I watched the show "band of brothers" recently. They seemed to be making good time moving through Europe towards and inside German territory. Was there a long period of the war where it was known what the result would be, but fighting still needed to be done?
Or were soldiers and generals generally unaware of how bad the German economy / war machine was doing until very late in the war. I always wonder if there was serious fear that the Germans would turn it around.
I guess I wonder if shortly after Normandy the "higher ups" knew the victory was only a matter of time considering the amount of troops and supplies the Allies had. And the fact that the Germans were fighting on two fronts.
Edit: Wow no way I can respond to all these answers! But be assured I read every single reply. Thanks.
In Churchill's The Grand Alliance he singled out the American entry into the war as the point at which he was certain of victory:
"No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all. . . . We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force. The British Empire, the Soviet Union, and now the United States bound together with every scrap of their life and strength, were, according to my lights, twice or even thrice the force of their antagonists."
Keep in mind this was written post-war, so there could some hindsight in there, and obviously Churchill can only speak for himself and not all Allied soldiers (and generals).
Hope this helps.
Many people point to 1942 with Midway, El Alamein, and the Axis forces surrounded at Stalingrad as the point at which the Allies knew they would win. I think it was actually the end of 1943 though. At the end of 1943 Eisenhower finally tells the Russians a second front will be opening in Europe sometime in mid to late Spring. The Russian response to this is initially excitement as it should be considering they had been begging for a second front since early 1942. But then the Russian attitude quickly cools. Russian military advisors begin suggesting that the resources for operation overlord could be better used by sending them to Russia or by using them to break the stalemate in Italy. I think the Russian change in position is pretty indicative that they felt that winning the war was an eventuality at that point and the second front would be nothing more than a land grab.
Well, the widely cited "turning points" are Midway, Stalingrad, and (to a lesser extent) El Alamein. It would be fair to say that even that early, there was a sense of "when, not if". The summer of '44 is also another good point - the combination of the Allied breakout at Normandy with the Soviet's Operation Bagration, which basically destroyed the better part of the German army in the East. At the same time, the Allies were approaching Japan and beginning serious air attacks on the mainland. Finally, the defeat of the Bulge/Ardennes offensive in winter of '44/'45 combined with the Soviet offensives in Poland marked the effective end of Germany's striking power. I am currently reading "The Last Offensive" by Charles MacDonald, which covers the elimination of the Bulge, crossing the Rhine, and the drive across Germany by the western Allies. The recurring theme in the fighting is the absolute impotence of the remaining German forces, the surprisingly small Allied losses, and a sense of the Allied troops mixing aggressiveness with a willingness to let air and artillery do the heavy lifting so as to not unnecessarily risk soldiers' lives. So, I'd say by the winter of '44 the war had become a "mopping up" operation in the west.
The Battle of Midway, and the destruction of Japan's carrier fleet, ended the Japanese navy's ability to launch real offensive operations against the Americans
On Nov 10, 1942, Churchill said in a speech concerning El Alamein:
This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning
Around the same time, the Germans were losing momentum in Stalingrad, and the Soviet counter-attack (Operation Uranus) which would see the 6th Army surrounded and cut off through the winter, was launched 9 days after Churchill's speech
It would have taken a while for the general public to notice the turnaround, but by Christmas 1942, the tide had turned. As 1943 wore on - especially after the Soviet victory in Stalingrad in February - the public would have noted less bad news and more good.
To answer your question specifically – the battle for Caen and the battle in Bocage country (those massive hedges) was absolutely brutal. Allied superiority in armour (movement) was nullified by the need to engage in close quarters fighting. According to Hastings, in terms of combat losses this phase of the war was the most bloodiest for the allied forces in the western theatre.
After Op Cobra (and the rather poorly executed Totalize), and the break out at Caen (and from the bridgeheads), the Wehrmacht engaged in a fighting retreat using their time test tactics of counter attacking the flanks of the allied offensive lines as a means to delay and stop the advance. All this ended when the Falaise pocket was formed. This was you could say (minus the strategically unviable and stupid German push in the Ardennes in December) the end of German resistance in the West. This was on account of two key factors,
The battle for Normandy and the consequent Falaise pocket decimated the Wehrmacht in the west – Normandy alone cost them some 2,00,000 in causalities and in Falaise they lost a lot of heavy equipment. This tore open gaps in their front which the Allies (Patton, not Monty) skillfully exploited by his race to the Rhine strategy (similar to Manstien / Guderian’s race to the coast push)
Op Bagration was concluded at around this time and after Bagration, Army Group Centre ceased to exist as a fighting force, and this was an existential threat to Germany – the allied advance was in relative terms a minor setback compared to the decimation of the Wehrmacht in Bagration.
By January (after the Battle of the Bulge), things became even more optimistic in the Allied camp and you get a sense that the soldiers also knew that the game was up – German troops surrendering in huge numbers without even offering a token resistance here is just one such example, the Germans did this because they knew that they would get a better treatment in allied hands as compared to Russian captivity and there was this thinking that the Allies would team up with the Germans to fight Stalin.
Many German generals engineered this (Model for instance held a gap open long enough to get the majority of his troops to surrender to the allies) in the later stages of the war. Thought it all came to naught because the allies handed over units that had faced the Russians back to the Russians (and almost certain death – given pow survival rates). The point is, after January the Allies were literally racing through the German front with only token resistance for the most part (unless an SS unit was involved). Reading Bradley’s memoirs, you get an idea of how the American troops dealt with resistance. If a shot was fired from a village, the American convoy would be halted, and the Germans would be hailed on loudspeakers and urged to surrender. If they did not, CAS would be called in and would level the village and the convoy would simply move on.
The only glitch here was the massive pessimism that was raised in the allied camp when they fell for German propaganda about the “Alpine redoubt” - The allied HQ and soldiers believed in this mythical hideout and feared that taking this would involve huge casualities.
If you want to read more about the Normany campaign in detail, I would suggest
From a Soviet perspective, the STAVKA (Sov HQ) knew that the game was over and victory was assured even when they were planning for Bagration , after Bagration (on paper) it was a mere formality though the human cost for the battles of the Vistula, Poland, Prussia, Seelow Heights and Berlin were ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS! The German view coincides – reading on Guderian, Manstien or even the average infantry troop you get the sense that once they reached the Vistula, they knew that the game was over.
It was to tap into this defeatist sentiment (and the demoralization of the Wehrmacht) that Bor Komorowski decided to launch his operation in Warsaw. He expected the Russian troops to cross the Vistula anytime after August and destroy the Wehrmacht in the East – the sad reality is, the Red Army needed to consolidate after the greatest Op (in terms of size and cost) and maybe even for political reasons the uprising in Warsaw could not be supported and was absolutely decimated.
Defeatism in German ranks set in after Kursk and by Bagration and Normandy it was total - only delusional Hitler thought that the war could be won after this.
edit : Sorry but my knowledge of the Pacific theatre is very rudimentary so I have no clue about when the Japanese knew they were defeated.
I like the quote of Winston Churchill . "Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat." .
NOTE: An unfinished composition by more then one contributor, on one keyboard, with passions soaring and pop-tarts simmering... It will be finished further today, people being present pending.
NOTE:we'll be here
NOTE: just re-read and its totally cut up and buchered, ENJOY!
I believe it could have been achieved much earlier. Like perhaps before Texaco and Standard Oil provided Hitler the fuel additive Tetra-ethyl lead, making the Blitzkrieg raids possible.
In fact, if the greedy fingers of Wall Street, and the infinite and unwavering champions of capitalism hadn't had the audacity, immorality, the undeniable lack of humanity. To imagine, perpetrate and strategically manipulate the world theater for an undeniably meticulous chain of events that are still being carefully crafted and utilized to this day. The exact same groups, bloodlines and institutions are responsible for one of the biggest and most successful bids at securing absolute political power, absolute resource attainment and the introduction of the ever present merger of a government designed to secure, protect and provide decency for the common man. These men composed a very comprehensible and concrete set of undeniable and unprejudiced documented birthright for the sons and daughters, and all the free man of the United States America. Unfortunate that these are being amended and the lives and efforts of the many men whom fought against a tyrant to be able to give their countrymen independence and the ability to acquire finances, property and not just needs but the wants previously reserved, maintained and distributed by the privileged and their impenetrable oligarchy that unjustly dictated the lives of people they could not relate to on any aspect of their night and day co-existence, or in the least accurately comprehend the wants and needs of an overwhelming majority that in their eyes is seen and has always been seen, as in the past and like the present day. Servants, plebeians, workers, common replaceable and unimportant animals. Definitely not deemed to rule, have any input on any thing that could stimulate diversity, challenged perspectives or thoughts and ideas that have not been conceived by a minority and quite detached from the harshness of the simpletons existence. The dictators of human progress, all left accordingly to the ruling class that is content and complacent with little or no ambition to require or invoke even the slightest hint of change. And why care for the needs of the servants, if born with any sort of purpose, simply to accommodate the wants and needs of the ruling class. The Archaic human condition, being better then a person exactly like me through artificial and self imposed accolades, cheaply acquired exuberant artifacts, art and every jewel adorned thing large enough to make palpable the importance and prestige of the bearer of such extravagance, unfortunately only highlighting a frail, insecure and always in need of victory with the least effort laden path, a hollow person that among his peers blends in and his wealth and noble status is rated above and beyond the gallantry of your average Magna Carta touting farm hand or cobbler. The noble man always steps up and presents himself to the world, always and gallantry . But through so many ignorant notions that the difference is worlds apart, on a genetic and anatomic levels far more superior. The only true difference is being born a noble. be refined when compared to a much more prestigious and strategically bred specimen, egocentric virtues marring reality and pretentiousness into a perfectly convoluted creature that has been made pure through incestuous tendencies to secure land and control in an arbitrary plight for control and acquisition of anything and everything without exception, for it is rightfully theirs and placed there much akin to the leaders of the days of yore, by an interesting invention that only the poor blindly follow and the noble to use as a very effective tactic for whatever you need the servants to accomplish. traditions kept pure as nobility. the only thing they saw standard for the necessary documentation of a reasonable co-existence designated and agreed upon by courageous men with obvious and time proven ease in which unchecked power corrupts. and the conquest and the interminable hunger to attain absolute power and ultimate control of anything and everything, usually sought and un-relinquished by people that view morals as whims to be manipulated to obscure fact and truth, and law as a Cudjel self-serving and realistically incapable or uncaring in understanding the wants, needs of a large diverse population and unable or indifferent to provoke positive social developments as opposed to an detached in all experience from the , and lacking any and all of the virtues of a just, honorable and altruistic leader or of self appointed relics and the experience founding charters and agreed with the blood and as an american, born right actively maintained planning and execution of gaining uncanny momentum and traction to their agenda to attain a relentless and unchallenged stranglehold in the form of corporate, political and financial power grip. A stranglehold on a gain for the few inhuman s capable of executing their and J.P. Morgan, T. W. Lamont, the Rockefeller interests, General Electric Company, Standard Oil, National City Bank, Chase and Manhattan banks, Kuhn, Loeb and Company
Keep in mind both sides were being fed both intentional (propaganda) and unintentional (fog of war) misinformation about how the war was going.
Post Normandy most Western Allied troops were pretty clear that victory lies ahead.
That doesn't mean that the average soldier had something to look forward to - there was still PLENTY of fighting ahead. It is easy to look at many battles and see that Allied material 'earned' them the victory with massive artillery and air strikes. This is plenty great for all those rear echelon troops. Allied divisions still took MASSIVE infantry casualties and your life expectancy as a front line rifleman was rather low.
For example, lets take the US 29th Infantry Division. In less than 1 year of combat it suffered 28,776 casualties which is a casualty rate of TWO HUNDRED PERCENT. This doesn't mean that every single soldier died but that many formations were almost completely slaughtered, filled with replacements, and slaughtered again. Your chances of survival were pretty slim and it was no comfort that the 'war was almost over' when some German teenager in some godforsaken little village is killing your friends. You also have to keep in mind that even as fast as the Allies advanced it was still 'slow' compared to how quickly the Germans took over the Western countries in the first place. The whole German campaign of 1940 took 6 weeks and ended in the conquest of the Low Countries and France - the Allied reconquest took signifigantly longer and was much bloodier for both sides.
And like others have said this was FAR WORSE for the Soviets. For example in the 2 week battle for Berlin the Soviets lost about 400,000 killed and wounded. That is more than the US has lost in every war from Vietnam until today - and that is in just over 2 weeks!
So yes there was a lot of optimism among average soldiers that the war will soon be won but that doesn't mean we can assume that they didn't have to try very hard. It is easy today to look at a date and say "Hmmm, March 1945 - it was totally over for the Germans" but to the Allied soldier at the time it was only over when the Germans surrendered and the only way to do that was to fight hard until the final white flag - if everyone just sat around optimistically hanging back then the Germans would have been pleased as punch.
It must also be noted that due to propaganda there were plenty of German soldiers who also believed in final victory, even towards the tail end of 1944. My grandfather himself was a German soldier (sorry for anecdote) and he told me that until the Bulge failed he still had a bit of optimism in that he thought a favorable peace treaty for the Germans could be made as long as they fought very hard. After all, the Soviets were the 'real enemy' and if the Western Allies could be fought to a standstill then the Germans could focus on the East and possibly gain a peace treaty which allowed them to keep some early gains (Czechoslovakia, Western Poland) at the expense of much of their other conquests.
Many German veterans were defeatist in the final months of the war but fought on to save Germany from the Soviets or to get a chance to surrender to the Allies for a cushier POW situation. Many of the younger troops were enthusiastic due to propaganda ("Just wait for our WONDER WEAPONS - Soon, boys!") and political indoctrination from boyhood spent in the Hitler Youth.