Did the Allies win WW2 mostly due to brute force?

Did the Allies win WW2 mostly due to brute force?

  • Yes

    Votes: 97 27.2%
  • No

    Votes: 99 27.8%
  • To a degree

    Votes: 160 44.9%

  • Total voters
    356

hipper

Banned
Better read that again. Jan Wellen had only topped them in ballast.; plus she had the wrong kind of fuel.

The most likely event is what happened. The Germans scattered among the fjords to avoid FAA air attacks. Fouled fuel and incomplete top-off in ballast.The Germans did not have the bunkerage or ballast necessary to do what you claim.

Jan Willhelm had 8000 tonnes of fuel oil that’s about 700 tonnes for each destroyer assuming 90% of it is useable. how much fuel do you think a destroyer holds? there is only 1000 tonnes between the 1934 class standard and full displacement. So they had the fuel required to make the return trip to germany about 600 tonnes according to your source.

HMS Glorious was in the North Sea.


HMS Glorious was in the mediteranian on the 10th of April 1940 conducting air training with Ark Royal according to Naval History.net and sailed to the Clyde. she was operational in the North sea in April 22nd.


So what? The Germans were not going anywhere. And there was HMS Renown on standby for Mousehole duty.

the german zdestroyers were under orders to return to Germany. on the 9 th they could not because of the delays involved in refuelling from one Tanker, they would have been ready on the evening of the 10th unless WL had not attacked.


I’ve been mentioning the weather for some time now it was very bad throughout rendering the eventual air attack 50% ineffective two days later and rendering the Concept of close blockade problematic. what do you think the germans chances were of escaping with some of the destroyers in a Snowstorm.

It appears there is a LOT despite your excellent research that remains unknown to you that you do not understand about Narvik.

it is possible that I lack understanding, on the other hand you seem to be using a ton of Hindsight to Rubbish the achievement of the First VC of the war without understanding the issues involved. Warbuton Lee Knew he was going to be outnumbered but decided to attack anyway. By doing so he caught the Germans at the moment of maximum Weakness. He disabled 5 destroyers in an action,where he got one of his destroyers damaged by one shell. this was an overwhelming victory, he then saw three more ships coming down the Fjord so he decided to retreat. these three destroyers were not handled very aggressively and were not engaging heavily. He was then Suprised by the George Thiel and theVon Arnim the Thiel was handled very effectively and inflicted most of the damage on the British Ships. it was only at this point with WL dead and his destroyer aground the British line fell into confusion. however the Thiel was also rendered combat inefective and 5he three surviving British Ships escaped down the Fjord. intercepting the german reserve amunition Ship as they left.

so no the british destroyers had not lost contact and were navigating independently because they had to change course when WL’s destroyer went aground.

It was in poor light when the Swordfish attacked U-64 at 1050, and she had to drop a parachute flare before she dropped her bomb and strafed the German. The Germans claim it was a depth charge. There was deep twilight shadow in the fjord and there was artificial illumination used to dispatch Kunne (starshell.)

Petty officer Rice the pilot of the swordfish does not mention Flares.

“With floats on a Swordfish you couldn’t carry a torpedo. What we carried was 250lbs armour piercing bombs, two 100lb bombs and an anti-submarine bomb. I decided to use the two armour-piercing bombs.”

Warspite Ian Ballantine

And... Explain the other British backup force mouse-holing the Fjord as Warburton Lee charged in then? Hmm?

there were no other british Forces at the mouth of the Vestfjord when WL attacked. he was ordered to Vestfjord at 06:26 on the 9th 10 minutes after Renown lost contact with Sharnhorst and Gneiseau. Penelope was not ordered to Vestfjord until 06:00 on the morning off the 10th


Five German destroyers attacked the Warspite incursion. So obviously something is wrong, here.

the germans did some Repairs between the 10th and the 13th
.
No. It was not. And you can see why. (^^^) The British MOUSE HOLED Narvik. Plus the Germans did not have the fuel they needed to get home. The British waited this time until they were ready, then they went in for round two.

Warbiton Lee was ordered to the mouth of the Vestfjord and arrived there to discover that the Germans had already arrived he had to decide to attack or not, he decided to attack he destroyed or damaged 6 german Destroyer for the loss or damage of three of his own, in a destroyer fight at 2:1 odds that’s an excellent performance.

it’s interesting to note that in the later attack with Warspite and 10 destroyers the British lost two destroyers the same as WL

fundamentally I don’t see how he did badly. And I think he carried out a model attack on a defended harbour.[/Quote]
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Since all you guys seem to hear is that the Germans were flawless and amazing strategists, and the Allies were bumbling hordes, regardless of what your fellow conversants are saying, fine then.


Fuck you all, Hitler's dog would make a better strategist than every allied general. Logistics don't matter, a total of zero German tanks were ever destroyed in the war. All allied casualties were directly resultant of their incompetence and failure as men.

You're never going to win your arguments because you are in fact perpetuating them when you refuse to accept anything other than "every aspect of Germany was awful and incompetent". Hopefully you can learn to argue above a preschool level.
1st: Thank you so much for forcing me to put on my Mod hat in here, thereby barring me from any further discussion in a semi-interesting.

Now, to the issue - You had absolutely no reason to start dropping F-Bombs. That is going from playing the ball to ignoring the ball and elbowing the man in the kidneys.

Kicked for a week.
 
Did the Allies win WW2 mostly due to brute force (larger manpower and industrial capability) as opposed to superior skill and fighting prowess?

I would agree that Russia (aka Soviet Union) won primarily via brute force (although the soviet T34 was an incredible tank from a technological and simplicity standpoint), but the western allies had an incredible technological edge in areas like code breaking and aircraft technology.
 
Jan Willhelm had 8000 tonnes of fuel oil that’s about 700 tonnes for each destroyer assuming 90% of it is useable. how much fuel do you think a destroyer holds? there is only 1000 tonnes between the 1934 class standard and full displacement. So they had the fuel required to make the return trip to germany about 600 tonnes according to your source.




HMS Glorious was in the mediteranian on the 10th of April 1940 conducting air training with Ark Royal according to Naval History.net and sailed to the Clyde. she was operational in the North sea in April 22nd.




the german zdestroyers were under orders to return to Germany. on the 9 th they could not because of the delays involved in refuelling from one Tanker, they would have been ready on the evening of the 10th unless WL had not attacked.



I’ve been mentioning the weather for some time now it was very bad throughout rendering the eventual air attack 50% ineffective two days later and rendering the Concept of close blockade problematic. what do you think the germans chances were of escaping with some of the destroyers in a Snowstorm.



it is possible that I lack understanding, on the other hand you seem to be using a ton of Hindsight to Rubbish the achievement of the First VC of the war without understanding the issues involved. Warbuton Lee Knew he was going to be outnumbered but decided to attack anyway. By doing so he caught the Germans at the moment of maximum Weakness. He disabled 5 destroyers in an action,where he got one of his destroyers damaged by one shell. this was an overwhelming victory, he then saw three more ships coming down the Fjord so he decided to retreat. these three destroyers were not handled very aggressively and were not engaging heavily. He was then Suprised by the George Thiel and theVon Arnim the Thiel was handled very effectively and inflicted most of the damage on the British Ships. it was only at this point with WL dead and his destroyer aground the British line fell into confusion. however the Thiel was also rendered combat inefective and 5he three surviving British Ships escaped down the Fjord. intercepting the german reserve amunition Ship as they left.

so no the british destroyers had not lost contact and were navigating independently because they had to change course when WL’s destroyer went aground.



Petty officer Rice the pilot of the swordfish does not mention Flares.

“With floats on a Swordfish you couldn’t carry a torpedo. What we carried was 250lbs armour piercing bombs, two 100lb bombs and an anti-submarine bomb. I decided to use the two armour-piercing bombs.”

Warspite Ian Ballantine



there were no other british Forces at the mouth of the Vestfjord when WL attacked. he was ordered to Vestfjord at 06:26 on the 9th 10 minutes after Renown lost contact with Sharnhorst and Gneiseau. Penelope was not ordered to Vestfjord until 06:00 on the morning off the 10th




the germans did some Repairs between the 10th and the 13th
.


Warbiton Lee was ordered to the mouth of the Vestfjord and arrived there to discover that the Germans had already arrived he had to decide to attack or not, he decided to attack he destroyed or damaged 6 german Destroyer for the loss or damage of three of his own, in a destroyer fight at 2:1 odds that’s an excellent performance.

it’s interesting to note that in the later attack with Warspite and 10 destroyers the British lost two destroyers the same as WL

fundamentally I don’t see how he did badly. And I think he carried out a model attack on a defended harbour.
[/QUOTE]

Look I intend to bring this argument to a close with a very simple statement.

Warburton-Lee attacked because it was his duty to do so.

Failing to engage the enemy where it was possible to do so under any circumstances was a court martial offence, the penalty for avoiding action was death!
The Articles of War governing the conduct of His Majesty's Navy are very clear on this, they once shot an Admiral for declining battle pour encourages les autres, its where the phrase comes from.
http://www.pdavis.nl/NDA1866.htm
http://www.pdavis.nl/NDA1884.htm
... and yes in 1940 the 1884 regulations were still valid, they were not updated until 1957.

Royal Navy Destroyer Captains had the aggressive instincts of a wolverine with a toothache, its how they were trained, the Navy looked for and encouraged that sort of attitude. Whether it is questionable now is irrelevant, hindsight does not matter in this case. Bernard Armitage Warburton-Lee did what was expected of him in accordance with his training and the traditions and regulations of the service, he could not have acted otherwise. Indeed had he done so he would at the very least have been relieved of command.
 
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Look I intend to bring this argument to a close with a very simple statement.

Warburton-Lee attacked because it was his duty to do so.

Failing to engage the enemy where it was possible to do so under any circumstances was a court martial offence, the penalty for avoiding action was death!
The Articles of War governing the conduct of His Majesty's Navy are very clear on this, they once shot an Admiral for declining battle pour encourages les autres, its where the phrase comes from.
http://www.pdavis.nl/NDA1866.htm
http://www.pdavis.nl/NDA1884.htm
... and yes in 1940 the 1884 regulations were still valid, they were not updated until 1957.

Royal Navy Destroyer Captains had the aggressive instincts of a wolverine with a toothache, its how they were trained, the Navy looked for and encouraged that sort of attitude. Whether it is questionable now is irrelevant, hindsight does not matter in this case. Bernard Armitage Warburton-Lee did what was expected of him in accordance with his training and the traditions and regulations of the service, he could not have acted otherwise. Indeed had he done so he would at the very least have been relieved of command.
Perhaps fewer destroyers would have sunk if, in between practicing their "Blood for the Blood God" chants, they could have spent some more time on things like damage control.

That said, the RN actions early in the war against Germany are a clear example that the RN, much like the German army's vaunted capacity for initiative, was quite capable of taking significant risks in pursuit of significant ends while the enemy was bogged down by catastrophically inept command decisions. Although I suppose its chief proponent on this thread has now been forcibly shown the door, perhaps someone could educate us on the tactical brilliance of bottling up half your navy's destroyer fleet in a single fjord.
 
I would agree that Russia (aka Soviet Union) won primarily via brute force (although the soviet T34 was an incredible tank from a technological and simplicity standpoint), but the western allies had an incredible technological edge in areas like code breaking and aircraft technology.

I would go one step further and say that by the final two years of the war (if not earlier), the armies of the Soviets and W. Allies had learnt from their prior mistakes and were the Germans' equals on the tactical and operational level, if not better in many respects.
 

hipper

Banned
Look I intend to bring this argument to a close with a very simple statement.

Warburton-Lee attacked because it was his duty to do so.

Failing to engage the enemy where it was possible to do so under any circumstances was a court martial offence, the penalty for avoiding action was death!
The Articles of War governing the conduct of His Majesty's Navy are very clear on this, they once shot an Admiral for declining battle pour encourages les autres, its where the phrase comes from.
http://www.pdavis.nl/NDA1866.htm
http://www.pdavis.nl/NDA1884.htm
... and yes in 1940 the 1884 regulations were still valid, they were not updated until 1957.

Royal Navy Destroyer Captains had the aggressive instincts of a wolverine with a toothache, its how they were trained, the Navy looked for and encouraged that sort of attitude. Whether it is questionable now is irrelevant, hindsight does not matter in this case. Bernard Armitage Warburton-Lee did what was expected of him in accordance with his training and the traditions and regulations of the service, he could not have acted otherwise. Indeed had he done so he would at the very least have been relieved of command.


hmm yes but no

this gazette says he was ordered to carry out an attack “On being ordered to carry out an attack on Narvik, Captain Warburton-Lee learned that the enemy was holding the place in much greater force than had been thought. He signalled to the Admiralty that six German destroyers and one submarine were there, that the channel might be mined, and that he intended to attack at dawn. The Admiralty replied that he alone could judge whether to attack, and that whatever decision he made would have full support.”

I have no doubt that he saw it as his duty to attack whatever the odds but the Admiralty gave him a get out clause.

the only criticism I have of the affair is that Penelope was not sent in support earlier.
 
The Allies only won using brute force if you define brute force as "utilizing every resource and weapon you have to the max" and "taking advantage of superior production capabilities". Their victory was just as much a result of developing superior technology, strategy, inherent advantages, and eventually training as the Axis defeat was due to a series of tactical and strategic mistakes and inherent disadvantages along with relative technological inferiority as the war went on.

I'm going to go ahead and declare right now that the idea of it "taking five Shermans to defeat one Tiger" and "Soviet human waves" are a myth. There are plenty of resources out there that refute this claim, which I'm not going to bother going into because that would extend this post unnecessarily.

Yes, it's true that the Allies had a decent if not outright good chance of winning using brute force if it came down to it, but there was a lot of finesse that went into the Allied victory and ending the war when it did, instead of perhaps years later.

The Allied victories of 1940-43 can most certainly not be said to have been the result of brute force. The Battle of Britain, for instance, had the British come out victorious while outnumbered by the Luftwaffe, and the US was in a precarious balancing act in the Pacific for a good while after Pearl Harbor, at one point having only a single carrier in that entire theater. As for the Soviets, while it is true that they had a lot more manpower, things like the KV tanks and the T-34 were most certainly not brute-force affairs—the Battle of Raseiniai, where a few KV tanks stopped an entire German panzer division for an entire day, is a prime counter-example of this—one of the few bright spots in what was otherwise probably the darkest hour of the Soviet armed forces.

In these years, superior Allied strategy and critical Axis mistakes made a big difference in the outcome, just as much as numbers. To elaborate on some of the above examples:
  • The Battle of Midway resulted in an American victory despite them being outnumbered and operating with a crippled carrier due to a combination of luck and generally better conduct before during the battle—the Japanese not committing the 5th cardiv into the fight due to plane losses (Zuikaku, at the least, could have made do with some plane and pilot transfers, but the Japanese never thought of that) while the Americans repaired Yorktown in 24 hours, Nagumo's vacillating compared to Spruance's decisiveness, damage control differences, (Yorktown tricking Hiryu into wasting multiple airstrikes on her and not damaging the other American carriers while Kaga died to literally a single bomb), etc. That's not even to mention the pre-battle shenanigans, like the American codebreaking or the rather pointless diversionary Japanese attack on the Aleutians.
  • The Battle of Britain was won despite the British having an quantitative inferiority in planes at the start. There were many factors in this victory: for instance, the radar stations that provided critical early warning proved very resilient to German attacks, and the British fighters proved quite the match for the German bombers and their fighter escorts (in fact, with regards to the ME 110, I'd say the thing was a net minus to the German strength during the battle), the British had the home field advantage, not to mention the entire German battle plan was to make way for the seriously flawed and frequently mocked plan known as Sea Lion.
  • The Soviets, contrary to popular belief, had much more elegant battle plans than what movies like Enemy at the Gates may suggest. A critical part of this was the theory of Deep Battle Operations. To give a quick and dirty summary of this, there would be multiple attacks all across the front in order to keep enemy divisions pinned down while most of the force would attack for a primary objective—basically Blitzkrieg but with multiple thrusts instead of a single one. As for why Barbarossa failed, a big reason is the sheer depth of the USSR, which allowed the Soviet Union to basically get its [edited] together and trade time for space, until the Nazi offensive bogged down and the Soviet forces could counterattack.
Moreover, it could be argued that the Allied nations were a lot more suited and prepared to fight the types of battles that came to characterize WW2 more than the Axis, who did much to hinder themselves.

  • The US mainland was completely untouchable by just about every Axis power, allowing it to pump out massive amounts of manpower and machinery for the Allied cause while also thinking up new and better technology that made life for the Axis even more difficult. Things like the VT fuse and the B29 bomber are prime examples that they had just as much to offer in the "quality" field as the "quantity" field.
  • The sheer scale of the British air, sea, and land defenses—everything from the RAF and the Royal Navy to the home guard and all of the various homeland defenses—meant that Nazi Germany really never had a chance of conducting a successful invasion. In the longer term, their intelligence agencies also played havoc among the Germans. While it may be true that they needed the quantitative support from the US to conduct eventual counterattacks (as opposed to defending themselves and their holdings), brute force was never the sole contributor to their tactics.
  • The Soviet Union utilized its sheer size to stretch German logistics to the limit and to buy time for it to get its [censored] together, and while it was caught off-guard and suffered massive losses for it, the Soviet military did learn from their mistakes, perfecting the theory of Deep Operations and even found the solution to blitzkrieg in the process, as shown in Kursk. Yes, they did have a manpower advantage, but they wielded it with the precision of a sickle as much as the force of a hammer.
In comparison, the Axis nations were rather unprepared, and indeed took steps at times to actively hinder themselves:
  • Apart from the colossal blunders of Barbarossa and declaring war on the US, the Germans never really developed a strategic bomber, something that hindered them during the Battle of Britain, and their navy was quite laughable in the realm of naval superiority (something that U-boats are not suited for). Its racial and genocidal policies frequently alienated potential allies (for example, the Jewish scientists they kicked out pre-war ended up helping design the atomic bomb for the US) and its economy was really sustained only by looting and plundering conquered countries. But by far the biggest problem they had were their quite antiquated logistics and industrial procedures: examples include the lack of an assembly line and Hitler insisting the ME262 be developed as a dive bomber, and the so-vaunted Panthers and Tigers were logistical failures that didn't even live up to the "5v1" myth. Add that to various tactical failings like Hitler's "no retreating" orders and you get the Soviets marching into Berlin on the ground while the Americans and British take turns flying over the city at night with not a care in the world. As for their "wunderwaffe", they were too little, too expensive, and too late.
  • The Italians were, quite simply put, unprepared for WW2, mostly owing to prewar economic woes. This feebleness showed in multiple ways and, to put it simply, is the reason why Italy generally has a reputation of being an absolute pushover during the war.
  • Japan based a lot of its doctrines around Mahan's theory of decisive battle and its experiences in the Russo-Japanese war. Quite a few of the Japanese high command knew that they couldn't hope to match the US in a numbers game, thus they aimed for a short, sharp war to force the Americans to the negotiating table and tried for the quality approach (Yamato being a prime example). However, they were ill-suited for the protracted carrier warfare the US, in its outrage over Pearl Harbor, forced them to fight: their commerce protection was a joke, they couldn't replace critical personnel and assets (and wasted them frequently in frankly stupid tactics like Banzai charges), the IJN and IJA frequently damaged the general war effort while bickering with each other, etc.
To counter some of the more common myths of Axis technological and tactical superiority:
  • No, it didn't take 5 Shermans to kill a single Tiger, and Shermans weren't deathtraps: they were much more reliable, versatile, cheaper, and had better crew survival rates. The five Shermans is simply because they tended to operate in squads of 5, while German tanks frequently were forced to operate alone due to various factors, none of which are anything for the Germans to be proud of. The Battle of Arracourt is a prime counterexample to this myth, and there are a host of other sources online that are dedicated to refuting this myth.
  • Rommel may have been tactically gifted, but he was a strategic and logistical failure, overrunning his supply lines frequently in North Africa and could be argued to have ultimately caused the German defeat in North Africa.
  • The Bismarck was not anything to write home about: it utilized an inferior armor scheme, a substandard propulsion system that ultimately got it sunk, AA that couldn't down a few biplanes, and a host of other flaws. Its primary achievement was sinking the Hood, an outdated battlecruiser that hadn't received retrofits necessary for the nature of WW2 Atlantic naval combat, with a lucky shot. It was basically an oversized Bayern. To compare, the North Carolina class was limited by the Washington Naval Treaty, weighed about 10% less, and had a much better service record to show for it.
TL; DR: No. The suggestion that the Allies won using purely brute force is a myth perpetuated by wehraboos. There is simply no other way to describe it.
 
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I will reply to the Narvik stuff in a bit.


I found this (^^^) very interesting.

Notice the target service/kill methods, engine overheating, armor qualities, communications, and ergonomics. For example it turns out that for the first two years of the Russian War, the T-34 was vulnerable to the 75mm and the 37 mm German tank guns. Armor was defective on the T-34 (welds popped when struck), the engine could overheat in temperate weather because cooling was inadequate, radios were junk, crew training was very poor, ammunition was defective or not available, the Russians did not practice combined arms. The 20 mm kills were tungsten cored APCR shot used by the PZKW IIIs. 88mm guns, to my surprise, killed less than 5% of the T-34s encountered. And T-34s were killed by the bushel load. They were cheese whizzed almost as if they were BTs. At the onset of Barbarossa of the 1,400-1700 T-34s available (confusion on sources?), about 400 were still stuck in factories or non-runners and allegedly ~1,000-1,300 were in the 5 tank corps. So my original conclusion that the T-34 was not much more numerous than the PZKWIII still remains fairly accurate, I think. ~1,000 versus possibly 1,300.
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There had to be a material reason why the T-34 performed poorly. I could summarize it further by stating I knew about crew factors, mentioned the high explosive round kills (75mm track hits.) and was aware of engine overheating, poor transmissions, air filter failures and crude welds (Aberdeen Report) already. The surprises for me, were the high number of APCR kills and how few 88mm kills there were. Not only was the Flak 88 not as much a factor as I supposed against the counterattacking Russians, but the Germans were deadly shots in the attack. They had to be in order for the relatively few tungsten rounds they had to account for so many T-34s.

Now before the KV crowd bring out that monster, let me supply this bit of trivia.

There was a lot of politics involved with tank production inside the Stalinist Soviet Union, which characterized and explained its BIZARRE tank park that it had prior to the Great Patriotic War. (One of the inherent inefficiencies of the usual top down dictatorship is its "political" production mechanics and industrial incompetence. Note Stalin and the KV. My opinion; YMMV. We'll talk about it with regard to the Germans in a moment.^1) but the results (Aberdeen Report and the Russian survivors who fought in them.) was that the KV tank it produced as a political competitor to the T-34 was a bog-tank. When an "awesome" (YMMV; but sarcasm from this observer.) reputation is built as an immobile pillbox that can be easily out-flanked and thus forced to be abandoned, well that is not a tank. It is wasted military and economic effort.

^1 Democracies have their own version of this kind of incompetence, witness the American aircraft production effort of WW II (Curtiss and Brewster) which was highly politicized, or some of the strange politics in French tank production. And do the British have any other explanation for the TOG tank?

There is a lot more unusual debaclery going on, but the point is that outsiders often do not know what is going on internally or what bedevils the Russians and cuts them down to 1.7 meters instead of the 3 meters that they appeared at the time.

======================================================

If the Russians were blessed with Stalin, then guess how this happened?

Like the brouhaha with Leningrad (KV) and that other spot in Russia (Kharkov)where the debating societies almost cost the USSR the war (Kotin and Koshkin) the Germans had their own debating societies (Henschel and Porsche) and their own lunatic, who had the final say on what went in the country. The only difference here is that as far as I can tell, the German engineering was a bit better and none of the Henschel or Porsche engineers was shot for incompetence. (Some might have been "drafted". Joke.) But the results are eerily similar to the late war Joseph Stalin tanks. Of course this is all my opinion. YMMV.

King_Tiger_and_crew.jpg


===============================================

There were never very many of them, they could not cross ground all that well, their transmissions were terrible, their engines were catastrophes, they were extremely bridge shy and they broke down and were bypassed as "invincible" pillboxes by which they earned a "fearsome" reputation.

===============================================

Meet what worked:

Panzer_IV_Ausf_J_Parola_2.jpg


Cromwell-latrun-2.jpg


vehicle_sherman13.jpg


1200px-Char_T-34.jpg


None of them was perfect. But they could cross ground reliably and were transportable, they could defeat each other with their main guns, three of them had good radios, the armor was proof against near miss HE and machine gun fire, the fire control and ergonomics allowed reasonable gun lay and target service and they fit within the respective combined arms doctrines of the armies which employed them. Add to the above, all of that, tank crews could be quickly trained on them and veteran crews could get the quirky machines to do the "impossible" when needed.*

* Apologies to Churchill fans, but in armored warfare "tactical speed across ground faster than a man can walk is important", especially against antitank defenses.

===============================================

This was pushing that upper limit of what was possible in WW II.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H26258,_Panzer_V_%22Panther%22.jpg


It has to be able to reach the fight, you know? Repair and bridge crossing again. Again YMMV.
 
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Deleted member 1487

I would go one step further and say that by the final two years of the war (if not earlier), the armies of the Soviets and W. Allies had learnt from their prior mistakes and were the Germans' equals on the tactical and operational level, if not better in many respects.
How much of that was a function of having developed vastly superior numbers, dominating the sky, having vastly more material, and the Axis having burned up the majority of their fully trained troops and were relying on poorly trained 'stomach and eye' battalion? Deep Battle worked just fine when the Soviets had a 3:1 manpower advantage in 1944 and the Axis armies was effectively immobile and locked in trench positions without air support. All that before Hitler interfered constantly down to battalion level and the Wallies were invading on other fronts, disrupting production and transport, plus eating up the German strategic reserve. So it's pretty much impossible to divorce Allied success and indeed Soviet survival to that point on anything other than vast numbers, both men and material. By 1944 the Soviets had lost how many men? According to field reports irrecoverable losses (not total dead, but including POWs and missing that were later reconscripted per Krivosheev) >8.6 million men. That doesn't include wounded and sick either, which was well over 10 million men by January 1st 1944. Krivosheev's numbers are a very conservative analysis with several others with about 75% higher death estimates, with the discrepancy mostly in 1941-43 when record keeping was highly flawed.
 
How much of that was a function of having developed vastly superior numbers, dominating the sky, having vastly more material, and the Axis having burned up the majority of their fully trained troops and were relying on poorly trained 'stomach and eye' battalion? Deep Battle worked just fine when the Soviets had a 3:1 manpower advantage in 1944 and the Axis armies was effectively immobile and locked in trench positions without air support. All that before Hitler interfered constantly down to battalion level and the Wallies were invading on other fronts, disrupting production and transport, plus eating up the German strategic reserve. So it's pretty much impossible to divorce Allied success and indeed Soviet survival to that point on anything other than vast numbers, both men and material. By 1944 the Soviets had lost how many men? According to field reports irrecoverable losses (not total dead, but including POWs and missing that were later reconscripted per Krivosheev) >8.6 million men. That doesn't include wounded and sick either, which was well over 10 million men by January 1st 1944. Krivosheev's numbers are a very conservative analysis with several others with about 75% higher death estimates, with the discrepancy mostly in 1941-43 when record keeping was highly flawed.

The Russians had to survive to get there to 1944, didn't they? And 1943 was the fulcrum year where the combat odds were fairly equal. Losing population, production and manpower manhour productivity equivalent to the US east of the Mississippi (overrun territories the Germans seized in 1941-1942) and coming back from that deficit is what the Russians did. Maybe the UK/US helped divert the Berlin lunatic's attention occasionally, but the main effort was in Russia. What were the Germans doing with all of their newly captured production base? The clue might be they were not following a sane course of action but were rather carrying out the orders of a Berlin lunatic and his associated conspirators. That had to be an own goal. Strictly my opinion. YMMV.
 

Deleted member 1487

The Russians had to survive to get there to 1944, didn't they? And 1943 was the fulcrum year where the combat odds were fairly equal. Losing population, production and manpower manhour productivity equivalent to the US east of the Mississippi (overrun territories the Germans seized in 1941-1942) and coming back from that deficit is what the Russians did. Maybe the UK/US helped divert the Berlin lunatic's attention occasionally, but the main effort was in Russia. What were the Germans doing with all of their newly captured production base? The clue might be they were not following a sane course of action but were rather carrying out the orders of a Berlin lunatic and his associated conspirators. That had to be an own goal. Strictly my opinion. YMMV.
They also got millions of tons of vital L-L to keep them alive, plus the help of the British/American blockade of Europe, strategic bombing, diversion of the Luftwaffe to other fronts, the Allies pulling off Axis ground troops to other fronts, the expensive of the naval war, inflicting huge losses on the Luftwaffe pre-Barbarossa, etc. Plus the Soviets had the vast majority of their population outside the grip of the Axis, so still had a numerical advantage in total population and only fought a single front war.
The Soviets never fought WW2 alone or against an Axis fighting a one front war. The problem with utilizing the East for the Axis is that the Soviets evacuated the most economically valuable manpower from the occupied regions (17 million people in 1941 alone, at least another 5-7 million in 1942), plus practiced scorched earth. They blew up most of the factories and other stuff that they didn't evacuate, so the Axis spent most of 1942-43 rebuilding things only to lose them again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnieper_Hydroelectric_Station#World_War_II_and_post-war_reconstruction
During World War II, the strategically important dam and plant was dynamited by retreating Red Army troops in 1941 after Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. American journalist H. R. Knickerbocker wrote that year:[7]

The Russians have proved now by their destruction of the great dam at Dniepropetrovsk that they mean truly to scorch the earth before Hitler even if it means the destruction of their most precious possessions ... Dnieprostroy was an object almost of worship to the Soviet people. Its destruction demonstrates a will to resist which surpasses anything we had imagined. I know what that dam meant to the Bolsheviks ... It was the largest, most spectacular, and most popular of all the immense projects of the First Five-Year Plan ... The Dnieper Dam when it was built was the biggest on earth and so it occupied a place in the imagination and affection of the Soviet people difficult for us to realize ... Stalin's order to destroy it meant more to the Russians emotionally than it would mean to us for Roosevelt to order the destruction of the Panama Canal.

The tidal surge killed thousands of unsuspecting civilians, as well as Red Army officers who were crossing over the river.[8] It was partially dynamited again by retreating German troops in 1943. In the end, the dam suffered extensive damage, and the powerhouse hall was nearly destroyed.

https://www.rferl.org/a/european-remembrance-day-ukraine-little-known-ww2-tragedy/25083847.html
The tidal surge killed thousands of unsuspecting civilians, as well as Red Army officers who were crossing over the river.

Since no official death toll was released at the time, the estimated number of victims varies widely. Most historians put it at between 20,000 and 100,000, based on the number of people then living in the flooded areas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth#World_War_II
When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, many district governments took the initiative to begin a 'partial' scorched-earth policy in order to deny the invaders access to electrical, telecommunications, rail, and industrial resources. Parts of the telegraph network were destroyed, some rail and road bridges were blown up, most electrical generators were sabotaged through the removal of key components, and many mineshafts were collapsed.

http://www.infoukes.com/history/ww2/page-06.html
The retreating Soviet officials, for example, shipped 6 million cattle from Ukraine east to Russia, 550 large factories, thousands of small factories and 300,000 tractors. The USSR also evacuated 3.5 million skilled workers from Ukraine to the Russian Republic. In the Battle for Ukraine Soviet sources say the partisans blew up nearly 5,000 enemy trains, blasted 607 railway bridges, 915 warehouses, and damaged over 1,500 tanks and armoured carriers.

As the Soviet authorities and army retreated from Ukraine in 1941, Stalin's scorched earth policy left a trail of destruction including the Dniprohes Dam on the Dnieper River, which was the largest hydro electric power dam in Europe, countless mines and major industrial factories, and Khreschchatik Street in the capital city of Kiev. On November 3, 1941 the famous architectural monument, the Dormition Cathedral in the Pecherska Lavra built 1073 in Kiev, was destroyed. Moscow tried to blame the Germans for destroying this superb example of medieval Ukrainian architecture but it was proven to be the work of a Soviet bomb squad which had mined it before their retreat and later set it off killing Germans.

http://bintel.com.ua/en/article/10-27-Russia-Germany/
Due to the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht and the inability to evacuate facilities from the territories that were being left to the enemy, the then Soviet leadership used the tactics of “scorched earth”. The resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the VKPb of 27, 28 and 29 June 1941 ordered the local government bodies and party cells to destroy everything that could not be evacuated to the East of the USSR, in particular: equipment of factories and plants, collective farm machinery and equipment, food supplies and logistical tools, crops and livestock. July 22, 1941, such demands were confirmed by a special resolution of the State Defence Committee. However, as always in Russia and the Soviet Union, the population of the occupied territories was left to its fate.

Such attitude towards ordinary citizens was characteristic of the Soviet authorities, especially in the industrial areas of the East and South of Ukraine, where German troops came later than into the North and the Center, which provided relatively more time to implement the above-mentioned decisions. As a result, all the 54 Ukrainian blast furnaces were blown, most mines were inundated, and the Kryvyi Rih, Dniprodzerzhynsk and Dniprohes HPPs were destroyed, destroyed or burned were thousands of industrial enterprises, bakeries and grain depots. In Kharkiv, like in other eastern Ukrainian cities, and like then in Kyiv, the Soviets burnt not only industrial facilities, but houses as well.


The destroyed “Azovstal” (Mariupol)

Crops of grain were also destroyed. According to eyewitnesses, for that purpose even the cattle was driven into evacuation through sown fields. As a result, the doomed civilian population was being left without food.

Besides, due to transport communications having been destroyed, the railway infrastructure was being turned into ruins, including bridges, railway stations, locomotive depots, warehouses, repair workshops, service buildings, water towers, communication lines, and switching points and rails being blown up. Stalino (Donetsk) railway junction was razed to the ground, which completely paralyzed the railway communications in the region. (The Railway Troops in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, by Volkovsky N. L.).

By the way, in many cases, the actions of the Soviet authorities to implement the tactics of “scorched earth” were accompanied by mass casualties, both among civilians and soldiers of the Red Army. Thus, due to the undermining of the dam of the Dniprohes (Dnieper HPP) on 18 August 1941, a river wave of more than 30 meters swept away dozens of settlements downstream of the Dnieper. It killed about 100 thousand people from the local population, as well as up to 20 thousand military servicemen of the Red Army (from the 9th and 18th Armies and the 2nd Cavalry Corps), who had taken defensive positions along the left bank of the Dnieper, or were on the ferry. Another three to five thousand people died directly on the dam at the time of the explosion. At this, German troops suffered almost no losses. (Moroko V. M., Dneproges: The Black August of 1941 /Research Works by the Faculty of History of Zaporizhzhya National University, 2010/; Rumme A. V., Tell People the Truth /Sociological studies, Moscow, 1990 — №9./).


The blown up dam of the Dniprohes (Dnieper HPP)

In Dnepropetrovsk, the bakery was blown up with the working shift and the citizens, queuing for bread near the store. In Odesa, a part of the coastal districts were drowned with residents. In Stakhanov of Luhansk region, the local population, mostly women with children, protested against blowing up of the coalmine, trying to save the only means of subsistence. The next morning an NKVD squad arrived in the city and, regardless of age and gender, shot every tenth inhabitant. In Stalino (Donetsk), after it had been captured by the Germans in October 1941, in the NKVD prison were discovered three pits filled up with 4 thousand corpses. (How Russia's Wealth Was Growing at Ukraine's Expense during World War II, online version).

There wasn't that much left by the Soviets for the Axis to exploit.
 
Any specific page you'd like to focus on? Clearly of course the German occupation was full of atrocities and warcrimes that only doubled down on the existing damage as part of the wider Generalplan East/Hunger Plan.

You missed the point. The Ukrainians hated the Russians and were a potential resource. The Germans were aware of this fact, but they chose to allow about 27 million human beings and a vast agricultural and industrial area to become a liability instead of an asset. The region had to be occupied, policed and was a sort of rebellion problem from the start as soon as the Ukrainians figured out which tyrant they preferred. That would be like removing California from the US Order of Economic Battle.

The Germans did that to themselves after spending the blood and treasure to acquire the region. Kind of makes you wonder?
 
The Allies only won using brute force if you define brute force as "utilizing every resource and weapon you have to the max" and "taking advantage of superior production capabilities". Their victory was just as much a result of developing superior technology, strategy, inherent advantages, and eventually training as the Axis defeat was due to a series of tactical and strategic mistakes and inherent disadvantages along with relative technological inferiority as the war went on.
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I'm going to go ahead and declare right now that the idea of it "taking five Shermans to defeat one Tiger" and "Soviet human waves" are a myth. There are of resources out there that refute this claim, which I'm not going to bother going into because that would extend this post unnecessarily.

Yes, it's true that the Allies had a decent if not outright good chance of winning using brute force if it came down to it, but there was a lot of finesse that went into the Allied victory and ending the war when it did, instead of perhaps years later.

The Allied victories of 1940-43 can most certainly not be said to have been the result of brute force. The Battle of Britain, for instance, had the British come out victorious while outnumbered by the Luftwaffe, and the US was in a precarious balancing act in the Pacific for a good while after Pearl Harbor, at one point having only a single carrier in that entire theater. As for the Soviets, while it is true that they had a lot more manpower, things like the KV tanks and the T-34 were most certainly not brute-force affairs—the Battle of Raseiniai, where a few KV tanks stopped an entire German panzer division for an entire day, is a prime counter-example of this—one of the few bright spots in what was otherwise probably the darkest hour of the Soviet armed forces.

In these years, superior Allied strategy and critical Axis mistakes made a big difference in the outcome, just as much as numbers. To elaborate on some of the above examples:
  • The Battle of Midway resulted in an American victory despite them being outnumbered and operating with a crippled carrier due to a combination of luck and generally better conduct before during the battle—the Japanese not committing the 5th cardiv into the fight due to plane losses (Zuikaku, at the least, could have made do with some plane and pilot transfers, but the Japanese never thought of that) while the Americans repaired Yorktown in 24 hours, Nagumo's vacillating compared to Spruance's decisiveness, damage control differences, (Yorktown tricking Hiryu into wasting multiple airstrikes on her and not damaging the other American carriers while Kaga died to literally a single bomb), etc. That's not even to mention the pre-battle shenanigans, like the American codebreaking or the rather pointless diversionary Japanese attack on the Aleutians.
  • The Battle of Britain was won despite the British having an quantitative inferiority in planes at the start. There were many factors in this victory: for instance, the radar stations that provided critical early warning proved very resilient to German attacks, and the British fighters proved quite the match for the German bombers and their fighter escorts (in fact, with regards to the ME 110, I'd say the thing was a net minus to the German strength during the battle), the British had the home field advantage, not to mention the entire German battle plan was to make way for the seriously flawed and frequently mocked plan known as Sea Lion.
  • The Soviets, contrary to popular belief, had much more elegant battle plans than what movies like Enemy at the Gates may suggest. A critical part of this was the theory of Deep Battle Operations. To give a quick and dirty summary of this, there would be multiple attacks all across the front in order to keep enemy divisions pinned down while most of the force would attack for a primary objective—basically Blitzkrieg but with multiple thrusts instead of a single one. As for why Barbarossa failed, a big reason is the sheer depth of the USSR, which allowed the Soviet Union to basically get its [edited] together and trade time for space, until the Nazi offensive bogged down and the Soviet forces could counterattack.
Moreover, it could be argued that the Allied nations were a lot more suited and prepared to fight the types of battles that came to characterize WW2 more than the Axis, who did much to hinder themselves.

  • The US mainland was completely untouchable by just about every Axis power, allowing it to pump out massive amounts of manpower and machinery for the Allied cause while also thinking up new and better technology that made life for the Axis even more difficult. Things like the VT fuse and the B29 bomber are prime examples that they had just as much to offer in the "quality" field as the "quantity" field.
  • The sheer scale of the British air, sea, and land defenses—everything from the RAF and the Royal Navy to the home guard and all of the various homeland defenses—meant that Nazi Germany really never had a chance of conducting a successful invasion. In the longer term, their intelligence agencies also played havoc among the Germans. While it may be true that they needed the quantitative support from the US to conduct eventual counterattacks (as opposed to defending themselves and their holdings), brute force was never the sole contributor to their tactics.
  • The Soviet Union utilized its sheer size to stretch German logistics to the limit and to buy time for it to get its [censored] together, and while it was caught off-guard and suffered massive losses for it, the Soviet military did learn from their mistakes, perfecting the theory of Deep Operations and even found the solution to blitzkrieg in the process, as shown in Kursk. Yes, they did have a manpower advantage, but they wielded it with the precision of a sickle as much as the force of a hammer.
In comparison, the Axis nations were rather unprepared, and indeed took steps at times to actively hinder themselves:
  • Apart from the colossal blunders of Barbarossa and declaring war on the US, the Germans never really developed a strategic bomber, something that hindered them during the Battle of Britain, and their navy was quite laughable in the realm of naval superiority (something that U-boats are not suited for). Its racial and genocidal policies frequently alienated potential allies (for example, the Jewish scientists they kicked out pre-war ended up helping design the atomic bomb for the US) and its economy was really sustained only by looting and plundering conquered countries. But by far the biggest problem they had were their quite antiquated logistics and industrial procedures: examples include the lack of an assembly line and Hitler insisting the ME262 be developed as a dive bomber, and the so-vaunted Panthers and Tigers were logistical failures that didn't even live up to the "5v1" myth. Add that to various tactical failings like Hitler's "no retreating" orders and you get the Soviets marching into Berlin on the ground while the Americans and British take turns flying over the city at night with not a care in the world. As for their "wunderwaffe", they were too little, too expensive, and too late.
  • The Italians were, quite simply put, unprepared for WW2, mostly owing to prewar economic woes. This feebleness showed in multiple ways and, to put it simply, is the reason why Italy generally has a reputation of being an absolute pushover during the war.
  • Japan based a lot of its doctrines around Mahan's theory of decisive battle and its experiences in the Russo-Japanese war. Quite a few of the Japanese high command knew that they couldn't hope to match the US in a numbers game, thus they aimed for a short, sharp war to force the Americans to the negotiating table and tried for the quality approach (Yamato being a prime example). However, they were ill-suited for the protracted carrier warfare the US, in its outrage over Pearl Harbor, forced them to fight: their commerce protection was a joke, they couldn't replace critical personnel and assets (and wasted them frequently in frankly stupid tactics like Banzai charges), the IJN and IJA frequently damaged the general war effort while bickering with each other, etc.
To counter some of the more common myths of Axis technological and tactical superiority:
  • No, it didn't take 5 Shermans to kill a single Tiger, and Shermans weren't deathtraps: they were much more reliable, versatile, cheaper, and had better crew survival rates. The five Shermans is simply because they tended to operate in squads of 5, while German tanks frequently were forced to operate alone due to various factors, none of which are anything for the Germans to be proud of. The Battle of Arracourt is a prime counterexample to this myth, and there are a host of other sources online that are dedicated to refuting this myth.
  • Rommel may have been tactically gifted, but he was a strategic and logistical failure, overrunning his supply lines frequently in North Africa and could be argued to have ultimately caused the German defeat in North Africa.
  • The Bismarck was not anything to write home about: it utilized an inferior armor scheme, a substandard propulsion system that ultimately got it sunk, AA that couldn't down a few biplanes, and a host of other flaws. Its primary achievement was sinking the Hood, an outdated battlecruiser that hadn't received retrofits necessary for the nature of WW2 Atlantic naval combat, with a lucky shot. It was basically an oversized Bayern. To compare, the North Carolina class was limited by the Washington Naval Treaty, weighed about 10% less, and had a much better service record to show for it.
TL; DR: No. The suggestion that the Allies won using purely brute force is a myth perpetuated by wehraboos. There is simply no other way to describe it.

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  • The Soviets, contrary to popular belief, had much more elegant battle plans than what movies like Enemy at the Gates may suggest. A critical part of this was the theory of Deep Battle Operations. To give a quick and dirty summary of this, there would be multiple attacks all across the front in order to keep enemy divisions pinned down while most of the force would attack for a primary objective—basically Blitzkrieg but with multiple thrusts instead of a single one. As for why Barbarossa failed, a big reason is the sheer depth of the USSR, which allowed the Soviet Union to basically get its [edited] together and trade time for space, until the Nazi offensive bogged down and the Soviet forces could counterattack.
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Expanding upon this point, I would like to mention the Battle of Kursk in July 1943 as an example of Russian preparation, whereby there was massive production and deployment of equipment, and utilization of their strategy of defense in depth. So more than just brute force of numbers of equipment (on the Russian side), the Russians also had superior intelligence, due to their effective spy network, that reveled what the German plan of attack was, and when it would be launched.
 
The Allies only won using brute force if you define brute force as "utilizing every resource and weapon you have to the max" and "taking advantage of superior production capabilities". Their victory was just as much a result of developing superior technology, strategy, inherent advantages, and eventually training as the Axis defeat was due to a series of tactical and strategic mistakes and inherent disadvantages along with relative technological inferiority as the war went on.
  • The Battle of Midway resulted in an American victory despite them being outnumbered and operating with a crippled carrier due to a combination of luck and generally better conduct before during the battle—the Japanese not committing the 5th cardiv into the fight due to plane losses (Zuikaku, at the least, could have made do with some plane and pilot transfers, but the Japanese never thought of that) while the Americans repaired Yorktown in 24 hours, Nagumo's vacillating compared to Spruance's decisiveness, damage control differences, (Yorktown tricking Hiryu into wasting multiple airstrikes on her and not damaging the other American carriers while Kaga died to literally a single bomb), etc. That's not even to mention the pre-battle shenanigans, like the American codebreaking or the rather pointless diversionary Japanese attack on the Aleutians.
TL; DR: No. The suggestion that the Allies won using purely brute force is a myth perpetuated by wehraboos. There is simply no other way to describe it.

I also agree with the thrust of your points in general, but in Midway's case the intelligence picture gained going into the battle gets overlooked, despite the massive advantage it was to have broken the JN-25 code. So in addition to material factors, and Soviet espionage achievements, the Allies had far superior technical intelligence as well.
 
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