What are some of the most persistent myths/misconceptions about the second world war?

what are some of the most persistent myths/misconceptions about the second world war?
like something you'd get from hearts of iron or a history channel documentary

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_at_Krojanty
tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13518040600697811)
mnstarfire.com/ww2/history/land/division.html),
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equipment_losses_in_World_War_II#Land).
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

>inb4 holocaust

Anyway
Italy's """""""""""colonies"""""""""""""

The fact so many are convinced the USSR was at any point unstoppable or that the Germans didn't come very close to beating them. Not even a stormfag myself, it's just logic.

>Germany could have beat the USSR
>the USSR was unstoppable
>lend-lease was a huge help to the USSR
>lend-lease barely helped the USSR
>strategic bombing did nothing
>the USSR was the reason for Japan surrendering

> USSR only one because zerg rash

>Germany could have beat the USSR
>the USSR was unstoppable
These two seem contradictory, by beat do you mean unconditional surrender by the Soviets?

It was stoppable, but not by Germans.

Poles charged German tanks with cavalry

They did use cavalry but to encircle and flank German infantry - usually successfully.

I mean that, supposing the allies had never gotten involved whatsoever in the war, it's likely that the Soviet offensive would have stalled, however that's not to say that the Germans would have been able to push back either. What you would likely see is a decade long war of attrition where the only victory available is phyrric victory.

>Nazis were the bad guys

>Hitler was an economic genius

Then we should have sat back and waited to wage war on the victor tbqh

>one
>one
>one
>ONE
>WON
HOW DO YOU GET THESE WORDS MIXED UP

>Nuking was the reason Japan surrendered
> USSR was close to be crushed, zerg rush, one rifle for every two men and shit
> The Chad """heavy""" mechanized Wermacht
> Poles charged tanks with horses
And of course,
>WW2 was won by the US of A.

This only includes really normie misconceptions. I would add other things such as the american Lend Lease being essential to the war effort,but thats already one step above the basic knowledge everyone has on ww2.

>the blitzkrieg was a revolutionary and innovative tactic.

Didn't the Poles unintentionally run into a German tank formation at one point though, spawning the meme?

The USA did close the Falais Gap though, and without a two-way retreat Germany would have held out against Russia for SOME amount of time. To pretend the USA wasn't instrumental to defeating Germany is arbitrary revisionism.
The US's contribution to the European theater is overstated though.

Also 'one rifle for two men' was a real thing, but only for a short period during Stalingrad when Russians were making heavy use of captured German weapons minute-to-minute.

>the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were massive war crimes and could have been avoided/were totally unecessary
>the Soviets threw bodies at the Germans
>Allied strategic bombing of X city was a genocide/war crime/unnecessary to win the war
here're a few favorites from the radical communists and general left-wing faggots:
>we fire-bombed Germany because they were white and we let them off easy; we nuked Japan because they refused to surrender to the white world
>Trotsky could have beaten Hitler and suffered fewer casualties
>USSR could have beaten Germany without the West's help by 1944

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_at_Krojanty

That 6 million jews died.
It was more like 1 million maybe a bit less

>>the USSR was the reason for Japan surrendering
this one is true tho

>Hirohito calls a cabinet meeting after Truman threatens to wipe Japan off the face of the earth
>cabinet talks for about five minutes
>"He can go fuck himself"
>meeting adjourned

>few days later
>Hiroshima is wiped off the map
>Hirohito calls a second meeting
>some cabinet members are worried now, consider the possibility of asking for terms of surrender
>majority of the cabinet still thinks Truman is bluffing
>meeting adjourned

>Nagasaki is completely obliterated
>Hirohito calls a third cabinet meeting
>yeah maybe we should fucking surrender

the Soviets had no fucking navy. their navy was submarines. they literally could not have even made a dent in Operation Downfall. and i doubt the US and UK would have had the ships to spare to transport them into Japan, since they were mobilizing all the resources they could to prepare for a massive transport of all units in Europe into the Pacific in preparation for Downfall

It isn't. The USSR couldn't stage an amphibious landing worth a shit the entire war. The only time they tried against the Japanese, they did it after the surrender, against a depleted garrison of which only about a third actually provided armed resistance, they STILL lost more men and almost had their beachhead repulsed. This was using all the landing craft the US had supplied to them since they had no idea how to build their own.

If this was how they fared against a single minor island, how the fuck do you think they were going to fare against the Home Islands themselves when the Americans, who had spent the past 4 years getting extremely good at amphibious warfare expected to lose more men than they had in the entire fucking war to date? This is even assuming the Russians could even land on Japan with their lacking naval presence and no knowledge how to carry out any kind of sea invasion let alone one of that size. It would have gone down as a disaster on the same scale as the Encirclement of Kiev in 1941.

It's generally pro-usa shit.
>the russians would have lost without lend lease
>the russians used inferior tactics and only won from zerg rush
When did the Germans come close to beating the USSR

>The USSR could have won alone!

First off where's the source for that, second, natural resources aren't the only part of industry

Reminder if you suggest that the Soviets would have lost without lend-lease, you are also suggesting that the Germans could have launched a campaign-ending offensive after the Battle of Stalingrad

If the Soviets are alone Moscow falls in 1941. The absence of North-Africa and Lend-Lease alone more than doubles German relative armored strength during that battle while also giving them an entire army group's worth of trucks.

It's not the Soviet success of invasion, it's that up until then the Soviets were the back door to a negotiated peace with the USA which they deluded themselves into thinking was possible, when the Soviets declared war they didn't have that backdoor anymore

> First off where's the source for that
"The Soviet Economy and the Red Army, 1930-1945", page 46.
>second, natural resources aren't the only part of industry
This is your brain on tankie-ism.

The Germans had a far higher industrial labor pool and overall more advanced industry. With a multi-fold advantage in resources and generally better performance for man, extracting a favorable peace would be trivial.

>If the Soviets are alone Moscow falls in 1941.
The Soviets were alone in 1941.
>The absence of North-Africa and Lend-Lease alone more than doubles German relative armored strength during that battle
There were 21 Panzer divisions in the Wehrmacht during Barbarossa. The Afrika Korps consisted of about 2-3 Panzer divisions. That means the Germans would have had 11% more Panzers, and as anyone with a fraction of knowledge about Barbarossa would tell you, that is absolutely not enough to make a campaign-changing difference. You also mentioned lend-lease even though every historian I've heard has said that lend-lease was not a worthwhile factor in 1941 since it was so little. I'd love to hear your source on that, and no Goebbels doesn't count.
>while also giving them an entire army group's worth of trucks.
Explain.

Natural resources aren't.
>"Taking the war as a whole, the Soviet defense industries greatly outproduced
Germany, despite various disadvantages – especially the country’s lower
development level, and the profound shock arising from deep penetration by an invader. On the author’s rough estimate, Soviet munitions output, 1941-4, exceeded Germany’s roughly in the ratio 5:3. If we take into account the division of German
military assets between the eastern and western fronts, then the Soviet advantage
over Germany in munitions was at least 2:1." -The Soviet Defense Industry
Complex in World War II by Mark Harrison
Keep in mind lend-lease made up between 4-7% of the Russian military economy output.
>overall more advanced industry. With a multi-fold advantage in resources and generally better performance for man, extracting a favorable peace would be trivial.
Source? It sounds like you're talking out of your ass here

Stalingrad?

How would losing Stalingrad have led to the loss of the entire Soviet Union West of the Urals and the complete destruction of the Red Army? Even if the Germans took Stalingrad they would still need to launch an offensive to take the entirety of the Caucases if they wanted the oilfields, something which the Wehrmacht was NOT equipped or prepared to do.

>The Soviets were alone in 1941.
No they weren't. The Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, and several armored divisions were tied up against the British, and Tito's partisans were still doing their thing. Even in 1941 the Germans were spending far more on planes and ships than they were on infantry equipment.
> The Afrika Korps consisted of about 2-3 Panzer divisions. That means the Germans would have had 11% more Panzers, and as anyone with a fraction of knowledge about Barbarossa would tell you, that is absolutely not enough to make a campaign-changing difference. You also mentioned lend-lease even though every historian I've heard has said that lend-lease was not a worthwhile factor in 1941 since it was so little.
There were the equivalent of 4-5 panzer divisions (including the Italians) in North Africa. Army Group Centre at Moscow, only had 10. Concentrate them in AGC and that's a 50% boost at Moscow. On top of this (tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13518040600697811) 30-40% of USSR non-light tanks at Moscow were LL.
>Explain.
There was basically no infrastructure in Libya, so everything had to be transported by truck instead of horse or train as in the USSR. This resulted in that front using an incredibly disproportionate amount of vehicles and supplies. Some numbers to put this in perspective: per Dimbleby's "Destiny in the Desert", the Afrika Corps required a minimum of 30,000 tons of supplies a month to function, not taking into account all the fuel burned by the transport ships and their navy escorts. The larger Italian contingent required more, about 90,000 tons. 120,000 tons in total for the Axis. A German panzer division on the move requires about 300 tons a day (mnstarfire.com/ww2/history/land/division.html), or 9,000 a month. In other words the supplies used in Afrika to support 4 panzer division equivalents would've been sufficient to support 13 panzer divisions in the east. All of Barbarossa only involved 20 panzer divisions.

Panzer divisions were not the key factor in Moscow. In order to take a city (especially one that's heavily fortified to take on a massive infantry attack) you need infantry, and lots of it. City battles are typically a war of attrition (the Germans were undersupplied, far from home, and outnumbered) and they heavily favor the defender.

One, quoting Soviet propaganda isn't a source.

Two:
>Keep in mind lend-lease made up between 4-7% of the Russian military economy output.
That's complete bullshit because it assumes the dollar value of things in GDP equal production that is easily replaceable. This is definitely not the case. Several goods such as machine dies and high-octane fuel were literally irreplaceable despite not having much dollar value. It literally didn't matter how much GDP they poured into the task, they simply did not possess the technical expertise. GDP is not a 1:1 swap, you cannot take $1 billion GDP of farmers and turn it into $1 billion GDP of stealth bombers.
>Source?
Compare attrition of German and Soviet material during the middle of the war (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equipment_losses_in_World_War_II#Land).

>Panzer divisions were not the key factor in Moscow. In order to take a city (especially one that's heavily fortified to take on a massive infantry attack) you need infantry, and lots of it.
Except what actually threw the Germans back from Moscow was an armored counter-attack. Which would not be possible in a scenario where German relative armored strength was twice what it was and when every single division has dozens of extra AT guns (because there's no need to build literally tens of thousands of heavy flak guns for Reich defense). With complete armored superiority the city can be easily encircled. In fact the major factor of failure was the mauling of the 4th Army by the Soviets in December... because they didn't have AT equipment.

Mark Harrison is soviet propaganda?

that the holocaust happened

That the USSR beat Germany on its own.

Thank COD and enemy at the gates for that.

But ww2 was won by the US

Nazi Germany was a well-oiled war machine and scary efficient evil dictatorship instead of a basket case full of retarded squabbling redundant agencies and constant backstabbing.

That France lost in a week
They actually lasted 45 days (5 weeks), aka 10 days more than Poland

Wow, grats France you lasted 10 days longer than an army still stuck in WW1

Indeed.

But the French army too was stuck in WW1

He's referring to how people see the US as the main Allief contributer, even though about 80% of the Wehrmacht died on the Eastern Front

Important to note that the Battle of France was a surprise to the Wehrmacht. Hitler's generals wanted a repeat of WW1 and an attack through Belgium (and right into the well-equipped and trained BEF) but Hitler and one other commander (I think it was Guderian) came up with the idea to attack through the Ardennes.

The Ardennes are on the French-Belgian border, you gigantic brainlet
The Germans did indeed invade through elgium, just like in WW1

>Nazis were a had a highly organized power structure

Hitler used to sleep in until 9 in the morning and meet with his advisors for a couple hours each day then sperg out when things weren't going how he wanted and the more fanatical and stupid ones vied with the smarter and more cynical ones for his capricious favor and took on overlapping and contrary roles in Nazi administration. He also ate his ravioli every night.

>Except what actually threw the Germans back from Moscow was an armored counter-attack.
Source? I cant find anywhere that lists the Winter Counteroffensive as an armored offensive.
>Which would not be possible in a scenario where German relative armored strength was twice what it was
50% of what it was. And German armored divisions were not effective at defeating a Soviet tank force comprised mainly of T-34s and KV-1s which were pargely impervious to German Panzer fire.
>and when every single division has dozens of extra AT guns (because there's no need to build literally tens of thousands of heavy flak guns for Reich defense).
Those heavy flak guns were some of the only guns that could penetrate the armor of 1941-era Russian tanks. If anything you're arguing that the Germans would have been less prepared for a Russian tank assault if the British weren't involved.
>With complete armored superiority the city can be easily encircled.
Real life is not Hearts of Iron IV. Moscow was occupied by a massive number of Soviet troops who could not only force the attacking Germans into a brutal war of attrition, but also easily launch a counterattack against an attempted German encirclement.
> In fact the major factor of failure was the mauling of the 4th Army by the Soviets in December... because they didn't have AT equipment.
Source?

I feel like these guys also believe the earth is flat

The Wehrmacht was a primarily mechanical unit
Most sherman myth like ronson and 4 vs 1
Moving the invasion earlier would make Operation Barbarossa successful
Operation Gommorah was real

>the Atomic Bombing of Japan was to end the war, not to demonstrate the tech and force the USSR to think twice about trying any shit after the war was done

"Bongistan Rules The Waves"

>>Hirohito calls a cabinet meeting after Truman threatens to wipe Japan off the face of the earth
>>cabinet talks for about five minutes
>>"He can go fuck himself"
>>meeting adjourned

The way this was worded made me burst out laughing. Thanks user.

That Versailles was "too harsh" and was one of the leading causes of the war.

It was the fault of the Romanians that Stalingrad was encircled. Romanian units defending the 6th Army's flanks literally begged German high command to send them infantry anti tank weapons to no avail. The Romanians predicted that any kind of Soviet mechanized push would collapse the whole front and what do you know, that's exactly what happened.

stoppably by japan? italy? lol. Don't mix latter crisis into ww2. There was nobody else wanting to 'stop' ussr so if germany wasn't able to then who was?

Gonna leave this here