Russia the most important country in defeating the Nazis in WW2?

[Sisyphos]

Japan attacked the U.S. because they felt it was economically necessary at that point and by 1941 the only real opposition left in the Pacific was the U.S. Germany didn't have to declare war, they chose to do it.

Most people are woefully uneducated on WW2 tbh (not you, I'm just making a general comment).
Japan's objective was not war with the USA. USA had strangled Japan with an oil embargo (since Japan doesn't produce oil on their own, they were going to effectively starve in a couple months). This was a calculated move by Roosevelt but it's another topic. Japan's objective with the Pearl Harbor attack was to eliminate the pacific fleet, which was the only way the US could strike Japanese assets (you cannot really move a fleet from one ocean to another in this area). Japan was pissed with Roosevelt's involvement in the Pacific and Americans wagging the finger at Japan's moves in Asia.

So if Japan succeeded, the US would effectively have to agree to Japanese sphere of influence in Pacific and sue for peace.
Relations would then be normalised. One has to understand that prior to WW2, Japan & USA did not have particular enmity. Japan's goal was never to get into a world war with the US.

Where the plan massively backfired, is that AFAIK, all US ships were not at Pearl Harbour, and all ships at Pearl Harbour weren't actually destroyed. Meaning Japan just entered a war with the USA it was going to lose.

 

[Sisyphos]

Roosevelt had been trying to get the US to enter the war against Germany but the anti-war sentiment was strong in the US. When the Japanese attacked, it was easy to get an immediate declaration of war on Japan but not Germany but Germany declared war on the US a couple of days later, possibly as part of a collaboration with the Japanese.

This is another point that Americans are ignorant about (the reason Germany declared war on the US).
The main reason is that Germany was de facto at war with the US since 1940. Since that time, USA breached neutrality laws by openly supplying the UK (and from 1941) the USSR, and US also attacked German ships in the Atlantic. A German declaration of war allowed the Germans to finally fire on US ships without it being illegal, and cut down that Atlantic traffic which was the main reason UK & USSR survived.

It would serve the Germans 0% if they had allowed this state of affair to continue.
They had to hit the American convoys, and fast.

Hitler was convinced by his Admiralty (Doenitz), this was the only reason.
There was no geopolitical reason whatsoever, Germany actually saw the US as the most similar country to theirs prior to WW2.

Patton wanted to invade Russia because he knew Stalin couldn't be trusted and the US had the upper hand with the atomic bomb. Would the US have gotten bogged down in Russia or would the successive wars been avoided? Germany and Japan prospered under allied occupation.

Patton was most likely killed off.
He was an embarrassment to Eisenhower and US political establishment.
He was openly critical of the occupation of Germany, and wanted the German Army to fight alongside the US Army. Such outrageous stuff got him sidelined.

 

[Sisyphos]

Everyone overlooks the strategic bombing campaign. Anyone really interested in WWII history should read "Wages of Destruction" by Adam Tooze

Alot of historians thought the bombing campaign didn't achieve much, but his books makes a very convincing case that it destroyed Hitler's ability to wage war.

My guy feeling is he's right. When you read about Luftwaffe planes or Wehrmacht tank development you always see the same patterns, "the prototype was destroyed in an allied air raid, leading to the project cancellation", or "the factory was destroyed in an allied air raid, leading to production delays". Tough to fight a war when almost everything above ground is getting destroyed, and you spend half you time moving what is left underground. Then when the allies switched to the railway marshalling yards in 1945, the whole country's transport was bought to a standstill. They'd have lost to the Soviets anyway, but it sure made things much, much, much worse for the Nazis.

Bombing campaign didn't have major strategic effect militarily (since Speer, ministry of Armament, developed effective underground factories). The only real thing it did is kill as many German civilians as possible, which to some people, is an advantage.

 

[Rjay]

Bombing campaign didn't have major strategic effect militarily (since Speer, ministry of Armament, developed effective underground factories). The only real thing it did is kill as many German civilians as possible, which to some people, is an advantage.

If you see the evidence laid out in The Wages of Destruction you may reach a different conclusion.

 

[Sisyphos]

If you see the evidence laid out in The Wages of Destruction you may reach a different conclusion.

No. Germans produced more in 1944 when bombed to rubble than in 1939-40 when Germany was intact.
At least when it comes to production, the massive bombing campaign had zero effect.
All the debate is about "crushing morale", etc, but IMHO this is bullshit, the Germans got harder the more you bombed them.

 

[Streeter]

Pretty much everyone (who cracked a history book)knows that Russia really beat NAZI Germany in battle of Stalingrad but it took them basically sacrificing millions of lives but they did it.

We were basically the mo up crew for most part other than a few hairy fights.

 

[avenue94]

No. Germans produced more in 1944 when bombed to rubble than in 1939-40 when Germany was intact.
At least when it comes to production, the massive bombing campaign had zero effect.
All the debate is about "crushing morale", etc, but IMHO this is bullshit, the Germans got harder the more you bombed them.

The other guy is correct on this. You're graph is technically correct but doesn't take into consideration things like mobilization, factors dedicated to war efforts labor dedicated to war effort etc. As an example, Germany didn't shift to round the clock, 3 shift production until pretty late in the war.

 

[Rjay]

No. Germans produced more in 1944 when bombed to rubble than in 1939-40 when Germany was intact.
At least when it comes to production, the massive bombing campaign had zero effect.
All the debate is about "crushing morale", etc, but IMHO this is bullshit, the Germans got harder the more you bombed them.

Waging war is an integrated economic process that is forced to obey the laws of economics. You either expand your economic resources, or prioritize them to certain areas. You can't pull them out of thin air. If you put all your steel into tanks and planes and mobilize slave labor to build them, numbers go up.

The attacks of the Ruhr greatly reduced steel production, choking total available supplies.

So you put all your steel into tanks and planes at the expense of other steel uses (crippling your war machine in other areas) you can have impressive production numbers. However the planes need to be of sufficient quality for operational use, and you need to get the planes to the airfields.



www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUSGgAXLOqc

So of 1443 Me 262 airframes produced, 40% were unusable due to manufacturing defects. Of the remaining airframes, ~60% were lost to air attacks prior to delivery. Given the Allies were not specifically attacking Me 262 targets, its reasonable to assume this extends to most areas of the aviation industry.

So the bombing has choked the steel supplies, and causes huge production losses. It still doesn't end there though.

Was there fuel to fly the planes and drive the tanks? Allied attacks on the synthetic oil plants starting April 1944 and bombing/mining of the transport routes from the Romanian oilfields meant there was simply no fuel left to power the Nazi war machine. The German plans for The Battle of the Bulge were predicated on capturing allied fuel dumps because the didn't have enough of their own for a sustained offensive. Luftwaffe pilot training was inadequate as they didn't have the fuel for flight hours, and after Operation Bodenplatte in Jan 1945 the planes of most units were stuck on the tarmac with no fuel for operations. All those planes produced rapidly become useless with no fuel or untrained pilots to fly them.

The impact of strategic bombing goes far beyond production numbers.

 

[Proud American]

This is another point that Americans are ignorant about (the reason Germany declared war on the US).
The main reason is that Germany was de facto at war with the US since 1940. Since that time, USA breached neutrality laws by openly supplying the UK (and from 1941) the USSR, and US also attacked German ships in the Atlantic. A German declaration of war allowed the Germans to finally fire on US ships without it being illegal, and cut down that Atlantic traffic which was the main reason UK & USSR survived.

It would serve the Germans 0% if they had allowed this state of affair to continue.
They had to hit the American convoys, and fast.

Hitler was convinced by his Admiralty (Doenitz), this was the only reason.
There was no geopolitical reason whatsoever, Germany actually saw the US as the most similar country to theirs prior to WW2.



Patton was most likely killed off.
He was an embarrassment to Eisenhower and US political establishment.
He was openly critical of the occupation of Germany, and wanted the German Army to fight alongside the US Army. Such outrageous stuff got him sidelined.

Someone who knows their stuff! Pleased to make your aquaintence

 

[Horus]

Put me in Stalingrad with a carbon fiber helmet, M16, and a bag of trail mix and that battle would’ve been over in two nights. Bunch of fucking cans back then.

Mark Wahlberg has an account here?

 

[SalvadorCollie]

The war did end there....

 

[Horus]

Read it was Hitlers worst mistake invading Russia tactically .Read a good book called the forgotten soldier a German soldiers biography who got sent to the Eastern front . The Germans fighting the Russians iin this book was like something out the zulu film Ivans the zulus heavily outnumbered them .
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgotten-...s=the+forgotten+soldier&qid=1608142556&sr=8-1

It's easy to say attacking Russia was a mistake. But Hitler has said a few times that he was receiving intell that Russia was prepping to invade, and that he had no choice but to attack first. The Germans had a better chance of using blitzkrieg offensives against Russia than waiting for Russia to attack them at an inopportune time and be on the defensive. Not the worst theory, but Hitler didn't pull it off. Russia was too big, too numerous, too vast for the Nazis at that time. There are many accounts of German soldiers remarking about no matter how many Russians they killed, there were always more, and more countryside to conquer, like it never ended.

A better argument might be should the Germans have focussed on capturing Moscow for the symbolic victory and demoralising the Russians? Rather than heading south the way they did for resources.

Bah, who the fuck can take on most of the world with modern weapons at the same time and expect to win?

 

[moreorless87]

No. Germans produced more in 1944 when bombed to rubble than in 1939-40 when Germany was intact.
At least when it comes to production, the massive bombing campaign had zero effect.
All the debate is about "crushing morale", etc, but IMHO this is bullshit, the Germans got harder the more you bombed them.

I think you could argue this two aspects show you the same issue. The Allies focus being not just on industry but on damaging German morale and the Nazi's being slow to move to a total war economy for fear of losing public support.

Its a spose a case of people fighting the last war given the importance of the Russian revolution and unrest in Germany during the end of WW1 which the Nazi's focused on playing this up as the main reason for defeat.

In reality it seems like all sides across the war overestimated the likehood of an opponent being hurt by public morale.

 

[EnthusiastCultivator]

Absolute facts. My grandfather was pushing the nazis as far back as possible, he even got a medal from Winston Churchill

 

[Aegon Spengler]

Absolute facts. My grandfather was pushing the nazis as far back as possible, he even got a medal from Winston Churchill

Was your grandfather Russian?

 

[Aegon Spengler]

Stalin and Russia were ill prepared for a war after years of squabbling following the revolution. Russian scientists and engineers had left the country, were imprisoned or executed. Education was viewed with suspicion and factory production was mainly in textiles. The military had divided into factions supporting or opposing one group or the other. By the time Stalin was able to seize power, he spent most of his time and resources getting rid of anyone he thought might oppose him. Stalin might not have wanted to build up Russian military forces and equipment that could be used to oppose him. Stalin signed a treaty with Germany in 1939. It bought the Russians almost two years to get ready for war and develop a more modern military. Without that treaty, Hitler might have reconsidered attacking Poland as his worries about Russia entering the war if he did were what lead to the non-aggression pact.

Russia was as responsible for the rise of Hitler as they were in his defeat.

In a strange way, Russia may have saved Germany from being nuked into nothing.

If the Russians hadn’t beaten the Nazis in conventional warfare, by 1946/47 the U.S. would have been able to produce a swarm of nuclear armed bomber groups that would have reduced Germany to a radioactive swamp, if they didn’t surrender.

 

[milenss]

USSR got like 80% of the weight of the war. Western Allies contributed towards the end.

 

[ssBaldy]

Yes, no question about that.
However, I am not going to say that allies role was insignificant. Both Britain and the USA provided huge economic help and lend lease program gave USSR the respite it needed to reassemble evacuated factories in Siberia. British front being open diverted a lot of German forces from the East.
D-day, while not changing the outcome of the war, helped to significantly hasten the allied success and cut the losses, also second front being open made sure that Germany had no time to finish their atomic program.
Every adequate Russian holds allied soldiers and workers who helped to end the war in high regard. It is a shame that we ended up in cold war after that.

 

[Rawex]

Where the plan massively backfired, is that AFAIK, all US ships were not at Pearl Harbour, and all ships at Pearl Harbour weren't actually destroyed. Meaning Japan just entered a war with the USA it was going to lose.

The Pacific aircraft carriers were out on a training exercise. Had they been destroyed at Pearl Harbour (and the oil storage facilities at Hawaii), most likely means USA is unable to wage war at Pacific for a long time, over a year. At which point who knows, Japan can take Midway and Hawaii. Possibly Australia too?

 

[Cole train]

The Pacific aircraft carriers were out on a training exercise. Had they been destroyed at Pearl Harbour (and the oil storage facilities at Hawaii), most likely means USA is unable to wage war at Pacific for a long time, over a year. At which point who knows, Japan can take Midway and Hawaii. Possibly Australia too?

Is it worth answering 4 year old message?