I completely agree with you Doppleganger that the Eastern Front was by far the largest and most savagely fought conflict of all time. We're in complete harmony on that point. I was never making the case that actions in the Pacific were anything worse - only that nations there too knew what "total war" is. Not even going into the millions of Japanese and Chinese who died - the destruction of Manila happened virtually overnite and hundreds of thousands of fillipinos died in the retaking of their land. The Germans and Russians had no monopoly on complete devastation - they just saw the worst of it.

I also believe it's the Eastern Front. It's aided by the fact that the Soviets threw wave after wave of people against the Germans. Now that is crazy stuff.

Originally Posted by Pete031

Well then WW1 would be the choice....

I would go for Stalingrad as well. The Somme would be up there as well as the 3rd Battle of Ypre.

heres to convince some:

on the factor of deathtoll, battle of the eastern front had tremendous casulties per battle per day per hour that seems to shadow world war I casulties in comparsion. for example, in 1 day the soviets alone had lost 70,000 guards troops during the battle of kursk

on the factor of brutality, treatment of prisioner, u all know that

on the scale of idology, definelty ranks as number 1

on the factor of fierce, as someone mentioned, soldiers fought with determiantion to the deaths, soldiers fought for cellars, sewers, crawlspaces, streets, buildings, forests, anywhere.

on the factor of sheer pain, one can say that the battles of the eastern front had the most dramatic inpact on humans ever seen,: imagine hundreds of tanks clashing and u have a 50 50 chance of dying or alive until the next tank is targeting you. 50-60 thousand artillery pieces firing at once, if ur caught ur pretty much screwed. large scale tank hordes that will shock you if uve seen it on the screen

what more can i say???

the war in the pacific was yes fierce, but cant compare with teh eastern front

For every American born person here.... Has every one of the able bodied adult males that are related to you that were alive during WW2 died in that war? Well guess what I never knew any of my greatgrandfathers or grandfathers and neither does any other Russian person my age that I know. The death toll was just unimaginable. It isn't as some say "no family was untouched", it is "all families were touched multiple times". Its a lot different from knowing someone who died in WW2 and having 2-3 generations of your family wiped out. The eastern front is in my opinion the only real case of "total war" ever experienced. As another example, my grandmother has letters from my greatgrandfather which say how he was happy to live for another day because he knew he would die and how living that extra day gave him a chance to kill more Nazi invaders. It is so sad and brutal. If Hitler would have prevailed in Russia, there would be no more Russians left. The soldiers in the Pacific never fought directly to keep thier nationality from being exterminated. Also if not from the Russian perspective, imagine being a german soldier in late '44 in the East. They knew full well that if they didn't resist in combat, the russian soldiers would extract revenge upon civilians. The fierocity of this theater of war is unimaginable and hopefully never again occur.

"The soldiers in the Pacific never fought directly to keep thier nationality from being exterminated."

As I said earlier, the Chinese, Japanese, and Fillipinos most certainly _did_. The US did not. Their death tolls were also in the millions. The fact that the Eastern Front was worse, does _not_ mean that it was not "total war" for those three nations. I could list many indications of such. I've already listed one, here's another. The Japanese had every civilian wearing an altered form of their army uniform. Women, boys, and girls were taught warfare. There were kamakazi type assault craft on every inlet and fortifications everywhere. This was while fielding an army of millions in China and Manchuria. The fire bombing of their cities alone made even Dresden seem like a campfire.

Originally Posted by Charge_7

"The soldiers in the Pacific never fought directly to keep thier nationality from being exterminated."

As I said earlier, the Chinese, Japanese, and Fillipinos most certainly _did_. The US did not. Their death tolls were also in the millions. The fact that the Eastern Front was worse, does _not_ mean that it was not "total war" for those three nations. I could list many indications of such. I've already listed one, here's another. The Japanese had every civilian wearing an altered form of their army uniform. Women, boys, and girls were taught warfare. There were kamakazi type assault craft on every inlet and fortifications everywhere. This was while fielding an army of millions in China and Manchuria. The fire bombing of their cities alone made even Dresden seem like a campfire.

The Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos certainly did not fight to prevent thier own nationality from extermination. Extermination meaning utter destruction: annihilation, eradication, extinction, extinguishment, extirpation, liquidation, obliteration. The Chinese were taken over by the Japanese, they definetly weren't exterminated. Same with Filipinos. There wasn't any gassing chambers meant to kill every single Filipino in Manila or Luzon, or anywhere for that matter. Say Hitler took Russia, his plan was to eradicate every single "sub-human" which in his mind included gypsies, gays, blacks, jews, and Russians among others. He already had a means with which to do that with and was going full steam ahead by starting on the European Jews. Any Japanese person who thought that the US was going to kill every single Japanese person be it a man woman or child must have been insane. The Japanese fought for honor and considered giving thier life for honor to be a fair trade. That still is a little different than a soldier having the thought that there may not be another living country-man of his if his nation's military fails.

But none of the that would make a battle more fierce.

You can't tell me a corpsman bashing the brains out of one opponent with a rock held in one hand while pitching live grenades back out of his hole with the other has a higher level of ferocity to which to rise. His ferocity is as amped as human ferocity gets.

Vitaly, I think you need to read something about the fall of Nanking, the battle of Manila, and the fire bombing of Tokyo just for starters before you draw such conclusions. What you're argueing is matters of degree. Sure the Russians where being decimated on a _much_ larger scale, but because that was so does _not_ make the feelings of "total war" and the threat of extermination any less real to the Chinese, Japanese, or Filllipinos.

the reason why i havent mentioned fierce battle in china was because there weasnt really much of a battle, however fierece resistance i place china second next to russia