Russia to the Rescue?

[Newcastle Uni]

According to an article published in The Sunday Times, many Russian veterans of the second world war are dissatisfied with the way that their contribution towards ending Nazi tyranny has been represented in the West. They say: -

More than 25m Soviet soldiers and civilians died in the war and by comparison Britain and the United States lost fewer than 1m people

The Soviets beat 607 German divisions, whilst the allies only beat 176 German divisions

The Soviets liberated much of Europe from the Nazis - including Auchwitz that was also liberated by the advancing soviet Red Army

They say that at the time of the Second World War, only the Russians were strong enough to defeat the Nazis

They say that the Russians could have defeated the Nazis on their own


Do you think that we in the west deliberately underplay the role Russia played in ending the Second World War?

I don't want to upset anyone with this post. I'm not suggesting for a minute that the allies did not fight bravely and successfully. Nor am i suggesting that Russians disregard the allied contribution. I am simply voicing the opinions of Georgy Kumanyov, apparently a leading russian historian and to me those figures seem irrefutable. If the Russians beat 6 German divisions to every 2 beaten by the British, US, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders etc. combined, and if they suffered 25m casualties to outr 1m casualties, then surely it was Russia that won the second world war?

 

[sceej56]

"The Soviets liberated much of Europe from the Nazis - including Auchwitz that was also liberated by the advancing soviet Red Army"

"liberated" - did they ever hear of the term "out of the frying pan into the fire"? I'm sure millions of Poles, Hungarians, Rumanians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, etc etc etc .. . would be only to happy to discuss the claim that they were liberated byt the Soviets.

"Meet the new boss ... same as the old boss!"

As for the rest, unquestionably the war could not have been won without the Soviets, Franc and Britain were run off handily by the Nazis; however, the fact that the Soviets absorbed catastrophic casualties to defeat those Nazi divisions could equally be argued to mean that the Soviets were on the verge of collapse. Unquestionably they infliced more damage on the Nazis but only at horrific cost to themselves.

 

[Newcastle Uni]

I think you've hit on the problem with the Soviets. They were prepared to accept such massive casualties and whilst some of the fiercest battles did take place in Russia, one could argue that this was only because the Soviets were too proud/stubborn to accept defeat. I believe that the Soviets 'murdered' many of their own men by sending them on suicide missions to attack the Germans. As for your 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss' quote. Thats probably very accurate. I sure as hell wouldn' have wanted to be liberated by Russia.

 

[Deleted member 2452]

no one could have won on their own...

except possibly the u.s.a., and only us if we were to have used the atomic bomb on germany. don't worry too much about what the russian vets say, hell their own people killed as many as the germans!
russians tend to exagerate.
steve

 

[Newcastle Uni]

I don't know whether the USA could have won the war on their own. With the atomic bomb they could have certainly won the war single-handedly. However, the Germans were damned good. Leaving aside their totally abhorrent atrocities (probably only the Japanese in China committed worse war crimes. They would dissect people alive and without anaesthetic just so that they got better experimental results and they would tie people to stakes at varying distances from the epicentre of a bomb that they would then detonate in order to observe the effects of the bomb on the human body)
Leaving aside their war crimes, so many inventions were borne out of Germany in that period. Would Russia have got into space or America have got to the moon without the Germans? And the Germans were working on their equivalent of the Manhatten Project themselves, so who knows what would have happened had they developed the atomic bomb first. Plus they were pioneering in their work on the jet engine and towards the end of the War London was being hit be missiles launched from as far away as France!

It is my opinion that for all of Americas great industrial output and massive armies and navies, they could not have won the War on their own. I don't know why, but America doesn't seem to excel when it comes to going to War. It usually becomes messy and protracted, either due to underestimation of the enemy or changing political climates. Do you agree? America is the world's only superpower, yet I cannot think of a single war in which they have won on their own and against comparable opposition?

 

[DEV]

Don't forget the role of Britain either. If not for British tenacity against Gernamy, America wouln't have bothered to enter the war and Europe would have faced a bloody war between Germany and the U.S.S.R which would have split the continent in two. America didn't win the war single handedly but it took the teamwork of all the allies to bring Nazism down.

 

[Newcastle Uni]

I think British resourcefulness was undoubtedly significant. Without the role of, was it Alan Turing?, and the other codebreakers at Bletchley park or without the Royal Air Force managing to hold the Luftwaffe at bay during the Battle of Britain, or without the tenacity and Churchill and the apparently brilliant relationship he formed with the then American President and without the role of various insurgents and resistance movements around the world from Norway to France, perhaps I would be speaking German. As it is I speak English, poorly! Good old Blighty!

(To be honest I think the home guard won the war. The thought of facing such a fierce, war-hardened group of determined warriors clearly scared the hell out of Hitler1)