[zek157]

War could have ended months earlier had Patton been given fuel to continue pushing once the breakout occurred in France as Germany was on the ropes. Instead they diverted resources for market-garden.

Decision to let Soviets take Berlin was made in Yalta.

[dfwgator]

Stalin wanted a higher count of Soviet dead to give him “moral superiority”, as in “We lost 20 million people, so we deserve Eastern Europe!”

[Ancesthntr]

“War could have ended months earlier had Patton been given fuel to continue pushing once the breakout occurred in France as Germany was on the ropes. Instead they diverted resources for market-garden.

Decision to let Soviets take Berlin was made in Yalta.”

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This. Near the end of the summer of 1944, the Germans had essentially nothing between the 500,000 men of Third Army and Berlin. Had we had the guts to support a thrust by Patton and 3rd Army into Germany, complete with some diversionary attacks, bombing raids and a massive airborne assault on Berlin, I firmly believe that we could have ended the war by October of 1944. Even if that effort had not been successful, the war would still have ended much sooner because IF the Germans would have been able to defeat it (and I don’t think that they could have, not at that moment in time), they only would have been able to do so by pulling large numbers of troops from elsewhere, leading to faster allied progress on other fronts (not the least of which would have been from the Russians).

Our failure to hand this mission to the best field commander that we had in WW2 was a strategic error of monumental proportions.

[Cronos]

Yet, how would that logistics have taken place — Patton was racing ahead of his logistics line.

I agree the decision was made, but by 1944 july the russians were going to take Berlin — heck they were already in Warsaw then

[Vermont Lt]

There was more interested in the destruction of Germany (again) than keeping Russia Contained.

We owned the logistics. But not the “will” or the terrain.

[Pelham]

“War could have ended months earlier had Patton been given fuel to continue pushing once the breakout occurred in France as Germany was on the ropes. Instead they diverted resources for market-garden.”

A shortage of resources isn’t what stopped Patton. There were supplies. Patton simply moved so fast there was no way to get them to him.

The logistics plan included a portable fuel pipeline that would follow the front but Patton moved faster than it could be built. So Patton created his own 5,000 truck convoy, the Red Ball Express, to run gas and ammo to his army. That worked until the distance from the depots to the front became too long. The supply trucks were running out of gas and breaking down.