After teething problems the USSR was fielding its own build of the B29 called the Tu4 in 1946/7, had better engines as well.
As for bombing soviet targets the Russians had an Air Defense system as good as the Germans. The Japanese bombing were unopposed. We had supplied Radar equipment under lend lease.
...except my point wasn't what the Soviets could do to protect their OWN airspace...
It was about destroying the Red Army...or as much of it as possible...when it wasn't actually IN the Soviet Union! But was in fact still gathered in "Western" Europe...
True to the first point, I thought you were answering my next post.
You do know how much bigger the Soviet Union is, don't you? The Japanese did what they were told after the surrender... I don't think you would find policing the USSR, filled with the relatives of the people you just killed, to be quite so obliging. All you would get is a festering drawn out conflict that would drag on for decades - like Vietnam or Afghanistan, only on an unimaginable scale.
It's as if you are not reading what I have been writing. I'm done discussing this with you.
No, the thread itself was focused on something else
Not how it works around here. We're free to discuss whatever we want, to answer whoever we want. YOU are free to discuss/answer your own strain within the thread....but unless I quote you I ain't talking to you, I'm talking/replying to the people or points I quote and then answer.
Wherever you came from 167 posts ago, get used to multi-layered discussions here.
Don't minimise the problem; the Americans ONLY managed it by allowing the Emperor to remain, and command the obedience of the population as a whole to obey the surrender. In other words - the Amricans made use of the Japanese tendency to obey authority!
Oh, you mean like Soviet citizens forced to run into a wall of bullets?
Oh, you mean like Soviet citizens forced to run into a wall of bullets?
No, I mean like the government and Emperor ordering the Japanese people obey the Surrender and cooperate with the occupying forces...and them doing so.
Not how it works around here. We're free to discuss whatever we want, to answer whoever we want. YOU are free to discuss/answer your own strain within the thread....but unless I quote you I ain't talking to you, I'm talking/replying to the people or points I quote and then answer.
Of course you are free to discuss whatever you like but your long post came across as someone talking about airplane engines after someone mentions they had a nice flight with a particular airline. It's the kind of post where people politely think, oh, OK. That's all I'm saying.
No, I mean like the government and Emperor ordering the Japanese people obey the Surrender and cooperate with the occupying forces...and them doing so.
Actually - I think you did. There was no problem between the Japanese population as a whole and the Occupying Americans because of the ingrained nature of japanese society...whereas in Germany the entire nation was beset by a whole range of problems apart from simple military defeat, which all mitigated against any real resistance or non-cooperation.
Also - and interestingly - there's a whole sub-history of the Germans being hugely opposed to guerilla fighting/resisting...and in fact it being FAR more often used against German forces in various conflicts for a century and a half before 1945...so much so that there were both official and unofficial strictures against it in various military regulations and doctrines under the Wehrmacht...so no matter how the Nazis fulminated for armed resistance before VE Day - it wasn't ever going to happen to any great extent.
but your long post came across as someone talking about airplane engines after someone mentions they had a nice flight with a particular airline. It's the kind of post where people politely think, oh, OK. That's all I'm saying.
That's very possibly because not very much of it at all was pointed at anything you'd said...
It's as if you are not reading what I have been writing. I'm done discussing this with you.
What did I miss? You think we should have nuked the Soviet Union after the war ended, using the bombs that the US would build. I merely enquired how you intended to manage the 8.5 million square miles of territory with a population of 250m very irritated people after you killed a million or two of their countrymates?
OP I have seen quite a few of your threads and not been interested enough to comment.
This one, however, is different. You are obviously a very young boy who was born after Glasnost and therefore know nothing of the CCCP.
Please don't insult those people who are older than you who had relatives who lost their lives during the Second World War.
Some of those who had to fight in the war on the side of the allies could never go home. My father was one of those. He was let out of a prison camp in Siberia in order to fight against Hitler and once the war was over was sold down the river by our own great War Hero, Winston Churchill when he signed the Yalta Agreement and could never go home again for fear of being shot as a traitor. He never saw his mother and father and sisters again.
Perhaps your history books have been "altered" but you should really research what you say on here before you say it.
Quote:
From 1933, USSR was largest opponent of Nazi policy (see Civil War in Spain).
Mmm, Russia didn't exactly cover itself in glory over the conduct of the Spanish Civil War, you know. Not only did the USSR grab the bulk of Spain's gold reserves, making the Republican government massively overpay for Russian assistance, Russian military advice was next to useless and instrumental in the Republican side losing the war.
Then there were the Communist-inspired purges of non-Communist units on the Republican side.
The only perspective I need is the fact that at the end of WWII America was the only superpower and the only country with nukes and a willingness to use them. I'm simply saying what should have been done. Obviously Patton agreed. I'm sure he wasn't the only one. Just the threat of the use of nukes would probably have been enough to dismantle communism in the Soviet Union. In hindsight it was a mistake not to topple the Soviet Union.
Even so, I'd trust the thinking of the leaders then, over the thinking of a 25 year old now.
If the Yanks had decided to stay and fight to roll on to Moscow, they would have met Soviet forces still in place and if they were cracked the Russian ability to migrate into partisan groups still existed. Threatening the use of nuclear weapons would have be political but as well be useless given the Russian ability to accept losses.
Soviet tank amour technology and tactics had been driven by German interaction and was superior to what the Yanks had to play with. Its a long way to Moscow and can be cold.
Leaders were right, Patton may have been cruisin for a bruisin but the establishment wanted to go home which led to Stalin to reimpose himself through the UN etc.
Leaders were right, Patton may have been cruisin for a bruisin but the establishment wanted to go home which led to Stalin to reimpose himself through the UN etc.
I don't think Patton was particularly bothered about who he was fighting, so long as it was someone.
Just the official version of events. Im not going to add much here because this is not a forum for such discussion. Just saying all is not as it seems regarding the propaganda, fabrications and lies thats been indoctrinated as facts and truth of events surrounding world war 2
Dude, I think you've been given a holiday for your own sanity. Too much paranoia will make you go nuts, y'know.
Our American cousins are usually quick to tell us that "if it wasn't for us you would all be speaking German" to which I always reply,
"actually if it wasn't for the Russian people who died in their MILLIONS to buy us time, as well as the bravery of the RAF pilots who defeated the Nazi Luftwaffe BEFORE the USA was even in the war, we would all be speaking German"
from all the nations involved in WW2 the Russians suffered by far the greatest losses.
COUNTRY CASUALTIES
Soviet Union 23,954,000
China 15,000,000
Germany 7,728,000
Poland 5,720,000
Japan 2,700,000
India 2,087,000
Yugoslavia 1,027,000
Rumania 833,000
Hungary 580,000
France 567,600
Greece 560,000
Italy 456,000 Great Britain 449,800
United States 418,500
Czechoslovakia 345,000
Netherlands 301,000
Austria 123,700
Finland 97,000
Belgium 86,100
Canada 45,300
Australia 40,500
Bulgaria 25,000
New Zealand 11,900
South Africa 11,900
Norway 9,500
Spain 4,500
Denmark 3,200
TOTAL: 63,185,500
when compared to the COMBINED casualties of the UK and the USA it's not hard to understand why the Russian people remember the war in the way they do.
I am in no WAY 'belittling' the horrors the suffering or the sacrifices made by all nations involved in the conflict, but what the Russian people endured far exceeds anything other nations experienced,
OP I have seen quite a few of your threads and not been interested enough to comment.
This one, however, is different. You are obviously a very young boy who was born after Glasnost and therefore know nothing of the CCCP.
Please don't insult those people who are older than you who had relatives who lost their lives during the Second World War.
Some of those who had to fight in the war on the side of the allies could never go home. My father was one of those. He was let out of a prison camp in Siberia in order to fight against Hitler and once the war was over was sold down the river by our own great War Hero, Winston Churchill when he signed the Yalta Agreement and could never go home again for fear of being shot as a traitor. He never saw his mother and father and sisters again.
Perhaps your history books have been "altered" but you should really research what you say on here before you say it.
Once again, my first post shows extremely ignorant opinion of some nationalists and cultists on the war, and WWII, as such.
Russian Victory Cult=ignorant, absolutely biassed, mostly nationalist(not patriotic, of course) and non-objective system of values, which is widely wide-spread among many yobs, narrow-minded people naive people who believe in biassed ideologies, around the country.
My mistake was that I forgot to mention it, actually.
And by the way, position of current russian government towards the history of WWII is correct, compared to narrow-minded yobs
However, state Media tends to be biassed a little bit, showing a russian role only, but sometimes they mention the role of allies, too.
Our American cousins are usually quick to tell us that "if it wasn't for us you would all be speaking German" to which I always reply,
"actually if it wasn't for the Russian people who died in their MILLIONS to buy us time, as well as the bravery of the RAF pilots who defeated the Nazi Luftwaffe BEFORE the USA was even in the war, we would all be speaking German"
from all the nations involved in WW2 the Russians suffered by far the greatest losses.
COUNTRY CASUALTIES
Soviet Union 23,954,000
China 15,000,000
Germany 7,728,000
Poland 5,720,000
Japan 2,700,000
India 2,087,000
Yugoslavia 1,027,000
Rumania 833,000
Hungary 580,000
France 567,600
Greece 560,000
Italy 456,000 Great Britain 449,800
United States 418,500
Czechoslovakia 345,000
Netherlands 301,000
Austria 123,700
Finland 97,000
Belgium 86,100
Canada 45,300
Australia 40,500
Bulgaria 25,000
New Zealand 11,900
South Africa 11,900
Norway 9,500
Spain 4,500
Denmark 3,200
TOTAL: 63,185,500
when compared to the COMBINED casualties of the UK and the USA it's not hard to understand why the Russian people remember the war in the way they do.
I am in no WAY 'belittling' the horrors the suffering or the sacrifices made by all nations involved in the conflict, but what the Russian people endured far exceeds anything other nations experienced,
It's arguable that most of it was at their own leaders' hands.
For a start we have the famine in Ukraine that was deliberately inflicted by Stalin. They also had a scorched earth policy in retreat - burning and destroying everything in their wake to prevent the Germans getting their hands on it. That included food. It left the civilian population starving.
Plus...8.5 to 9 million Soviet "casualties" were actually the WWII-period deaths in the GULAG system, at the hands of blocking divisions etc....
In fact, there was very nearly as many casualties at the hands of other Russians as there were at the hands of the Wehrmacht!
Not just "Russians", think of all the poor Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians etc etc who all got shipped East after the Soviets re-conquered them...
Well, also don't forget about extremely strict discipline, when all "traitors" were about to be killed and even their wives and family, and particularly Order No.227
The Order
No commander had the right to retreat without an order. Anyone who did so was subject to a military tribunal of the corresponding seniority level.
Order No. 227 established that each Front must create 1 to 3 penal battalions (штрафбат, штрафной батальон, shtrafbat, shtrafnoy battalion) of soldiers accused of disciplinary problems, which were sent to the most dangerous sections of the front lines.[1] Each Front had to create penal companies for privates and NCOs. From 1942 to 1945, 427,910 soldiers were assigned to penal battalions.[2]
The order also directed that each Army must create "blocking detachments" (barrier troops (заградотряд, заградительный отряд)) which would shoot "cowards" and fleeing panicked troops at the rear.[1]
Both measures were cited in the preamble of the order as having been successfully used by the Germans during their winter retreat.
The requirement for Armies to maintain companies of barrier troops was withdrawn after just three months, on October 29, 1942. Intended to galvanise the morale of the hard-pressed Soviet Army and emphasise patriotism, it had a generally detrimental effect and was not consistently implemented by commanders who viewed diverting troops to create barrier units as a waste of manpower, so by October 1942 the idea of regular blocking units was quietly dropped.[3] By 20 November 1944 the blocking units were officially disbanded.[2]
On the other hand, local nationalists love to mention a british plan of war against USSR, which was revealed recently http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable
So, as they say, "this is a proof that West has always betrayed us"
Such beasts.
"Uncle" Joe Stalin was as bad as Hitler, murdering millions of innocent Russians. Every "allied" country paid a severe price for defeating the Nazi's/Japan.
Well, also don't forget about extremely strict discipline, when all "traitors" were about to be killed and even their wives and family, and particularly Order No.227
On the other hand, local nationalists love to mention a british plan of war against USSR, which was revealed recently http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable
So, as they say, "this is a proof that West has always betrayed us"
Such beasts.
We were not that 'matey' in the first place.
Both populations of Germany and Russia were happy with their leaders while they were winning, no matter how despotic.
Comments
...except my point wasn't what the Soviets could do to protect their OWN airspace...
It was about destroying the Red Army...or as much of it as possible...when it wasn't actually IN the Soviet Union! But was in fact still gathered in "Western" Europe...
It's as if you are not reading what I have been writing. I'm done discussing this with you.
No, the thread itself was focused on something else, unless I have been speaking only to myself all this time.
Not how it works around here. We're free to discuss whatever we want, to answer whoever we want. YOU are free to discuss/answer your own strain within the thread....but unless I quote you I ain't talking to you, I'm talking/replying to the people or points I quote and then answer.
Wherever you came from 167 posts ago, get used to multi-layered discussions here.
Oh, you mean like Soviet citizens forced to run into a wall of bullets?
No, I mean like the government and Emperor ordering the Japanese people obey the Surrender and cooperate with the occupying forces...and them doing so.
Of course you are free to discuss whatever you like but your long post came across as someone talking about airplane engines after someone mentions they had a nice flight with a particular airline. It's the kind of post where people politely think, oh, OK. That's all I'm saying.
You missed the point.
Actually - I think you did. There was no problem between the Japanese population as a whole and the Occupying Americans because of the ingrained nature of japanese society...whereas in Germany the entire nation was beset by a whole range of problems apart from simple military defeat, which all mitigated against any real resistance or non-cooperation.
Also - and interestingly - there's a whole sub-history of the Germans being hugely opposed to guerilla fighting/resisting...and in fact it being FAR more often used against German forces in various conflicts for a century and a half before 1945...so much so that there were both official and unofficial strictures against it in various military regulations and doctrines under the Wehrmacht...so no matter how the Nazis fulminated for armed resistance before VE Day - it wasn't ever going to happen to any great extent.
That's very possibly because not very much of it at all was pointed at anything you'd said...
What did I miss? You think we should have nuked the Soviet Union after the war ended, using the bombs that the US would build. I merely enquired how you intended to manage the 8.5 million square miles of territory with a population of 250m very irritated people after you killed a million or two of their countrymates?
This one, however, is different. You are obviously a very young boy who was born after Glasnost and therefore know nothing of the CCCP.
Please don't insult those people who are older than you who had relatives who lost their lives during the Second World War.
Some of those who had to fight in the war on the side of the allies could never go home. My father was one of those. He was let out of a prison camp in Siberia in order to fight against Hitler and once the war was over was sold down the river by our own great War Hero, Winston Churchill when he signed the Yalta Agreement and could never go home again for fear of being shot as a traitor. He never saw his mother and father and sisters again.
Perhaps your history books have been "altered" but you should really research what you say on here before you say it.
From 1933, USSR was largest opponent of Nazi policy (see Civil War in Spain).
Mmm, Russia didn't exactly cover itself in glory over the conduct of the Spanish Civil War, you know. Not only did the USSR grab the bulk of Spain's gold reserves, making the Republican government massively overpay for Russian assistance, Russian military advice was next to useless and instrumental in the Republican side losing the war.
Then there were the Communist-inspired purges of non-Communist units on the Republican side.
Even so, I'd trust the thinking of the leaders then, over the thinking of a 25 year old now.
Soviet tank amour technology and tactics had been driven by German interaction and was superior to what the Yanks had to play with. Its a long way to Moscow and can be cold.
Leaders were right, Patton may have been cruisin for a bruisin but the establishment wanted to go home which led to Stalin to reimpose himself through the UN etc.
I don't think Patton was particularly bothered about who he was fighting, so long as it was someone.
Dude, I think you've been given a holiday for your own sanity. Too much paranoia will make you go nuts, y'know.
"actually if it wasn't for the Russian people who died in their MILLIONS to buy us time, as well as the bravery of the RAF pilots who defeated the Nazi Luftwaffe BEFORE the USA was even in the war, we would all be speaking German"
from all the nations involved in WW2 the Russians suffered by far the greatest losses.
http://www.secondworldwarhistory.com/world-war-2-statistics.asp
COUNTRY CASUALTIES
Soviet Union 23,954,000
China 15,000,000
Germany 7,728,000
Poland 5,720,000
Japan 2,700,000
India 2,087,000
Yugoslavia 1,027,000
Rumania 833,000
Hungary 580,000
France 567,600
Greece 560,000
Italy 456,000
Great Britain 449,800
United States 418,500
Czechoslovakia 345,000
Netherlands 301,000
Austria 123,700
Finland 97,000
Belgium 86,100
Canada 45,300
Australia 40,500
Bulgaria 25,000
New Zealand 11,900
South Africa 11,900
Norway 9,500
Spain 4,500
Denmark 3,200
TOTAL: 63,185,500
when compared to the COMBINED casualties of the UK and the USA it's not hard to understand why the Russian people remember the war in the way they do.
I am in no WAY 'belittling' the horrors the suffering or the sacrifices made by all nations involved in the conflict, but what the Russian people endured far exceeds anything other nations experienced,
Once again, my first post shows extremely ignorant opinion of some nationalists and cultists on the war, and WWII, as such.
Russian Victory Cult=ignorant, absolutely biassed, mostly nationalist(not patriotic, of course) and non-objective system of values, which is widely wide-spread among many yobs, narrow-minded people naive people who believe in biassed ideologies, around the country.
My mistake was that I forgot to mention it, actually.
However, state Media tends to be biassed a little bit, showing a russian role only, but sometimes they mention the role of allies, too.
It's arguable that most of it was at their own leaders' hands.
For a start we have the famine in Ukraine that was deliberately inflicted by Stalin. They also had a scorched earth policy in retreat - burning and destroying everything in their wake to prevent the Germans getting their hands on it. That included food. It left the civilian population starving.
In fact, there was very nearly as many casualties at the hands of other Russians as there were at the hands of the Wehrmacht!
Not just "Russians", think of all the poor Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians etc etc who all got shipped East after the Soviets re-conquered them...
On the other hand, local nationalists love to mention a british plan of war against USSR, which was revealed recently
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable
So, as they say, "this is a proof that West has always betrayed us"
Such beasts.
We were not that 'matey' in the first place.
Both populations of Germany and Russia were happy with their leaders while they were winning, no matter how despotic.