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Post by oftrollorigins on May 22, 2021 17:23:17 GMT
The Western Allies could've reached the city before Stalin's troops did. Would the Germans have resisted as tenaciously? Would it have been better for most of Germany to have been under the Western Allies as a result? Was it even possible to do?
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on May 22, 2021 18:27:14 GMT
Berlin was the price for the Soviets joining the Pacific War against Japan. By the beginning of 1945 it was obvious that Germany was doomed. Not so Japan. The Us was scared shitless of the potential casualties in Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. Upwards of 1,000,000 US casualties. And that might have been low, the Japanese had secretly reinforced Japan (explains why the Red Army was able to go through the vaunted Kwangtung Army like hot butter). The US needed the Russian, or so they thought. Of course, they didn't because of the Atom Bombs. But no one could foresee that possible end to the Pacific War.
Hindsight is 20/20.
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Post by Feologild Oakes on May 22, 2021 18:45:16 GMT
No
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Post by bravomailer on May 23, 2021 0:44:08 GMT
It isn't clear at all the western powers could have reached Berlin before the Soviets did. The Wehrmacht and Waffen SS were fighting hard on both fronts. Stalin didn't care about casualties. Eisenhower did.
The zones of occupation had already been agreed upon, regardless of where the lines were at the time of surrender. Also, it was agreed upon that Berlin would be occupied by the US, France, Britain, and the USSR.
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on May 23, 2021 1:53:17 GMT
And Berlin wasn’t worth the blood. 81,000 Soviets died taking the city. It was worth it to them after the Nazi atrocities they had seen. Not to us.
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Post by Winter_King on May 25, 2021 11:30:11 GMT
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on May 25, 2021 19:31:57 GMT
Yeah, it wouldn't have gone well at all. The Western Allies probably had better air support but the Red Army had more men, more tanks and better tanks. Had this gone poorly and the Soviets pushed the Allies back to the Rhine, would he have been forced to repeat Hiroshima on the Red Army? Not worth it at all.
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Post by bluerisk on May 26, 2021 1:27:22 GMT
Yeah, it wouldn't have gone well at all. The Western Allies probably had better air support but the Red Army had more men, more tanks and better tanks. Had this gone poorly and the Soviets pushed the Allies back to the Rhine, would he have been forced to repeat Hiroshima on the Red Army? Not worth it at all.
I'm sure the Germans had switched side and fought along the Western allies.
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Post by oftrollorigins on May 27, 2021 0:29:18 GMT
Yeah, it wouldn't have gone well at all. The Western Allies probably had better air support but the Red Army had more men, more tanks and better tanks. Had this gone poorly and the Soviets pushed the Allies back to the Rhine, would he have been forced to repeat Hiroshima on the Red Army? Not worth it at all.
I'm sure the Germans had switched side and fought along the Western allies. Oh they would’ve. There are many stories of Wehrmacht troops surrendering to the Western Allies and volunteering to help fight the Soviets. We all know Patton wanted to. He hated the Soviets far more than the Germans. |
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on May 27, 2021 20:23:25 GMT
I'm sure the Germans had switched side and fought along the Western allies. Oh they would’ve. There are many stories of Wehrmacht troops surrendering to the Western Allies and volunteering to help fight the Soviets. We all know Patton wanted to. He hated the Soviets far more than the Germans.Not after he seen the camps
and the Germans wanting to fight along side of the Allies and actually doing it are two different things. How would that have played out in Britain and the US, to be a war with the Nazis for years then, BANG, we are allies and US troops fighting along side of Waffen SS troops? The same ones responsible for Oradour-sur-Glane and Malmedy, not to mention Buchenwald and Belsen?
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Post by Prime etc. on May 27, 2021 20:57:58 GMT
Of course it was a mistake.
It was a mistake to let any Soviet takeover of nations.
They were raping and pillaging in the territories they were given.
According to Patton's diary entries, any woman who ran from the Soviets in Berlin was shot, and any who didn't, was raped, even 8 years-old.
He also said he was given orders to send 100 000 slave laborers to France.
Slave labor?
The clear winners of WW 2 was the USSR.
Anti-communist nationalists were the losers.
If the stated reasons for fighting WW 2 was to free Poland and save the British Empire, both objectives failed.
The USSR gained the most.
The nationalists who joined the Third Reich side to free their countries from Soviet occupation were sent back by the Us and the Uk to be killed or sent to prison camps.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 6, 2021 15:38:58 GMT
A mistake from whose point of view? If you mean the UK and US governments, what choice did they have? The Red Army did more to beat Nazi Germany than any other country. Without the Soviets pressing in from the east, Germany might have been able to hold France.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 6, 2021 15:44:56 GMT
According to Patton's diary entries, any woman who ran from the Soviets in Berlin was shot, and any who didn't, was raped, even 8 years-old. Not the most trustworthy source there given his racial hatred of Russians who he saw as Asiatic barbarians. |
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Post by Prime etc. on Jun 6, 2021 16:34:35 GMT
Not the most trustworthy source there given his racial hatred of Russians who he saw as Asiatic barbarians. The rapes are reported--you can find other sources of that. He also saved those dancing horses from the Soviet army who were going to eat them. Operation Keel Haul wasn't giving them a good reputation either and that's something hardly talked about.
It isn't like the atrocities in the Soviet Union were not known. Under-reported yes, but known to be happening.
Even a movie like Enemy at the Gates presented some things that call it into question like forcing citizens to fight by threatening to kill them. Not quite the image of a citizen army or volunteer militia.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 6, 2021 16:50:40 GMT
The rapes are reported--you can find other sources of that. Sure, there was mass rape - the Soviet records mention having to introduce the death penalty for soldiers found guilty of it so it was clearly a big problem. It's also an all too common result of war. However, the ideas that it was of an unprecedented level or it was actively encouraged by leaders seem more dubious, especially given the propensity for Western historians to exaggerate Soviet atrocities and the obvious biases of the sources. |
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Post by Prime etc. on Jun 6, 2021 17:31:53 GMT
Sure, there was mass rape - the Soviet records mention having to introduce the death penalty for soldiers found guilty of it so it was clearly a big problem. It's also an all too common result of war. However, the ideas that it was of an unprecedented level or it was actively encouraged by leaders seem more dubious, especially given the propensity for Western historians to exaggerate Soviet atrocities and the obvious biases of the sources. I agree that exaggeration is possible but I think the USSR enjoyed some protections from Western criticism. The forest massacre that was blamed on Germans. Media suppression, building walls to prevent people from leaving. Gulags.
Operation Keel Haul was not talked about in Western media--that made the US and UK look like accomplices to mass murderers--they were sending people who had joined Germany to free their countries from Soviet occupation to be murdered--hanged at the side of roads.
I think downplaying Soviet atrocities is the norm--otherwise Bernie Sanders would be in trouble for saying the USSR wasn't bad. These days you can declare you are a communist and the powers that be don't care. It's not a dirty word. It doesn't mean mass murderer despite a large number of murdered citizens. Was Poland better off under Soviet occupation? I don't think most Poles think so.
And keep in mind Patton wasn't considered a nice guy but he felt he saw or knew of punishment and abuse that was excessive. If the USSR was the victim of bullying that would be one thing but it is not-it was usually regarded with a kind of admiration in western media for decades. Movies tended to depict it as a well-meaning social project. Seven Days in May suggested the USSR wasn't a problem--anti-communist Patton-like generals were the problem.
And that's the US side. Fail Safe suggested the US would cause a nuclear disaster. I cannot think of a movie where the USSR is presented as a bad guy in the West. Not until something like Rambo which is mocked as an exaggeration etc. That was in the Gorbachev era.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 6, 2021 22:24:06 GMT
I agree that exaggeration is possible but I think the USSR enjoyed some protections from Western criticism. The forest massacre that was blamed on Germans. Initially, the West sided with the Soviet version of events there but as early as the 50s that had changed. The mostly fictionalised Gulag Archipelago was awarded with a Nobel Prize. You reckon so? It's almost a truism in western discourse to say the Soviets killed an ungodly amount of people, and Stalin is nearly always in the top 3 when people are listing their "most evil people of the 20th century". What should the powers that be do instead? Arrest people for being communist? I am sure they would rather have had more independence. But then when they got it, they were prey to vulture capitalists and lost many of the benefits of socialism. Well, there was the whole Hollywood blacklist to make sure the commies didn't get too much sympathy. But movies are only one aspect of culture. Think of Animal Farm or the aforementioned Gulag Archipelago. Or think of politicians from the West who spoke of it. Churchill was talking about the iron curtain as early as 1946. Truman defended the Korean War as a means to contain Soviet expansionism. JFK presented the Cuban missile crisis as Soviet aggression when it was the USSR trying to even the playing field following US aggression. And then look at the histories- Robert Conquest and the like who even to this day are seen as authoritative despite doubts cast on many of their assertions. |
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