Ok, not football at all, but it matters, eventually.

[WTF11]

My degree programme combined the study of Political history, International relations & Sociology with my main modules focusing on Eastern Europe (part of my genealogical line was of the area). A great course but heavy workload at the time but skimming through some books I own I noticed notes of reference I'd written inside one.

On 18 December 1940 Hitler issued F?hrer Directive 21 an order for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler?s June 1941 advance into the USSR (Operation Barbarossa) was the decisive moment of the war - because there after at unspeakable human cost the Red Army did the heavy lifting first to contain the Germans & finally to defeat them.

It may be argued that American supplies of everything from metals, spam, boots, trucks & telephone cable made an important contribution to Soviet victory but in the crucial first 18 months of the Eastern war, western materials reached the USSR in modest quantities, making only a marginal contribution to the Soviet war effort until 1943, by which time the battle of Stalingrad had been fought & won.

Counterfactuals are foolish because once one variable changes then infinite possibilities are opened up. If Hitler instead of launching "Barbarossa" had reinforced Rommel & completed the conquest of the Med & Middle East then Churchill?s government would not have survived, with any future administration thereafter seeking only a compromise peace with Germany.

That was the "common theory" projected onto my course when on it of which I noted below.

After the experience of the First World War, I don?t think the British people (any more than the French) had the stomach for the ghastly struggle of attrition that proved necessary on the Eastern front before the Germans were driven back.
It is unlikely there was ever any easy route to winning WW2 in whatever extensive reading one might undertake - was also the logic I was tutored to concur, rightly or wrongly.

So I had an opinion, more so discovering what actually happened to my ancestors in WW2 which is for me alone to try & comprehend the sheer brutality such a war offered.

But I will offer that I suppose a scenario can be "pondered" wherein the western Allies dallied until an atomic bomb was built & then to use it against Germany but that'll presuppose US entry into the war.

So i'll rest my case that sadly, an enormous amount of killing & dying had to happen before the Nazis were crushed (though it did not seem so to the western Allies & their peoples at the time) as posterity can see that the Soviets did most of it.

In terms of the human cost (both armed services and civilian lives lost), no argument. I disagree wholeheartedly with the assertion that supplies from the Allies (NOT exclusively from America, but supplied exclusively by British Royal Navy and merchant marine ships at enormous cost to both) made only “a marginal contribution to the Soviet war effort until 1943, by which time the battle of Stalingrad had been fought & won”. Tell that to the men who fought their way to Murmansk and beyond in the Arctic convoys with no support from any other allied nation, because no others had the wherewithal that the Royal Navy and merchant marine possessed.

“After the experience of the First World War, I don’t think the British people (any more than the French) had the stomach for the ghastly struggle of attrition that proved necessary on the Eastern front before the Germans were driven back”

No “theory” to challenge. Historical fact. Had there been a less erudite and skilled orator than Churchill at the time, persuading both parliamentarians and the British public that resistance was not only possible, it was essential if democracy in any form, anywhere, was to survive, it’s highly likely that the British House of Commons would have voted in favour of Lord Halifax as their choice of Prime Minister after Chamberlains resignation. Appeasement would have been official British policy and we would all (and I mean ALL, this side and the other of the Atlantic) now be speaking some version of german.

Winning wars has never been “easy”. If such a route existed it’s highly likely (but demonstrably not inevitable) the weaker, more exposed and vulnerable side would sue for peace (as Hitler expected us to do in 1939). Perhaps I should become a tutor, if it’s that easy to espouse a theory?

My father in law was what then was called a “conscientious objector” a “conchy”, unwilling to raise arms against an enemy, but not willing to forego service alongside his more combative fellow recruits. I don’t share his views, but before he passed we had numerous conversations about his time in the Royal Army Medical Corps, never carrying a weapon, only his medical kit, landing in the first wave on Gold beach and working as a medic throughout the remainder of the war with his final attachment with an armoured brigade liberating concentration camps
I have never served, although I dearly wanted to, as pilot in the RAF of the mid 70’s.Eyesight failed me, even though at 68 the only time I have to wear glasses is a s now, when reading or typing), but I know from Freds accounts that was is brutal, unforgiving, merciless, without pity of favour, and now as then, is only won by bravery, sacrifice and a healthy dose of sheer bl00dymindeness,

Fortunately (in my view given the potential effect on mainland Europe which is much closer to where I live), the decision to prioritise the European campaign was largely influenced by the Allies knowledge of Germans nuclear development programme. Efforts to disrupt development resulted in sabotage attacks such as that portrayed in the film, The Heroes of Telemark, and hazardous low level bombing raids by the Mosquitos of RAF 633 squadron. One can only imagine, and shudder, at what Hitler would have done with such a weapon atop a ballistic missile developed by the man behind the V2, Werner von Braun, who subsequently became head of the USA missile development programme

And your “the Soviets did most of it” comment?

Stuff and nonsense. They suffered the greatest number of casualties for sure, largely because they were totally unprepared for what the Germans did, had little or no tactical intelligence, and whose military suffered enormous “friendly fire” damage from the numerous pogroms that Stalin implemented due to his conspiracy theories and totally misguided belief that murdering all his senior officers would in some way improve military performance. Stoic resistance, as in the city of Stalingrad, was what defeated the Germans at enormous cost to the Russian people and military, but to assert that the Soviets “did the most” of anything apart from dying, is a gross insult to ALL the other servicemen and women of the vast cohort of allied nations who contributed not only to Germans defeat but that of Japan too