There is a lot one can say about D-Day – the courage, the heroism, the terrible hardships endured by those men on the landing craft as they waited to storm the beaches of Normandy. There was every possible chance it could all have gone very, very badly wrong. In hindsight, the fact that the Allied forces landing there took “only” a bit under 11,000 casualties, out of a total force of nearly 160,000, and only 4,413 dead, is an incredible achievement.
Much and more has been written by many historians about precisely who “won” WWII, at least in the European theatre. If you ask the Americans and Brits, they did. If you ask the Russians, they did. Of the two, the Russians assuredly have the far stronger claim. They lost upwards of 20 MILLION people, and the Soviets overall lost at least 27 million, from 1941 to 1945. There is simply no comparison with what the Soviets suffered in blunting the Nazi war machine.
Yet… it just isn’t that simple. The esteemed Col. Douglas Macgregor does a sterling job of reminding us all of that fact, in the final 10 minutes of this superb interview:
Now, Col. Macgregor does not present the other side of that story – which is to say, the astonishing performance of the Soviet industrial base, which cranked up into production and proceeded to out-manufacture the Germans, in tanks, aircraft, and artillery, by 1943.
The American contribution to the war was less military, and more economic, and the data prove that. But we must never lose sight of the fact that American and British air power, served its purpose in crippling the Nazi industrial machine – just as we must never forget that Soviet blood and bodies stopped the Axis forces from advancing to the oil-rich Caucasus and onward into the Middle East.
As the old saying goes – “all gave some, and some gave all”.
I am increasingly convinced, though, that the entire history of WWII is something we really need to relearn. The fairy-tale we have all been taught, about how Hitler came to power as an evil lunatic and went to war against the entire civilised world, looking to take over everything, is simply not true. The evidence just does not support it.
Nor is it necessarily true that Hitler’s headlong plunge into the USSR was an unprovoked and treacherous attack against a former ally. There is at least some data, from what we know of today as the Suvorov Thesis, to support the notion that Hitler actually invaded the USSR in a desperate attempt to forestall and destroy a coming Soviet invasion of ALL of eastern Europe.
Where is the truth? I do not know. The more I dig into this subject – and it is a GIGANTIC one, with several lifetimes’ worth of data and evidence to parse through – the less I am sure that any one point of view is correct.
All I know for sure, is that what we have been taught, is mostly wrong. And that goes for both Westerners AND Russians – though, to be fair, the Russians are a significantly more historically minded bunch than Brits or Yankees, and have a considerably tighter grasp of reality than any Western nation I have seen.
What we can know for sure, though, is that those who fought and died on the beaches of Normandy, 79 years ago, did not concern themselves with such intricacies.
They had a job to do – a very unpleasant and terrible one, which I am sure many of them would have rejected if given the choice. They were not. So they simply got on with it, and did their duty.
For that, we owe them respect and honour. And so, we shall give it.
HAIL THE VICTORIOUS DEAD!
3 Comments
dying rarely has much to do with winning. as the defenders of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Dresden will attest.
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so far as production is concerned, the numbers are the numbers. Russia out produced Germany, well and good. prior to the war, Russia and Germany were approximately equal in productive capacity. while the majority of the Russian population is in the west, there is no small part of it which ranges from southern Russia to the Pacific Ocean, most of which was never seriously threatened ( the Germans never got to Moscow ). ALL of German productive capacity was subject to constant bombing and all German lines of supply were subject to interdiction to one degree or another.
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whereas Russia received a LOT of supply and aid from the US in order to keep their manufacturing plants humming along.
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this is not to say that Russia/Ukraine did not suffer under the German invasion, they did. Mein Kreig is an excellent retrospective on the Eastern Front from the German perspective.
There’s a YT channel ‘Military History Visualised’ which did a video on the possibility of the Soviet Union preparing to invade the Reich.
Lots of equipment on the western frontier, but readiness was abysmally low. No doubt Mr. Stalin’s HR policy initiatives of 1937-8 didn’t help matters.
The USSR being a vicious police state the Germans likely didn’t know all of that, although the Winter War certainly shone a spotlight. And pre-war tours of Soviet factories impressed them with the sheer scale of industrialization.
They were near, and the Middle East was far. I think that clinched it for them.
All Hail! And let’s thank the allies for fighting to defend Bolshevism. THANK YOU ALLIES!!!!! Because of you, Bolshevism is now taking over the world! Hoo-AWW!!!