That is to be expected, wouldn’t you say? It took years to crack the Atlantic Wall, while the Soviets were connected to Germany via land. It only makes sense that the Soviets would sustain more casualties. They were in constant contact on the ground for 5 years.
In addition, towards the end the Germans were intentionally fighting the Soviets more tenaciously, because those who recognized that the war was a done deal were hoping to fight off the Soviets long enough to get more favorable terms from the rest of the Allies.
Actually, the USA as the Arsenal of Democracy perhaps contributed the most. Certainly the USSR did not spend as much as the USA did, so there’s at least one way the USSR was not the “biggest contributor”.
Now sure, the USSR lost the most men, and likely contributed the most to the land warfare. OTOH, the USSR had a larger population and armed forces to lose. As a %, Poland lost the most- of the Allies.
Without GB hanging on nearly by themselves until 1941, the Allies would have lost. Without the USSR’s huge contributions in manpower and land forces- the Allies would have lost. And without the the Arsenal of Democracy, the Allies would have lost. All three factors were necessary*, so it’s silly to talk of “the biggest contributor in every way”.
(*This is not to belittle the huge sacrifices made by the Dutch, Finland and other forces, of course.)
Casualties by themselves are not all that meaningful- China lost the second highest # of men, but it was almost a sideshow. Not to them, of course.
Get a dictionary. Great Britain is the name of the island that contains Britain, Scotland, and Wales.
The political entity is called The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, or the UK).
There hasn’t been a British Empire since the 1950s, and if you think calling Canadians or Australians “British” is correct, I heartily suggest you try it in person and see how they react.
Tough to establish exact casualty figures in a conflict between an alliance of countries which may or may not have been called the United Nations, consisting of a country which might have been called Russia, a country which might have been called Great Britain, and a country which might have been called America, along with several other countries which arguably also could be included, each of which contributed in a proportion that cannot be objectively determined, in areas which may or may not have been part of Germany at the time.
And then there’s the pesky little fact that the USSR enabled Germany’s re-arming and maintained a non-aggression pact with Germany. The USSR was a de facto prewar ally of Germany, and hence earned quite a bit of the blowback when Germany turned on the USSR.
One may well argue a parallelism in the US/UK Lend Lease and USSR’s pact with Germany, absent the high likelihood of Hitler’s betrayal.
Then there’s the matter of the incredibly, microscopically brief war by the USSR on Japan. And then of course we really, really need to give credit to the USSR’s most reliable ally against Germany: Winter, and Hitler’s insistence on repeating one of Napoleon’s most stupid errors.
Given the USSR’s technical lag behind Germany, the use of large masses of forces ensured large numbers of Soviet dead.
And by all means, discount the critical role played by allied strategic bombing and the attritive effects of all the other fronts…US and UK bomber forces drove Germany’s defeat.
While the numbers of USSR dead are indeed impressive, the weight of the credit in Germany’s defeat was heavily in the corner of air and sea power in attenuating Germany’s material ability to wage war.
Arguing that the USSR “contributed the most” to Germany’s defeat is at best naive, and at worst revisionist.
In general I agree with your post, but I think you are wrong here. Technologically, it was a mixed bag, with Germans being ahead in some things (fighter plans, for instance), while the Soviets were ahead in others (tanks). I think the main reason why the Soviets lost so many men had more to do with starting the war with political officers in command instead of military men (due to Stalin’s purges), and…well, just the mind set of the key Soviet generals, who were perfectly willing to ‘win’ battles, even if it cost them many times more men and equipment.
As to to the side discussion, I think that it’s silly to base who was the biggest contributor to the victory based solely on body count. Myself, I think it was built in equal parts by the Brits, Soviets and American’s, with each being key (ETA: And huge contributions by the other allies, especially the Aussies and Canadians, but also the Poles and even the French). Without America the Soviets would have lost…and probably the Brits too. At the least they would have had to sue for terms on a VERY unfavorable basis. Without the Brits the Soviets would have lost, and it would have been impossible for the US to have done anything about Germany. Without the Soviets, it would have been impossible for the Brits and the US to have done anything about Germany.
For the OP, I don’t know of any stats that break things down that way. However, the key question (did any American’s die IN Germany: answer, yes) has already been answered, so I guess that works.
Agreed, but in my view, the Germans had the best planes, tanks et al. The problem with the Germans was that they had fewer of these things, even though, on an equal basis, they were superior. The USSR had, perhaps, more rugged tools, and relied on more of said tools…
Well, I don’t want to hijack, and it’s certainly a matter of debate, but I think the T-34 came as a shock to the Germans, since it was much more advanced than the Panzer III’s they invaded with. Certainly it wasn’t as refined, but with it the Soviets pretty much invented sloped armor, it had a big gun (for the time), it was reliable and rugged…and they could build it in massive numbers. Part of being the ‘best’, IMHO, is the ability to produce something in large enough quantities to matter…which the Germans, with their perchance for over engineering, could not do. While the lowly American’s and Russians produced tanks that were good enough, but in war winning numbers.
I really think that the technology was a wash, both in the initial invasion and in the back and forth changes that took place throughout the war. The Germans had some things that were more technological, while the Soviets had others. In the end, it came down to numbers for the Soviets, and training and tactics for the Germans…and THAT is why it was such a slaughter. The Germans killed Russians by the boat load, not because their weapons were better, but because their troops were better trained, better lead and their tactics were better. The Soviets won (and killed Germans by the scores) because they could absorb those massive causalities (while the Germans couldn’t) and still press on.
I think the story I heard was that right before the war, when the USSR & Nazis were still buddies, some Soviet tank officers came to Germany. The Germans proudly showed the Soviets their shiny new Panzer IIIs and other tanks. The Soviets basically said “Yes, these are nice training and scouting tanks, but where are the ones you’re actually going to fight with, with real armor and guns?” I’m not sure the Soviet officers ever believed that the Germans weren’t intentionally hiding their real advanced tanks.
I see the points of both sides of this argument. WWII was predominantly the Eastern Front; the USSR absorbed Germany’s main war effort (at least 75%). On the other hand, the Western allies contributed mightily to the USSR’s war effort – didn’t Krushchev say “We advanced to Berlin on American trucks?” (And rail, food, boots, and so on…) I think a lot of us don’t really grasp the astounding amount of stuff involved; I’ve read that the US supplied enough food to feed every Soviet soldier for every day of the entire war, and food wasn’t the most important part of the supply programs.
I would like to point out, simply to show how intertwined these things can be, that some of the excellent T-34’s greatest strengths, notably its mobility and its sloped armor, were the work of an American: Walter Christie.
I was born in Australia in 1945, after the war had ended in Europe, but before it ended in the Pacific. For the first 3 1/2 years of my life my only citizenship status was British subject: Australian citizenship did not start until 1949, although Australia became an independent country in 1901. Similarly, there was no such thing as Canadian citizenship before 1947. So those Canadians and Australians fighting in the Second World War were, in a real sense, British as well as Canadian or Australian.
Well, when I said in post 16 that your point was well taken, I meant that it was … well taken! Guess you skipped over that part. As to the predominance of Russians in the Soviet population, which is hardly a controversial issue, and the proportion of Russians amongs Red Army casualties: disagree with it all you want, but back it up with a cite.
you’re reacting to something completely different - this is Russians as a percentage of Red Army casualties. This has nothing to with the Western Allies
did I ever say that that or anything else was not to be expected? I’m just reporting some numbers, that’s all.
in sum: there’s no point in reacting to people’s posts if you are not going to read the actual posts you are reacting to.
To take a very (very) rough stab at some numbers, the official figures of US Army strength and casualties in the ETO broken down by month is here. From March the fighting was largely in Germany, adding the numbers from March til May they come to:
18,834 KIA
66,736 WIA
2,803 Died of Wounds
Again, this is a very rough and entirely imprecise set of figures, but I’d guess it is fairly close to the number of US soldiers who were killed or wounded in Germany.
I’d argue that it’s not exclusively an American thing, but a human thing.
We all think we’re at the “center of the universe.”
My best friend, who is French lives in a small podunk town in France that had a particular pharmacy, of all things, and when she came to Paris to visit me (unarguably larger than her smaller 20,000 town) she said, “Ohh, you have one too!”
