70th D-Day question. Why didn't France, England, Ireland, Spain, etc fight in WWII and left America/Russia to Germany

Most European countries had already lapsed quite far to the left or never emerged from the cultural/political/economic sewer of socialism in the first place, so they had little to fight for and no resources to fight with anyway.

History Expert wrote:

Most European countries had already lapsed quite far to the left or never emerged from the cultural/political/economic sewer of socialism in the first place, so they had little to fight for and no resources to fight with anyway.

Normally I would call "obvious troll" on this one as well, but unfortunately one cannot be sure these days. As blatantly false and stupid as this is, you can totally hear it coming from the likes of Sean Hannity. Which means millions of halfbrains all over America will instantly believe it to be true.

adfawdsf wrote:

Here, just watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOVEy1tC7nk&feature=kp

You're welcome.

Nice!

Read "The Hopkin's Touch" to see how the Soviet Union won in Europe. Without our guns, trucks and supplies they would have pulled out of WWII just like they pulled out of WWI with another civil war.

The Russian's "winning" Europe is inaccurate. They lost about 22 million men. They used their soldiers as fodder. Our losses were about 300k dead in a two-theater war.

The harsh winter's helped hold off the Germans as well. The Russians got their asses kicked. Roughly every sixth man in the country died in the war.

Stalin's Molotov pact with Hilter was important, it enabled the blitz to concentrate on Western Europe with impunity.

So did Russia suffer during the war? Yes. Did they get what they deserved Yes.

Let's also remember the Russian mass-murder of the entire Polish officer corps as a prelude. One of the worst atrocities --about 2000 people-- of the 20th century.

Look at the number of boots on the ground during World War Two.

PRC gets 90% of the credit for defeating Japan.

USSR gets 85% credit for defeating Germany.

shhhhh wrote:

The Russian's "winning" Europe is inaccurate. They lost about 22 million men. They used their soldiers as fodder. Our losses were about 300k dead in a two-theater war.

So you're basing winners and losers on the number of deaths?

The Soviets lost 10 - 12 million soldiers. That includes the 3 million prisoners the Germans slaughtered.

6 million Soviet civilians starved to death and 4 - 8 million through bombings and atrocities.

shhhhh wrote:

The Russian's "winning" Europe is inaccurate. They lost about 22 million men. They used their soldiers as fodder. Our losses were about 300k dead in a two-theater war.

The harsh winter's helped hold off the Germans as well. The Russians got their asses kicked. Roughly every sixth man in the country died in the war.

Stalin's Molotov pact with Hilter was important, it enabled the blitz to concentrate on Western Europe with impunity.

So did Russia suffer during the war? Yes. Did they get what they deserved Yes.

Let's also remember the Russian mass-murder of the entire Polish officer corps as a prelude. One of the worst atrocities --about 2000 people-- of the 20th century.

some truth there, but the Russians did wind up with an empire that they held for 45 years.

Costly in terms of dead soldiers, but they milked the SSRs pretty good and owned half of Germany for 45 years.

If nothing else, the eastern block countries the Russians conquered provided a buffer zone.

The Russians had the greatest ground attack plane ever, the IL-2 Sturmovik Flying Tank.

Not sure that this was really a big win for Russia/USSR.

Milked the SSRs? For what? Basically that whole system just dragged everyone in it down. So, if you mean that they then had company in their misery for 45 years, then yeah, I suppose. Not much of a big win from this perspective.

And a buffer zone? Against what? Against whom? Was the US or Britain or France really going to try to take over Russia? What the heck were they buffering against? And if against nothing then what was the value of such a 'buffer zone'?

[quote]fudge not lest ye be fudged wrote:

Germany invaded Poland on Sept 1st 1939. This effectively started WWII.

Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th 1941 - more than two years later. Only then did the US grow a pair and join the war.

What say you know, aquote]

I think that oversimplifies things a bit. Most of the US was not interested getting involved (again) in a war in Europe. The US got in at the end of WWI and lost a lot of troops. Isolationism was rampant in the country.

Roosevelt did what he could to help GB.

Based on what the US military was like in 1939, the US would not have been much help in stopping the German overrunning of Western Europe.

The US waited until it was attacked. One argument is that the US just should have fought Japan since Germany had not attacked us, but then Germany did declare war a day or two after Pearl Harbor.

History Class wrote:

70th D-Day question. Why didn't France, England, Ireland, Spain, etc fight in WWII and left America/Russia by themselves to obliterate Germany?

France: France was the great continental power for the Western allies and her situation was hopeless after Case Yellow. France and her allies actually had more and better troops and equipment but superior tactics, especially revolutionary concepts like massed armored formations and combined arms operations carried the day for Germany.

France could have continued fighting with the help of her allies but Germany would have occupied France much sooner than they did when Case Anton was carried out. Germany most likely would have occupied France's African colonies also.

England: After the escape at Dunkirk, England was left without much heavy equipment and could really only continue a bombing campaign to fight Germany.

Ireland: Neutral, other posters have talked about this.

Spain: Spain was asked by Germany to join the Axis side but within months Spain would have been blockaded by England and there was very little benefit to join Germany. The country was still recovering from the civil war and while the Blue Division fought well, that is misleading since the best and most hard-line soldiers were probably fighting. The quality of that division probably couldn't be extrapolated to her other soldiers.

Source: A lot of personal reading. How Hitler could have won WW2, Battle of France: Strange Victory, and other books have formed my opinions and analysis.

This. As was previously mentioned, there was a lot of isolationist sentiment in the US at the time, and the huge industrial power of the US wasn't geared for war production at that point. Our military was tiny and had inferior equipment (we had just phased out biplane fighters a few years earlier!), we would have been totally inconsequential earlier.

The US in World War II was not Honey Badger. We did not put the world on our backs. We were an effective fighting force once we got involved, that pushed the scales in the Allies' favor, but we were one part of a team.

I applaud you as the only other knowledgeable poster on this subject.

1. Unlike what most people think, the French fought well and were bled white. Look at the casualty figures. And their situation was hopeless, after the pivotal victory at Sedan, the Germans completely cut off the Norther rump of the allied armies and it was all over. Why didn't France do the same as Russia? In Western Europe the distances were much shorter and attrition was something that could be avoided by tactical and strategic mastery of the battlefield.

2. Correct, Franco was smart to not involve himself in the war. He purposely asked for too much so Hitler wouldn't agree to Spanish intervention.

3. I disagree with the the prevailing thought that the USSR could have beaten Germany. (I don't talk about Italy because aside from their Navy, their armed forces sucked) The reason Germany lost after the Battle of France was that the focus of attack was not directed towards the Mediterranean theater, as Admiral Raedar and everybody else knew to be the correct objective. The English had like one armored division in North Africa and Germany could have used a few of their like 15 panzer divisions to smoke them there. After, they could continue East to capture the Suez canal and onto the middle east to capture infinite amounts of oil. Iraq was a temporary belligerent for the Axis powers, btw, and the area was ripe for the taking.

4. Correct, a lot of countries suffered mightedly, especially the USSR, China, and Germany.

5. The Dunkirk debacle could have probably brought the UK to the negotiating table.

6. With a Mediterrean strategy, Germany wouldn't even have had to attack England nor the USSR directly. Sun Tzu: attack where the enemy is weak. Up until the Battle of Britain, Germany had done exactly that--with spectacular results.

7. Germany could't invade Britain. It's navy was severely mauled by the Norway campaign and Britain had complete naval mastery of the local area.

8. WW2 bombing was actually rather ineffectual. Just check the diaries of Alliled and Axis leaders to see how inaccurate and costly they were. One big mistake of Hitler was to have so many flak batteries defending the Reich when planes were MUCH, MUCH more economical. He decided to have a flak arm for "civilian morale", even if it was ineffective.

9. If Germany wanted to have attacked the USSR directly, his generals advised securing terrain in pieces, over a period of years. The three army groups that attacked the USSR were severely short of manpowder, machines, trucks, supplies, everything. He even diluted the panzer arm to have "more" divisions that couldn't perform as autonomous entities like in the West.

"its" navy. Hard to avoid typos and mistakes with a long post.

Germany also developed potentially spectacular new weapons.

1. Messerschmidt 262: first effective operational jet fighter. Ace fighter Adolf Galland called flying it like, "angels pushing on you." Very, very effective in comparison to piston-powered planes like the p-51 Mustang. Troubles with engine development delayed its arrival to the skies.

2. Stg 44: first assault rifle. Amazing, very popular with troops and a great bridge between bolt action rifles and sub machine guns.

3. V1: Analysis of the V1 campaign and the Blitz show the V1 to be much more effective in causing casualties and material damage than the bombing campaign and with little loss in life or planes. The money spent on the V2, however, was MORE than what we spent on the Manhatten project. The V2 was not a smart investment for WW2 but it was important for future cruise missile development.

4. MG-42. So effective that our M60 was heavily based on it and is still used today. The post-war MG-1 is almost a copy of it too.

I could go on and on, but few would know what I'm talking about.

I'll concede the points after doing some additional research and thinking.

But there has to be some benefit to a centrally planned economy controlling a bunch of clients states around you. Just not sure how to show it.

The Russian winter and Hitler's ego are what defeated the Third Reich. A sane leader and we may be looking at a different world today.

Please tell me you're a troll or at least not an American HS student.

Please.