying the kickoff of Barbarossa, which mired the Germans down in a winter they weren’t prepared for, and, arguably, saved the Soviets.
They also got the Germans tied up in North Africa.
Without the delay to Barbarossa and their drain on German resources, the German might have won!
Interesting, that in his later years, Henry Wallace, did become a staunch Anti-Communist, and said he was ‘deceived’.
Brute Force by John Ellis is a good book about the war detailing the impact of Russian front and overall allied production.
The US provided the Russians with transport vehicles but their tanks were primarily Russian.
Exactly. Even the Greeks kicked their butts.
A German General in the early days of Barbarossa, saw the T-34 for the first time, and remarked that if the Soviets could mass produce the T-34, Germany would lose the war.
There was a military history professor at West Point in the 1980’s who had the view that the Allies did not beat the Wehrmacht. Instead, Hitler beat the Wehrmacht. He ran it into the ground.
Giderian was ready to execute Sea Lion. Hitler decided to go East instead, although I suspect a pessimistic assessment by Canaris had something to do with it. Canaris deliberately threw a few spanners in the works
Hitler’s demanding that the Me262 be a bomber as well delayed its use as an interceptor. Otherwise the Allied bombers would have been decimated.
Then there were the V weapons. No significant military value, just a terror weapon, diverting otherwise valuable resources. Yet these were the predecessors to the current ballistic and cruise missiles.
Then there were political roadblocks to Germany developing a fission weapon. That was the rejection of so called “Jewish Science”, which Germany’s remaining scientists were politically not allowed to use. The rejected resources wound up somewhere in New Mexico, and made a glass parking lot that is still a little “warm”.
And that is just a few blunders by the little corporal who relied on his fortune tellers.
I don’t think the Japanese had a choice about going to war with the US.
The embargo on oil and scrap steel was absolutely devastating to the Japanese economy. They needed to grab resources like oil, rubber, and iron, and force us to end the embargo.
It just didn’t go very well for them. The US had more industry on just the West Coast than existed in all of Japan, and the Japanese never managed to exploit their conquests very well.
—there was even a divison of Russian defectors, led by a General Vlasov—
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andrey-Andreyevich-Vlasov
Like “waltzing” through the Hurtgen Forest? Or Market-Garden?
The Slavic people were also untermenschen to Hitler and the Nazis. The Slavs taught them a lesson.
When Britain also declared War on Japan, now the US was freed up to give Britain all the supplies she needed, both for Europe and Asia.
Hitler knew that for all intents and purposes, when the US declared war on Japan, it pretty much was a declaration of War on Germany.
Even had Hitler not declared war on the US, it only would have been a matter of time before Germany sunk a US vessel, providing the Casus Belli for the US to declare war on Germany.
Even without the Allies the Russians would still have beaten Germany
Yes, quite true— a bargaining chip for Yalta. There is a true story of the “repatriation” of Russian POWs who included the Ukrainian divisions who fought for the Nazi’s against the Holodomor NKVD run Soviets. The Ukrainians cheered the Nazis coming into liberate the Ukraine—and put on the uniform.
Stalin demanded the POWs be returned, and FDR and Churchill, who knew this included over 100K pro-Nazis (and would have been a formidable anti-Stalin force to make use of post war)- and yet let them across the border— where they were summarily murdered by massed NKVD. The story was researched and written about by a direct descendant of Tolstoy (who is himself a principled conservative UKIP Farage supporter).
Victims of Yalta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victims_of_Yalta
Count Nikolai Dmitrievich Tolstoy-Miloslavsky:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Tolstoy
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