I have heard the Soviets were on their last reserves at the Battle of Berlin. Could Germany ever realistically, after Stalingrad, have led the Soviets to the point where they had no more offensive capacity?
John Cate, studied at Strayer UniversityAnswered Jul 28
I mentioned this in a post about a week ago. Before the final attack on Berlin, Stalin told Zhukov and Koniev that there were no more reserves, and they had to take the German capital with what they had.
The reduced manpower available to the Red Army is one reason why the Soviets made peace with Finland with the frontline about where it had started in 1941, rather than go all the way to Helsinki. The Finns had inflicted severe casualties on the Soviets at Ilomantsi, and Stalin rescinded his demand for unconditional surrender, so he could stop the fighting there and move the troops to fight the Germans.
This doesn’t mean the Soviets were bereft of offensive capability, though. They had more than 6.4 million men under arms at the time and were still able to carry out a successful attack on Japanese-ruled Manchukuo a few months after the Battle of Berlin. Stalin simply knew that the Allied coalition would break up as soon as the war ended, and he had to ensure that the USSR’s military capability wasn’t completely wrecked.
As far as the other part of your question, it’s very possible that the Wehrmacht could have stalemated the Soviets in 1943–44, but that would have required intelligent use of the remaining German military resources, including better decisions both by the high command (read: Feldmarschall Manstein makes all the decisions, not the Austrian Gefreiter) and in the production sector, with no wasting time and money on “super-weapon” projects that didn’t bear fruit. More Panzer IV’s and StuG’s instead of fewer unreliable “super-tanks,” and a much earlier Me 262 would have made a huge difference.
There were numerous discussions in neutral countries about a separate Nazi-Soviet peace, but both sides always put forward terms that were unacceptable to the other. (John Cate's answer to Why didn't Hitler make a peace deal with Stalin when he was losing the war? Perhaps offer him Poland and the Baltic states in exchange for peace. Then he could focus his attention on the West to stop the D-day attacks.) If Germany had mounted a better defense, then there is a likelihood that Stalin would have agreed to peace on terms more favorable and acceptable to the Germans.
это с кворы
3 comments:
«I want to tell you, from the Soviet point of view, what the President and United States have done to win the war. The most important things in this war are machines. The United States has proven that it can turn out from eight to ten thousand airplanes a month. England turns out threethousand a month, principally heavy bombers. The United States,therefore, is a country of machines. Without the use of those machines,through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war».
https://warspot.livejournal.com/6912.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=06%20августа%202018%20понедельник&media
в мемуарах Н.С. Хрущёва:
«Хотел бы высказать своё мнение и рассказать в обнажённой форме насчёт мнения Сталина по вопросу, смогли бы Красная Армия, Советский Союз без помощи со стороны США и Англии справиться с гитлеровской Германией и выжить в войне. Прежде всего, хочу сказать о словах Сталина, которые он несколько раз повторял, когда мы вели между собой «вольные беседы». Он прямо говорил, что если бы США нам не помогли, то мы бы эту войну не выиграли: один на один с гитлеровской Германией мы не выдержали бы её натиска и проиграли войну. Этой темы официально у нас никто не затрагивал, и Сталин нигде, я думаю, не оставил письменных следов своего мнения, но я заявляю тут, что он несколько раз в разговорах со мной отмечал это обстоятельство. Он не вёл специально разговоров по этому вопросу, но когда возникала беседа непринуждённого характера, перебирались международные вопросы прошлого и настоящего, и когда мы возвращались к пройденному этапу войны, то он это высказывал».
другими словами:
надпись — На Берлин!
имеет адекватный смысл на, к примеру, Крайслере,
но не на мерине или мицубиши
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