From: Monte Davis 

"Robert Comer"  wrote:

>WAY too simplistic.  Just how did the Soviets take out that 75%...

By day-after-day combat, on a scale of multiple army groups, on a land
front from 800 to 1800 miles long, for 47 months with very few quiet
spells.

Because of geography as well as strategic choices, the US always had the
choice of when and where to take on the Wehrmacht. The UK, aside from 7
weeks leading up to Dunkirk in 1940, took them on peripherally
(Scandinavia, Balkans-Greece-Crete, N. Africa after Rommel came to save the
Italians' bacon), with "breathers" between intense spells, rather
than going straight into the buzzsaw.

Then we and the UK faced the Germans together, still peripherally: final
phase of N. Africa, then Sicily, then Italy. Only in June 1944 did we and
the UK begin to take on German land forces on a scale (and with materiel
and logistical depth) even approaching the scale and depth  the USSR had
experienced for 36 months by then. And "approaching" is being
generous: in the destruction of Army Group Center, June-August 1944, the
USSR killed and captured *more German soldiers than there were in all of
France.*

NONE of the above has anything to do with "good" or
"bad," with how any participant did or didn't get into a war with
Germany, or "deserved" what happened, or behaved well after V-E
day -- it's simple geography. Main-force land conflict eats combatants'
lives much faster than naval or aerial conflict. In WWII the USSR did much
more of the former, for much longer -- because after 22 June 1941 it had no
choice
-- while the US and UK had the comparative luxury of doing mostly the
latter until they'd built up the steamroller resources behind Operation Overlord.

As a result -- and this is NO reflection on the courage or skill of the
Allied troops -- the Wehrmacht they faced from Normandy to V-E SDday was
much less "fresh" and aggressive than the Wehrmacht that had hit
Western Europe in 1940 and the USSR in 1941 (although we got a taste at the
Bulge). And we faced forces numerically about a quarter the size of the
force the Red Army was fighting over the same period.

So it's not surprising that USSR chauvinists saw the Western Allies as
"plinking" around the edges for too long, then jumping in late to
help bring down an enemy which by June 1944 the Red Army had decisively on
the retreat. In the same way, our chauvinists saw the USSR as jumping into
Manchuria in August 1945, rolling over third-tier troops to get a piece of
Japan's defeat without paying the price we'd paid from Pearl Harbor to
Okinawa.

Then of course there are the idiotic US chauvinists here, who puff up their
warrior wattles by reminding eah other how we saved the "Brits"
twice, or snickering about the loser French... more of whose soldiers died
fighting Hitler in 7 weeks of 1940 than the US lost in all of WWII. Again,
not a question of merit or virtue -- just geography. I guess it's easier to
be General Gary or Field Marshal Mark with an ocean on each side.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5