So I recently finished the series World War II in HD Colour on Netflix. Episode 8 focused on the eastern front in 1943. Something that surprised me was the degree to which the Red Army had achieved dominance over the Wehrmacht by the end of 1943. Notably, the show claimed that the German military command had essentially concluded that they had lost the war against the Soviet Union by the end of the year.
I found this interesting because, if true, it would pretty significantly change my interpretation of the Allied invasion of western Europe. The typical narrative is that the Allies invaded France and Italy in 1944 in order to increase the pressure on the Nazis and to relieve the pressure for the Soviet Union on the eastern front. This doesn't really make sense if it was known that the Soviets had essentially defeated the Nazis by the end of 1943.
So, is it plausible that the Allies invaded western Europe primarily to oppose the Soviets?
Particular in this space I'm curious about are:
Is it correct that the Red Army had essentially defeated the Wehrmacht by the end of 1943?
If this was the case, was this widely known?
What effect did the perception of the intermediate results of the war between the Soviet Union and Germany have on western military planners' goals for western Europe?
More broadly, to what extent did the western allies (US and UK primarily) treat the Soviet Union as a threat during WW2 and particularly in 1943 and 1944?
I found this interesting because, if true, it would pretty significantly change my interpretation of the Allied invasion of western Europe. The typical narrative is that the Allies invaded France and Italy in 1944 in order to increase the pressure on the Nazis and to relieve the pressure for the Soviet Union on the eastern front. This doesn't really make sense if it was known that the Soviets had essentially defeated the Nazis by the end of 1943.
To say that would change your interpretation would ignore the fact that the Western Allies had been fighting in North Africa (Operation Torch and the ensuing North African campaign) since November 1942, less than a year after the United States had entered the conflict.
And it would also ignore the fact that the Allies invaded Sicily in July of 1943, as well as Salerno in September of that same year. The ensuing Italian campaign tied down well over a million men total from both sides.
Thus the Allies had been involved in the West in trying to open a second front within a year of the United States entering the war.
The Second World War in Europe: Second Edition by S.P. Mackenzie discusses in brief about Operation Sledgehammer - the proposed invasion of Europe in 1942 by the United States which was rejected by the British. The British feared a repeat of Gallipoli of World War I and the weakness of unproven American forces.
Keep in mind too something that we take for granted in the modern age where the United States is a global military power capable of projecting force to any corner of the world: in 1942, the only way to get troops and equipment like tanks and aircraft across the oceans was via transport ships.
To build up the necessary personnel and equipment - everything from tanks to trucks to oil drums to engineering equipment - in order to sustain a fight on Western Europe that would require millions of men would take years to do.
So the planning and logistics behind such an invasion was already in the works by 1942, before the war on the Eastern Front was decided.
Finally, the Soviet Union didn't have infinite manpower. Keep in mind that on the Eastern Front, the Germans fought all the way to the end in Berlin.
The Germans, however, were very willing to surrender to the Western Allies. This AskHistorians thread discusses how entire German units fought their way west in order to surrender to the Americans and British.
This post by /u/GTFErinyes has an interesting table at the end:
Over 8,108,983 German prisoners were taken in total by the Western Allies, including 3,050,000 taken before war's end while fighting was still going on in Berlin. That's roughly the same as what the Soviet Union took prisoner in their entire 4 year struggle against Germany.
That's a staggering amount of German forces that willingly surrendered to the Western Allies, and one can only imagine what kind of bloodshed would have happened had the Western Front never been opened and if Germans fought to the last man against the Soviet Union. The Soviets might well have won still, but it would have come at even greater cost and strain on Soviet society.