The Gaming Den

Laertes wrote:Guderian wrote in his postwar book Panzer Leader that it was pretty clear from 1941 onwards that the invasion of the Soviet Union was doomed and that Germany would not win the war. The thing he rated as most important was the Soviet ability to produce immense numbers of tanks very cheaply and pour them into mobile battles on the steppe where the German lines were stretched too thin to respond effectively.

Guderian was the father of tank warfare, so I sort of trust his judgement on the matter.

David Glantz, who is probably the foremost American expert on the subject, put it something like this:
The loss at Moscow meant that Hitler would not win, at least according to his terms. The loss at Stalingrad meant that he would lose, and it only remained to see what the terms were. The loss at Kursk meant that the defeat would be total.

As for lend-lease, I would say that it mostly did three things:
1) Logistical support (shoes, rations, ammunition, radios, locomotives, etc.) that meant that more Soviet factories could be set to making weapons.
2) A useful but not critical supplement in tanks, aircraft, and other weapons. It should be noted that the Shermans were consistently assigned to Guards units, indicating that they were preferred over the T-34.
3) Most importantly, the jeeps and trucks in 1944-45 meant that the great Soviet offensives that crushed Germany would be motorized. Therefore, the offensives were faster, more decisive, and cost fewer Soviet lives.

Aside from that, I would say that the profoundly inefficient strategic bombing campaign did do one thing, it destroyed the Luftwaffe in the spring of 1944. And so when Bagration began on June 22, the Soviets had air superiority. That helped a great deal.

But none of it was critical, the vast majority of lend-lease aid arrived after the war in the east had effectively already been decided. There's only one bit of US aid that could be considered decisive: the relief effort for the 1921 Volga famine, in which something like five million died (though estimates range from 1-10 million). At its height, the American Relief Administration was feeding 10-11 million a day, and it also provided the seed grain to end the famine. It doesn't seem implausible that a USSR minus several million people in 1941 falls to the Nazis, or that its failure to relieve the famine might have led to another revolution.

Josh_Kablack wrote:ww2 is also the last real war that the US won, unless you use very very loose definitions of "war" and "win"

You can never take our glorious victory over the Grenadians away from from us.

shau wrote:

Josh_Kablack wrote:ww2 is also the last real war that the US won, unless you use very very loose definitions of "war" and "win"

You can never take our glorious victory over the Grenadians away from from us.

I would count Korea as a victory. If your only goal is the preservation of south korea, and you succeed, that should count as winning.

Josh_Kablack wrote:ww2 is also the last real war that the US won, unless you use very very loose definitions of "war" and "win"

The first Iraq war (when Saddam invaded Kuwait, aka: the one with a real reason to exist) was a clear win, too. Unless you don't count that as a war.

Hard to call Korea a victory, as that war hasn't officially ended yet.

-Username17

Well, one side is a modern nation and apparently fairly normal. Like, if South Korea was a person, I'd invite them to the neighborhood barbecue along with Norway and Brazil and Australia and Canada and Mexico.

The other side is a fascist state that is so delusional and so dedicated to venerating its leader that they instituted special grammar changes to their language so the leader's name would be first in a sentence where he is mentioned.

Among its many other insanities.

It's technology is outdated and its populace is starving and it can't interact with other nations in a normal way.

It's like a sovereign citizen who refuses to calm down and screams threats every time he's mentioned as being freakin' mental.

Pfft. You guys invaded Greece in 1947 and won, defeated the communist government.

South Korea was totally liberated from the North's invasion, though the attempt to the invade the North was a disaster and China kicked your ass. Taiwan and the Phillipines were then liberated from China by the US, which I'm sure.was a complete coincidence.

The Vietnam war was an attempt to prevent communist annexation of South Vietnam. There is no South Vietnam because the communists annexed them. The associated bombing of Laos and Cambodia was ... fairly disruptive. But if it wasn't for China telling you not to, you totally could've won instead. Call it a resignation under protest.

The Dominican Republic had their democratic government replaced by US military force, 1965. They're not huge, but that's a war and you totally won it.

Grenada lost when you invaded in 1983. Also not huge, but still a war.

Kept your pet dictatorship running in the Phillipines against a popular uprising, and at basically the same time attacked Panama to remove a formerly cooperative dictator and support the popular uprising. No, that isn't confusing, and you won them both.

Totally liberated Kuwait in 1991. Rather a lot of war crimes due to the disparity of arms, but still a victory. Effectively created Kurdistan at the same time, though it's not been recognised by anyone yet.

Somalia kicked your ass in 1993. Kinda sad, as they had no army and no government at the time, but that was a war and you lost it. Refusal to commit, really. Can't build a nation with a couple hundred guys in a military base outside the capital.

Liberated Bosnia and Macedonia and ... oh, you Balkanised the Balkans. It happens. Eventually you even liberated Kosovo, which is like ten people.

Haiti, 1994, clear win for the US, even on the democracy side.

Scattered the government of the Taliban in Afghanistan, 2001.

Iraq's a book loss, because it was to "bring peace to the region", and ... no. Realistically it was about getting a more compliant government, and so it's a real-world win anyway, the oil is yours and it flows once more. Operation Iraqi Liberation, success. The ten years of bombing beforehand ... kinda sadistic, but you know, war.

The drone wars are kinda weird, because any reasonable goal can only be made worse, but they're ongoing and there's certainly a lot of dead people, so let's just call it a humanitarian disaster.


Hmm, on the scale of real wars, I'd say four victories, two losses, a few resignations without play, and a whole bunch of promising practices. With no home games that's a pretty good record.

tussock wrote:Taiwan and the Phillipines were then liberated from China by the US, which I'm sure.was a complete coincidence.

What. The PRC was never in control of Taiwan, much less the Philippines.

FrankTrollman wrote:Hard to call Korea a victory, as that war hasn't officially ended yet.

-Username17

Seems a lot like it did for the US. Winning the war hard enough to guarantee that South Korea can now perpetually exist on it's own two feet seems like a victory.

Kaelik wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:Hard to call Korea a victory, as that war hasn't officially ended yet.

-Username17

Seems a lot like it did for the US. Winning the war hard enough to guarantee that South Korea can now perpetually exist on it's own two feet seems like a victory.

No, I mean we are still technically at war with North Korea. In 1953, we agreed to a cease fire, which was recently unilaterally rescinded by the DPRK. Our troops stationed right next to the DMZ could storm across at any time and so could theirs because there is an active declaration of war and there is no active peace treaty.

That war never really ended and neither side achieved their stated goals. Calling that a victory requires a very special definition of 'winning.'

-Username17

If you define a war by the legalities of declarations of war as though we were all European states post the Treaty of Westphalia, then the war is still ongoing. However, that is a bullshit definition because it ignores stuff like the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the current civil wars in Syria and Iraq, the South African war in Angola, the Russian wars in Chechnya and Georgia, and the whole Yugoslav thing. Declared wars between mutually-recognising nation states are an anachronism.

If you define a war as being a period where two organised groups of people are using violence to settle a political disagreement, then the Korean War ended in 1953 with a stalemate since neither side achieved their objectives, and neither side cared enough about those objectives that they wanted to resume the flow of body bags it would cost them.

FrankTrollman wrote:No, I mean we are still technically at war with North Korea. In 1953, we agreed to a cease fire, which was recently unilaterally rescinded by the DPRK. Our troops stationed right next to the DMZ could storm across at any time and so could theirs because there is an active declaration of war and there is no active peace treaty.

That war never really ended and neither side achieved their stated goals. Calling that a victory requires a very special definition of 'winning.'

Technically or not, we are not actually at war, because no fighting of any kind occurs. And we achieved our stated goal of South Korea continuing to exist.