[Yasotay]

I believe we should have tried .... And your opinion is?

[Slump Tester]

We should have turned Patton loose on them AFTER they got to Berlin.

[DTogo]

Considering the number of troops they lost fighting the die-hard (and they did) remnants of the Third Reich, we shouldn't have any regrets.

[muawiyah]

Berlin was an enormous city. The Deutschlanders said they were prepared to defend it to the death on the ground.

I think they were, and tried to. Glad to see the Russians belly up to the bar on that one ~ means a lot of American boys grew up with fathers FUR SHUR.

[76834]

If I recall my history correctly, this issue was already settled by an agreement with the Soviet forces approaching from the East, Was it Potsdam?

Anyways we were probly better off since the Soviets took horrendous losses taking the capitol,
I remember reading figures in excess of 350,000.

Am sure some friendly FReeper will correct me if I am wrong/

[Mears]

No. The Soviets were our allies.

We were exhausted and still had to finish the war in the Pacific.

Lines had to be drawn,and they were.

[Lando Lincoln]

FWIW......60 years ago yesterday, FDR died at the age of 63. What was the impact of that on the path to Berlin?

Lando

[bd476]

EUROPE: The great German arsenal city of Essen fell today in the wake of three American armies racing over the last 100 miles to Berlin at a clip that was expected to bring a juncture with the Red Army in the next 24 to 72 hours (April 11) ...

American Ninth Army tanks smashed through the Elbe river defenses today, striking into the last 50 miles before Berlin, and Lt. Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army splintered Germany’s east front supply lines with a 46-mile dash for Halle and Leipzig (April 12) ...

A solemnly hushed house of commons adjourned five minutes after it had convened in London in respect to the memory of President Roosevelt (April 13) ...

Gen. Mark W. Clark announced today that the “spring offensive in the Mediterranean theatre has begun,” with the U.S. Fifth and British Eighth armies engaged in operations along the entire Italian battlefront (April 16).

World War II Remembered

[ozzymandus]

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.

[COEXERJ145]

Should and could we have beaten the Soviets into Berlin?

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.

[Paul_Denton]

Not only that, we should have nuked moscow after we were done with Japan. And supported the ROC against Mao's communists.

[PzLdr]

Simpson's 9th Army was across the Elbe with the 2d Armored and (I believe) 83rd Inf. ready to go the 100 or so clicks to Berlin in early April. Ike stopped him from going around the 8th. Zhukov and Koniev didn't attack for another week plus. Except for some SS detachments, there was no significant resistance between Simpson and Berlin. The German Army seemed willing to hold the Red Army at bay while the western Allies drove east. Could Simpson have TAKEN Berlin is another question, but I agree, he should have tried. Eisenhower was lied to by the Russians, and feared the "National Redoubt" propaganda way too much. At the end, even the Waffen SS units facing the Russians sought to surrender to the West, including the Leibstandarte, Das Reich, Totenkopf and Wiking, so resistance in Berlin might not have been what the Russians ran into.

[fso301]

War in the East was unlike anything that the Western Allies experienced. Had hostilities with Russia broken out, Western casualties would have been horrific.

[KC_Conspirator]

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.

[ex-snook]

I don't know about Berlin but I do know about Vienna. My recollection is that we were on the Austrian border and stayed there for about a week. We had gone from Munich/Dachau is a few days and there was no reason/opposition to wait. We could easily have gone to Vienna but as we found out later, Roosevelt had made arrangements with Stalin. Roosevelt had a lot of Commie lovers in his administration. The Russians were even supplied with our currency plates.

[MHT]

60 years ago this week, Bob Dole was injured in Italy, too.