From 1945 until around 2000, the universal believe has been that the American and British had won the war in Europe. Yes, there had been bitter fighting in Russia, but that was only the introduction to the invasion, and the subsequent victory of freedom over dictatorship. The other major battles in this war were the Battle of Britain, and the war in Africa. And oh yes, also important was the battle of Stalingrad.
In military circles, it is a well known fact that the outcome of major battle is usually determined by which party is first to have depleted its reserves. Japanese admiral and strategic leader Yamamoto made a tour of the United States in 1936. On his return he advised against Japan starting a war, because he had seen that the industrial depth of the United States was much greater than that of Japan, so that Japan could have no hope of surviving a long term conflict. When eventually was decided on war, it was his plan to use surprise tactics to try to deal such a devastating blow, that the United States would be inclined to make a peace deal early on, instead of continuing a costly long war.
Armed with this knowledge, one only has to count produced and lost men, tanks and airplanes, to determine what was the decisive factor in a large scale conflict like World War II. Using such a count, it is without any doubt that the war in Europe was won and lost in Russia. In some more popular books that also included insights from German generals, one sometimes quotes, notably by Von Manstein, now considered the best strategic thinker on German side, that the battle which Germany lost the war was the one at Kursk. One of the editors of this side has tested a lot of people, from the mid seventies on, on knowledge of this battle. Even professional historians were unaware of it. After the fall of the Soviet Union, and with the advent of Discovery Channel, that specializes in this kind of subject, there have been increasing instances of the mentioning of Kursk, and its importance. In 2003, one of the experts commenting on the war in Russia came to the conclusion that, with all of the major battles that had been fought in Russia even before the invasion in Normandy, that “in some sense one might say that the war was decided in Russia”.
Addendum june 2004
This month were the celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of the landings at Normandy. Almost all historical comments in television and printed media described it as the turning point in World War II, the decision of the war, or similar terms. The author has encountered just one example of a medium sized background analysis that mentioned the possibility that this decision had already had fallen in Russia. This analysis appeared in a part of the newspaper for backgrounds and analysis, i.e. not the news or mainstream part of the newspaper. This is also an illustration how the Western media maintain the suggested ideal of objectivity: The half-truths and lies are given frequent representation on the mainstream parts of the media, and the other side of the story gets an single or occasional mentioning at the high numbered pages, or in programs on non-popular hours.
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