ussr didn't need allies to win ww2, survey...

Ok lets get back to WWII. I think the USSR needed the Allies for many reasons. Here just a few.
1) Lend-Lease
2) They needed the Allies to draw much of the Axis military off of Russia.
3) Without the Allies Germany and Italy would have taken N. Africa and possibly the oil rich Middle East.

Then again the Allies needed the USSR to keep Axis forces pinned on the Eastern front.

 

1) :the importance is dubious
3) :the importance of the oil rich middle east has been debunked severaltimes by Brndirt :there was no oil rich middle east.

 

Well I don't know about number one being dubious,at least insofar as raw materials supplied but number one & three combined probably mattered a heck of a lot.

 

number three :there was no way the Germans could reach the oil wells of Iraq,nor exploit them nor transport the oil to Germany .The allies also did not need the oilof the middle-east .
About LL :the SU survived in 1941 without LL,afterwards LL was usefull,but never crucial :the SU had in 1945 three times more horses than trucks and there was only 7 % of the manpower of the operational forces in the mobile units ;thus the LL Studebakers were not indespensable for the SU .

 

Britain and the USA were no doubt essential components to the allied victory. But if the majority of the fighting/casualties in WWII in Europe was between the Soviets and the Germans why is there so much more media coverage/historical attention given to America and Britain's contributions?

 

Agree partially but you still need the trucks to keep the essential mobile forces going. Then too all the locomotives,rolling stock and rails from LL were needed to replace the railways/equipment destroyed by the Germans as they retreated in order to keep the Soviet Army supplied..

Actually I meant numbers 1 & 2 not 1 & 3.

 

I often wonder about the whole heartedness of the Lend-Lease program from capitalist USA to communist USSR. Just how much did the USA really want to help the USSR? There must have been anti-communist sentiment back then in the US gov't.

 

also I was wondering: is there any historical evidence that the American's wanted the Nazi's to weaken the USSR? Is there any way that this anti-communist sentiment somehow drove America to delay its entrance into WWII?

 

I should think that would be obvious, especially to someone with your screen name.

The Soviets ran a closed information system; the press was usually NOT welcome where military matters were involved. The Soviets usually refused to discuss details of battles and casualties, even often refusing to announce the units involved. For many years after the war, the Soviet military archives were closed to any but a small group of Party historians, who shamelessly distorted the details to put the Soviet military in the best possible light. Historians from the West were not granted access to even the most innocuous of records. If you wanted to write something about the Soviet contribution to WW II, you had to rely on whatever the Soviets were willing to tell you, most of which was highly inaccurate.

Rather than go through that hassle and basically end up publishing Soviet propaganda, most historians preferred to work in areas where there was more or less open access to records which had (mostly) not been doctored to reflect the official government version of events.

That is why there is much more recognition of US and British contributions to the war in Europe. The situation might change at some point in the future, but I wouldn't hold my breath considering recent Russian proclamations about the history of WW II in Europe.

 

That's a rather strange question. Why would the US give military aid to country that it wanted to be weakened?

The US stayed out of the war until August, 1941, because it really had no reason to enter the war, Democracies do not go to war without some threat to their vital interests. I doubt most Americans gave much thought to the communists with regard to the war; they were just another hostile group we might have to help in order to defeat the Nazis.

 

someone with my screen name LOL touchée..

Thanks for the info and thanks for the quick reply.

But wouldn't the Nazi's have kept records on the battles? They certainly seem to have had a penchant for meticulously keeping track of things. They also would have had pretty good reconnaissance didn't they?

Also what about American, British + other European reconnaissance? Taken together with the Nazi battle records they should have been able to estimate the various contributions to the war effort in the USSR no?

(I remember I had an economics prof that once told me the CIA had a better approximation of the GDP of the USSR than the Russian gov't and that the KGB was essentially formed to spy on the CIA in order to gain information about its own country!)

 

I agree with you that it is a strange question given the fact that there was aid given to the USSR.

But if the Lend-Lease aid given to the USSR can be proven to have been knowingly 'half-hearted' or 'conditional' upon say the later purchase of tanks/equipment from American industries(which would help the American GDP) then it might at least suggest that America was undecided about who to support in the war.

I just read a report that the bombing of Dresden was at least partially motivated by a desire to scare the Soviets. Therefore there seems to be some evidence of a deep mistrust between the nations (USA and USSR).

 

Great statement/opinion!!

I will keep that as a copy for future distorted history threads conducted by you Devil....

Regards
Kruska

 

The "mistrust" was growing, but Dresden had been decided upon as a target before FDR's demise and Truman's presidency. I have read, or heard that put forward as well. For a time I almost thought it was a possibility since Dresden was going to be in the Soviet Zone post-war as already agreed to at Yalta. Sort of "look what we can do with bombing if we concentrate it, don’t continue past the agreed to lines."

Whether or not it had legitimate factories is irrelevant, and whether it was bombed as an "example" is as well. When the Deputy Chief of the Soviet General Staff (General Antonov), asked about events relating to the Western Allied strategic bomber force at the Yalta conference, he had two specific requests. The first was to establish the demarcation of a bomb-line running north to south where to avoid accidentally bombing Soviet forces as they advanced toward the west, i.e. Western Allied aircraft would not bomb east of the chosen line without specific Soviet permission.

The second was a request to hamper/hinder and disrupt the movement of troops from the western front, such as from occupied Norway and Italy, toward the east to face the Red Army; in particular by eliminating the rail junctions of Berlin and Leipzig with aerial bombardment. In response to the Soviet questions, Portal (who was in Yalta) sent a request to Bottomley back in Great Britain. Asking for Bottomley to send him a list of objectives which could be discussed with the Soviets. The list sent back to him included the oil plants, tank and aircraft factories and the rail junction cities of Berlin and Dresden (my emphasis).

In the discussions which followed, the Western Allies pointed out that unless Dresden was heavily bombed (with complete effort), the Nazis could simply re-route rail traffic through Dresden to compensate for any damage caused to Berlin and Leipzig's north/south connections. Antonov agreed and requested that Dresden be added to his list of requests. I myself believe this was how Dresden became one of targets selected to degrade German lines of communication, transport, production, and bring the Nazi regime another example of the "total war" upon which they had embarked.

Still existing archival RAF Air Staff documents state that it was their intention to use RAF bomber command to "destroy communications; to hinder the eastward deployment of German troops, and to hamper evacuation, but not to kill the evacuees."

The priority list drafted by Bottomley for Portal, so that he could discuss targets with the Soviets at Yalta, included only two eastern cities with a high enough priority to fit into the RAF targeting list as both transportation and industrial areas. These were Berlin and Dresden. Consequently both were targeted heavily directly following the Yalta Conference. Berlin had been bombed before, of course, but the bombing intensified until the Red Army was on the outskirts. Then the bombing of the Berlin area let up.

 

At the bombing of Dresden,FDR was still president and he was surrounded by people as Dexter White,who had no desire to scare the SU (and this is a euphemism )

 

,

Why should the bombing of Dresden scare the Russians? The only thing that really scared them was what happened in August on some Island country in the Far East.

Regards
Kruska

 

Yes, that would be typical of you. You seem to collect grudges like other people collect postage stamps. LOL!

I guess it would be too much of an intellectual effort to explain why you think my statement is wrong; you never seem to be able to sustain any sort of logical argument, it always has to be emotional with you.

 

And wasn't there also a sort of unspoken lend/lease program from the USA to the Nazi's since the US gov't didn't really interfere with American manufacturers who were supplying the Nazi's with parts and vehicles?

Is it possible that the USA was simply waiting for the outcome of the USSR/Nazi conflict before deciding which side to take in the war?

And I'm still looking for reasons as to why the USSR/Nazi conflict does not feature more prominently in WWII history. The Nazi's would have had records of the conflicts with the USSR would they not have? They were meticulous in every other way so why would they not have records on those conflicts that could be used to establish their prominence in WWII in Europe.

 

because books on the war in eastern europe do not sell :the public in western europe knows only about Stalingrad and the public in the US does not by books ..on WW II and is only interested in wrong (tautology )Hollywood movies on battles in which US soldiers were fighting .

 

A clue perhaps. Here in Michingan it's easy to form the opinion that half the Union army during the ACW was from this state if you just go by what's taught in school and the official publications and the local museums.