Which WW2 theater was more horrible? Eastern Front or Pacific

Both were pretty bad. I'd say the Eastern front.

Eastern Front no doubt. The Pacific Theater was awful, but the Eastern Front was hell on earth.
Imagine having malaria while fighting suicidally aggressive nips in dense shrubbery. Now, imagine fighting in a landscape so cold you'd have to choose between shitting yourself or dying of cold, where every street corner is a potential meatgrinder and people are dying en masse.

I'll take the pacific any day

Eastern Front - just by the sheer scale of it. If you throw Chinese theater into Pacific you might have a contender though.

>>270027

Eastern front.

Stalingrad.

>>270027

military casualties only

>eastern front casualties

roughly 15,5 million

>pacific theather casualties

roughly 6 million

>>270290
(this is including the chinese theater)

nips were didn't know what they were doing and we're in damage control mode. even on iwo bullet catchers could still be rushed back to medical tents and shipped back.

Stalingrad was two of the greatest powers desperately shitting down each other's throats

Civilians?

Eastern Front was waged across some seriously dense populations.

Gulags. Camps. Shootings. Etc. Messy nasty stuff.

Pacific was Yanks and Japs blasting away at each other on uninhabited coral reefs with airstrips.

>>271265
>Pacific was Yanks and Japs blasting away at each other on uninhabited coral reefs with airstrips.

Sounds so peaceful and romantic... Mmm

fighting in the pacific alongside Japan is on par with eastern front

>>270230
>Now, imagine fighting in a landscape so cold you'd have to choose between shitting yourself or dying of cold
what

>>271584
dysentry is pretty terrible tbqh

>>270290
>muh casualties

I guess having the shittier army would make battles more horrific, you're right.

>>271704
>10v10 skirmishes always have very well trained troops because of the low amount of casualties

>>270027
Chinese theater obviously.

>>271569
>surrender to Russians
>pissed off conscripts who had their villages burn just shoot you
>or pissed off officer who had his city bombed send you to gulag

>surrender to Americans
>strip and hold hands up to show you're not hiding any bombs
>get food, water, and some shelter

Germans at least had a good reason to fight to the end.

>>271265
The war in the pacific Pacific was waged across all Indonesia, Polynesia, the Philippines, and even the Aleutian islands. The Philippines and Indonesia combined had around a 6% of the worlds population at the time.

>>271971
on the other hand
>surrender to Germans as a Russian
>treated horribly

>surrender to japs
>literally hell on earth

there is no winning

>>272439
>surrender to japs
>literally hell on earth

like you wouldent want to have bamboo grow through your back and stomach

>>270027
The only Stalingrad-type battle of the Pacific War was Manila in 1945, aside from that there was barely any urban fighting between America and Japan.

Although there were quite a few massive urban battles on mainland China, but the US wasn't involved in those.

Over 3600 russian soldiers died in Stalingrad every 24 hours. For 5 months straight. That's not counting the wounded, nor the german casualties.

>>272485
well urban doesn't necessarily mean worse, like i really doubt the jungle was somehow less horrible than urban fighting I mean.
>disease rampant
>malaria out the ass
>giant animals and bugs
>rain
>mud
>hostile environment
>japs hiding in the ground and trees
>flamethrowers needed just to clear away forest
I personally would never want to be in either one
>>272498
I think end count was something like 450,000 dead Russian soldiers, not even counting civilians
That is more than some countries, and US states

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>>271584
often times, when the weather dropped below freezing, soldiers would freeze to death in the short time it took just to pull down their pants and take a shit.

That's a good question. I hate the idea of both.

Eastern Theater
>freezing
>snipers everywhere
>vicious fighting
>food scarce

Pacific Theater
>disease rampant
>boobie traps
>animals/bugs
>overwhelming humidity
>vicious fighting

I want to say my chances of living as an American in the Pacific would be best, though, so I'd go with that, by a hair

I'm pretty convinced Vietnam was one of the most miserable wars of all time though, per soldier experience

>>273002
Your chances to live as an american were astronomically higher than anything on the east front. Do you realize entire regiments of the red army were destroyed over a day? They ceased to exist. The life expectancy of a russian soldier in Stalingrad was well below 24 hours.

>>272152
Don't forget Manchuria.

>>273008

Do we take that into account, or living standards? There's only one way to make it a discussion.

>>271971

>Germans at least had a good reason to fight to the end.

The Germans didn't want to fight to the end. They constantly asked to surrender, which the Allies refused. Besides Russians raped their way into Berlin.

>>271971
Well actually
>surrender to americans
>pack you into cattle car and send to Blyat Cyca

>>270027
Whatever fucked up shit that went down in China.

eastern front was the worst

but any type of war fought in tropical or jungle areas is no joke. jungle warfare is the most hardcore type of environment to fight a war in.

>>272439

Soviet POWs were left alone. Literally. No food, no shelter. Only armed guards who shoot those who try to escape.

The death toll of Soviet POW camps was horrific, far worse than mortality of camps run by the Japs.

>>273339
true, but japs were really not much better

>>271971
Americans didn't take prisoners a fair amount of the time

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>>272510
>more than some U.S states
>450,000
You're gonna have to pick one

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>>270027
>Which WW2 theater was more horrible?
the ice cube theater

I always had a fascination on the smaller campaigns like North Africa, Aleutians, Burma, and Italy. In my opinion, every campaign matters.

>>270290
More casualties doesnt mean the front was a shittier place to be in, it just means there was more fighting going on.

>>271265
>what is China
Nanking never happen. Japan fight over little islands.

Eastern front clearly

The stories from the Eastern Front are unbelievable.
Thousands of prisoners hosed down to make ice bridges, entire towns being crucified, people's limbs literally shattering as they would trip in formation.


We're talking battles that had more KIAs than the US would suffer in the entire war.

>>276484
I can only believe the second one. The first sounds impractical, although I did read that prisoners were used to clear minefields. The third just doesn't sound possible either. You would have been dead before that happened.

>>276234
China is a separate theater of the war and isn't traditionally considered "Pacific"

It was the CBI (China-Burma-India) Front.

>>276573
Not a bridge like a building. They'd lay down russians over the anti-tank trenches and hose them down.

In regards to the third one, you're just misinformed. There are a ton of primary sources talking about how soldiers hands and feet would freeze solid.

>>271971
But the Japanese almost never surrendered. And like 50% of the time it was fake so they could cook off a grenade and take an American with them.

>>276597
yes, but while they were still marching? you describe it as if whole limbs simply froze solid and the soldiers never bothered to notice until they shattered. they would probably be dead by then.

>>270027

After reading enemy at the gates I really dont think anything could beat how fucking awful stalingrad was

The pacific theater is only a contender against eastern front in awefulness if you are just talking about early battles. Atleast in the later battles you had supplies, even though the terrain was shit, and you may get low on something for a bit while kinks in the supply chain are worked out, but at least you knew it was coming eventually

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-Sturmbrigade_Dirlewanger

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What was Russia doing in the pacific? Couldnt the Japs invade?

>>276978
>Couldnt the Japs invade?

They couldn't even win against pre-Barbarossa USSR, let alone after they starting raping Germany to oblivion

>>276978
There were a lot of shifty things going on in the pacific for all parties involved. You have to remember that the pacific war started a full two years before the rest of the war, and that alliances were still being formed. Hell at the outset of the Sino-Japanese war the Germans were originally providing support to the nationalists. When the Germans decided to ally with the Japanese, they stopped funding the nationalists and stopped providing aid. The soviets actually stepped in, although not as much as the Chinese would have liked, and provided some form of support up until 1941. They formed a non aggression pact with China and even sent some volunteer pilots to the Nationalists.

In early 1941, it wasn't really opportune for either side to attack the other. Japan was getting ready to attack the Allies and the Soviets were starting to suspect something was up with their Nazi neighbors. They both ended up signing a neutrality pact that ensured neither would attack the other. Obviously at that point in time, such pacts were meaningless, but really neither side would benefit from attacking the other.

Their policy was to make the war last as long as possible so that they didn't have to worry about the hyper aggressive Japanese in the region.

>>276978
>Khalkin Gol
That showed them everything they needed to see about the Soviet military

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Its always a big question for me. In raw size, surely the eastern front was worse, but the question is which was worse for the common man. Say, a US Soldier in the Marines or Merrill's Marauder, vs a Red Army soldier.
The Aleutian islands, a frozen Alaskan shithole, had thousands of men die on it, and the largest Banzai charge ever seen. The fact that out of tens of thousands of enemy combatants, MAYBE a dozen would surrender is pretty nutty, and overall the Japanese were suicidal, unrelenting, and you had to fight them from Alaska to Burma.

This may not be as bad for individuals in the eastern front until things like Stalingrad, with mass starvation and for the love of God, they were sharpening shovels to rush the Germans.

Truly I don't know, but I'd say the Pacific, only because MOST of the battles would've been worse for the people involved, but then places like Stalingrad would've been worse than most of the Pacific.

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>>276917
Basically this. Most of the Pacific was worse for the individual IMO, but Stalingrad trumps those. But was Kursk worse than Guadalcanal? Was Berlin worse than Iwo Jima? I don't think so.

>>271265
There were quite a few islands that had civilian populations. The Philippines, Okinawa, Saipan. Okinawa lost 1/4 of it's population IIRC.

>>276923
Ah, Dirlewanger, the degenerate Nazi.

I can't imagine being a part of the landing force on Iwo Jima or Okinawa. To know that you're running head first into defenses made specifically to kill as many of your side as possible, no matter the cost. That you can't take any prisoners or trust civilians. But Stalingrad was probably worse, due to the longevity. Not only was it awful, it was awful for 5+ months straight.

It really doesn't compare, in the scale, in the civilian casualties, in the conditions, in the waste of human life, in the absolute hatred each country had for each other.

It's comparing a Aurisio to Cannae. Both are certainly legendary and just bloody as hell. But one the other is much more well-known and had a greater effect that the former.