Video puts WW2 deaths into perspective (link)

18 minute video putting WW2 combat and civilian deaths in perspective. It's all charts and graphs, with lots of interesting comparisons within the WW2 era and to other eras, notably the 70 years since then. Good narration and explanations.

Interactive documentary The Fallen of World War II animates devastating loss of life during WWII and the Holocaust.

 

Yikes.

 

Yeah, the bit where the casualties in the Soviet Union just keep piling up is powerful. Very interesting perspective.

 

The savagery between the Germans and Russians was beyond belief. The Russians bled the Germans white, and themselves in the process. Russian infantry unit tactics weren't exactly great for their own survival, either.

 

North America obviously and rightfully places a great deal of importance on D-Day, but the Eastern Front was what decided WWII. Figure even if Dday failed, the Russians could have pushed the Germans into the English Channel once they gained the upper hand.

 

I had no idea China was so heavily involved. Granted, I'm certainly no WWII buff, but that was surprising to see.

 

Also, Col. Hogan and his fellow POWs staged some incredible covert operations.

 

Yeah, until he did covert operations on a bed with a film camera. That didn't go too well.

 

I've been reading a few books on the various campaigns of the European Theatre lately, and a common theme is that, for all of their success, the Germans were just as unprepared for war and as bad at it as everyone else. They were so successful because they had some radical new ideas and the element of surprise on their side, but a lot of their ground forces were still walking or in horse-drawn carts at the start of the war. Outside of the U-Boats and some S-Boats (their version of the American PT boats) the navy was subpar. The Luftwaffe was ahead of its time, but still had a lot of inexperienced pilots.
Basically, if they didn't win a quick campaign through fear, shock and overwhelming force like they did in Poland, Norway and France, then they were screwed.

It's what happened in Russia, when the Germans were incredibly successful for the first six months but eventually had their supply lines strung out, winter set in, and the Russians were able to make a stand at Moscow in December 1941 and regain some momentum. Stalingrad was a meat grinder in late 1942, and the huge tank battle at Kursk (1943) was the Eastern Front equivalent of the Battle of the Bulge -- the Germans threw everything they had into a major push against a salient in the lines, but the Russians knew it was coming and chewed up the Germans before the attack came close to accomplishing anything. After that, it was a race to Berlin.
Even in France in 1940, the German ground forces had an easy time but the Luftwaffe got beaten up pretty good. It lost a lot of transport planes and didn't do a good job ramping up production to replace lost aircraft before launching the air campaign against Britain. Germany had England's air force on the ropes later that summer, but even if it had achieved air supremacy it's debatable whether it could have mounted an actual invasion. Germany didn't have any landing craft and spent most of the summer scouring Europe to find barges it could repurpose for the invasion. The barges were often bombed by the British as soon as they got to the French ports.
Again, a protracted campaign led to defeat. If the French army had performed anywhere near competently in 1940 -- it was the biggest in Europe at the start of the war -- it's entirely possible Germany would have been stopped in its tracks before it even had the opportunity to invade Russia.

 

The Russians' fighting style is a war version of Muhammed Ali's rope a dope. They did the same thing to Napoleon. They let you in, kill a bunch of their people because they really don't care about them, destroy their own land, fight pretty hard, then wait until winter sets in. Then counterattack, and you're fucked because you're not prepared for the winter, your supply lines are cut, and they just send wave after wave at you.

 

The US and the West always remember the end of the war as a relatively happy thing, with rebuilding and post-war prosperity. I wonder how the Russians felt, since they took such a beating, and their future was spent under a dictatorship.

 

On the other hand, Lake Moscow might have become a wonderful summer destination.