What did the Nazis do for us?

[Washington Resistance Army]

ftfy

If that's what losing looks like, I wanna be the world's biggest loser.

Based off the past hundred years Poland pretty much is the worlds biggest loser

[Petrolheadia]

Rowling wouldn't have been familiar with American history; the KKK isn't that well known outside of North America.

As a person who lives outside North America, you are wrong. The KKK are well known throughout the Anglosphere.

And outside of it.

[Petrolheadia]

If that's what losing looks like, I wanna be the world's biggest loser.

Based off the past hundred years Poland pretty much is the worlds biggest loser

Except for the WWII damage, we've been absolutely mediocre, and continue to be.

[Valrifell]

Based off the past hundred years Poland pretty much is the worlds biggest loser

Except for the WWII damage, we've been absolutely mediocre, and continue to be.

You were a great power for a hot second there, though.

[Duvniask]

I do not know where you get the numbers for Operation Bagration from, but your presentation is quite disingenuous. Soviet losses were counted differently than Germans', especially with regards to counting both "wounded and sick" as one category (thus including any manpower that got pulled from the front due to sickness and disease), meaning non-combat losses get included as well. A quick glance at Wikipedia should tell you that the Germans suffered far more permanent losses: ~300,000-400,000 killed, missing and captured, whereas the Soviets had <200,000.

Excuses is all I'm seeing here, because we're talking total casualties; you're just attempting to obfuscate here.

You have repeatedly been claiming the Soviets got their ass handed to them and that they were "incompetent". I explained to you that things are not so simple, and that you should take into account how casualties are actually registered, because many of the Soviet casualties are not even from combat, hence why it's disingenuous to claim Bagration was a display of Soviet incompetence. In reality it was a successful operation that destroyed Army Group Center and saw the Soviets liberate all of the Byelorussian SSR.

Calling it "excuses" is really perplexing to me as well, because obviously a wounded or sick soldier can live to fight another day whereas a dead or captured soldier cannot. All those losses for the Germans were more impactful, even if we look past the relative difference of size between the two sides. You are also ignoring that if we had to truly get an accurate figure of "total casualties", we would either have to include all German medical casualties (sick/diseased) or subtract the number of sick/diseased Soviet soldiers, because those aren't really combat casualties at all. The fact that the Soviets had fewer permanent losses absolutely challenges your false narrative. Ignoring this to make it seem like the Germans did better than they actually did is the real "excuse" here, buddy.

This also ignores a string of other victories where the Soviets caused the Axis larger casualties (Vistula-Oder Offensive, Crimean Offensive, the Jassy–Kishinev Offensive and so on).

Let me introduce you to new word: scale. Outside of the Vistula Oder offensive, none of these were major operations nor did any of them feature staggering Soviet success in terms of casualty totals, with even Vistula-Oder effectively being a 1:1 exchange.

Lol. This takes it to a whole other level.

The Jassy–Kishinev Offensive involved more than a million men on the Soviet side, and at least a million Romanians and Germans on the other side.
The Soviets lost 13,197 killed/missing and 53,933 wounded and sick for a total of 67,130. If you include the Romanians on the Soviet side, with 8,586 killed and wounded, this total increases to 75,716. The Germans on the other hand lost 150,000 killed, wounded or captured, while the Romanians on the German side had 8,305 killed, 24,989 wounded and 170,000 captured or missing. This adds up to a total 353,294.

In other words the total casualty ratio is 4.66 in favor of the Soviets. Not only that, but Romania and Bulgaria switched sides against Germany in the war's final months.

Not a major operation, my ass.

And yet the Germans were not able to penetrate the defenses at Kursk as their advance slowed to a crawl. As testaments from men like Theodor Busse will tell you, the Germans had vastly underestimated the Soviet forces at Kursk, and there was a constant threat of encirclement and being overrun, making advancement difficult. The Soviets had the means to replace their losses, both in terms of manpower and manufacturing, the Germans did not. They pulled out because the offensive was a waste that did not achieve its objectives at all, and getting riskier by the day. That they were able to score some tactical victories at the local level means very little in the grand scheme of things. Even if it had not been called off, the Germans would have risked being encircled by the upcoming Operation Kutuzov at Orel and Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev at Kharkov.

They had penetrated multiple lines of Soviet defenses and II SS had effectively destroyed Soviet reserves in the area while Manstein still had several forces he could deploy. Encirclement was thus never an option for the Soviets to conduct while the ability of Manstein to further wreck the Soviet defenses was open before Hitler panicked because of Sicily. Kursk, just as the war as a whole showed, was a matter of the Soviets being too incompetent to fight their way out of a wet paper bag and the West bailing them out.

They managed to penetrate multiple lines of defense at certain points, yes, but they did not achieve their objective, which was for the forces of Army Group Center and Army Group South to take Kursk in a pincer movement. I'm not sure what "area" or "reinforcements" you are talking about that were "destroyed", since Ivan Konev's Steppe Front, which provided reinforcements to the Kursk salient was still up and running and took part in Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev regardless, along with the Voronezh Front itself, while in the North the Central Front undertook Operation Kutuzov. I might add the Germans, due to their poor intelligence gathering, had no knowledge of these counter-offensives, and again, they had vastly underestimated the size of the Soviet forces they were facing.

As for Hitler, he famously said the thought of Zitadelle made "[his] stomach churn", so he was not enthusiastic about Kursk front the start. He also allowed Army Group South to continue its attack until 17th August, which didn't reach Kursk or get through all the defensive lines anyway.

[Novus America]

If that's what losing looks like, I wanna be the world's biggest loser.

Based off the past hundred years Poland pretty much is the worlds biggest loser

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish–Soviet_War
Not really. Poland fought two war in the last 100 years. Won one and lost the other. And the one it lost it still held out about as long as France, despite being hopelessly out numbered, out gunned and attacked from all sides. (France and the UK actually had superiority in tanks and troop numbers during the Battle of France.)

Plus who is laughing now? Poland beat the Soviets when they did not have German help, and Poland is doing fine today while the Soviet Union is long dead.

Looks like when compared with Poland the Soviets were the loser.

[Duvniask]

Man even at the fucking Battle of Berlin I'm pretty sure the Soviets still took more casualties than the Germans lol, and they were actually fighting children and grandfathers at that point. The Red Army was atrocious until a while after the war.

No, they did not.
The Soviets lost 81,116 dead or missing, 280,251 sick or wounded, and the Germans lost ~100,000 dead, 220,000 wounded and 480,000 captured.

Again I might add that the "sick" figure most likely overinflates Soviet losses.

[Ifreann]

Excuses is all I'm seeing here, because we're talking total casualties; you're just attempting to obfuscate here.

You have repeatedly been claiming the Soviets got their ass handed to them and that they were "incompetent". I explained to you that things are not so simple, and that you should take into account how casualties are actually registered, because many of the Soviet casualties are not even from combat, hence why it's disingenuous to claim Bagration was a display of Soviet incompetence. In reality it was a successful operation that destroyed Army Group Center and saw the Soviets liberate all of the Byelorussian SSR.

Calling it "excuses" is really perplexing to me as well, because obviously a wounded or sick soldier can live to fight another day whereas a dead or captured soldier cannot. All those losses for the Germans were more impactful, even if we look past the relative difference of size between the two sides. You are also ignoring that if we had to truly get an accurate figure of "total casualties", we would either have to include all German medical casualties (sick/diseased) or subtract the number of sick/diseased Soviet soldiers, because those aren't really combat casualties at all. The fact that the Soviets had fewer permanent losses absolutely challenges your false narrative. Ignoring this to make it seem like the Germans did better than they actually did is the real "excuse" here, buddy.

OEP's a fascist, it's in the by-laws that he has to do the whole "German super-soldiers only lost because they drowned in dead Russian peasants" thing.

[Duvniask]

Beat the hell out of the Soviets so hard that the Soviets steamrolled them all the way back to Berlin and had to rely entirely on western Lend-Lease to keep their war effort goingand were then allowed to occupy half the continent by said western nations.

ftfy

By this logic we might as well conclude the Western Allies didn't win the war because they had to rely "entirely" on the Soviets killing most of the German forces so they could swoop in from relative safety and do the easy fighting.

It goes both ways.

You have repeatedly been claiming the Soviets got their ass handed to them and that they were "incompetent". I explained to you that things are not so simple, and that you should take into account how casualties are actually registered, because many of the Soviet casualties are not even from combat, hence why it's disingenuous to claim Bagration was a display of Soviet incompetence. In reality it was a successful operation that destroyed Army Group Center and saw the Soviets liberate all of the Byelorussian SSR.

Calling it "excuses" is really perplexing to me as well, because obviously a wounded or sick soldier can live to fight another day whereas a dead or captured soldier cannot. All those losses for the Germans were more impactful, even if we look past the relative difference of size between the two sides. You are also ignoring that if we had to truly get an accurate figure of "total casualties", we would either have to include all German medical casualties (sick/diseased) or subtract the number of sick/diseased Soviet soldiers, because those aren't really combat casualties at all. The fact that the Soviets had fewer permanent losses absolutely challenges your false narrative. Ignoring this to make it seem like the Germans did better than they actually did is the real "excuse" here, buddy.

OEP's a fascist, it's in the by-laws that he has to do the whole "German super-soldiers only lost because they drowned in dead Russian peasants" thing.

That was also my assumption, but thanks for the heads up, I suppose. It was sort of easy to tell because of the abrasive language involved, such as:

Beat the utter living hell out of the Soviets.

Even to this day, nothing makes a Communist shit himself more than a picture of a Panzer.

The Soviets got the utter hell beat out of them and were lucky the West existed otherwise Hitler would've turned Moscow into a Lake

Et cetera, et cetera...

[Liriena]

ftfy

By this logic we might as well conclude the Western Allies didn't win the war because they had to rely "entirely" on the Soviets killing most of the German forces so they could swoop in from relative safety and do the easy fighting.

It goes both ways.

OEP's a fascist, it's in the by-laws that he has to do the whole "German super-soldiers only lost because they drowned in dead Russian peasants" thing.

That was also my assumption, but thanks for the heads up, I suppose. It was sort of easy to tell because of the abrasive language involved, such as:

Beat the utter living hell out of the Soviets.

Even to this day, nothing makes a Communist shit himself more than a picture of a Panzer.

The Soviets got the utter hell beat out of them and were lucky the West existed otherwise Hitler would've turned Moscow into a Lake

Et cetera, et cetera...

To be fair, it's hard to be an unironic fascist without deluding yourself about fascism's supposed badassery.

It's why some neo-nazis love American History X but seem to mostly ignore Springtime for Hitler.

[Washington Resistance Army]

ftfy

By this logic we might as well conclude the Western Allies didn't win the war because they had to rely "entirely" on the Soviets killing most of the German forces so they could swoop in from relative safety and do the easy fighting.

It goes both ways.

You'd be correct in saying so. It was a team effort.

[Liriena]

By this logic we might as well conclude the Western Allies didn't win the war because they had to rely "entirely" on the Soviets killing most of the German forces so they could swoop in from relative safety and do the easy fighting.

It goes both ways.

You'd be correct in saying so. It was a team effort.

Nah-uh. Everyone knows, in their hearts of hearts, that it was Luxembourg that won the war.

[Ifreann]

By this logic we might as well conclude the Western Allies didn't win the war because they had to rely "entirely" on the Soviets killing most of the German forces so they could swoop in from relative safety and do the easy fighting.

It goes both ways.


That was also my assumption, but thanks for the heads up, I suppose. It was sort of easy to tell because of the abrasive language involved, such as:





Et cetera, et cetera...

To be fair, it's hard to be an unironic fascist without deluding yourself about fascism's supposed badassery.

It's why some neo-nazis love American History X but seem to mostly ignore Springtime for Hitler.

I see you are also a graduate of The Whole Plate Online University.

[Liriena]

To be fair, it's hard to be an unironic fascist without deluding yourself about fascism's supposed badassery.

It's why some neo-nazis love American History X but seem to mostly ignore Springtime for Hitler.

I see you are also a graduate of The Whole Plate Online University.

...I need that.

[Caracasus]

You have repeatedly been claiming the Soviets got their ass handed to them and that they were "incompetent". I explained to you that things are not so simple, and that you should take into account how casualties are actually registered, because many of the Soviet casualties are not even from combat, hence why it's disingenuous to claim Bagration was a display of Soviet incompetence. In reality it was a successful operation that destroyed Army Group Center and saw the Soviets liberate all of the Byelorussian SSR.

Calling it "excuses" is really perplexing to me as well, because obviously a wounded or sick soldier can live to fight another day whereas a dead or captured soldier cannot. All those losses for the Germans were more impactful, even if we look past the relative difference of size between the two sides. You are also ignoring that if we had to truly get an accurate figure of "total casualties", we would either have to include all German medical casualties (sick/diseased) or subtract the number of sick/diseased Soviet soldiers, because those aren't really combat casualties at all. The fact that the Soviets had fewer permanent losses absolutely challenges your false narrative. Ignoring this to make it seem like the Germans did better than they actually did is the real "excuse" here, buddy.

OEP's a fascist, it's in the by-laws that he has to do the whole "German super-soldiers only lost because they drowned in dead Russian peasants" thing.

I never really got that angle of valiant defence of the Wehrmacht. Like, even if it were true (which it's not), they still lost. Clearly they weren't that great after all. Given that fascism defines itself by its martial ability, that's kind of damning.

[Novus America]

OEP's a fascist, it's in the by-laws that he has to do the whole "German super-soldiers only lost because they drowned in dead Russian peasants" thing.

I never really got that angle of valiant defence of the Wehrmacht. Like, even if it were true (which it's not), they still lost. Clearly they weren't that great after all. Given that fascism defines itself by its martial ability, that's kind of damning.

The fact is the Werhnacht did have some quite impressive feats of arms. But at other times acted with extreme incompetence and stupidity (largely though not always due to Hitler’s dumbassery). So even ignoring the atrocious actions of the regime on human rights, its military effectiveness was mixed at best, and in the end it not only lost, but was completely destroyed.

[Duvniask]

By this logic we might as well conclude the Western Allies didn't win the war because they had to rely "entirely" on the Soviets killing most of the German forces so they could swoop in from relative safety and do the easy fighting.

It goes both ways.


That was also my assumption, but thanks for the heads up, I suppose. It was sort of easy to tell because of the abrasive language involved, such as:





Et cetera, et cetera...

To be fair, it's hard to be an unironic fascist without deluding yourself about fascism's supposed badassery.

It's why some neo-nazis love American History X but seem to mostly ignore Springtime for Hitler.

Wait, Nazis love American History X? Wat.

I watched it and seem to recall the movie being a rebuke or at least critical of Nazism?

[The Huskar Social Union]

This is a good video on the subject of the myths about german capability on the eastern front. It lists sources and references in the description

[Caracasus]

I never really got that angle of valiant defence of the Wehrmacht. Like, even if it were true (which it's not), they still lost. Clearly they weren't that great after all. Given that fascism defines itself by its martial ability, that's kind of damning.

The fact is the Werhnacht did have some quite impressive feats of arms. But at other times acted with extreme incompetence and stupidity (largely though not always due to Hitler’s dumbassery). So even ignoring the atrocious actions of the regime on human rights, its military effectiveness was mixed at best, and in the end it not only lost, but was completely destroyed.

I've never been able to muster up the interest to look that deeply into the conflict, however the general consensus from what I've read is that the Nazi armies managed to develop some impressive weaponry but failed rather badly when it came to logistics and strategy. I've also heard it said that the very nature of fascism (that the enemy is both weak and easily defeated and at the same time immensely powerful and an existential threat to the state) led to its defeat considerably. I should imagine the first claim is probably easier to support than the second.

[Washington Resistance Army]

To be fair, it's hard to be an unironic fascist without deluding yourself about fascism's supposed badassery.

It's why some neo-nazis love American History X but seem to mostly ignore Springtime for Hitler.

Wait, Nazis love American History X? Wat.

I watched it and seem to recall the movie being a rebuke or at least critical of Nazism?

iirc some parts of it are interpreted as justifying Neo-Nazism amongst those types

[The Huskar Social Union]

Based off the past hundred years Poland pretty much is the worlds biggest loser

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish–Soviet_War
Not really. Poland fought two war in the last 100 years. Won one and lost the other. And the one it lost it still held out about as long as France, despite being hopelessly out numbered, out gunned and attacked from all sides. (France and the UK actually had superiority in tanks and troop numbers during the Battle of France.)

Plus who is laughing now? Poland beat the Soviets when they did not have German help, and Poland is doing fine today while the Soviet Union is long dead.

Looks like when compared with Poland the Soviets were the loser.

The allies lost the battle of france as badly as they did because the Germans outplayed them by doing a gamble that would have been disastrous for them if they were caught doing it and because the French military was still very much in a WW1 mindset. France also was not that politically stable

[Liriena]

Wait, Nazis love American History X? Wat.

I watched it and seem to recall the movie being a rebuke or at least critical of Nazism?

iirc some parts of it are interpreted as justifying Neo-Nazism amongst those types

Plus, the movie has an aesthetic problem: the text clearly argues that neo-nazism is wrong, but the framing sometimes gives the neo-nazi imagery and characters a certain air of badassery.

[Crookfur]

They advanced small arms and munitions quite far. I’m no Wehraboo but the famous Panzer line is famous for a reason. The Sturmgewehr also made the entirety of the Allies realize “Holy crap we can do that too!”, and then they did.

Not really, most of the west ended up with reworked prewar rifles chambered for Ww1 ammo with new powder and hence a shorter case.

For the Soviets the stg was just confirmation they were on the right track with their own work. Biggest advance was on using metal stampings which the Russians did use captured germans to try and fix.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Panzers had their fair share of problems. The earlier panzers were often under armed and under armoured compared to their allied and soviet counter parts and were honestly nothing special until some tanks later in the war which had their own fair share of problems and were largely spurred on by the soviet and allied tanks the germans fought against (panther because of the T34 and sloped armour etc, the Tiger because of things like the KV and other similar tanks etc).

The germans just used them better early on than their opponents did. The Germans also used a ton of tanks from the nations they took over and fought against, they re purposed czech, french, british and soviet tanks for use, particularly a lot of czech tanks in the early parts of the war because they were honestly pretty decent tanks compared to many out there.

[Novus America]

The fact is the Werhnacht did have some quite impressive feats of arms. But at other times acted with extreme incompetence and stupidity (largely though not always due to Hitler’s dumbassery). So even ignoring the atrocious actions of the regime on human rights, its military effectiveness was mixed at best, and in the end it not only lost, but was completely destroyed.

I've never been able to muster up the interest to look that deeply into the conflict, however the general consensus from what I've read is that the Nazi armies managed to develop some impressive weaponry but failed rather badly when it came to logistics and strategy. I've also heard it said that the very nature of fascism (that the enemy is both weak and easily defeated and at the same time immensely powerful and an existential threat to the state) led to its defeat considerably. I should imagine the first claim is probably easier to support than the second.

In terms of weaponry it was often too few to be effective. Nazi technological superiority is often overstated, the Panzer I and II were crap, the III was mediocre at best.
Actually the French and British had better tanks during the battle of France.

Truly innovative things like the StG-44 and Me-262 were deployed in too small of quantities to late to have much impact.
The majority of German troops were light infantry with bolt action rifles, and had a severe disadvantage compared to the American M-1 Garand. The fact the StG-44 was better did not matter because most Americans had M-1s and few Germans had StG-44s.

Where the Germans excelled was in terms of innovative tactics such as using tanks as a primary weapon rather than simply infantry support, and coordinating tactical aircraft and artillery with fast moving ground forces.
In general they had excellent tactical communication compared to their opponents.
However these advantages greatly weakened once they lost the element of surprise and their opponents adapted.

You are correct however that their logistics were woefully insufficient, and their grand strategy inherently flawed. They focused too much on short term objectives over grand strategy. Also they were grossly over confident, which led to their biggest blunders. They never knew when to quit while they were ahead, and would continue to try to advance even when their logistics and numbers would be dangerously overextended. This was their big failure on the Eastern Front, while the Soviets had numerically superiority it was not as overwhelming as sometimes depicted.

And the Nazis seemed to not realize the importance of American logistical and industrial strength, and the impact that had, the Soviets also had not put enough emphasis on logistics, but Lend Lease was critical in overcoming that for the Soviets.

Also the Soviets learned quickly from their initial defeats. They often made mistakes but rarely made the same mistake twice. The Germans never did improve as much so they lost their initial advantage as the Soviets, British and Americans soon learned to adopt the German’s best tactics and even improve on them.

A big problem had more to due with Nazism rather than general Fascism. Certainly Fascism did have the problem of encouraging overconfidence while at the same time starting battles that need not be fought in the first place.

But Nazism, especially is obsession with race and Jews was self destructive. Nazi abuses towards the people of the Soviet Union and Poland (despite Slavs being linguistically more than genetically different than Germans) meant they were unable to use anger at Stalin to their advantage.
Oppressed under Stalin was better than dead or enslaved under the Nazis, so those opposed to Stalin usually either fought with Stalin or fought Stalin and the Nazis at the same time.

But had the Nazis been less, well Nazi they could have better used those opposed to Stalin against Stalin.

Finally killing Jews was (besides the moral horrors) a collasal waste of resources, when the Jews were obviously far more useful as scientists and officers (as they had been for the Germans in WW1) then dead. Plus all the trains, trucks, men, etc. used in the killing would have been better used supporting the German troops fighting the war.

The Germans were ironically able to beat the Russian Empire handily in WW1 despite not going anywhere near Moscow, as they had no reason to overextend so far. They did not make it a matter of life or death for the people, who were often more opposed to the Tsarist regime then the Germans.

Defeat in WW1 meant rule that while still often was harsh was better than Tsarist rule.
Defeat in WW2 meant slavery and genocide. So obviously the reaction of the people was different and far worse for the Germans.