Quote:
Originally Posted by Furio
The majority of those losses was on the Eastern Front.
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I think that's quite possibly mistaken.
It is apparently a fact that most of the German high scoring aces made those scores in the east. The scores were overstated probably, but the RAF overscored too, and it's probably not disproportionate, allegedly. Again allegedly the Germans found the east to be a target rich environment, and most of those targets undertrained, and under performing.
Stalin was prone to throwing numbers at his enemies when he couldn't match them in quality, in the air as on the ground. I've read that many I16s were sent into battle with no sights except markings painted on the windscreen.
German losses in the west were higher per allied aircraft, because of superior western allied training and aircraft. Even so, the "rodeo"s and "circus"es of 1942 and 1943 were apparently not profitable for the RAF and USAAF in hindsight, though they seemed so at the time due to overclaiming.
There probably were figures, there seem to be figures for almost everything in the west, the nazis were obsessive about documentation. If, as I suspect, there are numbers for the western front, it may be necessary to find those, and subtract them from the total to get a figure for the east, which I think there is a probability will turn out to be less than half.
The war wasn't a game that had to be fair or people wouldn't play, if they "didn't play" they would probably die anyway, so they did the best they could, even if the odds were hugely against them, because they had no better option.
The "blinding sun" campaign for the USSR isn't much fun, but it is probably as accurate a rendering of the actual eastern front as is possible without making it not a playable game at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thunderbolt56
There have been times I try to put the Eastern Front into perspective for people that are, say, less in-the-know. What i usually do is tell them a couple things that are fact and easily found.
1. 80% of all German ground casualties in WWII were on the Eastern Front.
2. The largest, bloodiest, most costly battle (in human life) in the history of mankind was the Battle for Stalingrad.
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I don't doubt any of that is true at all. The Germans had it much easier in the air.