More than a million men died in Stalingrad. Almost 3 million men were wounded in Stalingrad.
How is D-Day considered the turning point in the war, or any more bloody and dramatic than literally most battles on the Eastern Front? Even the invasion of Poland saw bloodier battles with casualty number exceeding those of D-Day by tens of thousands.
And considering casualty numbers of battles in World War 1, D-Day was nothing more than a walk in the park on a sunny day.
By being the biggest seaborne invasion in recorded history
Angel Russell
I never heard anyone argue D-Day was a turning point of WW2.
Angel Davis
>How is D-Day considered the turning point in the war, or any more bloody and dramatic than literally most battles on the Eastern Front? Literally no serious historian thinks that. Most will say Moscow, Stalingrad, or Kursk.
Henry Fisher
I'm German, and that's what i learned in school. Literally.
Lincoln Hughes
something like 200k Russian died freezing to death jump dropping their pants to take a shit in the winter. they then redesigned the uniforms so that the back of the pants had a hatch so you would lose all your body heat shitting in the freezing winters
Ofc they don't, how could they. I was more talking about the popular opinion.
Gabriel Morgan
>he thinks death toll indicates the strategic severity of battles in war I remember when I was 12 too.
Matthew Martinez
its an incomplete list so whatever you see its worse
Julian Williams
I think D-Day allowed the allies a foothold in Europe again, thus being a strategic turning point perhaps.
Ryder Robinson
because D-day made it a two front war instead of a war and airshow?
Brandon Morris
Well you were taught badly. Most historians would argue it was Moscow or Stalingrad.
Wyatt Peterson
I think the conventional wisdom is Moscow. The German army could very well have taken Moscow with Stalin still in the city but Hitler wanted to turn south for the oil.
Caleb Green
Literally everybody who knows half a shit about WW2 knows that the turning point was Stalingrad.
William Barnes
The Germans were already losing by then though, pretty badly. D-day hastened their defeat but it was inevitable after Kursk failed.
John Long
Turning point was Moscow, D-day was an indication that the war was ending.
Eli Johnson
Because american media hypes up D-Day and reinforces all the US war mythos. The same way Russia does. The difference is, the world consumes and laps up all American media. In the US especially, movies and TV take precedence over history class. Anyone with any special interest in WWII knows the nuances. The general population doesn't care about WWII, why should they beyond woo america back to back world war champs?
It's really not worth getting mad over, your niche is out there.
Jose Gutierrez
In America we were taught about midway, and D-day, and stalingrad being at the same level (whichis wrong), but that's high school. Only only a small portion of high school classes ever pay attention to history class.
Juan Baker
Back when i was 17, our history teacher asked why there was a Jewish exodus from Germany starting in 1935. Noone knew the fucking answer. In Germany.
James Price
>what is Italy >what is North Africa Anyone who calls the German part of WWII a "two-front war" at any stage (except maybe right after Barbarossa began) is perpetuating a silly and inaccurate picture of the events. D-Day of course added a front, but the war was well past two of them by that point.
Cameron Wright
Successful example of the outcomes when you intentionally erase all signs of popular knowledge of history (statues, flags, books) and dumb down expectations in education.
Jose Bell
Many of the people who died were dumbass Soviets who decided to throw their lives away for Stalin.
Also, it took the Chancellor's own strategic ineptitude and foreign aid for the Soviets to finally turn the tide in the Eastern Front.
Also, the D-Day Invasion enabled the Soviets to advance quickly especially since they were doing so quickly that it would have made them vulnerable to a counterattack. It did not happen because much of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS had to get sent to the Western Front or remain there instead of holding of the Soviets.
Luke Reed
tell me more about the holocaust, Ive never heard of it before recently
Jaxon Johnson
Because fuck slavshits fuck wheraboos and fuck historians
Wyatt Wood
>How is D-Day considered the turning point in the war
Normandy made the Germans fight on two fronts and effectively sealed their fate since they had to divide their forces to try and fight off both the US and UK on one side and the Soviets on the other. Without Normandy the Germans would have been much better positioned to defend themselves against the Soviet advance in the final years of the war.
Stalingrad was also a major turning point as was Kursk, the Soviets stopped the Germans advance and from then on they were pushing them back. But that doesn't mean that Normandy wasn't important.
This. America has the socialist parasites it deserves.
Alexander Clark
Why are Jews so slow? It takes you a decade to leave a country that clearly doesnt want you there?
Grayson Lewis
>How is D-Day considered the turning point in the war
It was launched in conjunction with Operation Bagration in the East, virtually eliminating the possibility of a far longer conflict. As Germany retreated into central Europe they took up a better defensive position, many thought the war could go on for years. D-Day ensured a faster end to the war, though it probably wasn't "the turning point".
The conflict is so massive that to point to a single turning point is probably pretty useless because of the economic and industrial factors of the conflict, things aren't going to be as decisive as they seem, failures/victories took time to build upon. You're probably better off just pointing to 1943, the year when Germany was forced almost entirely on the defensive.
>How is D-Day considered the turning point in the war Western propaganda. Lots of hollyjew movies. Pure and simple. WW2 was won on the Eastern Front. Western front was irrelevant.
Robert Smith
Where you fail in this argument is in thinking that D-Day and Stalingrad were in any way similar. The defense of Stalingrad had been going on for months and strategically was only important to Russia in maintaining its rail networks which were the lifeline of the country. Not to mention Stalingrad had a huge industrial district which was key to production of arms for the Soviet’s. The reason so many died at Stalingrad can be pinpointed with a few key issues. 1. The Soviet Union tactically believed more in an overwhelming but loosely organized force than it did in tactically planning manuevers that would have ended the blockade sooner. Similar circumstances were present during the winter war. 2. Stalingrad had been blockaded and Stalin wouldn’t allow a retreat or for civilians to leave as they were incredibly important when it came to production of arms and vehicles for that front. 3. The Germans were better armed, had air superiority, and had better unit cohesion which is a HUGE factor in effectiveness. This is why the soviets took such an intense beating, and also why the German 6th Army after being encircled was almost entirely wiped out through maltreatment, starvation, and work camps.
Now we get to the difference with D-Day and why less casualties were taken. 1. The western powers that took part in D-Day had intelligence and planned the attack over a series of months. 2. Though casualties were still extremely high, the US, British, Free-French, and Canadian forces present had been well equipped and had trained for operation overlord. 3. The allied forces had the support of bombers, CAS, fighter coverage, and naval vessels with large caliber guns to either destroy or suppress heavily entrenched German positions.
Now for your question as to why the Western Powers get all the recognition, it’s simply because Stalingrad only truly benefited the soviets, D-Day allowed for a foothold in Europe for further staging.
Tyler Bennett
Because film is a unnecessary leisure of the bourgeoisie. You could be doing much better things like building steam fittings in a factory, not wasting your mind watching silly capitalist films about war.
But in reality its because you live in a ally nation an connsume ally media. While Russia had none and didn’t have a major impact on culture so you didn’t hear there side.
Caleb Butler
>inb4 Russia was a foothold The soviets had only 2 warm water ports and getting equipment and troops to the eastern front would have been slow and the limited channels of travel would have made it extremely easy for U-boats to destroy vessels carrying necessary supplies. >inb4 the soviets didn’t need any help. If the US, Britain, and it’s commonwealth forces never got involved and left the fighting to one front we all can assume what would happen. The western powers essentially destroyed the luftwaffe, which if you know anything about war you’d understand air superiority is essential. American and Britain were also extremely influential in destroying the production capabilities of the Germans through constant air raids. The soviets had numbers, but they lacked on every other front. It has been proven time and time again that simply throwing waves isn’t a viable method when your enemy has air support, better training, and there production/man power isn’t being limited by a 2nd front and constant air raids.
Robert Perez
Lives lost is not how you measure the importance of a battle, but rather by how it changes the military and political landscape. So, in many ways you were taught right. If we look at the European theatre and Pacific theatre separately we can draw comparisons between battles. The military inflection point in the pacific was clearly Midway, where the Japanese navy went from comparable or superior to the USN to never again matching it. The comparable European battle would be Kursk, after which the German army could never match the allies. Both of these battles left one side mostly intact and the other completely crushed and what occurred after both is pretty much a victory march. (seriously look at the battle outcomes after each battle, they are hilariously one sided.)
Neither stalingrad nor D-day shifted the momentum of the war, as both were enabled by previous victories. For example stalingrad wasn't won until months after the Germans were surrounded, ie they'd lost all the battles around stalingrad, and thus ended up losing stalingrad. Same thing with D-day, the germans had lost north Africa, Sicily, and Italy forcing them to spread their troop massively before losing D-day.
If we are going for signifiers that Germany had lost the war and defeat was inevitable, I'd argue first the battle or Britain, as it signifies that Germany will not take England, and then the Battle of Moscow as it signifies that Germany will not take Russia.
Asher Flores
>mfw i enter a history thread and find it full of knowledgable anons with good points on various facets of global high intensity warfare >instead of the usual shitflinging and wehrboo/weeb/slavboo/murrica/jollyold faggotry
For the US (the only nation that matters) it was the turning point. The brits tried to have their day with market garden, but they lost all their good tacticians charging headlong into German machine gun fire a few decades prior.
Ryder Richardson
You don't win wars by dying for your country, user.
So yeah, sure, compared to Stalingrad, it was a walk in the park... because the Allies actually tried to minimize casualties by planning the damn thing as well as they could afford to.
What is the most desirable ?
>Zerg rush your enemy, throwing away your countrymen's lives because "not one step back", hoping the other side will go dry before you >Fighting only when you were sure to win or had no choice, even if it means retreating, so as to preserve your men and eventually manage to rack up the final victory at minor cost.
Brayden Garcia
The way I learned it Stalingrad was the turning point for the European war and Midway was the turning point for the Pacific War
Jaxon Cox
This. Also El Alamein was taught as the turning point in the North African theater.
D-Day, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Sicily, the Bulge, etc were all taught but mostly seen as mopping up operations
Jackson Kelly
In all honesty the turning point of the war was Pearl Harbor, not D-Day. The moment the Japs killed 2400 US sailors in a sneak attack and Hitler then doubled down by declaring war on the US, was the moment the US threw all of its oil, money, and industrial might into keeping the Soviet Union and British alive so they could come back them up
Japs should have gone North to invade Vladivostok along with the Dutch East Indies instead of attacking Pearl Harbor. The US wouldn’t have done shit about the Soviets being cut off from US supplies even though Vladivostok was how they were importing everything into the Soviet Union to keep them alive to fight Hitler. Also the US didn’t care about the dumbass Dutch who were cut off and stuck in Southeast Asia, even though Japan was gonna use their oil to continue genociding Chinese people
But the Japs didn’t trust the US who were sitting in the Philippines to do nothing while they raped the European colonies in Southeast Asia, so they attacked Pearl Harbor and killed any chance the Axis had left for victory
Colton Morgan
Bot thread slidgesage
Sebastian Perez
War is a racket
Dominic Clark
4 light tanks and 1 heavy tank doesn't count any of the thousands of medium tank Shermans.
Ryder Flores
>Japs should have gone North to invade Vladivostok along with the Dutch East Indies instead of attacking Pearl Harbor. The US wouldn’t have done shit about the Soviets being cut off from US supplies even though Vladivostok was how they were importing everything into the Soviet Union to keep them alive to fight Hitler. Also the US didn’t care about the dumbass Dutch who were cut off and stuck in Southeast Asia, even though Japan was gonna use their oil to continue genociding Chinese people They had tried this and failed in '39.
Jordan Nelson
Currently history is biased towards the Western front due to the amount of veterans in the West and media about the Western Front shaping a cultural zeitgeist.
Ironically the Italian Front only really gets a mention. Many feel the Eastern Front is a foreign and alien thing. Such is the ignorance of the masses.
Chase Cook
>Midway was the turning point for the Pacific War
Actually, there's a lot of debate on that. Sure, the IJN took massive losses on that battle, but that didn't immediately thwart all of their immediate strategic objectives and they were still carrying out offensives in the Pacific and expanding territory.
It could be argued that the true turning point would be Guadalcanal, which is where the US and Japan truly squared off in full scale combined arms warfare and the US came frighteningly close to losing at some points. The US winning Guadalcanal signaled the end of the Allies being on the defensive in the Pacific and it was all downhill for Japan from there.
Isaiah Rivera
Frog in a pot
Julian Jackson
>because the Allies actually tried to minimize casualties by planning the damn thing as well as they could afford to.
Nah. D-day was a walk in the park because a bulk of the German Army was concentrated east.
WW2 was always the most destructive on the Eastern Front. Allies had it good. They could afford to because they were separated by water with two strong navies (three if you include Norway)
Jose Jenkins
>the Germans were going to lose regardless of D-day and opening the ETO was more of a move to save any of Western Europe falling to the Soviets then "doing our part" to stop the big bad Nazis Prove me wrong
Carson Lopez
we where already in italy
Leo Kelly
The Germans still had a lot of elite units in France that could have easily pushed the invasion forces back into the sea if they were deployed properly. It took a lot of carefully planned decoy operations to neutralize their threat and even then, Operation Cobra proved the German forces stationed in Normandy weren't complete pushovers.
I mean, it's not as if Stalin was bitching at the Allies for YEARS to open up a second front against Germany.
Christian Taylor
1939=/=1941, Hitler was at the gates of Moscow and Stalin was shitting his pants at the thought of Japan invading from the Soviet Far East at any moment
Jackson Wilson
Italy was never intended to the foothold to push into Europe. Allied command always intended D-Day to fulfill that purpose. The Italian campaign was primarily to knock Italy out of the war and secure the Mediterranean for the Allies.
Lucas Anderson
>D-Day considered the turning point in the war Who the fuck has ever considered it that, lol?
soviets were asking for a second front since 1942, because it would have made the soviet advance easier and less bloody while the soviets were already on the way to victory in 1944, the allied invasion was still something they appreciated by speeding up the last advance
they still devoted tens of thousands of men and material to the defence of the west and were hoarding aircraft and AA weapons which were desperately needed on the east way before D-day
they had roughly 400,000 men in place to repel d-day, with a peak of 2M men in the west >but thats still smaller than the east and that's true, and no one will argue the east had it worse but that's 2 million men that weren't serving stalin total german captured in the west was 5M, which is a huge chunk of german manpower tied up and eventually wasted
yes, its true that the scale of the west is dwarfed by the fighting in the east but its disingenous to say claim the soviets didnt want or ask for a western front or that splitting 2M men to defend an opposite front is insignificant in any way that's a huge amount of diverted resources
Ethan Brown
>*murrica/10 Well, too bad in real life the SU has held a sizable military force in the Far East specifically for the occasion of Jap attack and had proved to be capable of completely fucking demolishing Japs before and during the WWII.
And Japs never did because they estimated that they could not win.
Xavier Hernandez
>because the Allies actually tried to minimize casualties by planning the damn thing as well as they could afford to. More like because they landed on a beach defended by literal teenagers with machine guns sitting in bunkers a mile away from the shore and because Hitler demanded that he was in direct command of that poor lone unfortunate tank division that ended up going circles between the advancing Allies due to that. >What is the most desirable ? Not exposing oneself to hollywood propaganda bullshit.
Elijah Collins
To be fair just a blockade of the US aid coming though the east would have killed the USSR.
Kevin Gomez
Parasites never leave until they're forced
Henry Morris
>strategically was only important to Russia in maintaining its rail networks >What the fuck is Volga river? Ok dude.
Robert Bennett
Yes, and that played heavily into Germany rolling over the Soviets in the early stages of Barbarossa, since Stalin was reluctant in transferring reserves from Siberia exactly because of concerns of a coordinated Japanese attack.
Ethan Foster
>More like because they landed on a beach defended by literal teenagers with machine guns sitting in bunkers a mile away from the shore and because Hitler demanded that he was in direct command of that poor lone unfortunate tank division that ended up going circles between the advancing Allies due to that.
It's almost as if the Allies staged a complex and effective deception campaign to trick the Germans into deploying their reserves on the wrong beaches.
Justin Sanchez
This thread got me curious and I got to keep my high school US History book. Here's probably the most relevant passage.
>Stalingrad only truly benefited the soviets Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk are the most important points of the WWII because they literally broke the back of Nazi military. D-Day is just a tiny landing operation on an irrelevant front by countries late to party but still wanting to have credit.
Jordan Baker
Which the Soviets couldn’t have done shit about, but Japs could never see the forest through the trees, and they never realized that killing the Soviet Union would have given them the best chance for victory
Nathaniel Gonzalez
Whew a shipping lane, my bad buddy. Obviously the rail network and wartime production value of the factories are of little to no importance when it comes to the might Volga River! Apart from my sarcasm, obviously the Volga was important, but that still is purely a soviet benefit in maintaining.
Christopher Lopez
>run at the germans and possibly die >run away and we kill you either via a bullet or by working you to death in a camp
Mason Stewart
>More like because they landed on a beach defended by literal teenagers They were attacked by literal teenagers too. Not gonna comment on the rest but that seems like such a dumb thing to bring up.
Joseph Hernandez
On dday, humans died
Ryan Gonzalez
No, not really, it did not. Read a book.
Xavier Morgan
Yep, it's not as if the Battle of Britain and North Africa broke the back of the Luftwaffe, which even in its weakened state was flying circles around the Soviets.
Or how the Battle of the Atlantic and the Pacific secured Allied superiority of the seas that shattered German and Japanese naval power and allowed critical Lend Lease convoys to reach Russia.
Nope, Russia won it all by themselves.
Adrian Thompson
>D-Day is just a tiny landing operation the largest seaboarne invasion in histroy is hardly small
they also eventually landed 1.5M troops with a highly mechanized force and air supremacy which is comparable to many soviet offensives of the time they eventually had over 2M+ men, which is the size of a major soviet offensive
Brandon Reed
This is what i learned. Stalingrad was not a turning point, but it was a fucking meatgrinder.
The true nail in the coffin was D-Day, strictly due to successfully opening a 2nd front, thus diverting resources from the east to the west. I don't think a single historian has said that the soviets would have won with 100% certainty had the americans failed or did not attempt D-Day, or keep the japs at bay.
James Flores
No, it's almost like the tank division couldn't react in time because they were put under Hitler's direct control and the man was literally fucking asleep. >staged a complex and effective deception campaign to trick the Germans into deploying their reserves on the wrong beaches Campaign being called "the Eastern Front" and said "wrong beaches" being located on the shores of Volga river around Stalingrad.
Julian Bell
Russia was good at dying, the Americans and brits and various others were good at killing.
Michael Green
>Many of the people who died were dumbass Soviets who decided to throw their lives away for Stalin.
>Soviets >decided to throw their lives away >for Stalin
This has to be bait, like no one can actually be this autistic right..? >the rest were late to the party Well apart from the US who was coming out of a depression and an isolationist nation at the time you couldn’t be more wrong. The British and French declared war on Germany in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland...in case you don’t remember The nazis and the Soviets actually struck up a deal to split Poland. Hitler didn’t declare war against the soviets till June of 1941 when he invaded the Soviet Union..a whole 2 years a later. America joined the war on Dec 7, 1941 just a few months after the soviets. You should definitely read up some more on your history. >D-Day is insignificant Once more your autism is showing. Operation overlord served as the western powers attempt at gaining a foothold to press the fight through German occupied France. Without it the only front that could be fought on would’ve been that of the eastern. Which as I stated earlier would have been impossible from a logistical standpoint. I know you’re likely a slaviboo and you prefer to look at history with soviet tinted glasses but the irrefutable truth is the soviets would have been defeated if another front wasn’t opened up stretching the Germans thin. Kursk, Moscow, and Stalingrad are all great battles with great importance to the soviet war effort but their effects could only be felt in the east. It’s important to remember almost all bombing raids were carried out by the US and British which crippled the German war industry. The US, British, and Remaining French Navy’s are what ensure the Germans couldn’t run supplies by sea to the eastern fronts few warm water ports. The truth is in order for the war effort to be successful everything that did occur needed to occur.
Aiden Barnes
Not really. He wanted to reduce a fuck-huge encirclement that Army Group South had barely bottled up, because he felt uncertain about playing siege to Moscow with a massive enemy force barely contained behind his main battle lines. Case Blue was more about the exploitation of the Caucasus, not Barbarossa.
Juan Martinez
>This is what i learned. Stalingrad was not a turning point The text literally says that it was.
Hudson Roberts
kek >USSR destroys elite divisions at Stalingrad and Moscow >Bongoloids and ameriniggers lose to literal cripples and kids at market garden
Jordan Johnson
Don’t try to reason with the Slaviboo
Jack Lee
Are you retarded? Do you even realize how strategically important was Volga waterway? >that still is purely a soviet benefit in maintaining Collapse of the Eastern Front would mean the victory of the Nazis.
Turned the tide into Russia, not of the war itself.
Benjamin Baker
battle of britian was very manpower-low but material intensive germans eventually lost over 2000 aircraft, which is a sizeable chunk of their airforce at the time operation barborossa cost them about 2800 aircraft, but over a much longer and more intensive period of time
US counter-intelligence successfully convinced the germans that the main attack was going to be in calais, so the germans stationed more than 400,000 eastern front veterans there in order to repel the attack hitler was convinced that D-day was merely a diversionary attack until operation goodwood, but allied air attacks nullified his counter-offensive because of the logistical nightmare moving a whole army is under air attack
D-day is a classic case of intelligence and counter-intelligence to blind your enemy to your intentions and striking them where they expect it the least
Michael Collins
>muh elite diviosns! The eternal vatty.
Dominic Richardson
>Do you even realize how strategically important was Volga waterway?
it was to be used as a geographical feature to restrict the movement of the soviet armies. considering the luftwaffe's air control at the time, water shipping was extremely vulnerable.
Julian Sanders
Look up Operation Fortitude. Literally the only reason the Germans had ONE Panzer division stationed in Paris was because they sent the rest of them to Calais.
Fortitude also played a key role because it also fooled most German commanders into thinking the Normany landings were the diversion and didn't mobilize their reserves like they should have. All their reserve units were trapped in eastern France and couldn't make the push to the Cotentin Peninsula after the British and Canadians managed to land and establish a defensive line against them.
Josiah Lewis
>W-well, we shot some aircraft and sank some boats... Good for you. Too bad Soviets were the ones who decimated Nazi military. >Nope, Russia won it all by themselves. That's not what I'm saying, retard, what I'm saying is that it is obvious for anyone who has learned history from books instead of hollywood movies and video games that the turning point of WWII wan on the Eastern Front. There's no discussion to this.
Brandon Mitchell
>the largest seaboarne invasion in histroy is hardly small It's small compared to what was going on at the Eastern Front every day.
You act as if the Volga was a safe haven for shipping and trade. The Germans had air superiority over the Soviet Union. The Volga is also present in far more places than just the shores of Stalingrad. IF the Germans saw it as being that important they could have taken it at other key points.
Landon Gutierrez
>W-well, we shot some aircraft and sank some boats. considering the germans spent a whopping 10% of their military budget on u-boats, vs 5% on tanks and nearly 1/3 of their twin engined cargo craft were shot down in north africa alone
it seems destroying the enemy in the sea and air was a strategically important aspect of war
Nolan Fisher
Probably would have meant a separate peace with the USSR and the war with the western Allies going to 1948 and ending with the nuclear annihilation of continental Europe, more likely. Nazis were never going to beat the USA to the bomb.
Jonathan Russell
its disingenuous to consider an attack the size of a major soviet offensive sweeping in the nazis backdoor "small"
Parker Phillips
Late to the party as in "late to the beating nazi asses" party. >I know you’re likely an ameriboo and you prefer to look at history with hollywood tinted glasses but the irrefutable truth is the western allies would have been thrown back into the atlantic ocean if the actual legit Nazi military was not busy having its ass served at the Eastern Front. Ftfy. >their effects could only be felt in the east See, you keep repeating this and I have no idea what obscure history revisionist blog did you get this from, but the truth is, the effects of these battles could be felt in the heart of the Nazi military.
Ayden Ramirez
>Muh numbers Ok let me break it down for you. The huge numbers of the Eastern front actually mean jack shit. The vast majority of those troops, the vast majority of them were trash mob leg infantry. Good for holding a line and not much else. On both sides, there were about a dozen division sized maneuver formations of good troops, and those units did most of the heavy lifting. Now an interesting thing in warfare between peer nations. When your good maneuver formations hit trash mobs, they tear through and you get blitzkrieg. When your good maneuver formations hit the enemy good maneuver formations, you get attrition. When your trash mob hits the enemy trash mobs, you get static trench warfare. Why is this important because it puts into perspective the two theatres. The only difference was in theatre size and number of trash mob formations. The number of good units, east front and west front was about the same. The eastern front was so large however that massive sections of the line were very thinly held, there was enormous scope for maneuver. In the West however at Normandy, the theatre was about the size of a shoebox, and it was packed with the literal elite of the german army, the very cream of them. Without those troops being tied up there, and without a million germans being tied up in Northern Africa, and half a million in Italy the Russians would literally have lost the war. There was no path to victory for Russia without American and British aid and the draining effect of the two other fronts.