Oliver Stone's Untold History of America

[CountDeMoney]

I'm pretty sure the Eastern Front gets covered by about 5th grade.

[garbon]

Though I'm not sure what that says anyway. Average person is ignorant of most history.

[Eddie Teach]

Does it really matter what ignoramuses think?

[CountDeMoney]

is ignorant of moat history.

lulz.  IT SURROUNDS A CASTLE

[Eddie Teach]

is ignorant of moat history.

lulz.  IT SURROUNDS A CASTLE

And ideally has monsters in it. 

[garbon]

is ignorant of moat history.

lulz.  IT SURROUNDS A CASTLE

Fucking kindle!

[Razgovory]

Yeah, this isn't really a secret. I don't know of many Americans (really any I've ever met) who thought it was us alone versus the Nazis in WWII and we heroically won the day. Virtually all Americans I know are at least aware a good bit of fighting happened before we even really got involved. Now, maybe the average man in the street doesn't know all the intricacies, and how big a deal the Eastern Front was, but it's not really a secret either. I mean, there have been major Hollywood films about German vs Soviet soldiers on the Eastern Front, so it's certainly not a secret. Not nearly as popular as films and stories about Normandy, Battle of the Bulge etc.

The Soviets won primarily by outlasting the Germans and avoiding a critical loss of Moscow in the initial phase of the invasion. The Soviets produce a ton of tanks and planes, more tanks than anyone I believe, but they produced virtually no trucks for example during the war and a lot of their locomotives (rail was vital to parts of the Soviet Empire) came from America too. It's a zero-sum game when talking about wartime manufacturing, so all the trucks they received from us were trucks they did not have to build at the cost of tanks. If they didn't have those trucks their ability to advance would have been significantly limited.

The Soviets also received significant amounts of petroleum from America (the world's top producer during WWII far and away), while the Germans fairly early on had fuel shortages. Take away the logistical support and the Soviets either have to build it themselves, which is difficult and takes away from other things they did make, or they simply don't have it and their movements against Germany are slower which probably means fewer Germans captured/killed in the counterattacks and Germany being able to fight on longer.

If you take away all allied assistance it's probably a very different war. "All Allied assistance" would mean, Germany can freely trade with the rest of the world, has no fear of invasion from the West from the UK or the U.S. etc. That would dramatically change things. Russia was so big and vast and had so many people I do not know that Hitler could ever conquer/tame it all. If he had none of those other concerns he probably could have captured Moscow though, which could have ended the war. (It would depend on whether Stalin politically survived the Fall of Moscow.) We could definitely end up with a superpower-sized Germany and a weakened Russia, for sure.

But yeah, the Soviets did a lot of dying in that war that we should all be grateful for, and deserve the lion's share of the credit for beating the Germans. But like DGuller said, you can get a bit facetious if you go too far the other way. I've seen that from some Russophiles on forums, making the claim that the Soviets essentially won WWII wholly by themselves.

I agree with most of what you say, but the Soviets did build a bunch of trucks.  I think they built slightly more trucks they got from the US, and they got a lot of trucks from the US.  Locomotives on the other hand, the Soviets built very few.  Perhaps the biggest thing was grain.  The Soviet Union could barely feed itself during times of peace, and with the Germans ruling over much of their best farm land they desperately needed American Foodstuffs.

[Siege]

I agree.

I can't name anybody not aware of the role of the USSR in WW2.

[Martinus]

And Stalin really didn't do squat in defeating the other land-hungry Axis empire.

Smart man.

No shit.  "Americans did the building, Soviets did the dying" was wholly dependent on which time zone discussed.

I thought EdAnger was calling Stalin smart for not fighting the Japs.

[Martinus]

The US had around 7 million captured in Northwest Europe.

When? In May 1945? The crucial point of time was certainly before the invasions of Italy in 1943 or even Normandy in 1944 and I doubt the US had captured very many German soldiers before that.

June of 1945.  Any point in time would have meant that the Soviets would still have to fight them if there wasn't a Western release valve.

You are an idiot troll.

[Martinus]

Anyway, this whole thread seems like a strawman. Yes, who would have thought that historical facts a popular tv programme targeted at general public (including young people) considers to be not very well known are actually known by many people on a forum composed of hardcore gamers united by their interest in niche historical games. Let's have a circle jerk over it.

And let's face it. Most people take their history knowledge from Hollywood. And I don't think the Soviet war effort features that prominently in Saving Private Ryan, Patton or Pearl Harbor.

[Martinus]

I agree.

I can't name anybody not aware of the role of the USSR in WW2.

This is probably a self-selecting bias - you normally discuss history with people who know about history. I'm pretty sure that if you did a vox pop and asked people in the street about the role of the US vs. the USSR in winning WW2, most people in the US would say that the role of the US was dominant.

[Razgovory]

The US had around 7 million captured in Northwest Europe.

When? In May 1945? The crucial point of time was certainly before the invasions of Italy in 1943 or even Normandy in 1944 and I doubt the US had captured very many German soldiers before that.

June of 1945.  Any point in time would have meant that the Soviets would still have to fight them if there wasn't a Western release valve.

You are an idiot troll.

Brilliant argument.  With an incisive mind like that, it's easy to see how the law firm's cleaning staff took you on.  I bet you outwit plenty of dust bunnies and stains.

[Zanza]

The question is, would it have been inevitable if they could have thrown millions more into the fray.  That sorta changes the dynamics.  I mean, they were surrendering because they had no where else to go.  With out the West the Germans would have more manpower to focus on the East and ground to fall back to.  Not to mention they could buy resources or weapons from people without the British blockading them and they wouldn't need to waste resources on V2 rockets or defending the skies over Germany or Uboats.

Your argument to quantify the importance of the Western Allies was the high number of POWs. However that was only after the war, so it is meaningless. I don't dispute that the Western Allies did fasten or even only enable Germany's defeat. However, the statistic you quoted doesn't help us at all to evaluate how important their contribution compared to the Russians was.

[Razgovory]

Being taken prisoner was a major factor in ending the war.  If there were no Western Armies to surrender to, then they wouldn't have surrendered.  They would have kept on fighting.  The German government tried to surrender only to the Western allies at first.  Only after being told that no surrender would be accepted that didn't include the Soviets did the Germans finally give up.  The presence of the Western Armies was essentially like steam valve, allowing German pressure to against the Soviet to dissipate.  With out that mechanism, they would have to fight all those Germans.