USA - decides everything!

jlew24asu wrote:

when one side surrenders. are you trying to say wars are won or lost based upon # dead? wouldnt that mean that Russia lost?

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This is true. The Russian lost a lot of people in World War II (about 20 million including civilians) to Germany's 7 million (also, including civilians).
But, what about Viet Nam? The North Vietnamese lost every military battle in that war. All they needed to do was survive.
The same goes for our current War On Terror. Our military has not lost one battle. All the terrorists need to do is survive because they will never surrender. We can fight them for 50 years and all they have to do is survive to the point where we decide to call off the fight. The Arabs have a saying about killing the giant by death of a thousand cuts. That is the stratagy they used against the Soviets in Afghanistan and it worked. And it is going to work against us. The only way we can 'Win' this war is to kill them all. This means killing the terrorists and their families and their friends and anyone else looking to avenge their deaths.
The question we need to ask ourselves is... How much are we willing to accept as 'acceptable losses' until it becomes unacceptable to us?

Cosmo wrote:

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Well... I got the numbers from wikipedia... not the best source.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
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The Eastern Front was literally, Hell On Earth... except hell was hellishly freeazing ass. Many died from minor wounds and were too far from any type of medical attention.
The biggest mistake Hitler made. It is possible that had Germany had stayed focused on England, the U.S. would have had a more difficult time because the invasion of France would not have been possible. The route to Berlin would have had to have been made from the East. Much tougher.

Ultimately Hitler was probably the main reason why Germans lost the war. His decision to hit British cities instead of radar installations and air fields cost him the Battle of Britian. His decision to attack Russia while not entirely rendering the British inept and not counting on the US was also disasterous.

Cosmo wrote:

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It's a good thing the dude was all coked up... he made some monster bad decisions.
Besides the ones you've mentioned...
Regardng the Atlantic Wall... Ordering Rommel to keep his Panzer divisions out to the fight, even though Rommel believed that heavy armour closer to the invasion point was better than keeping his tanks closer to Paris. Rommel knew that Allied air superiority would devestate his armoured divisions once a beach head had been established. And keeping Rommel's forces at Calais 14 days after D-Day because he was sure the maing invasion would come through there.
Demanding that the Me-262 become Germany's newest bomber instead of it's original designed use as a high altitude interceptor.
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It's a good thing he was the decider... not his military people.

It was definitely to our advantage that he was the decider. Can you imagine the outcome had Hitler listened to his military advisors. While I'm not taking anything away from the Russian, Canadien, British, US, and other troops who fought the German, if not for Hitler's utter stupidity the outcome could have been dramatically different.

Cosmo wrote:

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Plus... look at the world leaders of that time. It just so happened that the right people (Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin) were in power when Hitler was. And I agree, 100%, the outcome might have well been completely different if Germany's military strategists made the calls... instead of Hitler.

True. Had the allied powers had lesser men as leaders, though it pains me to label Stalin a great man, the outcome could have been different. All you have to do is look at how Britian dealt with Hitler while Chamberlain was at the helm and how they dealt with Hitler while Churchill was in charge.

Cosmo wrote:

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Russia needed an asshole like Stalin to go up against Hitler. The Russians held their own in places like Stalingrad... even though Patton was right... they were assholes.
If Hitler never opened that Eastern Front... Russia would have pretty much stayed out of the war until the end was near... and jumped on the side that was going to win. They declared war on Japan the day after Hiroshima.

From what I have read they didn't even want to declare war on Japan. They where convinced by the US and UK to do so in order to speed up Japan's surrendor.

Viggo wrote:

One fucked up country that has of course given their self the power to decide everything...

Am I right or am i right?

You are so very right! I hate this place. What ever happens to us we deserve it. We tell other countries how to live there lives. There is always someone ready to knock out the bully.

mammasan wrote:

From what I have read they didn't even want to declare war on Japan. They where convinced by the US and UK to do so in order to speed up Japan's surrendor.

I remember reading in college that FDR wanted the Soviets to break the neutrality pact in 1945 and help the U.S. and Britain get Japan to surrender, but Stalin wanted to keep building up his forces along the Japanese border and waiting until it was opportunistic to enter.

FDR then died and Truman took over and didn't want Soviet involvement and wanted Japan to unconditionally surrender on its own and threatened to use the atomic bomb if they didn't surrender. Stalin got word of this and moved up his attack plans by a few weeks and within 48 hours of Hiroshima the USSR declared war on Japan and Soviet troops attacked Manchuria within an hour after declaring war.

5 days later the Japanese surrendered to the Allies but not to Russia. And technically the U.S.S.R. / Russia and Japan still have never signed a peace treaty ending WW2.

Wasn't the atom bomb a secret?

A question I've always had is whether there were more than two a-bombs. For example, what would have happened had Japan not surrendered after Nagasaki?

mammasan wrote:

We didn't need to drop the atom bomb in order to defeat Japan. With Russia invading Manchuria the Japanese would have surrendered in a short matter of time without the US having to invade Japan. Also we caused far more damage, death and destruction when we fire bombed Tokyo than any of the two atom bombs.

The dropping of those bombs was not a means to end the war but a show of force for the Soviets and the rest of the world that the US was now the alpha male.

No, we didn't need the a bomb to defeat Japan, but it it cut down the number of casualties that would have been taken on on both sides. Considering that 35% of the landing force at Okinawa and Iwo Gima were either killed or injured on the American side with double that on the Japanese side, how many people would have died (on both sides) in a land invasion of Kyshu as part of Operation Olympic when the Japanese had a standing army of between 500,000 and 900,000 waiting.

Besides the Japanese were not some poor saps who were along for the ride in WW2. They killed between 16-30 million civilians (estimates of the number of dead in China vary) as part of the Asian Holocaust which no one ever talks about.