D-Day "myths". Actually not a bad article at all...

[Gups]

By the end of World War II the United States had the best armed services in the world

Is this generally accepted?

[Razgovory]

By the end of World War II the United States had the best armed services in the world

Is this generally accepted?

Probably not, but the US was certainly in the best position after the war.  Pretty much every other power was receiving resources from the US.  And the US has the Atomic Bomb.

[Berkut]

Rommel knew that once the Allies were established there was no way to get them back off, and that the only chance was to throw back the invasion.

He also knew that the need to defend all that coastline meant that actually defeating the invasion itself was not really possible. The troops would get onto the beach.

His plan then relied on the hoped for ability to defeat the invasion operationally, not tactically - that after the Allies landed, they would be able to counter-attack with forces kept near the beaches within the first 48-96 hours of a landing. This would, of course, mean that they would have to accomplish this despite Allied naval gunnery dominance, but he felt that they could do that.

This is why he asked for the reserves to be kept much less centrally organized and located, but closer to the beaches so he could mount a counter-attack within a day or two of landing. Of course this meant that said counter-attack would have less weight behind it, since you had to spread your potential reserves across a larger area.

In reality, the power of naval gunfire support was even greater than he thought, and his ability to bring in operational reserves in the face of allied air power actually probably a bit greater than he thought - the Germans became really good at night marching and staying under cover when the weather was clear. Still problematic though to move supplies and fuel around, but they got pretty good at moving tactical formations.

In hindsight, it was all pretty hopeless. I don't think there was any "right" answer to the puzzle presented to the Germans on how to defend the continent from the Allies, and a large number of viable answers to the allied puzzle of how to invade it.

[Malthus]

In hindsight, it was all pretty hopeless. I don't think there was any "right" answer to the puzzle presented to the Germans on how to defend the continent from the Allies, and a large number of viable answers to the allied puzzle of how to invade it.

That's my impression too.

The best strategy the Germans could have pursued was 'not be in this situation in the first place'. 

[Razgovory]

Yeah, it's pretty difficult to see how the Germans could have won this one.  The battle for Normandy was won within the first six hours, after the majority of forces were successfully able to land.  The only way for the Germans to win is for a freak storm to hit the channel disrupting the landings.  The campaign would be long, but the outcome was never in doubt.  It's excellent of example of winning a battle before the fighting starts.

[Malthus]

Yeah, it's pretty difficult to see how the Germans could have won this one.  The battle for Normandy was won within the first six hours, after the majority of forces were successfully able to land.  The only way for the Germans to win is for a freak storm to hit the channel disrupting the landings.  The campaign would be long, but the outcome was never in doubt.  It's excellent of example of winning a battle before the fighting starts.

Heh, they got a freak storm after the landings, that disrupted supply for days & smashed up the Mulberry ports: the worst channel storm in decades, allegedly. They still lost. 

[Razgovory]

I kinda disagree with #3.  The Allies did become bogged down in Normandy.  Obviously they eventually pushed through, but the author really seems to belittle the German defensive efforts.  Sure, they stayed within range of naval guns, but what was the alternative?  Mass retreat from France on D+6??

They had no good alternatives because they had already lost.  They only had three choices:  Hold the line and be destroyed, slowly get pushed back knowing that every square mile lost would mean more space for Allied soldiers to occupy and be used against them, or a full retreat out of France.  There was no good option.

[Admiral Yi]

Is this generally accepted?

Based on what I've read: not even close.

[OttoVonBismarck]

By the end of World War II the United States had the best armed services in the world

Is this generally accepted?

In the histories I've read I don't know that it is commonly stated that way. It's generally accepted the United States had the most powerful armed force at the end of WWII. Its Naval tonnage was greater than the rest of the world's combined, it generally had the largest amount of equipment in most major equipment categories. It did have a smaller infantry and I think fewer tanks than the Soviets. It was of course also the only armed force that had at its disposal a couple of nuclear weapons per month (a number that would increase per month in short order) and that has to count for a huge bit when talking about relative power.

But if you think about it from a qualitative perspective,  I'd guess the U.S. probably did have the best armed service in the world. Russia had similar problems to Germany in that a huge portion of their men of "ideal fighting age" were dead. Many of their military were not Russian or even Soviet citizens, and were of vague allegiance to the USSR, they had a lot of older people in the military that wouldn't even have been allowed to enlist in the U.S. military. They generally were worse supplied, and amount and quality of supply is incredibly important in determining how good/effective an individual soldier is. I don't think it's widely questioned the Soviets were much, much less disciplined. They weren't the rag tag band of Communist zombies that they're sometimes represented as being, but it was a force that had lost most of its best young men and had supplemented them with nationals from other countries and people outside the ideal age range for a soldier, not to mention even women in some cases.

[Berkut]

I don't think the statement as presented is much argued outside Soviet historians.

Who could possibly claim to have better armed services in total?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Also while there were some exceptionally well disciplined, well trained, Veteran soviet units, the range of quality in Soviet frontline units was tremendous, with some little more than the 1945 equivalent of villagers with pitchforks pressed into service. The U.S. frontline units were very uniformly trained, equipped and more or less uniformly capable. Some were battle hardened and some were not, but the United States was still able to have the luxury of providing significant training and organization of its entire military, the Soviets were not in a similar state.

[viper37]

I don't think the statement as presented is much argued outside Soviet historians.

Who could possibly claim to have better armed services in total?

The Mighty Canucks?

No matter how I turn this, numbers, training, equipment, chain of supply, quality of officers, I think the Americans come out on top in nearly every area in 1945.  Maybe the British had equivalent or superior training and better officers, but equipment-wise and chain of supply, the Americans would beat them.

On the other side, Russian equipment was inferior, so was russian training.  The quality of officers was certainly not on par with the US, not in terms of numbers (numbers of very good officers in proportion to underlings) and they depended on US supplies for all of the war, so it's dubious that by 1945 they would be the best fighting machine out there.  They had the numbers sure, but discipline beats numbers 9 times out 10, or so I've heard...

[Berkut]

I don't think the statement as presented is much argued outside Soviet historians.

Who could possibly claim to have better armed services in total?

The Mighty Canucks?

No matter how I turn this, numbers, training, equipment, chain of supply, quality of officers, I think the Americans come out on top in nearly every area in 1945.  Maybe the British had equivalent or superior training and better officers, but equipment-wise and chain of supply, the Americans would beat them.

On the side, Russian equipment was inferior, so was russian training.  The quality of officers was certainly not on par with the US, not in terms of numbers (numbers of very good officers in proportion to underlings) and they depended on US supplies for all of the war, so it's dubious that by 1945 they would be the best fighting machine out there.  They had the numbers sure, but discipline beats numbers 9 times out 10, or so I've heard...

...and the numbers aren't really all that in any case. They typically "count" use some metric of combat divisions (ie the USSR had 300 combat divisions in Europe! or something like that) and when you actually dig into those numbers, they don't tend to really hold up.

[dps]

I don't think the statement as presented is much argued outside Soviet historians.

Who could possibly claim to have better armed services in total?

The Mighty Canucks?

No matter how I turn this, numbers, training, equipment, chain of supply, quality of officers, I think the Americans come out on top in nearly every area in 1945.  Maybe the British had equivalent or superior training and better officers, but equipment-wise and chain of supply, the Americans would beat them.

The Brits were also exhausting their manpower.  U.S. commanders complained about manpower shortages, but that was mostly because U.S. commanders expected their units to be at 100% strength pretty much all the time (there was, arguably, a bit of a shortage of infantry, but that was mostly the result of conscious decisions about how manpower was allocated, rather than an actual shortage of manpower).

I think that man-for-man, the Canadian (and possibly Australian and New Zealand forces) were a bit better than the Americans (the Canadians, in particular, seem to have combined many of the best traits of U.S. and UK forces), but their populations were too small to support a lot of units.

[Valmy]

I know during WWI the Commonwealth units were considered the elite units of the British Army. I didn't know if that applied for WWII as well.