Posted on 04/13/2005 6:24:31 PM PDT by Yasotay
Sixty years ago, the US Ninth Army had two bridgeheads across the Elbe River. One was crushed and the other secured. The sixty year old question remains: Should and could we have beaten the Soviets into Berlin?
A valid argument can be made about Eisenhower.
Yamashita .... wrong league.
Rommel .... not a chance.
Kesselring defense does not even compare to Leningrad or Moscow.
Best money Uncle Sugar ever spent with that little gem.....I have mine on the key chain too. Albeit my last few years of service saw the MRE vs the "C" it was and is still one of the greatest designs of the last century IMO .......:o)
It was different ... a clash of cultures. The West's reaction would have been different, but the West DID experience fighting against the Japanese that was as horrific as the Eastern Front and on many locations on the Western Front as well.
Against the Russians, that is (and judging on the behavior of the Russian soldiers, can't say I would have blamed them). Had it been the Americans or British, it would have been an entirely different story. They would have surrendered in droves.
I saw something on the Discovery Channel sometime back about the end of the war with Japan about a military coup to keep Horohito(sp) from surrendering.If it would have succeded Tokyo would have been next on the A bomb hit parade.
The US wanted the Soviets fighting in the Pacific. The US would have pulled back. Churchill may have agreed to pull back, IF Poland was freed (the reason they went to war). But Churchill lost the election and was out of power.If fighting had broken out between the US and the USSR, the Soviets may have had some early successes, but in the long run, they would have been creamed.
I'll grant you that, with the assertation that the reason was because there were too many Nazi functionaries (read Hitler toadies) in important positions. This led to German generals, men who knew better, backing, or making decisions that they knew were wrong. While it's easy for them to point the finger at Hitler, the blame does ultimately lay at their feet.
Without Hitler's interference in every aspect; from decisions on armament priorities to troop movements, AND help from the Western Allies to the Soviets, I firmly believe that we see the Soviet defeat in 1942. Before any argument starts, I do think that it would not, and could not have happened with the chain of events that started in the late part of 1940(prior to Barbarossa even kicking off). IMO, the decisions that doomed the Germans in the East were made then and in the early to mid part of 1941.
You are 150% correct about political will and being tired of war. But by all accounts, the US 9th Army was almost begging to go to Berlin. Some of the 9th's exploits charging across Germany, makes the SS and the heyday of the Panzers look like wimps.
Yes but those Japanese forces were typically cutoff and isolated on small islands. Furthermore, the Japanese really didn't have a strategic defensive philosophy since such was viewed as defeatist.
The Red Army was vastly superior to the Japanese. Look at how the Red Army rolled right over Japanese defenses in August 1945.
In the air, the Western Allies would have quickly established supremacy. However, on the ground, it would have been a slugfest. For sure, by May 1945, the Russians had been bled badly. How deep their reserves were, I can't say. Without Lend Lease, they would eventually have been pushed back but the cost would have been very high. We like to think how superior the American soldier was but when reading first hand accounts by Germans, the Russian soldier is always ranked highest.
There were others as well. Still, existing Russian bombers in production in 1944 were satisfactory for hitting American positions in Western Europe. It was not until 1949 that a threat to America itself by the Tu-4 became a big issue.
BTW, the left sold out the US back in the 1920s with such pieces of nonsense as the Kellog-Briand agreement.
The more I read about what the Progressives were doing the more I'm convinced that the Republicans had been undermined by these guys.
Zhukov did what was necessary. Did you ever try to fight a war in a country without real roads?
Patton got everything he needed, and could hang onto except "command". He regularly lost "command". Zhukov didn't have that problem until right after the war when Stalin took him down a couple of pegs lest he, himself, be displaced in the public's mind.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/bomber/tu-4.htm ~ we are not talking about the most technologically sophisticated planes here, but check out the quantities ~ 12,000!
The historians you cite always forget about the Starvation Winter of 1943. The Russians would have been seriously hampered but for the fact the USA was making massive food shipments to them.
Look, the entry of Americans into WWI didn't send the Germans flying to POW compounds, and our entry in WWII didn't either. They would have fought. The difference in WWII was the Russians didn't abandon the field of battle the way they'd done in WWI with a separate peace with Germany.
You will see the ligntning flashing,
Hear atomic thunder roll;
When Moscow lies in ashes,
God have mercy on your soul.
Here's a question, Mr. Stalin,
And it's you who must decide:
When atomic bombs start falling,
Do you have a place to hide?
--Roy Acuff, from Advice to Joe, 1950
No I haven't, and I am venturing to guess that you never have, either, so your question is moot.
As to Zhukov, yes he did what was necessary, under Soviet conditions. So did everyone else. Still doesn't change the fact that he treated his troops as disposable, and that he was not very innovative in the attack, IMO (I am sure Soviet historians would disagree); unlike Patton, to whom he had been compared to earlier in the thread. Zhukov's methods (aka Soviet Military Doctrine) have been discredited on the battle field, while the methods Patton helped pioneer (US take on combined arms) have lead to overwhelming victories.
Look at it this way. The Soviets had up to a million casualties taking Berlin (I am still not sure of the actual numbers), but in the end the Americans, the British, and the French got their own sectors without having to sacrifice anyone. Furthermore, letting the Soviets take Berlin also helped in convincing them they had no claims to Japanese territories.
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