The Allies had massive concerns that a failed invasion of France would result in Uncle Joe pulling the plug.

If Hitler had pulled back & reduced his front by 1/2 after 43, which would have effectively doubled his forces & set the stage for a defensive battle of attrition...hum.




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Anyone advocating pushing harder should look at the casualties the Soviets took in 1945 and realize we were being intelligent. Much brighter to let the Germans and Soviets bleed each other rather than have the Germans and the West bleed each other. Why does anyone feel British and American servicemen should die so future German civilians live better. Only fools kill their own people for the profit of others.

Germany and USSR jointly at a truce changes the western front quite a bit, although the possibility of that actually happening seems to have been overblown.

IMO most in the US underestimate the contribution of USSR in defeating Germany in WW2.

Lots of issues with Germany and USSR doing a truce.

1) They'd had one earlier and both sides broke it. USSR by taking all of Lithuania rather than splitting as agreed and Germany by invading USSR.

2) USSR has paid 80%+ of the price of a total win but is likely getting little above starting position 6/22/41 and not even that if trying for a truce before mid 1944.

3) Because of the timing of the taking of Lithuania Germany knows it can't trust the USSR if still at war in the West and thus has great incentive to give up all their Western conquests for a truce in the West.

4) Germany defined their victory conditions; lebensraum in the East, so the West was always a diversion from winning.

5) I agree most in the US underestimate the price in blood the USSR paid and how important it was to defeating Germany.

I don't think the US transferred divisions out of Europe after the recapture of France. Their divisions were all rather heavily engaged. In fact they transferred quite a few fresh divisions in. The 12th, 13th, 14th, 16th and 20th Armored Divisions only have the battle honor 'Germany' except for the 13th ('Ardennes, Germany') and the 14th ('France, Germany'). The 42nd Infantry Division has 'Schweinfurt, Munich, Dachau (Germany)'. The 44th Infantry Division has 'Saar, Ulm (Germany), Danube River.' The 63rd Infantry has 'Bavaria (Germany), Danube River'. The 65th Infantry, 'Saarlauteren, Regensburg (Germany), Danube River.' The 69th Infantry, 'Germany'. The 70th, 'Saarbrucken, Moselle River (Germany).' The 71st, 'Harz Mountains (Germany)'. The 75th, 'Ardennes, Westphalia (Germany).' The 76th, 'Luxembourg, Germany'. The 78th, 'Aachen, Roer River, Ruhr (Germany).' The 84th, 'Ardennes, Hanover (Germany).' The 86th, 'Dachau, Ingolstadt (Germany).' The 87th, 'Ardennes, Germany, Czechoslovakian border.' The 97th, 'Germany'. The 98th, 'Ardennes, Remagen Bridgehead (Germany).' The 102nd, 'Siegfried Line, Ruhr, Munchen-Gladbach (Germany).' The 103rd, 'Stuttgart (Germany), Austria.' The 104th, 'Rhine Crossing, Cologne, Ruhr (Germany).' The 106th, 'St Vith (Ardennes), Germany.' It looks as though the US actually poured very large numbers of fresh troops into Europe after the successful campaign in Normandy. It was purely a US political decision to let the Soviets take Berlin and a large bite of eastern Germany, in the mistaken belief that those nice progressive Soviets would hold free elections -- a decision they soon came to regret.

Soviets had 360,000+ casualties from the Battle of Berlin with 80,000+ dead or missing. US by comparison lost under 300,000 dead in all of WWII. You have to despise the lives of US servicemen to think we would be better off losing the men so Berlin avoids being under communist rule. And the Soviet elections were as honest as any in countries conquered and occupied by one of the conquering powers; amazingly enough in all territories conquered after WWII the side with the troops occupying the area wins.

In 1944, the Russian army was a steamroller that had smashed Army Group Center in Bagration. If anything, the Russians stopped before Warsaw in order to let the Germans do their dirty work and neutralize the Polish resistance that could potentially be a problem in postwar Soviet plans.

I hadn't heard that the Americans had transferred troops to the pacific, but the Russian army was far bigger than the allied armies in the West. By the end of 1944, the Russians had close to 7 million men in the East whereas the Allies didn't muster more than 4 million. Moreover, there's no guaranty that if the Allies had mobilized more troops, it would have produced the desired effect. Conceivably they could have forced the Germans to weaken the Eastern front even further in order to strengthen the Western front and that would have made Russian advances in the East easier.

You also have to remember, a ton of the gains Stalin made after the war happened not because he got the expressed assent of the Western Allies in Yalta, but because he had the armies on the ground to force the result he wanted. OTOH, the Americans were somewhat naive in that regard longer than they should. Churchill did try to shape the military strategy in such a way that it had an impact on the post war political situation. That's why he insisted on opening a front in the balkans for example, but he was mostly thwarted by the Americans. But even in that regard, there were limits.

After the end of the war, Churchill did ask his High Command to prepare a plan for a war against the Soviet Union. Besides the obvious political problems - that everyone was exhausted and that propaganda had built the Russians as allies for 4 years- the planning revealed that the Russians had a significant military advantage and it wasn't worth the trouble. The perceived Soviet superiority in conventional forces persisted throughout the cold war with Western thinking revolving around how to stop a Russian advance in western europe until american reinforcements arrived.

Last but not least, IIRC the allied advance mostly stopped because of logistics since the supply lines were getting longer. I see that covered above as well.

The Americans did not in fact transfer troops from Europe to the Pacific. They pumped enormous numbers of troops into Europe after Normandy. The Allied logistical pause was well over by February of 1945, with Antwerp opened to shipping since the autumn. The Western armies had destroyed German Army Group B in Normandy using far fewer troops and resources than the Soviets did against Army Group Centre in Bagration, and Army Group B was of comparable size to Army Group Centre. The Western Allies also had an enormous advantage over the Soviets in air power. (The Soviets had no strategic air power, for instance, whereas by early 1943 RAF Bomber Command alone was holding down more German manpower, weaponry and materiel than the entire Red Army, which in the view of Albert Speer and the German official historian Horst ter Boog is the principal reason why the Soviets were able to win. When the US bombers became effective in early 1944, the effect was increased, but the war in the East had already been decided by then.) Few in the West actually wanted to fight the Soviets, but there was a naive political decision to let the Soviets take Berlin, which need not have happened.

And we've seen in recent months just how comically, catastrophically, brutally incompetent the Russian army is. It was no different during the Second World War, in fact it was worse. That is why the Western Allies could destroy Army Group B with a fraction of the resources that the Red Army had to use against Army Group Centre. And in Bagration, Soviet casualties were actually higher, a lot higher, than German casualties, whereas Allied casualties in Normandy were only a little over two-thirds of German casualties.

Had things gone differently, I think there is a VERY good chance that Germany would have atomic bombs dropped on it.

Just look at the fire bombing of Dresden...lots of Anglo-Saxons killing others in a very brutal way. Tens of thousands killed, many square miles of urban buildings totally destroyed. The damage done to Dresden was probably ALMOST as much as a small atomic bomb. A similar thing happened with the fire-bombing of Tokyo.

basically this

at this point we were no longer concerned about germany but rather an upcoming war with the soviet union - better to let them exhaust themselves cleaning up the final pieces which they'd have a huge administrative jurisdiction over anyway