75 years since the bomb

[cosmicchris00]

can we put to bed the myth that the Far East forces were stripped once Barbarossa kicked off - they were'nt, all the reinforcements that went from East to West were from the Trans-Baikal region and regions to the west (basically what we call the 'Stans' nowadays

The manpower levels of the far east armies remained pretty static all through WW2 (and while they never had any decent equipment to start with - it was plenty decent enough to roflstomp the Japanese)

I don't doubt their numbers remaining static.

The big question is; how many of the top leadership were stripped away?

The Red Army was routed during Barbarossa and then still suffered bad losses during key battles after they stopped the initial Nazi advance.

I'd suspect all the best men and equipment ended up on their western front.

 

[Scotty]

I don't doubt their numbers remaining static.

The big question is; how many of the top leadership were stripped away?

The Red Army was routed during Barbarossa and then still suffered bad losses during key battles after they stopped the initial Nazi advance.

I'd suspect all the best men and equipment ended up on their western front.

equipment, yes - the far east never got outfitted with any of the latest kit (but what they had still outclassed Japanese equipment - for ex, 2nd line Soviet tanks were still an order of magnitude more capable than the dross the Japanese classed as 'tanks')

men, i'm not so sure - however the far eastern forces were skilled enough to beast the Japanese at Khalkin Gol in 39, and as i said very few men actually went from Far East to West

commanders, definitely - Zhukov being the prime example. He was sent to the far east to command, achieved success and obviously came back west

 

[MonkeyLove]

They weren’t essentially beaten though,look at the resistance the Japanese gave during the war in the Pacific , the next option was an invasion of Japan.

The potential losses of US/ allied forces were incalculable if they succeeded at all.

The bombs were the only option to get the Japanese to surrender , they should have capitulated after the first one.

If you take that argument to its natural end you open up all sorts of justification for any country in the future. Say we end up with a war with Iran or N Korea in 20 years time, it opens the floodgates for them to claim it was the only way to stop the West

If it can happen it will, given enough time. Probably due to a glitch in ageing software and hardware or a mistake by a human.

What a classy and intelligent species….. to have thousands of such totally destructive and devastating warheads pointing at each other and with only the threat of mutually assured destruction prevents us from launching.

Why the feck, as a species, we just can’t clash our collective heads together, scrap the lot of them and put the money, resources and time instead towards something worthwhile like addressing climate change and switching over ASAP to renewable energy?

Amazingly on average modern nukes are about 80 times more powerful then those used against Japan. The Russians built one over 3,000 times more powerful before they ceased the ramp up.

Any used today would dwarf those ever used in history and If Russia could build something thousands of times more powerful 50 years ago I doubt a determined country today couldn’t also