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Kremlin Says D-Day Wasn't Decisive in Ending World War II
Moscow Times ^ | June 5 2019 | Reuters

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 ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Germany; Russia; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: 19440606; chechens; chechnya; dday; dday2019; dictatorship; fdr; hateamericafirst; kremlin; mariazakharova; normandy; pedosforputin; pos; putinlovertrollsonfr; putinsbuttboys; putinworshippers; revisionism; ronaldreagan; ronaldusmagnus; ronaldwilsonreagan; roosevelt; russia; russianaggression; scottritter; sergeilavrovl; sergeylavrov; stalin; stalinistnitwits; ukraine; ussr; vladtheimploder; whatshisfrnick; worldwareleven; ww2; wwii; zottherussiantrolls
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To: DesertRhino
"...Beaten down by centuries of czarist rule, and they just had no sophistication to allow them to understand. Half the USSR still lived in buildings with grass roofs at that time. Many of their people lived like it was 200 years..."

I think you nailed it right there.

While the Soviets were building huge dams and railroads, touting their industrial expertise in the twenties and thirties, a huge segment of their population were what we would characterize as country rubes living like it was the year 1740 with handmade farming implements and donkey carts...if not human drawn carts.

141 posted on 06/06/2019 4:01:28 AM PDT by rlmorel (Trump to China: This Capitalist Will Not Sell You the Rope with Which You Will Hang Us.)
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To: mrmeyer

Stalin sold their collective souls for plots of land, then they act outraged when they are stabbed in the back by their erstwhile ally.

It would be hilarious if it were not so bloody and tragic.


142 posted on 06/06/2019 4:02:58 AM PDT by rlmorel (Trump to China: This Capitalist Will Not Sell You the Rope with Which You Will Hang Us.)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

“The Soviet Union lost over 25 million lives in what it calls the Great Patriotic War, and Moscow under President Vladimir Putin has taken to marking victory in the war with a massive annual military parade on Red Square. “

What was that saying? Combat-ready troops will flunk inspection (parades), but parade-ready troops will flunk combat. Think Vlad ever heard that?


143 posted on 06/06/2019 5:56:40 AM PDT by Tallguy
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To: Lysandru

Without US-made trucks the Soviet armies would have been tightly tied to their rail lines. Even small mechanized counterattacks by the Germans would have devastated leg infantry and tanks that couldn’t go far for lack of fuel trucks. Plus a good chunk of Soviet frontal aviation were Bell P-39’s and P-63’s.

Finally, Stalin was begging for a “second front” beginning in 1942, and his complaints only got louder until he finally got the Normandy landings. A big part of the western allies’ Italian fiasco was driven by a need to placate Uncle Joe.


144 posted on 06/06/2019 6:01:24 AM PDT by Tallguy
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To: DesertRhino

We couldn’t have landed in 1942 in any strength for multiple reasons. Chief among them was a lack of landing craft. Heck, Normandy was pushed back from May to June by Eisenhower just to get another “month’s worth” of LST production over to England. They’d already stripped the Med of all it’s LST’s which pushed back the Anvil Landings in southern France to August. The original plan had those landings to be near-simultaneous.

I’ve always believed that the US Army needed to be “blooded” — North Africa & Sicily did that. It worked the kinks out in our Operational methods and taught important tactical lessons to the units that would be in the 1st wave at Normandy. Italy probably was a foolish move. The Germans were able to bottle up 2+ allied armies with a relative handful of divisions through skillful use of terrain.


145 posted on 06/06/2019 6:09:29 AM PDT by Tallguy
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To: tcrlaf

Germany was done after Stalingrad AND Tunisia. They lost 2 heavily mechanized field armies within the a few months. In Tunisia they actually lost the 5th Army plus the remnants of the Afrika Korps


146 posted on 06/06/2019 6:12:54 AM PDT by Tallguy
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To: Sivad

Yes, I am very aware of that. The Tupolev Tu-4 is a copy of the B-29.


147 posted on 06/06/2019 6:38:07 AM PDT by Army Air Corps (Four Fried Chickens and a Coke)
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To: rlmorel

Agreed! To me the most interesting part is that Stalin, despite piles of reliable intel from his own people and German defectors (let alone the Allies),refused to believe that Hitler was going to invade Russia or pretended to as to not stop them. One of the truly incomprehensible non-events in the history of war that will never make any sense.


148 posted on 06/06/2019 6:43:00 AM PDT by gr8eman (Ex-Flyer fan!)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Stalingrad and Kursk were more decisive than Normandy or even the Battle of the Bulge.

The Allies played a significant role but the Russians destroyed the Wermacht


149 posted on 06/06/2019 6:50:00 AM PDT by bert ( (KE. NP. N.C. +12)There were Democrat espionage operations on Republican candidates)
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To: jmacusa

Another little known fact: Had the invasion of Japan occured, the Soviets would have landed in the Kuriles and Hokkaido — because the US Navy would have delivered them there.


150 posted on 06/06/2019 6:53:16 AM PDT by Tallguy
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To: dfwgator

“The Western Allies would have waltzed into Berlin”

Possibly. But up to that point there were a lot of German civilians who were being strung up for cooperating with the US, Brits & French troops. SS dead-enders were as brutal on their own people as ISIS is today.


151 posted on 06/06/2019 6:55:50 AM PDT by Tallguy
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To: CondoleezzaProtege
"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.

I fail to see where anyone was diminishing the Soviets very massive contribution of a river of blood.

The sad part is that this was all the Soviet Empire was capable of, since their tyrant murdered every competent general, and the only ones left could think of nothing else other than using millions of young boys and old men as 24-7 machine gun fodder, simply to prevent the machine guns from moving forward.

Yes, it worked. Yes, it was a massive sacrifice. But it didn't have to be that way, had Stalin had any competent military minds left alive.

152 posted on 06/06/2019 6:58:08 AM PDT by Teacher317 (We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men)
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To: DesertRhino

” A modern military would have simply bypassed it and seized the nearby oil fields.”

Disagree. You’d be foolish to leave an unoccupied city on the near bank of a river in your rear. Your giving the enemy a free pass to cross the river and strike. Plus, in winter it’s far better to house your troops in a town or city.

I think where the Germans went wrong was not stopping before they hit the last few blocks before the river. The Germans had over 80% of the city, They could have easily cordoned off the rest. The bombed out factory buildings along the waterfront lacked the depth for the Soviets to use as a bridgehead. Chuikov’s troops were hanging on by their fingernails right up until the city got surrounded because Von Paulus went all-in.


153 posted on 06/06/2019 7:03:58 AM PDT by Tallguy
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

(Also a bit tacky to bring it up during the commemoration of the sacrifices made at D-Day. Maybe wait a week next time.)


154 posted on 06/06/2019 7:21:26 AM PDT by Teacher317 (We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men)
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To: colorado tanker

And how many of that 25,000,000 were killed by their own people?

It seems that they spent as much time, if not more, killing their own people.


155 posted on 06/06/2019 8:39:11 AM PDT by Ban Draoi Marbh Draoi ( Gen. 12:3: a warning to all anti-semites.)
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To: Tallguy

And the Germans were surrendering whole divisions at a time to the allies as fast as they could to get away from the Russians. Himmler, head of the SS and many senior SS thought that America and the rest of the allies would team up with Germany and fight the Russians. That’s how deluded they were.


156 posted on 06/06/2019 10:59:40 AM PDT by jmacusa ("If wisdom is not the Lord, what is wisdom?''.)
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To: LFOD

The Russians demanded that the goods we sent to them were labeled as aid from Communist US Organizations, like “The Workers Party of New York”.


157 posted on 06/06/2019 11:04:07 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Bringbackthedraft

The real hard fighting would come in the hedgerow country.


158 posted on 06/06/2019 11:04:11 AM PDT by jmacusa ("If wisdom is not the Lord, what is wisdom?''.)
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To: ZBM-2

By that time, German Air Power was virtually non-existent.


159 posted on 06/06/2019 11:05:03 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: elpadre

They also got sidetracked by Churchill’s insistence of going through Italy.


160 posted on 06/06/2019 11:06:21 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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