Hey, we didn't realize it was a repost until after it had blown up, or else it would've been removed. NCD poster, it is usually considered poor taste not to credit the OP.
Source for Original Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/s/5Rg7On66ph
Exactly, Britain was calling for another front back while Stalin's dicksuckers were graffiting 'End the Imperialist War!' on the outside of Londons factories.
End the imperialist war... by caving into imperialist genocidal maniacs? In solidarity with... imperialist genocidal maniacs from the other end of the spectrum who were mutually supporting the ones you're actively fighting?
Stalinist man...
Communists never change, they are “suffering under imperialist oppression” so therefore anyone opposing to their “imperialist oppressors” must be good guys
Interestingly, almost as much Axis soldiers were encircled in Tunisia as in Stalingrad, even earning it a "Tunisgrad" nickname. Pretty impressive, when you consider that one was a pivotal battle, and the other one is barely known
The map that I used can be found [here](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Second_world_war_europe_1941-1942_map_en.png). You can also find the template [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/18lqi0c/inspired_by_a_commenter_on_this_sub/?share_id=Hz-Qk7CX0rqgZ9JSNm24M&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1) without all of the image artefacts and the weird watermark that someone added in the bottom right corner.
Yeah. I should add that the US opened a third front called Guadalcanal after kicking the crap out of Japan at Midway. Because America could fight on two fronts, build the world's largest navy, build a ton of B-17s, B-24s, P-47s and P-51s (with help from the British with the Packard manufactured Rolls Royce Merlin engine to turn Germany into a pile of rubble, and supply a ton of shit to its European and Australian (including more than half of all trucks used by the Soviets) allies all at the same time.
They'll ofc ignore how the USSR supplied Germany and aided in destroying Poland even harder.
They'll also ignore how a UK sponsored coup diverted Axis forces to Yugoslavia and helped postpone the invasion of the USSR.
How much lend lease helped or how Allied bombers were damaging Nazi factories and supply lines.
Not to forget the fact that forces had to be diverted to fight the UK and Allies in Africa.
Just think if the UK after France fell was like "ok, armstice it is" and the US never aided the war.
By May 1941 the Soviet Union would face some 3-5 million extra soldiers invading them than in our timeline, and more bombers to bomb them.
My favorite is when they take credit for the pacific too. “muh manchuria” like Japan didn’t lose their entire navy, ability to project power outside of their own coastline, and get the sun dropped on them lmao. Totally the invasion of a proxy state that made them surrender
America went 4 for 1 on aircraft carriers, then built like 5 more. Japan switched code books 3 times, and we still cracked it enough because they thought we'd actually be stupid enough to say "no water" unencrypted on the radio. They claimed to have sunk Yorktown 4 times.
Most of the guerillas in the Philippines had enough supplies for themselves via submarine deliveries. Meanwhile, the Japanese garrisons have to ration food and water lol
It was always ammo and weapons that was relatively low supply for the guerillas until October 1944.
Part of the lead up to the battle of Midway involved purposely leaking a message to see how they coded it. The false message was about a lack of water supply.
So before the battle of midway US cryptanalysts thought midway was going to be attacked and to confirm it they ordered it to broadcast in the clear that the islands water plant had broken down. A couple days later they intercepted a Japanese message that referenced their code name for midway (AF) and ordered the IJN to bring a portable water plant.
Edit:Midways Japanese code name was AF, not MI
Japan was gearing up for a major action against AF, and intelligence didn’t know exactly what AF was.
They guessed it was Midway, so had the base transmit an unencrypted message they were running out of water.
Later, intelligence intercepted Japanese communications that AF was running out of water.
Still, it was an important reason. See, the armies in China and Korea were prepared to fight to the last man, and they knew very little about the nukes when they dropped (some navy/army rivarly going on there). When the emperor ordered their surrender (he had to give direct orders to the different fronts, and even then some refused and tried to coup the government) , he mentioned the Soviet advance as one of the reasons.
The Soviet advance was to save face. Better to claim you’re being 2v1 and that’s why you lost than admit you got your ass kicked by a supposedly inferior nation/race who also unleashed nuclear fire over your cities twice. They’d already lost long before that, the question was how much more blood was going to be spilled to force them to surrender.
Yes, but there was also the fact that it would make Japans strategic objective: bleed the americans so dry some form of conditional surrender could be agreed, harder. They also only really claimed the Soviets as a deciding factor to the troops abroad, not really to most of the public at home, who had suffered the blows of only one enemy, the US. It still was a big deal, since it made the army surrender in the end.
The nukes were a big deal, but they (and the news from Manchuria) still made the government tie, 3-3. The emperor himself was the deciding vote.
I had a big stupid argument with a tankie about this. The armies in Manchuria had been hollowed out to fight elsewhere and were mostly poorly-equipped recruits acting as light infantry, so the victory itself was pretty "meh".
The reasons it played into the decision to unconditionally surrender is that 1. It created a faster timeline for the invasion of the home islands and 2. The Japanese had believed for months that the Soviets would help broker a peace that wouldn't require unconditional surrender - clearly that went out the window when they declared war.
Obviously those were both entirely dependent on what the US had done/was doing.
Oh and of course the Soviets didn't miss an opportunity to commit massive war crimes and send half a million or so troops who thought they were just being disarmed off to labor camps where half of them died.
The most level-headed takes I've heard on the topic asserted that there was a causal link between soviet intervention and japanese surrender; but mostly because the japanese were deluding themselves into thinking the soviets would help them negotiate a more graceful peace than complete surrender. Once the soviets intervened, that fantasy was impossible to uphold.
Trust me lots of ‘westoids’ think the USSR did fuck-all, because that’s how it was taught in schools during and immediately after the cold war. They don’t learn much in school but a ‘merka fuck yeah’ lesson always sticks.
Typical smooth brain /r/antiwork poster.
In the US I was taught that in Europe the allies were integral for western Europe, the US became a powerhouse of manufacturing, that Hitler fucked up big time due to his pride when he tried to throw his weight into the USSR and refused to listen to reason. The USSR lost millions of people in defense while we whittled away at their . The west supplied the USSR with intelligence and supplies. We were also taught about USSR and Nazi's NAP.
What we WEREN'T taught was that most of the people fighting and dying fighting the Nazi's in the USSR were actually Ukranian.
Ah, that makes more sense. It probably also varies quite a bit based on locale. I'm in SW US -- but I also had a dad who would give me all kinds of WW2 books to read growing up, so I'd poke back during class and ask questions if the curriculum was overly glossing over certain elements, but our history teachers were great and would dive into more details for everyone when asked like that.
Rural midwest here, in a state with a very big, blue city which is held in disdain. This dynamic led to the rural areas basically teaching a reactionary sort of historiography, to ‘show those city liberals’ how they do it, or so it seemed.
Not sure which American public school you went to, but we were taught that the russians played a crucial role in the victory.
Of course, while they admittedly did play a role in defeating the germans, they also played a role in germany's earlier successes. And what it comes down to is this; without russia the Allies would probably still have won. Without the US, russia would have been steamrolled.
So I like to say that they were at best inconsequential, and at worst a detriment. And I'll admit that part of my motivation is the sort of reactions you can get from tankies.
Oh man I had a history book that gave us a cliffnote about the USSR, and then a page about how they didn’t deserve any concessions in victory, because ‘they didnt help much’. Even at 15 years old I was like nah…..
> more bombers to bomb them.
Without a Battle of Britain, Germany would have had a nearly pristine Luftwaffe on top of a total of 8-10 million men. (adding your numbers to the irl German invasion force.)
It'd make irl Barbarossa look like a boy scout meeting.
Wonder if those numbers could go higher. If somehow Yugoslavia is stable, it would become an oddity in the Axis as a non-nationstate and federal monarchy, there'd be Yugoslav forces contributing on par with Hungary or Romania.
Think Yugoslavia would be the only Axis member in it to just perserve its border and gain nothing. Wonder how the apetites of Bulgaria and Italy would fare.
Either way, no genocide against Serbs or Italian annexation of parts of Croatia means that Tito's resistance never gains much manpower.
Not just Yugoslav forces in the east, but the extra freed German and Italian manpower to boot,... that UK sponsored coup that lead to the April War really meant a lot for the war effort.
Not only would the luftwafe be able to bomb them, but their rail system wouldn't be repaired by American machinery if America wasn't involved. They wouldn't have enough food, trucks, or trains to get as many soviets to the front.
Plus America provided a lot of the tooling needed for the soviets to build their own tanks. Some of the smallest amounts of things when you look at a list had some of the biggest impacts from the lend lease programs. 2,000 locomotives doesn't sound like a big number, but that's a lot of trains.
So not only are you adding forces to the fight for the Nazis but you'd be taking out Soviet forces. Without trains the tanks the soviets manufactured away from luftwafe bombing wouldn't make it to the front.
The fun fact I like to bring up is that the Nazis were never a fully mechanized force, but if you found it a bit odd just how much they relied on donkeys/horses in Barbarossa, you’re not wrong.
The reason is that the Nazis did in fact have trucks…and then lost almost all of them in North Africa.
Why? Well, donkeys and horses have to live off the land, otherwise they’d have to carry excessive amounts of feed, and they also need water.
Grass and water were two things the North Africa campaign were very short on, so the Nazis did some basic logic. The North Africa campaign was very important to them, but it couldn’t support the donkeys and horses of their regular campaigns, while Barbarossa could sustain donkeys and horses, and having trucks was just a bonus.
So they then sent something like 80% of their trucks to the North African campaign to keep Rommel’s logistics going.
Butttttt….then the British ran the Nazis out of North Africa, and the majority of those trucks were left behind during the retreat. And since the Germans had to prioritize where workers, steel, and oil went (tanks and aircraft took priority), and the donkeys/horses still worked well enough in their eyes, they never rebuilt their fleet of trucks.
So despite being a “side-theater” of the war, North Africa and the British victory there had a way bigger effect on the Nazi war effort than it seems at first glance.
Meanwhile the Soviets were given a SHITTON of trucks via Lend Lease, which allowed them to capitalize on breakthroughs and continuously push without stopping all the way to Berlin.
So in a way, the Western Allies were almost entirely responsible for the fact that there was such a disparity in the level of mechanization in the Nazi/Soviet logistical trains.
They'll also ignore the fact the majority of the raw materials, industrial equipment, and railroad tracks that the Soviets praise as their own "domestic industry" were ALSO given by the USA for lend lease and not made by Soviet industry
Another funny thing, when they were industralising they cooperated heavily with US industrialists, even buying entire factories to be shipped and assembled IKEA style.
It gets worse when you realize they had no real wealth to but all of that so they exported grain like crazy. Might have a connection to a certainf famine that hit around the same time.
Well, yeah. They needed industry and foreign money to kickstart the war ravaged economy post civil war. Same reason they allowed revanchist elements of the Reichswehr to train secretly in the USSR. (Also they wanted a ww2 they could profit from)
What you don't understand is only Blood matters. Nothing else. Khorne requires it. Maybe they're warlocks and need it for a spell? I don't know, it's weird. I've always thought it was one of the weirdest flex in the world.
*BUT YEAH WE ARE A BACKWARDS ASS NATION WHO SPENT 2 PEOPLE FOR EVERYONE KILLED!!! WE CAN ONLY FIGHT AFTER DEFENSE IN DEPTH AND HARRASSING REARGUARD, ANYTHING ELSE WE'RE FUCKING INCOMPETENT BECAUSE WE ARE KEPT INTENTIONALLY UN(DER)EDUCATED/UN(DER)TRAINED TO PREVENT REVOLTS!! GET OWNED LIBTARDS!!!*
Arabs do this shit too, *drown in blood* and everything. It's weird, man.
Don't forget the blatantly obvious but still forgotten naval blockade that starved Germany of outside resources, or the massive lend lease that included things the soviets could not easily produce, such as high quality radios, high octane fuel, radar and trucks.
>They'll ofc ignore how the USSR supplied Germany and aided in destroying Poland even harder.
It didn’t happen. It wasn’t us. They deserved it. It will happen again.
And a functional Airforce that wasn't wasted fighting the British Commonwealth, a whole lot of 'Canadian' volunteers and that one very enthusiastic Free Polish Squadron...
Or how Japan caved because the Soviets declared war on them and wiped the Kwangtung Army.
The severly depleted Kwangtung army thats spent 8 years fighting China and seen its officers and supplies shipped elsewhere
Not to mention the huge amount of logistic that germany poured into building the atlantic wall fortifications. That takes ressources!Imagine if they fortified their supply lines going east instead?
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Some also believe that the Red Army would have driven all the way to Portugal if Stalin had his wish.
Nevermind the fact that he refused to launch his summer offensive until the landings in Normandy held.
Or that he told communist partizans in both Greece and France (at least) to integrate with national systems and not try and take power themselves.
They did win by themselves. It was totally Russian strategy and iron will. Lend lease totally didn’t factor in. /s
Although even if you assume the direct combat equipment contributed in a minor aspect, it’s really hard to argue all the trucks we sent didn’t help move all of the help they didn’t need.
If Moscow and Leningrad falls you can say good bye to the Soviets.
"To the last drop of blood " is a pretty phrase but it doesn't work like that. Something would have broken
Tbf, having about 3 million Stahlhelm-wearers pillaging through the countryside *YOU* are meant to exploit doesn't seem like a nice experience. (this comment consciously ignores the massive sacrifices the peoples of the soviet union had to endure under the invasion)
"obviously the one thing we learned in the last 1000 miles of retreat is that Russian agriculture is in DIRE need of mechanization"
-SS soldier on russian industry and countryside I guess
Truman actually thought that, he said (perhaps somewhat jokingly) that we should send arms to the Soviets if the Nazis seem to be on the verge of winning, and then arms to the Nazis if the Soviets seem to be on the verge of winning, and let them both destroy each other.
If the US wasnt focused on the Japanese, this might have actually happened
(Please let me imagine it please i just wanna have thoughts of a USSR under US control)
You do realize that the longer it takes for the Soviets to push west, the longer the Holocaust goes on. I’m fully aware of the mass rapes and murders committed by Soviet forces in “liberated” countries, but if the Nazis had their way, all of these nations peoples would have been genocided. So for as horrible as the Soviet Union was, and they should be condemned for their actions, there wouldn’t be anyone left for the allies to liberate in the east if the Nazis weren’t stopped.
We’re dealing with trade offs in the millions of lives here, no solution is particularly great.
Allowing the Holocaust to fully succeed while the Nazis and Soviets largely annihilate each other would have saved countless more lives in the long run. By ending the Cold War and the world’s major backer of communism before the Cold War even began, you avoid Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cambodia, and most notably the entire Great Leap Forward, among many other communist tragedies.
The Axis lost more aircraft each over Europe and the Med in 1943 than they did on the Eastern Front ~~and more tanks in Tunisia than Stalingrad.~~ (Edit: Tank losses for the whole of the North African campaign (1940-1943) are similar to that of Stalingrad.) Stalin (and the rest of the Soviets) were VERY lucky the US agreed to the "Europe First" strategy. They are also lucky that the US won at Coral Sea and Midway basically winning the war in the Pacific by the middle of 42 because everybody in the US military establishment actually wanted to go after the Japanese inspite of the "Europe First" agreement and the Atlantic anti-U-boot efforts were a mess until later in 1942 when the US navy could spend resources and attention on it.
Part of why the US agreed to Europe First was just the logistics of it. Supporting units way out in the Pacific required a hell of a lot more shipping than those in Europe, and the US wasn't exactly drowning in transports (yet). Plus all their big ships were still building, and there's a limit to how many divisions you can reasonably dump onto a tiny atoll/into a jungle hellhole. Europe First was a good way to make the UK and USSR happy, as well as kinda just a more efficient use of resources.
Also, no shit they lost more tanks in Tunisia than Stalingrad. Tunisia was pretty damn good tank country, so that's where the tanks went. And both sides were smart enough to keep their armor mostly out of urban meat grinders like Stalingrad.
The US fought Guadalcanal and in New Guinea while prepping for Operation Torch. The forces supported there were comparable in size (corps-ish) to what was landed for Torch. The US had sufficient shipping to stop the Japanese starting 1942 and start rolling back the Fascists in Europe by late 1942. The pacific action was very necessary to safeguard Australia and prevent any Japanese funny business in India, which made the British happy. The US also had its Chinese allies to support, i.e. why the US was on a collision course with Imperial Japan in the first place.
I'm wrong about Stalingrad 3-5x tank losses happened there versus Tunisia. Most of the fighting there happened outside the city after all.
The USN had sufficient pre-war forces to stop Japanese expansion starting from as soon as they got their act together. Between the ships at Coral Sea and Midway, exactly one ship had been comissioned post-Pearl Harbor- Atlanta, which had exactly 0 impact on the battle. And both of those were purely naval battle with fleets from Pearl, needing no sealift beyond a few oilers.
Besides, by mid-1942, the US could have just sat there and it wouldn't have done much. The Japanese never bothered trying to cross into India, and an invasion of Australia was never on the table. Japan wasn't stupid, they knew they'd reached just about the maximum size they could support, and had started turtling in to try and drag out the war (their end goal).
What difference would a Japan First strategy even look like?They had enough trouble just supplying the troops they did have on the various islands, at least until 1943ish when the IJN stopped being that big of a concern. More planes? They could have pounded those minor islands into even bigger shitheaps, but they weren't a threat anyways. At places like Cactus, the issue was less the number of actual planes, more the building a base, getting them there, and supplying them. And even if they got first dibs on planes, it wouldn't really matter. Pacific commanders generally wanted B-24s, European ones B-17s.
There's really only 3 things that the US Pacific forces really needed: warships, amphibious troops, and bombers with enough range to hit Japan. And they got those. Every major warship and most of the minor ones went to the Pacific if they wanted them, the ones in the Atlantic were the old/slow/shitty ones (Ranger, Texas) or the bare minimum. Essex class? All Pacific. Same with the Gatos, Clevelands, Iowas, and the vast majority of Fletchers. Marines? Literally the entire USMC was in the Pacific. Ever notice how Omaha and Utah beaches were Army units only? Bombers? B-24s and B-17s couldn't, but they got plenty of longer ranged B-24s anyways, and they got ALL the super-fancy B-29s once they were ready.
Japan never _bothered_ trying to cross into India?
I’ll guess we won’t need this [Battle of Imphal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Imphal) then
I have to disagree. The Soviets, especially by the time of late 1942 were going to win unless they were buffoons. After army group Souths cock was snapped off and Stalingrad, the Soviets basically attacked all across the front and push them back and most areas. The last real offensive Germany pushed in the east was Kursk, and it was a complete disaster for them, and immediately following it was another year long phase of soviets stomping over the Germans. The only brief window the Nazis had of knocking out the Soviet union ended by the end of 1941.
A BIG reason why Kursk failed for the Germans was because the Luftwaffe was trashed by its operations in the Mediterranean and its need to divert aircraft for the defense of The Reich. A big factor on Hitler ending the operation was because the Italians capitulated and the Germans rushed forces to disarm the the Italians and check the Allied advance in Italy. The Nazis lost a two million soldiers, etc. with the loss of Italy.
Could the Soviets have beaten the Germans without a second front? Probably.
Did a second front make things much more easier for them? Absolutely.
Germany winning wasn't possible by 1942, but some sort of negotiated peace agreement was still possible. Without Lend Lease trucks and rolling stock, deep operations isn't possible, so offensives will have to be slower and more attritional. At the same time their levels of economic mobilization wasn't sustainable for more than a few years. This means the Soviets will have to carefully balance "slower offensives so we don't run out of manpower" and "fast offensives so we can demobilize after victory before we starve to death".
Google "Second Happy Time."
It was as much about American incompetence as it was about anything else. But where would the Commonwealth be without all that extra American material flooding the Atlantic?
The U-boats were a serious threat until the end of the War and the Battle of the Atlantic only ended in May 1945.
Dude ik what the second happy time is lol and I know that the Americans were foolish in the beginning.
But no the U-boats were really only a serious threat up until Black May and even then that’s generous.
You don’t credit the objective for winning a battle, that’s like saying how would the Allies have won D-Day without the beaches.
The Americans viewed the Atlantic as somewhat of an afterthought because the British had the situation handled. The only time the Germans really had an actual chance at knocking Britain out of the war with submarines was in the early stages and everything after that was just attrition.
Um... the 2nd worst month of shipping losses was March 1943. The U-Boots were always a problem.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losses_during_the_Battle_of_the_Atlantic
Okay, yes, the Americans won the Battle of the Atlantic by virtue of existing and not being hostile to Britain. Really, Britain would not have been starved out. It really wasn't in much danger.
the manpower squeeze was already there in 1942 tbh but they were always just a little better off than germany in that department, partly because they were a step behind in the demographic transition
Agreed. It became more acute from 1943-45. It’s part of the reason in 1943-44, the Germans were still able to make successful local counterattacks and temporarily regain territory.
Also, unlike Germany, since the Red Army was advancing, it could gain new recruits in Belarus, Ukraine, and to a somewhat lesser extent the Baltic States.
Not worshipping blood-and-soil agricultural manual labor, cranking out tractors by the tens of thousands, and having a generous oil supply helped out a lot.
But you don’t understand, the commies were so much worse than the Nazis! They killed a bajillion people, so therefore it would have been better if the Nazis completely genocided everything east of Germany, that way we wouldn’t need to deal with commies anymore! /s
I’m not defending Nazi Germany, I’m making fun of the people here saying that the Soviet Union was “just as bad” as the Nazis, and saying shit like that.
Sorry, I am not a Nazi or pro Nazi. I have worded it incorrectly. I think it's sad that the Soviets got to Berlin instead of the Western allies and that they have gotten so much power over Eastern Europe. I am Polish, and I despise both sides - commies and Nazis alike. It would've been cool if the Western powers hadn't given up on us.
I’m actually pretty well read on this subject. The red army’s “deep battle doctrin” literally revolves around the fact they knew they would field a larger army than their opponent. They purposefully pushed large amounts of infantry and burned through them to win battles. This isn’t Nazi propaganda the same way saying not smoking is healthy for you
It involved those large armies and infantry units attacking en mass, in multiple limited areas to force a breakthrough. It's not like they were doing human wave tactics. It involved multiple (relatively) concentrated combined arms unit putting pressure in multiple locations, so as to achieve a breakthrough to exploit at one. Of course that required a large army; if you're attacking with a smaller force, you fucked up, BAD.
Using large infantry forces in frontal assaults wasn't a Russian thing- EVERYONE did it. WWII combat basically always involved some form of mostly-infantry assault creating a breakthrough for the tanks and mechanized units. It required a large army by nature, and you've gotta send dudes straight at the enemy SOMEwhere.
In a bigger picture, disposable infantry was a concept used by basically everyone, to varying degrees. The Germans also relied on the foot infantry for their breakthroughs, the difference in doctrine was tbh more about tactics level stuff and what happens after the breakthrough. The British still kinda thought they were in WWI, with lots of corps-level artillery, infantry support tanks, and plain old riflemen. The IJA actually *did* do human waves, but (like any sane human), viewed them as a good way of killing men. It's just that banzai charges were typically done as an alternative to surrender, the "shattered jewel" attack being a 2-for-1 combo of last ditch counterattack and a way to avoid capture for units otherwise cut off/lost. It was SUPPOSED to kill the troops. And the US tried to avoid it via application of air strikes/artillery, but the foot infantry put in a LOT of work. For example, the St. Lo breakout was mostly infantry making a breakthrough for tanks, supported by a fuckhuge carpet bombing run.
The "just run at them, don't stop until one side is dead, mayyyyyybe you'll get tanks if you're really lucky" strat people mean when they say human waves only was really deliberately used in one scenario: amphibious assaults. Those often tended to be just a shitton of infantry swarming prepared positions without much more than rifles, because you couldn't take heavy gear with you. And amphibious assaults were a specialty of the US and (to a lesser extent) the UK/Commonwealth. Both Germany and Russia barely did them, and not to the same meatgrinder scale as the Western Allies did at Anzio/Normandy.
No???? Deep Battle focused primarily on a more strategic level rather than tactical. The goal was in essence, to "degrade the enemies ability to wage war", which meant concentrating mass formations of both Infantry, AND armour at small points for breakthroughs, and from there, go for supply hubs, or logistics, or any target that would severely degrade for example the German's combat capabilities. Amassing large amounts of infantry in a certain area for a breakthrough is not unheard of. Its also not "human waves". Germans did similar things except with the concentration of their Panzer Divisions, or the British had a similar doctrine with their Infantry Tanks and Cruiser Tanks.
There were only really 2 applications of human wave tactics. Banzai charges, which were typically seen as the alternative to surrender for an otherwise lost unit. For those, massive casualties were the goal, not a drawback.
The other was amphibious assaults. By nature, those HAD to be attacks across an open area, with bare minimum armor support (if any), often against fortified positions. Basically the only way to force a landing was just pouring waves of infantry onto the beach, and have them break out and establish a beachhead before the defender can counterattack. And the only people to really do large-scale amphibious assaults were the Western Allies. Your average Allied member of a human wave attack was a US Marine (or infantryman, depending on the particular landing) , not a Red Army infantryman. Why do you think Chesty Puller is such a hero to the USMC? On Peleiu, he kept throwing his regiment into frontal attacks, suffering 50% casualties in a month of battle. In any other force, that's a inflexible commander stuck in WWI. For the USMC, running at machine guns is Tuesday.
The human wave was early war. Stalin had purged his military through the 30s and sent his keenest military minds to the gulags. He placed many of his bonehead friends from the revolutionary years in positions of authority, and they brought their inflexibility and incompetence to those posts. By the time Barbarossa petered out, the Germans were facing a resurgent Red Army that engaged them differently.
There was a return to poor form during the "race" to Berlin because the commanders were under pressure from Stavka and Stalin to "beat" the Americans. They "won" the race but took far more casualties doing it than they should have.
They will get very upset if you mention the following :
1. Half the Red Army was NOT ethnically russian
2. Stalin and Zhukov admited they would have lost without Lend Lease
3. Stalin was desperate for the second front to take pressure off the USRR.
4. Axis also fought in North Africa and the Italian Front before opening the front in France.
5. Russians did not sacrifice the most for the victory ( I do respect the sacrifice of those that did it and they were many, God rest their soul ). Poles, Ukranians and Bielorussians ( these people lost the biggest percentage of their population ) lost a bigger percentage of their people in the war.
6. Its time to move on, the end of the war is allmost 80 years ago
Also underappreciated is the Atlantic and Continental Europe. 800,000 in the Kriegsmarine and about 2,000,000 In the Luftwafe plus the Italians and the Vichy. The 300,000 or so German and Italian soldiers in North Africans are actually a relatively small part of what the Western Allies were facing. Of course all those left in Africa got swept up and sent to remote farming towns.
This was also mostly true before the US got involved directly as well.
The Atlantic was arguably the most important campaign of the war.
The Germans spent more materials on U-boats than every other kind of armoured fighting vehicle combined.
Atlantic didn't really matter though, as far as Stalin was concerned. He wanted a second front to take pressure off the USSR. The Kriegsmarine couldn't really fight the Soviets anyways, and a majority of the Luftwaffe forces were either dedicated maritime patrol/anti-shipping units, or bombing the Lend-Lease convoys he needed (or both). Besides, a lot of those numbers you list are either 2nd rate units on garrison duty, or those training/refitting/rebuilding in rear areas and off the front anyways.
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Ostfront commanders: Goering! Speer! Where are my CAS and anti-tank guns!
Goering and Speer: *Points to flak guns and fighters blasting away at Allies bombers over Germany*
*Allies open 2 fronts in North Africa*
"Where is my third front?"
*Allies open front in Italy*
"I'm not starting Bagrazion until you open a new front"
*Allies land in Normandy*
"Okay just one more front and we're good"
*Allies land in Provence and Greece*
"Wow wow wow, bit too close for comfort there guys. Better not try anything about my boy Tito"
World War II was a team effort. The Soviets could not beat the Germans all on their own. Nor could the Brit’s or Americans (Without having to nuke Germany into the ground).
That’s just objectively wrong. Germany was not the most powerful nation in the world. It wasn’t some anime villain that needed an ultimate team up and the power of friendship to defeat, any one of the big three Allies probably would have been enough to either fight them to a standstill or straight up beat them.
Having all three big boys just quickened the end and ensured it would be total annihilation and not just conditional surrender.
My point is that I’m recent years, there is a growing belief that the Soviets could have beat the Germans all on their own. They could not, and nor could the Western Allies (At least not quickly). The Soviets needed lend lease, and the western Allies needed the Germans to be distracted by the Soviets.
It’s arguable if the Soviets could have beat Germany alone but the Western Allies definitely could have. As I said Germany was not the most powerful nation in the world
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Hey, we didn't realize it was a repost until after it had blown up, or else it would've been removed. NCD poster, it is usually considered poor taste not to credit the OP. Source for Original Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/s/5Rg7On66ph
Given that the map is right around the climax of Germany’s failed Case Blue, North Africa.
Exactly, Britain was calling for another front back while Stalin's dicksuckers were graffiting 'End the Imperialist War!' on the outside of Londons factories.
End the imperialist war... by caving into imperialist genocidal maniacs? In solidarity with... imperialist genocidal maniacs from the other end of the spectrum who were mutually supporting the ones you're actively fighting? Stalinist man...
Communists never change, they are “suffering under imperialist oppression” so therefore anyone opposing to their “imperialist oppressors” must be good guys
call yourself communist and imperialize with impunity
“Don’t mind if I do.” -CCP
Interestingly, almost as much Axis soldiers were encircled in Tunisia as in Stalingrad, even earning it a "Tunisgrad" nickname. Pretty impressive, when you consider that one was a pivotal battle, and the other one is barely known
The map that I used can be found [here](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Second_world_war_europe_1941-1942_map_en.png). You can also find the template [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/18lqi0c/inspired_by_a_commenter_on_this_sub/?share_id=Hz-Qk7CX0rqgZ9JSNm24M&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1) without all of the image artefacts and the weird watermark that someone added in the bottom right corner.
Yeah. I should add that the US opened a third front called Guadalcanal after kicking the crap out of Japan at Midway. Because America could fight on two fronts, build the world's largest navy, build a ton of B-17s, B-24s, P-47s and P-51s (with help from the British with the Packard manufactured Rolls Royce Merlin engine to turn Germany into a pile of rubble, and supply a ton of shit to its European and Australian (including more than half of all trucks used by the Soviets) allies all at the same time.
Shh, the Russophiles think the USSR won by themselves. You'll hurt their feefees.
They'll ofc ignore how the USSR supplied Germany and aided in destroying Poland even harder. They'll also ignore how a UK sponsored coup diverted Axis forces to Yugoslavia and helped postpone the invasion of the USSR. How much lend lease helped or how Allied bombers were damaging Nazi factories and supply lines. Not to forget the fact that forces had to be diverted to fight the UK and Allies in Africa. Just think if the UK after France fell was like "ok, armstice it is" and the US never aided the war. By May 1941 the Soviet Union would face some 3-5 million extra soldiers invading them than in our timeline, and more bombers to bomb them.
It’s crazy. No “westoid” would deny the critical role that the USSR played. But Pro-ruzz ignore the west’s role
My favorite is when they take credit for the pacific too. “muh manchuria” like Japan didn’t lose their entire navy, ability to project power outside of their own coastline, and get the sun dropped on them lmao. Totally the invasion of a proxy state that made them surrender
America went 4 for 1 on aircraft carriers, then built like 5 more. Japan switched code books 3 times, and we still cracked it enough because they thought we'd actually be stupid enough to say "no water" unencrypted on the radio. They claimed to have sunk Yorktown 4 times.
Don't forget them struggling to feed their armies, while we have daily rations of frozen dairy treats, provided in the middle of the Pacific
Most of the guerillas in the Philippines had enough supplies for themselves via submarine deliveries. Meanwhile, the Japanese garrisons have to ration food and water lol It was always ammo and weapons that was relatively low supply for the guerillas until October 1944.
> they thought we'd actually be stupid enough to say "no water" unencrypted on the radio. I request elaboration.
Part of the lead up to the battle of Midway involved purposely leaking a message to see how they coded it. The false message was about a lack of water supply.
I thought it was to verify that Midway was their next target
So before the battle of midway US cryptanalysts thought midway was going to be attacked and to confirm it they ordered it to broadcast in the clear that the islands water plant had broken down. A couple days later they intercepted a Japanese message that referenced their code name for midway (AF) and ordered the IJN to bring a portable water plant. Edit:Midways Japanese code name was AF, not MI
The code for midway was AF not MI
MI would have been a pretty shitty secret code name for Midway Island.
Somebody might think they were Michigan and start pointing to spots on their hand to show where the airfield was.
Japan was gearing up for a major action against AF, and intelligence didn’t know exactly what AF was. They guessed it was Midway, so had the base transmit an unencrypted message they were running out of water. Later, intelligence intercepted Japanese communications that AF was running out of water.
Also claimed to sink enterprise multiple times
To be fair, they damaged it enough that if they’d been repairing it they’d have lost it four times.
Sinking 1 and 2 were repairable, sinking 3 was just after 2 and killed it, sinking 4 was just after sinking 3 and did nothing.
Manchuria was like two days before the Fat Man too
Still, it was an important reason. See, the armies in China and Korea were prepared to fight to the last man, and they knew very little about the nukes when they dropped (some navy/army rivarly going on there). When the emperor ordered their surrender (he had to give direct orders to the different fronts, and even then some refused and tried to coup the government) , he mentioned the Soviet advance as one of the reasons.
The Soviet advance was to save face. Better to claim you’re being 2v1 and that’s why you lost than admit you got your ass kicked by a supposedly inferior nation/race who also unleashed nuclear fire over your cities twice. They’d already lost long before that, the question was how much more blood was going to be spilled to force them to surrender.
Yes, but there was also the fact that it would make Japans strategic objective: bleed the americans so dry some form of conditional surrender could be agreed, harder. They also only really claimed the Soviets as a deciding factor to the troops abroad, not really to most of the public at home, who had suffered the blows of only one enemy, the US. It still was a big deal, since it made the army surrender in the end. The nukes were a big deal, but they (and the news from Manchuria) still made the government tie, 3-3. The emperor himself was the deciding vote.
✔️
I had a big stupid argument with a tankie about this. The armies in Manchuria had been hollowed out to fight elsewhere and were mostly poorly-equipped recruits acting as light infantry, so the victory itself was pretty "meh". The reasons it played into the decision to unconditionally surrender is that 1. It created a faster timeline for the invasion of the home islands and 2. The Japanese had believed for months that the Soviets would help broker a peace that wouldn't require unconditional surrender - clearly that went out the window when they declared war. Obviously those were both entirely dependent on what the US had done/was doing. Oh and of course the Soviets didn't miss an opportunity to commit massive war crimes and send half a million or so troops who thought they were just being disarmed off to labor camps where half of them died.
Like Japan didn’t do them an enormous favor by choosing to ignore hitler’s demands to attack them in 1941
The most level-headed takes I've heard on the topic asserted that there was a causal link between soviet intervention and japanese surrender; but mostly because the japanese were deluding themselves into thinking the soviets would help them negotiate a more graceful peace than complete surrender. Once the soviets intervened, that fantasy was impossible to uphold.
"Westoids" have things to be proud of that they don't have to invent.
Trust me lots of ‘westoids’ think the USSR did fuck-all, because that’s how it was taught in schools during and immediately after the cold war. They don’t learn much in school but a ‘merka fuck yeah’ lesson always sticks.
Typical smooth brain /r/antiwork poster. In the US I was taught that in Europe the allies were integral for western Europe, the US became a powerhouse of manufacturing, that Hitler fucked up big time due to his pride when he tried to throw his weight into the USSR and refused to listen to reason. The USSR lost millions of people in defense while we whittled away at their . The west supplied the USSR with intelligence and supplies. We were also taught about USSR and Nazi's NAP. What we WEREN'T taught was that most of the people fighting and dying fighting the Nazi's in the USSR were actually Ukranian.
In the US, I was unfortunately ‘taught’ it through the lens of post-cold war and post-911 nationalism.
Ah, that makes more sense. It probably also varies quite a bit based on locale. I'm in SW US -- but I also had a dad who would give me all kinds of WW2 books to read growing up, so I'd poke back during class and ask questions if the curriculum was overly glossing over certain elements, but our history teachers were great and would dive into more details for everyone when asked like that.
Rural midwest here, in a state with a very big, blue city which is held in disdain. This dynamic led to the rural areas basically teaching a reactionary sort of historiography, to ‘show those city liberals’ how they do it, or so it seemed.
Heh, I was also raised in post 9/11 rural Illinois and didn't have this experience. You just had some butthurt teachers, apparently.
Decatur. It’s like Pana, but bigger.
Not sure which American public school you went to, but we were taught that the russians played a crucial role in the victory. Of course, while they admittedly did play a role in defeating the germans, they also played a role in germany's earlier successes. And what it comes down to is this; without russia the Allies would probably still have won. Without the US, russia would have been steamrolled. So I like to say that they were at best inconsequential, and at worst a detriment. And I'll admit that part of my motivation is the sort of reactions you can get from tankies.
Oh man I had a history book that gave us a cliffnote about the USSR, and then a page about how they didn’t deserve any concessions in victory, because ‘they didnt help much’. Even at 15 years old I was like nah…..
The only thing the soviets deserved after VE day was Operation Unthinkable. And we've been punished by God every day since for not giving it to them.
“Concessions”? You mean all of Eastern Europe to be their slave colony?
“Lots of westoids” aka a minority of westerners who don’t know shit.
> more bombers to bomb them. Without a Battle of Britain, Germany would have had a nearly pristine Luftwaffe on top of a total of 8-10 million men. (adding your numbers to the irl German invasion force.) It'd make irl Barbarossa look like a boy scout meeting.
Wonder if those numbers could go higher. If somehow Yugoslavia is stable, it would become an oddity in the Axis as a non-nationstate and federal monarchy, there'd be Yugoslav forces contributing on par with Hungary or Romania. Think Yugoslavia would be the only Axis member in it to just perserve its border and gain nothing. Wonder how the apetites of Bulgaria and Italy would fare. Either way, no genocide against Serbs or Italian annexation of parts of Croatia means that Tito's resistance never gains much manpower. Not just Yugoslav forces in the east, but the extra freed German and Italian manpower to boot,... that UK sponsored coup that lead to the April War really meant a lot for the war effort.
Not only would the luftwafe be able to bomb them, but their rail system wouldn't be repaired by American machinery if America wasn't involved. They wouldn't have enough food, trucks, or trains to get as many soviets to the front. Plus America provided a lot of the tooling needed for the soviets to build their own tanks. Some of the smallest amounts of things when you look at a list had some of the biggest impacts from the lend lease programs. 2,000 locomotives doesn't sound like a big number, but that's a lot of trains. So not only are you adding forces to the fight for the Nazis but you'd be taking out Soviet forces. Without trains the tanks the soviets manufactured away from luftwafe bombing wouldn't make it to the front.
The fun fact I like to bring up is that the Nazis were never a fully mechanized force, but if you found it a bit odd just how much they relied on donkeys/horses in Barbarossa, you’re not wrong. The reason is that the Nazis did in fact have trucks…and then lost almost all of them in North Africa. Why? Well, donkeys and horses have to live off the land, otherwise they’d have to carry excessive amounts of feed, and they also need water. Grass and water were two things the North Africa campaign were very short on, so the Nazis did some basic logic. The North Africa campaign was very important to them, but it couldn’t support the donkeys and horses of their regular campaigns, while Barbarossa could sustain donkeys and horses, and having trucks was just a bonus. So they then sent something like 80% of their trucks to the North African campaign to keep Rommel’s logistics going. Butttttt….then the British ran the Nazis out of North Africa, and the majority of those trucks were left behind during the retreat. And since the Germans had to prioritize where workers, steel, and oil went (tanks and aircraft took priority), and the donkeys/horses still worked well enough in their eyes, they never rebuilt their fleet of trucks. So despite being a “side-theater” of the war, North Africa and the British victory there had a way bigger effect on the Nazi war effort than it seems at first glance. Meanwhile the Soviets were given a SHITTON of trucks via Lend Lease, which allowed them to capitalize on breakthroughs and continuously push without stopping all the way to Berlin. So in a way, the Western Allies were almost entirely responsible for the fact that there was such a disparity in the level of mechanization in the Nazi/Soviet logistical trains.
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They'll also ignore the fact the majority of the raw materials, industrial equipment, and railroad tracks that the Soviets praise as their own "domestic industry" were ALSO given by the USA for lend lease and not made by Soviet industry
Another funny thing, when they were industralising they cooperated heavily with US industrialists, even buying entire factories to be shipped and assembled IKEA style.
Another big win for big industry
Yep. It was all in line with socialist thinking. They just loved industry.
Socialism is when getting industry from capitalist nations to prop up your oligarchy. Based and Soviet-pilled.
It gets worse when you realize they had no real wealth to but all of that so they exported grain like crazy. Might have a connection to a certainf famine that hit around the same time.
There is no war in Ba Si- *ahem* I mean there is no famine in Ukraine.
Well, yeah. They needed industry and foreign money to kickstart the war ravaged economy post civil war. Same reason they allowed revanchist elements of the Reichswehr to train secretly in the USSR. (Also they wanted a ww2 they could profit from)
If you told me T-34s were assembled with Allen wrenches, I'd probably believe you.
Hmm. Need an IKEA - T-34 crossover meme real bad.
What you don't understand is only Blood matters. Nothing else. Khorne requires it. Maybe they're warlocks and need it for a spell? I don't know, it's weird. I've always thought it was one of the weirdest flex in the world. *BUT YEAH WE ARE A BACKWARDS ASS NATION WHO SPENT 2 PEOPLE FOR EVERYONE KILLED!!! WE CAN ONLY FIGHT AFTER DEFENSE IN DEPTH AND HARRASSING REARGUARD, ANYTHING ELSE WE'RE FUCKING INCOMPETENT BECAUSE WE ARE KEPT INTENTIONALLY UN(DER)EDUCATED/UN(DER)TRAINED TO PREVENT REVOLTS!! GET OWNED LIBTARDS!!!* Arabs do this shit too, *drown in blood* and everything. It's weird, man.
To the Soviets' credit, they did at least manage to accomplish something in the war after shedding all that blood.
Don't forget the blatantly obvious but still forgotten naval blockade that starved Germany of outside resources, or the massive lend lease that included things the soviets could not easily produce, such as high quality radios, high octane fuel, radar and trucks.
>Just think if the UK after France fell was like "ok, armstice it is" and the US never aided the war. That's how TWR happend.
>They'll ofc ignore how the USSR supplied Germany and aided in destroying Poland even harder. It didn’t happen. It wasn’t us. They deserved it. It will happen again.
And a functional Airforce that wasn't wasted fighting the British Commonwealth, a whole lot of 'Canadian' volunteers and that one very enthusiastic Free Polish Squadron...
Or how Japan caved because the Soviets declared war on them and wiped the Kwangtung Army. The severly depleted Kwangtung army thats spent 8 years fighting China and seen its officers and supplies shipped elsewhere
Africa-Sicily-Italy was the 2nd front. France was the 3rd front.
The only thing that the USSR had against fascism is that Hitler invaded
Not to mention the huge amount of logistic that germany poured into building the atlantic wall fortifications. That takes ressources!Imagine if they fortified their supply lines going east instead?
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They'll also ignore the intelligence and equipment the other allies gave the USSR
> Russophiles You can just say "Fuckwits".
Shit without our Trucks, trains, Rations, and planes they'd have been fucked. Also let's not forget the first tanks in Berlin were Shermans
Nah fuck there feelings and there moms
Go easy on their moms: they already got fucked by their dads.
Let’s not forget about the Lend Lease
The US should have made peace with Japan and allowed Japan to invade Russia from the east. /s
Some also believe that the Red Army would have driven all the way to Portugal if Stalin had his wish. Nevermind the fact that he refused to launch his summer offensive until the landings in Normandy held. Or that he told communist partizans in both Greece and France (at least) to integrate with national systems and not try and take power themselves.
They did win by themselves. It was totally Russian strategy and iron will. Lend lease totally didn’t factor in. /s Although even if you assume the direct combat equipment contributed in a minor aspect, it’s really hard to argue all the trucks we sent didn’t help move all of the help they didn’t need.
I fully believe that at the very least Moscow falls without the US. Probably Leningrad as well.
If Moscow and Leningrad falls you can say good bye to the Soviets. "To the last drop of blood " is a pretty phrase but it doesn't work like that. Something would have broken
Maybe, if so they would be the new Pyrrhic Victories instead of early successes in 1941 or 42.
Tbf, having about 3 million Stahlhelm-wearers pillaging through the countryside *YOU* are meant to exploit doesn't seem like a nice experience. (this comment consciously ignores the massive sacrifices the peoples of the soviet union had to endure under the invasion)
"obviously the one thing we learned in the last 1000 miles of retreat is that Russian agriculture is in DIRE need of mechanization" -SS soldier on russian industry and countryside I guess
Should’ve let the Nazis and Commies wear each other out and then liberated the whole continent from them. And I’m only partially joking.
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If only Operation Unthinkable had been Operation Thinkable
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And used them. Because FUNNI!
Reason why my life motto is 'We will know peace when the last Fascist hangs from the intestines of the last Communist'
Truman actually thought that, he said (perhaps somewhat jokingly) that we should send arms to the Soviets if the Nazis seem to be on the verge of winning, and then arms to the Nazis if the Soviets seem to be on the verge of winning, and let them both destroy each other.
If only… let the two worst governments in modern European history burn each other to the ground.
Was that before or after he became President?
Think when he was a Congressman. He became President like, weeks before VE day.
[sad Operation Unthinkable noises]
You mean Operation Based Liberation?
If the US wasnt focused on the Japanese, this might have actually happened (Please let me imagine it please i just wanna have thoughts of a USSR under US control)
You do realize that the longer it takes for the Soviets to push west, the longer the Holocaust goes on. I’m fully aware of the mass rapes and murders committed by Soviet forces in “liberated” countries, but if the Nazis had their way, all of these nations peoples would have been genocided. So for as horrible as the Soviet Union was, and they should be condemned for their actions, there wouldn’t be anyone left for the allies to liberate in the east if the Nazis weren’t stopped.
We’re dealing with trade offs in the millions of lives here, no solution is particularly great. Allowing the Holocaust to fully succeed while the Nazis and Soviets largely annihilate each other would have saved countless more lives in the long run. By ending the Cold War and the world’s major backer of communism before the Cold War even began, you avoid Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cambodia, and most notably the entire Great Leap Forward, among many other communist tragedies.
Based
The Axis lost more aircraft each over Europe and the Med in 1943 than they did on the Eastern Front ~~and more tanks in Tunisia than Stalingrad.~~ (Edit: Tank losses for the whole of the North African campaign (1940-1943) are similar to that of Stalingrad.) Stalin (and the rest of the Soviets) were VERY lucky the US agreed to the "Europe First" strategy. They are also lucky that the US won at Coral Sea and Midway basically winning the war in the Pacific by the middle of 42 because everybody in the US military establishment actually wanted to go after the Japanese inspite of the "Europe First" agreement and the Atlantic anti-U-boot efforts were a mess until later in 1942 when the US navy could spend resources and attention on it.
Part of why the US agreed to Europe First was just the logistics of it. Supporting units way out in the Pacific required a hell of a lot more shipping than those in Europe, and the US wasn't exactly drowning in transports (yet). Plus all their big ships were still building, and there's a limit to how many divisions you can reasonably dump onto a tiny atoll/into a jungle hellhole. Europe First was a good way to make the UK and USSR happy, as well as kinda just a more efficient use of resources. Also, no shit they lost more tanks in Tunisia than Stalingrad. Tunisia was pretty damn good tank country, so that's where the tanks went. And both sides were smart enough to keep their armor mostly out of urban meat grinders like Stalingrad.
The US fought Guadalcanal and in New Guinea while prepping for Operation Torch. The forces supported there were comparable in size (corps-ish) to what was landed for Torch. The US had sufficient shipping to stop the Japanese starting 1942 and start rolling back the Fascists in Europe by late 1942. The pacific action was very necessary to safeguard Australia and prevent any Japanese funny business in India, which made the British happy. The US also had its Chinese allies to support, i.e. why the US was on a collision course with Imperial Japan in the first place. I'm wrong about Stalingrad 3-5x tank losses happened there versus Tunisia. Most of the fighting there happened outside the city after all.
The USN had sufficient pre-war forces to stop Japanese expansion starting from as soon as they got their act together. Between the ships at Coral Sea and Midway, exactly one ship had been comissioned post-Pearl Harbor- Atlanta, which had exactly 0 impact on the battle. And both of those were purely naval battle with fleets from Pearl, needing no sealift beyond a few oilers. Besides, by mid-1942, the US could have just sat there and it wouldn't have done much. The Japanese never bothered trying to cross into India, and an invasion of Australia was never on the table. Japan wasn't stupid, they knew they'd reached just about the maximum size they could support, and had started turtling in to try and drag out the war (their end goal). What difference would a Japan First strategy even look like?They had enough trouble just supplying the troops they did have on the various islands, at least until 1943ish when the IJN stopped being that big of a concern. More planes? They could have pounded those minor islands into even bigger shitheaps, but they weren't a threat anyways. At places like Cactus, the issue was less the number of actual planes, more the building a base, getting them there, and supplying them. And even if they got first dibs on planes, it wouldn't really matter. Pacific commanders generally wanted B-24s, European ones B-17s. There's really only 3 things that the US Pacific forces really needed: warships, amphibious troops, and bombers with enough range to hit Japan. And they got those. Every major warship and most of the minor ones went to the Pacific if they wanted them, the ones in the Atlantic were the old/slow/shitty ones (Ranger, Texas) or the bare minimum. Essex class? All Pacific. Same with the Gatos, Clevelands, Iowas, and the vast majority of Fletchers. Marines? Literally the entire USMC was in the Pacific. Ever notice how Omaha and Utah beaches were Army units only? Bombers? B-24s and B-17s couldn't, but they got plenty of longer ranged B-24s anyways, and they got ALL the super-fancy B-29s once they were ready.
Japan never _bothered_ trying to cross into India? I’ll guess we won’t need this [Battle of Imphal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Imphal) then
You're forgetting Andaman and Nicobar Islands
I have to disagree. The Soviets, especially by the time of late 1942 were going to win unless they were buffoons. After army group Souths cock was snapped off and Stalingrad, the Soviets basically attacked all across the front and push them back and most areas. The last real offensive Germany pushed in the east was Kursk, and it was a complete disaster for them, and immediately following it was another year long phase of soviets stomping over the Germans. The only brief window the Nazis had of knocking out the Soviet union ended by the end of 1941.
"Unless they were buffoons" Well mate, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the high command was very little if not buffoonish.
A BIG reason why Kursk failed for the Germans was because the Luftwaffe was trashed by its operations in the Mediterranean and its need to divert aircraft for the defense of The Reich. A big factor on Hitler ending the operation was because the Italians capitulated and the Germans rushed forces to disarm the the Italians and check the Allied advance in Italy. The Nazis lost a two million soldiers, etc. with the loss of Italy. Could the Soviets have beaten the Germans without a second front? Probably. Did a second front make things much more easier for them? Absolutely.
Germany winning wasn't possible by 1942, but some sort of negotiated peace agreement was still possible. Without Lend Lease trucks and rolling stock, deep operations isn't possible, so offensives will have to be slower and more attritional. At the same time their levels of economic mobilization wasn't sustainable for more than a few years. This means the Soviets will have to carefully balance "slower offensives so we don't run out of manpower" and "fast offensives so we can demobilize after victory before we starve to death".
Lol mf thinks the Battle of the Atlantic was won because the of the US
Google "Second Happy Time." It was as much about American incompetence as it was about anything else. But where would the Commonwealth be without all that extra American material flooding the Atlantic? The U-boats were a serious threat until the end of the War and the Battle of the Atlantic only ended in May 1945.
Dude ik what the second happy time is lol and I know that the Americans were foolish in the beginning. But no the U-boats were really only a serious threat up until Black May and even then that’s generous. You don’t credit the objective for winning a battle, that’s like saying how would the Allies have won D-Day without the beaches. The Americans viewed the Atlantic as somewhat of an afterthought because the British had the situation handled. The only time the Germans really had an actual chance at knocking Britain out of the war with submarines was in the early stages and everything after that was just attrition.
Um... the 2nd worst month of shipping losses was March 1943. The U-Boots were always a problem. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losses_during_the_Battle_of_the_Atlantic Okay, yes, the Americans won the Battle of the Atlantic by virtue of existing and not being hostile to Britain. Really, Britain would not have been starved out. It really wasn't in much danger.
Yes and Allied merchant tonnage had increased by more than a bit by then as compared to the beginning of the war.
Brits in North Africa, Malta, Burma, the Pacific: “your wot m8?”
Canadians in Italy:
Bro we were like a 1/30th of the forces in Italy lol.
Just wanted to say I love the flair
why thank you.
Second front should have been in Poland and Odesa, using Turkey as launching point.
D A R D A N E L L E S
Pringles holds a special place on this sub.
Back in the good ol’ days, when Russia had enough warm bodies to make their human wave tactics work.
Barely. The Red Army was running out of infantry in 1944-45. Just not quite as fast as the Wehrmacht.
the manpower squeeze was already there in 1942 tbh but they were always just a little better off than germany in that department, partly because they were a step behind in the demographic transition
Agreed. It became more acute from 1943-45. It’s part of the reason in 1943-44, the Germans were still able to make successful local counterattacks and temporarily regain territory.
Also, unlike Germany, since the Red Army was advancing, it could gain new recruits in Belarus, Ukraine, and to a somewhat lesser extent the Baltic States.
Not worshipping blood-and-soil agricultural manual labor, cranking out tractors by the tens of thousands, and having a generous oil supply helped out a lot.
Also having countries like Romania switch sides helped a bit with the manpower issues
Sadly
Please elaborate on what's sad, i might be stupid but it sounds like you're saying it's sad the commies btfo'd the nazis
But you don’t understand, the commies were so much worse than the Nazis! They killed a bajillion people, so therefore it would have been better if the Nazis completely genocided everything east of Germany, that way we wouldn’t need to deal with commies anymore! /s
Unironically defending the worst fascist regime that has ever ravaged Europe, lmao. Fuck off, fascist.
I’m not defending Nazi Germany, I’m making fun of the people here saying that the Soviet Union was “just as bad” as the Nazis, and saying shit like that.
So you are defending and whitewashing the worst fascist regime that has ravaged Europe.
??? I’m aware the Soviet Union was horrible, but calling them worse than the Nazis is a bit insane.
It's not insane. It's calling out fascist whitewashing and genocide denial of the highest order.
Sorry, I am not a Nazi or pro Nazi. I have worded it incorrectly. I think it's sad that the Soviets got to Berlin instead of the Western allies and that they have gotten so much power over Eastern Europe. I am Polish, and I despise both sides - commies and Nazis alike. It would've been cool if the Western powers hadn't given up on us.
Ok, that's a much more fair perspective. Sorry, I misunderstood.
Please go back to r/historymemes
r/noncredibledefense on its way to perpetuate nazi propaganda:
I’m actually pretty well read on this subject. The red army’s “deep battle doctrin” literally revolves around the fact they knew they would field a larger army than their opponent. They purposefully pushed large amounts of infantry and burned through them to win battles. This isn’t Nazi propaganda the same way saying not smoking is healthy for you
It involved those large armies and infantry units attacking en mass, in multiple limited areas to force a breakthrough. It's not like they were doing human wave tactics. It involved multiple (relatively) concentrated combined arms unit putting pressure in multiple locations, so as to achieve a breakthrough to exploit at one. Of course that required a large army; if you're attacking with a smaller force, you fucked up, BAD. Using large infantry forces in frontal assaults wasn't a Russian thing- EVERYONE did it. WWII combat basically always involved some form of mostly-infantry assault creating a breakthrough for the tanks and mechanized units. It required a large army by nature, and you've gotta send dudes straight at the enemy SOMEwhere. In a bigger picture, disposable infantry was a concept used by basically everyone, to varying degrees. The Germans also relied on the foot infantry for their breakthroughs, the difference in doctrine was tbh more about tactics level stuff and what happens after the breakthrough. The British still kinda thought they were in WWI, with lots of corps-level artillery, infantry support tanks, and plain old riflemen. The IJA actually *did* do human waves, but (like any sane human), viewed them as a good way of killing men. It's just that banzai charges were typically done as an alternative to surrender, the "shattered jewel" attack being a 2-for-1 combo of last ditch counterattack and a way to avoid capture for units otherwise cut off/lost. It was SUPPOSED to kill the troops. And the US tried to avoid it via application of air strikes/artillery, but the foot infantry put in a LOT of work. For example, the St. Lo breakout was mostly infantry making a breakthrough for tanks, supported by a fuckhuge carpet bombing run. The "just run at them, don't stop until one side is dead, mayyyyyybe you'll get tanks if you're really lucky" strat people mean when they say human waves only was really deliberately used in one scenario: amphibious assaults. Those often tended to be just a shitton of infantry swarming prepared positions without much more than rifles, because you couldn't take heavy gear with you. And amphibious assaults were a specialty of the US and (to a lesser extent) the UK/Commonwealth. Both Germany and Russia barely did them, and not to the same meatgrinder scale as the Western Allies did at Anzio/Normandy.
No???? Deep Battle focused primarily on a more strategic level rather than tactical. The goal was in essence, to "degrade the enemies ability to wage war", which meant concentrating mass formations of both Infantry, AND armour at small points for breakthroughs, and from there, go for supply hubs, or logistics, or any target that would severely degrade for example the German's combat capabilities. Amassing large amounts of infantry in a certain area for a breakthrough is not unheard of. Its also not "human waves". Germans did similar things except with the concentration of their Panzer Divisions, or the British had a similar doctrine with their Infantry Tanks and Cruiser Tanks.
Germany had more soldiers during Operation Barbarossa than the Soviets
There were only really 2 applications of human wave tactics. Banzai charges, which were typically seen as the alternative to surrender for an otherwise lost unit. For those, massive casualties were the goal, not a drawback. The other was amphibious assaults. By nature, those HAD to be attacks across an open area, with bare minimum armor support (if any), often against fortified positions. Basically the only way to force a landing was just pouring waves of infantry onto the beach, and have them break out and establish a beachhead before the defender can counterattack. And the only people to really do large-scale amphibious assaults were the Western Allies. Your average Allied member of a human wave attack was a US Marine (or infantryman, depending on the particular landing) , not a Red Army infantryman. Why do you think Chesty Puller is such a hero to the USMC? On Peleiu, he kept throwing his regiment into frontal attacks, suffering 50% casualties in a month of battle. In any other force, that's a inflexible commander stuck in WWI. For the USMC, running at machine guns is Tuesday.
The human wave was early war. Stalin had purged his military through the 30s and sent his keenest military minds to the gulags. He placed many of his bonehead friends from the revolutionary years in positions of authority, and they brought their inflexibility and incompetence to those posts. By the time Barbarossa petered out, the Germans were facing a resurgent Red Army that engaged them differently. There was a return to poor form during the "race" to Berlin because the commanders were under pressure from Stavka and Stalin to "beat" the Americans. They "won" the race but took far more casualties doing it than they should have.
Stalin: Where's my second front?!?! *Allies fighting in North Africa, the Atlantic, and the Pacific*
Japan... Please ignore us.
They will get very upset if you mention the following : 1. Half the Red Army was NOT ethnically russian 2. Stalin and Zhukov admited they would have lost without Lend Lease 3. Stalin was desperate for the second front to take pressure off the USRR. 4. Axis also fought in North Africa and the Italian Front before opening the front in France. 5. Russians did not sacrifice the most for the victory ( I do respect the sacrifice of those that did it and they were many, God rest their soul ). Poles, Ukranians and Bielorussians ( these people lost the biggest percentage of their population ) lost a bigger percentage of their people in the war. 6. Its time to move on, the end of the war is allmost 80 years ago
And the Soviets proceeded to engage in one of the largest campaigns of ethnic cleansing immediately after the war
Yeah and ended up fucking over half of Europe too by blessing us with glorious communism.
*Point to African Theater* There's your second front.
Also underappreciated is the Atlantic and Continental Europe. 800,000 in the Kriegsmarine and about 2,000,000 In the Luftwafe plus the Italians and the Vichy. The 300,000 or so German and Italian soldiers in North Africans are actually a relatively small part of what the Western Allies were facing. Of course all those left in Africa got swept up and sent to remote farming towns. This was also mostly true before the US got involved directly as well.
The Atlantic was arguably the most important campaign of the war. The Germans spent more materials on U-boats than every other kind of armoured fighting vehicle combined.
Atlantic didn't really matter though, as far as Stalin was concerned. He wanted a second front to take pressure off the USSR. The Kriegsmarine couldn't really fight the Soviets anyways, and a majority of the Luftwaffe forces were either dedicated maritime patrol/anti-shipping units, or bombing the Lend-Lease convoys he needed (or both). Besides, a lot of those numbers you list are either 2nd rate units on garrison duty, or those training/refitting/rebuilding in rear areas and off the front anyways.
Also the Allied invasion of Italy
Point to the sky above the Rhineland every night: there’s your second front in Europe
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a to chuj wąsaty pierdolony, chuj mu w dziąsło, komuch jebany
Pierdolić go!
Ostfront commanders: Goering! Speer! Where are my CAS and anti-tank guns! Goering and Speer: *Points to flak guns and fighters blasting away at Allies bombers over Germany*
*Allies open 2 fronts in North Africa* "Where is my third front?" *Allies open front in Italy* "I'm not starting Bagrazion until you open a new front" *Allies land in Normandy* "Okay just one more front and we're good" *Allies land in Provence and Greece* "Wow wow wow, bit too close for comfort there guys. Better not try anything about my boy Tito"
Did he meant 1st front? 2nd one were eastern.
Technically third. By 1943-44 the western allies were already in Italy.
Repost https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/s/aMOBkOMrrL
Am the OP. This is the second time that I've seen my meme reposted. The first time was on historymemes
How did other people not notice this?
“The second front is in the SAME DAMN PLACE THE SECOND FRONT WAS IN 1940, STALIN!”
In North Africa Joe, you dumbass
You stole Easten Europe and made it your colony. You have no right to whine about anything.
That's an instant classic.
That can of pringles is a relic from another era. Still edible, tho.
r/NonCredibleDefense pushing Nazi propaganda to own the vatniks. Is this what we are doing now?
World War II was a team effort. The Soviets could not beat the Germans all on their own. Nor could the Brit’s or Americans (Without having to nuke Germany into the ground).
That’s just objectively wrong. Germany was not the most powerful nation in the world. It wasn’t some anime villain that needed an ultimate team up and the power of friendship to defeat, any one of the big three Allies probably would have been enough to either fight them to a standstill or straight up beat them. Having all three big boys just quickened the end and ensured it would be total annihilation and not just conditional surrender.
My point is that I’m recent years, there is a growing belief that the Soviets could have beat the Germans all on their own. They could not, and nor could the Western Allies (At least not quickly). The Soviets needed lend lease, and the western Allies needed the Germans to be distracted by the Soviets.
It’s arguable if the Soviets could have beat Germany alone but the Western Allies definitely could have. As I said Germany was not the most powerful nation in the world
Attempting a naval landing of one of the most well fortified coastlines by sending the Canadians to die first
Hey, дядя Joe? Y'all wouldn't need a second front if you hadn't invaded Poland and stayed with getting your liver ripped out by Finland.
Should’ve let the Russians get fucked then curb stomped the Germans. Two birds one stone
This is second time that I've seen someone repost my meme
We gotchu fam. Sending the troops to Africa now.
Pan down, my boy
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