well..i guess thats what happens when you have two major fronts going on..one group looks east..the other west..or vice versa.

I think most people really forget it was essentially a four front war: You had the pacific conflict the atlantic conflict, the european conflict, and the asian land mass conflict going all at once.

The allies had to win the battle for the atlantic, if we were to help europe with the materials it needed.

We had to shut off the japanese lines of supply, if we were going to stop japan.

The germans had to be stopped in russia, and evicted from western europe, and africa.

The japanese had to be stopped in china, and in the southwest pacific in order to save austraila and new zealand from falling. Not that the aussies couldnt do it to the japanese alone, but it seems everyone took some of the largest ship losses during the battles for the dutch indies, and everyone needed help at that time. i believe that the battles that ocurred between dec 8th 1941 and june 1942 are some of the most unpublished and unhearalded chronicles of the worlds navies in the pacific: The dutch, the americans, the brits, and the aussies had their butts handed to them by the japanese. If it wasnt for the submarines and their courages attacks, even with faulty torpedoes, we would have had no naval resistance at all. The US defitnetly needed austraila and new zealands help: we need secure bases for our navy and land forces that would be coming.

And these are just some of the main points. Not all of them. just some.

when you try to pin the most pivotal point, it can be a great goat rope.

True that Zukov was an indispensable asset for upping the Soviet casualties in many instances, but he wasn't completely incompitent. The Italians and Romanians and other allies would have been hard to convince to put up much resistence by 1944. Their prior forays in assisting Germany against the Soviets hadn't gone too well. By '44, the Soviets were pushing and the Germans were very slowly and painstakingly being driven backward. Germany had very little capability of doing much of anything else by that point.

Without D-day having ever happened, perhaps Germany and the Soviet Union make peace. Unlikely. Stalin might have, Hitler never would have. But hey, lets say they make peace. That would have ended the war, though the outcome seems like it would have been messier, more complex and problematic than WW1.

It was a ballancing act, Im not sure Rusisa would have defeated germany without D-day and if they did do you think they would had liberated western europe? What did Russia care about france and the others? If there was no d-day and the allies Germany could had used its full force to easly crush Russia.

Oh, no doubt it would have become part of the Soviet empire, there's little doubt of that.

I just think that If there was never a threat of D-Day, or even invasion of N. Africa, that the extra German divisions freed up would have perhaps limited German casulties In the retreat and forced Zhukov into a stalemate over time.

Its hard to say for certain, but based on history it probably would not have been enough to save the Germans. Still, the delay could have bought Germany time and perhaps they'd have been able to capitalize on some of their brilliant technologies. So the outcome is hard to guess.

Its not like today where we have US Marines walking thru hostile cities getting shot in their backs. The Germans didnt give a shit, they would burn the entire city down and move on to the next one. Im pretty sure Germany would had defeated Russia without all the trouble us allies were causing them.

Remember guys too that the Allies were helping the Soviets long before D-Day through Lend-Lease.

Quite simply put, without Lend-Lease the Soviet Union would have had barely any locomotives amongst other things and without an effective railroad system there's no way they could have effectively supplied or moved around their armies to combat the German invasion.

Without locomotives there would have been no Red Army counteroffensive at Moscow, no Operation Uranus (the counteroffensive at Stalingrad) and no defense at Kursk amongst many other things.

That equals no more Soviet Union.

According to Alan Clarke, who was the leading historian on Barbarossa In the decade or two after It happened, the real importance of lean-lease came through trucks to mechanize the Infantry. The Soviet Infantry was behind the rest of the world In the first phase of the war, and this Is why you saw German encirclements so successful, because their operational maneuverability was so poor. The Mech Infantry allow the Soviets to push the advantage after Kursk, and did not allow time for Hitler to coordinate a strong defensive line, or rebuild up his forces like he did after Stalingrad. But this is not a Russia vs. Germany discussion, it's a turning point discussion.

Exactly, and my point was that D-day was not THE turning point of the war, since the momentum was already in the Allies favor. If the US and UK continued supplying the Soviet Union, bombing Germany and just hadn't bothered to launch an amphibious assault into Western Europe, the Allies still win. It just would have taken a significantly longer amount of time and would have handed continental Europe to the Communist empire on a silver platter. So all I was saying is that it wasn't much of a turning point, aka "here's the point where the one side went from losing the war to winning".