# Without the resurgent Russians tearing through Europe, no D-Day? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 6, 2018, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549 "2018-06-06T15:38:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/21 "2018-06-07T03:08:08Z")
> [@Declan](#): > > So were those locomotives that the US gave Russia the same gauge , or did they have to modify the locos for Russia. Iirc there is something like a 6” difference between the larger US gauge and the Soviet one. I’m not 100% sure but they probably did the modification in the US as adjusting for other countries rail gauges wouldn’t seem that daunting. The US alone had two different garages and England had one different from the European continent, etc. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/22 "2018-06-07T03:50:38Z")
> [@Mr.Miskatonic](#): > > Iirc there is something like a 6” difference between the larger US gauge and the Soviet one. I’m not 100% sure but they probably did the modification in the US as adjusting for other countries rail gauges wouldn’t seem that daunting. The US alone had two different garages and England had one different from the European continent, etc. The Russian gauge was in fact the larger one (1524mm as opposed to 1435mm which is standard in the US, the UK and most of Europe). This matters, because if Russia had had a smaller-than-standard gauge, the not only the track width but the loading gauge (the maximum permitted height, width and turning circle of rolling stock) would likely have been smaller too, and locos (and cars) designed for US railways would be too big to run on Soviet railways, even if placed on Soviet bogies. The Russians were well-used to the problems presented by gauge difference, since a good deal of rail traffic passed between between the Russian gauge and standard gauge systems. The Russians had imported locos and rolling stock before, so retrofitting Russian bogies to rolling stock imported from the US would not have been a novel challenge. Equally, I suspect that the US would not have been greatly taxed by the engineering challenge of constructing locomotives with Russian-gauge bogies in the first place, even though it wasn’t something they would have had much recent experience of. (The had in the past; in the nineteenth century there was an extensive Russian-gauge network in the southern US, but it had all been regauged to standard by about 1880. 'm not actually sure which way round it was done. Probably a bit of both - whichever seemed quicker or more convenient in any particular circumstance. The priority generally was to do this _fast_. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/23 "2018-06-07T04:12:58Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The other factor is Japan. We didn’t know at the time that the atom bomb would work and Japan would surrender. So America wanted the Soviets to join in with the war against Japan and participate in the invasion of Japan. This meant the Soviets had more leverage against us than we had against them. I thought one of the motivations to decide to drop the atom bomb was to stop the Soviets. With the war in Europe over they wheeled around and had started taking Japanese islands (which they hold to this day). The US definitely did not want the Soviets taking Japan so that figured large in their decision to drop the atom bombs. I cannot imagine we would have been thrilled with their participation in the Pacific at all. The US had clearly won the war in the Pacific by that point. It was just a matter of time and cost to end it. The end result was not in doubt. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/24 "2018-06-07T05:07:12Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I thought one of the motivations to decide to drop the atom bomb was to stop the Soviets. With the war in Europe over they wheeled around and had started taking Japanese islands (which they hold to this day). The US definitely did not want the Soviets taking Japan so that figured large in their decision to drop the atom bombs. > > I cannot imagine we would have been thrilled with their participation in the Pacific at all. The US had clearly won the war in the Pacific by that point. It was just a matter of time and cost to end it. The end result was not in doubt. In my phone so it’s not the best reply, but all of this is basically incorrect. As early as the Tehran Conference in ‘43, the US and Britain requested the Soviets join in the war against the Japanese. A final decision was made at Yalta in February ‘45, to which Stalin agreed to join within three months of the surrender of Germany and the US and Britain agreed to the Soviets’ territorial demands. Even by Yalta, the atomic bomb was still questionable, and we really wanted their help. The Soviets really didn’t have amphibious capabilities so they really could not have taken much of Japan. Prior to the surrender, the Japanese still had a million men in Manchuria and the Soviets attacked these forces. The Japanese forces were not “clearly” defeated in their own minds. They were planning on making some bloody last stands which would have been costly for the Allies. The Soviet entry into the war came exactly three months after the surrender of Germany and coincidentally came between the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They launched a massive attack on the Japanese forces, in an attack which was obviously planned well before the bombings. The motivation for the atomic bombings was simply to end the damn war as soon as possible. The Soviet entry into the war helped convince the Japanese to surrender. Some historians believe that it was more important than the atomic bombings, but it seems that the twin factors were still barely enough to convince them to agree to the conditions of surrender. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/25 "2018-06-07T05:15:48Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I thought one of the motivations to decide to drop the atom bomb was to stop the Soviets. With the war in Europe over they wheeled around and had started taking Japanese islands (which they hold to this day). The US definitely did not want the Soviets taking Japan so that figured large in their decision to drop the atom bombs. All the evidence is that the main reason for using the atomic bomb was that it was a highly advanced weapon and we were at war with Japan. Nobody at the time seems to have thought it was an issue; there was no more debate about whether to use the atomic bomb than there was about whether to use machine guns or submarines. Keep in mind that atomic bombs weren’t seen the same way in the Summer of 1945 that they would be seen later. Atomic bombs destroyed two cities. But hundreds of other cities had been destroyed during the war. People at the time saw the atomic bomb as just another weapon. It wasn’t until after the war, when we had mentally re-adjusted to peace and the atomic arsenals had grown into the hundreds, that we began thinking of atomic weapons as something that changed the nature of warfare and were too terrible to actually use. > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I cannot imagine we would have been thrilled with their participation in the Pacific at all. The US had clearly won the war in the Pacific by that point. It was just a matter of time and cost to end it. The end result was not in doubt. No, without the atomic bomb, we were still looking at a prolonged war. We expected to have to invade Japan (and post-war intelligence showed the Japanese planned on resisting that invasion). It was estimated that the invasion would result in hundreds of thousands of casualties among the invading force (and millions of Japanese casualties). So it was an American priority to have the Soviets as part of that invasion force so that they would bear some of the high cost. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/26 "2018-06-07T05:22:25Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Not sure what you mean by ‘unofficially’, but there’s definitely evidence that multiple higher ups in Germany, including political figures like Himmler and Goering and military figures like generals, attempted to negotiate a separate peace with the Western Allies, with the idea that The conspirators behind the attempted assassination of Hitler in 1944 also had the idea of making peace just with the Western Allies. None of them had the support of Hitler (which would make them technically unofficial), but they were serious offers floated by people in position to possibly make it happen. The Allies had no interest in leaving Germany in any state other than “completely and unarguably defeated”, so all of this went no where. But we’re talking about something different here. An American drive on Berlin was based on the idea that the Germans were willing to surrender to Americans rather than to Soviets. The kind of negotiations you’re talking about were people who wanted to negotiate an end to the war with Germany retaining some independence and top officials staying in power. People like Himmler and Goering had no intention of turning themselves over to American custody. These people had no intention of opening holes in the front line so American troops can drive through Germany. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/27 "2018-06-07T06:19:38Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > That would probably have been a bad mistake. The Allies had a lot of strategic and industrial advantages( including control of the seas and a vastly superior bomber fleet ), but the the Soviet military in 1945 was a tactical juggernaut. In terms of sheer masses of veteran troops( AND armor AND artillery )the allied forces on the ground in Europe would have been seriously outnumbered and Soviet tactical air cover was at least at parity. Granted the Soviets had all but exhausted their manpower reserves, but the Allies were nearly as bad off. The allies might have won eventually, but quite possibly only after a second D-Day as it is not outside the realm of possibility that the Soviets could have pushed them right out of Europe in the first couple of years. That’s even assuming the UK( let alone France )had the stomach for further fighting in the first place. A couple of nukes would probably cripple that juggernaut, I would think. But I agree no one really had the stomach for it at the time. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/28 "2018-06-07T08:26:47Z")
“What might have happened, if that which did happen, had not happened, I cannot undertake to say.” - Lord Palmerston 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/29 "2018-06-07T09:08:40Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Had the war in Europe dragged on a few more months a nuke could have been dropped on Germany. On the other hand there is a thought that the US was less likely to drop a nuke on white Christians as opposed to non Christian Asians. The U.S. mostly had a “Germany first, then Japan” strategy, and if the U.S. military leadership knew that the nuke would work perfectly, they had absolutely no qualms about dropping one (or a few of them) on Germany. Potential targets for the bomb were discussed as early as 1943, and at that point, victory in Germany was far from certain. However, they also weren’t sure that the bomb would work. They also didn’t know how far along the German nuke project was, and feared that Germany was either very close behind or might even be leading the bomb race. They weren’t, but we didn’t know that. One of the main reasons for choosing Japan as a target that early in the war was that they feared that the bomb might be a dud, and if it was, they though that the Japanese were less likely to learn important things from the wreckage of the dud. In contrast, if they dropped the bomb on Germany and it failed to explode, the fear was that the Germans would take apart the wreckage and would use the knowledge from it to make their own working bomb first. There was still some debate about where to drop the bomb, and if the bomb had been ready sooner, it’s difficult to say what who would have been the first target. By the time the bomb was ready, it was clear that the war in Germany was winding down, so by that time the obvious choice for the first target was Japan and there was no more debate. If the bomb had been ready a year earlier, and they had confidence that the bomb would explode and not be a dud, then Germany very well might have been the first target for the atomic bomb. Nukes at the time weren’t terror weapons. That attitude toward nukes didn’t come until long after WWII had ended. At the time they were dropped, they were just big bombs. Very few people at the time would have had second thoughts about dropping one on Germany. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/30 "2018-06-07T10:02:12Z")
Well, even more simply than that, the first nuclear detonation, the Trinity test, was on July 16, 1945; V-E Day was on May 8, 1945. If the United States had had a bomb earlier, or the Germans had held out longer, we would have dropped one or more of them on Germany; but we didn’t and they didn’t, so it never happened. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/31 "2018-06-07T10:04:59Z")
If you were to ask a Polish equivalent of a French Gaullist the same question, you would get a very different interpretation of the American (and particularly Roosevelt’s) attitude to the USSR during WW2. They would say the western allies had been culpably gullible in trusting that the USSR would interpret “democracy” in the buffer states like Poland and Hungary in the same way as in the west, and particularly weak in agreeing to Stalin’s plans for Poland’s borders: but Roosevelt’s priority was to secure the creation of the UNO, and a system of international relations that would succeed where the League of Nations had failed. However much doubt there might have been about the likelihood of Stalin keeping to agreements, there was no other show in town but to trust them. (Likewise, the US attitude to French affairs was much more nuanced: don’t forget that the Vichy government had been allowed to retain a core army, which is one factor in Roosevelt’s hope to try to turn them, and particularly the bulk of their support and particularly their army, against the Germans rather than bet everything on De Gaulle and the assortment of competing resistance groups.) The idea that somehow the western allies just pottered around doing their own thing, then woke up and threw the Normandy invasion together when they suddenly realised the Russians were advancing, is nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/32 "2018-06-07T14:05:10Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Equally, I suspect that the US would not have been greatly taxed by the engineering challenge of constructing locomotives with Russian-gauge bogies in the first place… True, in fact the predominant design sent to the Soviets in WWII, what was called USA/TC 2-10-0 type at that time, 2000+ produced by Baldwin and Alco, was a little modified version of a design around 875 of which had been built for Russia in WWI, all variations of class Ye in Russian nomenclature. They could be switched from Russian to US gauge by fitting different tires (iron rings shrink fitted over the underlying wheels, called tires) on the wheels. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/33 "2018-06-07T14:11:37Z")
From what I am gathering a lot of the LL locomotives were used on the Iranian rails to transport LL goods through that country. But the locomotives, while good, were a drop in the bucket compared to the locomotive parts we shipped for LL. We sent wheels and axles by the millions to the Soviets. Those could well have been more useful for the Soviet infrastructure. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/34 "2018-06-07T14:46:02Z")
I get the impression that without the aid of the US that Germany and the USSR would have been in a long drawn out stalemate. My father was a historian and served in counter intelligence during WWII and he said something about the Soviets relying on manpower and the better equipped Nazis making a lot of mistakes. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/35 "2018-06-07T15:16:59Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I get the impression that without the aid of the US that Germany and the USSR would have been in a long drawn out stalemate. My father was a historian and served in counter intelligence during WWII and he said something about the Soviets relying on manpower and the better equipped Nazis making a lot of mistakes. That’s the stereotype, but it was largely untrue. The Soviet T-34 might have been the best tank of the war and was certainly the best during Barbarossa. German field reports had them being hit five or six times by Panzer IIIs and the T-34 and it’s larger KV brother simply continuing on as though nothing happened. Later it was surpassed by various Panzer designs, but they were expensive and slow to produce while the T-34 was able to be cranked out cheaply. I think that most people would say that it was better than anything that the US put out during the war and was arguably the most ground-breaking tank design of the entire war. The big negative of the Soviet military was lack of training and absolutely horrendous leadership. The reason that those T-34s were hit five or six times was because the only tactic they used was ‘drive forward and shoot.’ They were horrible marksman, almost unbelievably slow to acquire targets and didn’t know what to do to capitalize on their successes. At the beginning of Barbarossa, in one case, they simply drove straight through German lines and didn’t really know what to do when they got there, allowing the Germans to successfully counter-attack. Another big problem with the Soviets was complete lack of logistic expertise. They frequently lost vehicles by them getting bogged down in mud and the Soviets not have the equipment or knowhow to retrieve them. They would also simply just run out of fuel and have no way to refill their tanks forcing crews to abandon valuable hardware. They would also send tanks out into combat with no armor piercing ammunition because they couldn’t get it to the front in time. Bottom line is that the Soviet issues in combat that required so many troops were issues in leadership. That’s what happens when you purge your military leadership right before a war starts. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/36 "2018-06-07T15:20:10Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > … > > Another big problem with the Soviets was complete lack of logistic expertise. They frequently lost vehicles by them getting bogged down in mud and the Soviets not have the equipment or knowhow to retrieve them… Thread’s sort of drifting now, but didn’t the Germans as well as the Russians have a _huge_ number of horses and mules as part of the logistics inventory, partly for this reason? ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/37 "2018-06-07T15:26:21Z")
Cracked recently did a podcast on this topic, which I found quite interesting: [How America Gets WWII History Wrong (And Why That Matters)](https://soundcloud.com/crackedpod/how-america-gets-wwii-history) Broadly-speaking, they come down on the side of saying D-Day is overemphasized in the west and Germany was already teetering because of what was happening on the eastern front. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/38 "2018-06-07T15:31:12Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > The big negative of the Soviet military was lack of training and absolutely horrendous leadership. The reason that those T-34s were hit five or six times was because the only tactic they used was ‘drive forward and shoot.’ They were horrible marksman, almost unbelievably slow to acquire targets and didn’t know what to do to capitalize on their successes. At the beginning of Barbarossa, in one case, they simply drove straight through German lines and didn’t really know what to do when they got there, allowing the Germans to successfully counter-attack. > . I’d attribute the T-34’s being hit so many times more to the fact that, despite its innovations as a tank, it still only had a 2-man turret. When the Commander is also acting as the loader, and his optics are limited his time to observe as well as his ability to observe make it hard to spot even slightly concealed targets. The T-34-85 resolved a lot of this by having a proper 3-man turret. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/39 "2018-06-07T15:38:15Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Thread’s sort of drifting now, but didn’t the Germans as well as the Russians have a _huge_ number of horses and mules as part of the logistics inventory, partly for this reason? The Soviets did use horses for logistics, but also for combat. Even at the end of the war, they had mounted units intermingled with mechanized cavalry. During the German invasion, over 11 million horses were lost (over half of the total number of horses in the USSR) and the Soviets had trouble replacing them since they were still being used for agriculture as well. They lost so many that by 1943, they were relying nearly exclusively on vehicles given by the other allies. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549/40 "2018-06-07T15:42:21Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > Bottom line is that the Soviet issues in combat that required so many troops were issues in leadership. That’s what happens when you purge your military leadership right before a war starts. Also helps when only one in five tanks is equipped with a radio, so you have to rely on hand signals to coordinate anything. Also, on the subject of manpower, the Germans stupidly kept 400,000 men in Norway right up to the end of the war, based on previous small attacks by Britain. Norway had a population of 3 million at the time, so that was 1 german soldier per 7.5 people. A rather heavy occupation force. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-the-resurgent-russians-tearing-through-europe-no-d-day/815549.md?page=3)