What battle would be the decisive battle of WW2?
SolomonW
battle that brings about a turning point in the conflict. It is not
necessarily military as it can bring about a political change in the
conflict. Often it can be determined, only in retrospect.
So I decided to search for this battle in WW2.
Since I consider the main enemy the Nazis, I took off Midway.
Also since Hitler was defeated without an atomic bomb used, it could not
have been that.
In Europe after the battle of France, Germany was ahead yet by late 1943
the tide had changed. So my battle had to be between those two dates. Since
I do not believe that North Africa decisive, I took out these battles.
After consideration, I decided to review these battles.
Battle of Britain
I rejected because even if the British air force was defeated. It would be
temporary. The losses would be made up. In the meantime, it is unlikely
that Germany could defeat Britain because of the RN and the British army
were already too strong.
Battle of the Atlantic September 1939 - May 1945
This is a possibility. Churchill stated that this battle almost did defeat
Britain. Say early in 1940 or 1941, the U-boats had managed to drive
Britain out of the war. With Britain out, Germany having access to world
markets in 1941 and without the drain on the German military by the
British, Barbarossa would have worked.
Moscow 1941
If Moscow fell, it would have changed dramatically WW2. Its loss would have
been a disaster to the Russians. Many go further and say that Germany in
1942 could have defeated Russia eg Hitler's Panzers East: World War II
Reinterpreted, by Russell H.S. Stolfi.
Leningrad (Siege) September 8, 1941 - January 27, 1944
I do not see that as the decisive battle. Maybe if Germany had decided on
making the Russian campaign, a war of liberation. Leningrad would have been
a great base for a white Russian government.
Stalingrad August 21, 1942 - February 2, 1943
Another possibility. A German Stalingrad would have made a fine base for
the Axis. But it is unclear what decisive target the Germans could have
struck then. Much of the Russian oil was still long away. Maybe a battle
like Kursk would have been fought closer to Stalingrad.
Kursk July 5 - August 23, 1943
Unlikely as a great German victory here, would not have driven Russia out
of the war. What Kursk did is show the initiative had passed to the Red
Army. By this stage, the Axis were also on a defensive that is why the
Germans stopped the assault at Kursk
Therefore I am left with either the Battle of the Atlantic in 1940 to early
1941 or Battle of Moscow.
What are your views?
Don Phillipson
news:90uy1vpl6h6b$.gebk36zz8c4z$.dlg@40tude.net...
> There can only be one decisive battle in a war.
Why should anyone supppose this true? For example it
seems untrue of WW1 (even though nearly all commanders,
Central Powers and Allied, demonstrably believed it.)
> After consideration, I decided to review these battles.
>
> Battle of Britain . . .
> Battle of the Atlantic September 1939 - May 1945 . . .
> Moscow 1941 . . .
> Leningrad (Siege) September 8, 1941 - January 27, 1944 . . .
> Kursk July 5 - August 23, 1943
>
> Unlikely as a great German victory here, would not have driven Russia out
> of the war. . . .
>
> Therefore I am left with either the Battle of the Atlantic in 1940 to
early
> 1941 or Battle of Moscow.
Other posters may think:
(1) Besides conflating various similar battles (Moscow,
Leningrad, Stalingrad) your list omits important but
dissimilar events, e.g. 8th Air Force raids on Germany in 1944
(with long-range escort fighter forces, contributing to the
decimation of the Luftwaffe) or the 1944 Oil Plan (crippling
German mobility.)
(2) Taken together as a whole, the list of candidates
impeaches the basic proposition that "there can only be one
decisive battle in a war." A battle that appears decisive
on one front can materally help operations on another front
without being decisive on that other front.
Agreement on the basic proposition probably requires a
definition of "decisive" that applies to all plausible candidates,
especially those the OP may not have thought of.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Michael Emrys
> What are your views?
That there really wasn't "one decisive battle" in the way you have
defined it. Rather, it was a slow, persistent grinding away that doomed
the Axis. All that can be said is that there was a growing feeling
during 1943 that the tide had turned. The only question was how total
the Allied victory would be.
Michael
David H Thornley
> There can only be one decisive battle in a war.
In which case there is often no decisive battle in a war, which is
decided by several battles. This is obviously not always the case;
in the French-Prussian war of 1807-1808, it was very clear who was
going to win after Jena-Auerstadt. However, there was no decisive
battle in WWI (unless you count the entire western campaign in 1914),
and no decisive battle in WWII.
For significant ones, I'd suggest:
The Battle of Shanghai in 1937 was probably the most significant
one of the Pacific War, in determining how the war was going to go.
Once the Japanese made the decision to attack the US, particularly
in any sort of sneaky manner, their fate was sealed, so any
decision happened considerably earlier.
The Battle of France in 1940 pretty much guaranteed that Eastern
Europe would wind up under oppressive foreign occupation, the
only question remaining being whose. It doomed any hopes of
the Western Allies to win alone, and any hopes of returning
to anything vaguely like the old Europe.
The Battle of Moscow was arguably decisive in that it left the
Germans unable to win at all quickly in the East, but I really
don't know what it would have taken to knock the Soviets out of
the war. Since Hitler couldn't win quickly against the Soviet
Union, and couldn't make a serious peace with Stalin, Germany
was unable to concentrate on defending against the Western Allies.
One could argue that the Battle of Stalingrad was the last German
hope of anything like a quick victory, but it isn't clear to me
that they had such a victory if they'd managed to permanently
occupy Stalingrad. Certainly after Stalingrad their only hope
was to win a war of attrition, and the Western Allies at that
point weren't going to let that happen.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
geo...@ankerstein.org
> There can only be one decisive battle in a war.
Not my opinion, but I will play your game.
The invasion of Poland by the Germans, resulting in the
declaration of was by England and France.
GFH
SolomonW
> "SolomonW" <Solo...@nospamAustraliaMail.com> wrote in message
> news:90uy1vpl6h6b$.gebk36zz8c4z$.dlg@40tude.net...
>
>> There can only be one decisive battle in a war.
>
> Why should anyone supppose this true? For example it
> seems untrue of WW1 (even though nearly all commanders,
> Central Powers and Allied, demonstrably believed it.)
There may indeed be no decisive battle in a war but by definition there can
be no more then one.
>
>> After consideration, I decided to review these battles.
>>
>> Battle of Britain . . .
>> Battle of the Atlantic September 1939 - May 1945 . . .
>> Moscow 1941 . . .
>> Leningrad (Siege) September 8, 1941 - January 27, 1944 . . .
>
>> Kursk July 5 - August 23, 1943
>>
>> Unlikely as a great German victory here, would not have driven Russia out
>> of the war. . . .
>>
>> Therefore I am left with either the Battle of the Atlantic in 1940 to
> early
>> 1941 or Battle of Moscow.
>
> Other posters may think:
> (1) Besides conflating various similar battles (Moscow,
> Leningrad, Stalingrad) your list omits important but
> dissimilar events, e.g. 8th Air Force raids on Germany in 1944
> (with long-range escort fighter forces, contributing to the
> decimation of the Luftwaffe) or the 1944 Oil Plan (crippling
> German mobility.)
The reason I left it out was because I felt that towards the end of 1943,
Germany was clearly lost. As I wrote "In Europe after the battle of
France, Germany was ahead yet by late 1943 the tide had changed."
> (2) Taken together as a whole, the list of candidates
> impeaches the basic proposition that "there can only be one
> decisive battle in a war." A battle that appears decisive
> on one front can materally help operations on another front
> without being decisive on that other front.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I doubt this matters as by definition there can only be at most one
decisive battle in a war. What I wrote was "It is often defined as the
battle that brings about a turning point in the conflict. It is not
necessarily military as it can bring about a political change in the
conflict. Often it can be determined, only in retrospect."
It does not matter how it actually affects the war itself to this
definition.
> Agreement on the basic proposition probably requires a
> definition of "decisive" that applies to all plausible candidates,
> especially those the OP may not have thought of.
Indeed
SolomonW
> SolomonW wrote:
>> There can only be one decisive battle in a war.
>
> In which case there is often no decisive battle in a war, which is
> decided by several battles. This is obviously not always the case;
> in the French-Prussian war of 1807-1808, it was very clear who was
> going to win after Jena-Auerstadt. However, there was no decisive
> battle in WWI (unless you count the entire western campaign in 1914),
> and no decisive battle in WWII.
>
> For significant ones, I'd suggest:
>
> The Battle of Shanghai in 1937 was probably the most significant
> one of the Pacific War, in determining how the war was going to go.
> Once the Japanese made the decision to attack the US, particularly
> in any sort of sneaky manner, their fate was sealed, so any
> decision happened considerably earlier.
Except the decision for Japan to go to war with the US was made later.
Japan would probably not have done it if they had access to oil in 1941.
> The Battle of France in 1940 pretty much guaranteed that Eastern
> Europe would wind up under oppressive foreign occupation, the
> only question remaining being whose. It doomed any hopes of
> the Western Allies to win alone, and any hopes of returning
> to anything vaguely like the old Europe.
I was thinking something similar too. It also gave Germany the power to
take on Russia.
If you argue that the decisive battle brings about a turning point in the
conflict. This one did that.
> The Battle of Moscow was arguably decisive in that it left the
> Germans unable to win at all quickly in the East, but I really
> don't know what it would have taken to knock the Soviets out of
> the war. Since Hitler couldn't win quickly against the Soviet
> Union, and couldn't make a serious peace with Stalin, Germany
> was unable to concentrate on defending against the Western Allies.
Furthermore time was on the Allies side. Any wait in the fighting would be
in there advantage. After Moscow, the Germans faced a long war in the East.
> One could argue that the Battle of Stalingrad was the last German
> hope of anything like a quick victory, but it isn't clear to me
> that they had such a victory if they'd managed to permanently
> occupy Stalingrad. Certainly after Stalingrad their only hope
> was to win a war of attrition, and the Western Allies at that
> point weren't going to let that happen.
I do not see the quick victory. At best a German victory at Stalingrad puts
Germany in a good position to strike Russia in the next year and as you say
then it will be a long drawn out war.
Louis C
> There can only be one decisive battle in a war.
Strictly speaking, yes. A *decisive* battle is one that *decides* the
outcome of the war, so it's usually the last big battle. Prior to it,
the issue is still undecided.
For example, Germany was clearly in trouble in early 1918, on the
other hand had it managed to decisively defeat Allied forces in its
spring offensives then there's a good chance that it might have
retrieved the situation and pulled out a win after all.
For WWII, if Hitler's grand schemes had come through e.g. D-Day forces
thrown back into the sea with heavy losses and the panzer reserves
used to smash an army group's worth of Soviet troops before
irredeemable damage had been inflicted on the Ostheer, followed up by
a German atomic bomb, then Nazi Germany might conceivably have won. Or
at least not lost.
By that definition, the only decisive battles were those that broke
the back of the Wehrmacht beyond repair and de facto ended the war
save for some relatively minor follow-up operations. The western
crossing of the Rhine and encirclement of the Ruhr, followed by the
Soviet capture of Berlin, would probably qualify here.
> It is often defined as the
> battle that brings about a turning point in the conflict.
No, a turning point isn't necessarily decisive, because another
turning point can occur further down the road and reverse the previous
one. For instance, one could argue that the Confederation was about to
lose the ACW in 1862 but for serious northern defeats in the eastern
theater of operations, which allowed the South to think that the
situation wasn't, after all, hopeless.
Or that the Germans were winning everywhere in 1914, though the battle
of the Marne was a key turning point setting them back. Then other
battles sent the pendulum to swing back the Germans' way, until a
series of simultaneous turning points in the Balkans, the Middle East
and in France eventually proved decisive (i.e. there could be no
further turning points after those).
There were quite a few turning points in WWII. I'd consider the battle
of France to be one, as it decisively changed the shape of the
conflict and that of the postwar world. Another turning point took
place sometime in early 1943 with nearly simultaneous Axis defeats in
Stalingrad, Tunisia and the Atlantic as well as Guadalcanal.
> Battle of the Atlantic September 1939 - May 1945
Clearly a potentially decisive battle: had the Axis won it, the war
would probably have been lost for the Allies. The question is what
were the Axis changes of achieving a decisive victory in that theater?
If the answer is - as I would think it to be - "very small", then this
raises the new question of how decisive that battle would have been,
given the range of realistic outcomes? In other words, Germany was
never going to starve the UK into submission, what it might achieve by
being more successful would be further delays in the western buildup.
Would these be decisive?
Conversely, assuming an early Allied victory in the Atlantic, would
the effect in terms of added Western pressure on Germany be decisive?
Not necessarily, but I suppose it could be argued.
> Moscow 1941
I don't know if losing Moscow would have lost the war for the Soviet
Union. If that was the case, then the battle of Moscow would only have
been decisive as an Axis victory. As things were, the historical
outcome didn't rule out the possibility of Germany defeating the
Soviet Union (e.g. by capturing Moscow in 1942?), or even of avoiding
outright defeat. So Moscow was clearly an important battle but it was
hardly decisive. I'd consider Stalingrad to be more important, because
after that one the Germans knew that they no longer could win by KO
and were only looking for a draw or a small points victory.
LC
David H Thornley
> On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:21:58 -0500, David H Thornley wrote:
>
>> The Battle of Shanghai in 1937 was probably the most significant
>> one of the Pacific War, in determining how the war was going to go.
>
> Japan would probably not have done it if they had access to oil in 1941.
>
was a result of the China War, including the US reaction to it.
Roosevelt was lagging in imposing controls, since he didn't want
to go to war with Japan, and was forced by political pressure to
start imposing restrictions on exports to Japan.
The course of the war was fairly predictable after Shanghai, when after
a lot of fighting the Japanese defeated the best Chinese formations.
Had Japan quickly and decisively won at Shanghai, they might possibly
have been able to win in China, at least by convincing other countries
(like the US) that there was no real point in supporting China. Had
they lost, they would likely have not gotten deep into China.
Hans Christian Hoff
news:90uy1vpl6h6b$.gebk36zz8c4z$.dlg@40tude.net...
> There can only be one decisive battle in a war. It is often defined as the
> battle that brings about a turning point in the conflict. It is not
> necessarily military as it can bring about a political change in the
> conflict. Often it can be determined, only in retrospect.
>
> So I decided to search for this battle in WW2.
>
I think that you should stay by Midway as the decisive one (if any one
battle can be sad to be decisive). This turned the tables in the US/Japanese
conflict, and was what made it safe for the US to select the Nazis as the
pre-eminent enemy. The US decision to concentrate on the defeat of Germany
was probably the single most important of the war.
On the other hand, Ian Kershaw et. al. have rather recently pointed to the
British refusal to enter into peace negotiations with Germany after the
downfall of France as the most significant decision of WWII, in which case
the Battle of Britain may have been the decisive one; if that was lost,
negotiations would probably have been unavoidable after all, and the British
negotiating position would have been very much impaired.
Regards
Hans
Shawn Wilson
wrote:
> There can only be one decisive battle in a war. It is often defined as the
> battle that brings about a turning point in the conflict. It is not
> necessarily military as it can bring about a political change in the
> conflict. Often it can be determined, only in retrospect.
> What are your views?
Khalkhin Gol (Russia v Japan, 1939). Japan turned south instead of
north, freeing Siberian forces to be sent west in 1941...
Stephen Graham
I just finished Coox's _Nomonhan_ (and, boy, that was a bit of a slog).
He makes the point that the results of the battle and the Neutrality
Pact convinced the Soviets that they could withdraw many of their
experienced troops from Siberia. However, the Japanese didn't make the
decision to turn south until August 1941.
Don Phillipson
news:bc67b202-0bba-4089...@y1g2000pra.googlegroups.com...
> . . . if Hitler's grand schemes had come through e.g. D-Day forces
> thrown back into the sea with heavy losses and the panzer reserves
> used to smash an army group's worth of Soviet troops before
> irredeemable damage had been inflicted on the Ostheer, followed up by
> a German atomic bomb, then Nazi Germany might conceivably have won.
Delivery of an atomic bomb is the obvious problem with this scenario,
if we assume German ability to construct one. (1) The Luftwaffe had
few aircraft capable of carrying such a load (say 5 tons) and none
capable of aiming it via bombsight. (2) The actual events of the
war suggest air superiority is prerequisite to use of an atomic
bomb, which Germany never had (over foreign targets) after 1942.
This debate about decisive battles is clarified by Churchill's observation
that the Royal Navy could by itself not win WW2 but could by itself
lose WW2 for everyone else (presumably without any "decisive battle.")
kelly_gr...@yahoo.com
wrote:
There seems a problem with your premise:
Which part of World War 2 are we dealing with? You seem to
be limiting yourself to the European Theater, and Forgetting the
Pacific War! Now, while it is true decisions for one theater can draw
resources required by the other theater away, the decisions..
strategic or operational... in one need not effect thhe other!
If your STILL determined to limit yourself to Europe, I'd
say the candidates come down to: The battle for Stalingrad (not only
did it grind up a goodly part of the German Army, but - also - the
armies of it's allies), Operation Overlord (which brought the Allied
Armies BACK into western Europe), and the Battle of the Atlantic
(which, had the German navy won, may have actually starved Britian
into submission).
However.. there IS also the Pacic to consider...
geo...@ankerstein.org
> This debate about decisive battles is clarified by Churchill's observation
> that the Royal Navy could by itself not win WW2 but could by itself
> lose WW2 for everyone else (presumably without any "decisive battle.")
Admiral Byng was executed for carrying out that thought.
GFH
WaltBJ
Greece necessitating Germany's aid which in turn delayed Barbarossa
and thus General Winter stopped the Germans outside Moscow. Or, Hitler
invading Poland at least three years ahead of his own time-line and
catching his own Navy off guard. A hundred more U-boats - one boggles
at the thought. One could nit-pick all up and down the calendar
thusly.
Walt BJ
suddengunfire
Stalingrad, which ended up with defeating of the German army for the
first time in the WWII theatre and capturing German field marshal by
soviets. Since then Nazi-ruled territories started to shrink and
finally disappeared in the chancellery bunker.
Apart from this I also share an opinion, that there was not one
decisive battle in WWII. The war consist of many phases and each phase
can have its decisive moments. For me such decisive moment was under
Stalingrad, where soviets proved German victorious army could be
defeated and forced to retreat
ThePro
> A battle that lost Germany the war? How about Italy's invasion of
> Greece necessitating Germany's aid which in turn delayed Barbarossa
> and thus General Winter stopped the Germans outside Moscow.
Germany's intervention in Greece did *not* delay Barbarossa. Search
the archives of this group, like this thread
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.war.world-war-ii/browse_thread/thread/f746de28a6dc1159/0bf93bfdc37ed85f
and others as well.
Pierrot Robert
Chicoutimi, Canada
SolomonW
adhoc.
> How was Japan to have access to oil in 1941?
The Dutch government just before it fell agreed to guarantee its sale to
Japan in 1940. Japan when it won this guarantee failed to insure that
Japanese personnel would be controlling this directly in the Dutch East
Indies.
SolomonW
> I think that you should stay by Midway as the decisive one (if any one
> battle can be sad to be decisive). This turned the tables in the US/Japanese
> conflict,
Midway is often a most underrated. I was certainly one of the most
significant battles of the war. But the major battles were then in Russia.
US did help but some reduction in US resources is unlikely to effect the
war there much. The American influence on the war in Europe does take off
till Torch.
> and was what made it safe for the US to select the Nazis as the
> pre-eminent enemy. The US decision to concentrate on the defeat of Germany
> was probably the single most important of the war.
That decison was made earlier.
>
> On the other hand, Ian Kershaw et. al. have rather recently pointed to the
> British refusal to enter into peace negotiations with Germany after the
> downfall of France as the most significant decision of WWII, in which case
> the Battle of Britain may have been the decisive one; if that was lost,
> negotiations would probably have been unavoidable after all, and the British
> negotiating position would have been very much impaired.
Five days in London May 1940 by John Lukacs has a similar unspoken
conclusion.
SolomonW
> Greece necessitating Germany's aid which in turn delayed Barbarossa
> and thus General Winter stopped the Germans outside Moscow.
This is another ww2 myth. It did not delay Barbarossa.
Michael Emrys
> ...by definition there can only be at most one decisive battle in a war.
I am doubtful then how much your definition corresponds to what
actually happened in history. I mean, it sounds pretty airtight and has
a certain esthetic appeal, but in history things are seldom airtight
and their esthetics are nearly always compromised. Like the English
language, it may have more exceptions than rules.
Michael
Michael Emrys
> How about Italy's invasion of Greece necessitating Germany's aid which
> in turn delayed Barbarossa...
I think if you search for this subject in earlier posts, you will find
it rather convincingly argued that the invasions of Yugoslavia and
Greece had little to no effect on the timing of Barbarossa which was
determined by other factors, chiefly late rains over the western USSR.
Michael
Michael Emrys
> ...this one of Stalingrad, which ended up with defeating of the German
> army for the
> first time in the WWII...
Really? You don't regard Operation Crusader in late 1941 as the defeat
for the German army? Then how about being pushed back from Moscow about
the same time?
Michael
Rich Rostrom
wrote:
> What are your views?
That the above statement is false. It is in
fact unusual for a single battle to be decisive;
that is, for the outcome of the war to rest upon
the outcome of that one battle.
There may be a battle which, if the outcome
was reversed, would change the outcome
of the war, but which did not make the historic
outcome certain.
For instance, in WW I, had the Allies lost the
Battle of the Marne, the war might have ended
right then. But the Allied victory at the Marne
did not mean they had won the war.
It is certainly true that after Stalingrad, the
Germans had no hope whatever of defeating
the USSR - but that had less to do with the
outcome of that particular struggle than with
the reformation of the Soviet army, the re-
establishment of Soviet industry in the east,
the massive provision of Lend-Lease supplies,
and the threat to Germany from Britain and the
U.S. - none of which were "battles".
If the Axis failure to take Moscow in 1941
is considered - probably the most important
factor there would be the early arrival of fall
rains in October. The Germans had largely
destroyed the forces defending Moscow,
taking 650,000 prisoners around Vyazma,
and there was actual panic in Moscow. Stalin
himself almost left the city.
But fall rains bogged the German advance
until the ground froze, giving the Soviets
time to form a last line of defense (and forcing
the Germans to attack under horrible conditions).
Arguably, Axis defeat in WW II was inevitable
once the U.S. decided to build atomic weapons
and the Germans screwed up their bomb project.
Again, not a battle.
Hans Christian Hoff
Hans
"Michael Emrys" <em...@olypen.com> skrev i melding
news:xHku8B.A....@sol01.ashbva.gweep.ca...
SolomonW
>> There can only be one decisive battle in a war.t.
>
>> What are your views?
>
> That the above statement is false. It is in
> fact unusual for a single battle to be decisive;
> that is, for the outcome of the war to rest upon
> the outcome of that one battle.
It is am definition. There may not be a decisive battle in a war but if
there is, there can be only one. Your arguement is clearly that there was
no decisive battle.
Padraigh ProAmerica
the ability to decipher ENIGMA and IJN-24. Without the inteligence
provide by the codebreakers, many of the important battles could have
come out VERY differently!
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
Albert Einstein
mike
wrote:
>
> The Dutch government just before it fell agreed to guarantee its sale to
> Japan in 1940. Japan when it won this guarantee failed to insure that
> Japanese personnel would be controlling this directly in the Dutch East
> Indies.
Also, that didn't provide for transport, or that existing contracts
with the UK already accounted for all high octane gasoline produced.
A period Time magazine piece noted that the agreement was post
Nazi invasion, as well, and would supply 40% of Japans needs,
where previous US sales was approx 75%. Japanese efforts to
get Mexican Oil also were not panning out, despite the US/UK
embargo of said product. Transport issues again. US would not
allow Panama Canal transit. The few numbers of Tankers
available and long transit times made that a non starter,
even had the new Mexican President not been swayed
by US pressure not to sell.
**
mike
**
David H Thornley
Or, Hitler
> invading Poland at least three years ahead of his own time-line and
> catching his own Navy off guard. A hundred more U-boats - one boggles
> at the thought. One could nit-pick all up and down the calendar
> thusly.
>
more years of rearmament and preparation. While their economies would
have been strained by this, Germany's economy was always fairly close
to collapse.
Without being able to loot conquered countries, or being able to blame
all shortages on the war, it's hard to see how Germany was supposed to
get another hundred U-boats, particularly since the plan was to build
up the surface fleet.
SolomonW
Voltaire once stated that he refused to argue with someone before they
agreed on the meaning of the words they were going to use.
Note even with the definition that I am using, such battles have certainly
occured in history.
SolomonW
> allow Panama Canal transit. The few numbers of Tankers
> available and long transit times made that a non starter,
>From the Dutch East Indies, this would not be a problem. I suspect that if
Japanese leaders had a choice between war with the US in December or
building tankers, they would have picked the latter.
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> There can only be one decisive battle in a war. It is often defined as the
> battle that brings about a turning point in the conflict. It is not
> necessarily military as it can bring about a political change in the
> conflict. Often it can be determined, only in retrospect.
As others have said, your original premise, "there can be only once
decisive battle in war", is completely wrong. There is no "battle
that brings about a turning point in the conflict". By "wrong" I mean
you can't build an argument upon it.
WW II had many military and political variables going on
simultaneously. While there were two broad sides--Axis and Allies--
there were smaller conflicts within the broader picture. While Japan
and Germany were allies much of their fighting was done independently
of each other. Italy switched sides during the war. Despite the
political rhetoric, different countries fought for different reasons.
Basically, while some battles were significant, had they gone the
other way the ultimate outcome of the war would be the same. Perhaps
the cost of victory might have been higher in lives and treasure (or
perhaps lower).
The question is similar to "what domestic scientific or industrial
process" won the war? The answer is that while there were many that
helped a great deal, no one event was decisive.
It is important to note that military, domestic, industrial, and
political policies all play a role in victory and are constantly
evolving. It's not just the battle itself, but the resolve of the
people. For instance many of those previously conqurered and
terrorized by the Soviet Union welcomed the German invaders as
liberators. That is, until the Germans showed themselves to be even
crueller than the Soviets. The cruel German treatment of Soviets and
Russians galvanized them to fight very hard and take tremendous
casualties in defense of their motherland, despite Stalin's
dictatorship. That stupid German policy did not lose the war for
them, but it certainly contributed to the loss.
To determine a "decisive battle" by your definition you would need to
do many "what ifs". "What ifs" involve too many loose variables to
come up with a conclusive answer. Suppose, for example, the US didn't
give Russia as much lend-lease supplies. What would've happened in
the global sense? There are all sorts of possibilities.
David H Thornley
>
>>From the Dutch East Indies, this would not be a problem.
Sure it was. The Japanese didn't have anywhere near enough
tankers to supply their needs from the Dutch East Indies.
I suspect that if
> Japanese leaders had a choice between war with the US in December or
> building tankers, they would have picked the latter.
>
How many tankers do you expect them to build? The Japanese had
a decent shipbuilding industry, but it definitely had limits.
Michael Emrys
> Voltaire once stated that he refused to argue with someone before they
> agreed on the meaning of the words they were going to use.
That's all well and good, but I still maintain, as other posters to
this thread seem to maintain, that there was no real event in WW II
that corresponded to your definition. So far, it just seems to be
hanging in thin air without anything to support it. Now if you had some
solid information to support your thesis, we might have something to
talk about. But so far, every instance that has been put forward as a
possibility for consideration has fallen short in some way or other.
Michael
SolomonW
> I suspect that if
>> Japanese leaders had a choice between war with the US in December or
>> building tankers, they would have picked the latter.
>>
> How many tankers do you expect them to build? The Japanese had
> a decent shipbuilding industry, but it definitely had limits.
More than enough. After capturing the oil fields and getting them going the
Japanese dramatically increased its oil imports. By the first 3 months of
1943, Japan oil imports had risen to 80% of the pre-July 1941 oil embargo.
Then it started to drop as the Allied submarines came into the picture.
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:15mxmvrgu561k$.o4m2uqjl4ma5.dlg@40tude.net...
Where does this come from?
USSBS figures,
In the period April to June 1941 Japan imported 2,645,000 barrels of refined
oil products, plus 3,004,000 barrels of crude oil.
In the period January to March 1943 the figures were 821,000 and
2,059,000 barrels respectively.
In the period January to March 1944 the figures were 1,498,000 and
1,326,000 barrels respectively.
The wartime high for imports of refined oil product was the first quarter of
1944, about 30% higher than the next best figure.
The wartime high for imports of crude oil was the second quarter of 1943,
3,712,000 barrels, about 20% above the next best figure.
In the second quarter of 1943 the Japanese imported some 4,597,000
barrels of crude and refined oil products. The next best figure is
3,992,000
barrels in the final quarter of 1942. The figure for the second quarter of
1941 is 5,649,000 barrels.
As the tankers became scare the Japanese chose to import refined
product, to maximise tanker efficiency.
By the way the total oil imports in 1940 were 37,160,000 barrels, Japan
topped the 30 million barrels per year figure for imports in 1935. That is
around 8 million barrels per quarter.
1935 33,462,000 barrels
1936 34,735,000 barrels
1937 36,882,000 barrels
1938 32,448,000 barrels
1939 30,661,000 barrels
Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.
SolomonW
> "SolomonW" <Solo...@nospamAustraliaMail.com> wrote in message
> news:15mxmvrgu561k$.o4m2uqjl4ma5.dlg@40tude.net...
>> On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:05:44 -0500, David H Thornley wrote:
>>
>>> I suspect that if
>>>> Japanese leaders had a choice between war with the US in December or
>>>> building tankers, they would have picked the latter.
>>>>
>>> How many tankers do you expect them to build? The Japanese had
>>> a decent shipbuilding industry, but it definitely had limits.
>>
>> More than enough. After capturing the oil fields and getting them going
>> the
>> Japanese dramatically increased its oil imports. By the first 3 months of
>> 1943, Japan oil imports had risen to 80% of the pre-July 1941 oil embargo.
>> Then it started to drop as the Allied submarines came into the picture.
>
> Where does this come from?
The prize by Daniel Yergin p356
Let me quote
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The result was astonishing. Before the outbreak of war, the Japanese
military had planned on getting sufficient oil within two years from the
Indies— what was called the Southern Zone—to make up for shortfalls. That
goal was exceeded. Oil production in the Southern Zone had been 65.1
million barrels in 1940. In 1942, the Japanese were able to produce just
25.9 million barrels, but by 1943, they had gotten it back to 49.6 million
barrels—75 percent of the 1940 level. In the first three months of 1943,
Japanese oil imports had risen to 80 percent of the amount imported in the
same period of 1941, just before the imposition of the oil embargo in July
1941 by the Americans, British, and Dutch. As they had planned, the
Japanese were able to use the captured East Indies to replenish their
stocks of petroleum. Moreover, there was no lack of oil in the Southern
Zone. The Japanese fleet could refuel locally at will.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Daniel Yergin does not actually list his source for this but does quote
your USSBS here.
I can see your figures are from C51 of the USSBS report p135.
You have now presented me with a problem I love, trying to reconcile these
two statements.
I confess I dispute Daniel Yergin's comments about the Japanese Fleet
suspect. In Guadalcanal already the navy oil consumption was already a
major problem.
I am wondering if Daniel Yergin is adding to the oil imports, part of the
local use by the Japanese fleet in the South.
http://www.combinedfleet.com/guadoil1.htm
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Imperial Navy alone was consuming about 305,000 tons of heavy oil (in the
form of fuel oil) per month by this stage in the war (Parillo, p. 237).
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
That is another 2.24 million barrels a month = 6.72 million barrels a
quarter more then enough to get his figures up.
SolomonW
>> Voltaire once stated that he refused to argue with someone before they
>> agreed on the meaning of the words they were going to use.
>
> That's all well and good, but I still maintain, as other posters to
> this thread seem to maintain, that there was no real event in WW II
> that corresponded to your definition.
I would agree although I think Moscow comes very close.
Still it is interesting that many of the other posters to this thread using
a different definition to me of a "decisive battle" came up with their own
decisive battle.
GFH felt it was the invasion of Poland by the Germans.
Louis C stated it was "The western crossing of the Rhine and encirclement
of the Ruhr, followed by the Soviet capture of Berlin."
Hans stated it was Midway.
Shawn Wilson stated it was Khalkhin Gol (Russia v Japan, 1939).
kelly_graham stated Stalingrad as did suddengunfire.
Probably as Don Phillipson states after listing several battles that he
felt could be considered decisive states he 'requires on the basic
proposition probably requires a definition of "decisive" ' to proceed.
Possibly he would agree with me that it has become a good example of what
Voltaire was talking about when people discuss without agreeing on
definitions first.
Bay Man
> On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:13:47 -0500, Michael Emrys wrote:
>
>>> Voltaire once stated that he refused to argue with someone before they
>>> agreed on the meaning of the words they were going to use.
>>
>> That's all well and good, but I still maintain, as other posters to
>> this thread seem to maintain, that there was no real event in WW II
>> that corresponded to your definition.
"There can only be one decisive battle in a war. It is often defined as the
battle that brings about a turning point in the conflict. It is not
necessarily military as it can bring about a political change in the
conflict. Often it can be determined, only in retrospect."
"Turning point in the conflict" are the key words. That is the point when
the enemy was pretty well going to be defeated. It has to be two events,
one political the other military.
1. US industry availability. A series of announcements by the US in 1940
giving open availability to US industry and raw materials to France and the
UK and to rapid expansion of US forces. In May 1940 Roosevelt announced
production of 50,000 planes per year. This meant the Germans could never
compete in arms and would eventually be defeated. This was a "Turning point
in the conflict".
2. El Alemain. This event meant a German Army was to be wiped out, meaning
the UK & USA would focus on the European Continent. This was a "Turning
point in the conflict".
Note 1: Germany winning the battle of Moscow would not give Germany the
USSR. The USSR winning meant a tooing and froing on that front, so not a
"Turning point in the conflict".
Note 2: Pear Harbour was not a battle but a military/political event.
However it did not mean Germany was going to be defeated. That was already
pretty certain by then, so not a "Turning point in the conflict".
David H Thornley
>
> "Turning point in the conflict" are the key words. That is the point
> when the enemy was pretty well going to be defeated. It has to be two
> events, one political the other military.
>
time. A turning point in the conflict would be either where it changes
a lot, or possibly where it crosses 50%. The enemy isn't necessarily
"pretty well going to be defeated" at that point.
One definition of the turning point against Germany would be late
1942, as Germany was primarily on the offensive before then and
primarily on the defensive afterwards, but it isn't clear that
that marked a large change in the chance Germany had of winning
the war. I'd say that Germany was likely to lose the war before
then, and Stalingrad, the defense around Rzhev, El Alamein, and
Torch were more like signs things were changing rather than
changes themselves.
Specifically, this was a reflection of the increasing capabilities
of the Western Allies (largely the result of US participation), and
the Soviet feat of rebuilding a very credible offensive capability.
> 1. US industry availability.
Also of significance was the Soviet revival. Most of the front-line
Soviet army was destroyed in 1941, and a very large amount of Soviet
population and industry was in areas occupied by Germany. The
Soviets managed to rebuild a large army, with new organizations and
doctrine, capable of very large offensives.
> 2. El Alemain. This event meant a German Army was to be wiped out,
> meaning the UK & USA would focus on the European Continent. This was a
> "Turning point in the conflict".
>
More than that was being wiped out concurrently in the Soviet Union,
the British were already primarily committed against Germany for obvious
geographical reasons, and the US was fully committed to "Germany First".
Not to mention that winning the battle was not all that strategically
important, given the Anglo-American invasions in Morocco and Algeria.
El Alamein's significance was as a morale boost, showing that the
British could beat the Germans (although why everybody keeps forgetting
Crusader is a mystery to me). It did not destroy Panzerarmee Afrika,
although it really badly hurt it, and the Panzerarmee was going to have
to pull way back regardless.
> Note 1: Germany winning the battle of Moscow would not give Germany the
> USSR. The USSR winning meant a tooing and froing on that front, so not
> a "Turning point in the conflict".
>
Exactly what would have won is a mystery, and will remain so. It is
possible that, had Germany taken Moscow, Germany would have won.
It wasn't a turning point in the conflict in the sense that the flow
of events changed, but it represented a significant loss of opportunity
for Germany.
> Note 2: Pear Harbour was not a battle but a military/political event.
> However it did not mean Germany was going to be defeated. That was
> already pretty certain by then, so not a "Turning point in the conflict".
>
Not to mention that the US was already actively fighting Germany at
the time. It was a potential distraction from the "Germany First"
strategy, and in fact resulted in large diversions of US strength to
the Pacific, away from Germany, in 1942.
Geoffrey Sinclair
> On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:12:01 -0500, Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:
>
>> "SolomonW" <Solo...@nospamAustraliaMail.com> wrote in message
>>> After capturing the oil fields and getting them going the
>>> Japanese dramatically increased its oil imports. By the first 3 months
>>> of
>>> 1943, Japan oil imports had risen to 80% of the pre-July 1941 oil
>>> embargo.
>>> Then it started to drop as the Allied submarines came into the picture.
>>
>> Where does this come from?
>
> The prize by Daniel Yergin p356
>
> Let me quote
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> The result was astonishing. Before the outbreak of war, the Japanese
> military had planned on getting sufficient oil within two years from the
> IndiesĄX what was called the Southern ZoneĄXto make up for shortfalls.
> That
> goal was exceeded. Oil production in the Southern Zone had been 65.1
> million barrels in 1940. In 1942, the Japanese were able to produce just
> 25.9 million barrels, but by 1943, they had gotten it back to 49.6 million
> barrelsĄX75 percent of the 1940 level. In the first three months of 1943,
> Japanese oil imports had risen to 80 percent of the amount imported in the
> same period of 1941, just before the imposition of the oil embargo in July
> 1941 by the Americans, British, and Dutch. As they had planned, the
> Japanese were able to use the captured East Indies to replenish their
> stocks of petroleum. Moreover, there was no lack of oil in the Southern
> Zone. The Japanese fleet could refuel locally at will.
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> Daniel Yergin does not actually list his source for this but does quote
> your USSBS here.
It is known the Japanese finally produced more fuel in the Southern Area
than they could move, as storage capacity filled they simply burned the
excess.
This was after a major set back early when one of the few Japanese ships
sunk happened to be carrying key men and equipment to put the oil fields
and refineries back together. The allied sabotage efforts also had their
problems, which made it easier for the Japanese to fix things.
(snip) of USSBS figures for length reasons.
> I can see your figures are from C51 of the USSBS report p135.
Then you would also see the following,
Crude oil inventory April 1941 20,857,000 barrels, and this simply
declined every quarter of the war, down to 10,390,000 barrels by
July 1943. Note the late war declines of crude oil stocks decline
rapidly thanks to the decision to try and only import refined stocks
to maximise tanker capacity.
Refined oil products inventory April 1941, 28,038,000 barrels, this
held up for about a year, in April 1942 it was 25,882,000 barrels
as the decline began, down to 17,067,000 barrels in July 1943.
So Japan's refineries were being under supplied in early 1943,
For all the effort of supplying Japan with oil the reality is the imports
never equalled the pre war levels at a time when consumption was
well above pre war levels.
> You have now presented me with a problem I love, trying to reconcile these
> two statements.
Have fun then. Note 1 barrel of crude equals less than a barrel of
refined oil products, so it depends on what oil is being measured.
For me the reality is Japan was short of tankers, that can be seen by the
steady decline in oil stocks in Japan and the known problems from fuel
supply limits when the IJN fought in the Solomons. To the point where
Yamato and Musashi were used as tankers.
> I confess I dispute Daniel Yergin's comments about the Japanese Fleet
> suspect.
This means?
> In Guadalcanal already the navy oil consumption was already a
> major problem.
>
> I am wondering if Daniel Yergin is adding to the oil imports, part of the
> local use by the Japanese fleet in the South.
Most probably. He is reporting IJN consumption, when much of the fleet
was not in Japan.
> http://www.combinedfleet.com/guadoil1.htm
Nice to know someone tried to put some numbers on the IJN fuel
problem.
>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Imperial Navy alone was consuming about 305,000 tons of heavy oil (in the
> form of fuel oil) per month by this stage in the war (Parillo, p. 237).
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> That is another 2.24 million barrels a month = 6.72 million barrels a
> quarter more then enough to get his figures up.
Then if you look at page 137 of the report you will see the IJN was using
between 2 and 3 million barrels of fuel oil per quarter in the "inner zone",
so
say 1 million per month. Any further consumption was being drawn from
outside sources directly if the above figure is correct.
This would still have to be shipped to useful places. Few IJN ships could
refuel at the southern oil fields and then be able to operate in the
Solomons
with enough fuel to do something useful.
The big jump in inner zone consumption was in aviation fuel and fuel oil.
Bay Man
news:nJednQ-a8_nbksPU...@posted.visi...
> Bay Man wrote:
>>
>> "Turning point in the conflict" are the key words. That is the point
>> when the enemy was pretty well going to be defeated. It has to be two
>> events, one political the other military.
>
> A turning point in the conflict would be either where it changes a lot, or
> possibly where it crosses 50%. The enemy isn't necessarily
Well, if a graph is drawn, it was less than 50% for Germany on 3rd September
1939. The combined forces, and economies, of the UK and France was superior
to Germany. German generals were wanting to shoot Hitler after Poland
fearing total defeat against the UK and France.
> One definition of the turning point against Germany would be late 1942, as
> Germany was primarily on the offensive before then and
> primarily on the defensive afterwards, but it isn't clear that that marked
> a large change in the chance Germany had of winning
> the war.
Unless Germany forced the USSR to surrender within 2 months or so, they were
not going to win against the Russians. Taking ground was meaningless, as
they were short of everything and could not supply fast enough what they
had. The USSR was massing with a large industrial complex over the Urals.
That is from late 1941, they had no chance of winning in the east. Now the
turning point is getting earlier.
> I'd say that Germany was likely to lose the war before then, and
> Stalingrad, the defense around Rzhev, El Alamein, and
> Torch were more like signs things were changing rather than changes
> themselves.
There is some truth in that. The challenge is to identify a turning point
which is very difficult. I would say 3rd September 1939. Germany entered
into a war it could not win. They had some initial spectacular gains but
nothing conclusive.
> Specifically, this was a reflection of the increasing capabilities
> of the Western Allies (largely the result of US participation), and
> the Soviet feat of rebuilding a very credible offensive capability.
>
>> 1. US industry availability.
> Also of significance was the Soviet revival.
This was not a decisive "turning point". The availability of US industry to
compliment French and UK industry meant 100% the Germans would not win.
This was a decisive point.
>> 2. El Alemein. This event meant a German Army was to be wiped out,
>> meaning the UK & USA would focus on the European Continent. This was a
>> "Turning point in the conflict".
>
> More than that was being wiped out
> concurrently in the Soviet Union,
El Alemein meant in a matter of weeks the Germans would be out of Africa and
an army gone. The Russians were gradually defeating the Germans but nothing
conclusive. No decisive "turning point". There was no decisive point in the
east. It came in the west, which allowed the Russians to progress west.
> the British were already primarily committed against Germany for obvious
> geographical reasons, and the US was fully committed to "Germany First".
> Not to mention that winning the battle was not all that strategically
> important, given the Anglo-American invasions in Morocco and Algeria.
El Alemein was very important. It meant the UK & US could concentrate on
the European continent, a decisive "turning point", in the physical war.
This means the Germans were fighting on many fronts which they could not do
for any sustained period.
>> Note 1: Germany winning the battle of Moscow would not give Germany the
>> USSR. The USSR winning meant a tooing and froing on that front, so not
>> a "Turning point in the conflict".
>>
> Exactly what would have won is a mystery, and will remain so. It is
> possible that, had Germany taken Moscow, Germany would have won.
Even if Moscow had fallen, the Germans could not have defeated the USSR.
They just did not have enough resources and could not supply what they had
fast enough. The Russians were massing with a large industrial complex over
the Urals.
>> Note 2: Pear Harbour was not a battle but a military/political event.
>> However it did not mean Germany was going to be defeated. That was
>> already pretty certain by then, so not a "Turning point in the conflict".
>>
> Not to mention that the US was already actively fighting Germany at
> the time.
Some anti U-Boat activity in the North Atlantic could not be viewed as the
US fighting Germany. That is stretching it somewhat.
Hans Christian Hoff
news:nJednQ-a8_nbksPU...@posted.visi...
>>
> Not to mention that the US was already actively fighting Germany at
> the time. It was a potential distraction from the "Germany First"
> strategy, and in fact resulted in large diversions of US strength to
> the Pacific, away from Germany, in 1942.
This is just why I believe that Midway was so important. Had the Japanese
succeeded in occupying Midway and at the same time do serious damage to what
was left of the U.S. carrier force, it seems to me doubtful if the "Germany
first" doctrine could have been upheld.
Hans
Andrew Clark
> Specifically, this was a reflection of the increasing capabilities
> of the Western Allies (largely the result of US participation)....
The increased war-making capacities of the BCE (what other significant
'western ally' of the Us was there?) in 1942 certainly had something to do
with US participation - indeed the US made a very significant contribution
to British war-making potential, especially by 1944-45. But it overstates
the case considerably to say that the increased war-making capacities of the
BCE by 1942 were largely due to US participation. US aid to the BCE had not
even started to arrive in quantity by 1942.
> El Alamein's significance was as a morale boost, showing that the
> British could beat the Germans (although why everybody keeps forgetting
> Crusader is a mystery to me).
2nd Alamein saw the effective destruction of 9-10 division-equivalents of
German-Italian troops and their logistic support, including some highly
motorised and mechanised formations. That's a military victory of
significance ranking alongside any of the feted Western battles of late WW2
(Falaise, Ruhr, Ardennes), although it may be small by comparison to some of
the battles on the Eastern front.
2nd Alamein led to the opening of the Suez Canal and the resultant saving of
over 1 million tons of shipping per annum, without which it is doubtful that
Dragoon and Neptune could have been staged, possibly at all and certainly
not on their historical timetable.
Without 2nd Alamein, the likelihood is that Tunisia would not have been
cleared on the historical timetable, which would have delayed the invasion
of Sicily and Italy and possibly killed the Italian campaign completely, due
to the US impatience to land in France in early 1944. The huge troop and
equipment losses incurred by the Axis in these campaigns would have allowed
additional redeployments to France and to the East in the later war, which
may have been critical to the success of Neptune/Overlord and locally
significant in the East.
The failure of the Allies to defeat Italy and clear North Africa would have
had significant political consequences for the attitude of Spain and
Portugal, which again could have affected important Allied raw material
supplies.
All this indicates that 2nd Alamein was more than a "morale boost".
> It did not destroy Panzerarmee Afrika,
> although it really badly hurt it, and the Panzerarmee was going to have
> to pull way back regardless.
The divisions and units of PAA were reduced to less than 10% of their
fighting strength by 2nd Alamein, which counts as destruction in my book.
Torch would not necessarily have led to a forced withdrawal by PAA - the PAA
troops were not particularly needed to man the stop lines in Tunisia
(reinforcements were available more speedily from Italy) and the Allies
could not project amphibious force deep into the central Med to bypass
Tunisia without the air cover which 2nd Alamein made possible by winning the
Libyan airfields. It would have been perfectly possible for Kesselring to
stall 1st Army in Tunisia with one hand while Rommel held off 8th Army in
Libya, had 2nd Alamein failed or not been mounted.
chea...@yahoo.com
of France. History teaches that Hitler could have been stopped then
and didn't have a big enough army to fight everybody but went
unopposed. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigns. Winston
Churchill formed a National Government and became Prime Minister of
Great Britain
The German invasion of France through Belgium and Holland completely
catches the French Army off guard. The ill-prepared British and
Belgium army are totally defeated by the German Armored Divisions. The
British Army evacuates from Dunkirk leaving the French to fend for
them.
The battle of France ended just six weeks later, when on June 25 the
French government capitulated to Nazi Germany after a disastrous,
humiliating defeat. By that time, Belgium, the Netherlands, and tiny
Luxembourg had also fallen to the Germans, leaving Adolf Hitler in
complete mastery of western Europe.
Hitler could have been stopped at France in 1940 and if he hadn't
invaded France the rest of the world was content with letting him have
what he had already accomplished.
Gary Smith
www.MtMestas.com
Bay Man
news:f93e20e1-c144-4a74...@s9g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
The war between the UK & France had already started. Norway, the RN
blockade, UK air strikes, U-Boats.
The problem was when Germany had invaded Poland. They knew the UK and
France would declare war. It was not a surprise. After Poland, all German
generals could only see defeat against the UK & France and wanted Hitler
shot to prevent a German defeat. General Halder carried a gun at meetings
with Hitler in order to shoot him. If he had, WW2 would not have happened
and most probably German forces move out of Poland.
When German forces took France in a wild gamble that paid off, they mainly
moved behind Hitler.
David H Thornley
> "David H Thornley" <da...@thornley.net> wrote
>
>> Specifically, this was a reflection of the increasing capabilities
>> of the Western Allies (largely the result of US participation)....
>
> The increased war-making capacities of the BCE (what other significant
> 'western ally' of the Us was there?) in 1942 certainly had something to do
> with US participation
Without actually bothering to look it up, the BCE started rearming
earlier and presumably reached its peak earlier. Until sometime in
1942, the US was serving primarily as a place where the British could
negotiate with a number of companies, aside from various naval
contributions. (There were fifty overage and thoroughly mediocre
destroyers, which appear to have been useful for about a year, ten
Coast Guard ships which were probably much better suited for British
needs, repairs of British warships, US participation in convoy
escorting, that sort of thing.)
In later 1942, the USAAF made a slight contribution, and the US Army
landed in North Africa, making a contribution, and Britain got
Lend-Lease equipment. From 1942 on, the US started to contribute
more, and continued to do so.
>> El Alamein's significance was as a morale boost, showing that the
>> British could beat the Germans (although why everybody keeps forgetting
>> Crusader is a mystery to me).
>
> 2nd Alamein saw the effective destruction of 9-10 division-equivalents of
> German-Italian troops and their logistic support, including some highly
> motorised and mechanised formations.
It was significant in that, but those formations were doomed anyway,
since Allied attacks from Algeria and Morocco were sufficient to
push the Germans out of their logistical base. It would, of course,
have taken longer.
> 2nd Alamein led to the opening of the Suez Canal and the resultant saving of
> over 1 million tons of shipping per annum, without which it is doubtful that
> Dragoon and Neptune could have been staged, possibly at all and certainly
> not on their historical timetable.
>
That would be operations over the whole of the MTO, primarily the
conquest of North Africa and Sicily. Second El Alamein contributed
but was not vital.
> Without 2nd Alamein, the likelihood is that Tunisia would not have been
> cleared on the historical timetable, which would have delayed the invasion
> of Sicily and Italy and possibly killed the Italian campaign completely, due
> to the US impatience to land in France in early 1944.
The Italian campaign would have been no great loss. It was necessary,
as you point out earlier, to conquer Sicily, and that was going to
happen.
The huge troop and
> equipment losses incurred by the Axis in these campaigns would have allowed
> additional redeployments to France and to the East in the later war, which
> may have been critical to the success of Neptune/Overlord and locally
> significant in the East.
>
The big loss was in the fall of Tunisia. Sicily was, in addition to
securing a very strategic island, was something of an attrition victory
like 2nd Alamein.
Italy was primarily a way for the Allies to tie down Axis troops with
forces that couldn't be deployed to a more important theater. If the
Allied forces had advanced into the very north of Italy, there was
no good way to exploit out of there to anywhere that mattered.
The capture of southern Italy was also somewhat useful.
> The failure of the Allies to defeat Italy and clear North Africa would have
> had significant political consequences for the attitude of Spain and
> Portugal, which again could have affected important Allied raw material
> supplies.
>
Really?
At that point, the Allies were richer, and could use military force in
Iberia a whole lot more than the Axis could. It was also becoming
at least more believable that Germany was going down, and that Spain
and Portugal (which was friendly to Britain in the first place)
might want to not be on the "naughty" list.
> All this indicates that 2nd Alamein was more than a "morale boost".
>
More than that, but that was its biggest effect.
> The divisions and units of PAA were reduced to less than 10% of their
> fighting strength by 2nd Alamein, which counts as destruction in my book.
>
Not, however, by the German book. As the Allies found after the Falaise
pocket, a German formation that was terribly mauled could show up again
in fighting condition in a surprisingly short time. Indeed, Rommel
was able to retire in good order with what he still had, and received
reinforcements so that he could counterattack on his way back.
> Torch would not necessarily have led to a forced withdrawal by PAA - the PAA
> troops were not particularly needed to man the stop lines in Tunisia
Which would not have remained stopped indefinitely. Once Tunisia went,
or the German positions there bypassed, PAA was in real trouble.
> (reinforcements were available more speedily from Italy) and the Allies
> could not project amphibious force deep into the central Med to bypass
> Tunisia without the air cover which 2nd Alamein made possible by winning the
> Libyan airfields.
The Allies could defeat Tunisia from just one side, if needed. 2nd
Alamein sped up the process somewhat. If Tunisia fell, PAA was doomed.
El Alamein was not a strategic position, since after Alam Halfa there
was obviously no way the Germans were getting through to Alexandria.
The right move was to pull out of the Alamein position and head west.
Montgomery sped that up, and made it a lot more expensive. It was
certainly a useful thing to do, but not all that strategically
important.
It would have been perfectly possible for Kesselring to
> stall 1st Army in Tunisia with one hand while Rommel held off 8th Army in
> Libya, had 2nd Alamein failed or not been mounted.
>
For a while, and the aftermath would have been very unpleasant for
the Germans.
David H Thornley
>>
> The war between the UK & France had already started. Norway, the RN
> blockade, UK air strikes, U-Boats.
>
their problems was victory, and they were making long-range plans.
Had Germany decided to stop without invading France, the Western
Allies would have built up enough force to attack.
Bay Man
news:z9adndkchv5BKcPU...@posted.visi...
> (There were fifty overage and thoroughly mediocre
> destroyers, which appear to have been useful for
> about a year,
A year? If only. Few of them were any use and one or two were given to the
Russians. They were a waste of junk.
>> 2nd Alamein led to the opening of the Suez
>> Canal and the resultant saving of
>> over 1 million tons of shipping per annum,
>> without which it is doubtful that
>> Dragoon and Neptune could have been staged,
>> possibly at all and certainly
>> not on their historical timetable.
>
> That would be operations over the whole of the
> MTO, primarily the conquest of North Africa and
> Sicily. Second El Alamein contributed but was not vital.
Without the removal of the Germans and Italians from North Africa, a
successful invasion of Italy was doubtful. The point about the Suez Canal is
very real to subsequent operations. El Alemein was vital and a highly
important "turning point" in the physical war. It is the only battle that
can be clearly identified as a clear decisive "turning point". One which
from then onwards meant the war would be only won by one side.
If the Germans had pushed the British out of North Africa and took the Suez
Canal, the situation would have been very different. El Alemein was vital in
many respects, even to the supply of India and the conflict in the Far East.
> Italy was primarily a way for the Allies to
> tie down Axis troops with forces that couldn't
> be deployed to a more important theater.
After the Allies had a clear foothold in France, it may have been wise to
move the bulk of the troops out of Italy and into France. The Germans would
retreat into Germany, but a massive allied advance over the German plains
would not have made any difference if more German troops were there.
Keeping southern Italy was vital for naval protection in the Med.
>> All this indicates that 2nd Alamein was more
>> than a "morale boost".
>
> More than that, but that was its biggest effect.
You need to read up more on this part of WW2. The need to remove the
Germans and Italians from North Africa has been well put across.
> Not, however, by the German book. As the Allies
> found after the Falaise pocket, a German formation
> that was terribly mauled could show up again
> in fighting condition in a surprisingly short time.
The re-grouped German troops who escaped the Falaise pocket were not a fully
fit fighting unit. They were short of everything and demoralised being
constantly bombed by Allied planes.
SolomonW
>> Daniel Yergin
Now I wish I could ask him how he determined his figures. I find yours more
plausible
However getting back to the original point. At the period of Pearl Harbor,
Japan had about 575,000 tons of tankers. She could given peace grow that
fleet rapidly. Japan took based on your figures around 8 million barrels a
quarter or about 1 million tons. Indonesia to Japan is not such a long
haul. So surely in peacetime, this is not much of an ask.
Bay Man
> Bay Man wrote:
>>>
>> The war between the UK & France had already started. Norway, the RN
>> blockade, UK air strikes, U-Boats.
>>
> Precisely. The British and French realized that the only way out of
> their problems was victory, and they were making long-range plans.
What was clear was that the Battle of France was not "the battle that brings
about a turning point in the conflict". Before the battle the USA had
opened up its industry to France and UK. During the battle, May 1940, the
USA announced the building of 50,000 planes year. The outcome of the battle
was not clear when announced.
The German victory did not open up US industry to the UK, that door was
already open, so the battle of France was not a "turning point". If the
battle opened up US industry to the UK then it would be in consideration for
being decisive.
> Had Germany decided to stop without invading
> France, the Western Allies would have built up
> enough force to attack.
France and the UK, who were allied, already had enough forces to attack
Germany. The combined forces of France, Germany, Holland and Belgium was
far superior to Germany.
Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction.
Page 371. The German army 2.439 tanks, while the French were as an army
were far more motorised with 3,254 tanks. Dutch, Belgian, UK & French tanks
in total was 4,200 tanks. The BEF was a fully motorised army, no horses
were used to tow guns or supplies, unlike the German army, which mainly
horse drawn. "the majority of the German tanks sent into battle in 1940,
were inferior to the their French, British and Belgian counterparts".
Page 372, "The Luftwaffe was rated at 3.578 combat aircraft in May 1940,
compared to a total Allied strength of 4,469".
Page 372, "German success cannot be attributed to overwhelming superiority
in the industrial equipment of modern warfare".
Page 376, "none of these were a match for the heaviest French armour. Nor
did the Germans have an anti-tank gun capable of stopping the Char B, as
became evident in a number of shocking incidents when individual French
tanks massacred entire columns of German infantry."
Page 373, "In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to
expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had
arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg
suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other than
military incompetence for their pitiful defeat. But whereas it suited the
Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment, Germany's own
propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic terms."
David H Thornley
> "David H Thornley" <da...@thornley.net> wrote in message
> news:z9adndkchv5BKcPU...@posted.visi...
>
>> (There were fifty overage and thoroughly mediocre
>> destroyers, which appear to have been useful for
>> about a year,
>
> A year? If only. Few of them were any use and one or two were given to
> the Russians. They were a waste of junk.
>
like U-boat kills. They were definitely overage, and definitely
weren't the best destroyers around when they were built (that honor
would go to the somewhat earlier British V&W destroyers, unless
there's some I missed).
However, they were involved in the sinking of several U-boats, and
seem to have served acceptably, if not well. The ones the US
kept served in all front-line destroyer roles, at least until
enough considerably better ones were available. While there were
good reasons for replacing them, they don't seem to have been
hopeless.
(During the Battle of Midway, the USN in the Aleutians had about
a dozen of them formed into a torpedo attack force. Since they
were about the least weatherly ships of that size around, it
does seem an odd place to use them.)
> Without the removal of the Germans and Italians from North Africa, a
> successful invasion of Italy was doubtful.
Certainly.
The point about the Suez
> Canal is very real to subsequent operations.
Certainly. It was extremely important that the shipping route through
the Med be restored. This involved clearing North Africa, Sicily, and
preferably southern Italy.
El Alemein was vital and a
> highly important "turning point" in the physical war.
That is the debating point here. How important was it in the process
of clearing North Africa?
It is the only
> battle that can be clearly identified as a clear decisive "turning
> point". One which from then onwards meant the war would be only won by
> one side.
>
Except that it can't. It doesn't represent the first battle the Germans
lost; if nothing else, the British had beaten them a year before in the
Crusader offensive. The Germans continued to win battles here and
there.
Nor did it make a heck of a lot of difference to who was going to win
the war. It was one battle in a theater of war that was at best
secondary. If the British had lost, nothing would have happened there
until the Panzerarmee had to retreat after the Torch offensive. Since
the British won, they were able to follow along behind the Germans.
> If the Germans had pushed the British out of North Africa and took the
> Suez Canal, the situation would have been very different.
No contest, but Second El Alamein had absolutely nothing to do with
that. If you want to nominate First El Alamein as an important battle,
that's another story. That was when Auchinleck managed to get Eighth
Army to stop the Axis on what was pretty much the last possible
position before Alexandria.
El Alemein was
> vital in many respects, even to the supply of India and the conflict in
> the Far East.
>
The Mediterranean campaign as a whole was. El Alamein was just part of
it, and Second El Alamein changed very little strategically.
> After the Allies had a clear foothold in France, it may have been wise
> to move the bulk of the troops out of Italy and into France.
Actually, after the Allies had the means to supply everybody in France.
Supply was always tight after the breakout, and wasn't real abundant
even after the opening of Antwerp.
It was at least marginally useful to have troops in Italy, tying down
some German troops. If they had good uses elsewhere, they had best
be used there.
The
> Germans would retreat into Germany, but a massive allied advance over
> the German plains would not have made any difference if more German
> troops were there.
>
How many more troops? The Germans really never had all that many in
Italy. During the fighting, it was a tertiary theater, and one the
Germans could afford to lose in, unlike France or the Eastern Front.
If the Germans had pulled more men out of Italy, they would have been
in positions where they would be easier to destroy. They'd slow things
down a bit, but no more than that.
> Keeping southern Italy was vital for naval protection in the Med.
>
Sicily and North Africa were vital. Southern Italy was very desirable.
Northern Italy was a waste of effort.
> You need to read up more on this part of WW2. The need to remove the
> Germans and Italians from North Africa has been well put across.
>
You need to read up on the post you are replying to.
I am aware of the need to clear North Africa.
The point I am making is that Second El Alamein was not critical
to that effort. It could be accomplished by attacks from the
Atlantic side, which were easier to supply. At that point, either
Panzerarmee Afrika would retreat, fulfilling the main military
result of Second El Alamein (and the fuel situation was such that
it could not retreat intact), or it would surrender or be defeated
in situ.
>> Not, however, by the German book. As the Allies
>> found after the Falaise pocket, a German formation
>> that was terribly mauled could show up again
>> in fighting condition in a surprisingly short time.
>
> The re-grouped German troops who escaped the Falaise pocket were not a
> fully fit fighting unit. They were short of everything and demoralised
> being constantly bombed by Allied planes.
>
Of course they weren't fully fit. By the time the campaign was over,
the Germans had lost hundreds of thousands of men, including many who
didn't make it out of the Falaise Pocket. The survivors had to leave
a whole lot of equipment behind. As you say, they were demoralized
by Allied air attacks, among other things.
However, the formations weren't destroyed. In a remarkably short time,
the Germans had scraped up enough men and enough equipment to reform
enough of them to stop the Allies more or less along the German border.
This is why I don't count Panzerarmee Afrika as being destroyed at
Second El Alamein. It certainly lost a whole lot of men and equipment,
but continued retreating in good order (one of the hardest maneuvers
in military operations), and inflicted a sharp defeat on overeager
British pursuers in a counterattack.
Those are not the signs of a destroyed army.
So, Second El Alamein was effective as an attrition battle, since German
losses were considerably heavier than Allied ones, but most of those
forces were never going to leave the area, except as prisoners, and none
of them were going to leave Africa.
It didn't protect Alexandria, because at that time the Axis had
precisely no hope of breaking through.
It provided a speedup to the Allied conquest of North Africa, but it
by no means made that possible.
It was one battle in a far corner of a secondary or tertiary theater.
It had almost no effect on what happened in the primary theater.
It did have a very large morale effect, and was very good for
Montgomery's career. Had Montgomery not shone there, he might not
have been picked for his role in France and Germany, and that would
have hurt the Allied cause. For all his foibles and annoyances,
he was the best field commander the British had in the ETO.
It had special significance for some Brits, in that it was the last
real victory by the British and their lesser allies. There were
significant US forces in Tunisia, and they fought well after some
initial serious problems. After that, the US and BCE-led ground
forces were in rough parity in operations until later in 1944,
when the US took the decisive lead.
David H Thornley
> "David H Thornley" <da...@thornley.net> wrote in message
> news:c6WdnboDKrDtQMPU...@posted.visi...
>> their problems was victory, and they were making long-range plans.
>
> What was clear was that the Battle of France was not "the battle that
> brings about a turning point in the conflict".
In which case no battle of WWII was. I'm not sure any single battle
made so much of a change in WWII.
Before the Battle of France, there was the prospect of Britain and
France defeating Germany without involving the Soviet Union. There
was an actual prospect of freeing Poland. After the Battle of France,
there was essentially no prospect of Eastern Europe surviving the
war with any sort of democracy or independence.
If it wasn't a turning point, I don't know what battle in history was.
Before the battle the
> USA had opened up its industry to France and UK.
Basically, the USA was being neutral. This meant that the vast US
industrial establishment was available on market terms. It wasn't
until after the Battle of France that the US started heading away
from strict neutrality, as defined by the appropriate Hague
conventions.
> The German victory did not open up US industry to the UK, that door was
> already open, so the battle of France was not a "turning point". If the
> battle opened up US industry to the UK then it would be in consideration
> for being decisive.
>
It opened up non-neutral US action. I believe the first strictly non-
neutral act was the provision of the fifty lousy destroyers, as being
clearly in violation of the Hague convention on Rights and Duties of
Neutrals in Naval Warfare. (The convention forbade supplying warships
to belligerents, and said nothing about the quality of the warships.)
In other words, darn near nothing changed before the Battle of France.
US industry was open for British and French purposes before the war,
and after war was declared Roosevelt managed to relax the stupid US
Neutrality Acts enough to be a true neutral, although it was obvious
whose side the US was neutral on.
It was after the Battle of France that the US started seriously
considering how to supply the Brits when they ran out of dollars,
and started to increase the size of the US army dramatically.
> France and the UK, who were allied, already had enough forces to attack
> Germany. The combined forces of France, Germany, Holland and Belgium
> was far superior to Germany.
>
You could toss the forces of Portugal and Turkey in there as well, and
make as much sense.
Belgium and the Netherlands were not Allies before the German attack on
them. They were not going to become Allies. Without being attacked by
the Germans, they were just sitting there on the best attack routes into
Germany.
It's misleading to count them into the total defenses, even, since they
operated independently and largely ineffectually until it was Too Late.
Had the Belgians maintained relatively small forces in the Ardennes, it
would have made a difference. However, the Ardennes was a thoroughly
unimportant part of Belgium to the Belgians, and so it was not defended.
The Dutch army was nothing more than a short diversion.
The defense was almost all French and British. Any attack would have
been even more so.
> Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction.
> Page 371. The German army 2.439 tanks, while the French were as an army
> were far more motorised with 3,254 tanks. Dutch, Belgian, UK & French
> tanks in total was 4,200 tanks.
Dutch and Belgian tanks were few in number and ineffectual. It should
be noted that most French tanks were far less useful than the German
tanks, being very slow and lacking radios. The majority of French
tanks lacked guns useful against enemy tanks, with the R.35s in
particular mostly mounting a 37mm infantry gun of no use against
armor, rather than a 37mm high-velocity gun.
The BEF was a fully motorised army, no
> horses were used to tow guns or supplies, unlike the German army, which
> mainly horse drawn.
Useful, but hardly decisive. The German infantry divisions showed that
they could attack and maneuver well, despite their reliance on horses.
"the majority of the German tanks sent into battle
> in 1940, were inferior to the their French, British and Belgian
> counterparts".
>
Inferior in some respects, by no means all.
Tanks are harmless. Several years ago, I walked right up to a M1A1,
and it did absolutely nothing to me. I was perfectly safe.
Tanks operated by men are quite dangerous, which means that the
effectiveness of a tank depends on its mobility (definite German
advantage), guns (Allied advantage, although by not nearly as much
as gun caliber would suggest), armor (Allied advantage), and the
efficiency with which the tank crew could use the mobility and
guns (great German advantage over French tanks, perhaps less so
over British).
Tank formations depend on their equipment (perhaps some Allied
advantage), their doctrine (tremendous German advantage), and
command/control/communications (tremendous German advantage).
> Page 372, "The Luftwaffe was rated at 3.578 combat aircraft in May 1940,
> compared to a total Allied strength of 4,469".
>
The French had serious problems with maintaining their aircraft, and
most of them were inferior to their German equivalents.
> Page 372, "German success cannot be attributed to overwhelming
> superiority in the industrial equipment of modern warfare".
>
Certainly not, but the Allies didn't have an overwhelming superiority.
The Germans had good equipment, in adequate numbers, with good
training and excellent doctrine.
They also had a devastating strategic plan.
> Page 373, "In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans
> to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had
> arrived at its most brilliant military success.
Which was attacking through a woefully weak section of the French line,
and exploiting. It doesn't necessarily seem like a good idea to say
"We lost because we had an incompetent supreme commander," even when
true.
The myth of the
> Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an
> explanation other than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat.
Except that this was a blitzkrieg, one of the best examples in
history. That was due to German doctrinal superiority, and the
superiority of their equipment in fitting in with their doctrine.
Comparatively, the French had built a whole lot of tanks without
having a good idea as to how to use them for mobile warfare, and
the British were somewhere in between.
> But whereas it suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of
> German equipment, Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less
> materialistic terms."
>
In some ways, the German equipment was superior. German aircraft were
generally better than anything they faced in the Battle of France (the
British were unwilling to commit the excellent Spitfire at any distance
from their own shores). German tanks had their advantages and
disadvantages, and were prepared to fight in ways that exploited their
advantages and didn't expose their disadvantages all that much.
German artillery was at least as good as anything they faced, although
this was less important than it might have been, due to superb ground
support.
However, the decisive differences were:
1. The Germans had a reasonably good doctrine for mobile warfare. It
wasn't perfect, but it was a lot closer than anybody else's (the only
real competitor being the then-defunct Soviet Deep Battle ideas, and
their proponents had been executed and/or disgraced by 1940).
It's hard to blame the Allies for having unrealistic ideas, when
nobody really knew what would happen, although it's arguable that
the rapid buildup of the German army favored the young radicals like
Guderian, as opposed to, say, de Gaulle in the French army. Fuller,
in the British Army, had managed to come up with a fairly bad doctrine,
whether by bad thinking or bad luck.
2. The Germans had a strategic plan that worked wonderfully against
the Allied deployment.
This is easier to fix the blame for. The French deployment sucked.
It left a large weak spot, without reserves behind, right where the
main German attack was aimed. The French needed to at least get
some reserves behind the center, at least the army that had been
tasked to try to establish contact with the Dutch before the Dutch
made it clear they weren't interested. There were other things
they could do, rather than leave class "B" reserve divisions
thinly spread right in front of the Panzerkorps.
Rich Rostrom
<acl...@nononostarcottspamspamspam.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> "David H Thornley" <da...@thornley.net> wrote
>
When was Suez closed? In late 1940-early 1941,
the Red Sea was closed by the threat from Italian
East Africa, but thereafter Suez was open to Allied
shipping, AFAIK. The only destinations beyond
Suez were in the eastern Med: Alexandria, Cyprus,
Beirut, Jaffa, and at times Tobruk; but Allied shipping
did go there.
The great gain was the capture of Sicily, which
opened the Mediterranean, and thus allowed the
use of Suez for its main purpose of shipping from
Britain to Asia.
However, by that time, with the North African
campaigns over, how much shipping was needed
there? I suppose there was still a lot going to and
from India, and the Lend-Lease aid to the USSR
by way of Iran.
> Without 2nd Alamein, the likelihood is that Tunisia would not have been
> cleared on the historical timetable, which would have delayed the invasion
> of Sicily and Italy and possibly killed the Italian campaign completely, due
> to the US impatience to land in France in early 1944.
Probably not by May 1943, but very likely by July or
August. The Italian campaign wouldn't be cancelled,
but it would not begin till say November, and probably
not go beyond the capture of southern Italy.
...
> Torch would not necessarily have led to a forced withdrawal by PAA - the PAA
> troops were not particularly needed to man the stop lines in Tunisia
> (reinforcements were available more speedily from Italy)...
Not immediately, no, but the Allies' advantages were
enough that the Axis in North Africa was doomed.
> and the Allies
> could not project amphibious force deep into the central Med to bypass
> Tunisia without the air cover which 2nd Alamein made possible by winning the
> Libyan airfields.
I don't think anyone seriously contemplated
landings east of Tunisia from west of Gibraltar.
That's just silly. Where?
Also, 2nd Alamein didn't win any Libyan airfields;
the subsequent pursuit did, some weeks later.
Maybe that's a distinction without a difference.
Louis C
> Sicily and North Africa were vital. Southern Italy was very desirable.
> Northern Italy was a waste of effort.
Northern Italy was a significant industrial zone, I'd rate it as worth
having.
LC
David H Thornley
Europe.
Under the circumstances, it took a significant effort on the Allied side
to take it, and it's not clear to me that it was worth it. The troops
doing that could be better used in France, once there was enough supply
capacity there. This suggests to me that pushing on into winter 1944
may well have been a good idea, but the 1945 campaigning was wasted
effort.
Andrew Clark
> A year? If only. Few of them were any use and one or two were given to the
> Russians. They were a waste of junk.
Not quite. The destroyers *were* nearly worthless as Atlantic ASW convoy
escorts without disproportionately expensive conversion (some were converted
for political purposes and one or two were quite successful as part of
escort groups) and they did nothing to help deter a German invasion of the
UK, as they arrived after the cancellation of Sealion. But they did make
tolerable surface gunfire convoy escorts and patrol vessels with a smaller
amount of conversion and refit and this enabled the RN to withdraw more
capable vessels from those roles and deploy them more productively in the
Atlantic and Western Approaches. In particular, the old US destroyers
enabled the RN to more quickly withdraw the converted liners being used as
Armed Merchant Cruisers, thus increasing much-needed troopship capacity.
So they were useful and helpful within limits. What they did not do (as is
often suggested by the US-centric) was save Britain from invasion or win the
battle of the Atlantic.
Geoffrey Sinclair
news:gjnl32$ski$1...@news.motzarella.org...
> Page 372, "The Luftwaffe was rated at 3.578 combat aircraft in May 1940,
> compared to a total Allied strength of 4,469".
Luftwaffe strength 4 May 1940.
345 close range reconnaissance
321 long range reconnaissance
1,369 single engined fighters
367 twin engined fighters
1,758 twin engined bombers
417 dive bombers
531 transports
241 coastal types
5,344 total.
To obtain a figure close to 3,578 from the above list, drop the dive
bombers, all reconnaissance, transport and coastal types.
Alternatively simply count the German aircraft that were operational
which is put at 3,530 excluding transports.
French Aircraft OOB
http://france1940.free.fr:80/adla/ada_may.html
The basic figure I have seen for the French Air force is some 1,145 combat
types in units, of which around 250 were obsolete, in Metropolitan France.
Whatever allied aircraft strength is being counted it is not on the same
basis as the Luftwaffe figures. Simply put either overseas units are
being counted, or things like Coastal Command or numbers of aircraft
in units, not operational aircraft and so on. Or some combination.
Presumably the Dutch and Belgian air forces are being counted as
well despite them being outside French and British control with few
systems in place for achieving coordination and being very exposed,
as their countries were at peace.
There were something like 1,250 allied aircraft in Northern France when
the German offensive began and the allies would have real problems
finding bases for say twice this force.
> Page 373, "In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to
> expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had
> arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg
> suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other
> than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat. But whereas it
> suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment,
> Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic
> terms."
WWII was the radio war. In 1940, the average British infantry division had
75 radios, most Morse, versus nearly 1,000 in 1944, despite having around
the same firepower in 1944 as 1940, organisation matters.
The Germans were not the first to form or even use armoured divisions, they
were the first to realise and implement the fact that if the vehicles could
move
at several times walking pace the communications and command and control
systems had to be speeded up as well. Hence things like enigma and the
training of junior ranks to exercise initiative.
It took well into the war before opponents could match the speed of
information flow and decision making the German army started the
war with. Not to mention the system for command and control of air
support operations.
Blitzkrieg evolved over the course of the Polish and French campaigns,
convincing doubters and exposing the inevitable problems. It was a
combination of speed as well as material.
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> They appear to have been used for about a year, according to records
> like U-boat kills. They were definitely overage, and definitely
> weren't the best destroyers around when they were built
Most were rebuilt as escorts IIRC losing a boiler to provide added fuel
capacity and accommodation. The surviving S class destroyers were also
converted to escorts. The surviving V and W classes were either
converted to AA ships (4 four inch HA) or to long range escorts.
Ken Young
Bay Man
news:755f0316-e329-404b...@r34g2000vbp.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 2, 1:46 pm, "Andrew Clark"
>> 2nd Alamein led to the opening of the Suez Canal
>> and the resultant saving of
>> over 1 million tons of shipping per annum...
>
> When was Suez closed? In late 1940-early 1941,
> the Red Sea was closed by the threat from Italian
> East Africa, but thereafter Suez was open to Allied
> shipping, AFAIK. The only destinations beyond
> Suez were in the eastern Med: Alexandria, Cyprus,
> Beirut, Jaffa, and at times Tobruk; but Allied shipping
> did go there.
I think you lost that point. Shipping to supply India, Australia, etc, had
to go around the Cape. The round trip was now much shorter through Suez
releasing more ships to operations in Europe.
The 2nd Alamein put the Germans clearly on a big retreat. A retreat which
would clearly lose North Africa for them and the Italians. It was over for
them, there was no coming back. The battle was the crux, the "turning
point" of ejecting the Germans and Italians from Africa. Once they were
out, Allied operations against mainland Europe with masses of US troops was
now possible, it was not possible before the 2nd Alamein. Also the Suez
Canal opening meant a free far quicker route from the UK and north east USA
to the Indian Ocean releasing shipping.
Andrew Clark
> Before the Battle of France, there was the prospect of Britain and
> France defeating Germany without involving the Soviet Union. There
> was an actual prospect of freeing Poland. After the Battle of France,
> there was essentially no prospect of Eastern Europe surviving the
> war with any sort of democracy or independence.
If the US had taken Britain's attitude to Stalin's plans for Eastern Europe,
a great deal more of Eastern Europe would have saved from Soviet domination.
The US gave away most of central and eastern Europe.
> Basically, the USA was being neutral. This meant that the vast US
> industrial establishment was available on market terms.
The US certainly for a time maintained a certain degree of political
neutrality toward the combatant nations as required by Hague. However, more
generally, and contrary to what might be implied by the general use of the
term 'neutral', the US throughout WW2 and especially prior to May 1940 was
exploitative of its market position in a deliberate plan to devastate
Britain (and France's) commercial, economic, political, imperial and
financial position. The US position even toward its Allies in WW2 overall
can best be described as a degree of self-serving hostility.
(snip)
> It was after the Battle of France that the US started seriously
> considering how to supply the Brits when they ran out of dollars,
> and started to increase the size of the US army dramatically.
Before the defeat of France, the US, safe behind the Atlantic and the RN,
gleefully extorted every dollar and convertible asset it could from France
and Britain while plotting how it could start snatching the British and
French empires. After the fall of France, with the real possibility of a
German-dominated Europe which would gravely threaten US interests, the US
started supplying arms and supplies to Britain on credit so as to strengthen
British war-making potential - protecting US interests by proxy, in other
words. US re-armament was started for the same reason, along with taking
bases which would protect the US like Iceland and the Caribbean.
(snip other issues not responded to)
Andrew Clark
> When was Suez closed? In late 1940-early 1941,
> the Red Sea was closed by the threat from Italian
> East Africa, but thereafter Suez was open to Allied
> shipping, AFAIK. The only destinations beyond
> Suez were in the eastern Med: Alexandria, Cyprus,
> Beirut, Jaffa, and at times Tobruk; but Allied shipping
> did go there.
The Canal was open to local shipping for Egypt, but not for through traffic
from Europe to India, SE Asia and Australasia, which was its main purpose,
as you acknowledge.
> The great gain was the capture of Sicily, which
> opened the Mediterranean, and thus allowed the
> use of Suez for its main purpose of shipping from
> Britain to Asia.
Actually, opening the Med demanded air and sea control over all three
sections of sea: the Canal and Eastern Med, the Central Med and the Western
Med. Morocco and Tunisia opened the western Med, Sicily made the central Med
accessible, but capturing Libya and Tripoli was essential to opening the
eastern Med.
This is why 2nd Alamein was essential to opening the Canal to through
traffic...
> However, by that time, with the North African
> campaigns over, how much shipping was needed
> there? I suppose there was still a lot going to and
> from India, and the Lend-Lease aid to the USSR
> by way of Iran.
POL from Iraq was essential to all military operations (US and British) in
Europe. In addition, Britain and Australia/NZ were heavy mutual exporters,
as were Britain and India. There were also a lot of strategic materials
shipped through the IO, such as rubber. Given the shipping stringency, the
shipping would not have been using the route unless the cargos were
essential.
> Probably not by May 1943, but very likely by July or
> August. The Italian campaign wouldn't be cancelled,
> but it would not begin till say November, and probably
> not go beyond the capture of southern Italy.
Firstly, no successful rout of PAA at 2nd Alamein means a stronger German
defence in Tunisia, because von Arnim can concentrate all his forces (plus,
no doubt, some additional formations drawn from PAA) on opposing Br 1st Army
rather than worrying about the approaching very strong 8th Army. The eastern
Tunisian Allied position in Feb-March was very weak historically; absent 8th
Army's intervention in the south and the destruction of some key formations,
it is most unlikely that a general attack into Tunisia from the east would
be possible in April or May. Given the experience of the Allies in Italy
against a stubborn Axis defence, it might easily take the remainder of 1943
simply to take a similarly mountainous Tunisia - and after that, Tripoli and
Libya (and possibly even Egypt itself?) would presumably still need to be
cleared. Sicily might have to wait until 1944, possibly as an alternative to
Dragoon - certainly the Med had to be cleared to through shipping before the
shipping would have been available for both Neptune and Dragoon.
Also, the Italian campaign was originally an attempt to exploit the imminent
Italian surrender and the weakness of German forces in southern Italy as
perceived by the Allies in August 1943. There is no guarantee that those two
factors would be extant if the Allies failed in Libya and stalled in
Tunisia.
> Not immediately, no, but the Allies' advantages were
> enough that the Axis in North Africa was doomed.
This seems to be being taken as a given, but it does not seem to be
objectively accurate.
> I don't think anyone seriously contemplated
> landings east of Tunisia from west of Gibraltar.
> That's just silly. Where?
That's my point. The Allies cannot leapfrog Tunisia and attack from the
south without first possessing Libya - so the only course open to them is a
hard slog through the ,mountainous terrain of Tunisia. Another mini-central
Italian campaign, in other words.
> Also, 2nd Alamein didn't win any Libyan airfields;
> the subsequent pursuit did, some weeks later.
> Maybe that's a distinction without a difference.
I think so, although it was two weeks rather than weeks, indeterminate, IIRC
Duwop
<acl...@nononostarcottspamspamspam.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
Ref. treaty destroyers:
> So they were useful and helpful within limits. What they did not do (as is
> often suggested by the US-centric) was save Britain from invasion or win the
> battle of the Atlantic.
"Often suggested"? Where? I've never read such comments. Can you
refer us to some of these please? I'm sure it will be easy for you as
according to you they are common.
I've read where they've been described as probably more helpful than
they were, usually included along with other aid given to Britain in
the same time period. But being described as helpful is a far cry from
claiming either of the claims you purport are "often" made.
Bay Man
news:4960cac8$0$28507$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au...
> "Bay Man" <xyxbay...@xyxmailinator.xyxcomnospam> wrote in message
> news:gjnl32$ski$1...@news.motzarella.org...
>> Page 372, "The Luftwaffe was rated at 3.578 combat aircraft in May 1940,
>> compared to a total Allied strength of 4,469".
>
> Luftwaffe strength 4 May 1940.
>
> 345 close range reconnaissance
> 321 long range reconnaissance
> 1,369 single engined fighters
> 367 twin engined fighters
> 1,758 twin engined bombers
> 417 dive bombers
> 531 transports
> 241 coastal types
>
> 5,344 total.
>
> To obtain a figure close to 3,578 from the above list, drop the dive
> bombers, all reconnaissance, transport and coastal types.
>
> Alternatively simply count the German aircraft that were operational
> which is put at 3,530 excluding transports.
So AdamTooze is right.
> Blitzkrieg evolved over the course of the Polish and French campaigns,
> convincing doubters and exposing the inevitable problems. It was a
> combination of speed as well as material.
It was based on what Napoleon did. Concentrate all your forces on a narrow
point and force your way through like a battering ram. It did rely on speed
and a rolling logistics supply of ammunition and fuel, using radios, because
they had no reserves. They had to do it fast and hope because of no
reserves. If the logistics failed the attack would fail. This form of
"blitzkrieg" was only made up a matter months before the attack when they
had to devise a new battle plan because the enemy got to know the older
plan.
There were no reserves. All the Luftwaffe was 100% committed, losing 350
planes on the first day. If the Allies counter attacked the Germans had
nothing in reserve and the plan would have failed. It was a reckless gamble
to expect the enemy not to counter attack or expect an untried, newly
devised rolling logistical system not to break at some point. It did
occasionally, but not for long and the Allies never counter attacked to
expose the weaknesses. The non-existent counter attack was more to do with
the Allied incompetence than anything the Germans were doing.
The French moved far too many troops and units into Belgium alongside and
behind the British when the Germans moved into Holland. The British and
Belgians could cope with them there, with some French help, and were. When
the main thrust of the German attack entered France at Sedan there were few
French to meet them.
The cost was high to the Germans with 49,000 lost and heavy decimation of
the land and air force's equipment. It took around 16 months to replace all
the equipment to attack Russia and even then they were still hopelessly
short of everything.
Stephen Graham
> Before the defeat of France, the US, safe behind the Atlantic and the RN,
> gleefully extorted every dollar and convertible asset it could from France
> and Britain while plotting how it could start snatching the British and
> French empires.
That's certainly an interesting claim, Andrew. What documented proof are
you offering for a US plan to "start snatching the British and French
empires"?
David H Thornley
> a great deal more of Eastern Europe would have saved from Soviet domination.
As always when this comes up, I am curious how the West could have saved
much more of Eastern Europe from Soviet domination.
After all, no matter how things went, there were going to be Soviet
boots all over Eastern Europe. The only way to restore any sort of
freedom or independence was to remove those boots, and Stalin was not
the sort of guy to do the right thing for the sake of doing the right
thing.
If you have any ideas, please let us know.
> The US gave away most of central and eastern Europe.
>
I wasn't aware the US had ownership, possession, hegemony, or any
such thing. One would think that the US could not give away what
it never had possession of, or claim to.
>> Basically, the USA was being neutral. This meant that the vast US
>> industrial establishment was available on market terms.
>
> The US certainly for a time maintained a certain degree of political
> neutrality toward the combatant nations as required by Hague.
Before the fall of France, the US was legally neutral. The US then
started breaking the Hague rules in favor of Britain.
However, more
> generally, and contrary to what might be implied by the general use of the
> term 'neutral', the US throughout WW2 and especially prior to May 1940 was
> exploitative of its market position in a deliberate plan to devastate
> Britain (and France's) commercial, economic, political, imperial and
> financial position.
Actually, the US was out to preserve US interests. The US was simply in
a better position to do so than Britain and France were to preserve
British and French interests. This is partly due to a certain hands-off
attitude the US had.
This stems very much from the end of WWI. That particular war was sold
to the US as the war to make the world safe for democracy. President
Wilson set down some visionary principles to make the world a better
place. Britain and France at least seemed to be agreeing to them.
Then came Versailles, and the great disillusionment. The victorious
Allies squabbled over their shares of the pickings, and made it look
like the end of the 19th century dynastic wars all over again. It
became clear that much of the German-bashing that had gone on, that had
made the US turn against Germany to the point that sauerkraut was
renamed "Victory Cabbage", was just propaganda. It was not clear to
the US public how much of it was true, and they discounted more than
they should.
When 1939 came along, there were a lot of people who doubted everything
the British had to say, and a very strong "never again" feeling, a
feeling that the US wasn't going to get suckered again.
I'm not saying this was fair. I'm saying that this is how a lot of
people felt. WWI was similar to the Napoleonic Wars, one country trying
to extend hegemony over Europe, against the opposition of Britain and
her allies. WWII was far different, but that was not immediately
obvious to the US public.
So, you can understand why there was a lot of feeling that the US
really shouldn't have to be in Europe, particularly early on, and
therefore the feeling that the US was doing a very large favor.
Many Brits saw it that way at the time. Given that the US was
doing such a favor, it made sense that the US would protect its
own interests.
Having said that, you described a deliberate plan, even in the time
when the US government was staying out of the way, with a
nudge-nudge-wink-wink cash-and-carry neutrality.
Certainly you have some sort of sources for this nonstandard and
counterintuitive view; could you share?
The US position even toward its Allies in WW2 overall
> can best be described as a degree of self-serving hostility.
>
Not what I've read elsewhere. The US was certainly self-serving,
as most countries in the history of the world have been, for good
reason. Calling this "hostility" is nonstandard, and I await
your reasons for describing it as such.
>> It was after the Battle of France that the US started seriously
>> considering how to supply the Brits when they ran out of dollars,
>> and started to increase the size of the US army dramatically.
>
> Before the defeat of France, the US, safe behind the Atlantic and the RN,
> gleefully extorted every dollar and convertible asset it could from France
> and Britain while plotting how it could start snatching the British and
> French empires.
The US, at this time, was anti-colonial. There were real commitments to
freeing the US's greatest colony. The US was interested in breaking up
colonial empires, since the US saw them as not in the interest of the
native peoples. (Historically, US foreign policy has been more
idealistic and less practical than usual.)
However, I fail to see how a nation serving simply as a market can do
such things. The US was interested in selling as much as possible to
the British and French, and making as much money as possible. At this
stage, there was no coordinated policy, just a large number of
businessmen hoping to be successful war profiteers.
It would be interesting to know who you think was plotting, and how
they thought they could accomplish this, given that the US was
staying officially neutral.
After the fall of France, with the real possibility of a
> German-dominated Europe which would gravely threaten US interests, the US
> started supplying arms and supplies to Britain on credit so as to strengthen
> British war-making potential - protecting US interests by proxy, in other
> words.
Well, yes. I'm not aware of many countries that joined WWII for the
sake of disinterested goodness, Brazil probably being the nearest to
that ideal. For all major belligerents, I can point to the interests
they had, and how they were trying to protect them.
I'm not claiming that Lend-Lease was based on sheer generosity; it
was obviously a way to influence events in the favor of the US. The
equipment, by the US lend-lease law, could not be used for any
other purpose than war against the enemies of the US.
Still, most countries jumped on the opportunity to accept US equipment,
even with those strings. There was never any element of compulsion.
The US did not ram unwanted tanks down unwilling nations' throats.
Again, the US was in an excellent position in WWII, able to wage
full-scale war with very little danger to the homeland. The US
used that position, very much like every country in history that
I can think of right now which has been in that position.
Frankly, I don't think that a country that managed to build up
something like the British Empire did so without taking advantage
of wars to advance their interests, so you may well have better
insight into the whole idea than I do.
US re-armament was started for the same reason, along with taking
> bases which would protect the US like Iceland and the Caribbean.
>
US rearmament started when it was clear that the US might have to
intervene in Europe. The naval buildup started earlier, but that
was primarily intended for war against Japan. After the fall of
France, the US started expanding the army.
At the time, of course, it looked like US expansion into Iceland
and the Carribean was in British interests. Churchill wrote that
he was perfectly happy to give the US the base rights in the
bases-for-destroyers deal, and that the reason he gave for it
being a deal was to get it through Congress. Churchill wanted
the destroyers (which were fairly useful in the short term), and
thought British interests were better served by having US
extended bases.
Rich Rostrom
<acl...@nononostarcottspamspamspam.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> "Rich Rostrom" <rrostrom.21stcent...@rcn.com> wrote
> The Canal was open to local shipping for Egypt, but not for through traffic
> from Europe to India, SE Asia and Australasia, which was its main purpose,
> as you acknowledge.
Because the Med was closed. Why then refer to "opening
the Suez Canal"?
And 2nd Alamein did not open the Mediterranean.
That was achieved by a much larger campaign
of which 2nd Alamein was only a part.
> POL from Iraq was essential to all military operations (US and British) in Europe.
I doubt that. Iraq's 30-32M barrels/year was useful,
no doubt, but no more essential than Iran's 30-32M
barrels/year, and not a major factor compared to
the 1,200-1,300M barrels/year produced by the U.S.
> There were also a lot of strategic materials
> shipped through the IO, such as rubber.
After the fall of Malaya, what rubber was shipped
across the Indian Ocean?
> > Probably not by May 1943, but very likely by July or
> > August.
> Firstly, no successful rout of PAA at 2nd Alamein means a stronger German
> defence in Tunisia, because von Arnim can concentrate all his forces (plus,
> no doubt, some additional formations drawn from PAA) on opposing Br 1st Army
> rather than worrying about the approaching very strong 8th Army.
I don't see that the outcome of Second Alamein
had any effect on the situation in Tunisia until
well into 1943. I can't see any part of PAA being
transferred over 2,000 km, given Axis transport
limitations.
> The eastern
> Tunisian Allied position in Feb-March was very weak historically; absent 8th
> Army's intervention in the south and the destruction of some key formations,
> it is most unlikely that a general attack into Tunisia from the east would
> be possible in April or May.
I did suggest that the campaign would take two to three months longer.
> Given the experience of the Allies in Italy
> against a stubborn Axis defence, it might easily take the remainder of 1943
> simply to take a similarly mountainous Tunisia...
Oh please. By the end of November 1942, the
Allies were firmly established in western Tunisia,
less than 100 km from Tunis and Bizerta. The
ground between is rough, but nothing like the
mountains of Italy. What stopped the Allies in
the winter of 1942-43 was winter rain and the
near total absence of paved roads (combined
with German resistance of course). Come
summer 1943, it wouldn't take very long for
the Allies to finish the business.
Sicily is at least as mountainous as Tunisia,
and the Allies cleared the whole island in a month.
>- and after that, Tripoli and Libya (and possibly even
>Egypt itself?) would presumably still need to be cleared.
Once Tunisia fell, even if Eighth Army was
_still_ stuck at Alamein, the Axis in Africa
would be blockaded, and it would not take long
to finish the whole thing. Besides which, even
if instead of Montgomery, Eighth Army was
commanded by General Twitt-Bunglethorpe
and Rommel repulsed SUPERCHARGE - a
new general would take over and there would
be another attack in a month or two.
> Also, the Italian campaign [exploited the ... Italian surrender
> and the weakness of German forces in southern Italy... in August 1943.
> There is no guarantee that those two factors would be extant if the Allies
> failed in Libya and stalled in Tunisia.
Once Africa was cleared and Sicily taken, Italy
would want out of the war.
> > I don't think anyone seriously contemplated landings east of
> > Tunisia from west of Gibraltar. That's just silly. Where?
>
> That's my point. The Allies cannot leapfrog Tunisia and attack from the south...
Attack _where_ "from the south"?
> > Also, 2nd Alamein didn't win any Libyan airfields; the subsequent pursuit
> > did, some weeks later. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference.
>
> I think so, although it was two weeks rather than weeks, indeterminate, IIRC
Fair enough. The breakthrough was on 11/2/1942.
Tobruk fell on 11/13/1942. Benghazi fell on 11/20/1942.
Call it 11 to 18 days as the airfields in Cyrenaica were
taken.
Louis C
> >> Page 372, "The Luftwaffe was rated at 3.578 combat aircraft in May 1940,
> >> compared to a total Allied strength of 4,469".
> > Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:
> > Luftwaffe strength 4 May 1940.
(snip)
> > 5,344 total.
>
> > To obtain a figure close to 3,578 from the above list, drop the dive
> > bombers, all reconnaissance, transport and coastal types.
>
> > Alternatively simply count the German aircraft that were operational
> > which is put at 3,530 excluding transports.
>
> So AdamTooze is right.
He's not exactly comparing like with like. The Luftwaffe had 3,500
operational combat aircraft, the French figure is 1,368 (of which
1,012 were modern types) and the equivalent figure for the RAF was
under 2,000 IIRC. The Allies didn't have an edge in operational combat
aircraft in May 1940, what they did have was a larger stockpile of
useless and obsolete aircraft in training establishments or overseas
formations, as well as greater production. In other words, they were
catching up thought they hadn't quite caught up, yet.
Tooze is wrong on that score. Didn't we already discuss that the last
time you brought the topic up?
> There were no reserves. All the Luftwaffe was 100% committed, losing 350
> planes on the first day.
...half of which were transport planes and therefore not counted in
the previous figure for Luftwaffe strength. In other words, contrary
to what the superposition of 3,500 and 350 implies, the Luftwaffe did
not lose 10% of its frontline strength on the first day of the
campaign. Also, this includes damaged aircraft.
> The French moved far too many troops and units into Belgium alongside and
> behind the British when the Germans moved into Holland.
Divisions sent to Belgium and Holland:
British - 9 (Belgium)
French - 11 + 4 (Holland)
German - 15 (Belgium) + 7 (Holland) + 7 (Army Group B reserves)
Allied total: 24 divisions. German total: 29 divisions.
In the above, "Belgium" means "central Belgium" as the Ardennes are in
Belgium so a lot of the decisive battles took place there. Based on
international borders, both sides' count would be much higher.
> The cost was high to the Germans with 49,000 lost and heavy decimation of
> the land and air force's equipment.
The cost was much higher to the Allies, and the Germans gained an
enormous amount of booty.
> It took around 16 months to replace all
> the equipment to attack Russia and even then they were still hopelessly
> short of everything.
You are aware that the Germans had more troops when they attacked the
Soviet Union than they had had attacking France?
LC
Bay Man
news:0e2d21f2-bad5-4f3e...@c36g2000prc.googlegroups.com...
>> > Alternatively simply count the German aircraft that were operational
>> > which is put at 3,530 excluding transports.
>>
>> So AdamTooze is right.
>
> He's not exactly comparing like with like. The Luftwaffe had 3,500
> operational combat aircraft, the French figure is 1,368 (of which
> 1,012 were modern types) and the equivalent figure for the RAF was
> under 2,000 IIRC. The Allies didn't have an edge in operational combat
> aircraft in May 1940, what they did have was a larger stockpile of
> useless and obsolete aircraft in training establishments or overseas
> formations, as well as greater production. In other words, they were
> catching up thought they hadn't quite caught up, yet.
>
> Tooze is wrong on that score. Didn't we already discuss that the last
> time you brought the topic up?
I think I brought up the Barberossa plane count.
>> There were no reserves. All the Luftwaffe
>> was 100% committed, losing 350
>> planes on the first day.
>
> ...half of which were transport planes and therefore not counted in
> the previous figure for Luftwaffe strength. In other words, contrary
> to what the superposition of 3,500 and 350 implies, the Luftwaffe did
> not lose 10% of its frontline strength on the first day of the
> campaign. Also, this includes damaged aircraft.
Damaged is out of the battle and cannot be used in the time frame the
Germans had in mind.
>> The French moved far too many troops and
>> units into Belgium alongside and
>> behind the British when the Germans moved into Holland.
>
> Divisions sent to Belgium and Holland:
> British - 9 (Belgium)
> French - 11 + 4 (Holland)
> German - 15 (Belgium) + 7 (Holland) + 7
> (Army Group B reserves)
>
> Allied total: 24 divisions. German total: 29 divisions.
If I recall the Allies (loose term I know) had more armoured divisions
committed as the Germans reserved the majority of theirs for the Ardennes
attack. Far too much was pushed up to stop the German diversion in Holland.
Allied intelligence did not know of a German build up just across the
Ardennes border. The Germans must have thought their build up was known,
which makes their plan even more reckless.
>> The cost was high to the Germans with
>> 49,000 lost and heavy decimation of
>> the land and air force's equipment.
>
> The cost was much higher to the Allies,
> and the Germans gained an
> enormous amount of booty.
The cost was higher to the Allies. The German cost was still very high. The
booty was near useless as little was serviceable. OK the Germans salvaged
Bedford trucks, etc. How much artillery, tanks, etc, did they use? I did
read they did use some Char Bs, but not in any number. The captured
equipment did not conform to German standards and supply and would be
difficult to get parts. German industry would not make parts for this
captured equipment when they had to supply their own types. They is only so
much you can cannibalise from other equipment to keep others running. It was
worth more in scrap value as Germany was short of iron ore.
>> It took around 16 months to replace all
>> the equipment to attack Russia and even
>> then they were still hopelessly
>> short of everything.
>
> You are aware that the Germans had more
> troops when they attacked the
> Soviet Union than they had had attacking France?
Yes. They went in for a large conscription campaign. This had an adverse
effect of leaving industry short of skilled men, so supply suffered.
Bay Man
news:Laedndq1lstj4fzU...@posted.visi...
> Andrew Clark wrote:
>> "David H Thornley" <da...@thornley.net> wrote
>>
>> If the US had taken Britain's attitude to Stalin's
>> plans for Eastern Europe, a great deal more of
>> Eastern Europe would have saved from
>> Soviet domination.
>> The US gave away most of central and eastern Europe.
>
> I wasn't aware the US had ownership,
> possession, hegemony, or any
> such thing. One would think that the US
> could not give away what
> it never had possession of, or claim to.
The USA agreed to the Russian claims for Eastern Europe. Immediately after
hostilities, bizarrely, lined up against the USSR accusing them of evil
empire building, after agreeing the formation of this evil empire.
>> However, more generally, and contrary to what
>> might be implied by the general use of the
>> term 'neutral', the US throughout WW2 and
>> especially prior to May 1940 was exploitative
>> of its market position in a deliberate plan to devastate
>> Britain (and France's) commercial, economic, political,
>> imperial and financial position.
>
> Actually, the US was out to preserve US interests.
>> The US position even toward its Allies in
>> WW2 overall can best be described as a
>> degree of self-serving hostility.
That is an odd way of putting it. The USA was dragged out of depression by
mainly British and initially French money being spent in the USA. Not
content with the US economy being dragged up by its boot straps by primarily
by the UK, the US government started to asset strip the British. The
instances of only paying in gold and the UK having to sell all interests in
the US were clearly to economically strip bare the UK, not assist the UK.
As regards to colonialism, the US was a colonial power. The US insisted
sovereignty of territory from Newfoundland to the Caribbean, be transferred
to the USA from the UK, as a precursor for "selling" materials to the UK.
The USA wanted to extend its colonial territory.
At Yalta, Roosevelt was talking to Stalin behind the backs of the British,
over dividing up the British Empire between themselves. The USA being so
eager to give Eastern Europe to the Russians gives a clue.
The US was exerting an economic strangle on the UK way after WW2. The USA in
the 1960s insisted the advanced TSR2 fighter/bomber be cancelled otherwise
and IMF loan for social programmes would be blocked. Harold Wilson chose the
social programme and dropped the plane. Harold Wilson never forgot that and
let the US wallow in Viet Nam keeping the UK firmly out. The British in some
form or other had been fighting in jungles since WW2. The British had won a
jungle war in South East Asia just prior to the onset of Viet Nam with
British expertise in this theatre being greatly needed by the USA. In the
1960s the relationship between the two countries was virtually non-existent.
In hindsight, post WW2, the British should have taken the stance of DeGualle
in France, who would have no US interference and minimal influence. The
French would not dance to the American tune.
Just as well the USA did not get its hands on much of the British and French
empires, as they proved to be un-worldly post WW2 in the super power role
they found themselves.
Geoffrey Sinclair
message news:hdadnegrH4A7bv3U...@giganews.com...
> "David H Thornley" <da...@thornley.net> wrote
>
>> Before the Battle of France, there was the prospect of Britain and
>> France defeating Germany without involving the Soviet Union. There
>> was an actual prospect of freeing Poland. After the Battle of France,
>> there was essentially no prospect of Eastern Europe surviving the
>> war with any sort of democracy or independence.
>
> If the US had taken Britain's attitude to Stalin's plans for Eastern
> Europe, a great deal more of Eastern Europe would have saved from Soviet
> domination.
This is a claim repeated over and over and I have yet to see anyone
come up with a plan for the western allies to control any territory in
Eastern Europe before the USSR.
> The US gave away most of central and eastern Europe.
The US did not own the territory. Stalin had the power in the area
and used it as he normally did.
>> Basically, the USA was being neutral. This meant that the vast US
>> industrial establishment was available on market terms.
>
> The US certainly for a time maintained a certain degree of political
> neutrality toward the combatant nations as required by Hague.
Basically the US was behaving in a neutral manner but with a pro
western allied President.
> However, more generally, and contrary to what might be implied by the
> general use of the term 'neutral', the US throughout WW2 and especially
> prior to May 1940 was exploitative of its market position in a deliberate
> plan to devastate Britain (and France's) commercial, economic, political,
> imperial and financial position.
This is just plain wrong.
The best way to describe the US attitude is to remember in 1939 Britain
was the official world number 1. Now note with the US as the number 1
the mixture of reactions to US activities because of its number 1 status.
Overlay that with a preference for isolation and a feeling WWI was a major
waste, so round 2 was likely to be just as futile.
> The US position even toward its Allies in WW2 overall can best be
> described as a degree of self-serving hostility.
This is simply wrong. Lend Lease for a start included lots of
equipment that helped allied economies.
> (snip)
>
>> It was after the Battle of France that the US started seriously
>> considering how to supply the Brits when they ran out of dollars,
>> and started to increase the size of the US army dramatically.
>
> Before the defeat of France, the US, safe behind the Atlantic and the RN,
> gleefully extorted every dollar and convertible asset it could from France
> and Britain while plotting how it could start snatching the British and
> French empires.
This is so far from reality it is a good joke.
For a start the USN was by treaty close to RN strength. As long
as the RN was not hostile the USN was quite capable of defeating
any other naval power.
The British made the decision to pay for all French orders and
also to withdraw all financial limits.
Perhaps it would be good to show the plans for snatching empires.
> After the fall of France, with the real possibility of a German-dominated
> Europe which would gravely threaten US interests, the US started supplying
> arms and supplies to Britain on credit so as to strengthen British
> war-making potential - protecting US interests by proxy, in other words.
My what a venal world.
Lend lease arrived in March 1941 but most equipment arriving in British
etc. hands had been paid for until sometime in 1942.
> US re-armament was started for the same reason, along with taking bases
> which would protect the US like Iceland and the Caribbean.
US rearmament had been underway before France fell. The loss of
France made it more urgent. Sort of like what the British had to do.
Geoffrey Sinclair
> "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinc...@froggy.com.au> wrote in message
> news:4960cac8$0$28507$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au...
>> "Bay Man" <xyxbay...@xyxmailinator.xyxcomnospam> wrote in message
>> news:gjnl32$ski$1...@news.motzarella.org...
>>> Page 372, "The Luftwaffe was rated at 3.578 combat aircraft in May 1940,
>>> compared to a total Allied strength of 4,469".
>>
>> Luftwaffe strength 4 May 1940.
>>
>> 345 close range reconnaissance
>> 321 long range reconnaissance
>> 1,369 single engined fighters
>> 367 twin engined fighters
>> 1,758 twin engined bombers
>> 417 dive bombers
>> 531 transports
>> 241 coastal types
>>
>> 5,344 total.
>>
>> To obtain a figure close to 3,578 from the above list, drop the dive
>> bombers, all reconnaissance, transport and coastal types.
>>
>> Alternatively simply count the German aircraft that were operational
>> which is put at 3,530 excluding transports.
>
> So AdamTooze is right.
I see the figure where Tooze is wrong has been omitted. Sort of makes
clear what is going on.
So No. Because the allied strength is not reported on the same basis,
as a result the comparison distorts the picture.
For example the RAF:
BAFF, Fighter Command and Bomber Command held around 1,580
aircraft, of which 940 were operational.
Basically the Luftwaffe had something like a 3 or 4 to 1 superiority over
the battlefield which improved as the fighting went on.
>> Blitzkrieg evolved over the course of the Polish and French campaigns,
>> convincing doubters and exposing the inevitable problems. It was a
>> combination of speed as well as material.
>
> It was based on what Napoleon did.
Actually the ideas go back further than Napoleon.
> Concentrate all your forces on a narrow point and force your way through
> like a battering ram. It did rely on speed and a rolling logistics supply
> of ammunition and fuel, using radios, because they had no reserves.
Actually the Germans did have reserves, just like the allies.
> They had to do it fast and hope because of no reserves.
They had to do it fast in order to maximise their advantages, the
Germans were unaware of how much faster their command was
moving relative to the allied one, hence things like the stop orders.
The Germans were quite confident they were superior, but only
battle would show how and where.
>If the logistics failed the attack would fail.
His is basically something that could be said of any war.
> This form of "blitzkrieg" was only made up a matter months before the
> attack when they had to devise a new battle plan because the enemy got to
> know the older plan.
No it was made years before, the Army took a long time to come round
to the new ideas. Poland helped provide some answers, note the
disappearance of the light armoured divisions for example between the
Polish and French campaigns.
Various defects in peace time training were exposed in Poland, and they
were corrected.
> There were no reserves.
Keep repeating this and your wish may come true one day.
> All the Luftwaffe was 100% committed, losing 350 planes on the first day.
Around half those losses were transports, in fact it seems like the
losses of combat types was in the region of 130. The air forces were
swapping off at around 1 to 1 on the first day, in terms of combat types.
The French lost some 65 aircraft on the ground for example. The RAF
something like 38 aircraft in the air, the French maybe half of that. Then
comes the losses of Dutch and Belgian aircraft which lost something like
150 aircraft on the ground, but not all front line types.
> If the Allies counter attacked the Germans had nothing in reserve and the
> plan would have failed.
No, just saying counter attack does not guarantee success.
> It was a reckless gamble to expect the enemy not to counter attack or
> expect an untried, newly devised rolling logistical system not to break at
> some point.
Actually it was not a reckless gamble, and the Germans did things
like stop for a while to consolidate, which turned out to be the
wrong move as the allies were simply unable to match German
command and control. Then add the Luftwaffe ensured German
formations could move faster than allied ones, thanks to air strikes.
Plus the Germans received better reconnaissance information.
> It did occasionally, but not for long and the Allies never counter
> attacked to expose the weaknesses. The non-existent counter attack was
> more to do with the Allied incompetence than anything the Germans were
> doing.
No, it was to do with the Germans managing to move faster, so allied
orders were out of date.
> The French moved far too many troops and units into Belgium alongside and
> behind the British when the Germans moved into Holland. The British and
> Belgians could cope with them there, with some French help, and were.
> When the main thrust of the German attack entered France at Sedan there
> were few French to meet them.
The Germans sent more troops into Belgium than the French and British
combined..
> The cost was high to the Germans with 49,000 lost and heavy decimation of
> the land and air force's equipment. It took around 16 months to replace
> all the equipment to attack Russia and even then they were still
> hopelessly short of everything.
The 16 months claim is simply wrong. A simple check of aircraft and tank
production shows that. Also the Germans could take what they want from
French stocks to replenish losses.
Bay Man
>> Concentrate all your forces on a narrow point and force your way through
>> like a battering ram. It did rely on speed and a rolling logistics supply
>> of ammunition and fuel, using radios, because they had no reserves.
>
> Actually the Germans did have reserves, just like the allies.
If they did there didn't have too many.
Tooze page 380.
"On both occasions [France and Barberossa] the Germans held no significant
forces in reserve."
>> They had to do it fast and hope because of no reserves.
>
> They had to do it fast in order to maximise their advantages, the
> Germans were unaware of how much faster their command was
> moving relative to the allied one, hence things like the stop orders.
>
> The Germans were quite confident they were superior, but only
> battle would show how and where.
>
>>If the logistics failed the attack would fail.
>
> His is basically something that could be said of any war.
It was far more critical in this untried gamble. The Gemrans did not do
this Poland.
>> This form of "blitzkrieg" was only made up a matter months before the
>> attack when they had to devise a new battle plan because the enemy got to
>> know the older plan.
>
> No it was made years before, the Army took a long time to come round
> to the new ideas.
Not according to Tooze. He says there was no plan to invade France in
September 1939. He give the months of the two plans, the final being
conceived in Feb 1940. Only Hitler and Manstein, who conceived the plan,
liked it. All other generals thought it far too risky.
>> There were no reserves.
>
> Keep repeating this and your wish may come true one day.
It may be true. Read on :)
>> If the Allies counter attacked the Germans had nothing in reserve and the
>> plan would have failed.
>
> No, just saying counter attack does not guarantee success.
The system was finely balanced it could have failed. If the French had cut
the line it would have failed (this is, not driving the British out and
France still fighting).
>> It was a reckless gamble to expect the enemy not to counter attack or
>> expect an untried, newly devised rolling logistical system not to break
>> at some point.
>
> Actually it was not a reckless gamble, and the Germans did things
> like stop for a while to consolidate, which turned out to be the
> wrong move as the allies were simply unable to match German
> command and control.
Tooze page 380.
"In both campaigns [France & Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving
decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less
spelled disaster".
It was reckless. They poured into the French rear. If they were met by full
French armoured units head on, and the French cut the line they would have
been in big trouble. They was easily with the capabilities of the French.
They did not know how good or bad the French and British command structure
was. The rolling system relied on the conveyor belt not being broken.
The best they could have hoped for before the start was to get as far into
France as possible then a war of attrition ensues. They could not believe
how far they were advancing without any serious counter, well not enough to
stop the conveyor belt.
> Plus the Germans received better reconnaissance information.
That is obvious as the Allies did not know the German had massed across the
Belgium border. 7 out of their 9 tank divsions.
On 10 May German Group Army B moved into holland and northern Belgium with
only 29 divisions, out a total of 93 combat ready divisions.
Tooze page 368.
"The bulk of the French army, backed up by the British BEF, marched rapidly
northwards."
This was to stop the Germans getting to the Channel coast but using 57
divisions. Group Army B's move was a feint. Group Army A, with 45 crack
divisions, moved through the Ardennes forest with 7 out of the 9 tank
divisions. They faced 18 French and Belgian 2nd rate divisions. This move
was to fill the vacuum left by the French and British crack divisions who
had swiftly moved north to face Group Army B.
Tooze page 369.
"If the French and British had held back substantial reserves, Army Group
A's pincer movement would have be vulnerable to counter attack, or even
counter-encirclement."
"The much feared counter attack against the exposed flanks of the Panzer
divisions never came."
"The bulk of the Anglo-French forces continued to move in a northerly
direction, even as they were encircled by the tanks of Army Group A to the
south."
It was to that point, the largest encirclement in military history.
Page 370.
" no single disaster of the Red Army can compare to the Anglo-French debacle
of May 1940."
The Germans were expecting a counter-attack. Fighting such a large force
with more armour than what they had, they would expect that to happen.
>> The French moved far too many troops and units into Belgium alongside and
>> behind the British when the Germans moved into Holland. The British and
>> Belgians could cope with them there, with some French help, and were.
>> When the main thrust of the German attack entered France at Sedan there
>> were few French to meet them.
>
> The Germans sent more troops into Belgium than the French and British
> combined..
Like 7 of their 9 Panzer divisions.
> The 16 months claim is simply wrong. A simple check of aircraft and tank
> production shows that. Also the Germans could take what they want from
> French stocks to replenish losses.
The Germans used French tanks in small theatres like the Balkans, but the
greatest contribution was the artillery, which accounted for 47% of all
German artillery.
Michael Emrys
And I might add, What parts of the British and French empires did the
US end up in possession of? I am having trouble locating any and would
appreciate some help on this. I do recall that the US desired to have
economic access to the trading bloc known as the British Commonwealth,
but clearly that is a different matter and doesn't clarify the issue at
all to my mind.
Michael
..
David H Thornley
> "David H Thornley" <da...@thornley.net> wrote in message
> news:Laedndq1lstj4fzU...@posted.visi...
>
> The USA agreed to the Russian claims for Eastern Europe. Immediately
> after hostilities, bizarrely, lined up against the USSR accusing them of
> evil empire building, after agreeing the formation of this evil empire.
>
When dealing with a country that can't be defeated militarily (and
the Soviet Union was in that category for several reasons), there are
basically two ways to act.
One is to occupy the moral high ground, which while often satisfying
generally fails to accomplish anything. This is often accompanied
by economic sanctions that generally inflict suffering on the
people the moral superior is nominally trying to help.
The other is to try what has been called "constructive engagement",
which is to go along and try to moderate the other country's behavior.
Sometimes it works, but not in this case.
Once the constructive engagement had failed, the US was free to go
back to the traditional holier-than-thou policy.
> That is an odd way of putting it. The USA was dragged out of depression
> by mainly British and initially French money being spent in the USA.
The US economy was recovering from the 1937 low on its own, actually.
Not that the additional business wasn't welcome.
Not
> content with the US economy being dragged up by its boot straps by
> primarily by the UK, the US government started to asset strip the
> British. The instances of only paying in gold and the UK having to sell
> all interests in the US were clearly to economically strip bare the UK,
> not assist the UK.
>
You must tell me how the US did that. US companies continued to sell
materiel to Britain, and did indeed require payment in hard currency.
At that point in time, the British pound was not a good bet to keep its
spending power.
The spend-down was because of contracts the British freely signed,
not a result of US long-range hypnotism.
If you are saying that the US did not start giving materiel to
Britain until Britain was no longer able to pay for it, well do
so. Then you can explain why Britain was supposed to be subsidized.
> As regards to colonialism, the US was a colonial power. The US insisted
> sovereignty of territory from Newfoundland to the Caribbean, be
> transferred to the USA from the UK, as a precursor for "selling"
> materials to the UK. The USA wanted to extend its colonial territory.
>
What are you smoking, and where can I get some?
Alternatively, what is your source for that demand, and when did it
happen? The US changed the older, not particularly bright, Neutrality
Acts pretty much when war broke out, and I haven't heard of any
demands for territory.
And how much colonial territory did the US take from the British
Empire?
> At Yalta, Roosevelt was talking to Stalin behind the backs of the
> British, over dividing up the British Empire between themselves. The
> USA being so eager to give Eastern Europe to the Russians gives a clue.
>
At Yalta, Roosevelt was half dead. I think that had a significant
effect on negotiations.
Again, I'd like to see a credible source as to talks about breaking
up the British Empire.
> The US was exerting an economic strangle on the UK way after WW2.
I'm deleting this wild-looking speculation on the grounds that it's
off-topic.
> Just as well the USA did not get its hands on much of the British and
> French empires, as they proved to be un-worldly post WW2 in the super
> power role they found themselves.
>
I'll give you a hint here:
The US took exactly as much of the British and French empires as they
wanted.
The US was interested in decolonialization at the time, and had
worked towards independence for what another country would have
considered a prize colony. The US was not interested in colonial
acquisitions.
David H Thornley
>
> The cost was higher to the Allies. The German cost was still very high.
> The booty was near useless as little was serviceable. OK the Germans
> salvaged Bedford trucks, etc. How much artillery, tanks, etc, did they
> use? I did read they did use some Char Bs, but not in any number. The
> captured equipment did not conform to German standards and supply and
> would be difficult to get parts. German industry would not make parts
> for this captured equipment when they had to supply their own types.
> They is only so much you can cannibalise from other equipment to keep
> others running. It was worth more in scrap value as Germany was short of
> iron ore.
>
equipment. It wasn't usually in front-line service, but there were a
lot of roles where front-line quality didn't matter, and where it
didn't matter all that much if some of it broke down and couldn't
be repaired.
After its destruction in Tunisia, 21st Panzer Division was rebuilt
with mostly French equipment, and hadn't finished converting to
all German equipment by Normandy. I don't remember if any of the
French equipment saw actual combat.
The Germans used a lot of captured trucks in Barbarossa, knowing that
they would break down and not be repaired. They were hoping that it
wouldn't matter.
Not to mention the usual loot of horses, food, raw materials, and
ordering French industry to produce stuff for Germany. The Germans
did know how to loot subjugated economies.
David H Thornley
>
> If they did there didn't have too many.
> Tooze page 380.
> "On both occasions [France and Barberossa] the Germans held no
> significant forces in reserve."
>
Tooze wrote an excellent book on the German economy before and during
WWII. Take it as that. It is not a general history, or a military
history, and since these were not among Tooze's goals he's much less
reliable on them.
There are other books and other sources on the actual military
campaigns that you will find much more useful for what happened
in the field, although of course they won't have as much good stuff
on the German economy as Tooze.
> Not according to Tooze. He says there was no plan to invade France in
> September 1939. He give the months of the two plans, the final being
> conceived in Feb 1940. Only Hitler and Manstein, who conceived the
> plan, liked it. All other generals thought it far too risky.
>
Some other generals came around. Halder became convinced that the von
Manstein plan was brilliant, and supported it fully.
At that time, von Manstein was a rather junior general, and Hitler was
very reluctant to override his generals. While he interfered with them
much more than they liked, he did not enforce decisions that most of
them disagreed with until about the end of 1942. If there had been
no senior generals in favor of the von Manstein plan, Hitler would
have been very unlikely to force it through.
Rich
wrote:
> "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au> wrote in message
>
> news:49621aa6$0$28518$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au...
> > Actually the Germans did have reserves, just like the allies.
>
> If they did there didn't have too many.
> Tooze page 380.
> "On both occasions [France and Barberossa] the Germans held no significant
> forces in reserve."
As has been noted before, Tooze is an economics historian, not a
military historian. He is also human and like all of us he
occassionally makes mistakes, especially in items that are not
directly in his expertise. This is one of those cases.
As of 10 May 1940 the Heer had 157 divisions active, 79 of which were
rated Kampfwert I (fully trained, manned, and equipped and ready for
offensive operations), all of which were committed to the campaign,
and 14 that were rated Kampfwert II (ready for operations in a limited
capacity due to incomplete training and/or lack of full manpower and
equipment) that were also committed. Of the remaining 64 divisions ten
were newly formed and were incomplete in terms of training, manpower,
and equipment, 27 were Landwehr divisions suitble only for limited
deensive operational employment, and three were Stellungs (fortress)
divisions. The remaining 24 divisions (all infantry) comprised the
bulk of the 39 divisions in the supposedly non-existant OKH reserve
(AOK 2. and 9. with I, XVII, XXXVI, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XLII, and XLIII
AK). At the end of the campaign 19 of those divisions were disbanded,
but others were raised or converted for a net increase of 50 divisions
for the year. So 93 divisions committed, 39 in reserve (of which about
24 were eventually commited in a limited way by the end of the
campaign), and 25 in Norway, Germany, and Poland.
The situation in Barbarossa was similar, of 205 divisions operational
22 June 1941, 145 were committed to Barbarossa, 24 were in OKH
opererational reserve and the other 36 were in occupation duties in
the west, in the Balkans, or in North Africa.
> That is obvious as the Allies did not know the German had massed across the
> Belgium border. 7 out of their 9 tank divsions.
A consistant error on his part, there were 10 Panzer divisions
operational, not 9. HG A did have 7 of them, HG B had the other 3 (3.
and 4. Panzer in XVI AK (mot) and 9. Panzer under the direct control
of AOK 18.
> The Germans used French tanks in small theatres like the Balkans, but the
> greatest contribution was the artillery, which accounted for 47% of all
> German artillery.
Effective artillery doesn't count in warfare? Try telling a Redleg
that. At one point French 155mm GPF accounted for well over half the
heavy artillery of Panzerarmee Afrika while by April 1944 captured
pieces (Frenh and Russian mostly) were 3,486 of the 4,619 pieces in OB
West.
YMC
>> sovereignty of territory from Newfoundland to the Caribbean, be
>> transferred to the USA from the UK, as a precursor for "selling"
>> materials to the UK. The USA wanted to extend its colonial territory.
>>
> What are you smoking, and where can I get some?
I think he's referring to the Virgin Islands. Surely a prized possesion for
any man whether Red Coat or Blue Jack.
The rum produced in the Carribbean - Pussers' Rum - powered the British Navy
for over 100 years. Once lost, Britannia could no longer rule the ocean.
Michael Emrys
> I think he's referring to the Virgin Islands.
According to this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Virgin_Islands#History
the US purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917. BTW, the
Brits still have their half of the Virgin Islands.
Michael
Bill Shatzer
> "David H Thornley" <da...@thornley.net> wrote in message >> As regards to
> colonialism, the US was a colonial power. The US insisted
>
>>>sovereignty of territory from Newfoundland to the Caribbean, be
>>>transferred to the USA from the UK, as a precursor for "selling"
>>>materials to the UK. The USA wanted to extend its colonial territory.
>>What are you smoking, and where can I get some?
> I think he's referring to the Virgin Islands. Surely a prized possesion for
> any man whether Red Coat or Blue Jack.
The US Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917. The British
Virgin Islands remain an autonomous self-governing territory within the
British Commonwealth.
There was no transfer of any territory in the Virgin Islands to US
control as a result of WW2.
And, no, I don't know how Denmark got them in the first place.
Geoffrey Sinclair
> "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinc...@froggy.com.au> wrote in message
> news:49621aa6$0$28518$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au...
>
>>> Concentrate all your forces on a narrow point and force your way through
>>> like a battering ram. It did rely on speed and a rolling logistics
>>> supply of ammunition and fuel, using radios, because they had no
>>> reserves.
>>
>> Actually the Germans did have reserves, just like the allies.
>
> If they did there didn't have too many.
> Tooze page 380.
> "On both occasions [France and Barberossa] the Germans held no significant
> forces in reserve."
One day the idea will form Tooze is very good describing the German
economy and much weaker on describing the military.
I note no attempt to explain how Tooze manages to have such wrong figures
for airpower.
And another thing. The Germans had some 3,464 tanks as of 1 May
1940, that is counting reserves, which seems to be how Tooze is
counting allied tank strength.
The British Army had some 310 tanks in France. In addition the First
Armoured Division was preparing to leave for France, with 330 tanks,
and it looks as though they are counted.
>>> They had to do it fast and hope because of no reserves.
>>
>> They had to do it fast in order to maximise their advantages, the
>> Germans were unaware of how much faster their command was
>> moving relative to the allied one, hence things like the stop orders.
>>
>> The Germans were quite confident they were superior, but only
>> battle would show how and where.
>>
>>>If the logistics failed the attack would fail.
>>
>> His is basically something that could be said of any war.
>
> It was far more critical in this untried gamble. The Gemrans did not do
> this Poland.
I see, the plan is declared an untried gamble, infallible pronouncements
then follow.
You do know the Germans did do armoured thrusts in Poland, and
took advantage of geography to mount pincer attacks?
>>> This form of "blitzkrieg" was only made up a matter months before the
>>> attack when they had to devise a new battle plan because the enemy got
>>> to know the older plan.
>>
>> No it was made years before, the Army took a long time to come round
>> to the new ideas.
>
> Not according to Tooze.
Ah yes, the infallible one has spoken, no possibility of him being
wrong.
> He says there was no plan to invade France in September 1939.
That would be the most shocking dereliction of duty on the part of
the German military command.
> He give the months of the two plans, the final being conceived in Feb
> 1940. Only Hitler and Manstein, who conceived the plan, liked it. All
> other generals thought it far too risky.
There were not two plans, there was the original one, which was an
updated version of the WWI plan. This was considered compromised
when a courier plane carrying some of the plans landed in Belgium on
10 January 1940.
It should also be remembered Hitler pushed for an attack on the west
almost as soon as Poland fell, it was only the loss of plans that finally
stopped ideas of a winter attack. Over the course of the winter more
armour was being assigned to Army Group A.
Manstein had been working on his plan from October 1939, at about
the same time the OKH plans for the French campaign were circulated.
Manstein is on record as saying Rundstedt backed the new plan from
the start. It seems General Busch may have passed on an idea of them
to Hitler in November 1939. Manstein told Hitler of the plan personally
in February 1940.
Things then flowed from there. With Hitler awarding himself much of
the credit when it all worked.
>>> There were no reserves.
>>
>> Keep repeating this and your wish may come true one day.
>
> It may be true. Read on :)
No, it is not true.
>>> If the Allies counter attacked the Germans had nothing in reserve and
>>> the plan would have failed.
>>
>> No, just saying counter attack does not guarantee success.
>
> The system was finely balanced it could have failed. If the French had cut
> the line it would have failed (this is, not driving the British out and
> France still fighting).
Attacks can always fail.
The French needed to firstly break the supply lines and then keep
them broken, and that was a lot harder.
>>> It was a reckless gamble to expect the enemy not to counter attack or
>>> expect an untried, newly devised rolling logistical system not to break
>>> at some point.
>>
>> Actually it was not a reckless gamble, and the Germans did things
>> like stop for a while to consolidate, which turned out to be the
>> wrong move as the allies were simply unable to match German
>> command and control.
>
> Tooze page 380.
> "In both campaigns [France & Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving
> decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less
> spelled disaster".
Ah yes, the Oracle has spoken, no possible chance of it being wrong.
The Germans needed to clear the good defensive terrain on the German
border, if they could not do that their attack would be slowed so much
the allies could react, even given things like German air superiority.
Disaster seems to be defined as just about anything other than the
historical result.
> It was reckless. They poured into the French rear.
Oh good, than just about every attack in Europe and North Africa
was reckless under this definition.
> If they were met by full French armoured units head on, and the French cut
> the line they would have been in big trouble.
The French divisional armoured units had around 1,200 tanks in them.
And no the French would not cut the supply line by attacking head
on, they would go for the flank, rather like the Germans were doing.
> They was easily with the capabilities of the French.
In theory yes, in practice with the lack of air support, the slow command
structure, the troop training, the abilities of their tanks, the answer was
no.
Go look up Rommel's remark about fighting armoured warfare with the
enemy having air support and you having none.
> They did not know how good or bad the French and British command structure
> was. The rolling system relied on the conveyor belt not being broken.
The conveyor belt could be broken for a time.
> The best they could have hoped for before the start was to get as far into
> France as possible then a war of attrition ensues. They could not believe
> how far they were advancing without any serious counter, well not enough
> to stop the conveyor belt.
Another infallible pronouncement it seems. If the Germans had made it
into France then their armoured warfare ideas should provide them with
the ability to mount a deep attack, since the bad terrain has been crossed.
>> Plus the Germans received better reconnaissance information.
>
> That is obvious as the Allies did not know the German had massed across
> the Belgium border. 7 out of their 9 tank divsions.
10 armoured divisions.
> On 10 May German Group Army B moved into holland and northern Belgium with
> only 29 divisions, out a total of 93 combat ready divisions.
As noted the 93 combat ready divisions figure is misleading and if it
is going to be used make the similar adjustments for allied troops.
> Tooze page 368.
> "The bulk of the French army, backed up by the British BEF, marched
> rapidly northwards."
Well that is wrong for a start, the French sent their most mobile army,
along with the BEF, so they could make as much ground as possible
before encountering the Germans.
The bulk of the French army stayed in France.
To put it another way the Germans sent more troops to Belgium than
the allies did. If the bulk of the French army was in Belgium then it
is clear the allied defeat was due to lack of troops.
> This was to stop the Germans getting to the Channel coast but using 57
> divisions.
This seems to count every French and British division from Luxembourg
to the coast. Plus the entire French reserves, including those guarding the
Swiss border.
French
7th Army 7 divisions, 1st Army group 22 divisions, BEF 9 divisions,
French reserves 22 divisions including 5 watching for an attack through
Switzerland, total 60 divisions, or 55 removing the Swiss group.
Perhaps it can be explained where the French advanced beyond Sedan
into the Ardennes, since those units had to advance to make up the
59 divisions numbers.
> Group Army B's move was a feint. Group Army A, with 45 crack divisions,
> moved through the Ardennes forest with 7 out of the 9 tank divisions.
10 armoured divisions.
> They faced 18 French and Belgian 2nd rate divisions. This move was to
> fill the vacuum left by the French and British crack divisions who had
> swiftly moved north to face Group Army B.
The Belgian forces in the Ardennes were actually quote good but too few.
The French formations in the area had been there for months, it was their
guard sector, they were not suddenly sent there. They stayed on their
side of the border.
> Tooze page 369.
> "If the French and British had held back substantial reserves, Army Group
> A's pincer movement would have be vulnerable to counter attack, or even
> counter-encirclement."
If the allies had the atomic bomb.....
Or perhaps just 2nd TAF.
And in case you have not figured it out the allies could have struck the
German thrust from the North as well as the South. However that
required the allies being able to command and move in time.
There was no fundamental reason to stop the allied armies in Belgium
striking south.
> "The much feared counter attack against the exposed flanks of the Panzer
> divisions never came."
It came in small numbers. One of which provoked a stop order, but
none did a lot of damage in the ground.
> "The bulk of the Anglo-French forces continued to move in a northerly
> direction, even as they were encircled by the tanks of Army Group A to the
> south."
Again this is wrong, it was not the bulk, the allies began pulling back
before
the Germans completed the encirclement.
The fall back began on 16 May, the Germans had crossed the Meuse
on the 13th.
> It was to that point, the largest encirclement in military history.
WWII was going to set records.
> Page 370.
> " no single disaster of the Red Army can compare to the Anglo-French
> debacle of May 1940."
Nice to know.
> The Germans were expecting a counter-attack. Fighting such a large force
> with more armour than what they had, they would expect that to happen.
Yet somehow the idea is when the counter attack came it would be
unstoppable, the German anticipation would not do them any good.
>>> The French moved far too many troops and units into Belgium alongside
>>> and behind the British when the Germans moved into Holland. The British
>>> and Belgians could cope with them there, with some French help, and
>>> were. When the main thrust of the German attack entered France at Sedan
>>> there were few French to meet them.
>>
>> The Germans sent more troops into Belgium than the French and British
>> combined..
>
> Like 7 of their 9 Panzer divisions.
Actually all 10 Panzer divisions if you want to get technical.
>> The 16 months claim is simply wrong. A simple check of aircraft and tank
>> production shows that. Also the Germans could take what they want from
>> French stocks to replenish losses.
>
> The Germans used French tanks in small theatres like the Balkans, but the
> greatest contribution was the artillery, which accounted for 47% of all
> German artillery.
I see the claim about the time it took to replace losses has melted away.
narrl...@hotmail.com
> On 2009-01-04 19:21:26 -0800, Stephen Graham <grah...@speakeasy.net> said:
>
> > Andrew Clark wrote:
>
> >> Before the defeat of France, the US, safe behind the Atlantic and the
> >> RN, gleefully extorted every dollar and convertible asset it could from
> >> France and Britain while plotting how it could start snatching the
> >> British and French empires.
>
> > That's certainly an interesting claim, Andrew. What documented proof
> > are you offering for a US plan to "start snatching the British and
> > French empires"?
>
> And I might add, What parts of the British and French empires did the
> US end up in possession of? I am having trouble locating any and would
> appreciate some help on this.
American greed and malevolence are always tempered by American
incompetence. Does that clear things up?
Narr
Duwop
> On 2009-01-05 21:52:49 -0800, "YMC" <smoothcof...@gmail.com> said:
>
> > I think he's referring to the Virgin Islands.
>
> According to this article:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Virgin_Islands#History
>
> the US purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917. BTW, the
> Brits still have their half of the Virgin Islands.
>
> Michael
See, the US had a history of taking advantage during wars and
obviously were targeting British posessions. Only with British cunning
and luck were they able to keep posession of their half of the
Virgins. Others claim half a Virgin is none at all.
E.F.Schelby
>
>According to this article:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Virgin_Islands#History
>
>the US purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917.
Purchasing islands, inhabitants and all, doubtlessly made the
world safer for democracy during the First World War. Yet the
islanders were no longer slaves, so how could they be bought?
In any event, this buying of land -- inhabitants included -- goes
back to the huge Louisiana Purchase. The US was not a colonial power
but did business with colonial empires. Another big buy was about
half of Mexico in 1848: first conquered and occupied, next purchased
(for legal veneer).
ES
cman...@gmail.com
<xyxbayman...@xyxmailinator.xyxcomnospam> wrote:
>The USA was dragged out of depression by
> mainly British and initially French money being spent in the USA.
This does not seem to be true. Britain and France were simply too poor
(in terms of gold- all that mattered under Cash&Carry) to be able to
fix the US economy. To give you an idea here, the UK spent roughly 2.5
billion prior to Lend Lease (counting the French orders that they took
over). More than the US government spent on defense (1.6 billion in FY
1940) but the US was spending 3.5 billion on social services, and
another 2 billion on resource and community development in FY 1940.
The 2.5 billion helped, but it certainly wasn't enough of a Keynesian
stimulus to drag the US out. It helped more to get the US industry to
start producing war material, so that once it was involved in the war
the weapons came quicker than they would have otherwise, but it's
macroeconomic effect wasn't decisive.
Lend Lease didn't help that much either, for the simple reason that in
its first year it didn't provide that much in the way of material to
other countries. By Spring 1942 the US economy was at essentially full
employment, and so every bit of LL goods that were sent out after that
point came at a cost to the US production for its own stocks [1].
[1]: "The United States: From Ploughshares to Swords" by H. Rockoff,
in _The Economics of World War Two_ ed. by Harrison
Chris Manteuffel
Andrew Clark
> "Often suggested"? Where? I've never read such comments.
A Google Group search found multiple mentions of these allegations in
various WW2 forums. They used to be made fairly regularly in this group too,
although not for a few years now.
Louis C
> >> All the Luftwaffe was 100% committed, losing 350
> >> planes on the first day.
and...
> Damaged is out of the battle and cannot be used in the time frame the
> Germans had in mind.
Of the 323 German planes lost on May 10, a good 170 were transport
planes. So the Germans lost something like 5% of their available
combat, non-transport, planes that day. The French lost 14 planes in
the air and over 60 destroyed on the ground, so a slightly higher loss
rate. If you're using loss rate as an indicator of commitment and of
risk-friendliness, then the Luftwaffe was taking it almost easy.
> If I recall the Allies (loose term I know) had more armoured divisions
> committed as the Germans reserved the majority of theirs for the Ardennes
> attack.
The Allies sent 3 armored divisions to Belgium and The Netherlands,
the Germans sent 3. Two of these clashed with 2 of the Allied ones,
for that matter.
Allied intelligence reported German armor in the Low Countries, the
decision to send friendly armor had to be taken before intelligence
could come up with a reliable panzer division count. At worst, the
French sent 1 division too many there.
That left 3 Allied armored divisions for the Ardennes sector, with 2
more on the way (the British one arriving, and the French 4th DCR
forming), vs 7 German ones.
> Allied intelligence did not know of a German build up just across the
> Ardennes border.
Allied intelligence correctly detected a German build up in the Eifel
region, which gave no clue as to where the forces would go.
> The Germans must have thought their build up was known,
> which makes their plan even more reckless.
The Germans knew what the Allies could learn i.e. where they were
building up, which is why they did it in a way that wouldn't telegraph
their intentions. And they definitely did not assume that the Allies
knew about their plans, quite the contrary they expected Allied forces
to move into the trap.
> The cost was higher to the Allies. The German cost was still very high. The
> booty was near useless as little was serviceable.
You want to look up how much of the Barbarossa force was equipped with
booty equipment.
> OK the Germans salvaged Bedford trucks, etc.
Yeah, "etc". Like doubling their truck inventory.
> How much artillery, tanks, etc, did they use?
I don't remember offhand, but the number of guns is in the thousands,
and a very quick and not thorough mental addition of booty French
tanks comes at a few hundred i.e. more than were deployed in North
Africa.
> German industry would not make parts for this
> captured equipment when they had to supply their own types.
I know you seem to think that British forces were the only ones with
motor equipment, but the bulk of the equipment that the Germans
captured was not British (because the BEF, once again, was only a
fraction of the forces Germany fought) and the Germans had access to
Belgian and French industry to build parts for Belgian and French
equipment.
Not only that, but British trucks weren't manufactured on another
planet, and European workshops were used to working with them for
normal repairs.
So the Germans used a lot of captured equipment.
> It was worth more in scrap value as Germany was short of iron ore.
Do you have a source for that? I'm 99% certain that you're just making
it up, and if not 100% certain that your source is wrong.
LC
Louis C
Bay Man wrote:
> That is obvious as the Allies did not know the German had massed across the
> Belgium border.
Yes, they did, the problem is that the Belgian border was too long.
Those Allied forces that were out of position were still in Belgium.
> On 10 May German Group Army B moved into holland and northern Belgium with
> only 29 divisions, out a total of 93 combat ready divisions.
> Tooze page 368.
> "The bulk of the French army, backed up by the British BEF, marched rapidly
> northwards."
I provided a divisional count of those units that went to central
Belgium in another post, the result is less than the German total. The
bulk of the French army did not march northwards, and certainly not
rapidly.
> This was to stop the Germans getting to the Channel coast but using 57
> divisions.
Your division count is wrong, or taking into account the Belgian and
Dutch units which were understrength and did not march northwards.
Another possibility is that you're double-countring French units that
marched into Belgian territory but were hit by Army Group A.
> "The bulk of the Anglo-French forces continued to move in a northerly
> direction, even as they were encircled by the tanks of Army Group A to the
> south."
That's just false.
> The Germans were expecting a counter-attack. Fighting such a large force
> with more armour than what they had, they would expect that to happen.
...and they expected to beat the counter-attack, which is why they did
it.
> The Germans used French tanks in small theatres like the Balkans, but the
> greatest contribution was the artillery, which accounted for 47% of all
> German artillery.
French tanks were used in Russia, hardly a small theatre. 47% of all
German artillery was of French origin? Wow, for someone who claimed
that booty was insignificant, you certainly don't mind contradicting
yourself. That would be a huge contribution, greater than that of lend-
lease on the British and Soviet war efforts, were the figure true.
Which, as other readers may have guessed, it isn't.
LC
Bay Man
> Not to mention the usual loot of horses, food, raw materials, and
> ordering French industry to produce stuff for Germany. The Germans
> did know how to loot subjugated economies.
It didn't actually work that way. The Germans had to provide much needed
grain and coal to conquered countries as the RN blockade was effective.
Bay Man
> Bay Man wrote:
>> "David H Thornley" <da...@thornley.net> wrote in message
>> news:Laedndq1lstj4fzU...@posted.visi...
>>
>> The USA agreed to the Russian claims for Eastern Europe. Immediately
>> after hostilities, bizarrely, lined up against the USSR accusing them of
>> evil empire building, after agreeing the formation of this evil empire.
>>
> Exactly what was the alternative?
Not agreeing in the first place. And not being greedy and valuing your
friends instead of ripping them off and plotting against them.
>> That is an odd way of putting it. The USA
>> was dragged out of depression by mainly
>> British and initially French money being spent in the USA.
>
> The US economy was recovering from the
> 1937 low on its own, actually. Not that the
> additional business wasn't welcome.
The USA recovered a lot more slowly than others.
>> Not
>> content with the US economy being dragged up by its boot straps by
>> primarily by the UK, the US government started to asset strip the
>> British. The instances of only paying in gold and the UK having to sell
>> all interests in the US were clearly to economically strip bare the UK,
>> not assist the UK.
>
> You must tell me how the US did that.
"The instances of only paying in gold and the UK having to sell all
interests in the US" was the start.
>> As regards to colonialism, the US was a colonial power. The US insisted
>> sovereignty of territory from Newfoundland to the Caribbean, be
>> transferred to the USA from the UK, as a precursor for "selling"
>> materials to the UK. The USA wanted to extend its colonial territory.
>
> What are you smoking, and where can I get some?
Hard facts irritate you.
>> At Yalta, Roosevelt was talking to Stalin behind the backs of the
>> British, over dividing up the British Empire between themselves. The
>> USA being so eager to give Eastern Europe to the Russians gives a clue.
>
> At Yalta, Roosevelt was half dead.
He could still speak, as well as his aid , who could speak better .
> Again, I'd like to see a credible source as
> to talks about breaking up the British Empire.
>> Just as well the USA did not get its hands on much of the British and
>> French empires, as they proved to be un-worldly post WW2 in the super
>> power role they found themselves.
> I'll give you a hint here:
The hint was not to the point.
> The US was interested in decolonialization
> at the time,
The USA was interested in getting its corporations into the UK and French
empire markets. Market which were built up over centuries which the USA had
no role in making. US foreign policy is geared towards their corporations,
and still is today.
Bay Man
news:8accff89-3b3c-4768...@y1g2000pra.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 5, 4:02 pm, "Bay Man" <xyxbayman...@xyxmailinator.xyxcomnospam>
> wrote:
>> "Geoffrey Sinclair" <gsinclai...@froggy.com.au> wrote in message
>>
>> news:49621aa6$0$28518$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au...
>> > Actually the Germans did have reserves, just like the allies.
>>
>> If they did there didn't have too many.
>> Tooze page 380.
>> "On both occasions [France and Barberossa]
>> the Germans held no significant
>> forces in reserve."
>
> As has been noted before, Tooze is an
> economics historian, not a military historian.
So, you don't believe him. Fine.
Bay Man
> Bay Man wrote:
>>
>> If they did they didn't have too many.
>> Tooze page 380.
>> "On both occasions [France and Barberossa]
>> the Germans held no
>> significant forces in reserve."
>
> Quick note: Nobody gets everything right.
>
> Tooze wrote an excellent book on the
> German economy before and during
> WWII. Take it as that. It is not a general
> history, or a military history, and since these
> were not among Tooze's goals he's much less
> reliable on them.
What are you saying?
> There are other books and other sources on the actual military
> campaigns that you will find much more useful for what happened
> in the field, although of course they won't have as much good stuff
> on the German economy as Tooze.
WW2 was an economic war.
>> Not according to Tooze. He says there was no plan to invade France in
>> September 1939. He give the months of the two plans, the final being
>> conceived in Feb 1940. Only Hitler and Manstein, who conceived the
>> plan, liked it. All other generals thought it far too risky.
>
> Some other generals came around.
> Halder became convinced that the von
> Manstein plan was brilliant, and supported it fully.
Once Hitler went 100% for a plan they all generally followed.
> At that time, von Manstein was a rather junior general, and Hitler was
> very reluctant to override his generals. While he interfered with them
> much more than they liked, he did not enforce decisions that most of
> them disagreed with until about the end of 1942. If there had been
> no senior generals in favor of the von Manstein plan, Hitler would
> have been very unlikely to force it through.
Initially only Hitler and Manstein liked the plan. Hitler favoured it and
the rest had to follow.
David H Thornley
>> Exactly what was the alternative?
>
> Not agreeing in the first place. And not being greedy and valuing your
> friends instead of ripping them off and plotting against them.
>
tendency that crops up in US foreign policy from time to time.
What practical good would it have done? How would the US lack
of agreement stop Stalin from continuing to occupy countries that
had Soviet boots all over the ground? Was Stalin going to back
down if Roosevelt held his breath until he turned blue in the
face?
You've been asked before what the Western Allies could have done to
stop the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. You are convincing
us that you have no idea whatsoever, and merely want the US to have
taken the holier-than-thou road. Even that would be admissible
if you'll tell us what substantive advantage that would have been
for the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians, Bulgarians, and Hungarians.
>> You must tell me how the US did that.
>
> "The instances of only paying in gold and the UK having to sell all
> interests in the US" was the start.
>
The UK was not required to pay anything in gold, and was not forced to
sell all its interests in the US.
There was no way the US could require that.
Now, the US could refuse to sell on credit, or for sterling. Since
neither British credit nor sterling were a real good investment in
a large war, accepting credit or sterling would have been a sort of
subsidy towards Britain.
The terms were of course to the advantage of the US. Do you consider
this to be any sort of oddity in history? To be specific, do you
think Britain acquired that empire while scrupulously refusing to
press any diplomatic or military advantage?
>>> As regards to colonialism, the US was a colonial power. The US insisted
>>> sovereignty of territory from Newfoundland to the Caribbean, be
>>> transferred to the USA from the UK, as a precursor for "selling"
>>> materials to the UK. The USA wanted to extend its colonial territory.
>>
>> What are you smoking, and where can I get some?
>
> Hard facts irritate you.
>
As far as this thread goes, it's hard to tell.
What element of the cash-and-carry legislation required sovereignty
transfer? US companies were happy to sell to the British and French
before the war, and they were happy to sell after the cash-and-carry
legislation. There was no requirement to transfer any territory.
(That is a hard fact.)
Nor do I understand the scare quotes around "selling". Britain and
France gave US firms money. US firms gave Britain and France stuff.
This is selling. (That, by the way is another hard fact.)
>> The US was interested in decolonialization
>> at the time,
>
> The USA was interested in getting its corporations into the UK and
> French empire markets. Market which were built up over centuries which
> the USA had no role in making. US foreign policy is geared towards
> their corporations, and still is today.
>
Among other things, yes. The US was also interested in freedom for
the colonized peoples. Like most such things, the motives were
a complicated network involving quite a bit of self-interest.
Now, you seem to be proposing that, because a country invaded an area,
shot up resisters, played divide and conquer among its inhabitants,
and organized the local economy for exploitation, that it would have
an eternal right to do so, and that the locals never should be allowed
to buy from the US.
If this is not what you mean, please clarify.
David H Thornley
>
> It didn't actually work that way. The Germans had to provide much
> needed grain and coal to conquered countries as the RN blockade was
> effective.
>
it was going to be more useful to the Germans than keeping it in
Germany.
The fact is that the Germans cared somewhat less about the welfare
of the conquered peoples than I feel about the welfare of gerbils.
The German government cared nothing about their starvation, except
when they wanted to encourage it.
Louis C
> It didn't actually work that way. The Germans had to provide much needed
> grain and coal to conquered countries as the RN blockade was effective.
The Germans had to provide coal, which they had aplenty, and in
exchange for which they received far more in terms of foodstuffs and
finished goods.
The Germans did not have to provide grain, except minor amounts to
Bohemia-Moravia and Norway. Most of the "German" exports of grains
were of course ultimately sourced from other countries, Germany being
a massive net importer of foodstuffs during the war.
LC
Rich
wrote:
> "Rich" <RichT...@msn.com> wrote in message
> > As has been noted before, Tooze is an
> > economics historian, not a military historian.
>
> So, you don't believe him. Fine.
Are you truly that much of a naif? Or just that thick-headed? I
*believe* that Tooze has written a remarkable synthesis of economic,
political, and military history. I also "believe" that evidently I
have access to better sources than he on this particular subject,
which is something that has little to do with "belief" and everything
to do with simple facts and investigation of sources. Is it really
that remarkable to you that in several hundred pages on a very complex
subject where he got many things right that he also got some things
wrong? Or does your worldview require your Tooze to be perfect?
Unfortunately though when something or someone is demonstrably wrong
no amount of "belief" will change that. Or do you "believe" that if
you "believe" hard enough that something - such as the sugarplum fairy
- will come true?
Andrew Clark
> Because the Med was closed. Why then refer to "opening
> the Suez Canal"?
I slipped into contemporary British-speak: in documents of the time,
'opening the canal' was used as shorthand for 'opening the Med'. My
apologies for any confusion.
> And 2nd Alamein did not open the Mediterranean.
> That was achieved by a much larger campaign
> of which 2nd Alamein was only a part.
I agree. But without 2nd Alamein, the Med would not have been opened.
> I doubt that. Iraq's 30-32M barrels/year was useful,
> no doubt, but no more essential than Iran's 30-32M
> barrels/year, and not a major factor compared to
> the 1,200-1,300M barrels/year produced by the U.S.
I should have used Persian Gulf POL rather than just Iraq; thanks for the
correction.
That said, POL from Abadan was a significant factor in military operations
in Europe, although I would have to search again for the figures to prove it
..
> After the fall of Malaya, what rubber was shipped
> across the Indian Ocean?
Rubber from Ceylon, of course: 88,000 tons in 1941 rising to 200,000+ tons
in 1944.
> I don't see that the outcome of Second Alamein
> had any effect on the situation in Tunisia until
> well into 1943. I can't see any part of PAA being
> transferred over 2,000 km, given Axis transport
> limitations.
Can you say why? After all, PAA managed to retreat from the Western Desert
into Tunisia and 8th Army managed to advance after them...
There were roads and a more or less continuous rail line from Tripoli to
Tunis, and coastal shipping was also operating successfully. I'd guess that
the first units would arrive about 4 weeks after starting the journey; not
quick but neither was the Allied advance on Tunis. If PAA stalled 8th Army
in October 1942, and straightaway Comando Supreme/Kesselring began to
withdraw mechanised units to Tunisia, I'd imagine that they would arrive in
the latter in plenty of time. It was after all March until 1st Army felt
able to launch a general offensive on Tunis.
> Oh please. By the end of November 1942, the
> Allies were firmly established in western Tunisia,
> less than 100 km from Tunis and Bizerta. The
> ground between is rough, but nothing like the
> mountains of Italy. What stopped the Allies in
> the winter of 1942-43 was winter rain and the
> near total absence of paved roads (combined
> with German resistance of course). Come
> summer 1943, it wouldn't take very long for
> the Allies to finish the business.
Historically, 1st Army was roughly handled by Axis forces (Kasserine, for
example) and made no progress towards Tunis from the east after November
1942 until after Medenine, the Mareth Line battle and Wadi Akarit in March
1943 - ie *after* 8th Army had seriously attrited the Axis forces in
theatre. Even then, Vulcan faltered and 1st Army needed two additional elite
divisions from 8th before making headway on Tunis.
Without 8th Army, 1st Army will face much larger odds in the shape of a
relatively larger and more concentrated Axis deployment - and, of course,
the Allies will not have the very considerable asset of the Desert Air Force
either.
I remain of the opinion that, absent the pressure and attrition exerted by
8th Army, the Allies could have been stalled in Tunisia for a considerable
period, quite possibly the whole of 1943.
> Sicily is at least as mountainous as Tunisia,
> and the Allies cleared the whole island in a month.
The two situations are quite different. The Italian army did not defend
Sicily with any vigour, and the few German units in Sicily, faced with an
Italian fait accompli, found themselves massively outnumbered and had no
choice but a fighting withdrawal. The Italian Army in Tunisia was rather
more enthusiastic and committed and Axis forces in Tunisia were pretty much
equal in numbers to 1st Army.
> Once Tunisia fell, even if Eighth Army was
> _still_ stuck at Alamein, the Axis in Africa
> would be blockaded, and it would not take long
> to finish the whole thing. Besides which, even
> if instead of Montgomery, Eighth Army was
> commanded by General Twitt-Bunglethorpe
> and Rommel repulsed SUPERCHARGE - a
> new general would take over and there would
> be another attack in a month or two.
I am not suggesting that PAA would survive in Libya indefinitely. However,
if 8th Army suffered a major defeat at 2nd Alamein, the resultant British
enquiry, shuffle of generals and re-supply would take several weeks; time
during which the best mechanised units of PAA could be withdrawn to Tunisia.
On the other hand, if the British defeat at 2nd Alamein was really bad,
Rommel might even decide to attack into Egypt and capture (or raid) the base
installations and depots in the Canal Zone and at Alexandria. That would be
a severe blow to Britain and significantly if temporarily set back British
ability to attack into Libya.
Even when Britain did attack again, and such an attack would be successful
if PAA has moved units to Tunisia, the Axis could easily stage a slow
orderly fighting withdrawal through Tripolitania which would hold up 8th
Army for quite a long time. The pursuit after 2nd Alamein was described by
Rommel as a rout, but even in those circumstances he managed to stage a
number of useful rearguard actions.
> Once Africa was cleared and Sicily taken, Italy
> would want out of the war.
Yes. But if Sicily isn't taken by summer 1943, the Americans might decide to
abandon the whole thing. They were never very keen on the underbelly
campaign...
> Attack _where_ "from the south"?
Tunisia, of course. In theory, the Allies could ship troops from Algeria
into the south of Tunisia and take the Axis defences in the north of Tunisia
between two fires. But this could only be done if the Allies had secured the
airfields on Tripolitania so as to secure air superiority over the sea
lanes. My point was only that, like the northern Italian campaign (albeit
for different reasons), the Axis had the opportunity in Tunisia to use
terrain to establish strong blocking positions which could not be easily
bypassed.
mike
d
>
> It didn't actually work that way. The Germans had to provide much needed
> grain and coal to conquered countries as the RN blockade was effective.
And they did such a good job of that in Holland.
Food went from the Dutch, to the Germans, not the other way around
**
mike
**