I always have trouble following this logic. WHY do you consider the USSR bad and want it to lose military strength? I assume it’s because the Soviet system was ultimately a tyranny that posed a terrible threat to everyone it ruled. Fine, I agree with that assessment. Now ask yourself: who were the people most doomed of all to suffer in the Soviet empire? The conscripts in its armies. The poor bastards you want to see killed. No leave for the duration of the war, almost no rest, poor supplies, horrible combat, minimal regard for their well-being. Tortured if they are captured, executed if they desert. They are victims of the very state you fear becoming a victim of.
It’s easier to identify costly Allied mistakes than to project a better overall strategy. Among the clearest and costliest was the Allied invasion of Italy. Never mind men stationed or captured there – those men would have to be fought somewhere else if not Italy. The real questions are, is Italy an easier route of attack, and does Italy offer us strategic advantages?
The first is answered by looking at a map. Italy is INSANELY GOOD defensive ground, ESPECIALLY against attack from south-to-north, like we did. Central mountain ranges giving the defense permanent high ground (AND interior lines), overlooking the only routes of attack which are repeatedly cut by perpendicular river defense lines. Even its proximity to Germany argues against that strategy; German forces (especially airpower) are easily committed and yet still nearby if needed at home. It’s hard to find any place that would be worse to attack, frankly. Maybe down the spine of New Guinea, but at least we could have isolated New Guinea with seapower. The Italian campaign was undertaken mostly for non-military considerations.
The second question is muddier. Italy did offer bomber bases closer to the German fuel supplies (principally Romanian oilfields). We DID bomb the fuel p[roductioon, and it certainly hurt Germany. But we didn’t exploit bombing the oilfields as much as we should have – postwar analysis has suggested a much more intensive effort against fuel would have paid dividends – and the Italian campaign was a high price to pay for something we wound up just dabbling in.
That last figure seems grossly inflated. The Germans started Barbarossa at the peak of their strength with about 3 million men, yet they would have used 1/3 of that to defend Italy while being overrun at home? Wikipedia says that in April 1945 there were a somewhat more plausible 332,524 German fighting men in Italy. Perhaps the 1 million+ figure includes a lot of defeated troops streaming in seeking refuge from facing the Soviets in Eastern Europe?
However many men were involved, terrain like Italy grossly multiplies the effectiveness of defenders. Far better to face those men in France – or really almost anywhere else on Earth.
Another missed opportunity was the way Allied escort fighters were employed during the bombing campaign. For a long time they were explicitly ordered to perform “close escort,” staying near the bombers at bomber speed and altitude. Fighter pilots argued for a relaxation of this rule, which left them unable to exploit their speed and altitude to engage the German fighters coming to attack the bombers.
This next part is a little complicated…I’ll try make it easy to follow. Remember that German fighter defenses were a primary deterrent to most of the ways we tried to attack Germany. For example, D-Day was flatly not considered while significant German fighters remained in coastal France. And Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe, had previously tried to use his own fighters to clear the way for an invasion of Britain (never mind that naval strengths indicated this was largely fantasy). During that battle, Goering’s frustration with the Royal Air Force’s dogged persistence led him to erroneously conclude that they were avoiding combat, and he sought ways to provoke them into “coming up to fight.”
Well, the later Allied air campaign may not have destroyed German industry on the ground, but it definitely provoked the Luftwaffe to come up and fight. Which was a necessary precursor the the defeat of Germany. But when the German fighters came up and the Allied fighters got a crack at them, the Germans held the initiative because the Allied fighter were stupidly slow and too close to the bombers to have time to engage and destroy their German counterparts.
Eventually a change in command won the fighter jocks permission to fly separately, higher and faster and ahead of their bombers, and even to send “fighter sweeps” ahead to hit the Germans as they climbed to intercept the bomber streams. The resulting combat, on terms much more advantageous to the Allies, crushed the Luftwaffe once and for all.
It should have been permitted much sooner.
The Battles of El Alamein were in July and October 1942. (IIRC, clerks in Cairo were issued guns and readied to report to the lines.) Despite that Britain had naval and air-power superiority over most of the Mediterranean—which presented a severe obstacle to Rommel’s supply lines—, Egypt almost fell. Are you suggesting Egypt could have been held more easily had the British been less vigorous?