Posted by 5GJW on March 22, 1999 at 16:54:10 {MWZNJSg.uPfFk}:
In Reply to: ********Realization posted by Revise History?-WW on March 22, 1999 at 15:44:29:
You said:
"C'mon sonny, you ever study history or watch the discovery Channel/PBS? They can be very enlightening. The Russians were MOVING their industrial base behind the Ural Mountains. We were supplying them with t-38, p-40 fighters, some twin engine bombers, tanks, trucks, grain etc. It was in late '43 and 44 that they started to roll out large amounts of their own replacements."
You need to turn off the TV, and read books. Here is just 1 stat for you to consider, the United States produced only 4,052 tanks in 1941, with only 1,461 of them being medium tanks.(United States Tanks of WW II In Action, George Forty, 1983). Even if we had sent them ALL to Russia, this would have been an insignificant number. We did not send them all to Russia, we sent most of them to the British Army in North Africa, where they didn't see action until 1942. By the way, what is a t-38? If you are going to make up data, at least use something that actually existed.
"Restated, Ike cut off Patton's gas when he realized that the Third Army could end up rolling into Berlin before the Russians. Had Ike let Patton go, historians speculate that he would have surrounded and cut off Berlin and made for the German eastern border. Ike also feared that Patton would engage the Russians if given half a chance..."
I suppose Ike told you this? How about this for a reason? There was a strong desire that the V1 launching areas be captured, as V1s were falling on London daily. There was not enough fuel to fully support both Patton's army and Montgomery's army at the same time. There was also a strong rivalry between these two generals that Ike did not want to contribute to by giving Patton extra supplies. The result was that Monty got the gas, so that he could attempt to capture the V1 launching sites. Not as exciting a reason as yours, but it is based on fact, unlike yours.
">We faced only 40% of the German army, the Russians had the rest.
Whoa, where does this figure come from? I will accede that they did face more NUMBERS than we did, but what about crack SS and Panzer units?"
You challenge my figures, then effectively agree with them. Do you think that there were no SS units or armored (BTW, that is what a panzer unit is) were on the Eastern Front? Where do you think that the SS and panzer units came from that launched the counterattack known as the "Battle of the Bulge"?
"This is all very relevant to the claim that we "stopped Hitler"."
The claim that "We stopped Hitler" is grossly misleading. We helped stop Hitler, but we did not even do the majority of the work.
The facts show that without a western front, Russian advances would have petered out and resulted in their eventual defeat. They threw everything they had at the Germans because they knew they had replacements. When the Germans tried this at Bologne against us, they 'shot their wad' because they had little left to back up their temporary advance."
I guess you mean Bastogne here, it seems to be a reference to the Battle of the Bulge. Your facts are false, the German Army had been doomed since Stalingrad.
"You also forget the effect that our costly daytime bombing had on the German production of armaments and the attrition it caused to the Luftwafe. Their veteran pilots flew hundreds of missions until they were decimated, near the end they were putting up pilots who had less than 100 hours of flying or glider time!"
This is just another attempt to direct attention away from your claim that "We stopped Hitler." German production actually increased as we bombed them. You did get it right about the Luftwaffe training problems.
"The facts are that without the USA, the Germans would have defeated Europe, Russia and Great Britain, occupied North Africa and the Middle East! Now, I qualify this statement with the recognition that the Allies victory was a combined effort in that every nation in the pact contributed to it."
The facts are that we barely contributed to the war in Europe before 1943. The Russians did most of the fighting. And If you were going to admit defeat by revising your statement from "We stopped Hitler" to "�the Allies victory was a combined effort in that every nation in the pact contributed to it", why didn't you do that at the beginning of this post?
5GJW