Turning point of WW2

Iwo Jima was to late In the war to be concidered a "tunring point". Alot of people died, yes, but victory over Japan had already been solidified.
 
did it, go back in time and make the Marines lose Iwo Jima, lets see what happens, if all those men had died for nothing.


Yes i do have a time machine, and anyone who wants to can rent it for the incredibly low price of $1000 a month.
 
The the decision to use the Atomic bomb comes quicker now that we no an assault on Japan would surely cause us mass casualties. We were never In a position to "lose" Iwo Jima, the numbers were just so heavily for us.
 
there was supposed to be a 3rd wave of Marines launched on Iwo Jima, but the general in charge of the operation held back the 3rd wave, who the hell knows why. he could have saved many Marine lives, but instead he held back the 3rd wave.
 
on the iwo jima issue: i must interject something important here that people arent considering when looking at it as a turning point: Iwo Became the life boat for the crippled B-29 bombers that were coming out of japan, and were too heavily damaged to make it back to tinnian, or china.

The B-29 raids are what knocked japan down; not for the long count, but at least enough to turn the industrial flow of of materials off to its forces. At that time, it was critical to at least try to rescue the B-29 crews, if not the planes, for every one of them were needed for the long haul, especially the crews. The american aircrew members did not wish to be captured and landed in japan: it is well documented on the fate of one such crew in of all places a hospital, where they were visasected and then put to death except for the pilot. if not that, then it was the mines and almost certain work related death. It just wasnt a good place to be captured at.

The capture of Iwo Changed the outlook of the crews: closer to japan, they had a fighting chance to make it to the island if damaged. The capture of use of Iwo Jima probly was the greatest morale raiser in the 20th Air Force that could have ever been done. My hats off to the Marines that made it so..they saved my breathren from certain death.

Jason..why dont you dig around, and find out why a marine general really stopped that 3rd wave. If you go to the marine corp history site, you will find out why. they dont make any bones about mistakes, or victories.
 
I am by no way trying to diminish the importance of Iwo Jima and the sacrifice our men made, but to say It is a "turning point" is farfetched because of the situation at the time. The Japanese Fleet was all but liquidated, their Air Force the same, and their Army left to fight rear guard suicide actions. Ad the fact that you said Mark, that the B-29s had taken out their industrial capacity, the Japanese were In their "collapsing stage"
 
Jason Bourne said:
Guadacanal, Iwo Jima, and D-Day.
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Notice something about these? Their all USA victories with the exception of D-Day being USA+UK. You wouldn't happen to be somewhat biased in favor of the USA would you?

Sad truth is, the Soviets has already turned the tide in Europe and would have won with or without us landing in France. D-day just shortened the war, it did nothing to change the outcome.

Have to agree with Guy on Iwo Jima, not much of a turning point. More like a mopping up opperation where we met incredibly tough resistence.

Guadal Canal may be a tad of a stretch. The momentum of the Pacific War was on the US side at that time.
 
well yea i am kind of biased, i apologize for loving my country, you can feel free to execute me if you wish.

Godofthunder the above was a joke.
 
Sad truth is, the Soviets has already turned the tide in Europe and would have won with or without us landing in France. D-day just shortened the war, it did nothing to change the outcome.
Click to expand...

Perhaps, but how long could Zhukov and his forces continued to bash upon the door of Germany without exhausting the manpower and supply of the Red Army? Ive heard that Stalin himself was getting tired of the fight, and he may have looked for an alternative (I do not see this as Stalin-esqu mind you) You still have to account for great numbers of divisions In France and Italy that could have been used to slow the Russians, If not stop them. Do not forget that after Citdel, that Hitler moved a number of Panzer forces to Italy (Was the 1st SS panzer not among them?) after Mussolini got the boot. The point is that in such a volitile period of the worlds history, victory, as we knew It In the sense after WW2, was not for certain.
 
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. :D
 
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.
 
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".
 
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