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Originally Posted by RN7
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.
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Don't get me wrong, I like the Bren, but the MG-42 was superior to the Bren Gun in nearly every way except maybe weight. The modern German version of the MG-42, the MG-3, is still in use around the world today, as is the M60 which was modelled on the MG-42.
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Originally Posted by RN7
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.
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Good call.
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Originally Posted by RN7
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.
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Yes, the 17-pounder was a badass AT gun. It was the gun the Germans respected, not the tank it what mounted on.
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Originally Posted by RN7
The Germans also killed three times as many Soviets as the Soviets killed Germans.
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Very true. But the Soviets still won. I only bring this up as it supports my premise in the Defense of the Red Army thread.
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Originally Posted by RN7
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.
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I don't think your first claim is very accurate. During the five weeks of Operation Bagration, launched in June of '44, the Red Army destroyed Army Group Center and bagged the Soviets 17 German divisions utterly destroyed and 50 others shattered. The Soviets claimed 400,000 Germans killed, 2000 tanks destroyed, and 158,000 prisoners taken. By contrast, the Germans lost about 200,000 men killed, wounded, and missing, and 250,000 men captured during the entire Normandy campaign, including the Falaise Pocket battles (all told, nearly three months of fighting). That's just the most glaring example.
Your second claim is right on the money.
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Originally Posted by RN7
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.
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The Western Allies were also much more reluctant to take casualties and so Eisenhower decided to let the Soviets earn Berlin with their blood. Stalin and the Red Army generals were more than willing to oblige.