[RN7]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to go with Max Hastings on this one. In WWII, the Allies had some superior weaponry- the P-51 Mustang, M-1 Garand, and the T-34/85 are all examples. Overall, they also had superior artillery. Allied naval superiority isn't really a matter of debate (aside from the Japanese Yamato class super-battleships which were impressive but anachronistic by 1941 and a couple of advanced German U-boat classes).

On the other hand, the Germans fielded a clearly superior GPMG in the MG-42, the word's first assault rifle, the STG-43/44, and the deadly 88mm DP gun. Most WA tanks crews would have gladly traded in their Sherman or Churchill for a Panther or Tiger, depite their often finicky engines.

And the Allies fielded a superior light machine gun; The Bren Gun, the world's first real infantry support weapon, still used by the British Army until the 1980's and still built in India. The Allies also fielded the M2 Browning, the best heavy machine gun ever made and still the standard heavy machine gun of every NATO and western country and many more besides. Despite its limitations the Germans also had a very healthy respect for the Sherman Firefly, who's 17 pounder chewed up some Panthers and Tigers in Normandy after D-Day, and are credit with killing the Tiger tank commanded by Michael Wittmann who was Germany's top scoring tank ace of WW2. The Allied tank commanders would no dount have prefered to have gone into battle against the Germans with the M26 Pershings and Centurion but the Sherman weighed 33 tonnes as opposed to 46 tons for the Pershing and I think the Centurion was even heavier. I think the logistical problems of transporting them across the sea in landing craft and then putting them on the beaches may have played a part in prolonging their introduction as the smaller Shermans were doing a good enough job and their were thousands available.

Originally Posted by Raellus

The ME-262 had is problems and vulnerabilities, but it still gave the allies fits in the air. Most ME-262s that were shot down were done so when they were landing. The Brits might have had jet aircraft first, but they didn't field them in any significant numbers until the war was nearly over. ASFAIK, there weren't any Meteor aces. The Germans also developed the world's first ballistic missile and the first radio-controlled ASMs.

The Germans were well ahead of the rest of the world in ballistic and radio controlled missiles. The Brits didn't have any need to field the Meteor in any significant numbers until the war was nearly over as the Allied air superiority over Western Europe and Germany was so great they werent needed. Also the RAF forbid Meteor pilots to fly over German occupied territory or to go east of Eindhoven in Holland until January 1945, to prevent downed aircraft being captured by the Germans or the Soviets. There werent any Meteor aces because there were relatively few German fighters flying in 1945 and the Meteor never actually encountered any German fighters.

Originally Posted by Raellus

The German's biggest mistake was devoting so much of their war industry on small production runs of extremely complex and complicated wonder-weapons. That, coupled with a delay in converting to a war economy and late-war shortages of fuel and raw materials due to strategic bombing and sabotage meant that the Germans would never be able to translate any technological edge into a decisive strategic advantage.

No one can argue that the correlation of forces was not the decisive factor in the Allies' victory. We had numerical advantages of at least 3-to-1, and in some cases 5-to-1 or more, in every major category of weaponry, from tanks to fighters to warships to men in uniform.

True

Originally Posted by Raellus

Now back to the Red Army. In WWII, the Soviet Union lost more citizens and soldiers than any other nation on earth. The U.S. had the lowest casualties of any major combatant. With all of their technology, the U.S. and UK combined to kill approximately 500,000 German men at arms during the entire war. The Soviets killed about 4.5m. The Red Army began the war with a decimated officer corps, outdated infantry weapons, and generally very poorly equipped troops. Four years later, they were a juggernaut.

The Germans also killed three times as many Soviets as the Soviets killed Germans. Outside of air and naval operations the only major land battlefield between the UK/USA and Germany from 1940 until the invasion of Sicily in 1943 was North Africa, a small side show compared to the Eastern Front. The UK/USA armies were only realy able to get to grips with the Germans with their full military forces in a geographicaly open battleground after D-Day. The German army casualty rates in the west after D-Day were every bit as severe as they were in the east, and Western air power was superior in technology and also in numbers to even the Soviets.

Originally Posted by Raellus

As for arguments about doctrine- no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The idea that superior doctrine would have won the war assumes a short war with flawless execution, no surprises, and a fairly predictable, cooperative enemy. In a longer war, both sides learn to make adjustments.

Hitler expected the U.S.S.R. to collapse in a matter of weeks. "Kick in the door and the whole rotten building will collapse" he said. For a few weeks, it looked like he might be right. Four years later, the Red Army was at the gates of Berlin.

The Allies could have taken Berlin before the Soviets, in fact the Germans probably wanted them to take Berlin before the Soviets. But the decision who was to take Berlin was decided at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Eisenhower’s halted the Western Allied advance at the Elbe River.