70th Anniversary of D-Day

[Anomalocaris]

Oh so basically we let Russia do all the heavy work. Conservation of energy.

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Still though what the fuck was Hitler thinking attacking Russia in any case? What a delusional fuck.

Yes, 3/4 of all German combat casaulties suffered in WWII were inflicted by the Russians. Even after Normadie landing, the Russians still faced 2/3 of all available German forces and inflicted 2/3 of all casualties suffered by the Germans.

Russians also suffered 4/5 of all combat combat casualties inflicted by the Germans. There is no doubt Eastern front was the central theater of WWII in Europe.

There are many reasons why Germany decided to attack Russia. You can not say the decision to attack Russia was totally irrational given the intelligence Germany had.

But much of the intelligence proved wrong. The German overall strategic direction on the eastern front was further hampered by Hitler's interference. Hitler had serious trouble with defining an objective and sticking to it, so while Germany had the material superiority in the beginning Germany dissipated her material superiority by switching strategic objectives several times and squandering its force in transportion rather than applying them to the tip of combat. Later when Russia pulled even materially, it became clear where as Stalin encouraged high level Russians generals to learn their lessons from Russian combat experience, Hitler was hampering high level German generals from learning from German combat experiences. So starting from middle of 1943, Russia was constantly outmeneuvering Germany on strategic level, and sucker punching the Germany army time and again. By 1944, The Russians can pretty much count on being able to always out think the Germans and deliver crushing attacks were the germans were least expecting it.

In the west there is a convenient pat story about how Russia crushed Germany by sheer weight of numbers. This is not really the whole story. Where as German army retained an advantage in tactical leadership, Russian overall strategic and operational leadership had became vastly superior to those of Germans by 1944. So while man for man German army retained an advatage on the company and battalion level, there was a parity at division level, and Russians were usually able to outmaneuver and set the Germans up at corp and army level.