Posted on 06/05/2019 6:24:22 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Russia told the West on Wednesday the Normandy landings on D-Day in 1944 did not play a decisive role in ending World War II and that the Allied war effort should not be exaggerated.
Moscow's comments might irk war veterans in Britain where the 75th anniversary on Wednesday of the largest seaborne invasion in history was marked at a ceremony in Portsmouth attended by Queen Elizabeth and world leaders including Donald Trump and Angela Merkel.
Speaking at a weekly news conference in Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova offered a tribute to those who died on the western front of World War II and said Moscow appreciated the Allied war effort.
"It should of course not be exaggerated. And especially not at the same time as diminishing the Soviet Union's titanic efforts, without which this victory simply would not have happened," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at themoscowtimes.com ...
While I agree that Germany had to be the primary focus of our efforts, the U.S. forces in the Pacific had a hard way to go for a time, since we were siphoning off resources to North Africa and Italy in an effort to take some pressure off of the Soviets by opening up a second front against the Nazis. I also agree with your point that we really didn't want the commies in Japan, but that just underlines what great "allies" the the Soviets were. It's just very tiresome to hear about the selfless sacrifices of the Soviets even as they helped themselves to eastern Europe.
Way to pollute a good thread.
Show ‘im what he won, Bob!
[Bob opens the exit door].
“Perhaps if Stalin wouldn’t have sided with Hitler at the outset, there would have been no need for the “Great Patriotic War”.
No kidding. Commies are @**holes.
Perhaps for the same reason that the Imperial Japanese Army exiled General Yamashita, conqueror of Malaya and Singapore, to the comparative backwater of Manchuria...jealousy.
And I’m sure Russia scoffs at any mention of Lend/Lease. ........................ Yes, it was canned “Spam” that won the war on the eastern front. We helped a little with the massive supply of equipment sent to our allies. By the time we hit the beaches, the Germans were pretty much ground down. Not to say they didn’t fight, but what good are mechanized forces without fuel and little food. They lacked the man power they had in 39-41’, by the time we got to France we already had a good portion of their army 10+(?) divisions in PW camps. The Volk Divisions we had to fight weren’t the Waffen SS. Germany was running out of warriors, and was sending the 4F’s in by the time we got there. (This was told to me many years ago by a German WW II veteran. If they could surrender without being shot On the western front), many did so. Once the Allies (Americans) landed he said most knew the war was over.) 43 to 45 also resulted in bad crops in Germany, and the Russians were busy grinding down the best German divisions after Stalingrad, thanks to a huge amount of made in the USA equipment and their endless supply of conscripts. The worst fighting was on the eastern front, neither side was willing to give quarter. We took losses too, most were USAAF casualties. Our greatest contribution to victory was material and the bombing of the communications and industry. I’m not poo-pooing the ground troops, you don’t take the land with without the fighting men.
By the time we landed in Normandy we were drafting High school kids, that tells you what kind of shape we were in, when we were only fighting 42-44. What shape were the Germans in after 39-44, all one had to do is look at the 14 yr olds in the PW camps in 45. We get there in time, had we waited another year, the USSR could have had all of Europe. Makes one wonder about iffy history.
Bingo! That is correct. The Germans would have welcomed the Americans and Brits. Of course some of the hardened SS and Hitler Jugend would have bloodied us, it would not have been as bad as the Russians entering Berlin.
Well they’re right. It wasn’t the decisive ending. Then again, nobody said it was.
Oh and Russkies, the war was much bigger than just Hitler. You often seem to want to forget that.
>>Far too many Americans have zero appreciation for the size of the Soviet effort, and the weight they brought to the fight.
Thank a teacher. Or really, the quasi-monopoly government school system.
Another thing the Russians like to forget. The economic and military aid to them from the West was absolutely massive. That had a decisive impact.
Furthermore, their statement that D-Day did not have a decisive impact are wrong. It wasn’t the ending but its impact was huge - as was the threat of Allied invasion elsewhere that tied down a lot of German troops. Norway alone tied down over 10 divisions. They didn’t end up fighting and they weren’t casualties but they wouldn’t have been stationed there but for the threat of Allied invasion.
No, you did not win the war all by yourselves no matter how much you would like to think you did.
Also most of the Russian casualties are the result of Stalin’s leadership. He did not care how many died.
Yup.
Truth is far more complex as both nations were seen as a threat by the West and policy was to basically let them kill each other. Military hardware was sent to both sides by the USA until later in the war.
Very few Americans know Hitler’s army was so enhanced by Ford’s manufacturing prowess that Henry Ford was given the Nazi’s highest civilian award.
Hitler would not have gotten nearly as far without American know how. Of course we could then have had Stalin terrorising Europe a few years after that.
Politics is not as clean cut as our leaders say and those who always suffer most are poor civilians who just want to live their lives in peace...
Yeah, well, as I recall the Soviets weren’t shy about demanding it, loudly and repeatedly. So now it didn’t matter? Right...
I’d be shocked if it were only 30%. The US and Canada supplied Russia with 450,000 Trucks. That includes the Studebakers on which they mounted their Katyushas. This was at a time when their factories were fully engaged producing tanks.
The US also supplied 2,000 locomotives at a time when they produced 200.
Then there were the tens of thousands of jeeps.
Without that alone, they would have had the same problem the Germans did when trying to project power at any distance from their supply bases. ie horses really struggle to bring up enough supplies, can’t do it fast enough, and your logistics corps requires far more manpower than it would if it were fully mechanized.
That’s to say nothing of the 15 million pairs of felt lined boots the US supplied the Red Army with.
Or the huge amounts of food.
Or 100% of their aviation fuel early on when the Germans knocked out their refining capacity to refine that.
Or the western allies making good on their strategic metal reserve when that fell into German hands when Kiev fell.
and most of the aid was not even weapons. Most of it was food, transport and especially industrial equipment.
I wish all the ghosts of the American and British sailors and those of other countries who died taking the supplies to the ungrateful Soviet SOBs would march down their streets the next time they celebrate their great victory. What a load of crap. Patton was right.
Lend Lease to Russia
From Major Jordan’ Diaries
http://www.jrbooksonline.com/fdr-scandal-page/lend.html
It’s an amazing list, mind-boggling.
373 gals of bourbon was impressive:)
Even before signing a devil’s pact with the Germans
Stalin’s paranoia caused him to execute many thousands
of his high level military officers throughout the 1930s.
That set the defense of the USSR back immeasurably.
You are no doubt aware that the Russians reverse
engineered the B29 based on one that had to land
on Russian soil after a bombing run over Japan.
Supposedly American aircrews were held by the Soviets
because they were not at war with Japan until the
very end. There is a story about the Soviets looking
the other way while an American aircrew escaped
and made their way to freedom. I would be interested
in reading about that now that I have time and if there
is a good book on the subject.
I’d say most of US air crews were smuggled through Iran back to US. A really few Americans were held in conditions not near close to imprisonment just to show the Japanese that the Soviets indeed intern the US personnel.
The Soviets weren’t the single nation interning US airmen. It is actually the law of war for neutral countries to do so.
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