WWII helping hands
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You are currently reading a thread in /k/ - Weapons
Which country/force that wasnt part of the "Big 5" contributed most towards the war effort (on either side) in WWII?
The pacific theater was pretty much entirely the US, with Aussies and the Brits holding onto what they already had, but Im not so sure about the European theater.
Im leaning towards Eastern European partisan fighters in Poland and such. It wasnt a "formal" army or anything, but they disrupted a lot of supplies and forced the Germans to allocate significant resources to anti-partisan activities.
If not them then maybe the Finns? They managed to occupy Russia for a LOT of time especially considering what they had.
Thoughts /k/?
>>29896339
The Polish put themselves under British command and did themselves proud, they flew under the RAF, ran POW camps and went in with regular British troops.
>>29896339
Canada
>>29896339
Yugos.
SSad boys
funland
>>29896339
Guy in the middle was shooped in
Romanians gave in a bunch of men
>>29896339
Are you people fucking serious?
Yugo partisans ofc. They litterally opened a new front on the balkan. At the end of the war there was more than 600k of them.
On the other hand you have the Slovene "domobranci", Croatian "ustase" and serbian "cetniki" that helpped Hitlers side. Whichever side you take Balkan nations were the 6th most important (or even 5th cuz italy was real shit) protagonist in ww2
>>29899479
Was the Yugo resistance really that large? Did they ever formalize any sort of units once they got big enough. My knowledge of that area is really lacking.
The South Africans had a fairly significant part in the North African campaign along with bombing supplies in Poland and conducting recon in Europe.
>>29899495
Dude we even had "organized" fighter squadrons, with repainted captured german planes.
Entire partisan thing was big enough to yield 3 decades of ww2 war movies. Check out Vrhovi Zelengore for battle of Sutjeska and some top kek flammenwerfer action.
>>29899479
>Yugo Partisans
Even if there were 600k of them, they still did not achieve even close to half of what the FRENCH resistance accomplished.
Go read a book, kid.
>>29896372
fuck iirc they had the highest scoring squadrons during the battle of britain and did alot of work with technology like cracking the enigma before the war started, or something of that sort, smaller countries during WW2 dont get their credit due
I feel bad for how we treated them after the war, literally sent them to the slaughter
>>29899495
Check wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_Partisans
They were a strong force after 1943 or so. They had more tanks than italians at the end of the war. Anyway ye they were a huge force. About 300k died fighting axis forces i think.
The thing in Balkan, as mentioned, was that nations fought kind of a civil war because people hated both nazism and communism but sadly communists gained power over the partisans and later created the shithole of a country called Yugoslavia. They would have ended under soviets anyway.
All historians will tell you that it was because of Hitlers attack on Yugoslavia in 1941 that the operation Barbarossa went to shit. Basically he thought that he could just blitzkrieg until reaching greece, like he did in France and Belgium but he failed and had to postpone the attack on soviets for about three months (out of head i think the operation was planned to start in april? But ended starting in june). That caused eventually the fail of the operation Barbarossa because instead of reaching the crucial points like moscaw or stalingrad in summer they reached it just before winter. And you know the story afterwards.
>>29899550
Yo baugette you should learn some objective history and not the western or eastern brainwash they served you. French caused a lot of fuss but they did nothing of big until summer of 44.
>>29896339
>Thoughts /k/?
I'd at least consider China and Hungry
>>29896339
>The pacific theater was pretty much entirely the US
The British fought and won the largest land battle of the entire Pacific war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Imphal
>>29899550
Of course not, no one could match the ability of french resistance to get butt fucked by Germans. Yugoslavs managed to lock down 3-4 additional German divisions along with regular heavy occupation presence. The French managed to keep the Germans fat and satisfied until the Anglos deiced to kick Hitler out.
>>29901143
Largest single battle maybe, but the scope of that campaign was nothing overall. Smaller than the Philippines
>>29899550
But anon, the french resistance didn't do anything except send radio signals to London the entire war
>>29896339
Definitely Poland. They fought at the start of the war totally alone against two fronts, then immediately hopped to the UK, helped out a good bunch with the air combat, did a bunch of techy stuff, and then leapt right back into the fray again with the British Army in much larger numbers than the British.
They also ran a very fucking desperate resistance and while ultimately a failed attempt (Fuck Stalin forever) the Warsaw Uprisings were no small feat.
>>29899613
>All historians will tell you that it was because of Hitlers attack on Yugoslavia in 1941 that the operation Barbarossa went to shit
Literally no one sane believes this. Yugoslavia campaign lasted like a week. Every single meaningful division had more than enough time to return and take part in Barbarossa.
>>29904954
Are you fucking retarded or what? One week was the amount of time Germans needed to get the old Yugoslavian kingdom to surrender. The fighting never ended.
I know this is not a history board and no one can expect some illiterate muhrican to know it but CMON. This clueless really?
Poland desu, and its not even close
>>29905046
The correct answer
>>29899613
>>29905028
Are you retarded? Go look up the rasputitsa. Germany invaded Russia the second they could actually move their tanks over the roads without losing all of them in the mud. Invading any sooner would have had the Russians alerted and given time to prepare, and Germany would never have achieved the success they did from June-November 1941.
>>29896339
Can you list off who you think to be the big 5 so there are no redundancies?
>>29908064
>US
>USSR
>England
>Canada/Australia
>???
Im *supposed* to say France but Poland, who alot of guys in this thread nominated, contributed more to the war effort
>>29896339
Well.. They call it a "world war" for a reason, the entire world was involved in some way or another.
South American nations mining ammonium nitrate (or similar) for the Allies is one example.
In practically every country on earth, the war divided peoples in some way or another.
>>29896339
>>29908119
Then I would say:
China
then either France or Poland
probably France.
>Canada/Australia
You mean GB and the commonwealth right?
Otherwise it would look like:
US
USSR
GB
China
Canada
France
Australia
Poland
Yugoslavia
Greece
Some African countries Italy couldn't beat.
Norway&Denmark
Nepal (Gurkhas)
Arab counties that probably put up some resistance.
...
Ireland
>>29908302
Fuck i forgot China, but yeah thats what i meant by Canada, I was debating just putting down Commonwealth
>>29908302
Don't forget Egypt
>>29908327
Most of the time (I'm Canadian btw) I see it put down as GB and the commonwealth. And Churchill was part of the big three.
>>29908340
I didn't, I just lobbed them under
>Some African countries Italy couldn't beat.
I could only think up of Libya and Egypt at the time so I just generalized.
>>29908302
The independent Arab countries and Ireland were neutral.
>>29908064
Russia
US
UK
Japan
Germany
>>29896339
Poland, they fought under the Allies on almost every front, including Normandy and Italy. Protected the British homeland in 1940 in the skies and also had their own division called the LWP with the Red Army's Belorussian front which took part in key offensives.
Compare that to the collaborating frogs and flip-flopping spaghetti niggers.
The Polish also had greatest act of resistance to the occupation with the Warsaw Uprising, which didn't turn out to well for them...
Meanwhile the French "resistance" is a meme.
>>29899479
>Yugo partisans ofc.
How many fronts did the Yugos fight in?
Oh.. just their fucking own, running into the hills?
Yeah, fuck off Dusan.
>>29905032
Modern re-enactors.
>>29899572
Again, IIRC, I saw a documentary about Polish RAF pilots.
They were interviewing WAAF girls and RAF personnel who basically all said that the Polish pilots were incredibly brave and aggressive, but also batshit and prone to charging at the Germans full tilt intent upon mayhem and slaughter, rather than co-ordinated combat.
Plucky buggers.
>>29899572
An acquaintance of mine several years ago, whilst moaning about Polish immigrants to the UK, said that since we fought a war for them they ought to be more grateful.
Had to carefully explain to her how bullshit that statement was.
>>29910818
>French "resistance" is a meme
Whilst it can't be held to the same level as Polish resistance, it wasn't a meme.
Just to go back a point, the Polish resistance was resisting people who wanted to liquid a large chunk of their country and force the rest into forced labour.
The French were resisting a bunch of arseholes who stole their wine, slept with their women, bossed people about and slowly (when it started getting desperate) started shipping men off to the Reich to work.
I just think that what each group had to resist in itself shaped the nature and level of their resistance.
Not that I've probably worded that very well.
The French resistance did play an important role as far as supporting allied agents and slowing troop movements was concerned.
But after the war they really played their involvement up (as wrong as it was, I can hardly blame them) and (purely speculatively) I'd say a lot of Resistance members weren't members until it was very, very obvious that the allies were there.
>>29896339
norwegian merchant fleet
+ tying up 300 to 400 thousand german troops
>>29910904
It's a fair point and I agree that perhaps the level of French resistance would have been greater if they were slated for slavery like the Pollaks were.
