Crisis in the Ukraine

Just for the record, you do realize there are casualties in every war even after the shooting stops, right? A lot of soliders died or were injured in Europe after V-E day through accidents, encounters with holdouts, crimes, etc. Hell, from 1980-2000, hardly a time of intensive combat for the U.S., anywhere from 800 to 2,400 soldiers died each year of various causes.

 

If you were born after (or before) October 1962, you should be happy politicians have at least something to do with it.

 

Political points of view are one thing, historical inaccuracies another. It was a General, Eisenhower to be exact, who ordered US forces (not Patton's, Simpson's) not to advance past the Elbe River. He did so because it had already been agreed by Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill that Berlin would be in the Eastern Zone and he saw no point in getting guys killed for a trophy they'd have to give back. The cake was already baked and there was nothing the US Army could do about it. Remember, at this point there was no functioning atom bomb and US policy's first priority was to get Russia into the war with Japan.

 

Cut the Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development and Health and Human Services and kill the waste, fraud and abuse at the EPA

 

To be fair to Stalin, and who wouldn't want to be fair to Stalin, Patton didn't trust anyone.

 

http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

We are the Gladys Kravitz of planet Earth.



"Abner! Somebody's doing something somewhere! Go to Defcon 2!"

 

I was always under the impression that Ike made the decision to provide
fuel for Montgomery forces and it left Patton's 3rd army stalled. Some historians
say that if Patton has been allowed to continue The Battle of the Bulge would
have never happened.

 

You beat me to it.

 

That's probably true. Might even have prevented the Cold War.

 

Boom, you're about one-third right. Eisenhower did limit Patton's fuel, but also everyone else's, as he believed in the Broad Front plan which Monty and Patton, each of whom wanted all the fuel, opposed. Ike's genius as a commander was to keep his generals fighting Germany when they would've much preferred fighting each other. However, The chances that one U.S. Army could've penetrated deep into Germany in 1944 were nil. as the last nine months of the war proved.

 

But if anybody would have had a shot it was Patton and he did not get the chance. Ike certainly did not
anticipate the Battle of The Bulge.

So many aspects of WW II history just fascinate me as to their ramifications even today.

 

There just wasn't enough gas, Boom. Failure (Monty's fault) to capture Antwerp in September meant Allies had no deepwater port for supplies.