Comments by "Colonel K" (@Paladin1873) on "Global News" channel.

You make it sound like the USSR had a victory lock on the Axis by the time of D-Day. If they had, Stalin could have controlled all of Europe in the end instead only the east. So why did Stalin keep pressuring the West to attack the continent head-on as soon as possible? This would have been counterproductive to his postwar aims. For the record, the Germans were conducting a strategic withdrawal from much of the USSR during this time. It wasn't a rout or full retreat. They had a very hard time going on the offensive because so much of their artillery and fighter aircraft were defending the fatherland, and fuel shortages were becoming endemic. Meanwhile, the Soviets were benefiting from the critical supplies we were giving them such as high performance aviation fuels, trucks, and radios. There is much more to war than who is winning the land battles or how many casualties one has endured. Nobody here is saying the Soviets didn't absorb the lion's share of suffering and fighting against the Nazis. The same is true of the Chinese against the Japanese. It was a joint effort all around. Had it been otherwise, I doubt anyone could have stopped the Nazis, Fascists, and Imperialist, certainly not without prolonging the war with even more suffering. There's a popular belief floating around these days that it was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that led to the rapid surrender of Japan, not the A-bombs we dropped. I don't believe it. What I do believe is the Japanese saw the hopelessness of fighting in the face of starvation, isolation, nuclear attacks, firebombings, and an all-out invasion by the US, UK, and USSR.
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@tvgerbil1984 Operation Bagration began over two weeks after D-Day and went on for nearly two months. During this time the Germans had to fight a three front ground war and an air war. Combined, all of these factors contributed to their major losses in Bagration. Without the D-Day invasion it is quite likely the Soviet victory would not have been so complete, if it had occurred at all. The same can be said for Overlord. Would the corresponding breakout from Normandy and race across France have occurred if Bagration had never been initiated or it had failed? I think a fair assessment is that the "Second Front" relieved enough pressure on the Soviets to allow them the opportunity for a smashing victory, albeit at great cost, but one they, unlike the Wehrmacht, could afford. It also introduced the same problem the US and UK forces now faced, an overextended supply line. Conversely, German supply lines were compressed, making logistical support much easier for them. It would take the combined might of all Allied fronts to finally crush them.
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@tvgerbil1984 You did not address my comments.
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@Bob31415 The 160,000 figure reflects only the first day of Overlord. The follow-on forces eventually numbered over three million.
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@Bob31415 One could view it as the difference between being hit by a tidal wave vs. a rising tide. Both will drown you if you don't get out of the way. One just does it faster than the other. Regarding TV Gerbil's comments about the Soviets carrying 3/4 of the fighting, that is absolutely true. I doubt we and the Brits could have pulled off a successful landing on the main continent without them. It certainly would have been a lot longer and bloodier for us, which is something westerners find most repugnant. In an ideal world we would have been able to sit back and watch the Communists, Fascist, and Nazis kill each other off, leaving the US and UK free to walk in and rebuild all their societies as free market democracies and republics. But we don't live in an ideal world, so it didn't work out that way. All the same, two out of three ain't bad.
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