Stupid with hindsight, perhaps. Easy for them to overestimate British interest in Norway, bearing in mind both the history and the disinformation campaign designed to draw German attention away from Normandy. Useful lesson on the effects of not actually invading.
IIRC the main reason for Germany’s heavy presence in Norway was that the German industry got most of its iron ore from Sweden, and Norway shielded Sweden from possible Allied assault.
As much effort as the Allies devoted to bombing perceived bottlenecks in the German war economy such as oil production and even ball bearings, imagine trying to conduct World War II without iron or steel. That’s what the Germans were touchy about.
It’s unlikely (for political reasons) the Allies would have actually invaded Sweden, theoretically a neutral, but Hitler wasn’t going to count on them playing nicer than he would.
It’s somewhat more likely we would have invaded Norway (to “liberate” it, of course) and then pressured Sweden into stopping trade with Germany (see Finlandization).
I can’t verify it’s true but I read once that there was a discussion of sending missions to bomb the horse-raising areas in East Prussia in order to handicap German logistics. Eisenhower supposedly vetoed the idea because he didn’t like the idea of targeting horses.
Some US built LL locomotives given to the British were used in Iran, and after the end of 1942 the US Army Transportation Corp directly ran trains in Iran with US built steam, as well as GE-Alco diesel locomotives. But those locomotives weren’t given to the Soviets.
The USA/TC 2-10-0 aka class Ye locomotives, which were most of the LL supply of complete US locomotives to the Soviets, were mainly shipped from Portland, OR to Vladivostok, after being railed on flat cars from the factories, already outfitted as Russian gauge. These locomotives were only delivered in 1944-5, when most US LL to the USSR went to the Soviet Far East, in Soviet flag merchant ships, taking advantage of Japan’s neutrality v the Soviets. The Japanese chose what seemed the lesser of evils and respected Soviet neutrality even though eventually much of this material was earmarked to support the upcoming Soviet attack on Japan, rather than provoke an earlier conflict with the Soviets.
Source is “Allied Military Locomotives of the Second World War” by R. Tourret.
Well, they also got their asses kicked in the one battle they did have with the Soviets and had nothing that could remotely match Soviet armor. Japan wasn’t really ever in the tank competition.
The demarcation line was the Elbe River; in roughly the first week of April, US forces reached the Elbe and… stayed put. They could have relatively easily kept going; one thing to remember is that at some point in late 1944 or early 1945, the US and Western Allies had got the logistics game figured out and were able to continuously and rapidly advance without the stop and start pattern evident earlier in the war as they’d run ahead of their supplies. The Russians either didn’t figure it out, or were fond of large set-piece offensives, because they tended to attack, consolidate, and attack again.
I sometimes wonder if the US forces might have beat the Russians to Berlin, simply because the Russians weren’t ready to attack, while the US forces would have just kept rolling.
I wonder if there was any thought given to buying Swedish iron ore by the Allies.
This is flatly wrong. The decision to drop the bomb was not lightly taken. The Japanese knew the situation they were in and were seeking a way negotiated peace.
There was some genuine fear among the Western Allies that rushing along headstrong might result in more than a few ‘friendly fire’ incidents. Those could spiral out of control fairly quickly.
There was also the whole 'Werewolf" thing. Its hard to say if the Allied command actually took it seriously or were just giving their soldiers something to do is hard to say for certain, but given all the German propaganda and the fact that the front troops were seeing 14 year old kids in SS uniforms attack their tanks with Panzerfausts I am inclined towards the former.
Mostly I think the Western Allies just weren’t keen on wasting lives to take Berlin just so they could be the ones to do a dance on Hitler’s bunker and then turn over half of it to the Soviets (along with all the land between the Elbe and Berlin).
A concern Eisenhower had was that the Germans might adopt the most sensible military strategy and fall back towards the south. This would have allowed them to fight a defensive battle in the alps. There was some evidence that the Germans had made plans for this and had been fortifications and supply depots in the alps. If they had done this, the Germans might have been able to stretch out the war in Europe for several more months. So Eisenhower decided that the Allied drive from the west should be aimed at cutting off the Germans fighting in the north from southern Germany and Austria.
As it turned out, this was unnecessary. Hitler had abandoned military logic by 1945. He insisted right up to the end that all German forces hold their ground and never fall back to a better defensive line. There had only been minimal preparations for an alpine redoubt because Hitler refused to acknowledge that it might be needed.
You seem to confirm the stereotype. A good tank doesn’t make the Soviets better equipped. They couldn’t arm their soldiers, didn’t have planes, no backline support.
Einstein and the guys who wrote the letter to FDR intended the bomb to be used against the Germans. When Germany was defeated, they asked that the bomb not be used.
Soviet production at the beginning of the war was pathetic. By the end of the war they were producing vast amount of equipment (helped in no small part by the US providing them with trucks and other utility vehicles so they could focus on weapon systems).
By the end of the war they produced more than 35,000 T-34 tanks and 23,000 T34-85 tanks. By comparison the Germans had built around 16,000 Panzer III and 13,000 Panzer IV tanks.
That was the point of my prior post, the US helped the Soviets get equipped.
Everything I’ve read says that the Soviets got the leadership issues sorted out in large part by mid-late 1943/early 1944 at the latest, in an extremely Darwinian kind of way- leaders who sucked were replaced or got killed. Same for Soviet small-unit tactics and infantrymen.
That’s not to say that they were as effective, man-for-man as the Western Allies, but they were drastically better than they had been in 1941-1942, and they had numbers on their side.
And Whack-A-Mole, there’s a reason that early-war Soviet production was so terrible; their factories were either overrun by the Germans, or in the process of being moved lock, stock and barrel out past the Urals and set back up. Kind of hard to keep up large scale production under those circumstances.
I agree with that, but I don’t think that I would say that the Soviets had issues in combat by 1944. With the exception of Narva, I think that they had started steamrolling by then. There obviously were no real sustained German offensives after Kursk, but even their defensive actions weren’t producing great results with the exception of Narva and maybe Dukla, but honestly they were attacking a well-fortified pass, I don’t know that you can chalk Dukla up to anything more than it being a difficult goal to achieve.
When one is claiming that others are “flatly wrong” it’s probably best to not use op ed from a noted activist and revisionist as a primary source.
I was not in the least bit surprised that Gar Alperovitz was the author of the piece. He’s a leading revisionist for claiming the atomic bombs were not necessary and has pushed his point of view in numerous op eds in various newspapers over the last 25 years or so.
I’m not particularly impressed with him. While he has certainly done some research, he deliberately cherry picks his quotes without context rather than attempt to honestly deal with them.
For example, from the linked article, he states such things as:
The US knew this at the time because we had broken their codes. What Alperovitz is selectively ignoring is that we also knew the conditions they were proposing to the Soviet and those were ridiculous. The Japanese believed that if they offered the Soviets some fishing rights and a few other things that the USSR would intercede with the US to allow them to end the war on terms completely unacceptable to the States. They did not want to end their system of government, they wanted to try their own war criminals, disarm themselves and avoid an occupation.
Alperovitz says that all the US needed to do was modify the proposed conditions of surrender. That’s absurd. Short of the unacceptable terms they proposed, the military was looking at fighting to the bitter end.
Also completely missing from his account was the very real possibility of a coup and the military completely ruling the country.
We have accounts of what actually transpired and it took the combination of both the atomic bombing and the Soviet entry into the war for the hardliner to accept the inevitable. There simply was no way for the US to have known the outcome of this in advance. It’s dishonest to suggest that.
Yes, there was the US Secretary of State James Byrnes who was looking at the post war and the Soviets. This is the person in that “shocking” part you quote.
However, what Alperovitz doesn’t talk about is that Byrnes didn’t become Sec. of State until July 3, 1945, well after May 31 and June meetings of the Interim Committee (for matters concerning the atomic bomb) had taken the position that the atomic bombing needed to be done as soon as possible, without warning and on dual military and civilian targets.
The entire op ed is filled with misleading and questionable statements. It’s revisionism at it’s worst.
You make that seem as if Byrnes just appeared on the scene in July 1945 so had little impact on the decisions being made.
In fact Byrnes was deeply and intimately involved in the government prior to that and in fact was one of the people who informed Truman of the existence of the Manhattan Project. He was also a close advisor to Truman so maybe…just maybe…he had some influence on the decision making.
Again, you make it seems as if this guy was the power behind the throne and imply that’s his views we’re carrying the day.
The article you rely on was is trash. The decisions leading up to the bombings were well in place years before Truman became president.
This is a hijack to this thread and I’m ending my participation about the discussion. You are welcome to open a thread about it and I would discuss it there.
Well you should step out because you are wrong.
The context was whether there was more to the decision to drop the bomb, including consideration of the Soviets. There was and I showed there was.
It does not matter if that first cite was a revisionist because the point about Byrnes stands no matter who said it. You are trying to discredit the evidence because the initial cite was someone you don’t like. I gave you a second cite and you dismiss it because of the first cite.
And in the end Truman made the decision. It does not matter if there were a million years of decision makers before Truman. In the end it was Truman who said yes or no to dropping the a-bomb. Not to mention I also showed Byrnes was close to the prior decision makers and in fact knew about the Manhattan Project even before Truman did (which says something about how well plugged in he was). It is likely he was part of those earlier discussions.