Food For Thought

..some statistics I read recently:

No. of Allied (i.e. US, British and others) Divisions in France and the Low countries in late 1944:   91
No. of German divisions facing them:  65   (the numbers in a division varied hugely depending on what type of division, e.g. infantry or armoured, and whether it was at full strength, a lot of the German ones in particular wouldn't have been by this time, but we're talking thousands of men).
Length of front:   c. 400 km

compared with..



No. of Soviet divisions on the Eastern front at the same time:  560
No. of German divisions facing them:  235
Length of front:   c.  3200 km


or, earlier than that, in August 1944 not long after D Day, 38 Allied divisions encircled 20 German divisions on a 120 km front and took c 90,000 prisoners in 27 days
.
..compare that with the three Soviet offensives happening concurrently:

1) 92 Soviet divisions and 6 tank/mechanised corps (a corps was/is made up of multiple divisions) attacked 47 German and Romanian divisions on a 700 km front in South Eastern Europe, encircling 18 divisions and taking 100,000 prisoners in a week.
2) 86 Soviet divisions and 10 tank/mechanised corps attacked in Southern Poland, destroying 40 German divisions.
3) the biggest of all, launched on 22 June 1944 in Belarus and Eastern Poland, the third anniversary of the German invasion and named 'Bagration' after a general from Napoleonic times, comprised, according to the figures I have, saw 172 Soviet divisions and 12 tank/mechanised corps advancing 600 km in about two months, on a 1000 km front, defeating 67 German divisions in the process (17 of which disappeared altogether).

...now, I don't know about you but that seems a huge disparity. I had to chuckle to myself the other day when I saw a youtube poster, unfortunately I've lost the link, but I assume an American, thanking the Russians for 'watching our backs' during the war. Hmm, we must have had a hell of a big back.

The fact remains that, galling though it may be from a Western perspective, it probably wouldn't have made any difference at all if the Western theatre hadn't been opened. What would've happened if there had been no Western alliance at all, or if they'd been knocked out earlier by the Germans, is more speculative still, but presumably all of Germany would have fallen to the Soviets, not just the East, and if Germany why not France and...