bouzane said:
rocketpig said:
bouzane said:
rocketpig said:
bouzane said:
Britain didn't contribute anything meaningful to the Front with Japan either so what's your point? Although it is worth mentioning that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria saw the Soviets killing or capturing over 700,000 Japanese troops. Also, Romania, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia and Spain all contributed to the Eastern Front. The Italians lost almost all of the 100,000 troops that they provided for the Siege of Stalingrad alone. If you factor in Manchuria the Soviets inflicted over 10.6 million casualties upon the Axis, again, more than all other Allies combined. |
The Soviets invaded Manchuria after America had dropped two nuclear devices on the home island. They were picking up scraps and trying to grab land, nothing more.
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The vast, vast majority of Axis casualties, in terms of aircraft, vehicles and manpower were inflicted by the USSR. Almost the entire Wehrmacht was eliminated fighting the Soviets. Additionally, the Battle of Berlin was won by the Soviet Union with no other Allies present with the exception of approximately 200,000 Polish soldiers. There is no logical conclusion other than the understanding that the Soviet Union contributed more to the war effort than all other Allies combined. Over nine out of ten German casualties as well as millions of other Axis losses, the most significant defeat of the Luftwaffe, the failure of the Blitzkrieg and the successful invasion of Berlin.
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Your numbers seemed high to me. I looked into it and according to Wikipedia, Germany lost ~5.5m soldiers to military conflict.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
Anyway, I'm not arguing whether the USSR served the majority of casualties in the war. I'm simply refuting your premise that they singled-handedly defeated the Axis powers despite not having meaningful conflict with Japan.
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Please note that the information that you provided is only for those killed in action. These statistics do not include wounded or captured soldiers. Again, the Eastern Front saw virtually no meaningful contributions made by the other Allies. As far as the Pacific Theater is concerned, I will concede that the Americans achieved victory with little to no outside assistance. However, it is worth mentioning that the Wehrmacht was over triple the size of the Imperial Japanese Army meaning that the Wehrmacht accounted for the vast majority of the Axis' power.
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Are you comparing the entire of the Wehrmacht to just the Japanese navy? The Kriegsmarine (German navy) was basically crippled by the Treaty of Versailles and not a huge threat to anybody.
Also you keep on bringing up how the Russians won the Battle of Berlin, ignoring that this is entirely because Eisenhower let the Russians take Berlin out of diplomacy.
I'm not trying to downplay the USSR in WWII - without them Nazi germany would simply not have fallen (apart from perhaps to nuclear bombs) and no invasion from Normandy would have been able to even get a foothold. However I think you're trying to downplay the effect that first the British and then the Americans had in inflicting defeats on the Germans, especially on the German airforce.
