>ALthough the Eastern Front is my front in WWII, I will say that downgrading
>the importance of the Second Front is not a view that was shared by the
>Soviets at the time!
Well, I wasn't downgrading it; just recasting it. And the Sovites had been begging for the invasion for two years - neither Chirchill nor Roosevelt thought it conceivable before Kursk took out most of Germany's armour and thereafter absorbed all her reserves (they literally lost thousands of tanks at Kursk - the scale of the carnage is beyond imagination, I think). Sure, the invasion helped the Soviets (to whom I'm sure it still mattered a fair bit), it just didn't decide whether Germany would win or not. That, I reckon, was decided at Kursk (if we must choose a single engagement). And of course the Italian and western fronts were horrible - fewer soldiers involved, but commensurable per capita agonies, I'm sure.
I think British and American strategy after they got through at Falaise Gap was as much concerned with the implications of the Russian advance as it was with the immediate challenges mounted by the Germans. Might even explain the extremely ambitious Operation Market Garden episode - a nice idea rather ruined by excessively impatient territorial ambition (hence that rather boring war flick 'A Bridge Too Far').
Cheers, Rob.
Until D-Day, all Stalin and Molotov could talk about
>with Churchill and Roosvelt was Second Front, when? And whatever moron said
>that the Western Allies faced children and old men at Normandy and the
>Battle of Bulge should talk to some veterans of those conflicts. I think
>that person confused the battle for the West with the final gasp in
>March-May 1945, when the Nazis did mobilize the home reserves. The Italian
>front was very tough too--Anzio was no piece of cake. And it _mattered to
>the Russians, oh yes it did. And indeed, to us all. --jks
>
>
>>From: Rob Schaap <rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au>
>>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>>Subject: Re: Allies against fascism?
>>Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 16:04:25 +1100
>>
>>Worth pointing out, too, that D-Day could not have happened but for the
>>Eastern Front in general and Germany's enormous reversals at Stalingrad and
>>Kursk in particular. So D-Day was not, and could never be, a decisive
>>war-ender or a very useful aid to the Soviets (the possibility of it
>>probably kept the few really useful divisions left at Rommel's disposal in
>>the west, but even they - mebbe 100 000 tried'n'true - couldn't have turned
>>the eastern tide after Kursk). By the time a western invasion was
>>practically doable, it was more a matter of keeping a chunky buffer zone on
>>the continent out of Stalin's mits ...
>>
>>Cheers,
>>Rob.
>>
>> >Max,
>> >
>> >>I'm out of my depth on this topic, but how could
>> >>the Western Front be 'small'? I would say the
>> >>Southern Front was secondary -- all those annoying
>> >>mountains in there, but the west? That doesn't
>> >>discount the extent of casualties in the East.
>> >
>> >Looks like Charles beat me to this. Let's put it this way - the Nazi's
>> >were already beaten by the time of the Normandy invasion. The Nazi
>>forces
>> >were solidly on the defensive in the East. Certainly the Western Front
>> >hastened the inevitable, but the Germans were defeated in Russia.
>> >
>> >The western allies helped the Russians by sending them equipment and so
>>on,
>> >but the lion's share of the credit goes to the Soviets, in my opinion.
>> >
>> >Brett
>>
>>
>>
>
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