I replied to someone saying that the USSR defeated the Nazis saying that it was a group effort. Got into an argument and called a Nazi repeatedly because “I was mad that the USSR defeated the Nazis and hated them for it” which is ridiculous. This isn’t the first time that’s happened on Lemmy. What’s up with that?
They only lost the most due to their tendency to throw bodies at a problem until it went away. They didn’t have to lose so many.
They were severely under equiped. Hitler sent almost everyone east near the end. As with most things, the issue is complex and multifaceted.
Sadly not true. It’s explain some but not all of their loss
Lend-lease went a long way towards remedying that, though. Hence my entire group effort argument. The Russians rolled into Berlin in Studebakers after all.
The “human wave” thing is a myth. It’s true that the Soviets were under-equipped at the start due to having to develop from a pre-industrial society, and it’s also true that they were militarily inexperienced, partially because of the officer purges.
However, if you actually look into to Soviet strategies and tactics, they innovated and adapted quickly. They kept meticulous, accurate records, and learned from their mistakes in an almost scientific way. The most notorious blunder was at Stalingrad, and was a result of Stalin meddling with the Red Army and pressuring them instead of letting them do their thing, but after that, he backed off.
A typical Soviet battle plan involved holding a wave in reserve until a breach was made in enemy defenses, then sending them forward to do as much damage as possible to the rear line and support. Then, they would evaluate whether they could hold the position against reinforcements, and retreat if necessary, satisfied with the damage.
This can be starkly contrasted with the Nazi approach to war. The Nazis did not put emphasis on supply lines or support, instead glorifying the image of the heroic ubermensch on the front lines. Nazi battle records were completely inaccurate, focused entirely on trying to avoid or shift blame to avoid reprecussions. The idea of retreating from a position before reinforcements showed up would be unthinkable, you’d be shot for cowardice.
Technologically, where the Soviets focused on building things that were cheap, efficient, easy to mass produce and repair, because they saw war as being primarily about logistics (being communists, and understanding labor as a driving force ideologically), Nazi technology was over engineered and difficult to both repair and produce. Nazi tanks were designed to look, feel, and be powerful (to accommodate their individualistic power fantasies, again, in line with their ideology), and when they worked and could be fielded they performed well, but they could not be produced in anything like the same numbers (once Soviet manufacturing capabilities had time to catch up).
The reality is that the heavy Soviet losses included a lot of civilian casualties, because the Nazis were genocidal and exterminationist. They slaughtered villages en masse, just for being, in their eyes, racially inferior. A very significant chunk of Soviet territory was subject to the Holocaust. This “human wave” narrative, on top of being completely ahistorical and not supported by evidence, also downplays the severity of Nazi war crimes.