Stalin was a sub-optimal military leader and the Soviet dictatorship was cold-blooded in war. If Stalin had not made an agreement with Hitler to take Finland in exchange for neutrality it is possible Hitler might not have started the war. As it was Hitler invaded Poland and so did Stalin in 1939. Then the Soviets captured Finland in the winter war. When the two serpents turned upon one another, the Hitler-Stalin agreement was terminated. War in Leningrad was to develop in 1941-42, by which time Field Marshall Rommel and his Panzer edge was being blunted by the British at El Alemein
If 70% of the storm troopers were not former socialists that believed that Hitler would purge the aristocracy if in power, Hitler might not have taken power in Germany and the war might not have occurred. As it was Hitler declared war on the United States in 1941, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. declared war on Japan. The United States had to fight a world war on two broad fronts it didn’t want.
The United States had kept England in the fight after western Europe was lost with lend lease and other material support until entering the war itself. Stalin had purged his military of high ranking officers in his paranoia before the war. The Red Army was in a less than optimal condition when Operation Barbarossa was launched upon the Soviet Union.
Hitler had some allies in the Ukraine as well as in other Eastern European nations who would act as fifth columnists in the fight against the Soviets. Eisenhower wanted to directly invade France to attack, yet Roosevelt forestalled that. Rommel and the Panzers in North Africa needed to be addressed. When the Brits and Americans wound up the Wehrmacht, Italy was an obvious place to flow the war. A general pincers attack on two European fronts along with Soviets engaging in a third on the east presented tactical complications for the former corporal.
Britain was able to supply the Soviets with about 700 tanks in 1941 and together with the U.S.A., about 5000 tanks in 1942. During the entire war the Soviet produced about 350,000 wheeled vehicles while the United States supplied more than 500,000. The U.S.A. provided most of the armored troop vehicles the Soviets had for they produced none during the war. U.S. and Britain built 40% of the Soviet Air Force.
There is no question about the value of the Soviet war contribution to defeating Germany and the axis powers. Most Americans do not learn Soviet history- just western history, and learn of their own national contribution in that regard. The allies were a team, rather like the super band Cream that played together for just two years, that accomplished a lot working together.
Questions like; Could the Soviet Union have survived the Nazi invasion if the other allies had not been in the war?, or Could the allies have won the war without Soviet participation? are interesting, yet unrealistic historical speculation or war gaming practice for war theorists. Stalin was about as lethal to Soviet subjects before the war as Hitler was during the war. The kulakization policy alone killed I believe, twenty million people. Red Army soldiers fought well, yet the peasant soldier sleeping on the frozen ground in a greatcoat was a tradition reaching far, far back in Russian history under the Tsars. They were badly used during the Second World War by the communists.
No comments:
Post a Comment