Political Crossfire Forums

[Mr.Bill]

Quote: Nope, there was a famous race to berlin. Soviet general Georgy Zhukov was the general to have soldiers in Berlin first. General Dwight Eisenhower was unable to reach Berlin first, due to the failure of Operation Market Garden, which forced a further delay in troop movements. The allies wanted to get to Hitler and the Reich's leaders held up in Berlin first, just like the german scientists.


Nope. No way Ike was going to take hundreds of thousands of casualties and then just hand Berlin over to the Russians.

There was a race to Berlin, between Russian Generals. But once Ike heard Berlin was in the Russian zone he was content to let the Russians take Berlin.

[battleax86]

The Russian wrote: Quote: Many points you make are good points. However the allies never intended to take Berlin. The big 3(FDR, Churchill, Stalin) already divided Germany into zones and since Berlin was in the Russian zone Ike and FDR/Truman saw no use in taking Berlin and then having to turn it over to the Russians anyway.
Nope, there was a famous race to berlin. Soviet general Georgy Zhukov was the general to have soldiers in Berlin first. General Dwight Eisenhower was unable to reach Berlin first, due to the failure of Operation Market Garden, which forced a further delay in troop movements. The allies wanted to get to Hitler and the Reich's leaders held up in Berlin first, just like the german scientists.
You're wrong. As Mr. Bill already noted, the race was between Russian generals, as the Americans and British had already agreed to let the Soviets have the eastern part of Germany, which included Berlin.

The Russian wrote: Quote: You've bought too much into the Soviet propaganda. August Storm only began between the atomic bomb drops. It did not come close to being a Soviet victory until after the decision to surrender had already been made.
No comrad, it is you who have bought into the anti-soviet propaganda. Check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_August_Storm ... and I quote: Quote: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's research has led him to conclude that the atomic bombings themselves were not the principal reason for capitulation. Instead, he contends, it was the swift and devastating Soviet victories on the mainland in the week following Stalin's August 8 declaration of war that forced the Japanese message of surrender on August 15, 1945[3] Taken from: Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy ... a Japanese historian, and if I'd suspect anyone of being biased towards a country, the last country Japan would be biased towards is Russia.
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa does not speak for Japan and several of his claims have been proven false. For example, there was no race between Stalin and Truman to Japan and Korea, as his book claims. America and Russia had already come to terms at Yalta, which explains why the Russians peacefully retreated from Inchon and Kaicheng when the US Army landed there after the Japanese surrender. Hasegawa is wrong. Not only is Hasegawa wrong, but, ironically, your own link disproves Hasegawa's claim that Japan surrendered because of the Soviet attack...and I quote:

Quote: Japan's decision to surrender was made before the scale of the Soviet attack on Manchuria, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands was known, but had the war continued, the Soviets had plans to invade Hokkaido well before the other Allied invasion of Kyushu.
Like I said, step away from the Kremlin Kool-Aid...

The Russian wrote: Quote: The American contingency plan was to keep dropping nukes, not invade. We had a rather long target list and would not have had to invade until the Japanese had refused to surrender after several more bombings.

Incorrect my friend, the Americans only had two bombs built, there would have been a very large time passage between where they could enrich more uranium.
That's simply not true. The only American bomb that used uranium was the one dropped on Hiroshima. All the rest use plutonium. If the Japanese had not agreed to surrender soon after the bombing of Nagasaki, there were plans to bomb Kokura and Niigata shortly thereafter.

The Russian wrote: Quote: Speaking German if it wasn't for you? Won the space race? What the hell are you smoking?
Is that a cucumber in your pants or your anti-russian bias showing? ...
Why are you concerned about the long, thick thing in my pants? I have no anti-Russian bias. I'm only interested in the truth, something you seem to be woefully short of.

The Russian wrote: how do you think Hitler would have faired if he wasnt in Russia with all of his tank divisions except two when normandy was invaded? and how many resources, generals and men? ... the normandy invasion and subsequent french liberation would have failed.
The Germans still had over a million men in theater when the Allies invaded, while the only major combat going on in the Eastern Front consisted of 120 Russian divisions against less than 800,000 Germans. Also, how long do you think Russia would have held off the Wehrmacht if the Americans and British hadn't bombed Germany's industrial capability to hell? Yes, comrade, the Soviets helped us (after doing more than their share to help Germany before Hitler turned on Stalin), but don't think that you won the war for us.

The Russian wrote: The space race? ... who got the first Satelite, Dog, Man, and Space Station up there?
Doing these things first is irrelevant, as we had better technology in these aspects. We could have done it sooner, but we were more interested in getting it right than scoring propaganda points. For example, Alan Sheppard would have beaten Yuri Gagarin into space if Wehrner von Braun hadn't insisted on one last test to ensure the rocket's safety, a test that went perfectly. So don't beat your chest too hard, comrade. You did things a split-second before we did, but we did them far better than you ever could...