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?
Could have, but the lines were already drawn. We had to hand some territory over to the USSR after we occupied it. I think that the Red Army suffered about 1 million casualties in the entire Berlin-area operations. Better them than us, especially since we were going to give it to them anyway. Patton wanted to re-arm the German army and attact the Russians. Interesting idea, but not politically do-able. The US Army was just getting totally up to speed in 1945, and the Red Army was starting to finally run low on manpower, and was using Allied-supplied equipment in huge quantities, which would have ended immediately, so, plus Allied air power, it might have been posssible to drive the USSR out of europe. However, the US was planning on an invasion of Japan, and all the military force was needed there, so it wasn't considered.
You are correct, it was decided on the Odor and Neisse Rivers, not Berlin.
We should have let Patton have his way. There would have been no Korean war, no Viet Nam war, and countless other conflicts funded by the commies would have been avoided. Don't forget that we had the bomb way before they did either. Communism should have been stopped then.
Could we have beaten the Soviets into Berlin? Yes.
Should we have beaten the Soviets into Berlin? No.
There was no reason except for bragging rights that we needed to take Berlin. The city was in the Soviet zone of occupation so there wasn't much of a point in sacrificing tens of thousands of American lives. The Russians did the bulk of the fighting against the Germans (7 out of 8 German Army casualties in WWII were inflicted by the Soviets) and tied down the vast majority of the German Army.
Now I don't think the Germans (not counting the die hard Nazis) would have fought nearly as hard for Berlin if it had been the Western Allies attacking. They fought to the death against the Russians because they were trying to delay the Russians as long as possible to allow as many civilians to flee westward and because they knew what the Russians were going to do when they took the city.
Understand totally
After what the German forces did to the Russians, they had a real reason to fear the retributions.
Suppose rumors of what happened after the German pullback from East Prussia got to the German populace.
No doubt the Germans fought the Soviets harder than would have us.
Maybe we would have suffered a lot less but by the Soviets taking the city we didnt have to.
I have to disagree on every point you made.
The lines were drawn. Handing over that land would have sucked, and Ike and Bradley were correct about that. A side note, Napoleon's 1st exile was caused by the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig. When I toured it, I learned that many of the last Americans to die in Europe in WWII died at that monument (it is a great monument and sad that Americans died and then gave the land back).
I might add
The Soviets had the T34
Hands down the best tank of it's age, and they had thousands of em....
BS. We're the only reason "the most massive and powerful land force on earth" isn't speaking German today. Who do you think fed them and armed them with stuff that actually worked?Absolutely!!! Fighting Hitler was one thing, but the Commies should of been left to fend for themselves... dealing with an insane Hitler would of been better than dealing with a sane Uncle-Joe!!!!!!!!!
Not only that, we should have nuked moscow after we were done with Japan. And supported the ROC against Mao's communists.
We let these "allies" get away with declaring war on Japan AFTER we dropped the bomb. This got their foot in the door for a piece of a pie they never paid a drop of blood for. (How many russians died fighting japs?)
In turn, they then gave us the Korean War, the Viet Nam war, and the Cuban missle crisis.
I was a commander on the Berlin Wall when it fell, and before the Fall, I would have argued that yes we should have beaten the Soviets to Berlin. After the Fall, it sure looks like Ike was right, but I still think we should have tried .... your logic is sound.
I remember seeing some footage of the US Army handing Leipzig over to the Russians. Many German soldiers kept fighting the Russians because they were under the impression that the Allies were going to join them in fighting the USSR, a rumor spread by many German commanders to keep their men in the fight.
Your daddy raised you right! Why can't people see the logic of stopping communism then, instead of taking $hit off of them for the next 60 years?
The Russians built their own guns, and could assemble Stalin Organs without a lot of difficulty.
You have to remember that they'd relocated as much industry as they could beyond the Ural mountains, but their ace in the hole for resupply was the United States of America.
We made a deal ~ the US built the stuff ~ the Russians used it to kill Germans and Hungarians.
Did you know that Russian soldiers in the Battle of Stalingrad got canned meat from Chicago every day? The German soldiers didn't!
This stuff is called Spam, and there are those who will argue that Spam won WWII. All things being equal it definitely tipped an important balance.
Then there's Georgi Zhukov ( http://www.carpenoctem.tv/military/zhukov.html has a fair brief on his life and career ). I think it's safe for Americans to give this fellow some credit these days.
Patton simply does not stand up against Zhukov by any measure.
Sometimes "hope" was the only thing the Germans had to hang on to. It is ironic that it was newly recruited Hitler Youth units that crushed the 2nd Armored Division's brigdehead on the Elbe and in doing so crushed the hopes of the Germans fighting the Soviets.
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