World War II History Thread - Page 4

On December 28 2011 06:13 atwar wrote:
lets talk about the winter war or how the finnish lost 70k men and the russians 323k LOL useless russians

On December 28 2011 06:13 atwar wrote:
lets talk about the winter war or how the finnish lost 70k men and the russians 323k LOL useless russians

On December 28 2011 06:23 DeepElemBlues wrote:
I hate how WW2 discussions have a tendency to deteriorate into "the Russians did it all" "no they didn't."

Both sides needed each other. The US sent millions and millions of tons of supplies to Russia, including guns of all kinds, tanks, trucks, planes, oil and gasoline, synthetic rubber, ammunition, etc., we helped them with industrial experts we sent over there when they relocated their factories to the Urals, there were several dozen German divisions that were diverted to Italy in 1943-1944, and we were the ones who eventually broke Germany's industrial capacity in late 1944 with our bombing campaign.

And they did their part by tying up and decimating hundreds of German divisions and fighting the longest and the hardest against the Nazis.

The Russians wouldn't have won without us and we wouldn't have won without them. We managed to overcome our distaste for Stalinism to beat Hitler when we needed to, sure what happened afterwards wasn't that great either but one thing at a time.

Well, kind of.

On December 28 2011 05:40 darthfoley wrote:
The pianist is a great WW2 based movie, on something history classes don't spend much time covering. (Warsaw uprising/ German occupation of poland)

It was really sad, yet amazing at the same time. I for one, cant get enough of WW2, avid cod1/2 player. Absolutely love WW based fps's. It's just so interesting.

and the fins kicked some tush

On December 28 2011 05:57 Sithelin123 wrote:


Thats the list beside the permanent casualties (titled "Total"). I only listed the permanent casualties for the Soviets because only the permanent casualties for the Axis were listed. Non-permanent casualties would be things like wounded or sick.

If you like, you can get another credible historian on the subject to list casualties.

You need to be more careful about how you use "we"

On December 28 2011 07:08 5ukkub wrote:
Let me tell you what my grandmother experienced. (she was 14 when the war began).

It's not about gunfights, frontlines. It's about life at war from common people's perspective.

When germans came, life in the village didn't change almost at all. Only the land owners and people like mailman, teacher, priest chaged. German soldiers were clean, polite, never tried to steal. My grandmother even said "gentelmen" when describing their behaviour towards villagers. She was even recieving flowers from one of the officers.
The only thing that indicated it was an occupation, was that they had to work for 2 hours a day building railroad and children were tought german songs in school.

When the russian army came "liberating", it was a whole another story. My grandmother had to hide in chickencoop for two weeks to avoid rape! There was no property whatsoever. Soldiers slept where they want, eat what they want. Any resistance could mean shot in the head. Officers themselves rather encouraged hatred towards villagers instead of disciplining their comrades.
They were like animals. They smelled on a mile. There were louses everywhere... My grandmother said, what best describes them: "Ruskies were cooking in chamberpots and shitting in cooking pots! There was no difference for them whatsoever!"

That was the best teaching about WWII i've ever got.

On December 28 2011 07:25 Millitron wrote:
I feel I need to point out to the people who say "Russia did it all", that it was the Western Allies who bombed Germany's infrastructure and factories into oblivion. If the Strategic Bombing Campaign had never happened, things wouldn't have gone so well for Russia. Remember, German forces made it so close to Moscow, they could see the Kremlin.

Imagine if they had been well-equipped and well-supplied.

On December 28 2011 07:34 Ph4ZeD wrote:
Thats really a mis-characterisation of what happened. Remember that as the Germans approached Moscow, the US was not even in the war yet and Britain was fighting for her life, so Germany's entire concentration was on Russia. It is my opinion, as a student of World War Two, that Germany had an opportunity/chance to knock Russia out. Germany's mistake is they went for Blitzkrieg - a lightning war. A lightning war is when you do not commit your economy to the war effort, you simply knock the enemy quickly. A campaign in Russia required total war, and the Germans only converted to total war when the war was lost.

Do not confuse Germany's mistakes with British and American successes.

On December 28 2011 07:40 Eisregen wrote:

The main problem was that they thought they can knock out such a huge country in a one summer campaign
Russia did the only right thing. retreating, hitting here and there, leaving nothing behind and then strike back after the enemy has problems supplying their tropps, the russian winter kicks in and their own industry (safely in the back of this huge country) is established.
I doubt any "full war industry" would have changed that fact. You have to be well supplied, with fuel and material. Not doable, only if you have resources captured.

On December 28 2011 06:31 Sithelin123 wrote:


Wow.... First of all, the Fins actually LOST the Winter war....And the war following the Winter war as well...I wasn't aware that having a lower body count allows you to have some sort of superiority attitude...There are many reasons behind their poor performance in the war against Finland.

Oh and btw, that poster is just propaganda bullshit. The Russians weren't fighting for freedom. You can argue they were fighting for survival but its definitely not for freedom.

I would warn against placing a revisionist spin on what happened during Operation Barbarossa. When the Germans invaded, there was no master plan by Stalin, simply catastrophe and disaster. The German offensive annihilated the best Russian armies instantly and crushed morale. Its hard to exaggerate the scale of what happened, 2/3rds of a million Russian casualties at Kiev, 6000 tanks lost at Minsk alone, the Moscow defence line shattered in days.

On December 28 2011 07:52 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:

They never stated they were fighting for freedom. The poster wasn't most likely not even made by the Soviets. It isn't even in any Soviet language and more importantly it looks too silly and comical to be propaganda. It's just anti-Soviet satire of the Soviets if anything.
However, the Germans started the whole "let's wage war for our freedom" fad in the justification for the invasion of Poland. To be fair though, as Germany was, before electing the Nazis, very oppressed by a puppet government and bankers eating up everything domestically, and up to the start of WW2 was exploited by foreign nations through the post-WW1 terms, were at least actually fighting more more for their freedom than say we have in the past 60 years, and as you know, all our wars in this period have supposedly been for our "freedom and democracy". :|

However, the fact of the matter is the Soviets were fighting for their freedom. If they were defeated in the war, they would be under the rule of the Germans, thus killing their freedom. Furthermore, look who invaded who, and while that's irrelevant as war was inevitable between the two nations and the Germans picked the best timing to start the inevitable war with the USSR, it was very clear that if the Soviets lost, the nation would lose all freedom and would be completely subject to the Axis.

On December 28 2011 07:49 SheaR619 wrote:
From what I been taught and the article that I have read, the Japanese were pretty suicidal. They had no reason to start a war against the United states and should of just focus on the Russia. Or they started the war way to early and should of expanded their territory into Asia more before engaging the united states. I think the reason they decided not to attack Russia was because of the harsh climate and they would probably suffer to many losses due to the climate similar to what happen to Germany when they engaged Russia. Thus they engage the United state too early and got out macroed.

From history, we know that Germany attacking Russia was a mistake because they were not ready for the harsh winter but where else could they have attacked? Attacking GB like you said, without air or naval control would be rather impossible and was the main reason why hitler decided to focus on the eastern front. I think the failure to take GB was already the beginning of the fall for the Germans.

On December 28 2011 07:46 Ph4ZeD wrote:
I would warn against placing a revisionist spin on what happened during Operation Barbarossa. When the Germans invaded, there was no master plan by Stalin, simply catastrophe and disaster. The German offensive annihilated the best Russian armies instantly and crushed morale. Its hard to exaggerate the scale of what happened, 2/3rds of a million Russian casualties at Kiev, 6000 tanks lost at Minsk alone, the Moscow defence line shattered in days.

Lets not pretend because one side won, they had the master strategy. They didn't.

Attacking GB like you said, without air or naval control would be rather impossible and was the main reason why hitler decided to focus on the eastern front.