WW II discussion

kvs wrote:Wikicrappia and its sources do not include a single one of those groups in its list of Nazi allied forces.    WWII had similar aspects
to the war in Syria in that hordes of Nazi jihadis joined the effort to invade and destroy the USSR.    These irregulars are systematically
omitted from the war accounting.  

So it is actually true that the USSR was fighting against Europe during WWII.   But the key detail is that it was Europe that
instigated the war and was driven by hate.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS_foreign_volunteers_and_conscripts#France

The number was minuscule. France had just 20,000 volunteers on the Eastern Front out of a population of over 40 mln, the Netherlands 25,000. If Europeans were keen to fight alongside of Hiter, the number would have been larger by a factor of 20 (Latvia had 80,000 out of a popualtion of slightlty more than 1 mln).

No Europeans were joining the German en masse with an exception of Estonians, Latvians and Western Ukrainians. Vast majority of the population in Western Europe was anti Nazi - French factories were to produce 4,000 aircraft for the Luftwaffe but ultimately produced something like 50.

kvs wrote: WWII had similar aspects to the war in Syria in that hordes of Nazi jihadis joined the effort to invade and destroy the USSR.    These irregulars are systematically omitted from the war accounting.  So it is actually true that the USSR was fighting against Europe during WWII.  

Germany soldiers dominated the Nazi forces both in authority, quantity and quality. Just like a big gang mobilize his own forces then add up the auxiliaries from the small vassals and lackeys.

Moreover, for example, amongst the Polish resistance included the Armia Ludowa of the communists who were friendly toward the USSR. The Yugoslav Partisans were a formidable anti-fascist forces. The revolutions in Bulgaria and Romania gave the USSR valuable allies at the late phase of the war, too. And there were Poles, Czechoslovak, Romanian Armies... in the Red Army.

On the other hand, the war in Syria is a proxy war when the jihadist lackeys and local traitors do most the menial job and the West stay hidden in the shadow and direct them.

Thankfully there are no mentions of supposed soviet technological inferiority of the artillery itself and even praises soviet mortar designs.

It could hardly call Soviet artillery crap when the Germans put back into service most Soviet Artillery that they captured, and were especially impressed with their 120mm mortars which they put into production and started using them in similar numbers to the Soviets.

2. The soviets massively depended on western explosives supplies.

The Soviet paid for those explosives supplies... perhaps if Lend Lease was more like.... we are allies... use all you need for free, then perhaps it might have been something they could be thankful for, but it was not free... and the west fucked around till the result of the war was certain before starting their invasion of Europe in a rush to avoid missing out on some of the spoils.

It was like building a house where half the workers turn up to get on the clock and then pissed off and played soccer all day and then came back to check off the clock... then when it came time to complete the house they rush around with a broom and brush pan and clean up little areas and act like the house could not have been built without them.

Honestly, I agree with the people who say we should change our messaging about it and always refer to the genocide of the soviet peoples in WW2, if there's one thing the jews did right it's use that message to their benefit at every turn.
And it's not like the germans are in any state to disagree. So I don't really see a downside.

That is the problem for the Soviets... there is a massive Jewish presence in the west that constantly brings up jewish issues and jewish suffering during WWII at the exclusion of everything else, and fair enough the Nazis were scum for doing that and shame on everyone else for letting that happen, but it tends to obscure the reality that the Nazis were scum and WWII was not actually about killing some jews... they killed lots of different groups of people who don't have a voice in the west and are largely being ignored.

Massive soviet losses in many offensives had to do with both shortage of ammunition and lack of on call indirect fire, while the germans had both..

Bullshit. The first massive losses of Soviet forces was the same for them as it was for the French and the British... the mobility and tactics of the Germans meant when the defending forces rushed forward to defend the border the mobile German forces would find a weak area and punch through and encircle the enemies strongest forces near the front line.

Trying to escape the encirclement often involved dropping or leaving behind heavy equipment which was captured and if it was of any use was added to German resources... the Soviet 76.2mm artillery guns were considered excellent by both sides... the Germans even put the ammo into production for themselves, and the 82mm mortars were considering very good too, but the power of the 16kg 120mm shell was prized above all others as a very potent round.

This means soviet infantry and armor was less supported than the germans on the offensive.

You could put the name of any country Germany fought against before 1942 there and it would make sense too.

The Soviets were not backward at all and had more armour than the rest of the world combined.

Given another few years and they could have gotten a decent number of T-34s into service and converted their T-26 tanks into artillery tractors or APCs and they would have been a real problem for the Germans.

5. The soviets lacked, and simply didnt have the ability to train enough artillery observers during the war in order to have on call artillery support, mainly because in operation barbarossa, the soviet NCO corps was depleted,as well as due to the lack of radios.

Most of the first portion of the war they were retreating... trying to use forward artillery observers would have just resulted in their artillery being kept further forward and more of it would have just been captured by the Germans.

6. Lack of enough radios and poor quality of maps massively hampered artillery effectiveness and prevented on call indirect fire

Hilarious that the problems of the first year or two of war for all protagonists except Germany, who was the only force actually prepared for war suddenly becomes a problem for the entire war... which is hogwash. By the middle of the war they were actually rather good and fighting... and having lots of radios and communication for the Japanese proved their downfall because the Americans were listening and had decoded their secret codes...

7. Even by 1945, soviet artillery was mostly used in direct fire when not doing preplanned barrages, and the soviets relied much more on the ZiS-3 field gun and mortars while the germans and allies used heavier howitzers.

The Soviets kept 45mm anti tank guns in service right to the end of the war well past the time they were effective in their primary role because with a HE frag round they were excellent in built up areas or out in the open against troops outside small arms fire range.

Direct fire is always vastly more accurate than indirect fire and because of that the requirements to destroy the target are much less.

By the end of the war the Soviets have 10 times more artillery pieces being used in combat than the Germans and as you mention also more direct fire weapons too and the guns on their armoured vehicles were much bigger than at the start of the war... by the end of the war artillery support was not a problem for the Soviets... in fact many argue it was a strength.

What the Soviets didn't do was piss about with super calibre guns like the Germans did. Instead of wasting time and money on a few expensive super weapons, they built weapons of 152mm and 203mm in enormous numbers and used them widely and much more effectively than the much bigger German weapons.

Thankfully there are no mentions of supposed soviet technological inferiority of the artillery itself

Because in most areas Soviet guns and mortars were the equal or superior to German weapons throughout the war.

Many types the Germans hunted down to use themselves.

Soviet primitive artillery operation and doctrine seems to have been a result of the dire situation of the war.

They needed doctrinal changes due to the vastly more mobile nature of the conflict, but by the end of the war their artillery was more effective than german artillery, though probably not as flexible.

kvs wrote:Turning the other cheek is not the correct response to revisionist propaganda.   If the spew from the west is to delete the USSR's
actual achievements in fighting the Nazis, then the response should be to undermine this propaganda.   That includes questioning the
exaggerated value of lend-lease.   Again, if there was a lack of trucks to tow the artillery, then where were these lend-lease trucks?
So they were not there when the USSR needed them.   Trucks delivered in 1945 don't count for anything.  

The Soviet airforce was not flying lend-lease aircraft as if it had no Soviet aircraft:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_aircraft_production

https://airpages.ru/eng/uk/gs_uk60.shtml

So a total of 14,002 fighters and 3,652 bombers supplied by lend-lease in total.   Compared to the Soviet total
fighters and bombers of about 140,000.   Again, the lend-lease aircraft were not there before 1943 in any
numbers that matter.

The USSR stopped the German advance without the assistance of lend-lease.   Lend-lease helped it push back
the Nazis faster.    Western revisionists do not own the victory on the Eastern front.

It was not the fighters and tanks that helped. Trucks were the real deal. Without US providing 400,000 motor vehicles (vs 130,000 produced in the USSR) USSR would still have won the war but at a slowe pace, all large sccale offensives like Dnepr offensive, Kutuzov and Polkovodets Rumyantsev, Bagration, Lvov-Sandomierx, Vistula Oder etc.would not be possible due to constraints of logistics. It would ake until 1946-7 to reach Berlin

I always liked isaev's arguments about artillery, that the most difficult problem was a lack of towing machines that could keep up with a mechanized column.

The fundamental problem is that it is bullshit.

Even in 1941 having captured all those western european tanks and put them into service as light tanks they were no where near a fully mechanised for when they entered Soviet territory... most of their artillery was not mechanised at all either... but the Soviet Unions biggest problem was lack of towing vehicles?

That is ridiculously stupid... early in the war they had plenty of horses which was standard for ALL military forces of that time period, and the thing with horses is that you lash more on if they can't pull that gun.

Most of the guns early war were actually rather light so horse drawn was fine, but if there were not enough horses then you got men to pull the damn things.

It hampered both organized retreats and early war offensives, when after the infantry and tanks had moved forward they lost artillery support as it was slowly plodding along somewhere in the rear.

The French army got overwhelmed and the British expeditionary force lost all their equipment... most of them didn't even have their rifles and small arms when they were picked up, but some how the Soviets were supposed to have fully mechanised artillery with radios and all the stuff everyone else developed much later.... give me a break.

He also does cover the chemicals issue quite well, but the towing problem really makes sense, especially when you see all those early-war pictures with virtually undamaged artillery being left behind.

Yeah, you are not getting it are you... those guns were left behind early on because the whole Soviet force it was attached to was surrounded and captured and sent to work in prisoner of war camps in eastern europe.

But then who cares because according to this same bullshit they likely didn't have any ammo for those guns anyway so an ability to take them back as they retreated would be a stupid use for available resources... it makes more sense to bring back something that can be used that will work.

I like that we remember the help that their grandfathers offered and it's always interesting to analyze what equipment was prized and what was not.

You mean the Soviet and Russian people should be happy being left to fight the core of the German army because after all your western allies managed to send a lot of shit they could not use themselves... I really don't think it was a balanced and fair arrangement... do you thank the shop owner where you buy your groceries for selling you food and other essentials?

I mean if he let you have them for free, then sure... thanks would be due, but he was selling them to you and earning a living from these purchases.

Like how the airacobra and kingcobra really proved to be awesome in eastern front conditions but were completely out of place in the western theatre/pacific.

The difference is that in the west they treated them as ground attack aircraft with those big nose mounted cannon, well the Soviets had Il-2s for that... their Yak-9Ts with their nose mounted 37mm and 45mm cannon tended to be used against fighters and bombers in an air to air role.

The best feature of those fighters was the number of guns which inexperienced fighters liked. The fuselage mounted cannon arrangement was preferred by Soviet and also German aces was the normal arrangement for Soviet fighters.

Same with early war deliveries like the matildas, stuarts and lees.

The less said about the General Lees the better... suffice to say the nickname was grave for 7 brothers.

The Matildas had good armour but were slow and had awful guns and the Stuarts were certainly better than the T-26s, but were no useful for all of the war.

You are right, but they still depended on lend lease for explosives.

The Soviets could buy explosives from a range of sources if the allies decided not to supply them.

The Allies were happy to supply them because they knew if the Soviets folded then they were next but they would be next against a German army with more men and more production capacity and more armour and more air power because all those forces in the eastern front could then transfer to the western front and then D Day would not work at all.

In fact the injection of all the forces sent to the east alone would probably enable a decent attempt at invading England again and without England where would US forces land from to fight in Europe?

Unless you prove that soviet wartime production of explosives for shells was enough for wartime needs, the point still stands.

When you buy potatoes in a shop because they are cheap and always available all year round.... how many potatoes do you plant in your own garden?

If they couldn't get explosives from their western allies then they would have had to put resources into making more of their own... and by the way they made all their own shells, the only ammo they didn't make was for lend lease weapons which were supplied with ammo to use with them.

Some were not really used, or given to their equivalent of dads army, like Thompsen SMGs, which lacked penetration against targets with lots of heavy clothes on.

This is generalizing bullshit. The soviets didnt always retreat. they counterattacked and had major offensives too. And even if you say they were retreating, them retreating had to do with lack of ample artillery support and german artillery superiority.

The Germans used more horses to move their artillery than they had vehicles to move them.

The Soviets had a significant advantage in rocket artillery which was highly mobile and the range of Soviet artillery was generally very good and was not overrun all the time.

The Soviets were pushed back to the gates of Moscow in early december 1941... the invasion occurred in mid 1941 so we are talking about an initial withdrawal from the Ukraine to Moscow over about 6 months with several major encirclements where enormous numbers of Soviet soldiers were captured or escaped to fight with the resistance. A lot of old obsolete artillery and armoured vehicles and obsolete fighter planes like I-15s and I-16s got captured or destroyed.

After that there was more tooing and froing.

The Soviet use of artillery was devastating.... throughout the entire battle of Stalingrad their artillery was located on the other side of the river and it was never overrun as they let the Germans take more and more of the city before springing a trap and surrounding them. IN that case it was german artillery that was cut off and lost.

The numerous failed attacks to break the leningrad siege in 1942,

What!!! how much artillery would it take to defeat an entire German Army Group? Are you joking?

More to the point Leningrad had excellent artillery support from ground based artillery, but also from the ships in the port of Leningrad delivering salvos to shell the attacking forces.

Leningrad was a German siege... they never committed forces anywhere strong enough to take the city, they only had forces strong enough to contain and prevent forces inside the city from breaking out. Stalingrad was a Soviet trap to capture the Germans and it worked very well. Leningrad was a holding siege to contain that flank of the battle while Moscow and the oilfields to the south were taken... there was no intention of capturing Leningrad any time soon... it was in effect a perpetual artillery duel... which the Soviets eventually won.

operation Mars, and the extreme casaulties suffered attacking the northern flank of stalingrad in 1942 are examples of massive soviet attacks that could've been more successful with on call artillery support.

So you don't know anything about the war then because all the ineffective counter attacks that failed always had artillery support... they normally failed because of a lack of coordination or experience of operating large armoured formations that the Soviets would suffer from for most of the early part of the war.

The French had the same problem but that was not so obvious because they surrendered... or the British who ran away.

SO far you haven't proven that on call indirect on call artillery support is not useful, nor that the soviets had it. You just use "oh but the french were worse" type excuses.

Cell phones are fucking useful... the only combatant that had on call artillery and aircraft support for most of WWII was the Germans which is why they were so successful.

The US probably had on call artillery support but then their tanks were all shit... so in many ways the Soviets were better off having better tanks and less radios.

Of course if you think lend lease won the war then you must be counting how many radios and variable time fuses for artillery shells the west was sending to the Soviets to make their artillery better and more effective.

Stalin was asking for B-17 bombers and was getting B-25s, if your local grocery store fucked up your order that bad and that often you would be looking for another place to shop.

Actually the soviets produced a very modest number of ML-20 152mm and A-19 122mm guns(corps level artillery) and their tonnage of shells expended was much lower than that of germans, british, or Americans.

And yet 2/3rds of Germans killed on the battlefield were killed by the Soviets.

They had about a dozen different 152mm guns and howitzers, both towed and tracked like the IS-152 and SU-152 and ISU-152 vehicles, including a tracked towed gun.

Were those radios used by artillery observers for on call indirect artillery support. Its not only about radios, but adequate training, and theres no proof the USSR had trained artillery observers, hence why they used preplanned barrages and direct fire.

They also had Il-2 armoured ground attack aircraft... a type the western allies didn't have... the fact that they did the bulk of the fighting and won suggests they did OK.

And it exposes artillery crews and the artillery piece to much more danger.

You mean like the danger the troops in tanks and infantry faced... yeah.. that happens in war time I am told.

Also massed indirect artillery fire rpvided on-call with a trained artillery observer is vastly more efficient.

The Western Allies levelled entire German cities trying to hit individual german factories... and missed... and you are whining about efficiency?

Massed direct fire is almost useless for obvious reasons.

Of course... the Germans thought Soviet artillery and their skills in battle were a total joke and would stand up in the middle of combat and laugh at them because they were rubbish...

Except preplanned barrages and direct fire were a relic of WW1 and before.

Preplanned barrages and direct fire artillery are still used today.

Most machine gun tactics were developed during WWI but no mention of them being obsolete too?

The only reasons the soviets didnt use on call indirect fire was due to not having enough shells, not enough radios and lack of trained artillery observers.

They didn't have Armata T-14 tanks either.

The Germans didn't use 120mm mortars until they came up against Soviet forces using them and captured as many as they could and put them into production in Germany and started making their own ammo for it.

They used as many 76.2mm Soviet Artillery guns as they could get their hands on too and also put that ammo into production as well.

Its about ability to produce explosives for shells, not producing artillery pieces

It is about a lack of testicles that led to the western allies hiding behind the English Channel and sending the stuff they didn't want and thought was useless to the Soviets so they could keep fighting the Germans.

They finally grew a pair when in 1944 they realised that the Soviets were definitely going to win and if they didn't hurry up and invade Europe it would all be occupied by the Soviets pretty soon.

Does he prove that soviets had artillery observers that could direct on call fire?

Don't be silly... they couldn't even speak English... how could they possibly fight a war?

It was not the fighters and tanks that helped.

Of course it wasn't because the ones that were sent were ordinary to useless.

Trucks were the real deal.

The Trucks didn't make much of a difference till Bagration.

Without US providing 400,000 motor vehicles (vs 130,000 produced in the USSR) USSR would still have won the war but at a slowe pace, all large sccale offensives like Dnepr offensive, Kutuzov and Polkovodets Rumyantsev, Bagration, Lvov-Sandomierx, Vistula Oder etc.would not be possible due to constraints of logistics. It would ake until 1946-7 to reach Berlin

If the western allies really wanted to speed up the war they could have launched D Day in 1942 when it would actually have been useful to the Soviets.

Western claims that lend lease took years off the war ignore that Germany was actually on its knees it had no fuel for aircraft and no fuel for armour... they were screwed.

Without those trucks the Soviets would have pushed them back slower but the Soviets could have used their airpower to just hammer them even more than they did.

There is no way it would have taken more than an extra few months.

The Soviets had the BT series tanks. They did not need any Stuart tanks.

The Stuarts were good tanks, and they had radios, which at the time most other countries tanks did not.

Many Soviet tanks did have radios, but the Soviets made more tanks than the rest of the world combined... Germany and France and Britain and the US could put radios in most of their tanks because they only made a fraction that the Soviets did.

Just like you said, the Soviets simply had the same issues initially the French and British had in the battle of France.
Poor unit coordination and poor combined arms.

Like the British and French they were dropped in the deep end trying to learn to fight WWII despite being trained and equipped to fight a previous conflict.

The first problem was the enormous encirclements in the first 6 months of the war essentially led to the bulk of the standard trained army and air force of the Soviet Union being captured or killed or forced into a huge retreat.

On the plus side it got rid of a lot of old crap, but is also killed a lot of men who were trained to use it.

Getting rid of the T-26s which were two men tanks and therefore useless by definition, was like losing so many I-15s and I-16s... but many of the latter were lost on the ground meaning the pilots were spared.

The T-34 tanks and KV-1 tanks and the MiG-3 and Yak-1 and of course Il-2s were much better than the platforms they replaced.

Sometimes the new stuff wasn't even that great, the LaGG-3 was not amazing.... just ordinary really, though it ended up turning into the excellent La-5FN and La-7 series of fighters which were excellent.

The Soviets had plenty of T-34 and KV-1 tanks. More than enough to meet the Panzer III and IV the Germans had.
The light tanks had highly variable quality but so did German tanks which included the Pz I. Sure they could have more radios.

The crushing problem for all the allies was tank design in the sense that the T-26 was a very common type... it was essentially a licence produced Carldon Lloyd design of British design except with better armament than the British ever mounted on it... the fundamental problem was its two man crew so a driver drove the vehicle around while the other guy did everything else... gunner, loader, commander, navigator, communications... it was just too much and so most of the time it was blind because there was only one set of eyes loading and firing the guns, when in tank combat you need a set of eyes looking for targets and threats constantly, and a set of eyes loading the guns with the proper ammo and another set of eyes firing the gun till the target is destroyed and it can move to the next target while the commander looks for threats and targets and positions for the driver to drive to.

A radio would not help...

I think the main problem the Soviets had in terms of equipment was the lackluster quality of the majority of their fighter aircraft which were I-16 fighters.
The constant sabotage the Soviet government and industry did to Polikarpov in late 1930s was the main cause for this I think.

It was an excellent fighter but for a war in 1933 and not the 1940s.... in many ways it was kept past its prime so when it got into combat it showed.

The Shkas machine guns and 20mm cannon were excellent, but it was just obsolete by the time WWII had started and also more importantly the German pilots had been practising shooting down the airforces of Europe from fighters and bombers to transport planes, so they knew what they were doing and had had the experience of shooting down lots of aircraft to confirm what worked and what did not.

They could have produced the much superior I-180 easily since it used much the same techniques as the I-16. Instead a lot of effort was spent on aircraft like the Yak-1.
Which were decent aircraft once developed but took a long time to get right and were totally new in construction to Soviet industry.

They were in the process of moving forward with their fighter technology.... mostly held back with a lack of really powerful aircraft engines and the high octane fuel they would need to get the best out of them...

3) The turning point for the Nazis was the battle of Stalingrad in 1942.

That is widely held up as an example but stopping the German forces at the gates of Moscow could be pointed to as being the first time they were thwarted from getting to a primary objective, though the west loves to blame the weather and the stretched logistics... you would have to say poor planning that did not include winter combat gear and lubricants suggests arrogance was more of a factor.

The west often claims Hitlers order of no retreat as a mistake, but when the outside temperature is minus 40 degrees Celsius then leaving the farm building you are occupying to retreat a few kilometres could be more lethal than fighting to stay.

Conclusion: the USSR reversed the Nazi advance without lend-lease. Only morons would fob this off as a mere
detail and pretend that 1945 was more pivotal and important. But that goes together with their western chauvinist
revisionist "history" where D-Day won the war in Europe.

And when that is proven and obvious they change tack and suggest lend lease saved lots of Soviet lives by shortening the war... but if that was the concern then D Day could have been moved up to 1942 and some real pressure would have been taken off the Soviets and the war really would have been shorter.

Obviously the western allies would have massively increased their losses because essentially what they actually did in WWII was sit on the sidelines in Europe and let the Germans and Soviets smash the snot out of each other, but they are not prepared to admit that.

Germany's casualties on the eastern front were 80% and not 2/3. You have to count Germany's allies as well
even though it is normal for western revisionists to omit the Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, etc., fighting on the
eastern front.

Most importantly the germans being killed on the eastern front were soldiers and airmen... the bulk of the Germans being killed by allied bombing were the women and children and old men in Germany...

The west was hedging its bets in 1942 when it realized the Hitler would lose. If Hitler
was winning on the eastern front, you can bet your ass that lend-lease would have fizzled out. There would be
lots of pretexts that could be used.

Actually if the Germans started being more dominant on the Eastern Front I suspect the lend lease that was sent would suddenly have doubled or tripled, because that would be a much smaller price for the western allies to pay than starting D Day a few years sooner.

If the Soviets had been better able to defeat the Germans then the LL would have shrivelled... they wanted the Germans and the Soviets to wear each other out and destroy each other... and to be fair Stalin probably would have done the same if the Germans had invaded the UK... they probably would have sent T-34s and PPSh-41s to England to help fight the Germans and while the English were crying out for Stalin to attack Germany from the east to reduce the pressure on them Stalin would find all sorts of excuses and problems as to why they could not.

It is interesting that during the 1920s and 1930s there were three enormous defensive lines that were dismantled in the Soviet Union before the German invasion that would have made the German rush to Moscow much more costly and slower, and of course they were in the middle of new reforms of their military that if they could be completed would have made the Soviet forces much more formidable an opponent...

Thing is there are a lot of thickos around but I doubt that if they were were unaware of the other axis powers on the eastern front then they'd know about lend lsease aid to the soviets... or about the eastern front at all.

The really frustrating thing is that it puts me in a position of belittling what a lot of real heros did to get this material to the Soviets, but then the irony is that the heroism of those men was largely ignored by the western governments they worked for... they had to get campaign medals from the Russians rather than their own military...but that is a story on its own...

As before there is no way for D-Day to take place in 1942. Transporting 100,000 men to North Africa to fight against 3rd rate troops is not the same as transporting milions of men with as imilarily huge amount of equipment.

Even D-Day on 6 June 1943 means that Germans recall Operation Citadel and sent the reserves to Normandy. The allies are crushed, lose several 100,000s of men and are unable to launch D-Day a year later. The Germans themselves are highly exhausted

Net results - Red Army in Berlin in May 1944 not 1945

Best strategy for the Soviets was to blitz build the fortifications on the German-Soviet border. If they hurry they could have it ready by April-May 1941.

Defend this and the Stalin line and the German offensive will be reduced from a dash to a crawl even if neither line stops them fully.

As before there is no way for D-Day to take place in 1942. Transporting 100,000 men to North Africa to fight against 3rd rate troops is not the same as transporting milions of men with as imilarily huge amount of equipment.

We keep hearing how powerful the Royal Navy was and the US Navy.

An invasion in 1942 would obviously have been much more costly than what they actually did, but that is the point... they hunkered down and let the Soviets do all the heavy lifting and claimed it was Lend Lease that gave them the ability to do that.

What gave them the ability to do that was because the Germans and their allies treated the Soviets like cattle... there was no choice at all.

Even D-Day on 6 June 1943 means that Germans recall Operation Citadel and sent the reserves to Normandy. The allies are crushed, lose several 100,000s of men and are unable to launch D-Day a year later. The Germans themselves are highly exhausted

So the western allies continue to hide while the Soviets lose hundreds of thousands of men each week pretending and making excuses that they are fighting too...

I understand the logic and dare say if Hitler had decided to invade the UK instead of go the other way Stalin would do exactly the same thing... let them wear each other out and then sweep in near the end and declare victory.

Like I said before the Soviet Union leaders never thought the West would collapse so quickly so they thought they had more time to rearm.

They were likely also aware that the Germans invading the Soviet Union was Britains biggest wet dream and they would do anything in their power to make it happen... up to and including getting spies close to Hitler that keep mentioning all the resources and living space in the East.

The Panzer I, also only had a 2 man crew. They were small tanks so you could not fit more people inside.

It was essentially a tankette... a machine gun and a light 20mm cannon wasn't it?

In the case of the T-34, I think the problem with the turret was the original design with A-20 was not for it to use a 76mm gun, and when they decided to put one into the turret they had to reduce space somehow and taking a man out was the easiest option.

They didn't get the T-34 turret right till they had the T-34/85.

I personally thought what they should have done was arm the T-34 with as long a 76.2mm gun as they could fit with that cartridge for use against light vehicles and enemy positions and fit the 57mm high velocity gun to the KV-1 so that there was a significant difference between them.

That way the slower heavier better protected KV-1 could be a tank hunter and the T-34 could be their standard tank against all the other vehicles.

I rather suspect production was a problem.... the idiot that introduced new fire arms to the Army thought submachine guns were wasteful so when Soviet troops went to Finland they didn't take most of them. A very painful lesson.

The I-16 was a great fighter when it came out with its innovative monoplane design.

In many ways forward deploying them and having many destroyed on the ground was a good thing if their pilots could move back with the units as they retreated... but sadly the sudden introduction of newer aircraft types that the pilots were not familiar with meant a lot of new planes and pilots were lost to silly things.

Best strategy for the Soviets was to blitz build the fortifications on the German-Soviet border. If they hurry they could have it ready by April-May 1941.

Defend this and the Stalin line and the German offensive will be reduced from a dash to a crawl even if neither line stops them fully.

The only really successful defence line of that war was the French Maginot line... it did exactly what it was supposed to do...

It forced the Germans to go around and through the low countries, but they capitulated and fell without slowing the Germans down very much at all... the French assumed they would delay them so they could send forces to fight in the low countries instead of on French soil... they clearly had not discussed this properly with the low countries or perhaps they might have been better prepared.

Complaining that the Soviets were pushed back so far so quickly ignores the Germans had already done the same with the armies of western europe first... now if you look at western coverage of WWI the western european forces were a match for the Germans and the Soviets just threw men into the grinder to compensate for not being a modern european fighting force.

If you look at WWII Germany seemed to advance as quickly in any direction it tried to go until it got to the gates of Moscow where it was stopped and pushed back and kept getting pushed back from then on... they didn't get closer at any time later in that war.

The best strategy for the Soviets would be regime change... Kill Hitler and then get buddy buddy with his replacement... drop the anti commie and anti Jew bullshit and all that nazi crap and Germany could take its time and eventually either sue for peace with the UK or invade with T-34s and Yak-3s supporting the best of the German vehicles being produced beyond the Urals...

The Soviets were allies with the west because it was useful to both parties but they were never actually friends and did not really see eye to eye on most things.

If that shocks you look at what happened post 1991... a reunified Germany enters HATO along with Japan who has been a member (US puppet) for a while, so that is essentially what the west has done to the Soviet Union/Russia...

Just having naval superiority id not enough for D-Day. D-Day required massive preparations. training and equipping troops, stockpiling ammo fuel and other supplies, building transport ships etc etc that simply had not been completed in 1943 let alone 1942. You don't just conjure 1.5m troops and supplies for them out of thin air.