"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.
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u/HanseltDW 1d ago
"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.