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There is much truth to this notion. I think that the US Army's and Navy and Air Corp) defeat of the Wehrmacht was the greatest achievment in it's history, as the German Army was THE outstanding tactical fighting force of the war, even with the dead strategic hand of Adolph Hitler at it's controls. Never has any army (German) in history fought so well for so monstrous a cause.

In assesing our victory, we must acknowledge that we were tasked with confronting only 20% of that formidable German enemy in NW Europe. 8 of every 10 German soldiers who died in WWII were killed by the other hideous regime of the time, Stalin's Soviet Russia. Just think of our casualty lists had we had to face just another 25% of the German Army in the West. While we would not have been has inhumanly profligate as the Soviets were in expending human capital, it is safe to say that hundreds of thousands of baby boomers alive today would have perished with their fathers in the mud of European battlefields.

I am just trying to keep our victory in perspective and to make the case that even though I think that we would have ultimately prevailed, it would have been at the price of the greatest death toll in our history without the contributions of the Reds. I think our fight was nearly as much to prevent the westward advance of the Red Army as to defeat the Germans. It was a good thing for the world that we stopped them by meeting? them at the Elbe River. Would have been better had we gone a bit farther east though, despite the Yalta conference agreements.

I'll tell you this. My grandfather met the end of war as a staff officer in the 4-th Guards tank corps. When I asked him about the raping and plundering issue, he told me basically this:

Before the corps entered German territory, there was an order published, that prescribed the strictest possible code of conduct on the occupied territories. No plundering. No looting. No marauding. No rapes. The order explicitly stated, that anyone caught doing any of it, will be immediately shot on the spot. He remembered this very well, since he helped to distribute it among individual units. It was made very clear, that every soldier of the corps would read and understand the order. The reason was quite obvious - the Germany was to be occupied for a long time, and the Soviets worried about postwar policy.

As to what actually happened, grandfather said this: There were, unfortunately, isolated incidents of plundering and rape. To prevent that completely was impossible. Even a few cases of gang-rape. BUT, and this is very important, the perpetrators where sought after, and when caught, they were publicly executed with all corps present. Those caught "in action", so to say, were executed on the spot. The enforcement of that order was very strict, and very harsh. So, after a couple of public executions, there were no more attempts at such behavior. And there were, he repeated, very few incidents to begin with.

As to the rumor that the so-called "mass gang rapes" were in any way sanctioned, well, this is just a big pile of bull****.

I have another point to make. Many of FReepers present in this thread regard the article as "leftist nonsense". However, while the parts about Western Allies seem as a nonsense to them, the "mass rapes" nonsense is too easily accepted, without any trace of historical criticism, or attempt to discover what really happened. Most unfortunate. After all, the Russia does not deny a Katyn massacre.

the German Army was THE outstanding tactical fighting force of the war, even with the dead strategic hand of Adolph Hitler at it's controls.

A number of years ago, I read a very scholarly study written by Martin Van Crefeld (sp) while he was a contractor here in Northern Virginia about the fighting efficiency of the Wehrmacht in WWII. It had been promoted by to early (late 1940s-1950s) attempts under the leadership of the famous Colonel Dupuy, USA to model combat outcomes using computers of the era. The simulations used battles from WWII as the subjects because they had accurate order of battle information and knew the actual outcomes of the battles. However, the modeling had a problem. They could never get the modeling outcome to match the actual outcome of the battle unless they INCREASED the troop strength of the German forces by 50%. This efficiency was present in all battles from 1939 to 1945 and it did not matter if the Germans were on the offensive or defensive.

Never has any army (German) in history fought so well for so monstrous a cause.

A warning, if ever one was needed, against turning the state into a religion and its leader into a God.

While we would not have been has inhumanly profligate as the Soviets were in expending human capital, it is safe to say that hundreds of thousands of baby boomers alive today would have perished with their fathers in the mud of European battlefields

My father was an 8th Air Force bomber crewman, so include me among those who would not have seen daylight had the war not ended when it did. Since he was regular Army and Army Air Corps before WWII started, he was not eligible for the 25 mission rotation. He flew over 120 missions during 1943 to 1945, was wounded(lightly) twice, and shot down/crashed three times.

It was just a matter of time before his number came up. Sure glad it didn't.