Exactly, without worrying about an Eastern front tying up the bulk of Germany’s strenght, the Atlantic Wall would had been too much a hurdle to jump over. No way an operation like Overlord would have suceeded, something much, much bigger would had been needed.
In fact, the only realistic (or acceptable in terms of casualties) way to get into Germany would had been a continuation of the Italian front, fight all the way up from Sicilly to Berlin. And again, with the full force of the Nazi army, the Alps may just as well been 30.000 feet high.
Let us not forget that apart from the thirty million plus murdered by the Russians during the purges ,I have no figure for the enslavement but I suspect that it could possibly have been just a trifle more,the Russians invaded the independant nations of Latvia,Estonia and Lithuania,attempted to invade Finland and co operated with their German allies to invade Poland .
Soviet Russia was not and had never been the good guys,not at the time of Stalingarad or any time ever,
Yes. But without the Russians fighting on the same side as the U.S. and Britain, the Nazis would never have been defeated.
I know some of us harp on about not equating ‘England’ and ‘The UK’, but this is an extreme example.
In this context, when you say ‘England’ you actually mean ‘England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, India, the British West Indies, Newfoundland, Canada [though I suppose those 2 are included under “America”], South Africa, the British African Colonies, Australia, New Zealand etc etc.’
I’m not sure that is a realistic alternative though. Hitler and Stalin couldn’t coexist on the same continent. There was going to be war between them (not least because the Nazi economy would collapse without ongoing war and successful conquest), the only question is when.
Could the US & the British Empire/Dominions have successfully invaded Fortress Europe had the German’s only ever fought a defensive war against the USSR? Probably not, I think. Certainly not for multiple years, and certainly not with any attention being paid to the Pacific theater.
In the end it boils down to this: The Germans had LOST by June 1944, even if D-Day had failed, or never occurred, there is no way Germans the could have won at that point, that is NOT the case in November 1942 at the pivotal moment in Stalingrad, if operation Uranus had failed and Stalingrad had fallen, then in all likelyhood the Soviet Union would have fallen, and the Germans would have won.
Thats what is boils down to. D-Day did not change the outcome of the war with Germany, it shortened it, and greatly changed the post-war outlook, but did not make the difference between victory and defeat, Stalingrad did.
Until the United States gets nuclear weapons. Which still happens in 1945.
And in any case, there’s no single “turning point” There is no guarantee of German victory with a victory at Stalingrad and there is no guarantee of German defeat with a defeat there. It’s forgotten - strangely, it seems to me - that Germany remained on the offensive after that and was the attacker at Kursk. I could argue that Kursk was the turning point, or that Bagration the turning point, or even construct an argument that the failure to capture Leningrad or Moscow were turning points. If you reverse the outcomes of any one of those battles you could theorize a German victory.
Assuming:
a) The United States is still involved in the war in Europe at that point.
b) There still is a war in Europe at that point (Britain has not made a separate peace).
c) The German air defenses are sufficiently devastated to permit the dropping of one of a VERY small number of atom bombs on a German city.
d) The American military decide to use atomic weapons on Germany as opposed to Japan.
e) The American public is willing to permit the use of atom bombs on Germany rather than Japan.
It’s not as cut and dried as you might think.
Actually, probably would have been more like German cities disappearing in atomic fireballs…
-Joe
My mother’s parents and their parents emigrated from what is now Western Ukraine before the Russian revolution. They were from several small villages outside of L’vov (Lemberg at the time.) They were Jewish. Every one of their relatives who stayed behind died in concentration camps. They weren’t rounded up by Germans but by Ukrainian volunteers. Once the Jews were gone, the locals moved into their homes.
My mom went to the family village in the 90’s. You can still find broken headstones around what used to be the Jewish cemetery. It’s now a potato field. The old synagogue building is still standing. It’s a sausage factory now. Jewish murals can be seen under the peeling paint. There were still remnants of prayer books in the attic.
Mom tried to talk to some of the older people in the town to see if any of them might have remembered the family. All of them swore to her, without prompting, that they tried to help the Jews. Uh huh.
They weren’t the only ones.
But does not depend on D-Day happening or not. At that point its effectively another war. You would have the World War Two as we know it ending in 1943 with defeat of the Soviet Union, followed by at least two years of stalemate in the west (the chance of the invasion of Italy suceeding against the enture wermacht are very slim, given how close Salermo was with the bulk of the German Army on the eastern front).
But it becomes FAR more likely if they win at Stalingrad than if they lose. Both the Germans or the Russians could have won after the losing at Stalingrad but the chances of that happening are greatly decreased. At D-Day that is simply not the case, that fact alone makes the answer to the question the OP: “Battle of Stalingrad far more important than D-Day in defeating Germans?” YES.
You can argue for the point at which German CANNOT win at any time between the defeat (or at least failure to win decisicely) at Moscow and defeat Kursk. But by June 1944 it had DEFINITELY passed that point, neither D-Day or Bagration changed the outcome of the war.
No. Stalingrad was a battle between two oppressive, murderous regimes. There were no good guys.
I disagree with that. The ordinary Russian soldier at Stalingrad was fighting to defend his native soil, against a enemy invader that had killed millions of his contrymen. Inasmuch as talk of “good guys” and “bad guys” has any meaning when you are talking about historical events, you cannot say the poor schmuck fighting to the death to defend a bombed out stairwell in Stalingrad is not a “good guy” reggardless of the regime he was fighting for.
If you want to take it to the “poor schmuck” level, every guy in every army is just a “poor schmuck.” Every “poor schmuck” does what he does because he thinks it’s his duty to his country.
The Russians were no better than the Germans. The Nazis get more or bad rap than the Commies only because they lost.
I would say D-Day. Stalingrad was a turning point in the war, but D-Day was much more, it announced to the western European peoples the Nazis would soon be gone. This demoralized many of the Germans on the Western Front. You also had the Russians now trying to push harder to get to Berlin first. You had the Nazis put up much less resistance on the West than the Russian front.
Even if Germany had won Stalingrad, Germany and Eastern Europe didn’t have the infrastructure to get these needed materials back to middle Europe where they were needed. And they had no air power to cover them even if they were able to build transportation networks.
The bottom line is America won this war. And World War II was won by lend-lease, it’s unlikely Britian or the USSR would’ve held up without out it. By the time 1945 rolled around America was producing more goods and industry than the rest of the entire world combined. And America was no where near maxing out, while the USSR and Britian were exhausted.
While it’s true the Soviets could’ve marched to Atlantic, without US goods they would’ve never been able to keep that territory. Most of Europe was divided up long before the war ended and no one saw any point risking armies for the sake of something they’d give up. For instance since Berlin was to be in the Soviet sector why should the Americans race to get there just to give it up.
D-Day was more important because it gave the Nazis notice and put them on a two front war. Stalingrad was a turning point in retrospect only. Look at the papers from that time and you can see no one says “Stalingrad is a turning point” untill long after and the Germans kept losing.
Indeed. US and European troops raped their way along the Italian peninsula and across Germany, anywhere the Germans, Russans and Japanese were involved was marked by war crimes of particular nastiness, every time the battlefronts went across an area the locals took the opportunity to victimise minorities while ingratiating themselves with whoever was currently on top, and in general WW2 was a spectacularly shitty experience for everyone, but worst for the civilians it rolled over the top of. We know. Unless you think your family would have got better treatment from the russians or germans than they did from their neighbours, I’m not sure what point you are trying to make.
The Italian campaign was a horrible meatgrinder of a fight as it was. Another German corps or two could probably have stopped that advance cold. Ditto for the Normany effort. It’s worth noting that despite all the allied bombing Nazi production of war material peaked in July 1944 - without the Russians to grind all that materiel into bloodstained scrap it would have been sitting in France and Germany waiting to welcome Overlord.
D-Day was the nail in the coffin. Stalingrad was a bowie knife in the gut, and without it getting the Nazi regime nailed up inside the coffin would have been a hell of a lot more challenging.
Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle in human history, more Russians and Germans died in it then all the rest of the Allies put together for the entire war (excluding a China in mid civil war), it lasted 6 months, it was unquestionably the turning point in the Eastern Theater.
By the time the Allies set foot on French soil the German army had been hauling ass out of Russia for 6 months.
It’s not even close.
Which newspapers? The German ones, the russian ones, the ones from neutral countries or the ones from the English-speaking world? And what on earth makes you think that accurate tactical and strategic overviews would be publicly printed? Leaking that sort of information in any of the combatant nations could get you shot.
What relevance has that got to do with the OP? I can see where you’re coming from, but then you may as well say that the war was won by Soviet and Commonwealth troops using American equipment. The other allies didn’t have the industrial muscle to take on the Germans, but the Americans most certainly didn’t have the stomach to lose 5-10 million GIs in order to defeat Germany. Without Russia and the others in the fight, the US would have settled for the Americas and the Pacific and left Hitler to it.
Thats why its pretty meaningless to talk about “good guys” and “bad guys” in historical events. But if you are its impossible not to choose the schmuck who is defending his homeland against an agressor that has killed millions, than the one on vanguard of an genocidal invading army. Especially as one of the groups who bore the brunt of Stalinist attrocities were the very Soviet soldiers who fought so hard against the Germans.
This definitely not true. All sides recognised the loss of an entire German Army Group as a serious blow to the Nazi regime.