The Margin of Victory
On May 9, Russia celebrates the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. The United States played a major role in the defeat of Nazi Germany, one the American people should never forget and never stop honoring. But the margin of our victory over the Nazi scourge was razor slim, measured in the lives of millions of our Soviet allies without whom our collective victory would never have happened. We should never forget their sacrifice.
The Battle of Waterloo, in June 1815, Napoleon’s dream of French glory, was crushed by the combined armies of Great Britain and Prussia. According to field marshal Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington and commander of the British forces, “the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life.” If one or two more battalions of French Imperial Guardsmen had been available during the third and final infantry assault on the British center, the British positions would have collapsed, allowing Napoleon to pivot his army and meet the Prussian forces under the command of Field Marshal Blücher head on, pinning them in place until French reserves closed in from behind, an action which would have led to the destruction of the Prussians. But the French had reached the end of their resources, and when the tired soldiers of the British 52nd Regiment of Foot made a last desperate charge, the French Old Guard broke, sending the entire French army into retreat, ending the battle.
The margin of victory was literally a few hundred men in a battle that involved hundreds of thousands on either side.
In July 1863, during the Battle of Gettysburg, the 20th Maine, a regiment which normally mustered some 1,621 men but which, because of the effects of war and heavy campaigning, had been whittled down to 266, was tasked with holding the left flank of the Union line, a small hill known as Little Round Top. Prior to the battle commencing, the 20th Maines was reinforced by 120 deserters from the 2nd Maine, who were given the option of joining the 20th or being shot. This brought the 20th Maine up to 386 men.
Facing the 20th Maine were two Alabama regiments, the 15th and the 47th. The approach march to the position held by the 20th Maine took several hours, in the hot sun, with no water. Between them, the 15th and 47th Alabama mustered just under 1,000 men. By the time the men from Alabama reached the base of Little Round Top, they had deployed some 180 men as skirmishers to protect their advance from Union sharpshooters. Another 15 men from the 15th Alabama were sent out to look for water.
The men from Alabama charged up Little Round Top four times but were repulsed. The fifth charge brought them to within 15 yards of the 20th Maine’s positions. Here they nearly broke through. The men from Maine had seen 130 of their number fall dead or wounded. They were running out of ammunition. But the men from Alabama were similarly exhausted, with 150 of their number fallen on the hill. When Colonel Chamberlain, the 20th Maine commander, ordered a last desperate bayonet charge, the men from Alabama broke.
If it weren’t for the 120 men from the 2nd Maine regiment who reinforced the 20th Maine at the last moment, Little Round Top would have fallen.
If the Alabamans had retained the nearly 200 men they had left behind as skirmishers or water bearers, Little Round Top would have fallen.
If Little Round Top had fallen, the Battle of Gettysburg would have ended in a Union defeat, and the US Civil War may very well have had a different outcome.
Once again, the margin of victory came down to a few hundred men at the right time and place to change history.
Throughout the course of history, the margin of victory in battles that shaped world events often could be measured in terms of hundreds, if not thousands, of men whose presence at the right place and time tipped the scale of fate in their favor.
“We won two World Wars—but we never took credit for it!,” Donald Trump, the 47th President of the United States, recently posted on his Truth Social account. “Everyone else does! All over the World, the Allies are celebrating the Victory we had in World War II. The only Country that doesn’t celebrate,” Trump wrote, “is the United States of America, and the Victory was only accomplished because of us. Without the United States,” Trump continued, “the War would have been won by other Countries, and what a different World it would be.”
Donald Trump went on to proclaim May 8 to be World War II Victory Day (he also redesignated November 11 as World War I Victory Day).
The impetus for such a historically flawed statement is not stated by those who issued it but is apparent to all: Trump is jealous of the attention being given to Russia’s May 9 Victory Day celebration and is looking to create a competing event which would thrust the United States into the limelight.
One of the problems Trump will face in generating enthusiasm for his new May 8 holiday is that the American people have long forgotten about “The Greatest Generation” and the sacrifices they made for the United States and the world in defeating the dual threats of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. More than 16 million Americans served in the military during World War II, of whom just under 300,000 were killed in combat, with another 670,000 wounded.
I will never denigrate the service of anyone who served their nation honorably in the time of war.
Every American who wore the uniform during World War II deserves praise, as do the millions of Americans who helped turn the American industrial base into the arsenal of democracy.
Americans fought the Germans and the Japanese simultaneously, requiring a division of resources and national focus that meant we could not bring the total weight of our national power down on our enemies.
This required a balanced approach to both theaters of conflict where specific timings were linked to manpower and resource availability.
The margin of victory was often tighter than would otherwise have been desired. Take, for instance, the D-Day landings in France on June 6, 1944. The United States had been carefully martialing resources for this event, even as we engaged the Nazis in North Africa, Sicily and Italy.
But there was no guarantee of victory, as General Dwight Eisenhower’s statement he prepared in case of defeat demonstrated: “Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
We prevailed on D-Day.
But the margin of victory was slim.
One of the factors that played a major role in successfully managing this margin of victory was the “other war,” the one most Americans know very little about—the war on the Eastern Front between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Those familiar with the history of the Normandy operation may be familiar with “Operation Bagration,” the Soviet offensive against Nazi Germany’s Army Group Center which unfolded from June 22 through August 19, 1944. This offensive was ostensibly timed to prevent the Germans from transferring troops from the east front to Normandy. The Soviets employed a combined force of approximately 1,670,300 combat and support personnel against a German force of some 849,000 soldiers.
By comparison, Operation Overlord, by mid-July 1944, saw the US and British deploy some 1,452,000 troops in France, facing off against a force of approximately 640,000 Germans. By the time Overlord concluded, on August 30, 1944, the allies had suffered some 226,386 combat casualties, with the Germans losing some 323,000 combat casualties, including around 233,000 prisoners.
During Operation Bagration, which ended on August 30, 1944, the Soviets suffered some 670,000 combat casualties, while inflicting losses of 539,480 killed, missing or captured Germans. In short, in just five weeks, the Soviets had destroyed 22 German divisions. To stabilize the front, Germany had to transfer 46 divisions to the eastern front, including several divisions that were supposed to be arrayed against the US and British forces in France.
But the real story of the critical role played by the Soviets in helping guarantee a US-British victory over the Germans at Normandy was the Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive which took place between December 1943 and May 1944. Here, the Soviets lost some 270,000 killed, and another 840,000 wounded—greater losses than the entire US military suffered fighting against both the Germans and Japanese—while inflicting 380,000 casualties on the Germans.
But this isn’t the full story.
Because of the Dnieper-Carpathian offensive, on the eve of the Normandy invasion Germany withdrew from France some 46,000 troops and nearly 400 tanks and assault guns organized into some of the most elite combat formations in the Germany military, to reinforce German positions arrayed against the Soviets.
These were troops that otherwise would have been deployed to counter the D-Day landings at Normandy, making the possibility of Eisenhower having to read his draft defeat statement more possible.
The margin of victory was slim.
But the Soviet contribution to allied victory in Normandy doesn’t stop here. The German mobile reserves which were supposed to respond to any allied invasion consisted of six divisions and several separate brigade-sized units which were transferred out of Russia to France in order to refit, ensuring that when Germany did respond to the US-British Normandy invasion, it would be using divisions that had been recently torn to pieces by the Soviets on the eastern front.
The margin of victory for the US and British forces in Normandy was slim and would have been even slimmer had the Soviets not carried out the twin offenses of Dnieper-Carpathian and Bagration. These two campaigns resulted in the Soviets losing more than twice the total number of casualties suffered by the United States for the entirety of World War II in both theater of operations.
Americans would do well to recall the words of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who noted in a letter to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that “It was the Russian army that gutted the German military machine.”
And this came at an unimaginable cost.
Some 34 million Soviet men served in the Red Army during World War II. While the official death toll for the Red Army in World War II stands at some 8,600,000, the Central Military Archives in Moscow contains the names of more than 14 million Red Army soldiers who died or went missing during the fighting with Nazi Germany. Millions more were wounded in battle.
But this is only part of the story.
The fight against Nazi Germany took place on the soil of the Soviet Union—the dark earth of Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, the Caucasus. Between 15.9–17.4 million civilians were killed on Soviet territory by Germany and its allies during the war.
These are unthinkable numbers.
And they are numbers no western nation, including the United States, could have sustained under similar conditions and prevailed.
Americans and Russians both speak about the importance of US military assistance—“Lend Lease”—on helping sustain the Red Army during the critical years of 1942-43.
But “Lend Lease” did not win the war.
The blood and sacrifice of the Red Army did.
As US President Franklin Roosevelt noted in 1942, “Russian troops have destroyed—and continue to destroy—more manpower, planes, tanks and cannons of our common enemy than all the other United Nations combined.”
It was the “skillful leadership, solid organization, appropriate training and, above all, determination to defeat the enemy, regardless of its own sacrifices” of the Red Army which, Roosevelt noted in a 1943 letter to Joseph Stalin, “certainly forced Hitler’s armed forces to follow the path to final defeat and won the admiration of the people of the United States for a long time.”
A long time.
But not forever.
Today a sitting American president denigrates the unimaginable sacrifice of the Red Army and the Soviet people—the Russian people—in defeating the scourge of Nazi Germany.
America should—indeed must—honor the sacrifices and accomplishments of its own soldiers and citizens in contributing to the great allied victory of Nazi Germany.
But not at the expense of the truth.
The Red Army engaged and destroyed between 76-80% of Nazi Germany’s military machine.
I’ve read and re-read Rick Atkinson’s amazing trilogy on the history of the US Army during World War II.
And I am amazed at just how slim the margin of victory was in many of the battles fought between American forces and their Nazi enemy.
One more German battalion here, a few hundred German tanks there, and a battle may have gone the other way.
But the Germans did not have the resources, because nearly 9 million of their soldiers fought and died on the eastern front—9 million soldiers who otherwise would have been available to tip the scales of fate in favor of the Nazi armies fighting in the west.
The margin of American victory was slim.
And without the sacrifices of the Red Army and the Soviet citizens, there would have been no margin of victory.
For the people of Russia, May 9—Victory Day—is a solemn, spiritual occasion, where the eyes of the 27 million or more ancestors who perished in the horrible struggle against Nazi Germany stare down on the citizens of today, reminding them of the sacrifices they made, and challenging them to never disgrace their memory.
The military parade is a moment of supreme national pride.
It is not, as some in the West posture, a statement of modern Russian military chauvinism.
Instead, the Russian people see before them the progeny of the Russian troops who paraded down Red Square in December 1941, marching straight from the ceremony to the front lines only a few miles away, where they shed their blood to stop the German army that was knocking at the door of the Soviet capital.
They see in the soldiers of today the pride of the Red Army when it again paraded at the end of the war against Nazi Germany, flinging down the banners of their defeated enemy.
They look at the young men who proudly march today and see in them the same indomitable spirit of their forefathers who gave everything so that the Russian people of today might live in peace on the soil of Mother Russia.
Victory Day is not a national gimmick, or a narcissistic pleasure for a Russian leader.
It is an expression of the very soul of a nation and its people.
A reminder that the margin of victory in World War II is measured in the sacrifice of the Red Army and the Soviet nation.
Donald Trump seems to have forgotten this truth.
It is incumbent upon the citizens of the United States, Britain, Canada, France and the other nations that comprised, together with the Soviet Union, the great alliance that defeated Nazi Germany.
The Russian people have never forgotten or forsaken these allies. Indeed, the Russian Army marches in their honor as well.
We must never forget the heroism and sacrifice made by American soldiers in defeating Nazi Germany.
But the margin of our victory was slim.
And only came because of the sacrifice of untold millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians.
It is our duty to honor them as we honor our own.
Excellent work and, historically, spot on. Scott has given us an excellent review of why Russia made D-Day successful. Thanks, Skipper.
I love it when you bring a historical focus to one of your posts. This was excellent.