The difference being that in the West, the governments didn't (generally - i.e. not as a rule) dictate how the history of WWII was to be written. The USSR made it their business, so to speak.
Even today it can be difficult to get at some archival material for all but the most experienced people (those that know the Russian system, and know exactly what is they are looking for).
The ing Boy Scouts could have shown massive improvement down to the divisional level against the rabble that was the Kwantung Army. Sorry, I'll give due credit where it is earned, like with Bagration, but as far as the Manchurian campaign goes, color me unimpressed. The only thing really inspiring was the constitution of the individual soldiers who were transported in only a couple weeks from Central and Eastern Europe all the way to the Far East to fight another campaign.
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I didn't say that. Nevermind, I shouldn't be bothering with someone who thinks Russia is God's gift to the world.
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I'm glad you admitted your error of judgment
My position is that in 1941 the Soviets were one of the worst armed forces in terms of quality, not quantity.
By 1945, their ground forces were one of the best in terms of quality
I'm sorry the my position makes me such a fanatically nationalist Russophile.
Last edited by Applesmack; April 05, 2010 at 03:40 PM.
No, there are plenty of other reasons why you are a fanatically nationalist Russophile, but the above statement is not one of them.Originally Posted by Total Fanatic :)
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☻ This is a random collection of symbols. He's tired of you abusing him.
/▌\ Don't copy-paste this if you know what's good for you.
/ \
motiv-8, I'll have to disagree with you here. I don't know much about the Kwantung army, but just look at the stats for the japanese forces in Okinawa:
67 000(77 000 according to other sources) regulars from the 32nd Japanese army, 9 000 IJN troops, of whom a few hundred had equipment and training for ground combat, 39 000 draftees(24 000 conscripted rear-area militia and 15 000 non-uniformed laborers) and 1500 school boys. That's wiki source. So what he have here is a ratio of 7:4.5 of soldiers to armed militia. They were well armed, but the fact remains that 40% of the combatants at Okinawa were in your words "wubbing Boy Scouts".
Okinawa is an island....
Manchuria is not.
But if you want to look at a real Japanese Army look at the Philippines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanes...enth_Area_Army
“The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.”
—Sir William Francis Butler
You're disagreeing even though you don't know much about what you are disagreeing with?
The Kwangtung army was worthless. It had almost zero combat capabilities, and wouldn't have presented a challenge to any of world's professional armies - let alone the Russians they faced.
I don't know much about their combat value, at least not as much as I'd like to. He described it as a rabble of rifle-armed raw recruits and I pointed out that 40% of the people the Americans faced at Okinawa were militia, laborers and school students. In two weeks the Russians killed and captured more Japanese soldiers than the American landing force did in two months. And they lost fewer men doing it. That is what I'm talking about. There was a document by an American officer on the Manchurian offensive operation, but I can't find it now.
Wow torongill, way to make a complete non-comparison. I hope you don't REALLY believe that the situations in Manchuria and Okinawa were the same.
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That would be Glantz's August Storm, in which he describes the Kwangtung Army as:
Despite its numerical strength, the Kwantung Army lacked quality. The Japanese Imperial High Command had transferred most veteran Japanese divisions from Manchuria before the summer of 1945. Hence, most remaining divisions were newly formed from reservists or from cannibalized smaller units. In fact, only the 119th, 107th, 108th, 117th, 63d, and 39th Infantry Divisions had existed before January 1945. Training was limited in all units, and equipment and materiel shortages plagued the Kwantung Army at every level. The Japanese considered none of the Kwantung Army divisions combat ready and some divisions only 15 percent ready
Of course, there are. Let me guess, is it because I disagree that the Russian Army is entirely composed of serial killers who love nothing better than to kill Chechen babies or is it because I don't believe that the FSB's wet dream is to kill as many of their own peope with a bombing as possible in order to get another crack at those jihadists. Maybe it is both?
None of the above. You could stop cluttering the thread though.
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