"SIXTY-FIVE years ago, in November 1944, the war in Europe was at a stalemate. A resurgent Wehrmacht had halted the Allied armies along Germany’s borders after its headlong retreat across northern France following D-Day. From Holland to France, the front was static — yet thousands of Allied soldiers continued to die in futile battles to reach the Rhine River. "One Allied army, however, was still on the move. The Sixth Army Group reached the Rhine at Strasbourg, France, on Nov. 24, and its commander, Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, looked across its muddy waters into Germany. His force, made up of the United States Seventh and French First Armies, 350,000 men, had landed Aug. 15 near Marseille — an invasion largely overlooked by history but regarded at the time as “the second D-Day” — and advanced through southern France to Strasbourg. No other Allied army had yet reached the Rhine, not even hard-charging George Patton’s. "Devers dispatched scouts over the river. “There’s nobody in those pillboxes over there,” a soldier reported. Defenses on the German side of the upper Rhine were unmanned and the enemy was unprepared for a cross-river attack, which could unhinge the Germans’ southern front and possibly lead to the collapse of the entire line from Holland to Switzerland." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/opinion/23colley.html?_r=1&ref=opinion Dave
"SIXTY-FIVE years ago, in November 1944, the war in Europe was at a stalemate." The western front was at a stalemate. But the real front was moving (interesting article by the way, since they could have rescued Germany from the communists if they advanced fast enough, East Germany would never have to exist, or Stalin would have advanced over the allies to get to berlin?):
Dave, an interesting article. It raises another imponderable among many. Decisions made on personality, decisions not made because of faulty information; the list is long. I'm not sure I was aware of this particular incident, but still it gives one pause to think about what might have been.
Well, commanders in the field usually want to attack or advance. Their higher ups look at their maps, at the big blank zone of 'we don't know what's in this location', at the lack of nearby armies to support or reinforce, and think a lot more cautiously. For every missed opportunity we blame them for now, there's probably a dozen times they got it right and reined in a disastrous overstretch. Hindsight's always 20:20.
Excellent point. We can always second guess from 65 years later. In the heat of the moment, though, reality has a nasty tendency to intrude. I'm guessing that the number of times they "got it right" is pretty high. In examining the events of the past, we need to be careful about including what we know happened later that they, of course, would not be able to know.
"Guaporese" stated: The western front was at a stalemate. But the real front was moving (interesting article by the way, since they could have rescued Germany from the communists if they advanced fast enough, East Germany would never have to exist, or Stalin would have advanced over the allies to get to berlin?): My response is this. Let’s not forget that on the eastern front the invaders weren’t facing the Siegfried Line, i.e. the West Wall and the Rhine river. The Siegfried Line was a defense system stretching more than 630 km (390 mi) with more than 18,000 bunkers, tunnels and tank traps which the Nazis had been keeping in pretty good shape since the thirties. No invading army had crossed the Rhine in 140 years, not since Napoleon in 1805. Not taking anything away from the Red Army, but the Nazis had to put more men in their eastern defense simply because they didn’t have anything like the Siegfried Line or the Rhine to use to hold back the Red Army.
Sure. The fact that the Red Army had 6.5 million front line soldiers and 14.000 tanks including IS-2 tanks while the Allies had 2 million front line soldiers and 6.000 tanks played no role in the decision to allocate more forces to the Eastern front. The fact that in the last 6 months the soviets inflicted 1.2 million casualties and the western allies, 0.4 million, too, had no role. Sources: When Titans Clashed, Glantz and Why the Allies Won.
Guys, let's remember that there was an Allied Coalition during the war. Victory over the Nazis was not achieved solely by the Red Army or by the western powers, but by the Allies together. Dave
You always miss out the bits that do not support your case Please tell us how many German POW's were taken in the West 1944-45. Then tell us how many the Soviets took and compare it to the total the Allies took. Who took more?
