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It was all decided in Teheran conference in November 1943. WW2 was considered a done deal so Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met to discuss the future of Europe
by michalu 7y ago
It was all decided in Teheran conference in November 1943. WW2 was considered a done deal so Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met to discuss the future of Europe.
At the time of the conference, Red Army was about to enter Poland.
While Churchill was happy to let Soviets do all the dying, Roosevelt cared about getting them involved in pacific. He wasn't much concerned with the war in Europe.
As soon as it became clear from Stalin that, when it comes to talking about the future of Europe he holds all the leverage, Churchill decided it's necessary to jump on the bandwagon.
And so the outcome of the Teheran conference was the "Operation overlord" (aka D-day)
To clear any doubts about the significance of Soviet contribution all that needs to be done is go wikipedia and look at the size of the battles in East Europe and compare the to the D-day.
Normandy landings don't even make it to top 10 in terms of the size. Germany was operating with 1 million+ soldiers in multiple battles compared to 50,000 including untrained and underquipped teenagers and seniors allies faced in Normandy.
Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, Rzhev, Kharkow, Leningrad, etc. were mostly 10x larger in size and personnel. 90% of German army was killed in the East front.
The fact that most western people don't even know what was the major turning point in the WW2 and think it's the D-day, would leave most of those generations speechless.
Soviets and East Europeans (Yugoslavia liberated itself, Polish army took the Monte Cassino, the largest battle of Allies) won the war. Allies helped, then made a lot of movies about it.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoOverlord was decided and committed to at the Trident conference in the US, 6 or 9 months before Tehran. That is when the postponement to 44 was decided. Due mainly to lack of supplies.
- michalu 7y agoNo. Overlord was promised and planned before. It was continually postponed. The decisions necessary to start were made in Teheran. In many countries it is taught in schools that allies were simply taking their time, waiting for the lowest risk/highest return moment. That is one version.
- cameldrv 7y ago> 90% of German army was killed in the East front. This is an overstatement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II#German_sources_for_military_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War... If you go by KIA, MIA, and POW, Eastern Front is about 2 million, France/Belgium + North Africa + Italy + Navy is about 900k.
- michalu 7y agoIf you go by Overmans Eastern Front until 12/31/44 2,742,909 Western Front until 12/31/44 339,957 makes eastern front 91%. If you look at the size of the battles in Western front it's hard to see how would the figure exceed 339k. For comparison, Stalingrad alone claims 500k Germans and 900k axis total. Battle of Moscow estimates 500k killed, missing, wounded or captured. Now we can play with semantics. Are we looking at killed only, or captured and wounded or otherwise incapacitated? Is it Germans only of axis. I think did overstate. To put it better, I would say 90% of Nazi power was defeated in Eastern front.