World War 2

M

Maceface

Guest
I was just reading some movie review and the users comments mentioned how basically we would all be speaking German if the Americans hadn't off stepped in.

This really annoys me. It was the Russians who beat the Nazis. By the time America came in, Germany was already in big trouble.

It reaalllllly p's me off!
 
The Russians had their back against the wall before the US entered the war, the Germans were still 100's of miles inside Russia when the US came in & Russia had suffered horrendous casulities in the previous year. The attacks from the US/UK in France & Africa meant Germany had to re-deploy troops from the East, this is what changed the course of the war. Whether Russia could have defeated the Germans alone I would doubt, they were at the stage of strategic withdrawls stretching German supply lines/morale & the famous Russian winter's, then throwing millions of poorly trained soldiers/civilians in counter-attacks. To me simply it would have been a conflict between quality & quantity, not sure Russian would have reached Berlin first if the US was not involved on the other fronts..
 
Vorld Var II

.........und vat vould vee so vad if vee did speek germin??
 
Vorld Var II

> It reaalllllly p's me off!

Yeah - I know how you feel. I still haven't gotten over the Boer War myself!
 
Allied victory wasn't a certainty until the yanks finally joined in. Without the Americans, Field Marshal Alan Brooke's strategy of regaining control of the Mediterranean and drawing German resources into Italy before re-entering France wouldn't have worked. It depended on the Russians keeping the bulk of German forces busy on the Eastern front. If the Germans weren't forced
to fight on three fronts they could well have contained Stalin's armies.
 
ww2

Which leads us back to the original point. The Movie Commentator was right : if it was not for the Americans and the British we would be speaking german now. What was left of us that was. After the war it was discovered that the germans had a plan to use British and presumably Irish labourers to build a motorway to the far east ie. useful extermination.
 
Plan

"British and presumably Irish labourers "

I wonder what pecking order would've developed?
 
ww2

That is like asking what peking order existed between jews and gypsies, or gypsies and handicapped people, in the Nazi concentration camps. Hitler did not have any respect for neutral people or indeed neutral countries, and invaded them when it suited him. In fairness to Nazi Germany, it did generally treated British and Allied POW's according to the geneva convention. This makes it all the more shocking when his plans for the motorway to the far east - using forced labour - were discovered at the end of the war.
 
Re: ww2

to build a motorway to the far east ie
Click to expand...

As it was it only took us another 40 years to build motorways to the 'far east .ie' ...Dublin!
 
Germany and neutrality

Ah, but you must admit, we might've got to the top of the pecking order on the motorway job.

We fairly well ran with the hare and ran with the hound during the "neutral emergency".

To mention just some, we gave them Lord Haw Haw, we were not by any means compassionate to the (well with a McCabe run country, how could we be) Jews, and in case all hope was not lost, Dev' pottered down to pass condolences to the German Embassy at the first rumour of Adolf's death.

It is also a known fact that many of Irelands middle/upper (non west-brit) classes, had extra-curricular tuition in german given to their children.
 
!

I do not see anyone here congratulating the Irish diplomats from extrapolating ourselves from any global or European wars and protecting the Irish populous, although most are more concerned with the protection of the label “neutrality” rather than the actual objective.
 
Maceface AKA ignorance

Maceface- Does it p**s you off to know that the Irish government at the time was a supporter of the nazis and all of their policies?

Oh weren't we just great. Not!

Bluz
 
Maceface AKA ignorance

Maceface- Does it p**s you off to know that the Irish government at the time was a supporter of the nazis and all of their policies?

Oh weren't we just great. Not!

Bluz
 
Re: Maceface AKA ignorance

Maceface- Does it p**s you off to know that the Irish government at the time was a supporter of the nazis and all of their policies?
Click to expand...

What do you mean a supporter?
If anything, we were on the Allied side. Anytime we caught one of their guys, they were held down the Curragh, and anytime we we caught a Allied soldier, they were sent on their way.
Please don't try and make me out to be a supporter of Nazi Germany.
I never mentioned once anything about Irish policy during the war. My simple point was how it annoys me to hear from Americans that they won the war when it was my opinion that it was really Russia who drained the strength of the Germans in Stalingrad. I am not saying that America coming into the war didn't help, but it the Allies were winning it by the time they came in.
 
TrueNazi

MaceFace, you're big mistake is believing that you can have a rational conversation with True Blue. Forget about it.
 
.......

Maceface – I never said that you were a supporter of the Nazi’s. Unfortunately our government did adopt a very friendly approach to the Nazis. When Hitler died we even sent over our condolenses. Also remember that the government at the time were extreme socialists – which of course explains their bizarre behaviour.
 
oh yeah

'the Irish government at the time was a supporter of the nazis and all of their policies?'

I fogot about how we agreed with the extermination of the Jewish race. Amazing the little thing syou forget isn't it!!
 
Re: oh yeah

Shouldn't we be debating world war 3 instead of looking back at ww2? It looks a distinct possibility now with the instability in the middle east and terrorists poised to attack the oil supply. They don't even need to attack the US or Europe. Cut off the oil and the west will fall. Or am I being over-dramatic? :)
 
Re: oh yeah

Getting back to the original point, I think it took both the American and Russian effort to defeat the Nazis.

At the time of the D-Day invasion, Germany had about 3 times as many divisions on the Eastern front as it had in the West. And still, even with overwhelming air superiority, it took the Allies almost a year to make it through to Berlin. So, if the USSR had been taken out of the picture by then, and if the German military hadn't been bled dry in Russia, then Hitler would have been unchallengeable in Western europe.

On the other hand, if Russia didn't have the benefit of a constant stream of war materiel from Allied convoys, (and possibly, intelligence from the Enigma code-breaking effort) it is unlikely they could have turned the war around on the Eastern front. The sheer size and depth of the country may have eventually ground down and halted the German advance, but decisive battles such as Kursk, could never have been won without aid from the West.

Any analysis must recognise the enormous contribution of the USSR in terms of lives, some 25-30 million, and, also, the contribution of Allied, mainly American, industry. Just one example; at its peak, the Americans were manufacturing almost 100,000 military aircraft per year. Without both of these remarkable (and different) contributions from the USA and the USSR, the outcome of the war would have been vastly different.
 
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