so what did the british do in ww2 ?

[euges]

Originally posted by Zbyszek
[ excerpts from the fascinating book of Norman Davies „EUROPE. A history". ]

..... Germany’s immediate neighbours in Poland and France were both eagerly awaiting their
freedom. The Soviet army was approaching the eastern suburbs of Warsaw. The American army was working its way round the western suburbs of Paris. Both cities were filled with various groups of resistance fighters directed mainly from London; both were straining at the leash to rise against The Nazi oppressor. In Warsaw they were led by AK, in Paris by the Free French.
Paris rose on 19 August [1944]. Despite poor intelligence, the idea was to mount attacks inside the city and accelerate the Americans’ final push. Parts of the French Resistance worked with the American Command, which had recognized their value in the battles since Normandy landing. Assailed from all quarters, the German garrison pulled back- and the Americans struck. General Leclerc’s French armoured division, fighting under American command, was given the honour of spearheading the advance. The German garrison surrendered, having ignored the Fuhrer’s order to leave no stone standing. On 25 August, with snipers still active, General de Gaulle walked magnificently erect down the Champs-Elysees. The cathedral of Notre-Dame celebrated a great Te Deum. Despite the heavy loss of civilians, the population rejoiced. France’s pre-war Third Republic was restored; Paris was free.

Warsaw had risen on 1 August, three weeks before Paris. The plan was to co-ordinate attack inside the city with the Soviets’ final push. But the Varsovians were not to share the Parisians’ success. The intelligence of the Polish Resistance was poor; and they found too late that the Soviet Command was not going to help. The Soviet generals had used the Polish Underground in all the battles since crossing the Polish frontier. But Stalin did not recognize independent forces; and he had no intention of letting Poland regain its freedom. Assailed from all quarters, the German garrison had began to withdraw. But then the Soviets suddenly halted on the very edge of the city. Foul treachery was afoot. Moscow Radio, which had called on Warsaw to rise, now denounced the leaders of the rising as ‘a gang of criminals’. Two German panzer divisions moved forward; and the garrison was given time to receive massive reinforcements from the most vicious formations of the Nazi reserves. General Berling’s Polish army, which was fighting under Soviet command, was withdrawn from the Front for defying orders for defying orders and trying to assist the rising. Berling himself was cashiered. Western attempts to supply Warsaw by air from Italy were hamstrung by the Soviets’ reluctance to let their planes land and refuel. Street by street, house by house, sewer by sewer, the insurgents were shelled, gunned, and dynamited on one bank of the Vistula, whilst Soviet solders sunbathed on the opposite bank. In one of several orgies of killing, in the suburb of Mokotów*, Nazi troops massacred 40,000 helpless civilians in scenes reminiscent of the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in the previous year. Weeks after the liberation of Paris, the Warsaw insurgents were still fighting on. They surrendered after sixty-three days, on 2 October, when their commander General Bór, walked into German captivity. Their only consolation was to be granted combatant status. Despite the sacrifice of 250,000 of its citizens, Warsaw remained unfree. Poland’s pre-war Republic was not restored. There was no Te Deum in the destroyed cathedral of St John. The remaining population was evacuated. In his fury, Hitler ordered that no stone of the rebel city was to be left standing. The demolition proceeded for three months, whilst the Soviet army, with its committee of Polish puppets in tow, watched passively from across the river. They did not enter Warsaw’s empty, silent, snowbound ruins until 17 January 1945.

Now, my comment..

Communists made us think that heroic Soviet troops liberated Warsaw on Jan. 17, 1945. Having the above in mind you can guess what sort of liberation it was. Warsaw had 1 250 000 inhabitants before the war (1939). When Soviets crossed the frozen Vistula river and reached its right bank, there was no one to greet them because the town was e m p t y. Can you imagine the empty Phoenix or Pittsburgh? This drama was increased by the fact that many good soldiers of the Polish Army which had been organized in Soviet Union and moving along with the Red Army were aware they were a few months late with this liberation.
The fate of my family, including my 14 years old mother (mother’s side) was no less dramatic than that of thousands innocent civilians, kicked out of their burning city.

* Mokotów is a lovely, green quarter of Warsaw where I have been living through all my childhood and youth. The name originates from Mon Coteau, a French term that means My Hill. I can add that Wladyslaw Szpilman, whose memoir was filmed by Roman Polanski temporarily worked in Mokotow after the Ghetto uprising with a group of his Jewish friends and then he has been hiding in the ruins of Mokotow for months before a day of January Seventeen 1945, which was so lucky to him. Anyone watching the film or reading the book remembered his grotesque liberation.

mr Davies, Should the Soviet army just charged the city walls? The comparison of Paris and Warsaw may be romantic but the actual situation was quite different.

Poland preserved its statehood, enlarged its borders to the West and did pretty well for itself. I won't call it loss of freedom or occuppation of the kind parts of the Soviet Union suffered under Nazi Germans.

Why did the uncoordinated but brave uprising and devastation of the city occur in and to Warsaw and not to Bucharest, Sofia or Prague, or any other city Soviet forces "liberated"?

[Zbyszek]

Originally posted by euges

mr Davies, Should the Soviet army just charged the city walls? The comparison of Paris and Warsaw may be romantic but the actual situation was quite different.

Poland preserved its statehood, enlarged its borders to the West and did pretty well for itself. I won't call it loss of freedom or occuppation of the kind parts of the Soviet Union suffered under Nazi Germans.

Why did the uncoordinated but brave uprising and devastation of the city occur in and to Warsaw and not to Bucharest, Sofia or Prague, or any other city Soviet forces "liberated"? [/b]

Gienek, your comment belongs to a discussion lasting in Poland for decades. Yes, my personal opinion in this case is that the uprising should be delayed. I curse the London-based decision makers whose order concerning the uprising was unfounded. The price Poland paid was definitely too high. Tragically, both the Soviets and ther Nazies confirmed the worst expectations of how they would behave in the end. I remember how many years later gen. Berling remembered the course of things on our TV and Stalin in their private talk said to him: Byerling, vy znayetye, v politikye nyet syentimyentov..
Yesterday, exactly at 5 p.m. a voice of sirens in Warszawa announced another anniversary and all people and cars stopped again and stood half a minute in silence...

[Greg_P]

Kalinin,

I suppose that what you described as "filtering" might actually be taking place, I can't say. I am 52 years old and we learned a lot of history in high school in the 1960's ... no doubt colored by the A,erican point of view, as I'm sure the Russian history texts of the time were colored from the Soviet point of view.

Schools ALWAYS teach the history that is avilable to them in their own language. If our histories don't give a lot of detail about Russian campaigns, it is simply due to the fact that the details of Russian campaigns are mostly known to Russians ... not too many of the Germans survived to write textbooks. In the 1960's, not too many Russian were overly concerned about letting the West know history from the Soviet perspective. So, given the turbulent times in the 1950's and 1960's, I believe it is no wonder that American schools had little, if any, access to the war from the Russian point of view.

I notice in this forum that most of the respondents feel that Russia did the bulk of the fighting and won the bulk of WWII. Naturally, YOUR schools probably give you the details from the Russian point of view, and that is not a condemnation, just a probable fact, especially given the distrust with which the Soviet Union viewed the West, including the British, French, and the U.S.A.

So ... what IS the real truth?

British, Belgian, Dutch, Spanish, and German cities were bombed heavily, many people died on D-Day. There has never been a gathering of military ships and aircraft to compare with D-Day in the history of the world. I cannot comment on the percentage of German troops concentrated on the Russian campaign since I have not checked on it to verify the numbers, but I daresay that the fighting on the British-French front was just as bad as the fighting on the Russian front. We didn't have as many casualties, but that could be an indication of the relative preparedness of the two fronts or of th weapons available. We did not attack the germans with cavalry. I have not read of 1,000-bomber raids on Germany by the Soviet Air Force.

Each front has its own story. Of the two fronts, the Russian front has, by far, the most tragic consequences. The British and Americans would have been there to help if we could have broken through in time. The common goal was to defeat Hitler's military machine.

Keep in mind that the fighting in Western Europe happened in cities and fields where there were hedgerows, hills, and all manner of cover from which to fight. The open steppes and plains of Russia probably offered very little in the way of cover on the battlefield.

My point is that the two fronts were completely different in nature. I am NOT trying to say one was more heroic or more important than the other.

It would be nice, indeed, to compare an English-language version of a Russian history text with an American text. Would the teenagers read it? I don't know. Undoubtedly, SOME would. Certainly, I would.

There were political reasons at the time for letting the Russian military capture Berlin. It was NOT the fact that we couldn't get there in time. Perhaps the 20 million Russian casulaties had something to do with it, huh? As I recall, Stalin insisted on the Soviet Union having the first crack at Berlin, and we agreed.

Now that the war has been over for almost 60 years, and the cold war has been "warmed up" a bit, I'd like to be friends and swap information. I don't want an "America is best!" or a "Russia is best" argument, I want to exchange information in a friendly manner.

So ... can you recommend some English language history books written from the Russian perspective? Can you also tell me where I might buy them? Perhaps over the internet?

[Greg_P]

In the opening post of this thread, it was stated that the Soviet Union absorbed 80% of the German war machine. The facts are somewhat different, and were dredged up from both personal, internet, and library resources.

In 1941, 84% of German troops and 64% of german aircraft were on the eastern front. 5 million Soviet troops against 3.3 million Germans.

By 1942, 74& of German troops and 65% of German aircraft were on the eastern front. million Soviet troops against 3.1 million Germans.

In 1943, 72% OF German troops and 42% of German aircraft were on the eastrn front. There were over twice as many Soviet troops on the eastern front as Germans troops.

In 1944, 40% of German troops and 45% of German aircraft were on the eastrn front. There were over twice as many Soviet troops on the eastern front as Germans troops.

So, when Hitler wanted to conquer Russia (41 - 43), he put the biggest share of his troops into the Russian campaign ... which makes sense. It caused a heavy toll in Russian casualties and materially helped the Western Allies to gear up production of war materiel. By 1944, even Hitler knew the Russian front was a lost cause, and he committed more of his forces elsewhere.

German oil production dropped from 8 million tons in 1939 to 6.4 million tons in 1944. A lot of German oil reserves were lst when Romania was lost to the Germans.

According to my sources, the USSR had 12 million military casulaties and 17 million civilian casualties for a total of 29 million dead. That is simply horrible!

The next worst hit country was Poland with a total of 6.5 million dead, followed by Germany with 5.7 million dead. The USA had 413,000 dead of which only 6,000 were civilians. That makes sense because the USA has two oceans separating it from the war in Europe and Asia.

The reasons for the disparity in war dead are numerous, but there were no invading German divisions in the USA like there were in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union and the Soviet peoples certainly suffered the greatest death toll in the history of warfare during the 1941 - 1943 timeframe. The cost is staggering to consider. I salute your gallant peoples and hope it NEVER has to happen again anywhere in the world to anyone.

However, to claim the Western Allies did little to win the war is to ignore the facts.

In 1940, no German fighter aircraft were used solely against invading bombers. They were available for offense as well as defense. By 1945, 50% of all German combat aircraft were reserved for use against western Allied bombers alone.

In the entire war, the Soviet Union lost 131 major warships of all types. The USA and Great Britain lost 584 majopr warships. We lost 5,150 cargo ships in the Altantic alone; 2,742 to U-boats.

58% of all bombs dropped on Germany were dropped in 1944 by American and English bombers.

I have seen the D-Day landing being mocked on this forum. The facts are as follows:

On D-Day, the Allies landed 2.87 million men against 1.5 million German troops. We landed 5500 tanks against 1400 German tanks. We flew 2500 bombers against 400 Luftwaffe bombers and 3500 fighters against 420 German fighters. These numbers are in ONE battle within a few day period. There is no bigger battle in recorded history anywhere in the world at any time. Whe the battle was finished, the Germans knew they were done for since they were then fighting on two major fronts. Prior to D-Day, the Russian front was the only place where land battles were being fought.

During the entire war, the world as a whole prodiced 542,000 aircraft and 5.1 million vehicles for use in war. The USA alone produced 283,000 aircraft and 2.47 million vehicles for use in war. So, we produced 52% of all wartime aircraft and 48% of all wartime vehicles.

We could do that because we did not have Germans invading our borders.

I state once more here that the Soviet Union and its peoples contributed greatly to the winning of WWII. In human terms, you suffered 61.2% of all deaths in WWII while the Western Allies taken together suffered less than 4% of all WWI deaths.

Yet we contributed more than half of all the war machines used in WWII (remember the ships ...) and dropped almost all the bombs on Germany that destroyed the industrial heart of their war machine ... rendering their field armies short of rations, gasoline, and ammunition.

And I state once more, we could NOT have done it without each other.

If the Western Allies had not destroyed German industrial might, the Russian front would have been well resupplied and the outcome might well have changed. The Germans very nearly won anyway. If the Soviet Union had not fought 70+% of the German troops on the eastern front in 1941-1942, the Western Allies may well have not had the time and strength to build up war material to defeat the Germans. And the Germans very nearly won anyway.

We did it together.

Russia didn't win WWII alone. The Soviet Union didn't win WWII alone. Neither did the USA or Great Britain. We did it together, despite ourselves.

If you disagree, why? Don't give me opinions, show some numbers that support your claims.

[Cojimar 1945]

One service the allies did was to cause German aircraft to be used in defense of Germany rather than on the eastern front. Apparently Germany lost more aircraft against the western allies than they did against the Soviets.

The British/Americans may deserve more credit than the Soviets for destroying the German airforce.

[MaxPower]

The numbers are all wrong

The German forces never went under 2/3 of the eastern front

I dont know where you get 40% from maybe you were looking at divisions and got tricted by assumeing all divisions are the same size or maybe you were looking on the budget a great part of the budget in 44 was going into rockets and other miracle weapons. Also not all divisions are fighting all the time lots of men are resting or moveing from point A to B also many divisions were needed to keep down the people of the occupied countries

A division can be anywhere from 2000 --- 20000 depending on how under strength it is or how fat it is

Also the Axis did invade with 3.3 million germans but there was also 1 million axis allies (finland, romania, hungary and italy plus waffen ss)

Yes the soviets did have 5 million men but only 2.6 million of those were in the west 1,5 million were in the far east and the rest were around the country.

The Soviets did have more men for a full 2 weeks then the axis would have more men in battle untill 1943, so great were the soviet losses during 1941 that they were unable to gain back the advantage untill 43

Anyway just wanted to give my 2 cents about the numbers


Also the aircraft numbers are all wrong on D-day the germans had 3000 planes on the eastern front

[ANDY-J1]

In terms of aircraft destroyed by far the majority of German planes and experienced pilots were lost in the air battles against allied bombers over the Reich. Also there is the effect of British strategic bombing against German industry. Both these factors made things a lot easier for the Russians as they lesssened the tanks and aircraft available for the eastern front so the British were contributing directly in aiding the Russians- imagine the carnage had the Germans been allowed to employ large numbers of jets in the east rather than have them squandered fighting off allied bombing raids. Also comparing numbers of divisions is not always useful- not all divisions were at full strength and the premier divisions of the German army 1st and 2nd SS Panzer, Panzer Lehr etc. (which were at full strength) were stationed in France to combat the allied landings. Another factor is the German rocket programe- that utilised a massive amount of resources that could have been used against Russia and it was the one German weapon that was intended for use solely against Britain, so simply by remaining in the war Britain forced the Germans to divert resources from the war in the east.