Soundbreaker Welch?
Tech Sergeant
I just watched "Death of the Luftwaffe." It was great! So cool!
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4 GIAP/VVS-KBF continued operating I-16s until 1943. This I-16 was brought down by a pilot of I./JG 54 in the same area where 4 GIAP/VVS-KBF operated.
Summary of Axis and Soviet Aircraft production during the war
----- Soviet German Italian Hungarian Romanian Japanese
1941 15,735 11,776 3,503 5,088
1942 25,436 15,556 2,818 6 8,861
1943 34,845 25,527 967 267 1,000 16,693
1944 40,246 39,807 - 773 28,180
1945 20,052 7,544 - - 8,263
Where are the stats for US Lend Lease aircraft
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Both the British and the American public have long been told that "we won the war" and D-Day, in particular, has been built up as the decisive moment. The American D-Day Museum has been adopted as the national tribute to the war and Steven Spielberg, the director of Saving Private Ryan and co-producer of Flags of Our Fathers, which is just about to open, seems to have made it a mission to perpetuate Churchill's myth.
After talking at Cambridge recently about the preponderance of the eastern front and the scale of the Red Army's triumph, I was accosted by an angry young British historian. "Don't you realise that we were pinning down 56 German divisions in France alone," he said. "Without that the Red Army would have been heavily defeated." What is less acknowledged is that without the Red Army pulverising 150 divisions, the allies would never have landed.
Absent the Brits defeating the LW during the BoB - Germany launches against the USSR much earlier, with totally devastating results for USSR.
Proportions, however, are crucial. Since 75%-80% of all German losses were inflicted on the eastern front it follows that the efforts of the western allies accounted for only 20%-25%.
That may be true for ground losses. Probably not close for air losses.
Furthermore, since the British Army deployed no more than 28 divisions as compared with the American army's 99, the British contribution to victory must have been in the region of 5%-6%. Britons who imagine that "we won the war" need to think again.
See above for BoB and Battle of Atlantic and perhaps re-think your comments?
But what American has ever heard of Operation Bagration? June 1944 signifies Omaha Beach, not the crossing of the Dvina River. Yet the Soviet summer offensive was several times larger than Operation Overlord (the invasion of Normandy), both in the scale of forces engaged and the direct cost to the Germans.
The really neat thing about the Overlord op is that all of Europe did not fall under the USSR boot and 'peaceful re-education'
It is thus all the more important to recall that - despite Stalin, the NKVD and the massacre of a generation of Bolshevik leaders - the Red army still retained powerful elements of revolutionary fraternity. In its own eyes, and that of the slaves it freed from Hitler, it was the greatest liberation army in history.
Are you serious? you consider the USSR a "liberation army'? East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Rumania? Poland? Hungary???? YMBSM. All glorious People's Republics, god fearing, free voting?
Moreover, the Red army of 1944 was still a Soviet army. The generals who led the breakthrough on the Dvina included a Jew (Chernyakovskii), an Armenian (Bagramyan), and a Pole (Rokossovskii). In contrast to the class-divided and racially segregated American and British forces, command in the Red army was an open, if ruthless, ladder of opportunity.
ROFLMAO - you have zero idea what you are talking about with respect to the US Citizen Soldier..
Comment: Saving Private Ivan | World news | The Guardian
I was always well aware of the Soviet contribution to the defeat of Hitler and am also aware of the invasion of Poland by the USSR after they were attacked by the Nazis.
And don't misconstrue the stopping of the Wehrmacht at Moskow as a great Russian triumph. Without overstretched supply lines and change of objectives, the jack-boots would have been heard stomping all the way to the Pacific.
Invasion of Poland? Without a single shot fired? What's your defenition of invasion? Why didnt Poland fight back?
Answer is simple: those territories of western Ukraine and Belarus had never belonged to Poland. Poland stole them from Russian Empire thanks to revolutionary chaos in Russia in 1917-20, Stalin returned them back and now those lands are parts of Ukraine and Belarus as they used to be for 1000 years. Poland has never claimed them back.
The Poles didn't want the Russians there. They didn't want liberation. They didn't have a cruel dictator like Saddam Hussein controlling them, until Hitler showed up, and when Stalin took them over he wasn't a whole lot better. They were happy the Russians destroyed the control of Hitler over them, but they would have been much happier if the Russians had left them alone after WWII and didn't establish a Communist State in Poland.
I dont think Stalin really wanted to establish a Communist State in Poland (extremely religious people, catholic country, close ties with UK, etc...), but in the Cold War reality he had no other choice.
He specifically agreed to permit free elections in Poland and return sovereignty and self government to the Poles. That was one of many agreements he 'broke'.
He certainly had the 'choice', the commitment and the obligation. He reneged on all three.
For centuries, invaders from the West had been coming through polish territory, on and on again, so Russia fought wars on its own soil with devastating results for its civilian population. last war claimed 27 million lives. So, maybe Stalin though: enough is enough and he did what he did, guaranteeing peace for his people for at least some time. Sounds cinical now, but those were brutal times and he was a brutal dictator.
If Pols didnt want someone to liberate them, they should have fought, like Serbs and other Yugoslavian peoples did, sacrificing almost 2 million lives.
People, please do not disturb this post-communist cockatoo that just entered the forum. His postings are fun.