Cheguvera,

Your really stretching it! If you get a chance read a book called “The making of the Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes, It is a fascinating and very interesting book…The Germans were activley trying to develope an Atomic weapon, they just were looking in the wrong places scientifically….Undoubtably if Hitler hadn’t invaded Russia the war would have lasted longer but the Allies would have still won…….By 1946 it would have been B-29’s leveling Germany, and Meteors and P-80’s vs Me 262’s either way the Germans could not defeat US production….in my opinion.
TTP

Lets stretch it a bit more; We all know of the Bohr and Hagberg meeting. Germans were actively trying upto a point in time. They did’nt pursue it all the way as zeolously as did the americaine, for various reason. Lack of resource could be one. The reason why I speculate was the enormous drain on resources the Russian misadventure turned out to be, we may not know the full extent of it nor we would of the lost potential of Germany.

American Manufacturing base was huge, no doubt. How would that have manifested into Allies eventually winning the war, I am not sure.
From the same token, how about if Hitler had allocated the more resources to North Africa and Middle East, perhaps the whole British control of oil would have been wrested.

Laslty, it would have been Me-262s v. P-51s, not P-80s.

Sun, May 30, 2004

Did Russia win D-Day?

By Eric Margolis — Contributing Foreign Editor

It certainly seems right that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be a guest of honour at the upcoming 60th anniversary celebrations of the Normandy landings.

It’s high time Russia was accorded recognition for its role in the World War II defeat of National Socialist Germany and its Axis allies. Most North Americans believe the U.S.-British-Canadian landings at Normandy were the decisive stroke of the war. Not so, in my view.

When the Allies invaded France, most of the war-battered German units they met were undermanned, short of armour, trucks and heavy artillery, almost immobile, and reduced to 40% combat effectiveness by previous hard fighting on the Eastern Front.

Most important, Germany’s once-splendid air force was almost extinct. German forces at Normandy had almost no air cover and were pounded day and night by thousands of Allied strike aircraft and bombers. Few recall that 15,000-20,000 French civilians in Normandy were killed by the Allied bombing campaign.

Germany’s star commander, Marshal Erwin Rommel, was seriously wounded in a strafing attack. The Germans still put up fierce resistance against overwhelming odds, inflicting 209,000 casualties on the Allies and suffering 200,000 of their own. As Churchill observed, “You will never know war until you fight Germans.”

Eastern Front did it

Still, I would argue the Wehrmacht was not defeated in France, but on the Eastern Front, during 1941-1944, by Stalin’s murderous and bloodthirsty Soviet Union.

The Red Army claims to have destroyed 507 German divisions, 48,000 German tanks and 77,000 enemy aircraft; 100 divisions of Nazi-allied Romania, Hungary, and Italy; and at least 450,000 Japanese soldiers, 32% of Japan’s total military losses.

Of Germany’s 10 million casualties in WW II, 75% came fighting the Red Army. The Luftwaffe lost most of its warplanes and its best pilots in the East. Almost all German military production went to supplying the 1,600-km Eastern Front, where elite German forces were ground up in titanic battles involving millions of men.

Soviet forces lost upwards of 20 million casualties; total U.S. casualties (including the Pacific) were one million. To the Russians, D-Day was mainly a diversionary sideshow to tie down German troops while the Red Army pushed on to Berlin.

Some may dispute this, but there’s little doubt the Soviets destroyed most of Germany’s military capability well before June, 1944. It’s interesting to speculate what would have happened if Hitler had not invaded the U.S.S.R., and if the Allies would then have landed in Normandy to face intact German forces with air cover.

My own view: The Allies would have been beaten.

All those Allies

So Russia’s Putin certainly merits an invitation to Normandy, though I say so reluctantly because of Moscow’s frightful human rights violations against the oppressed Chechens.

But what about German Chancellor Schroeder? A bit odd, no, Germans celebrating a German defeat? Schroeder claims Germans were also victims of Nazism, and so should fete its defeat. That seems a stretch.

Mind you, Schroeder, a deft, intelligent politician, is only doing what former wartime Nazi allies Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Finland and Romania have managed to do: Totally escape their pro-German wartime role and, through the magic of doubletalk, emerge as “Allies.” Call it Euroamnesia.

I recently saw a plaque in Italy lauding the liberation of a town from the Germans by “Italian Allied forces.” Excuse me. I always believed Italy was on the German side.

It makes you wonder just who was fighting against the Allies? Everyone seems to have been either anti-Nazi, in the Resistance, or vacationing in South America at the time.

Whatever, the war is long over and today’s Germans bear no responsibility or guilt for such long-ago events. Let them join the party. Maybe we’ll even see a smiling Japanese delegation at Pearl Harbor next year.