Posted on 04/27/2006 6:26:15 PM PDT by spanalot
Was General Patton's death the result of a traffic accident or was he the victim of an assassination plot? (By Stalin)
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It seems possible that had the Western Allies decided to keep the German armed forces as intact as possible, and with a united front, Stalin would have been defeated in a head to head fight.
At least Patton And McArthur were aggressive when needed. Granted they had large ego's, Unfortunately Montgomery had a larger ego, less well deserved.
This is not a serious discussion. Anyone who believes that a new, UNELECTED, President could reverse the long-held policy of his Sainted predecessor and attack our biggest ally with nuclear weapons can hardly call ME "daft".
You are also apparently unaware of the Soviet/Russian peoples' capacity for suffering. We could not have killed enough of them to win without turning into the monsters we claimed to be fighting.
Cynics and Machiavellians may be able to rationalize this grab for power but it would have been totally inconsistent with the nature of the American people who had to be dragged into the world arena of power politics.
Less than three decades before America was so isolationist that the Senate rejected the League of Nations. We deliberately turned our backs on European politics until it became so dangerous involvement was unavoidable. Now it would be ready to rule the world through military power? I don't think so.
"This is not a serious discussion."
You're right and it is because of your failure to understand the misery that resulted by outr inaction.
This inaction resulted in the Kremlin and China getting the bomb and putting a billion people in slavery and another 60 million in their graves.
What part of this don't you understand?
Do you know waht it cost us to contain this vermin once they had the bomb?
And the final chapter is not yet written.
Are you Russian, by any chance?
"It seems possible that had the Western Allies decided to keep the German armed forces as intact as possible, and with a united front, Stalin would have been defeated in a head to head fight."
It seems possible, but certainly wasn't. It's not merely a matter of having enough men, tanks or planes, but of logistics and terrain, as well. Logistics and terrain are the primary reasons for German defeat on the Eastern Front to begin with, how you arrive at the conclusion that after their surrender there were a) any German forces capable of having another go at Russia and b) they would have been successful with American help, defies logic on many points.
Germany lost on the Eastern Front for three specific reasons:
a) Supply lines were extended and almost impossible to maintain due to distance, terrain, lack of security, and weather.
b) the German (really Hitlerian) predisposition to hold eveything they took to the last man, rather than engaging in tactical/strategic withdrawls when necessary, or otherwise conserving combat power whenever possible, in the face of determined Russian attacks, ensured that when the Germans tried to hold everything, they would, in fact, hold nothing.
The Hitlerian ideal of ensuring that every square inch of ground taken mby the Wermacht should be held by a German soldier and never relinquished guarenteed a lot of dead Germans in ultimately futile situations.
German commanders, acting mostly under orders or Nazi enthusiasm, frittered away a first class army in a series of stupid campaigns.
c)The vast Eurasian landmass simply swallowed the German Army whole. There would never be enough soldiers, in anyone's army, to present a coherant front against the Russian army under those conditions. This space gave the Russians a tactical advantage which they took at every chance they got; constructing defenses in depth, exploiting the gaps between German formations, slipping partisans and special units in to operate behind German lines, tying up front-line German troops in repeated security operations behind the lines.
Germany and her allies lost in excess of 5 million men on the Eastern Front (killed, wounded, captured and missing), and the average German soldier endured hardships, and experienced horrors, that had probably not been seen or felt since Napoleon's retreat from the gates of Moscow. There were a further million men lost just trying to keep the Russians out of Germany proper.
By 1944, the German army was reduced to culling POW camps for enemy soldiers with pro-Nazi "sensibilities" (The Freikorps)to be recruited into the SS. And that's when they weren't rounding up the children (Hitler Youth), the old men (Volkstrum) and the "stomach cases" (i.e. veteran soldiers declared medically unfit for combat duty, but still capable of at least dying, rifle in hand, in place).
The "German" trooops encountered at Normandy Beach were nothing of the sort, being mostly conscripted Poles, Ukranians, and in at least one circumstance, KOREANS (true story!).
There was nothing "to keep as intact as possible" vis-a-vis the German army of 1945. There were very few soldiers left capable of anythign except stubborn defense to the death.
As to your assertion that a "united front" would have been a deterrent to Moscow. Well, it was; It was called NATO.
Whether ther Western Alliance could have become NATO-like in 1945 (instead of '48)is another argument altogether, though.
"Use of the bomb ironically was an act of mercy"
That's the official propaganda, put forth by the only country to ever have used atomic arms. The old "we saved a million Americans and 10 million Japanese" rhetoric is quite old and threadbare, given the evidence of Japan's (and America's) true state in mid 1945.
The bomb was used as a means with which to terrorize Japan (as if firebombing and carpet bombing weren't enough) into surrender. Without the demonstration of "total destruction" as laid out in the Potsdam Declaration, Japan would have continued to fight to the last man. Japan, realistically, in all probability, would have starved by early 1946 (this is according to a United States Naval Intelligence report issued in April of 1944, long since backed up by actual Japanese records), before any American invasion would have been feasible in the first place.
If necessary, Truman would have suffered that mystical "million casualty" number, if only to prop up the ridiculous notion of a united allied front (a premise which had far outlived it's usefulness) and the nonsense of "unconditional surrender" as laid out in the Potsdam declaration and it's forerunners (Tehran conference, Atlantic Charter, Cairo Conference, etc. Japan's surrender was certainly NOT unconditional, despite the allied propensity to pretend it was).
Military art being what it was in 1945, Truman could not end the war, conventionally, in any other way with the existing resources at hand, and the political realities back home. The tactics of naval blockade (the strategy favored by Nimitz), and siege would only have accelerated the process, but it's possible that Japan would have surrendered, or fallen to internal revolt, long before an allied soldier set foot on the Home Islands (the strategy favored by MacArthur).
The bomb was an expedient. The attempts to describe it as an instrument of saving lives do not change that reality, because the only lives being saved were AMERICAN (attempts to rationalize the killing of 150,000+ Japanese in this regard, were always an afterthought), and they were being "saved" in this fashion because the American public had tired of war, had sacrificed enough on the altar of war, and had simply run out of soldiers to be used by an increasingly frustrated and uncreative military leadership. We could not have "won" (at a price worth paying) by most other means, and waiting for Japan to rot from the inside out was beyond our patience or political will at the time.
Now, if you call the mass murder of innocents that resulted from the atomic bombings of Hiroshina and Nagasaki, undertaken to prove an ultimately worthless political point, in support of a war effort that was running out of steam and materiel, and laboring under the weight of adverse public opinion, on behalf of a frustrated military and diplomatic complex to be "humane", then you have a strange definition of "humane".
What kind of idiot can ignore the deaths of the millions due to communism? That has never been the point. Your incapacity to understand anything outside of your fantasy world has been the issue all along.
Perhaps in a game of RISK or some other board games your speculations and strategies deluded as they are could be amusing to watch play out. But those who understand world politics and military and strategic considerations can only laugh at your silliness.
Pure WASP? Are you by any chance an idiot?
I have read Doestoevsky and listened to Shostakovitch which may be enough to make me suspect to ham-headed fools.
Every weapon is an "expedient" and all are designed to end the conflict as soon as possible in order to save lives. That is exactly what happened wrt Japan. There appears to be no issue here except to those who want to limit America's use of its power.
Propaganda is not necessarily false in any case and it is not in this one.
PS, don't pay attention to spanalot anymore. You;ll sleep better that way.
Secondly, I don;tobject to the notion that "every weapon is an expedient" but I do object to the notion that instant vaporization of people (or a slower, more painful death due to raditation sickness and cancers) is more "humane" than slow starvation, immolation via napalm, or a bullet to the brainpan.
Death is still death, and a violently inflicted death, regardless of how quick and painless, is a violently inflicted death. The great crime of WWII is that death and destruction were PURPOSELY visited upon those not directly involved as a matter of strategy and policy, and the technology and ideologies existed (and evolved) to make those things commonplace, and not something reserved for the bad old days of Atilla the Hun and Ghengis Khan. I know this is not the first time such things have happened in the history of warfare, but you would think that at perhaps some point someone would have protested (and I know many did) at this type of barbarity.
What were once considerd criminal acts beyond the pale became the standard operating procedure of the Second World War.
From what I understand, Stalin had his own problems, in regards to the continued ability of the Red Army to maintain a high level of combat worthiness. I certainly hope you don't disregard that possibility in arguing for an invincible Red Army.
Never said "invincible" just "unbeatable by Patton with the resources at hand". Big difference.
In my youth, I lived next door to a very refined and educated Japanese lady. It was her opinion that the A-bombs, horrible as they were, saved many lives. As they came out of left field so to speak, they allowed the Japanese to save 'face' and then they could surrender with honor. I had been of the opinion, the first nukes should have been used on strictly military locations. Her position was the C. LeMay had leveled everything worth while previously. I later learned that Nagasaki/Hiroshima were taken off target lists, just for purposes of a demonstration.
Could you explain?
Obviously, any army can be defeated. I should think that would have been self-evident.
The discussion was about the prospects for success had George Patton been ordered (or as many here seem to think, if he'd been ALLOWED) to instigate a war against Russia after the defeat of Germany. It's generally assumed that Patton's mission would not be just kicking the Russians back into the Soviet Union, but a victory against the Russians in a way that would preclude the Cold War. This would have to entail an outright defeat of the Soviet Union (invasion and occupation of at least the majority of Western Soviet territory and resources). Of course, this is only possible with hindsight: in 1945 no one would have thought of "Cold War", the Berlin Wall, or Vietnam. I that regard, the scenario is not quite fair.
However, assuming that we could magically attribute what we know is hindsight as foresight to American military and political leaders of the day, Patton in 1945, with what he had to hand and with the difficulties he would have faced would have most likely (I say definitely) lost any conflict with the Soviet Union.
This assesment is not made on the basis of general quality of troops on a man-to-man level. Your American soldier of 1945 was just as tough and dedicated as his Russian counterpart. However, you have to take several other factors into consideration:
1. Relative numbers - In terms of manpower, Patton is vastly outnumbered by the Soviet Armies he will face. He has no Eurpoean ally capable of helping make up this gap in any signifgant way. The American armed forces at this time are still fighting the Japanese, and Patton cannot expect signifigant reinforcements from the Pacific Theatre. He does have several advantages: his troops generally have better support from artillery, armor and artillery (and he's outnumbered in these weapons as well), and his commanders have a freedom of action that their Soviet counterparts do not. However, you have to ask the basic question: is one American soldier, taking into consideration these advatanges equal to two Soviets? Three? Ten? It is generally recognized (I could give you the exact figures and sources, but I'm lazy at the moment, if you want them, I can get them within a couple of days) that the German Army registered a 15-to-1 kill ratio over the Soviet Army, and they were still outnumbered. And they still lost.
America in 1945 had 16 million troops in uniform (Army, AAF, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, Merchant Marines and a slew of Military/Civilian services), and was scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel as early as 1944. The United States had no more soldiers to send, not with the expected invasion of Japan expected to require upwards of 1.5 million troops.
None of this, of course, begins to discuss relative quality of weapons and equipment. Too long a discussion to get into here, but again, we have to ask: Is one P-51 equal to 5 MiGs? How many Shermans to a T-34? etc.
2- Logistics - Patton is dependant upon a supply line that begins in the Continental United States. This is a 4,000 mile long supply line. Soviet forces are, for all intents and purposes, enjoying interior lines of supply. It's a shorter distance Berlin-to-the-Urals than it is Boston-to-Berlin. While Patton's supply lines are secure (there is no Soviet Navy worth the name to interdict his SLOC's, he has a variety of relatively-convenient European ports to unload from, etc), they are extended and it will require just as many logistical resources to support the basic logistical effort, as it will his Armies. At some point, this pays diminishing returns (the campaign across France supplied by the Red Ball Express showed this in painful detail. The problem would have been roughly similar).
3. Geography - Assuming Patton solves these problems or can at least manage them, he has clear sailing right across Germany and the Eastern European plains until he begins hitting natural barriers: The first major ones are the Oder and Vistula Rivers in Eastern Germany and Poland, respectively. Pass these barriers and the Ukranian plains are wide open, until you reach the confluence of the Don and Volga rivers (the Pripet marshes), at least. This area is impassible to armor and mechanized forces (the Germans hated it with a passion). If you get past this natural barrier, you then run smack into the Ural mountains.
Now, something that is generally disregarded in discussions of the German campaigns in Western Russia is the vast area that needs to be secured. Once you get through the Ukraine, the Russian landmass opens,like a fan, from the Baltic States all the way to the Crimea. The Germans found they simply did not have enough grunts to hold enough of this territory to make it secure, so they relied on mobile "Flying Columns" to patrol large areas between strategic points. It didn't work all that well. The Russians were very good at exploiting the gaps presented by too small a force holding too large an area.
Conversely, the Russians could, if they were being beaten or outmanuevered, trade space for time, which is what they did against the Germans, sucking the German army deeper into the interior of Russia, extending the enemy's supply lines, causing him to use up readily-available supplies in simple movement from point to point, in skirmishes and holding actions, and not in the taking and holding of ground or in engaging major Soviet forces. Then, at a time and place of their own choosing, the Red Army would unleash an overwhelming counterattack from prepared positions, and on the exposed flanks of their enemy.
This, of course, does not take into account the weather (neither did the Germans). In the spring and fall (due to heavy rains and the spring thaw), the Ukranian and Russian plains become a sea of thick mud (known to the Russians as the Rasputitsa) that is virtually impassable. The Rasputitsa slows an enemy down (especially a mechanized enemy) and after the fall rains, the Russian Winter freezes him in place. For months.
If George S.Patton, as brilliant as he could have been could have overcome these problems he would be rightly hailed as the Greatest Military Commander of All-Time. Relaistically, though, it was a very tall order, almost impossible in the face of a foe who could fight just as well as we could and who had the means to do it with.
Even Patton could not do the impossible. Past commanders, most notably Alexander and Ghenghis Khan, took larger geographic areas with smaller forces, they also had several other factors in their favor that Patton would not enjoy: his enemy is expecting him, his enemy is not a foreign culture unfamiliar with the Western way of war, it's tactics, and it's effects, the enemy is not a disjointed, politically diverse coalition, it is a unified country with a common ideology and strategic goal. That'll do for a start.
Atomic bombs do not even begin to equal the score in this regard. We could have nuked the Russian cities and factories, but we would not have been able to physically conquer the Soviet Union, which is what it would require if the Cold War and it's consequences are to be avoided completely (our original war aim, remember?).
Had the situation been reversed, say with a Soviet Army having to fight in North America rather than Americans in Europe, they would have encountered the same problems and would probably have lost in just as severe a fashion.
It is always a pleasure to read thoughtful and considered opinion. WWII has always intrigued me and it has always been a mystery why the Allies, knowing what Soviet Communism was, even in 1945, didn't go straight through Berlin and on to Moscow.
Basically because they truly knew the strategic situation and because of politics.
The "Take Berlin and Win the War" stretegy ws purely political symbolism. The Western Allies could win the war without taking Berlin, and certainly had an inkling of the enormous casualties this would entail (some post-war estimates count the Russians as having lost 300,000 men in taking Berlin ALONE). It just would have required vast investments in time, blood and iron that would have been hard to take.
The reality was that Britain was exhausted and out of soldiers. France barely existed as a nation, let alone one capable of fielding a massive army. The only available (potential) ally was Germany, and they had just lost 8 milllion or so people, and the alliance would have been politically unpalatable.
It was best to let the Russians and Germans fight for Berlin, and bleed the hell out of each other while they did it. For all practical purposes, the Russians beat the Germans in any case, with the US/Anglo-Fench alliance more or less nibbling at Germany's perimeter from 1941 until Normandy. That tells you something about the ability of the Western Allies to actually carry the war to Germany, let alone Russia, prior to 1944, and even then, we suffered horrendous losses.
Hell, we wasted near on 60,000 men on "strategic bombing" campaigns that were nothing of the sort and did very little to actually stop German war production. How long could we sustain that kind of effort?
Think of it this way: from the Normandy beaches to the Rhine is a relatively short distance (if memory serves, more or less 500 miles, give or take). How long did it take to actually reach the Rhine and what difficulties did the allies face in doing it? And how close did the whole thing come to disaster after the fighting in the Hurtgenwald and the Bulge? And against an enemy that was increasingly running out of manpower, resources and was fighting on two fronts?
The very effective German soldier was even more so on the defensive than he was on the offensive. Germany fought a defensive battle all the way across France and across trhe Rhine, and made the Allies invest a year in the process, with attendant loss of life and limb.
The Russians truly carried the war to Germany in a way the Western Allies could not.
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