Quote:
Originally Posted by PIMking
CC,
How was the German army all but beaten before the Yanks joined the war? (this is an honest question) Do you think the Normandy invasion would of been successful or even happened if the yanks weren't in the war?
at that point the German army had a firm grip of western europe, I think they would of eventually lost with Russians advancing causing less German troops on the western front.
I can say it honestly doesn't matter whether you're canadian, American, Dutch,French, English, or scottish. These brave people all paid the ultimate price to rid the world of the evil that was the nazi regime. I'm so grateful that those who fought, the world is a better place because of them.
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Germany severely over reached itself after its initial successes in the war.
I can agree that they had a fairly firm grimp on the Western European front, but they were bled out by the Russians, not only in terms of manpower, but most of their most experienced armor and frontal aviation got tied up there, and it was a matter of time til the Russian's hit Berlin because of their massive abilitiy to counter punch with men and machinary.
Germany also made the mistake of trying to rescue Italy first in the Desert, then in Italy, and the Italian campaign gave Hitler a new worry as a D-Day invasion might only be a distraction to the real attempt by the allies to gut Germany through a soft underbelly.
Most military strategist will tell you that you will always lose a war on two fronts especially against a numerically superior foe, a three front war was insanity by Hitler.
But Germany's defeat was at that point measurable. They were beaten in Germany and in Italy.
If the Allies would have appeassed the Russians, they would have launched their final invasion through Italy and up without the American's help,, but decided to wait which caused the cooling of Stalin's relation with the allies.
But I think that Hitler was also very dissapointed that the Japanese didn't do more to pull American Troops into the pacific.
Hitler was truly surprised by D-Day thanks in large part to things like Operation Mincemeat, and through the assigning of Patton to a false army. He was so surprised and the high command was so surprised that they refused to release a massive armoured Panzer SS to assist in the defense of the beaches.
I have no doubt that if the German's had taken D-Day seriously and released an elite armoured division that D-Day would have been a lot bloodier or possibly thrown back into the water.