What-what-which? 
Since when was Russian gear well-made?
Rubbish.
It was usually “robust”, which is what I thought he meant. The T-34 is described as having been built with cruder manufacturing techniques and quality controls, but it was robust enough to be reliable even with the spotty maintenance it could expect to receive out in the field.
Well, the Russian T-34 series of tanks was certainly better than the German equivalents. Probably as good as the US tanks – not as sophisticated, but more easily maintained/repaired in the field. And much of the fighting in this was tank warfare. Probably the largest tank battle in history, had been the year before, there at Kursk.
US Tanks in WW2 stunk.
Period.
Gun too small, armor too thin.
Easy to fix, plenty of parts, lots of them.
But they still stunk.
Would Hitler have stayed in Berlin in this scenario? If his western border was still the coast of France, would he have withdrawn west and consolidated his forces?
Heck, I can imagine massive immigration from western Europe to the U.S. and Canada in that circumstance, comparable to earlier waves of economic refugees fleeing potato famines and whatnot.
Perhaps the U.S. couldn’t be affected significantly, but I can imagine Canada’s population dramatically increasing, with who-knows-what outcome. French refugees settling in Quebec in large numbers by itself could have brought about significant changes in the subsequent culture wars, possibly leading to breakup of Canada.
As others have pointed out the Red Army had the best tank units in the war. Some German tanks may have been individually better but Germany was never able to get its best tanks into mass production and keep them in the field. (The Tiger, for example, was a better tank than the T-34. But the Soviet Union built 57000 T-34’s during the war and Germany only built 1300 Tigers.) American tanks were good and they were plentiful but I don’t think anyone can objectively argue they were the best.
I think that depending on the extent of the failure, Germany buys itself time and is able to cause a stalemate with Russia somewhere in Poland or possibly on the eastern border of Germany. Taking Germany even WITH the allied invasion of Western Europe and the pressure the allies were putting on Germany from the west was ruinously costly for the Soviets. Without any of that? I don’t think that Russia could have pushed through with a German defense totally focused on the East.
Of course, with Hitler in charge he might have tried some sort of stupid offensive against the Soviets that managed to throw away a few more army groups, but assuming Germany is able to focus on the eastern front and that they aren’t having to worry about a new invasion in the west for at least a few more years (as the US and allies rebuilt their invasion force for another try), I think folks in this thread are overestimating what the Red Army was capable of at the time.
-XT
I strongly disagree with that assessment. The USSR came out of ww2 much stronger than it was going in. In terms of relative strength, it leapfrogged all of the other stronger economies, except USA. Not only could USSR have conquered Germany alone by the time of D-Day, it could (and would) have also completely evicted Japan from the mainland at the same time.
The Western world would look very different now if D-Day had failed. WW2 might not have ended with the defeat of the Axis powers.
I think the answer is somewhere in between the opposing views here. Aside from the technological and industrial capacity of the sides, there was the attitude factor. The nazi’s inability to take Leningrad, the cost of their siege and eventual withdrawal made Germany fearful of the Soviets, and gave the Soviets a new optimism, and made the idea of revenge look feasible. This might have doomed German military more than the quality and number of tanks.
Even with Allied pressure from the west, and Italy, and the strategic bombing campaign, the substantial majority of the German military continued to face the USSR until the end of the war. They had no problem pushing through German defenses. Even granting an utter Allied defeat at Normandy, which is completely implausible and unrealistic, Germany was still facing the Western Allies in Italy, in a strategic bombing campaign that had already demolished the Luftwaffe as an effective force, and Operation Dragoon which was to land in southern France on August 15th. The pause of Bagration in central Poland was caused by the rapid extension of the distance of the Soviet supply lines, not effective German resistance. From wiki:
It also soon left the substantial part of Army Group North; subsequently renamed Army Group Courland cut off and trapped in Latvia. The Soviets shifted their attention to the south just as Bagration came to a close, launching another major offensive in the Jassy–Kishinev Offensive which as can be seen on this map overran Rumania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, all of whom capitulated to the Soviets and switched sides by declaring war on Germany by mid-October. The possibility of a stalemate in the East was nothing more than a fantastical pipedream of Hitler’s, and would have remained so even if the landings at Normandy were somehow miraculously defeated.
You mean like the futile and pointless Lake Balaton Offensive? Germany didn’t have any Army Groups to throw away.
Not a good assumption, forces would still have to be maintained in the West to face the next invasion, the strategic bombing would continue, and Italy was still an active front with Southern France set to become another active front by mid-August. It wouldn’t take a few years to prepare another invasion, another cross channel assault would be ready by next year at the latest, or more likely the forces could be shipped into Southern France turning it into the main Allied Front in France rather than the secondary one.
With due respect, I know that you are vastly underestimating what the Red Army was capable of at the time. Germany had no hope of stalemating in the East, even with a successful repulse of the Normandy landings.
A question about the plans to use the atom bomb against Germany.
The air force (I know it wasn’t really the air force yet) was given instructions at some point to put some Japanese cities on a non-bombing list. The idea was that some cities should be reserved as targets for the atom bomb and the War Department didn’t want them to be all bombed out by regular bombing.
Does anyone know when these orders were issued? And was there ever an equivalent order to put some German cities on a reserve list as potential atom-bomb targets?
The Soviets also had post-war political reasons for stopping.
Which Alexander is he referring to?
Tsar Alexander I. This, in particular.
Reality check: Ukrainians do speak Russian.