Posted on 06/05/2019 6:24:22 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
I’d be a lot more supportive of the USSRs role in WWII if they hadn’t signed the Ribbentrop pact with Stalin and the secret codicil that divided up Europe if Germany won.
Yes, Stalingrad, IMO, was the decisive battle of WWII. Too bad they both couldn’t have lost.
Not to mention their invasion of Finland and the Baltics.
The part I can’t get my mind around, is knowing how many Red Army soldiers had relatives murdered by Stalin, and then had to fight Germans who were just as murderous.
It reminds me of a domestic argument between a married couple, and a stranger steps in. Both of them turn on the interloper even though they were at each other’s throats a moment before.
I’ve also read a lot of stories, that one the Germans first poured in, many people in places like Ukraine thought the Germans were civilized people, and thought salvation was finally in hand from Stalin. They were shocked to find the Germans were just as bad. Kind of like a rape victim seeing a cop walk up and knock the hell out of the rapist, only to unbuckle his pants. The German bestiality on the Eastern Front is probably one of the great betrayals in history.
Ironically, for Germans to behave as liberators was probably the only chance they ever had to win on the Eastern Front. It just wasn’t in that Teutonic DNA
The Soviets would stage NKVD agents to shoot anyone retreating.
Biggest mistake the Germans made in Stalingrad was bombing the city to rubble, the rubble made it easier for the Russians to defend.
If the war in Europe was delayed a year, the atom bomb would have hit Berlin.
Starting with killing his entire officer Corps just before the war. There is probably no way to calculate the human cost of that one decision. Not only did he lose all of his experienced officers, he made the new young officers absolutely terrified to do anything lest they risk the same fate.
good observation, IMO
And all the while we were also fighting a separate war in the Pacific - thanks for all the help out there, Uncle Joe.
Well there was that little problem known as Fallout, it would have gone most likely out of the German borders, and probably endangered our soldiers. Whereas the Fallout from Fat Man and Little Boy pretty much stayed within Japanese soil.
Another reason to thank God for The Bomb.
It doesn’t make sense to say the Germans would have let us Waltz in the Berlin. They didn’t let us Waltz into any other City we invaded. They wouldn’t even let us Waltz into Metz for God’s sake.
But they knew how they had behaved on the Eastern Front as a bunch of mass murdering perverts sexually abusing uncountable Millions of Ukrainian and Russian women, so they probably did expect retribution in kind.
I have read accounts of that sentiment.
What I always found puzzling was he people sentenced to twenty years for no crime at all, who cried when Stalin died.
All I can do is shake my head...
The Germans also became famous for shooting people retreating, are being found away from their unit. There was one Nazi General in the Balkans who I cannot remember the name of, who was especially famous for it.
Would it be racist to doubt that?
Then why was Stalin crying like a French school girl demanding a 2nd front?
And Stalin whined about us opening a second front every time he met with FDR.
The Russians certainly paid a huge price for their victory—no one should dismiss that. But DDay was a huge deal. That should not be underplayed.
The biggest mistake the Germans made at Stalingrad, was even being in Stalingrad. There was literally no strategic reason to seize the city. It was a pure ego play to take the city with Stalin’s name. A modern military would have simply bypassed it and seized the nearby oil fields. The forces in Stalingrad did not have the capability to strike out at such a move. A land-based version of the island hopping strategy was strongly called for there. For all the talk of German prowess, they made some astonishingly bad plans. And they didn’t all come from Hitler. Another horrifics decision the Germans thankfully made was splitting the force into 3 giant army groups on three Avenues of advance. And I think the reason they did that is that they believe their own propaganda that the USSR would simply implode as soon as they crossed the border. That old quote about the whole rotten house collapsing. German plan was never a serious plan that anticipated resistance. They got overconfident after a string of victories over small unprepared countries.
I still say, if the Nazis took Moscow, Stalin would have been deposed, and someone more pragmatic could have taken control, who knows perhaps even allowing non-Bolsheviks into the government and a greatly changed post-war Soviet Union.
D-day and the later landings in the south of France pulled men, aircraft, tanks and other resources off of the eastern front. Later that year, when the Russians started operation bagration, the eastern German divisions folded like a house of cards. So to this Russian I say “cyka blyat”.
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