Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire WW2 Russian vet. recalls atrocities by his soldiers -

The Russians would hava had a tougher time if 20% to 40% of the economic output of Germany, including the Lufrwffe, hadn't been needed for diverting to defending against the 8th Air Force.

Some in the Japanese government thought they could get Russia to act as an intermediary with the Americans. It was sort of a desperation Hail Mary play. After the two A-bombs, Hirohito intervened and told them to shut up. Russia had just declared war and attacked their troops in Manchuria but Hirohito did not mention that in his speech to the Japanese people. How many moe A-bombs could the US drop? Hirohito didn'tknow but a third one was already in transit to Tinian. the military actually tried a coup to keep the war going.

Sort of like Hitler's secret weapons. Germany spent more money on the V2 program than we did on the A-bomb. Didn't work.

Gotta be careful. Things that seem obvious in hindsight now, weren’t necessarily so obvious to people back then.

Of course, there are more lies about WW II than any conflict in history. First of all, it’s still really recent with lots of people who were in it are still alive. And many many of the children and grandchildren of the people who were making decisions then are writing the histories now. Not enough time and space for real objectivity yet. And secondly, and most importantly, the official narrative of WW II is the creation myth upon which the ENTIRE modern world and its interconnected structures are built. If the narrative crumbles, so do the foundations of the modern world.

The red air force was doing just fine against the luftwaffe. Bombing non military civilian targets didn’t win us the war. Our war on german industry was a failure. German production actually increased in every year of the war.

In some ways this is true, but not all hindsight is 20-20. A lot depends on who is exercising the hindsight. Those who are wringing their hands over the "mistakes" of the past such as our treatment of the Native Americans, slavery, etc. and are using these events to justify the wholesale re-making of the country, are making an even worse mistake.

Myth? I'm no historian, but I'd put more stock in the contemporaneous accounts of WWII than any of the modern analysis of that event, simply because I think the world was a less dishonest place back then. But yes, the world as we know it is a direct outgrowth of that war and its aftermath. But the re-writing history by the Leftists, and not just as pertains to WWII, is part of what is causing the present-day crumbling of the country that has done more than any other to bring the world into the modern age. I don't see that as a positive thing.

Myth? I'm no historian, but I'd put more stock in the contemporaneous accounts of WWII than any of the modern analysis of that event, simply because I think the world was a less dishonest place back then. But yes, the world as we know it is a direct outgrowth of that war and its aftermath. But the re-writing history by the Leftists, and not just as pertains to WWII, is part of what is causing the present-day crumbling of the country that has done more than any other to bring the world into the modern age. I don't see that as a positive thing.

The Germans were the first to confront and check communism and for that the world owes them a great due. We’ve been doing it ever since.

One could say and not be totally wrong that we supported the wrong nation in that war. We had no choice after France and England declared war on Germany however.

The downfall of Germany was the nazis and their bullshit ideology.

We sold our soul to the devil by supporting the reds imho.

The Red Air Force never had air superiority over the Luftwaffe until 1943, when half of the planes were diverted to countering our bombing campaign.

German industry increased until 1944 because Hitler didn't fully mobilize the German economy for war until 1942-43. The reason he so eagerly embraced the concept of Blitzkrieg was because it produced rapid results at far less costs than huge battles of attrition. He was afraid that German support for the war would collapse like it did in 1917 if he pushed them too hard by maximizing the economic focus on military concepts. So, he didn't fully mobilize the German economy until he started losing. Before that, he didn't believe it was needed and would actually undermine the war effort. If we had not been bombing the crap out of Germany, its economic output would have increased much more rapidly = more dead Americans and Brits.

The reasons Stalin were taken by surprise are that he knew exactly what Germany had and he knew what he had. He knew Hitler could not hope to win a war against the Soviets. He knew their preparations for an extended campaign and one in the winter were nonexistent. But he completely underestimated at how big a gambler Hitler was.

Hitler’s early successes where all insane gambles that worked. France could have crushed him like a bug or sent him running back in disgrace when he retook the Rhineland. His generals were ready to depose him if France or England had declared war in Czechoslovakia. Poland backfired but then England and France did nothing. The invasion of France involved reckless tactical decisions that could have resulted in disaster a dozen different times, but didn’t. But he was doomed the second he invaded the Soviet Union. It could never work. He gambled the Soviet government would collapse. When it didn’t, defeat was inevitable.

A big part of what's causing the crumbling in America today is FDR's decision to align America with Stalin,...one of the biggest tyrants/butchers of the modern era.

Pretty accurate although I firmly believe had Hitler not delayed invasion (by six weeks) because he was helping the Guineas in Greece AND had he not weakened Army Group Center, they could hav easily taken Moscow and at the very least solidified an almost impregnable front in western Russia. The war would have dragged on for years were in not for Stalingrad.

I wrote, and can send if you want, a 48-page undergraduate thesis on all but your last point. Hitler had a very narrow path to defeat the USSR, and it involved taking Moscow in the fall of 1941, but he intentionally forewent that for the Ukrainian sideshow. Moscow was much more important to the Soviet Union in 1941 than it was to Russia in 1812. He possibly still could have won a longer war against the Russians if he had treated the occupied Soviet residents better than Stalin did, which wasn't very difficult, but Hitler would never do that because he was a Nazi.

On your last point, I think, even after Stalingrad, the Germans could have dragged the war on a lot longer at a much greater cost to the Soviets if Hitler had simply turned over the strategic decisions to von Manstein. Hitler had, and adopted, some effective strategies on the offensive for the first three years, but was stunningly ignorant of how to fight a defensive war.

For example, after Manstein's "Backhand Blow," when he stopped the post-Stalingrad Russian offensives in the south, Manstein wanted to immediately attack the salient at Kursk before it was fortified. But Hitler refused. He then made a series of the worst decisions possible for the Wehrmacht, leading them to attack the most heavily fortified region in world history in a doomed attempt. After Hitler delayed the attack on Kursk, Manstein attempted to persuade Hitler to instead allow him to execute a much-more effective plan. Up to that point, the Soviets, in every instance had aggressively pushed movement and attack in every sector they believed the Germans were vulnerable. Manstein wanted to fight a fake withdrawal along the area to the north of the Black Sea, draw millions of Russian, who would have been all to eager, in that direction, and then use the forces that were being concentrated for the doomed Kursk offensive to strike south from the same area and trap millions of Russians. Manstein knew how to fight a defensive war with maneuver. Instead, Hitler's stand-your-ground directives causes massive casualties on the German side and inflicted very little carnage on the Red Army.

I'd love to read it. I did a similar treatise whilst at the Naval War College back in 1995. The war in Europe was a lot more difficult to go through all the permutations, unlike the war in the Pacific where the caps lost it the very second the first bomb came off the rails at Pearl Harbor.

But a question that seems unasked , when we whipped out the biggest wang in the world (nukes) , had every bodies attention , why did we not go for the throat and take out Russia and Chine then ?
Was the communist ball already rolling in our midsts ?
Of was they not considered that much of a threat back then ?
Kenneth

China wasn't Communist back then. The Reds didn't take over until 1949.
I believe that Germany was the more immediate threat in 1939. Due to famines (both natural and manmade) and purges, the Soviet Union was a basketcase. Germany was actually taking over other countries at that time. Germany declared war on us first, so we had no choice. We should have done what we did in real timeline except we shouldn't have stopped at the Elbe. We should have driven the Soviets back to their prewar borders. That way, they wouldn't have been able to loot Eastern Europe of the machinery and men that allowed them to reindustrialize and build their bomb so soon.

When England chose to declare war on Germany, America should have said, "good luck", and stayed out of it.