World War II in Europe: day by day change in map

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^Yeah, I thought that too. You can always learn new things about history.
 
Originally Posted By: Cutehumor
interesting that Spain was not invaded by either side!


Spain had actually just come out of a civil war in 1939. The the side that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy backed won.
 
Cool, I liked how USSR had different color from allied, as they were initially on the Hitler's side and later betrayed by him.

Similar, but, opposite with Finland, initially allied, but later switched sides with Hitler.
 
Thanks for posting this!

It's a shame that my dad, a WW II vet, who died in 2001, is not around to see "stuff" like this.
I also imagine he's rolled over in his grave several times with what is going on around us today. May he rest in peace.
 
Originally Posted By: friendly_jacek
Cool, I liked how USSR had different color from allied, as they were initially on the Hitler's side and later betrayed by him.

Similar, but, opposite with Finland, initially allied, but later switched sides with Hitler.


Finland was actually in an extremely tough position. I don't know if you noticed on the map, but the USSR actually invaded Finland early in the war. So it wasn't so much that they were allied with Germany, but more that they were doing everything they could to hold off a Russian invasion that occurred prior to Hitler ordering the invasion of Russia.

It was similar to the position of some units of Waffen SS created from soldiers of some of the Baltic Sea states that were formed to fight against Russia. They weren't so much fighting for Hitler as they were fighting against Stalin.
 
Originally Posted By: Mykl
So it wasn't so much that they were allied with Germany, but more that they were doing everything they could to hold off a Russian invasion that occurred prior to Hitler ordering the invasion of Russia.


No, initially they were allied with France/UK, etc. Too bad they received no help from them fighting soviets. They sided with Germany only when Germany attacked USSR.
 
Originally Posted By: friendly_jacek
Originally Posted By: Mykl
So it wasn't so much that they were allied with Germany, but more that they were doing everything they could to hold off a Russian invasion that occurred prior to Hitler ordering the invasion of Russia.


No, initially they were allied with France/UK, etc. Too bad they received no help from them fighting soviets. They sided with Germany only when Germany attacked USSR.


Yeah, it was a pretty rough situation where politics ended up taking over. France/UK desperately needed Russia on their side and rocking the boat by taking the "stop invading your neighbors" stance concerning Finland could have messed all that up.

Clearly Russia was going to get drawn into conflict with Germany anyway. But maybe sacrificing Finland helped to shape things favorably after the war. Who knows if Russia would have stopped at Berlin had they been at odds with UK/France.
 
It really shows the vast scale of the eastern front. The Russian army did the vast bulk of the fighting and dieing.
 
Originally Posted By: hattaresguy
It really shows the vast scale of the eastern front. The Russian army did the vast bulk of the fighting and dieing.


And they really used Winter to push back against the Axis.
 
Oh yeah, they used their vast terrain and winter to push back more than a few invaders.

Only way the Germans might have pulled it off would have been with a direct thrust to Moscow that started in April as soon as the roads dried up. That might have chopped the head off the central beast and if they kept the follow up units from killing peasants that might have kept a lot of popular support they generated by attacking.

Oh and in concert which the Germans could never get the Empire to do, they would have had to get the Japanese to put just a bit of pressure on the Russians on their end to prevent the disengagement of their Siberian forces.
 
Originally Posted By: hattaresguy
Oh yeah, they used their vast terrain and winter to push back more than a few invaders.

Only way the Germans might have pulled it off would have been with a direct thrust to Moscow that started in April as soon as the roads dried up. That might have chopped the head off the central beast and if they kept the follow up units from killing peasants that might have kept a lot of popular support they generated by attacking.

Oh and in concert which the Germans could never get the Empire to do, they would have had to get the Japanese to put just a bit of pressure on the Russians on their end to prevent the disengagement of their Siberian forces.



The world we know right now would be a different place if the nazis didn't have to tough out a Russian winter.
 
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