Underground Knowledge — A discussion group discussion

This excellent episode of the Oliver Stone-produced TV documentary series The Untold History of The United States (based on the book of the same name co-written with leading American historian Peter Kuznick) puts forward the little known theory (in the West at least), and a theory I have always tended to subscribe to, that the Soviet Union not the US was more responsible for the defeat of the Nazis:

https://www.goodreads.com/videos/1001...

When you consider just what the Soviet Union sacrificed to defy the Nazis, (out of the 60 million people who died in the war, 27 million were Soviets!), it's hard to even consider the Nazis could have ever been defeated had the Soviets been neutral or sided against the Allies. Yes, America was crucial to winning the war also (and the US along with Britain made tremendous sacrifices too), but I think we've all been fed propaganda by Western historians to believe the US almost single-handedly won the war. In fact, I think it's fair to say that the Allies wouldn't have had a hope of even putting up much of a fight against the Nazis without the might of the Soviet Empire supporting them.

Keep in mind also that the the United States did not enter the war until after the Japanese bombed the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941 (over two years after the war began with Nazi Germany's attack on Poland in September 1939). In those two years, the Soviets had begun to slowly but surely put up the first form of resistance to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis...

Another statistic: Compared to the 27,000,000 Soviets who died, Britain lost 450,000 and the US lost 420,000.

Most likely, this was an incident in history where the US involvement was overplayed by historians post WW2 and the Soviet involvement was downplayed due to this episode of history being reported on in the Cold War era when nobody in the West wanted to give the Soviets any credit for anything. But now, I think we need to be honest and agree we all owe some of the freedoms we experience today to the Russian people.

WW2 was the bloodiest war in human history (almost twice as many people died as in WW1) and the Russian front was where most of that blood was spilled - the Nazis vs the Soviets was THE epic battle of WW2.

p.s. As a footnote to this debate, there are some Brits who believe Britain was the party that won the war in Europe against the Nazis :)

A new group poll is underway on this topic, asking group members who they think was most responsible for the defeat of the Nazis: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

A) The Soviet Union
B) The United States
C) Great Britain

The history as we (in the USSR) were taught unequivocally claims that USSR borne most of the fighting burden, while allies help was appreciated but was far from decisive, as they were not involved in the ground battles in Europe until less than a last year of WW2. Soviet histroirians claim that Western Front was opened as late as 1944, when it became clear that USSR had been coming out with the upper hand and would clearly defeat the Nazis and Russian army would sweep through Europe. By then the prospective victory of the Soviet Army was evident. That by opening the Western Front the Allies meant more to stop Stalin from advancing too far into Europe rather than defeat Germany. Symbolically it was important to Stalin to put the Red Flag over Reichstag, which he achieved. And post WW2 line of separation of influence between USSR and US/UK was pretty much aligned with the front lines of each army.
There is probably much propaganda on each side, but the statistics, brought by James, as well as timeline of WW2 events tell a lot.

Two more things not directly connected, but you may find interesting to discuss.
Who defeated Napoleon? You would probably find a lot of historians concentrating on the Waterloo battle, while overlooking the fact that his Grand Armee was pretty much wiped out three years earlier in Russia.

Yet another interesting topic could be Suvorov's theory, that Hitler beat Stalin to it by attacking USSR two weeks earlier than Stalin planned his own campaign. At the time I found this book quite interesting: Ice-Breaker: Who Started the Second World War?

James, congratulations. When you post, I learn.

J.B. wrote: "James, congratulations. When you post, I learn."

Thank you, sir - we all learn when ANYONE shares something.

Who was most responsible for defeating the Nazis? "Winning" isn't necessarily reflected by a body count. A huge body count could merely determine the loser, under some scenarios. More logical would be, for example, how many were standing at the end? (That also might be Russia!) Remember that the Americans and British avoided attacking Berlin, letting Russian forces defeat Germany's capital, ending the war.

But a simpler answer would be one man, and one man only, who caused Germany to be defeated. Adolf Hitler. (1) His strategies were idiotic, such as forbidding tactical retreats to meet battlefield conditions. (2) He wasted precious weeks by delaying decisions that were needed quickly. (3) He was more focused on the Holocaust than on actual warfare, particularly in the East, where he diverted men and resources to rounding up and murdering Jews. (4) He weakened the Wehrmacht by expelling Mischlings. (5) He attacked Russia before he was ready, creating a two-front war that he couldn't win.

I almost agree with J. All I would add is that Hitler was ably assisted in losing the war by Göring. It is stupid to go to war against a country when you have no chance of winning because you can't get at them. I would add to the Hitler errors the fact that going to war against Britain, which was inevitable after invading Poland, required some means of getting at Britain. Accordingly, he had to do three things to have any chance: capture the BEF at Dunkirk; have some form of boats ready to supply cross the channel; keep his parachute regiment OUT of the invasion of Belgium and Holland.

Goring's contribution was simple - by complete tactical stupidity, he managed to lose most of the Luftwaffe. Basically, over half his fighters were NOT lost to Spitfires or Hurricanes, but rather because they were running out of fuel by the time his assembling was finished and the squadrons were over England. The other half were lost because they companied the bombers, rather than fly independently. Of course the RAF would have always downed a number of his aircraft, but he did not have to make it so easy.

Yes, Göring oversold the capabilities of his Luftwaffe to Hitler. He told Hitler they could stop the bombing of Berlin. He also promised that they could move 300 or more tons of supplies per day to German forces trapped in Stalingrad. Neither of these were true.

He was apparently in some form of denial, refusing to believe that Allied planes could penetrate deep into Germany at will. The court at Nuremberg named him the #2 war criminal, so they obviously considered him nearly as responsible as Hitler, himself. That would apply in defeat, as well.

I don't need to add that Hitler appointed Göring to his position, do I?

The group poll asking group members who they think was most responsible for the defeat of the Nazis (The Soviet Union, The United States or Great Britain), is now complete.

Here are the voting results:

62.0% of members voted for The Soviet Union
24.1% voted for The United States
13.9% voted for Great Britain

Check out the comments from members (beneath the poll) that occurred during the voting period: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943



Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad

Certainly with out Russia's efforts and the loss of over 20 Million Russians, the results of the 2nd WW woulds have been horrifically different!

Statistically it had to be the Russians. Morally, it was the Brits who in 1940 stood alone and wouldn't quit. However, material it was the US who produced the goods. So finally, it was the ALLIES who did the job. Team work is always needed in great triumphs. Nobody does it alone.

actually codebreakers also played a major role.....Polish codebreakers cracked the Enigma ciphers and thus all Nazi soldier movements was tracked...and this was mainly possible because of a German called Schmidth, who supplied all the keys of codes of Nazi communication and he also supplied the enigma machine to France so that they find a way to crack the codes....

I still say Russia was the key reason.
Yes of course it required teamwork, yes America and to a lesser degree Britain were crucial and also sacrificed A LOT...However, I think more and more war historians in recent years are coming to the conclusion that it was the brutal Eastern Front where the war was primarily won and lost.

Bottom line is Hitler underestimated the Russian people.
We all owe Russia a big thank you in this regard.

Me and the Don(ald) vote the Russkies. Putkin agrees. Just sayin'.

One reason why people short the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is to avoid the awkward part about how the war began as a conspiracy to divide up Europe between Soviet socialists as allies with German socialists, invading Poland together. Soviet socialist were most responsible for starting the German socialists in their killing spree. Some would say that Soviet socialism is responsible (at least in part) for German socialism's enormous body count. Thus, is it just to say Soviet socialism "had it coming"? 2 Girls 1 Cup

My view is that Stalin always knew Hitler was the problem, and the reason for the great famine in the early/mid 1930s was not a shortage of food, but the fact Stalin was selling as much as he could to the West to get the money he needed to modernize his factories for military production. He joined Hitler's invasion of Poland because he had signed a treaty earlier to buy more time, and the invasion bought more space - it was purely strategic. However, thanks to his purges of the Russian military, that space was irrelevant to the Wehrmacht. The USSR was the main agent in defeating Germany, but as Tinny noted, had that treaty never been signed, Hitler probably would never have started the Polish invasion. Had he, and had the Russians helped, and had the French been a little more aggressive (they did, after all, cross the Rhine, but then camped and did nothing) the war could have been over a lot quicker.

When you talk of food shortages under Stalin, Are you referring to the Holodomor, Ian?

James, yes. I know it was a little more complicated than that, because Stalin was also determined to collectivise the farms, and the Ukrainians refused to cooperate, but the point about selling the grain, etc rather than feeding the people was to raise money for industrialisation, so that more tanks etc could be made. It was dreadfully cruel, and there must have been other ways of going about building factories, but without the deluge of T 34s Kursk would have been lost (if it had even been necessary) and Russia probably would have fallen. Overall, the Soviets built about 60,000 of them, while in 1944, on the Western front, Germany could never put more than about 30 tanks into the field at the same time.

Intriguingly, historical data shows that at the close of the Second World War the French public believed that it was the Russians, not the Americans, who had done the most to defeat the Nazis. A survey conducted by IFOP in May 1945 showed that 57% of French people credited the-then USSR with having made the greatest contribution to Nazi defeat, compared to just 20% backing the USA and 12% the UK. https://today.yougov.com/topics/polit...

Of course the Russian made the most impact. Kursk was the killer for Germany, thanks to Hitler's incompetence, because it took out most of Germany's equipment and too many of the experienced troops. What the D Day invasion did was mean that Stalin did not control western Europe later. Actually, Kursk was the best thing that could happen to Germany because otherwise they would have received the A-bombs.

Correcting WWII history: How the USA erased the USSR victory over Nazi Germany - with Peter Kuznick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctp5a...
The Soviet Union played the leading role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II, but the US government has tried to erase its unimaginable sacrifice. Historian Peter Kuznick discusses the real history of WWII, and how 80% of Nazis were killed on the Eastern Front with the USSR.

I have seen claims that German defeat was inevitable after it failed to defeat the USSR in the one summer/autumn. If that is true, then it was really the need to rescue Italy in the Balkans that lost the war for them. There are all sorts of scenarios we can imagine, but the overall fact is, they lost. Kursk and Stalingrad were the nails - Germany did not have the manufacturing capacity or the number of experienced soldiers to fight a war of attrition.