Ukraine's European Revolution?

[Tamas]

I'm not certain the T-34 was the best tank to win the war.  The US produced nearly as many Shermans and weren't taking the kind of loses the Soviets were.  And the Shermans were more versatile, for instance they could be landed on beaches.  Also they had radios, which is really important.

The western front was a mere sideshow compared to the scale and numbers of the Eastern Front. It is not relevant to compare losses.

That is even more stupid than the people who think the Eastern Front was the sideshow to the West.

Well, not more stupid, but certainly as stupid.

Sounds significantly less stupid to me.  It may not be the truth, but it's a whole lot closer to the truth than the reverse.

They are both equally stupid, and both equally fail to understand how the war was fought, and what actually resulted in victory and defeat for the Allies and the Germans.

Yes, for the exact kind of victory the Allies achieved, they needed the contribution of everyone. And without such level of contribution, the war would had been much longer.

What I am saying is something like this: If Germans did not garrison the French coast, they would have still lost against the Soviets. If the Germans had their entire army in France, D-Day could never happen. Hence my comparison of the East being the decisive front.

[DGuller]

They are both equally stupid, and both equally fail to understand how the war was fought, and what actually resulted in victory and defeat for the Allies and the Germans.

Well, that may be your opinion, but I've yet to see a compelling argument.  The reason the Eastern front was deadlier was because that's where the bulk of the German forces were fighting.  Because they had to fight there, to keep back the Russians.  And calling the Eastern front a mere numbers game and not a technological warfare is a bit baffling;  the Eastern front is what stimulated the intense arms race in tank technology, for one.

[Eddie Teach]

They'd have left France as part of the treaty to stop nukes falling on German cities. 

[Berkut]

What I am saying is something like this: If Germans did not garrison the French coast, they would have still lost against the Soviets.

That is a simplistic analysis of the Western Front though - or better yet, it is a simplistic analysis of the Non-Eastern Front, which involved much, much, MUCH more than just the ground war in Europe.

Would the Soviets have won without D-Day? Perhaps.

Would they have won without the Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle of Britain, North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and the Strategic bombing campaign? Without Lend Lease?

I don't think the answer to that question is nearly as obvious, especially in light of recent scholarship about just how close to exhaustion the Soviet war economy was by the end of the war WITH all those things in play.

I think you can make a strong argument that the Germans could not have won after 1941, but that doesn't mean the Soviets win, and certainly not in the decisive manner they did. And even THAT still has a huge amount of German resources being diverted from the Eastern campaign.

If the Germans had their entire army in France, D-Day could never happen.

Could the Germans mobilize anything like an army of the size they did without the Eastern Front though? Would they have? What does it even mean to imagine how WW2 would play out if Germany never attacks the USSR? It is an interesting idea, but I am not sure I would agree with the blanket assertion that absent and Eastern Front a theoretical Western allied war could not be won against Germany. It would not be won in the same manner it was won, of course, but I don't agree that it was simply not possible to be won at all.

Hence my comparison of the East being the decisive front.

I think in the war that actually happened, there is no question that the Eastern Front was the primary and decisive front. But I think of the Eastern Front as one of several, not one of two.

[Berkut]

They are both equally stupid, and both equally fail to understand how the war was fought, and what actually resulted in victory and defeat for the Allies and the Germans.

Well, that may be your opinion, but I've yet to see a compelling argument.  The reason the Eastern front was deadlier was because that's where the bulk of the German forces were fighting.  Because they had to fight there, to keep back the Russians.  And calling the Eastern front a mere numbers game and not a technological warfare is a bit baffling;  the Eastern front is what stimulated the intense arms race in tank technology, for one.

The Easter Front was deadlier in number of men killed because

1. That was were most of the deadly fighting that killed large number of men was going on (ground combat), and
2. That was the "existential" conflict for the two combatants involved, and hence you saw much more killing, rather than prisoner taking.

But my point is that war is not simply a matter of killing men. If it was, the Germans would have beat the Soviets.

And of course the questions of "numbers versus technology" is not some binary thing, it is not one of the other. And it isn't even really technology per se, but rather mechanization. The war of "stuff" as opposed to the war of men.

My point about the Atlantic War of the Pacific War illustrates what I am talking about. You fight the enemy in the realm of what is relevant for the geography you are fighting over, and with the tools that you have available and most useful to you. Like I said, how do you compare the amount of "forces" to decide that the Eastern Front had 90% of the German forces? What weight does a U-Boat count against a platoon of Panzers? How much does a 88mm anti-aircraft gun defending Hamburg weigh against a 76mm AT gun blowing away T-34s?

I am NOT saying that the bulk of the Germany military was not deployed to the East - it certainly was. I don't buy that calculus however that since most of the KIA's of Germans happened in the East, we can conclude that whatever that total percentage of killed men, we can simply use that as a rough determinant of the total commitment of the German war effort.

The best stats we have seen so far show that of the approzimately 5 million total German war dead, some 3.3 million were probably killed on the Eastern Front. However, that probably include somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 POWs killed.

I think the Eastern Front was the primary front of the war, but I don't think it is anywhere near "80%", even if it accounted for 80% of the fatalities, and I don't think it actually did account for that high a number.

[The Brain]

Ze Shermans had ze best tanks!

[Tamas]

I get your points Berkut but I think you think I am saying the non-Soviet efforts didn't matter. Of course they did, a great deal. However:

Would the Soviets have won without D-Day? Perhaps.

Would D-Day have won without there being a Soviet front? For sure not. That is the difference I am implying, nothing more, nothing less.

[Admiral Yi]

Putin has asked parliament to withdraw the authorization for him to use military force in Ukraine.

They will respectfully decline I assume?

I expect not.  I think Putin has been looking for an exit strategy since Crimea was annexed.

It would be interesting to know how the

Fucking touchpads.

Russian media are treating the fighting right now.

[derspiess]

It would be interesting to know how the

OMG they got Yi! 

[alfred russel]

I expect not.  I think Putin has been looking for an exit strategy since Crimea was annexed.

Exit strategy in the sense of conquering more territory. Probably not exit strategy in the sense of ceasing to fuck with the Ukraine to keep them poor and dysfunctional.

[derspiess]

Would D-Day have won without there being a Soviet front? For sure not. 

Why not?  The Allies still would have had air supremacy and lots of naval artillery.

[Berkut]

I get your points Berkut but I think you think I am saying the non-Soviet efforts didn't matter. Of course they did, a great deal. However:

Would the Soviets have won without D-Day? Perhaps.

Would D-Day have won without there being a Soviet front? For sure not. That is the difference I am implying, nothing more, nothing less.

But it isn't a difference with meaning. There wouldn't be a D-Day absent the Eastern Front, so saying whether the Allies would win or not is meaningless. LIterally, it makes no sense to say "Without an Eastern Front, D-Day would fail". What does that mean?

Does it mean that a sea-borne invasion of Normandy on June 6th, 1944 would not succeed? I suspect that isn't what you mean, as it is so specific that obviously it is a false history.

So I am assuming (please correct me if I am wrong) that you mean something more general, like "Without the German-Soviet war, the allies could not have ended WW2 with a victory". Is that NOT what you mean? Because that is what I dispute. I don't know if the Allies would win such a war, but I certainly would not agree that they could not win such a war - they would still have a massive numeric and economic/industrial advantage over the Nazi's.

Absent the eastern war, I don't think the western allied war goals are even the same. Probably would not include unconditional surrender, for example. But I could certainly imagine a long war that included Allied incursions into Nazi influenced/occupied territory that result in a peace on Allied terms. And of course, any hypothetical WW2 scenario that include the USSR staying completely out of the war is rather unlikely anyway, isn't it?

So, as an example, I could certainly see a reasonable hypothetical where Germany does not invade the USSR, the US comes into the war at some point (say when Japan attacks), and over a long period of warfare that includes the USSR attacking Eastern Europe (say into rump Poland or even Romania), dragging the Germans into a more limited engagement (not existential for either) on the Eastern Front, being engaged with the Allies at the same time, cutoff after losing a more protracted Battle of the Atlantic, Japan beaten (maybe even more quickly since the US and the UK have more resources to focus on them), and the Germans agreeing to a peace at some point that restored some form of a real French state and withdrawal form some of their gains in the East, like Poland.

In there somewhere, could I also imagine that the Western Allies pull off a successful naval invasion of Europe? In Norway? Sicily? Italy? Southern France? Somewhere? Certainly.

[Tamas]

Yeah that is basically what I am saying. There would had been no way (IMHO) back to the continent for the Western Allies without a Soviet front, before the nukes started to fly on German cities. It would had become sort of like a North Korea situation, where an economically severely handicapped Reich (although then again more resources for the air war would stipulate a longer time needed to win the strategic air war) would keep a grim grip on it's own and occupied territories.

[alfred russel]

Doesn't the development of nuclear weapons change all this though? Sure the Germans had some moments here and there of competitiveness, but their long term future, had they held out, was to get nuked into oblivion.

[Razgovory]

Yeah that is basically what I am saying. There would had been no way (IMHO) back to the continent for the Western Allies without a Soviet front, before the nukes started to fly on German cities. It would had become sort of like a North Korea situation, where an economically severely handicapped Reich (although then again more resources for the air war would stipulate a longer time needed to win the strategic air war) would keep a grim grip on it's own and occupied territories.

Indeed, that's how Germany won WWI.