Most Russians say they believe the Red Army would have defeated Hitler without Western assistance, Levada's research shows.
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Taking this quote at face value, I do not believe that the cited point of view is accurate. However, if the word "assistance" were changed to "paticipation" then I'm of the opinion that this could be justified.
Obviously, I cannot presume to know the intentions of those who responded to this poll. However, I have no trouble believing that the average person's interpretation of the word "assistance" would likely take the form of direct involvement that would better be described as participation. Lacking a direct quote from the article releasing the survery, or the precise wording of the survey question itself, I choose to base my response here upon this assumption.
In my view, there are three major ways in which the allies helped the Russians:
- Material Support
- Opening of Second Front
- Strategic Bombing
For the sake of my examination, I'm going to simply allow for material support at the historically factualy levels. This is assistance, but not participation and for the sake of my model I will allow for it to continue. Please note that I believe without this assistance, the Russians could not have beaten the Germans.
The Normandy invasion ocurred on June 6th, 1944. However, that is not the only significant event on that day. June 6th was also the day upon which the Russians first reached German pre-war territory. In 1941, the Germans had been within 30 kilometers of Moscow. On this day, in 1944, they had advanced over 1100 kilometers and were now less than 500 from Berlin. Given their momentum, rate of advance, and the growing disparity in the quantity of forces each side was able to field -- it's not difficult to see how the arguement could be made that a Russian victory was inevitable at this point and that the Normandy invasion, while useful, was not necessary to a Russian victoy over Germany.
This brings us to strategic air command, the joint British/American bombing effort against Germany. This is the least easily dismissed aspect of allied assistance from the Russian perspective. However, there are some arguements allowing for its dismissal. First is the fact that it didn't target German fictories or production. In 1942, studies indicated that the targetting of factories and production centers was ineffective. Directive 22 was then issued which essentially ended missions targeting production centers. This was the beginning of the shift to "carpet bombing". There can be no doubt as to the effectiveness of carpet bombing in destroying cities, however, the point at which it truly became effective can be effectively questioned. During the war, SAC dropped approximately 1.7 million tonnes of bombs on Germany. However, of this the vast majority (almost 1.3 million tonnes) were dropped in 1944 and 1945. By this point, many Russians will claim that their victory was inevitable and so SAC efforts were moot. SAC itself issues reports that their efforts into 1942 were ineffective, this leaves only the 200,000 tonnes of bombs of 1943 to truly influence the war from the Russian point of view. While this sum isn't insignificant, there's some credibility to the arguement that this was the period during which the SAC developed the techniques that would be so effective later in the war and so their effectiveness would not have yet been what it would become. Bearing this is mind, I wonder if this sum of weaponry truly effected the final outcome of the war.
Once again, I'm not sure that I believe Russia would have won without the participation of the allies. I strongly doubt that they would have won without the allies' assistance. However, the arguement is there to be made and I find this point of view absolutely justifiable.
EDIT (ADDITION):
Simple to give an example where a similar response would be garnered. Think of how you would expect Americans to respond if asked whether or not they would have won the war against the Japanese without Australian (or Chinese, if you prefer) assistance.
I think you'd mostly get people saying "Hell yes" we would have, while people from those nations would question the truth of that claim.
-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.