Posted on 02/10/2022 5:00:48 AM PST by Phoenix8
The Japanese attacking us did.
Freed up Soviet units to move west.
They had a similar problem in France, which didn't get much of a modern road system until after WWII. But they destroyed the French army and drove the British EF off the mainland in no time.
Also, the Russians had the same problem, but also had massive manpower to call on, and were unconcerned about casualty rates or the hardships imposed on the soldiers.
The terrain of the steppes was ideal for the Germans' rapid style of warfare, but the eastern front grew so wide in such a hurry that they couldn't sustain the advance, and hadn't built enough equipment beforehand to get it done.
Germany wasn't fully mobilized until 1943, but by then they'd started to lose vehicles (and planes and pilots) in a big way, and by 1944 simply couldn't keep up with the attrition.
During the Bulge, they were using horse-drawn to try to move supplies. It will work (in the right weather), but it's slow, and comparatively low-capacity, and some of the load has to be food for the horses. Replacing a blown-up vehicle (if it can be done at all) takes much less time than growing a new horse. :^)
Slowing then stopping the armored advance during the Bulge involved our tying up all the crossroads on the best roadways. Meanwhile, the lighter Shermans could should through medieval villages and between hedgerows -- ideally suited tank for war in France, despite the badmouthing it often receives.
I read somewhere that the British had a plan to assassinate Hitler in 1943. But they decided against it because Hitler was doing a terrible job running the war. It was better to leave him be than risk having someone like Rommel take over.
As a side note, the July 1944 plotters against Hitler assumed that the Allies would allow the new German government to keep the conquered territories in the east. So in a way those guys were as delusional as Hitler was.
Also, it’s sure nice to have all that land to work with to move your factories to.
Funny, it never occurred to Hitler that the Soviets could do that.
Exactly. Von Stauffenberg was no hero.
What a Dumb question, Lend Lease was a key factor in the Russians being able to fight the Germans. Without it the war with might have turned out differently for the Russians.
Read Admiral William Standley’s book, The Admiral Ambassador, he was our Ambassador to Russian during the heart of the war and had many direct dealings with Stalin and Molotov. He tried to repeatedly warn Roosevelt on how to deal with Stalin and he would not listen.
Stalin never made one trip to the front during the war. The way he treated his soldiers as cannon fodder was horrible.
FDR did not take a hands off approach, Roosevelt and Admiral Leahy set policy and war strategy, not the joint chiefs. Read Nigel Hamilton’s 3 volume series on FDR as CiC, you will find a out a lot that was not known.
Listening to radio reports from 1943, you discover that the Allies were already trying to formulate how to run the world after Germany’s defeat. It was the year the Victory switch was turned on.
We know Japan was going to lose by late 1942.
> Roosevelt and Admiral Leahy set policy and war strategy, not the joint chiefs <
Agreed. By “hands off” I meant that FDR did not interfere with operational decisions. For example, he did not decide which divisions hit which beaches on D-Day.
On the other hand, Hitler interfered on pretty much every level. For example, during the German defense of Cherbourg Hitler drew lines on the map where the German forces should be. Those lines did not correspond to the terrain, or to anything else. They were pretty much random.
I.e., to produce more radios, trucks, food, etc., their production of artillery and tanks would have nose-dived.
In overall amounts, Allied Lend-Lease provided only 10% of the Soviet war effort. Without Allied Lend-Lease, the Soviets could only have produced about 60% of what they did, not 90%.
Just looking at that, the Soviets could not have pushed the Germans back much. The Eastern Front would have stabilized somewhere between the line Leningrad - Moscow - Stalingrad - Novossisk, and perhaps Leningrad - Smolensk - Rostov.
But the small amounts of Lend-Lease provided by the British in 1941 and the first half of 1942 may have been critical in avoiding a Soviet collapse in the fall of 1942. See _Accounting for War_ by Mark Harrison. I read a WW2 alternate history, whose title I forget, which used Harrison's book to have just that happen. Harrison's opinion was that Soviet morale was getting so shaky that belief in Allied support was the tipping point between the Soviets continuing to hold on and their home front falling apart.
Here's an Amazon link to Harrison's book:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521894247/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
We made a bundle on Lend lease. We sent the USSR every thing from Spam, Biscuits, to trucks and locomotives. They weren’t sent as gifts. When the war ended, the USSR were the first of our allies to pay their bill. Was it profitable? Ask the work force at the time. With 14M in uniform, meant that women were welcome to the work force. Since it ended the depression and lead to the happy days, there was $$$$ to buy a home in Levittown. Had we not been involved with the mass production of war goods, it would still have been the the grapes of wrath period for us. IMO
I read a book about 30 years ago called War Cycles Peace Cycles and it of talked about the same thing. If there’s a buildup of peace, it lasts about fifty or so years and then we go into another War cycle and according to this book historically it looks like about a 50 year cycle. And somewhere in the globe especially now that we’re all globalists, these cycles are going to affect more countries and people proportionally as more countries are going to be manufacturing and selling the Necessities for war-making which comes back to another profitable cycle... ad infinim ad nauseam.
Peace is the interval between wars
“During WW2 China liked us...”
The Nationalist Chinese liked us, the Communist Chinese led by Mao and several other notable communist leaders liked us but only if it was convenient to do so. Mao took a lot of credit for what we or the national Chinese Army did in defeating the Japanese thus adding to the chicom disinformation campaign which eventually heloed to usher in the takeover of the country by the maoists.
“There were Ford parts in NAZI war machines”
Ford was an equal opportunity capitalist. There were Ford parts in the Soviet war machine. Some of the early BT tank series used Model A Ford Engines. The Soviet light anti tank guns used 19 inch Model A Ford wheels. The GAZ 67 used a model A Engine and cowl. The only 1 ton trucks in the Soviet Army in 1941 were built at the GAZ facility which Ford had built for Stalin in the mid 1930s.
“I have wondered if that verbal agreement also helped the Japanese talk themselves into the stupid idea of bringing the US into the war.”
Through the 1930s, the Japanese looked enviously at Easter Siberia as the source of raw materials necessary to support the industry needed for empire. The “Northern Strategy” was the planning for seizing Eastern Siberia. This strategy came into question when the General Zhukov led Soviet forces administered a severe whipping to the Japanese Army at Kalkhan Gol in August 1939. This defeat showed the Japanese that the Russian bear had grown much longer teeth and sharper claws then the Russians they had fought at the turn of the century. This defeat plus the signing of the German Soviet non-aggression pact convinced the Japanese staff that the Northern Strategy was impractical, and it’s goals out of reach. The Japanese thinking shifted to a Southern Strategy which involved the conquest of the European and American possessions in the Far East. The Japanese realized any action against the Philippines would probably lead to war with the Americans, but they thought that that was a situation the could manage.
That would have been Churchill who micromanaged.
Also for the last year of Roosevelt’s life Admiral Leahy was the unofficial acting President of the U.S., due to FDR’s health problems, something few people even knew about, he served on active duty for 62 years.
Yes people tend to think in terms of pure numbers. X men and x tanks met far fewer x men and x tanks of Germans and the Germans destroyed them. A lot of that was not armor thickness or gun calibers it was C in C , skill and tactics etc.
In 1941-1942 I believe it was common for each squadron of T-34s to have 1 radio in the commanders tank, and radios were poor contraptions in the USSR prone to failures. So these lighter German tanks have a reliable radio in each unit. The Germans were able to maneuver on command pick out the commander Soviet tank and knock it out or damage it. Suddenly the already poorly coordinated t-34s are leaderless etc. ‘’once the US/Uk radios start coming in the number of tanks and (Like you said) even infantry units start suddenly having better control and coordination.
Our lend-lease had a great impact.
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