[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Given that the Nazi’s scoured conquered territories for food, so as not to “starve” their own population, I would think that food supplies would be of utmost importance to a fighting army. That said, I know the Soviets were tough. The Nazi’s could have easily won the war IF they had treated the civilian population with respect and offered inducements to the subject people’s there. Finland’s geographical location ensured their gravitation to Soviet influence, as much as Latvia’s and Lithuania’s. Even today, the Ukraine can hardly call itself a sovereign country due to Russian meddling. There’s a reason Patton wanted to fight on past Berlin.... The Eastern Europeans certainly paid a heavy price. Given the numbers of Soviet soldiers at Berlin in April 1945, they could easily have gone further (if unopposed) and that would have made life quite different for the remaining non communist countries on the continent.

Like I said, it would have been very difficult for the Soviets to advance without US help. but defensively, they virtually unbeatable. Yeah, Hitler might have had a chance if he had acted as a liberator in the conquered provinces, but that was never going to happen. The Nazis racist ideology concerning peoples of the East meant that they were never going be treated as anything else other than subhumans fit only for slavery at best. Patton was mad if he thought that taking the fight to the Soviets was a viable option, not only because The Soviets were more numerous and just as battle-hardened as the defeated Nazis, but also because it is very likely that both the allied armies and the publics at home would have mutinied at the prospect of an even tougher war against an adversary that had been up until recently lionised as a valued ally. Patton may have been a skillful general, but his grasp of political realities was practically non-existent.

[Amberdawn]

All very true, but off topic, which is partly my fault! The Soviets may have been weary, but who had the strength to oppose them IF they had decided to camp out in Austria, Switzerland or all of Germany? At that point, only the U.S. had the bomb, the materiel and the numbers to oppose them realistically. This isn’t to denigrate the fighting forces of ANY Allied country, but numbers TELL.