The Germans and the Japanese had a DEFENSIVE alliance. The committed top coming to the aid of the other if ATTACKED. Japan wasn't attacked, it was the attacker so Hitler had no requirement to declare war on the USA. On the other hand, FDR was already fighting an undeclared war against Germany, so Hitler had little to lose by declaring it a real war. Sooner or later FDR was going to find a cassus belli and declare war on Germany.
That's typical diplospeak. In other words, meaningless bovine excrement. Churchill loathed Stalin, but he loathed Hitler more.
Learn some history, the AVG didn't enter combat until AFTER Pearl Harbor. Here' an excerpt from the AVG's history:
That is wrong on many levels. The most important one is that the only way for the Soviets to invade the Home Islands would be to swim from the Asian mainland to Hokkaido. The Soviets essentially lacked a navy in the Pacific. The had(if memory serves) 2 LIGHT cruisers about twenty destroys and torpedo boats and less than a hundred US landing craft provided under Lend-Lease. No ability to land tanks or supplies at all. Based upon US and UK experience with green crews half the landing craft would be lost on the first day to operational accidents, more to enemy action leaving a literal handful for any reinforcement and resupply efforts. Plus the Soviets never mounted a major amphibious invasion and like the Germans viewed it as a river crossing writ large. The Japanese army in Manchuria and China was poorly supplied and consisted of untrained draftees most of which were impressed Koreans and Manchurians who had little reason to fight for their Japanese conquerors and in fact didn't in most cases. The Soviet army in Manchuria and China was no threat to the Japanese government at all. The US naval blockade had already cut all passage to the Asian mainland from Japan and US ships and aircraft were sinking anything larger than a rowboat than ventured out of the harbors."...If the Japanese were not concerned with city bombing in general or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in particular, what were they concerned with? The answer
The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan. Stalin Did.
Have 70 years of nuclear policy been based on a lie?foreignpolicy.com
is simple: the Soviet Union.
The Japanese were in a relatively difficult strategic situation. They were nearing the end of a war they were losing. Conditions were bad. The Army, however, was still strong and well-supplied. Nearly 4 million men were under arms and 1.2 million of those were guarding Japan’s home islands....
It didn’t take a military genius to see that, while it might be possible to fight a decisive battle against one great power invading from one direction, it would not be possible to fight off two great powers attacking from two different directions. The Soviet invasion invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically decisive — it foreclosed both of Japan’s options — while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not.
The Soviet declaration of war also changed the calculation of how much time was left for maneuver. Japanese intelligence was predicting that U.S. forces might not invade for months. Soviet forces, on the other hand, could be in Japan proper in as little as 10 days. The Soviet invasion made a decision on ending the war extremely time sensitive."
Actually that was a British idea. It's how they fought their continental wars for centuries. They would subsidize the Russians or Germans, or someone to fight the French.
Most of those Soviet casualties were the direct results of SOVIET decisions, starvation and abuse by the Soviet government. The Germans only killed less than five million Soviets. At the beginning of the invasion, large numbers of Soviet civilians and military were coming over to the Germans who they viewed as liberators from Stalin's bloody regime. Germany was too stupid to recognize and take advantage of the situation and began mistreating and slaughtering the people who were willing to support the invaders.
No it wasn't. It was a horrible tank that has a decent, but not world-class gun and good mobility. In every other metric it fell short of allied tanks. especially the Sherman. The T-34 was the most destroyed tank of WWII, in the early days of the invasion the Germans were killing them with 37mm gun armed tanks. The T-34 crews were so blind that one 37mm gun hit a single T-34 over fifty times before being spotted and run over by the T-34.
T-34 was arguably the best overall tank of the war. And where it fell short, it made up for in numbers.
The Soviets valued life enough to give their soldiers good equipment.
Good equipment, right, Ford Model A trucks, Moison Nagant rifles from pre-WWI stocks, WWI artillery, no armored personnel carriers at all. underperforming fighters, no radios in most of their tanks (usually only the company commander had a radio that received only) Most Soviet equipment wasn't good at all, but it was designed to be used by drafted idiots and was soldier proof.
T-34 was arguably the best overall tank of the war. And where it fell short, it made up for in numbers.
The Soviets valued life enough to give their soldiers good equipment.
Are you completely mad?
Yes, you are...
That only happened because Hitler diverted troops, equipment and supplies to the southern front. German troops were within sight of Moscow. If Moscow had fallen, the war would have been over because all roads and railroads led to Moscow. The Soviets would have had to retreat behind the Urals to reorganize because they had no way to move troops, supplies and equipment laterally without going through Moscow. Pull up a railway map of the USSR from 1939 and you will be shocked at how centralized it was. Stalingrad held a similar position, that's why it HAD to be retaken at all costs.
Yes, Truman expected Stalin to keep his treaty commitments. It didn't take long for him to be disillusioned by Stalin's conduct. Stalin had promised a lot of things, but only delivered those that benefitted Stalin.
Nope read some history. During Barbarossa German Panzer 38T and 35T tanks were killing T-34s in large numbers as were 37mm infantry antitank guns. T-34 side and rear armor was vulnerable to light weapons. Even it's frontal armor was vulnerable to the L42 50mm guns on Panzer IIIs and the long L60 guns on later Panzer IIIs and PAK 38 infantry antitank guns. 75mm guns like the PAK 40 could penetrate T-34 frontal armor at any distance they could see the tank. The KV-1 was a different story it was pretty much invulnerable to German antitank guns. but it was so slow and unreliable it wasn't much more than a slightly mobile pillbox. Most of the invulnerable T-34 stories can be traced to KV-1s.
These are the notes on the back of the postcard that my grandfather made in 1942 during advanced training courses, from where he came out as a captain of sapper units:
