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Likewise for German forces in the second war. When they encountered the sheer richness and quantity of U.S provisions after the D Day landings, for many of them
by helloworld11 5y ago
Likewise for German forces in the second war. When they encountered the sheer richness and quantity of U.S provisions after the D Day landings, for many of them it really brought home how hopeless their situation was in ways that abstract ideas of military and economic balances couldn't. Of course this shouldn't necessarily be used to draw absolute conclusions. Soviet forces were basically pushed into battling the Germans while subsisting on what could basically be called starvation rations, but they managed to crush the Wehrmacht piece by piece.
Incidentally, the U.S also fed much of the Soviet Army from 1943 onward, to the point where Soviet food provisioning became highly dependent on U.S supplies (only from 1943 onwards).
- Thorrez 5y ago>Soviet forces were basically pushed into battling the Germans while subsisting on what could basically be called starvation rations, but they managed to crush the Wehrmacht piece by piece. But the Soviets lost more solders than the Germans.
- chrisco255 5y agoThey did the bulk of the Nazi killing.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago> But the Soviets lost more solders than the Germans. Yes, they won by playing to their strength - many more expendable soldiers. "Quantity has a quality all its own." - (attributed to) Joseph Stalin.
- missedthecue 5y agoCaptured german defenders on D-Day famously asked their American captors where all their horses were.
- andi999 5y agoSource?
- rjsw 5y agoWhy? The British Army that they had been fighting since 1940 didn't use horses either so the Germans knew that it was possible.
- p_l 5y agoFor a lot of the soldiers who were fighting on D-Day would not have a lot of experience fighting british units, especially well supplied british units. The defeat in France was pretty swift and not a great place to observe superior logistics. Meanwhile Nazis were heavily dependant on horses in their logistics - things like the Red Ball Express were pretty much inconceivable.
- helloworld11 5y agoNot sure about specific German soldiers asking that specific question, but I've heard the anecdote from a couple books about the post-D Day U.S military operations towards Germany. It's plausible though; the U.S Army was by far the most mechanized of the war in Europe. Germany's massive "mobile army" during Barbarossa and during the Polish and French campaigns before that was something like 80% literal cavalry and only 15 or 20% mechanized (taking aside marching infantry). These percentages never changed much during the war for the Germans.