CrusaderFrank
Diamond Member
- May 20, 2009
- 146,708
- 69,857
again--people on a lot of these forums do not think realisticallywhat are you saying? Goring wasn't in charge"Göring was freed on 5 May by a passing Luftwaffe unit, and he made his way to the US lines in hopes of surrendering to them rather than to the Soviets. He was taken into custody near Radstadt on 6 May by elements of the 36th Infantry Division of the US Army.[118]"
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Why did the Germans prefer to surrender to the Allies instead of the USSR?
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The soldiers of the Red Army captured by the Germans were usually sent to concentration camps where approximately 4 million of them were starved to death, worked to death, tortured to death or just shot or beaten to death.
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The Soviet state on the other hand could be ruthless towards its own people, even when they were loyal communists, so how were they going to treat Germans ...
etc.
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Couple of reasons, since the invasion of the USSR in 1941 German treatment of Soviet prisoners had been horrendous, kept in wire enclosures until they starved, succumbed to disease, or were simply summarily executed (among the first victims gassed at Auschwitz were Russian PoWs). With no quarter given on the Eastern Front it could hardly be asked. Wehrmacht soldiers rightly feared Russian vengeance, after what had been done in the occupied territories of the USSR, and knew that capture would mean heading for forced labor in Siberian gulags, if they were not shot out of hand. Many, if they survived, weren't released until the '50s.
Treatment of PoWs from the western allies was - comparatively speaking - much better, as was their treatment of German PoWs, although there were incidents of brutality on both sides they nominally adhered to the Geneva Conventions on treatment of PoWs (to which the USSR was not a signatory). A commander of the 352nd Volksgrenadier wrote to the families of six men MIA, "The Americans opposite us have been fighting fairly, they have treated German prisoners well and fed them. If your husband is a PoW, you will probably receive news of him through the Red Cross." It got him in trouble with the party for suggesting that captivity was a tolerable state. Compare this to the Eastern Front, where the wretched prisoners taken by the Red Army were known as Stalinpferd, a Stalin horse.
"Halt at the ElbeNearly two hundred miles separated Montgomery's Rhine bridgehead from the Elbe, while Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov had nearly a million men on the Oder with some elements within thirty or forty miles of the German capital. Even if the Allies reached the Elbe before Zhukov crossed the Oder, the British and U.S. forces would still have to cross fifty miles of lowlands marked by lakes, streams, and canals to get to Berlin. When asked by General Eisenhower for an opinion, General Bradley estimated that a breakthrough from the Elbe would cost 100,000 casualties.
so the US/Brits were 200 miles from the ELBE--while the Russians were within 50 of Berlin
!!???
Bradley was a certified fucking moron who extended the war in the West by over a year. Had they not traded positions after the Slap Incident, Patton would have lead the US and Brits into Berlin sometime in 1944
you are in Dreamville if you think it would've been so easy
just like Monty at Marget Garden--'''we'll just go up this road''
but General Sosabowski was not in Dreamville but Realville
...remember the one of the most critical factors = logistics ...this hampered the Allies just as much as the Germans did"But the Germans, General, the Germans!".
This goes all the way back to Bradley being terrified of closing the Falaise Pocket. Patton had 19 German division, the bulk of the German forces in the West trapped in the pocket and wanted to swing North to link up with the Brits and close the pocket. Ike and Bradly refused, the Germans got away. Patton wrote in his diary that night that the Allied just made one of the biggest mistakes in the history of warfare