Allies against fascism?

[Rob Schaap]

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