People never learn - invading Russia is something you just don't do! I think all military leaders who consider invading Russia ought to play Risk first...

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Matthew Sprange

Mongoose Publishing
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com

Indeed, as has been said before as to why an invasion of Russia has failed - Its too big, its too cold and there's too flamin' many Russians.

Tneva,

There are several reasons the Soviet Union could not win against the Axis powers without Britian and the US.

The first is logistics. The USSR has the manpower but not the logistical/industrial capability, even after moving key industries. The allies supplied critical war stocks, tanks, planes, ammunition, small arms.

The second is Leadership. The Stalin purges of the military in the 30's, wiped out the best of the Soviet military leadership. Prior to the war, Stalin was convinced the military was going to overthrow him. So he made those that he thought could oppose him, disappear. By the end of the war, Soviet Military Leadership was strong once again. It had a 5 year college to develop officers better than any Military School is capable of.

Third, the allies tied town literally millions of Axis troops that otherwise would have been fighting on the Eastern front. Remember, Stalin was against Operation Torch. He wanted a second European front openned earlier. The invasion of North Africa, Scicly, and then Italy made Stalin downright irritable. I would suggest that if the USSR didn't need the Allies, he would not have cared where we had busied ourselves.

Going back to Plan Red, where Matthew compares UK-US production as being roughly even in the 30's, both countries were coming out of a depression. Production is a matter of manpower, raw material, and facilities. The US nay have taken will and a few years to gear up, but in a protracted war, the US would have outproduced the UK including the Common Wealth allies.

But, this once again depends on will. The US was unwilling to jump into the war with the UK and USSR against Hitler until attacked by the Japanese. At that point, we were in lock stock and barrel. I have heard many veeterans speak about the differences in the fighting mans spirit/will in WWI versus Korea or Vietnam. And I think we saw a recurrance of that will in the wake of 9/11.

No single country won WWII by themselves, and I'm not convince could have won by themselves. Without the participation of all the allies the ETO would have turned into a stalemate.

Ummm...USSR outproduced German big time. If wars would be won by production alone German would have been stopped lot sooner. Yeah US helped them but again this only quickened the process.



Yeah. That's what caused the initial disaster of 1941-1942. Note however that Soviets had the Germans running back before Normandy. And the Normandy was really a side show. Soviets faced triple the amount of divisions than Allies did. And the quality of said divisions was better on eastern front(more SS and panzer divisions for one) so disequality on the two fronts was even wider than just number of divisions shows up.

Stalin slaughtered the officer corp of '30's. He did not prevent military from re-learning lessons AFTER Germans attacked. War is the best teacher of warfare so the soviets were introduced into quite a crash course in "how to win a war". Result which was that the Germans were soon swamped by the superior manpower and production capabilities of the Soviets, halted in their track and then sent backward.

Process which began well BEFORE the Normandy(and indeed which triggered the whole Normandy invasion 'least USSR take German and French under it's wings as well)

Germans couldn't beat USSR whether or not the USA or Brits came. It would just have taken tad longer for the USSR if allies hadn't landed on French(albeit USSR would have then got German+French under their control as well. So probably Stalin would have prefered US+Britain to stay out of Europe despite extra losses to USSR military that would have caused).



Pittances compared to what they faced already. And USSR could take down larger force.



Yeah. No doubt he wanted when it looked bleak but when the inevitable happened and German advance was finally halted by superior manpower+production and after the USSR military had learned required lessons they were already grinding Germans BACK toward German. And THEN the second front opened.

Why you think the Allies landed AFTER USSR got the Germans running? Answer: They wanted to prevent USSR from going all the way to French. They weren't so much interested in helping USSR(if they had wanted to do THAT they would have done when it actually looked like it might actually be needed. Not when it became pretty certain(barring some incredibly unlikely disasters) they won't be needed after all.

Normandy wasn't anti-german manouver. It was anti-USSR manouver. US and Britain knew very well that once German is dealt they will be against USSR's power. Stalin knew that too. Normandy invasion was done with post-Nazi situation in mind.

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皆と友達ができませんが皆に友好的ができます

You can't be friend with everybody but you can be friendly to everybody

The USSR only outproduced the German tanks with the T 34's fairly late on (late 43?). Before then they desperately needed the lend-lease equipment supplied by the allies. They also needed a second front opening up - even the USSR on its own wasn't going to win decisively on just a single front - even with Hitlers poor decisions helping Stalin! The lend-lease and Allies tying down divisions in Italy helped to give the USSR time to build up - time which it desperately needed.

As to Normandy - if the USSR had not been as strong and aggressive, there would have been more divisions facing the allies in Normandy - which would have pushed the invasion back into the sea. Don't forget - D-day was a close run thing, the allies could have failed there if Rommels plan had been followed and the reserves had been released, even without any more troops being available. Similiar thing with the USSR - if the German generals had been given free rein it might have been a different story, certainly a much longer and costlier war than it was.

The US was certainly looking beyond the end of the European war - they wanted to deal with the Japanese. They had wanted to do that before dealing with Germany. It was combined pressure from the USSR and Britain that convinced the USA to commit troops to Africa and then Italy. Without them, the USSR would probably have been pushed back even further, and retaking Europe would have been a monumental task. Imagine a new cold war with Germany and the USA being nuclear superpowers! Very few people in the US or British military were looking to continuing the war against the USSR after Germany (Patton and Churchill being the 2 most well-known) - most believed that with the fall of Germany and Japan, the war would have been ended completely.

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"Truth is a 3-edged sword" bit like a toblerone, really.

Patton wanted to forcibly remove the USSR from Western and Central Europe, and then contain them within their borders. As a student of history, I think he realized that taking the Soviet Union was a loosing proposition.

Rick is absolutely correct about the industrial capabilities in comparison. And if not for the Murmansk Convoys, the war would have been protracted for the USSR. And the production capability of the US was greater than Germany and the USSR. But we built a lot of material for our allies, and many materials we built such as shipping and aircraft, were materials that the USSR didn't even attempt in quantity.

It's kind of funny, but usually American's are accused of claiming we won the big one all by ourselves. If Stalin had not needed us, he would not have bothered with the late war conferences.

By the way, there can be arguments made that if not for some very poor strategic moves by both Britain and the US in late 44, we would have beat the USSR to Berlin in a cake walk. Also, the strategic bombing campaign waged by both Britian and the US was a major contributing factor toward robbing Germany of need resources and reducing manufactuuring and well as dirupting transportation. This helped the USSR greatly in offensive operations against Germany.

I think one of the poorest tactical decision's was to only advance along one axis. That decision was made to try to capitalise on the Germans' collapse after 'Cobra' but was hamstrung by the fact that the allies couldn't get enough logistics across the channel to support the more desirable 2-axis advance. That and second-guessing the intelligence we were getting from Dutch and French resistance!
However, not to downplay the sacrifice made by the people involved, I still think that the allies advance from Normandy to Germany was easier than the Russians advance to Germany (easier in terms of lives lost on both sides is what I mean - there was still some bitter fighting on all fronts).

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"Truth is a 3-edged sword" bit like a toblerone, really.