1. #1
    na85's Avatar Senior Member
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    Sixty-six years ago today, on a Tuesday, the Allied powers invaded Normandy, France in undertaking the largest amphibious invasion of all time.

    It's a very sobering thought to consider the vast swaths of young men cut down by machine gun fire in defense of our freedom to simulate their struggles electronically in the comfort of our homes 66 years from then.
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  2. #2
    ytareh's Avatar Senior Member
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    Yeah it boggles the mind ...must have been some sight from the air ...RIP all...
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  3. #3
    Erkki_M's Avatar Senior Member
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    And just four days later, another massive operation was begun at East front, in which nearly a million men would be taking part together with 2,000 aircraft and thousands of tanks and armored vehicles as well as naval units.

    Invasion Normandy was massive, but it overshadows other battles, of equal or nearly the same scale and significance. The unimaginably named Vyborg-Patrozavodsk Offensive is one of them. If a schoolboy is asked to name 3 greatest battles of WW2, answers are, probably, Normandy, Battle of the Bulge and El Alamein, with a possible "Stalingrad was big too".
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  4. #4
    ytareh's Avatar Senior Member
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    Vyborg-Patrozavodsk Offensive?Yes its ironic that even after years of general interest in this Eastern Front born sim Id never heard of it ...
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  5. #5
    Yeah i have to say, after looking at the Eastern Front my view of WWII has shifted a bit;

    Soviet Russia won the European war
    Other allies were 'also rans'.


    Just think - between Barbarossa and Berlin, the Eastern front involved armies of something like 15 million men.

    Even after the Normandy landings, the Russians were facing something like 3-5 million in German armies. The Allies faced something like 800 000.

    Its just a complete joke to say D-Day was the most important battle of the War, or that the Russians werent already winning and would have sued for peace. The Russians didnt just continue, they raced the Allies to Berlin. The objectives of D-Day were more geopolitics.

    Theres a very good reason the Red Army was considered too powerful even for the combined Allied armies - and that the Allies investigated as much.


    If i had to name the most important land battles of WWII now, theyd all be on the Eastern Front.

    If i considered all types, id say Stalingrad, Moscow, Atlantic (uboats and raiders like Bismarck). Some popular choices like the Battle of Britain seem of little consequence when considered against losses in merchant shipping, let alone that Germany did not have the wherewithal or disposition to invade
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  6. #6
    DuxCorvan's Avatar Banned
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    According to my calendar, you're a day too late... ;-) (Normandy is in the same date and time zone as my country).
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  7. #7
    D-day defined where the iron curtain fell no more no less. It didn't win the war, that was won in the east at least as far as the ETO goes.

    Still a remarkable achievement non the less.
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  8. #8
    na85's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally posted by irR4tiOn4L:
    Yeah i have to say, after looking at the Eastern Front my view of WWII has shifted a bit;

    Soviet Russia won the European war
    Other allies were 'also rans'.


    Just think - between Barbarossa and Berlin, the Eastern front involved armies of something like 15 million men.

    Even after the Normandy landings, the Russians were facing something like 3-5 million in German armies. The Allies faced something like 800 000.

    Its just a complete joke to say D-Day was the most important battle of the War, or that the Russians werent already winning and would have sued for peace. The Russians didnt just continue, they raced the Allies to Berlin. The objectives of D-Day were more geopolitics.

    Theres a very good reason the Red Army was considered too powerful even for the combined Allied armies - and that the Allies investigated as much.


    If i had to name the most important land battles of WWII now, theyd all be on the Eastern Front.

    If i considered all types, id say Stalingrad, Moscow, Atlantic (uboats and raiders like Bismarck). Some popular choices like the Battle of Britain seem of little consequence when considered against losses in merchant shipping, let alone that Germany did not have the wherewithal or disposition to invade
    You're correct and I agree that the Eastern front was the most important front of the war, but that's not to say any other theatre was unimportant.

    The fact that 30 000 of my countrymen risked their lives storming Juno beach makes D-Day somewhat more personally relevant than say the battle of Stalingrad, important and massive though it may have been.

    I also disagree that the D-Day objectives were more geopolitics than military.
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  9. #9
    Tjaika's Avatar Junior Member
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    Lets not forget that Sovjet was allied to Hitler-Germany and helped in the attack against Poland. Naval bases were available to Germans against allied countries. That Russia lost so many, is also a result of the disrespect of human life of the sovjet leaders as anything else. The number died in political motivated starvation in the 20ties and up is unknown, but not unsignificant vs the losses in WWII.

    The Battle of Britain is very important, "small" as it is, because at that point Britain was alone against the axis. If they had lost, US probably wouldnt entered Europe later on when Japan attacked. Sovjet would not have won then.

    On the contrary, if Sovjet-Germany were united the whole war, it is not certain that they would have won. Who knows?

    But, it is beyond doubt that the people in Sovjet union did most to end the war, and paid the most heavy price. The reason it was so heavy was because of Stalin.
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  10. #10
    Wildnoob's Avatar Senior Member
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    The Soviets were the biggest victorious?

    First thing for people who think that: how we could put the USSR in a superior position over the other Allies when were are talking about a WORLD WAR?

    The Eastern Front was a consequence of the Western Front.

    If you put the Western Allies as useless then we are not in WWII anymore, but in a hypothetic conflict between Nazi Germany and the USSR!

    Yeah, the Germans lost 70% of their troops in the East...

    How about the other 30% the Western Allies were holding plus the entery Japanese forces?

    Maybe if Hitler had this contingent it's very likely he could beat the soviets, but wait... for those things happen we should had an exact WWII sceneario in this hypothetic war.. can we confirm everything would happen exactly like in WWII?

    An example of how everything was conected: the Siberian troops in Moscow were transfered because Richard Sorge told Stalin the Japanese were not planning an agression for the momment. Yeah... the supossed isolated PTO maybe had direct consequences in the fate of the Eastern Front.

    How about the Lend Lease, critical for the Soviets... the Western Allies making the Germans redirect resourcers more and more like in Kursk by the invasion of Italy?

    Just a few examples for we understand that the conflict is not named a WORLD WAR in vain, and see an isolated Eastern Front is just a "what if?" alternative history discussion. Interesting but really not factual.
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