Originally posted by easymo
Stalin. His willingness to throw away the lives of millions of his countrymen, stopped hitler.
He was instrumental in causing WWII but in winning it? Any one of his underlings or even his vanquished opponents - Trotsky, Bukharin, etc. would have thrown away as many lives as he did, likely more.
Tac: I think the group of people that invented RADAR take priority over the one that cracked enigma. How about the internal combustion engine? Or an airplane? The radar was invented in many countries at approximately the same time and there is no unique individual responcible for that.
A lot of success attributed to the radar was in fact the result of brits knowing the contents of all luftwaffe communnications starting 1939.
In fact you would be hard pressed to find another nation so inept in using the radar. They could not develop their own radar-fuse and had to use american design for anti-aircraft shells.
But they equipped their bombers with rear-facing "Monica" radar. It was guaranteed to always show the danger because british planes were sent in a stream a few miles one after another and the radar did not differentiate between enemy and friendly targets.
Hundreds of german Me-110 nightfighters (Shrage Musik variant) were equipped with radar that specifically homed on Monica emissions from 50+ miles away which allowed them to find and destroy hundreds of british bombers with impunity. No damaged planes survived to tell the tale until a german landed his fighter in England by accident.
Anyway, radar or no radar, Germany did not have startegic bombers to seriously attack England - they had to use fighter-bombers and tactical bombers. Even if it did have stategical bomber force and long-range escort fighters, it would not have been instrumental in the war.
Allies had strategic bombers and used them a lot with complete air superiority and still failed to break germany's will to resist or destroy germany's industry. Luftwaffe run our of pilots before it run out of planes - despite aircraft factories being the prime targets. Same with oil - germans lost Rumanian oil when russians captured it, not when it was bombed.
I do not have any reason to believe that brits were less determined then germans. Politicians could present teh air war as death and life struggle but it was far from it. Getting food/materiel into the islands (and to the russians) was much more important to winning the war.
mainly because old Joe didn't want his citizens to know about it and when captured they were given their last ration by the NKVD. 9mm of lead! Not really. For various political reasons (apparently becasue of allies who actually accepted their surrender), most were sentenced to 5 years in the camps. The ordinary soviet POWs liberated from german concentration camps got 10-15 years for treason. When many of the real traitors served their terms, they did not have anywhere to go, especially to their home towns, so they stayed in Siberia. Some hired to serve as guards in the same camps - guarding the soldiers that did not turn traitors who had more time to serve!
His offensive could've ended the desert war Hitler eventually lost the desert war anyway. If he lost it earlier it could have been very beneficial for him - as a weaker side with limited resources it was not in germany's interests to spread their efforts in multiple theaters of operations. The forces and resources lost in prolonged struggle in Africa could have been much better used on European continent.
miko
