Hardly to any significant degree. As you noted, 60% is one of the lower estimates. And if we're only talking frontline combat units, it spikes to closer to 80%.
No, you don't understand. 60% wasn't the "low estimate". It was the low
point. As in, the lowest point of the proportion of ground forces being in the east was in December 1944 at 60%. If your keeping track, that means prior to December 1944 it was higher. It was something like 75% in 1943.
I hope you're able to realize what an impermanent solution that is.
Sure. The Nazis don't care. So long as they can drag out their Gotterdammerung as long as possible and take as many of... well, literally everyone down with them.
Assuming they were replaced at a 1:1 ratio IOTL, and assuming that that extra million isn't just kept in the East to begin with.
Why would they be kept if they weren't sent in the first place?
France was seen as a backwater, remember.
By Spring of '44 it wasn't. German concerns over the mounting WAllied threat meant they began shifting in serious formations starting in April of 1944, despite the devastating casualties in the East.
1) Not the primary cause of German deaths prior to 1944 (or even captures, for that matter, given the generally defensive nature of the Soviets until the end of 1943)
"Defensive nature of the Soviets until the end of 1943"? The totality of the time span of German offensive operations in 1943 comes out to about a month. It's seven
times that number for the Soviets.
2) less and less dependent on LL the longer things drag on
At a slower rate then IOTL, even assuming they don't collapse outright. A part of lend-lease was the provisioning of machine tools the Soviets used in their
Weapons and food, perhaps valid. Though this makes the assumption that the Soviet field performance is directly correlated to supplies received.
To a degree it was. Western trucks didn't enable Soviet maneuver advances, but it allowed them to push them faster and deeper then they would have been otherwise, killing or capturing more German men and machines then they would have otherwise and forcing the Germans to expend much more ammo . Lend-lease radios gave the Soviets enough so that they could provide effectively communication and coordination for formations below the divisional level. Without these, they would have definitely performed more poorly.
You mean the huge casualties from June 22 1941 until 12 July 1943.
No, I mean the huge casualties from November 21st 1942 until June 6th 1944. The Soviet counteroffensives starting on July 12th cost the Germans three times more in human and material casualties then Operation Citadel did.
Soviet offensives in 42-43 winter didn't do much more than the Germans attacking did, especially considering they failed to encircle and destroy much more than the 6th army.
Which is nonsense since it focuses entirely on the 6th Army and ignores the entire front throughout the entire period. Innumerable suffered horrendous German infantry divisions got gutted in the desperate fighting retreats from Stalingrad onwards and it was the Soviet offensives of July-August 1943, not Citadel, which gutted the German Panzerwaffe, destroying three times as many tanks and four times as many men. For the subsequent autumn Soviet offensives to and across the D'niepr in September-November 1943, The
low end of German casualty estimates from Army Group South alone is 400,000 men, the equivalent of the entire German army deployed against the WAllies at Normandy. And then there's the winter of 1943-44, where the Soviets achieved multiple encirclements,
some of which the Germans managed to break out of... but even then at the cost of much of their heavy equipment.
So 3.5 million dead from when they held the initiative.
Thanks for illustrating my point.
Are you even reading my post? The Germans had the initiative in 1941-42. They didn't in 1942-43, despite their delusions at Kursk. They lost 500,000 fewer men then they did when they lost the initiative in 1942-43. I haven't even counted the losses from the first half of 1944, which adds even more.
because the Germans had almost nothing left by May of 45, from industry, soldiers, food, fuel, etc.
They'll have a bit more IATL, both from holding back the WAllies longer and having been able to exploit the resources of the East for a bit longer.
Your assumption that the Germans will be able to maintain the same level of effectiveness throughout the campaign is simply false.
Everything you listed above was the case in April 1945 as well. 10,000 Americans still died that month. Multiply that out over an additional 5 further months, as you yourself suggested.
And I never said it was a complete halt. But it was slowed to a trickle, which was more than enough to get the job done, which was my point from the beginning.
Not really in evidence. German formations at Normandy reliably received ammunition and fuel throughout the battle. They didn't receive replacements, but largely that's because there were no replacements to send.
Normandy was concurrent with the air campaigns. The noose was around the neck, but the door hadn't fallen yet.
And for Wacht am Rhine, they were hoarding supplies for weeks, and still ran out. Fuck, from the out set they planned to rely on captured fuel. That alone should speak to how critical their supply chain was.
It speaks to an absolute lack of supply, not an ability to get supply forward. IATL they have more supply since they don't need to expend as much defeating the Soviet offensive. That's gonna last longer.
Once again not particularly the point. Especially for this phase of things.
Ah, but it very much is the point. With the Germans having expended less resources in the East holding back the Soviets, there would be more doomed offensives. More Bulge's. The Battle of the Bulge cost the US a 100,000 casualties.
The whole damn thread is a might have been.
To us. Not to the people IATL. To the people of IATL, OTL is a might have been and one that is a whole lot better given that millions of additional people didn't have to die in pointless wars.
We all already know that Unthinkable is pretty damn unlikely, and politically hard to sell.
Your not just trying to sell Unthinkable here, though. Your trying to sell a longer and harder war against the Germans
Your entire argument is centered around the premise that it just can't happen because it's politically unsellable, and frankly that's never been under question. Hell OP gave us the choice to remove a popular sitting US president in wartime, so mucking with US politics completely fine.
The US house and congress collectively drink the crazy juice, McCarthy gets elected president somehow, etc, whatever it takes
There's altering the politics of the matter and altering an entire society. This is rather more the latter. Basically we're positing a US that more resembles the Nazis or Soviets then the actual United States of the 1930s/40s. Your positing American leadership that is as uncaring of their own countries lives and as morally bankrupt as Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin.
Somewhat true. Though you seem to be of the position that worse Soviet strategic performance in 1941-43 significantly reduce German casualties, this being the lynch pin of a stronger German defense.
I am not.
The problem is that your assumption doesn't actually have a real basis in reality. That a worse Soviet strategic performance reduces German casualties is pretty evident. Additionally, if Soviet performance
isn't altered by lend-lease, then the Soviets are still just as powerful and still just as able to take on Operation Unthinkable as they were IOTL. Which means no easy victory and even indeed the real prospect of some early defeats for the first year or so.