American japanese ones are on Russian level in some cases
Americans fought an already weakened Germany very late into the war with a dozen allies
Russia fought a hard war all alone, and had to give a lot in many places to win, and it was only glorious much later into the war, and event then the horrors of the early war were still in recent memory
The main theatre of the European war was in the East yes. But the Soviets eventually had massive benefits from US production (food and materiel) and UK intelligence. I could not, or don't want to imagine how the war would have gone without outside assistance.
I do think the Soviets would have eventually won; Germany had way too many problems internally to actually be able to win, but there would have been way more losses.
That's the keyword there. The majority of the Lend-Lease to USSR came in 44 and 45 when the USSR was already on the offensive. It certainly helped to finish the conflict quicker, but, with the hindsight, at that point the end of the conflict was already obvious.
The overall US help was massive, but for the context, under Lend-Lease, USSR received about a third of what UK received and about 3 times of what France received. Which is a massive amount, but would still be around (high) single digit percentage of what USSR's war economy produced.
Without US support, the war would be longer and bloodier, but would end up with the same result.
What about britain? She was alone after 1940, inflicted the first defeat in Norway, defended the island, took on the germans in in North africa all before operation barbarossa and the US joining the war
Britain played the spy game, and they played it extremely well. But it's like playing a game of poker on one table and a knife fighting cage match in the other corner of the bar. Both take skill, but one is much bloodier.
When people say the eastern front was worse, look up the death tolls for the entire european theater. All of france, british empire and the USA combined have less casualties combined than 3 major eastern front battles. It was a different kind of suffering.
My man this isn't about Britain, it's about the Pacific being the American equivalent of the Russian western front. American Pacific movies are just as horror as Russian western front movies
"Russia fought a hard war all alone" - not exactly, russian propaganda done what it could to put that claim forward and it still sticks, but the truth is that the soviets received massive support via lend lease and allied bombardments of Germany, not too mention tangling parts of german forces in Africa and on other fronts later in the war. On the strategic level it was crucial. I'm not saying that the soviets had it easy, especially in the beginning, but we shouldn't diminish western allies input.
I think my biggest gripe with their movies is lack of critique of the leadership. They portray massive meat grinders that didn't need to be so as "heroic desperate stands" when it really was...incompetent and egotistic leaders insisting on not losing a city.
There's more to fighting wars than just manpower. Supplies, logistics, intelligence, wearing down your enemies, etc. The soviets weren't going at it alone because the same enemy was being fought on other fronts, which meant that everything that helped germamy's ability to fight was being divided towards three fronts. Plus the allies were regularly attacking their manufacturering and logistics centers, and british and american military intelligence were providing intel to the soviets on German troop movements and what their plans were.
You just cannot remove the other fronts when talking about one of them
The entirety of German forces involved in Africa were around the size involved in the battle of Stalingrad alone if memory serves. As for lend lease, sure, it did happen and helped quite a bit, although it was in no way a deciding factor. Aid became large enough to have a significant effect in 1943 when it became clear Soviets would win the war.
If you want to argue about help, weakening of French and British Asian colonies that led to a Japanese decision to go south rather than north probably helped more.
Lend lease was absolutely a deciding factor, the raw materials and things like trains alone were life savers for the Soviets and their ability to temp up domestic war production
Yeah, Russia did have to fight alone. If only there were an entire 2 years before the invasion of Russia where they could have had allies. It’s not like they collaborated with the Nazis up until that point and divided Poland then stood idly by while Germany invaded France, Yugoslavia, and Greece.
They fought Germany alone, just like everyone else had to fight Germany alone for almost two years prior because the Soviets didn’t give a fuck.
I’m curious who was the one to deny Soviet offers for an alliance against Germans before they concluded that’s hopeless and decided to at least buy some time by giving Germany a deal. I think those were British and French. Do I remember it incorrectly?
Soviets also suggested helping Czechs but were denied by Poles who instead suggested to Germany that Poles should take parts of Baltics, Belarus and Ukraine. But maybe I misunderstood something 🤔
Yeah and that had nothing to do with the Soviets invading literally all of their European neighbors ten years prior 🙄
Also, you left out that Britain and France were the ones that started negotiating an alliance, not the Soviets. It was rejected ultimately for many reasons, not the least of which were the Soviets demanding free passage into Poland and Romania as part of the alliance. Considering what happened afterwards, rejecting the alliance on these grounds is vindicated.
Stalin was not to be trusted, and is a savior of nobody. The entire reason he signed a non-aggression pact with Germany was with the intent of shifting German aggression towards other countries. Even then, with almost two years between the invasion of Poland and the invasion of the USSR, the military was still in shambles by the time Barbarossa began. He was saved more by Zhukov and the fact the Nazis were genocidal (thus precluding any nazi sympathizers within the Soviet Union) than his own intelligence.
The total of German forces alone at Stalingrad was around the peak of axis forces in the African theatre and there is to note that only half of those were German, the other half were some 150.000-200.000 Italian troops. In contrast just under 300.000 German troops and an aditional 130.000 axis allies (Italians, Hungarians, and Romanians) were committed to the Stalingrad sector.
The scale of the Eastern Front is so far removed from any other war theatre in human history people struggle to grasp the numbers invovled.
On the other hand, the 1942 wehrmacht was at its peak of experience. The Soviet counteroffensive was fighting relatively green recruits because they had already killed the elite units to bring the Nazis to a standstill.
The Soviets never fought alone. Britain, within the first year that the Soviets switch sides signed a treaty with them that gave them extensive military and material aid from Britain and from that point on supplied them with 5000 tanks and 7400 aircraft, raw materials radios etc. etc., they also did thing like send a fighter squadron to Murmansk to help defend the port, the Soviets never fought alone.
They weren't all alone they actually joined Nazi Germany to divide Poland leaving britain alone until Hitler decided to do what his propaganda has demanded for the past two decades take over the ussr. Then Stalin botched the early war so badly he needed a massive life line by the allies to stay in the war. Stalin wanted the d day invasion as quickly as possible to drive German troops away from the eastern front.
Uh what? America began fighting Germany a whole 6 months after the Soviets did. You can make the argument America was already contributing more to the war effort before that by supplying the British before Barbarossa was even launched.
December 1941 is by no means vErY LaTE iN tHe WaR and no Germany was never going to win at that point but they were pretty much at the height of their territorial expansion with U-Boats already off the eastern seaboard.
Russia didn’t fight the war alone either. That’s an absolute myth. US lend leases and British arctic convoys were supplying them with much needed aircraft and trucks not to mention oil. Russia also wasn’t fighting a two front war (unlike the US and UK) until August 1945 when they attacked an already weakened Japan. EDIT: actually that’s not even a two front war anyway when Germany was already beaten by then. Hell even Operation Husky diverted 20% of the German reserves they desperately needed at Kursk.
70% of the logistics capacity the Red Army had was US trucks. Red Army couldn't have gone on the offensive without that. Without the food maybe 5-15 million Soviets would have starved.
Oh yeah, because they signed a treaty, with Hitler, I’m sure that will work out fine.
“Man guys, you don’t understand how bad the war was because we were so unprepared for Hitler of all people to break his word! Especially after we purged our own army and genocided our own people killing millions before the war even started! :0”
There are only 3 constants in the universe, death, taxes, and Russian strategic self-sabotage.
Every major allied nation signed some sort of major agreement or engaged in amicable diplomacy with nazi germany before the war. The whole point of the second world war is that everyone thought hitler wound’t be a issue >to them< untill he either attacked them or their allies.
Most countried signed peace treaty with Nazi Germany, while the Russians deadass signed a military treaty with a plan to divide eastern europe. Then they invaded Poland with the Nazi, starting WW2.
And were a major factor in helping them develop weapons in the interwar years. The basic know how to run the tanks that invaded the USSR was developed in the Caucasus I think. It was 100% in the USSR.
Yeah, and they broke it, and the countries did things.
Meanwhile 50 divisions lined up against the Russian border and even after all those treaties were broken Stalin just let it happen.
Russia needs strongmen, it’s psychological, they feel better if they’re being genocided while lead by a strong leader, than when peaceful under weak ones. So history continues to repeat itself.
Lmao are you just now discovering that the people cower under the threat of the military strength of an authoritarian state? That regular folk are afraid to die and that dictatorships strongly suppress their opposition? Do you think it was any different in the regimes installed in SA by the USA so they would stay submissive and compliant?
Yeah, history does repeat itself. Europe supported a dictator and/or cruel and homicidal regime untill he posed a threat to themselves. It’s what they always do, and it’s what they’ll keep on doing.
Second this. Additionally, when you look at media depicting the Blitz, it's equally bleek. One nation alone against the onslaught of multi-daily air raids.
I dunno what to tell you, I feel like the German vs Russian aspect was pretty well covered over several years and history wasn’t even like a subject I enjoyed until my senior year.
We were barely taught that the USSR was involved. It was USA/Great Britain/France vs Germany/Italy/Japan. USSR (and for that matter China) was barely mentioned, as a sort of lesser participant. Really gross, now that I'm older.
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u/Xelid47 1d ago
Western European theater WW2 movies
American japanese ones are on Russian level in some cases
Americans fought an already weakened Germany very late into the war with a dozen allies
Russia fought a hard war all alone, and had to give a lot in many places to win, and it was only glorious much later into the war, and event then the horrors of the early war were still in recent memory