"The Western Allies deliberately allowed Russia and Germany to fight each other to the death"

Klaus Fuchs said this. He was a young German-born physicist who helped the U.S. develop the Atomic Bomb and then passed along atomic secrets to the Soviets, for this reason.

Was he right? Did the U.K. and/or the U.S. allow the Germans and the Russians to fight each other 'til the death, with perhaps a more contemporary example being Iran/Iraq? I mean, 27 million Soviet deaths during the war is a big red flag. There were more Soviet deaths in individual battles than American/British deaths the entire war. Why was the Western front so late in forming?

I would like to research this question on this thread. All comments all welcome.

Just some more specific issues I would want to delve on:

- A supposed Roosevelt/Stalin meeting in Alaska, to go around Churchill who was a devote Russophobe
- Hitler communique with Truman, right before Berlin fell, to request an alliance vs. Stalin
- Summaries of Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam; and Stalin/Churchill, Stalin/Roosevelt, and Churchill/Roosevelt relations/letters
- Soviet intelligence during W.W. II indicating British/German plotting
- Western business involvement with Nazi Germany
- Casualty figures Eastern front vs. Western front
- Western foreknowledge of Holocaust and concentration camps
etc.

[edit on 23-5-2007 by db330]

[edit on 23-5-2007 by db330]

It is an interesting idea.

Why the front may have been slow to form?

The necessary material and personal had to first be assembled and stationed before any front could be established these things take some time. Especially in a time without most of our modern conveniences.

Reasons for Russian casualties?

They fought differently then their western allies. They used wave after human wave in an attempt to slow down and wear out the Germans so that they could regroup and equip themselves. Most of that equipment came from the good old USA.

IF we were deliberately waiting for the germans and russians to off each other why then didn't we follow up by wiping out the russians when we certainly could have?

As mentioned, the Russian casualty numbers were inflated by Russian tactical doctrine. The numbers certainly weren't helped by the fact that the Russians had to fight over a lot of their ground twice (once on the retreat, and once again taking it back), or by the fact that some of the largest (Kursk) and bloodiest (Stalingrad) land battles of the war were on Russian soil.

If the Western powers had wanted Russia and Germany to fight each other to the death, then some things don't make sense...

Why did we (the US in particular) ship so much equipment and material to the Russians?

Why did we adopt a "Fight Germany First" policy that gave the German/European front priority over the Japanese/Pacific front?

Why didn't we 'finish off' the Russians at the end of the war? It would've been the perfect time, after all...the US Army already in place in Europe, the US Navy already in place in the Western Pacific, the US in sole possession of the atomic bomb, the Royal Navy well set up to command the Baltic and the Med...it just doesn't GET any better, from a military perspective.

Why did we invest heavily in the rebuilding of West Germany in the post-war period?

It just doesn't sound like we (the US/UK) were setting up a Russia vs Germany 'deathmatch'.

Certainly the West didn't want to fight itself to death.
D-Day, was essentially delayed until it was completely ready to go.
If it had gone off half baked, with less troops and equipment, then there would have been a whole lot more dead Americans and Englishmen.

It think it was more a matter of we weren't overly concerned about Russians getting killed, as long as they weren't losing.

[edit on 24-5-2007 by emjoi]

I'm curious...what are you basing your opinion on?

As for 'delays' in the Normandy invasion, given the scale of the operation, it actually came together fast. The delays that did exist had nothing to do with Russian casualties, but had a LOT to do with two things that would crop up repeatedly over the course of planning the operation:

1) Lack of experience - Amphibious operations were, at the time, still a rarity in *any* size...and nothing near the eventual scale of Operation Overlord had ever been seriously planned. The lack of practical experience would come back to bite the Allied forces repeatedly.

2) Logistical shortfalls - In part, related to the 'lack of experience' problem, but a huge hurdle in its own right. The Allies kept finding out that they needed more of "X", and more of "Y"...then they needed more landing craft to carry "X" and "Y", then they needed parts and fuel for the landing craft and the trucks, and so it goes.

To put things in context, what became Operation Overlord started out as Operation Sledgehammer, scheduled to go in 1942. The idea of Sledgehammer was to capture Cherborg or Brest, and hold the area as a defensible staging point for a larger follow-up operation. By the time planning for Sledgehammer was reaching the detail stages, the logistical problems hit...there weren't enough landng craft available to get the troops ashore.

There was an attempt to use at least some of the planning and preparation done for Operation Sledgehammer, though. A smaller operation, called Jubilee, was put together. Jubilee's objective was the port of Dieppe. The most polite description I can give you of Dieppe is "absolute (insert profanity here) disaster on an unbelievable scale. The only good thing to come out of the Dieppe disaster was that it exposed the two problems I listed above...in spades.

Once the egg got wiped off several faces, it was realized that something needed to be done to open a second front against Germany...so a new operation was put together, taking advantage of the lessons learned at Dieppe. Operation Gymnast would take aim at North Africa. Gymnast got a new name in mid-1942. It became Operation Torch, and started in November of 1942.

Planning for Operation Overlord got underway in early 1943, and the operation actually kicked off on 6 June 1944.

The reason I went through the mini history lesson was to show that Overlord wasn't 'delayed'. If anything, it was a stunning achievement to get it planned in time. Essentially, in a year's time, the Allies went from planning a landing by 10,000 troops (Sledgehammer), to horribly botching a landing by 7,000 troops (Jubilee), to successfully executing a landing by 73,000 troops (Torch). Then, in another year, they went from executing a landing with 73,000 troops to executing the largest amphibious operation ever...1,400,000 troops crossed the beaches. The pace of tactical development was unbelievable....as was the logistical effort that supported it. And just to tie this rambling history essay back to the original topic...the entire motivation for Operation Sledgehammer (and thus, for its offspring, down through Overlord) was to take pressure off the Russian army. It's hard to believe that all of that effort, all of those resources, and all of that blood would've been spent if the Allies wanted Germany and Russia to destroy each other.