| It’s high time Russia was accorded overdue recognition of its prime role in the World War II defeat of National Socialist Germany and its allies. Most North Americans seem to believe the US-British-Canadian landings at Normandy were the decisive stroke of the war. Not so.
When the Allies invaded France, most of the war-battered German units they met were undermanned, short of armor, trucks, and heavy artillery, almost immobile, and reduced to 40% combat effectiveness by previous hard fighting on the Eastern Front.
Most important, Germany’s once splendid air force was almost extinct. German forces at Normandy had almost no air cover and were pounded day and night by thousands of Allied strike aircraft and bombers. Few recall that 15,000-20,000 French civilians in Normandy were killed by the ferocious Allied bombing campaign
The Germans still put up fierce resistance against overwhelming odds, inflicting 209,000 casualties on the Allies and suffering 200,000 of their own. As Churchill observed, `you will never know war until you fight Germans.’
Still, in spite of the heroism of the Allied forces at Normandy, the Wehrmacht was not defeated in France, as many still believe, but on the Eastern Front, during 1941-1944, by Stalin’s Soviet Union, a tyranny far more murderous and bloodthirsty than Adolf Hitler’s Germany.
The Red Army claims to have destroyed 507 German divisions, 48,000 German tanks and 77,000 enemy aircraft; 100 divisions of Nazi-allied Romania, Hungary, and Italy; and at least 450,000 Japanese soldiers, 32% of Japan’s total military losses.
Of Germany’s 10 million casualties in WWII, 75% came fighting the Red Army. The Luftwaffe lost most of its warplanes and its best pilots in the East. Almost all German military production went to supplying the 1,600km Eastern Front, where elite German forces were ground up in titanic battles like Kursk and Stalingrad involving millions of men.
Soviet forces lost upwards of 20 million casualties; total US casualties (including the Pacific) were one million. To the Russians, D-Day, as well as the North African and Italian campaigns, were mainly diversionary side-shows to tie down German troops while the Red Army pushed on to Berlin.
We may dispute this view, but there’s little doubt the Soviets destroyed most of Germany’s military capability well before June, 1944. It’s interesting to speculate what would have happened if Hitler had not invaded the USSR, and if the Allies would then have landed in Normandy to face intact German forces with air cover. My own view: the Allies would have been beaten as quickly and thoroughly as the French Army in 1940.
On the other hand, if the Allies had not landed in France in June, 1944, the Red Army might well have reached Paris, and the North Sea ports sometime in 1945. D-Day must also be thought of as a race between the Allies and the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Army in 1945, was the mightiest Army the world had ever seen. Their tank formations, air-force, land armies, armored corps and shock troops was like nothing the allies could muster up.
If a war did break out between the Allies and Soviets in 1946, the Soviets would have been the clear victors in that campaign. The Allies simply did not have the numerical and technological superiority to hold back the Red Army.
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