Languish.org

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/06/opinions/d-day-myth-reality-opinion/index.html

I thought this was going to be a bunch of stupid crap (D-Day was the biggest battle if WW2! The Americans won the war!), like how most of these pop culture "history" articles work, but the "myths" in question are actually ones that I do think a lot of people probably are not really aware of, and the writing is pretty decent as well.

YMMV, of course.

This one I kinda sorta disagree with:

Quote6. MYTH: America and Britain got off lightly in World War II

REALITY: Allied frontline troops suffered horrifically during World War II. Democracies such as Britain and America tried to achieve victory with as few casualties as possible. For the most part, they did this very successfully using technology and machinery to shield lives wherever they could.

I think the common perception identified as a "myth" here is that the UK and US "got off lightly" only because there was no ground war that rolled over significant US or UK territory: they only "got off lightly" by comparison with places ground between the combatants (or occupied by one - or worse, both - of the Nazis or Soviets). Most everyone these days knows that actual frontline troops suffered horribly. 

Yeah WWII is our bloodiest war ever not fought against ourselves.

Quote from: Malthus on June 07, 2016, 08:57:02 AM
This one I kinda sorta disagree with:

Quote6. MYTH: America and Britain got off lightly in World War II

REALITY: Allied frontline troops suffered horrifically during World War II. Democracies such as Britain and America tried to achieve victory with as few casualties as possible. For the most part, they did this very successfully using technology and machinery to shield lives wherever they could.

I think the common perception identified as a "myth" here is that the UK and US "got off lightly" only because there was no ground war that rolled over significant US or UK territory: they only "got off lightly" by comparison with places ground between the combatants (or occupied by one - or worse, both - of the Nazis or Soviets). Most everyone these days knows that actual frontline troops suffered horribly. 

Yeah, I would agree with you - although I am not sure how much people are aware of just how bad the casualties were in frontline Allied units.

The problem is that so few soldiers were actually in those frontline units. The Allied armies had a ridiculously large tail wagging the combat dog. For good reason, it turns out (mostly), as the per soldier applied combat power was probably radically greater than anything our opponents could bring to bear, but it still created this perception that 95% of the people in the military were largely immune to the horrors of combat.

So the "myth" here might be

1. Not a myth at all, because in fact for the most part "America and Britain" did get off lightly in WW2, or
2. It is a myth in that many people think that #1 is true but don't realize how untrue it was for the poor guys who actually had to do the fighting, or
3. It is not a myth, and not true, because people do actually realize that while overall we may have gotten off lightly, most people realize that for the actual combatants is was terrible, or
4. It really isn't a myth any way you cut it because even if it was pretty terrible to be a Western combat troop, even *they* actually got off lightly compared to, well, basically everyone else fighting in the war.

I think the fourth might be the closest to actual reality. While being a solider in the Big Red One almost certainly sucked, and the casualty rates were incredible, it still had to be a damn site better than being a frontline soldier in pretty much any other major combatant in the war. USSR? Worse. Japan? Much, much, MUCH worse. Germany? Certainly worse.

Other than finding some guys somewhere who simply were not fighting, I can't think of any other major combatant I would trade places with if I had to be an infantryman or tank crewman on one of the active fighting fronts during WW2.

Or the poor Chinese. Man did it ever suck to be in that army.

Quote from: Valmy on June 07, 2016, 08:59:32 AM
Yeah WWII is our bloodiest war ever not fought against ourselves.

sure, you guys keep fighting among each other, when not trying to invade your canadian cousins. ;)

Quote from: viper37 on June 07, 2016, 09:22:51 AM
sure, you guys keep fighting among each other, when not trying to invade your canadian cousins. ;)

Hey! We only did that twice.

Quote from: Malthus on June 07, 2016, 08:57:02 AM
This one I kinda sorta disagree with:

Quote6. MYTH: America and Britain got off lightly in World War II

REALITY: Allied frontline troops suffered horrifically during World War II. Democracies such as Britain and America tried to achieve victory with as few casualties as possible. For the most part, they did this very successfully using technology and machinery to shield lives wherever they could.

I think the common perception identified as a "myth" here is that the UK and US "got off lightly" only because there was no ground war that rolled over significant US or UK territory: they only "got off lightly" by comparison with places ground between the combatants (or occupied by one - or worse, both - of the Nazis or Soviets). Most everyone these days knows that actual frontline troops suffered horribly.

Let's not also forget that a lot of the UK was bombed to shit too.

Quote from: Brazen on June 07, 2016, 09:30:42 AM

Quote from: Malthus on June 07, 2016, 08:57:02 AM
This one I kinda sorta disagree with:

Quote6. MYTH: America and Britain got off lightly in World War II

REALITY: Allied frontline troops suffered horrifically during World War II. Democracies such as Britain and America tried to achieve victory with as few casualties as possible. For the most part, they did this very successfully using technology and machinery to shield lives wherever they could.

I think the common perception identified as a "myth" here is that the UK and US "got off lightly" only because there was no ground war that rolled over significant US or UK territory: they only "got off lightly" by comparison with places ground between the combatants (or occupied by one - or worse, both - of the Nazis or Soviets). Most everyone these days knows that actual frontline troops suffered horribly.

Let's not also forget that a lot of the UK was bombed to shit too.

Was it though, really?

Again, compared to the treatment given to France and Germany (even Italy? although I am not as certain about that) in bombing, I am guessing the UK was pretty lightly scathed. The capability of the Luftwaffe to pound southern Britain in 1940/41 was a tiny slice of what the US and British Air Forces would be able to do to Germany and Italy a couple years later.

And the devastation that Eastern Europe and the USSR saw as the fighting swept across that area was surely of an order of magnitude greater than the damage done to the UK.

My understanding of German bombing of the UK was that it was

A) Largely initially aimed at military targets, and
B) Once they shifted to civilian/industrial targets, they actually could not reach much outside southern England, and it was largely limited to hitting London over and over again. Other British cities were mostly unscathed, with a handful attacks each, at the most.

It was, of course, by far the worst bombing that Britain ever suffered. But "only" 60,000 people were killed, whereas it was more like half a million in Germany.

Quote from: Brazen on June 07, 2016, 09:30:42 AM

Quote from: Malthus on June 07, 2016, 08:57:02 AM
This one I kinda sorta disagree with:

Quote6. MYTH: America and Britain got off lightly in World War II

REALITY: Allied frontline troops suffered horrifically during World War II. Democracies such as Britain and America tried to achieve victory with as few casualties as possible. For the most part, they did this very successfully using technology and machinery to shield lives wherever they could.

I think the common perception identified as a "myth" here is that the UK and US "got off lightly" only because there was no ground war that rolled over significant US or UK territory: they only "got off lightly" by comparison with places ground between the combatants (or occupied by one - or worse, both - of the Nazis or Soviets). Most everyone these days knows that actual frontline troops suffered horribly.

Let's not also forget that a lot of the UK was bombed to shit too.

Certainly, the Blitz was terrible. But compared to the other combatants, the UK indeed "got off lightly", bad as it was.

The blitz allegedly killed some 40-50K Britons, ad even more were killed later by buzz bombs etc. The Allies allegedly killed more than that bombing France. That, on top of whatever damage the Germans did to that country, having it invaded first by the Germans and later by the Allies (and even the Italians!), etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_France_during_World_War_II

As is often pointed out, the harms the Germans inflicted paled in comparison to the damage returned by the Allies later in the war through strategic bombing.

Quote from: Malthus on June 07, 2016, 10:52:59 AM

As is often pointed out, the harms the Germans inflicted paled in comparison to the damage returned by the Allies later in the war through strategic bombing.

Yeah, fucking with democracies when it comes to war really didn't turn out well for the 20th century totalitarian regimes.

I kinda disagree with #3.  The Allies did become bogged down in Normandy.  Obviously they eventually pushed through, but the author really seems to belittle the German defensive efforts.  Sure, they stayed within range of naval guns, but what was the alternative?  Mass retreat from France on D+6??

Quote from: derspiess on June 07, 2016, 12:11:21 PM
I kinda disagree with #3.  The Allies did become bogged down in Normandy.  Obviously they eventually pushed through, but the author really seems to belittle the German defensive efforts.  Sure, they stayed within range of naval guns, but what was the alternative?  Mass retreat from France on D+6??

I think it was Rommel's plan to group a reserve in the center and counter-attack and some historians have been sympathetic to that view. But I think the Germans did it the best way they could. The ONLY chance to win, and it was a slim chance, was to beat them on the beaches.

Quote from: Valmy on June 07, 2016, 12:13:25 PM

Quote from: derspiess on June 07, 2016, 12:11:21 PM
I kinda disagree with #3.  The Allies did become bogged down in Normandy.  Obviously they eventually pushed through, but the author really seems to belittle the German defensive efforts.  Sure, they stayed within range of naval guns, but what was the alternative?  Mass retreat from France on D+6??

I think it was Rommel's plan to group a reserve in the center and counter-attack and some historians have been sympathetic to that view. But I think the Germans did it the best way they could. The ONLY chance to win, and it was a slim chance, was to beat them on the beaches.

I agree: holding back a reserve for a big counter-attack would have been difficult to organize and implement effectively, what with the Allied warplanes stalking every road and railway & blowing shit up all over the place. Allied air dominance really made it difficult for the Germans to win, once they had established themselves. Preventing them from establishing themselves was also difficult, given that the Allies could pound any beach they liked with naval gunnery, and the Germans could effectively do nothing about it.

Really, unless the beach defenses fended off the initial landings, the Germans were pretty well screwed, given Allied superiority in the air and at sea. Of course, that leads to the problem of attempting to 'defend everything' with fixed defenses ...

Naturally, the Germans attempted to avoid the 'defend everything = defend nothing" problem by reasoning that the Allies needed a port, therefore what requires the most defense is ports (plus, Dieppe). Only the Allies managed to bring a port with them (well, two, but one got busted). So the Allies could do without a port for a bit, until they were strong enough to take one from the land side.

QuoteBy the end of World War II the United States had the best armed services in the world

Is this generally accepted?

Quote from: Gups on June 07, 2016, 12:52:06 PM

QuoteBy the end of World War II the United States had the best armed services in the world

Is this generally accepted?

Probably not, but the US was certainly in the best position after the war.  Pretty much every other power was receiving resources from the US.  And the US has the Atomic Bomb.

Rommel knew that once the Allies were established there was no way to get them back off, and that the only chance was to throw back the invasion.

He also knew that the need to defend all that coastline meant that actually defeating the invasion itself was not really possible. The troops would get onto the beach.

His plan then relied on the hoped for ability to defeat the invasion operationally, not tactically - that after the Allies landed, they would be able to counter-attack with forces kept near the beaches within the first 48-96 hours of a landing. This would, of course, mean that they would have to accomplish this despite Allied naval gunnery dominance, but he felt that they could do that.

This is why he asked for the reserves to be kept much less centrally organized and located, but closer to the beaches so he could mount a counter-attack within a day or two of landing. Of course this meant that said counter-attack would have less weight behind it, since you had to spread your potential reserves across a larger area.

In reality, the power of naval gunfire support was even greater than he thought, and his ability to bring in operational reserves in the face of allied air power actually probably a bit greater than he thought - the Germans became really good at night marching and staying under cover when the weather was clear. Still problematic though to move supplies and fuel around, but they got pretty good at moving tactical formations.

In hindsight, it was all pretty hopeless. I don't think there was any "right" answer to the puzzle presented to the Germans on how to defend the continent from the Allies, and a large number of viable answers to the allied puzzle of how to invade it.

Quote from: Berkut on June 07, 2016, 01:06:10 PM
In hindsight, it was all pretty hopeless. I don't think there was any "right" answer to the puzzle presented to the Germans on how to defend the continent from the Allies, and a large number of viable answers to the allied puzzle of how to invade it.

That's my impression too.

The best strategy the Germans could have pursued was 'not be in this situation in the first place'.  ;)

Yeah, it's pretty difficult to see how the Germans could have won this one.  The battle for Normandy was won within the first six hours, after the majority of forces were successfully able to land.  The only way for the Germans to win is for a freak storm to hit the channel disrupting the landings.  The campaign would be long, but the outcome was never in doubt.  It's excellent of example of winning a battle before the fighting starts.

Quote from: Razgovory on June 07, 2016, 01:20:39 PM
Yeah, it's pretty difficult to see how the Germans could have won this one.  The battle for Normandy was won within the first six hours, after the majority of forces were successfully able to land.  The only way for the Germans to win is for a freak storm to hit the channel disrupting the landings.  The campaign would be long, but the outcome was never in doubt.  It's excellent of example of winning a battle before the fighting starts.

Heh, they got a freak storm after the landings, that disrupted supply for days & smashed up the Mulberry ports: the worst channel storm in decades, allegedly. They still lost.  ;)

Quote from: derspiess on June 07, 2016, 12:11:21 PM
I kinda disagree with #3.  The Allies did become bogged down in Normandy.  Obviously they eventually pushed through, but the author really seems to belittle the German defensive efforts.  Sure, they stayed within range of naval guns, but what was the alternative?  Mass retreat from France on D+6??

They had no good alternatives because they had already lost.  They only had three choices:  Hold the line and be destroyed, slowly get pushed back knowing that every square mile lost would mean more space for Allied soldiers to occupy and be used against them, or a full retreat out of France.  There was no good option.

Quote from: Gups on June 07, 2016, 12:52:06 PM
Is this generally accepted?

Based on what I've read: not even close.

Quote from: Gups on June 07, 2016, 12:52:06 PM

QuoteBy the end of World War II the United States had the best armed services in the world

Is this generally accepted?

In the histories I've read I don't know that it is commonly stated that way. It's generally accepted the United States had the most powerful armed force at the end of WWII. Its Naval tonnage was greater than the rest of the world's combined, it generally had the largest amount of equipment in most major equipment categories. It did have a smaller infantry and I think fewer tanks than the Soviets. It was of course also the only armed force that had at its disposal a couple of nuclear weapons per month (a number that would increase per month in short order) and that has to count for a huge bit when talking about relative power.

But if you think about it from a qualitative perspective,  I'd guess the U.S. probably did have the best armed service in the world. Russia had similar problems to Germany in that a huge portion of their men of "ideal fighting age" were dead. Many of their military were not Russian or even Soviet citizens, and were of vague allegiance to the USSR, they had a lot of older people in the military that wouldn't even have been allowed to enlist in the U.S. military. They generally were worse supplied, and amount and quality of supply is incredibly important in determining how good/effective an individual soldier is. I don't think it's widely questioned the Soviets were much, much less disciplined. They weren't the rag tag band of Communist zombies that they're sometimes represented as being, but it was a force that had lost most of its best young men and had supplemented them with nationals from other countries and people outside the ideal age range for a soldier, not to mention even women in some cases.

I don't think the statement as presented is much argued outside Soviet historians.

Who could possibly claim to have better armed services in total?

Also while there were some exceptionally well disciplined, well trained, Veteran soviet units, the range of quality in Soviet frontline units was tremendous, with some little more than the 1945 equivalent of villagers with pitchforks pressed into service. The U.S. frontline units were very uniformly trained, equipped and more or less uniformly capable. Some were battle hardened and some were not, but the United States was still able to have the luxury of providing significant training and organization of its entire military, the Soviets were not in a similar state.

Quote from: Berkut on June 07, 2016, 01:44:49 PM
I don't think the statement as presented is much argued outside Soviet historians.

Who could possibly claim to have better armed services in total?

The Mighty Canucks? :)

No matter how I turn this, numbers, training, equipment, chain of supply, quality of officers, I think the Americans come out on top in nearly every area in 1945.  Maybe the British had equivalent or superior training and better officers, but equipment-wise and chain of supply, the Americans would beat them.

On the other side, Russian equipment was inferior, so was russian training.  The quality of officers was certainly not on par with the US, not in terms of numbers (numbers of very good officers in proportion to underlings) and they depended on US supplies for all of the war, so it's dubious that by 1945 they would be the best fighting machine out there.  They had the numbers sure, but discipline beats numbers 9 times out 10, or so I've heard...

Quote from: viper37 on June 07, 2016, 02:07:54 PM

Quote from: Berkut on June 07, 2016, 01:44:49 PM
I don't think the statement as presented is much argued outside Soviet historians.

Who could possibly claim to have better armed services in total?

The Mighty Canucks? :)

No matter how I turn this, numbers, training, equipment, chain of supply, quality of officers, I think the Americans come out on top in nearly every area in 1945.  Maybe the British had equivalent or superior training and better officers, but equipment-wise and chain of supply, the Americans would beat them.

On the side, Russian equipment was inferior, so was russian training.  The quality of officers was certainly not on par with the US, not in terms of numbers (numbers of very good officers in proportion to underlings) and they depended on US supplies for all of the war, so it's dubious that by 1945 they would be the best fighting machine out there.  They had the numbers sure, but discipline beats numbers 9 times out 10, or so I've heard...

...and the numbers aren't really all that in any case. They typically "count" use some metric of combat divisions (ie the USSR had 300 combat divisions in Europe! or something like that) and when you actually dig into those numbers, they don't tend to really hold up.

Quote from: viper37 on June 07, 2016, 02:07:54 PM

Quote from: Berkut on June 07, 2016, 01:44:49 PM
I don't think the statement as presented is much argued outside Soviet historians.

Who could possibly claim to have better armed services in total?

The Mighty Canucks? :)

No matter how I turn this, numbers, training, equipment, chain of supply, quality of officers, I think the Americans come out on top in nearly every area in 1945.  Maybe the British had equivalent or superior training and better officers, but equipment-wise and chain of supply, the Americans would beat them.

The Brits were also exhausting their manpower.  U.S. commanders complained about manpower shortages, but that was mostly because U.S. commanders expected their units to be at 100% strength pretty much all the time (there was, arguably, a bit of a shortage of infantry, but that was mostly the result of conscious decisions about how manpower was allocated, rather than an actual shortage of manpower).

I think that man-for-man, the Canadian (and possibly Australian and New Zealand forces) were a bit better than the Americans (the Canadians, in particular, seem to have combined many of the best traits of U.S. and UK forces), but their populations were too small to support a lot of units.

I know during WWI the Commonwealth units were considered the elite units of the British Army. I didn't know if that applied for WWII as well.

Quote from: dps on June 07, 2016, 02:41:39 PM

Quote from: viper37 on June 07, 2016, 02:07:54 PM

Quote from: Berkut on June 07, 2016, 01:44:49 PM
I don't think the statement as presented is much argued outside Soviet historians.

Who could possibly claim to have better armed services in total?

The Mighty Canucks? :)

No matter how I turn this, numbers, training, equipment, chain of supply, quality of officers, I think the Americans come out on top in nearly every area in 1945.  Maybe the British had equivalent or superior training and better officers, but equipment-wise and chain of supply, the Americans would beat them.

The Brits were also exhausting their manpower.  U.S. commanders complained about manpower shortages, but that was mostly because U.S. commanders expected their units to be at 100% strength pretty much all the time (there was, arguably, a bit of a shortage of infantry, but that was mostly the result of conscious decisions about how manpower was allocated, rather than an actual shortage of manpower).

I think that man-for-man, the Canadian (and possibly Australian and New Zealand forces) were a bit better than the Americans (the Canadians, in particular, seem to have combined many of the best traits of U.S. and UK forces), but their populations were too small to support a lot of units.

I read a pretty good article about how much manpower was wasted in the US Navy. By the end of the war, the US Navy had some ridiculous number of fleet carriers, vastly more than what was necessary to deal with Japan. King was basically given an open checkbook after Pearl Harbor, and the US Navy radically over-built.

Just in crew alone, the estimate was that there were some 500,000 excess naval personnel that could have been used to much better effect in the army - who certainly was NOT given the Navy blank checkbook.

So were they over-estimating carrier losses?  Oh well, hindsight is 20/20.

And the Army did alright.  They had the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor bastards they were going up against.

As John Keegan wrote, the American style of war is figure out the maximum possible amount of equipment you could hypothetically need, double it, then bring some more.

Somewhere there is the story of the German who saw US soldiers cleaning engine parts in gasoline - if I remember rightly he figured then and there the war was over.

Quote from: derspiess on June 07, 2016, 03:40:20 PM
They had the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor bastards they were going up against.

By God we murdered those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 07, 2016, 03:44:42 PM
As John Keegan wrote, the American style of war is figure out the maximum possible amount of equipment you could hypothetically need, double it, then bring some more.

I can't remember where I read it, but someone described the US war plan as "a cunning strategy to crush the Axis under a gigantic mound of US equipment".  :D

All of which are but ways to say 'the Axis slightly underestimated the potential productivity of their new enemies'.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 07, 2016, 03:44:42 PM
As John Keegan wrote, the American style of war is figure out the maximum possible amount of equipment you could hypothetically need, double it, then bring some more.

There's two kinds of waste.  One kind is building lots of redundancy.  Another kind is building say a tank, spending all the resources to ship it overseas, train a crew, fill it with ammo and gas get it to the front, and then have the whole damn thing set idle because it throws a gasket and you don't have the exact right spare part for it on the front lines at the exact time you need it.  Waste in the first way - big redundancies in transport assets, parts and equipment -- can ameliorate waste in the second way.

It's rather stunning how badly German was outmatched in the war.  The US had an enormous reserve of manpower, the world's largest and most sophisticated industrial base, the most mechanized agricultural sector, and a highly skilled and educated population. It also had the benefit of a powerful navy two large oceans to protect it.

I do remember reading that German soldiers bitterly complained that every GI had a Jeep and a radio, which was only a slight exaggeration.  By D-Day every platoon had a radio and jeeps were plentiful.

Germany didn't have a chance. I am always amazed by how determined they fought on given that fact. I mean I understand why the leadership didn't give up. I understand that their families were threatened back home etc...

But the fact that things occured like the garrison at Saint-Nazaire holding out until Germany surrendered when they just could have given up at any time just boggles the mind. I can get why they might put up a token resistance than give it up, but it was clearly more than that they fought like hell killing tons of Western Soldiers...and for what? I mean I can get resisting the Soviets but holding up the Western advance with such ferocity seems rather counter-productive to saving Germany from Soviet reprisals. And far from saving their families it just meant more of Germany got bombed to hell.

Quote from: Berkut on June 07, 2016, 03:24:39 PM
I read a pretty good article about how much manpower was wasted in the US Navy. By the end of the war, the US Navy had some ridiculous number of fleet carriers, vastly more than what was necessary to deal with Japan. King was basically given an open checkbook after Pearl Harbor, and the US Navy radically over-built.

Remember that these carriers were, by and large, started long before anyone knew how many carriers would be needed.    I'd also argue with the idea that the USN "radically overbuilt," given the task of sweeping aside a powerful Japanese land-based air force using only sea-based air, and the huge need for amphibious shipping.  The USN certainly built some ships it didn't turn out to need (not carriers, but things like the Alaska class), and you can certainly make the case that King and company robbed the UK of support and merchant shipping that were fairly it's under the joint US-UK production quotas, but the complaints about "over-building" seem more revisionist than not.

QuoteJust in crew alone, the estimate was that there were some 500,000 excess naval personnel that could have been used to much better effect in the army - who certainly was NOT given the Navy blank checkbook.

The way that the Army used its personnel make the idea that 500,000 Navy crewmen were critical to the war effort laughable.  There were probably 500,000 US Army personnel lost in the bizarre repple-depple system at any given time.

If there is a myth about WW2 that deserves exploding, it is that candaians were pretty much fellow-riders on the UK.  In fact, Canada produced as much merchant and support shipping in WW2 (1939-1945) as Japan (a fact that astounded me when I found it out).

Quote from: Valmy on June 07, 2016, 06:59:55 PM
Germany didn't have a chance. I am always amazed by how determined they fought on given that fact. I mean I understand why the leadership didn't give up. I understand that their families were threatened back home etc...

But the fact that things occured like the garrison at Saint-Nazaire holding out until Germany surrendered when they just could have given up at any time just boggles the mind. I can get why they might put up a token resistance than give it up, but it was clearly more than that they fought like hell killing tons of Western Soldiers...and for what? I mean I can get resisting the Soviets but holding up the Western advance with such ferocity seems rather counter-productive to saving Germany from Soviet reprisals. And far from saving their families it just meant more of Germany got bombed to hell.

Because they fought for their buddies, not Hitler's shiny Reich.  You can't give up because it fucks your buddy, your brother, whatever, who would otherwise have to face the forces you are tying down. The Germans at Stalingrad knew they were doomed, but knew that they were tying up forces that would otherwise have cut off Army Group A.

Quote from: grumbler on June 07, 2016, 07:17:23 PM

If there is a myth about WW2 that deserves exploding, it is that candaians were pretty much fellow-riders on the UK.  In fact, Canada produced as much merchant and support shipping in WW2 (1939-1945) as Japan (a fact that astounded me when I found it out).

Though in some ways, that's as much a indictment of the Japanese as it is praise for the Canucks.  Even more than the Germans, the Japanese were trying to punch above their weight.

Yeah, when you hear about how there were particular months of the war were the US produced more combat aircraft than Japan produced during the entire war...you realize how fucking stupid the entire thing was...

That seems a bit hard to believe.  The Japanese were certainly massively outproduced, but it sounds a little off that the USA ever produced in one month what the Japanese did during the entire war (and is that 39-45?  41-45? 37-45?).

There is an excellent website that I can't find that goes into details on US vs Japanese production (and provides what looked like reputable sources, as well). There were several categories where US production was much higher than Japanese - IIRC, the US produced more artillery and airframes (?) in 1944 than the Japanese did over the entire war.

Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on June 07, 2016, 10:09:05 PM
IIRC, the US produced more artillery and airframes (?) in 1944 than the Japanese did over the entire war.

That sounds much more believable, and likely.

Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on June 07, 2016, 10:09:05 PM
There is an excellent website that I can't find that goes into details on US vs Japanese production (and provides what looked like reputable sources, as well). There were several categories where US production was much higher than Japanese - IIRC, the US produced more artillery and airframes (?) in 1944 than the Japanese did over the entire war.

Here's a thing that covers a bit of ship production: http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm

Something to keep in mind with production is that the United States was realistically the only modern industrial economy (modern like in the present tense sense of the word) in the war. Yes, the Germans, Soviets, etc had factories. They did not work like American factories. A typical German tank factory had two shifts (and was idle for a portion of every day since these shifts didn't provide 24 hour coverage.) Each shift you had crews, there was a master mechanic/engineer type guy on each crew who was a real craftsman of sorts. He oversaw maybe 3-4 tanks being built simultaneously by his underlings. Each crew would work on a few tanks at a time, building it essentially from the ground up. No assembly line, no extreme reduction of the work to tasks any rote imbecile could perform, instead you had to really know what you were doing. It wasn't until deep in the word, Speer (I believe) reformed this a bit to at least make the factories run 24 hours.

American factories already ran 24 hours--not just for war production, but they had been doing that just to build consumer products like cars before the war. When we fully switched over to a war economy we started rolling shit down assembly lines that were vastly more complex than anything that had ever been built on an assembly line previously. Willow Run (which was actually not even necessarily one of the most successful factories), once it was fully up and running was rolling a new B-24 out of the assembly line every 63 minutes, 24/7/365.

This actually is a pretty major feat of industrial engineering, business management etc--and really no one else was doing it. Other countries could build complex machines, but to actually work out the process to build them on assembly lines and at massive scale isn't easy, and only the United States really achieved this during WWII. This is important in a lot of ways, just from raw production throughput on a national scale, but also because it means we could pretty much hire anyone off the street to start working in factories. My grandmother on dad's side had never worked outside the home and she was able to be a productive worker at an industrial plant. This is because it took all of about a half day's training to know your job. This is because the process had been broken into very simple steps.

I've not read a book on Overlord. What do you guys recommend? Hastings, Beevor or Ambrose? Or are there others? I'm leaning towards Hastings as I like his prose style.

It's not an x's and o's type of book but Five Armies at Normandy by Keagan is bloody fookin brilliant.

Enjoyed Ambrose's book a couple of years back.

Quote from: Habbaku on June 07, 2016, 10:13:35 PM

Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on June 07, 2016, 10:09:05 PM
IIRC, the US produced more artillery and airframes (?) in 1944 than the Japanese did over the entire war.

That sounds much more believable, and likely.

I'm doing this off memory, so it might not be quite accurate, but I believe I've read that the U.S. produced more aircraft in the last six months of 1944 than all the other countries in the world combined produced during the entire war.

Yeah, I was going from memory - it might have been some other item they produced more in a month than Japan produced during the war - tanks maybe? Not really sure. :embarrassed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_aircraft_production

It's interesting to note that the US was only in full war production for about two years.

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on June 08, 2016, 08:26:04 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_aircraft_production

Some fun with those figures:

Total aircraft production: 824,102 (the total on the page is wrong)

Total Allied aircraft production: 604,911

The Allies produced nearly 3/4 of the total ... 

Quote from: Malthus on June 08, 2016, 08:54:58 AM

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on June 08, 2016, 08:26:04 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_aircraft_production

Some fun with those figures:

Total aircraft production: 824,102 (the total on the page is wrong)

Total Allied aircraft production: 604,911

The Allies produced nearly 3/4 of the total ...

The craziest figures are the German and Japanese ones.  Contrary to the allies, they knew they were going to war.  Yet they don't prepare themselves for it.  Compare the 1941 vs 1939 figures for the UK, Germany and Japan.  In the case of the UK, they increased production by more than 200%.  Germany, only around 50%.  Japan, which was the first nation to go to war in 1937, only increased production by 10-20% from 1939 to 1941. 

Good article. I hadn't realized that the UK air force were such a majority of air forces. I did know that the UK navy was a larger presence of warships but didn't realize it was as much as stated in the article.

The article bought out other good points. Such as the training differences by 1944 and how the allies were at least as good or better. Also how the allies used the rigid practices of the German army against them, such as drawing them to do their usual counter attacks to get them into the open.

However, I wasn't surprised at the part of the not Allied forces getting off easily. A while ago I was looking at some of the unit histories of my father's division in Europe and saw casualty rates of 50% up to and over 100% in some of the combat units. That was a stark view of just how bloody the fighting was and the turn over in personnel and replacements. I found the same thing when I looked at unit histories of other units in Europe.

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on June 07, 2016, 11:20:51 PM
This actually is a pretty major feat of industrial engineering, business management etc--and really no one else was doing it. Other countries could build complex machines, but to actually work out the process to build them on assembly lines and at massive scale isn't easy, and only the United States really achieved this during WWII.

That puts the waste issue in context.  US production was benefitting from increasing returns to scale.  Building an extra unit at the margin was very low cost.  Having the part or piece of equipment you need at the right time at the right place at the front is of very high value.  So there is a logic to high amounts of redundancy and "waste" on the production side. 

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 08, 2016, 10:03:30 AM

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on June 07, 2016, 11:20:51 PM
This actually is a pretty major feat of industrial engineering, business management etc--and really no one else was doing it. Other countries could build complex machines, but to actually work out the process to build them on assembly lines and at massive scale isn't easy, and only the United States really achieved this during WWII.

That puts the waste issue in context.  US production was benefitting from increasing returns to scale.  Building an extra unit at the margin was very low cost.  Having the part or piece of equipment you need at the right time at the right place at the front is of very high value.  So there is a logic to high amounts of redundancy and "waste" on the production side.

There is also this: there is essentially no downside to being massively better supplied than your enemies, and massively more powerful. Total war, unlike most other activities, does not necessarily benefit from "efficiency" in the sense of having just enough material and men to win. True, having ten times as much as you need may rob resources from civilian life; but the US was in the unique position of having enough to massively over-kill in war, and yet also have enough left over to preserve civilian applications as well. 

Quote from: Monoriu on June 08, 2016, 09:03:34 AM

Quote from: Malthus on June 08, 2016, 08:54:58 AM

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on June 08, 2016, 08:26:04 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_aircraft_production

Some fun with those figures:

Total aircraft production: 824,102 (the total on the page is wrong)

Total Allied aircraft production: 604,911

The Allies produced nearly 3/4 of the total ...

The craziest figures are the German and Japanese ones.  Contrary to the allies, they knew they were going to war.  Yet they don't prepare themselves for it.  Compare the 1941 vs 1939 figures for the UK, Germany and Japan.  In the case of the UK, they increased production by more than 200%.  Germany, only around 50%.  Japan, which was the first nation to go to war in 1937, only increased production by 10-20% from 1939 to 1941.

I think one has to genuinely subscribe to fascist ideology to be quite so foolish as the Axis leaders were. They must have had some knowledge of the USA's industrial capacity (more than all of Europe if memory serves)........expecting Britain to throw in the towel too..........and expecting the Soviet Union to give in.........

Oh well, don't fall for your own propaganda is the lesson I guess.

Quote from: Monoriu on June 08, 2016, 09:03:34 AM
The craziest figures are the German and Japanese ones.  Contrary to the allies, they knew they were going to war.  Yet they don't prepare themselves for it.  Compare the 1941 vs 1939 figures for the UK, Germany and Japan.  In the case of the UK, they increased production by more than 200%.  Germany, only around 50%.  Japan, which was the first nation to go to war in 1937, only increased production by 10-20% from 1939 to 1941.

Hitler thought the war with the UK & France would not come until 1945, that they would still let him go his own way toward the east, despite the treaties.

In the past, his generals always advised caution, saying they could not risk a war with France, UK and USSR.  And always, Hitler's bold strategy proved wise.  That's one reason why so many followed him for so long, because they looked like over-caution fools before.  Even the biggest threat, France, was basically walked over by the Whermacht.  So when you tell your Fuhrer that you can't possibly defeat England and the USSR with what you have, when you said the same thing about France and managed to conquer the country and push the Brits out of there, really, who would support you? :)

The Whermacht had very good soldiers at the beginning of the war, they had experienced veterans from previous conflicts, but they had a lousy government system, their best engineers had fled the country and they couldn't out-produce the allies.

Even with all the might of the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine, they could not directly attack the UK and hurt them enough to force a surrender.

Hitler's strategy of isolating England from its colonies (well, Commonwealth) was sound, but he had nowhere near enough submarines to do that, and he shifter resources from submarine production to surface warships around 37-38.  By the time the resoures were shifted back to the subs, there was no more such a thing as a fleet of surface ships (if it could ever be considered a fleet) and submarine production had difficulties keeping up with the losses.  IIRC, I think they had less than 100 u-boats at the beginning of the war.  You can't isolate England with 100 boats.

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on June 08, 2016, 10:19:55 AM
I think one has to genuinely subscribe to fascist ideology to be quite so foolish as the Axis leaders were. They must have had some knowledge of the USA's industrial capacity (more than all of Europe if memory serves)........expecting Britain to throw in the towel too..........and expecting the Soviet Union to give in.........

Oh well, don't fall for your own propaganda is the lesson I guess.

The high ranking generals, the carreer military officers, they didn't believe in it.  But what could they do, really?  It's not like they were listened to.  And it wasn't really a good carreer move to criticize the Fürher.

I think, even among non military advisors, there were serious reservations about declaring war to the US, but I don't Hitler asked everyone to voice in their opinion before doing it ;)

Hitler wasn't exactly a rational man, and he did not seek rational people to surround him.  People like Goebbels, Himmler, Goering, not exactly the smartest military advisors.

No one in the Whermacht pushed for Barbarossa.  They kept telling Hitler how bad an idea it was, but they said the same for France...

Germany at least tried to deal with the issue in the manner that makes sense - when you have foes that are in aggregate larger and more powerful than you are, you have to either not engage them, or make sure you take them on (and defeat them) one at a time.

Germany, kind of reasonably, thought that once France fell and the Brits were pushed off the continent, they would make peace of some kind or another. In the face of an occupied France, a alliance/treaty with the USSR, and England standing alone, what choice would they have but to accept the status quo and a cease fire? They didn't know Germany would be throwing themselves at the USSR, right?

So the plan seems pretty rational, even if it made necessary assumptions that turned out to not be the case:

1. Take out Poland.
2. If France and England fight, take out France.
3. Negotiate some kind of deal with England.
4. Turn attention to the real target - the USSR.

The English, however, were not "reasonable" and just said "Yeah, we are going to just keep fighting. Sure, we have no way of getting back onto the continent, but we don't care. We can blockade you and be a pain in your ass, so take your peace feelers and shove them."

I still maintain that this was the crucial turning point in the war, the decision made that doomed the Axis - the UK just giving Germany the bird and fighting on even when it seemed pretty reasonable for them to make a deal.

Japan? There war against the US never made any sense - there was no reasonable response form the US that could have possibly had an outcome other than what happened. The idea that the US was ever going to just negotiate a peace after Pearl harbor? No real chance of that, and no rational reason for the US to even contemplate it. The US certainly had the capability, will, and opportunity to crush Japan on their own.

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on June 08, 2016, 10:19:55 AM
I think one has to genuinely subscribe to fascist ideology to be quite so foolish as the Axis leaders were. They must have had some knowledge of the USA's industrial capacity (more than all of Europe if memory serves)........expecting Britain to throw in the towel too..........and expecting the Soviet Union to give in.........

Oh well, don't fall for your own propaganda is the lesson I guess.

The expectation that the Soviets would quickly collapse looks totally nuts in hindsight, but at the time it seemed a lot more reasonable: many unbiased contemporary observers thought they would collapse, too. The Nazis based this notion on four facts, all true:

1. The Soviet army had performed pathetically against tiny Finland.

2. The Soviet army leadership was gutted in the purges. The generals and officers who survived were noted more for their ability to survive Stalin's purges than for their military skills.

3. The Soviet leadership was deeply unpopular, having persecuted various ethnicities and segments of society horribly. Many in the Soviet Union would welcome a German invasion.

4. The Soviet system was rigidly hierarchical, with decision making concentrated on the dictator: military officials feared to show initiative. If Stalin's morale collapsed, or there was a fight at the top among Soviet grandees, the system could not recover.

The Nazi grand strategy was that they realized they could not successfully invade England, and so they thought that if they eliminated the Soviets they would have a unified European empire as an accomplished fact. Britain would have to make a deal then, or be totally cut off by submarine blockade. Also, the US would be tied down dealing with Japan. True, the Nazis could do nothing to the US - but with the Soviets defeated and UK neutralized, the US could do nothing to the Nazis, either. There would be a new cold war, between US and Nazi continental blocks. 

Quote from: Berkut on June 08, 2016, 10:29:58 AM
Japan? There war against the US never made any sense - there was no reasonable response form the US that could have possibly had an outcome other than what happened. The idea that the US was ever going to just negotiate a peace after Pearl harbor? No real chance of that, and no rational reason for the US to even contemplate it. The US certainly had the capability, will, and opportunity to crush Japan on their own.

What doomed Japan to taking this hopeless path was that the leadership was unable to cope with the demands of the army. The army had managed, over the preceding decade, to enforce its will on the leadership through terrorism and assassination: and the army was totally committed to expanding its empire in China.

The US basically told Japan that the price for continued supply, on which it was dependent on, was giving up its China empire. That was the one thing the Japanese leadership could not do (and survive). Any leader who agreed with that demand would have been assassinated for sure. Yet Japan could not survive without supplies.

The only way out of that was to simply grab the supplies Japan needed. Yet they knew the US would never simply stand aside and allow that. The only way out of this self-imposed dilemma was to convince themselves against all reason that the US would be deterred by the destruction of their Pacific Fleet.

I've always thought that if you were going to make a wargame of the Eastern Front in the manner that Germany thought the war would work out, you would have some system for modeling "Soviet Political Failure" that would result in a political collapse of the Soviet Union (meaning a coup that overthrows Stalin, or Stalin is simply shot, a revolution, or something like that resulting in a structural collapse of the soviet nation).

Each time some milestone is reached, the Soviet player would have to roll on the "Political Collapse" table. Like

Standing Soviet Army 90% destroyed - roll
Kiev captured - roll
Moscow threatened - roll
Moscow captured - roll+1

Etc., etc.

In the German thinking, at some point these blows would result in the Soviet government collapsing, that at some point their hits will result in the Soviet player rolling that '6' needed, and they get to make a "Brest-Litovsk" like treaty with the remaining government.

You could look at their failure (in that context) in one of two ways:

1. Their table odds were not actually as good as they thought - in reality, they didn't need to roll a 6 on d6, but rather a 12 on 2d6, hence it just wasn't as likely as they thought..., or
2. Their table odds were fine, they just never managed to roll that 6, and if you re-fought the war 10 times with the exact same operational results, 7 out of 10 times the Soviet Union does in fact collapse and they "win" the war. The historical result just happened to be one of the 3 out of 10.

It is, of course, impossible to say which scenario was actually true. Was the USSR even close to simply collapsing, but simply did not? Really hard to say.

But I think that is the thought process that went into Hitler's decision to attack - that at some point the Soviet will to fight will break and he will be able to consolidate his gains.

Quote from: Berkut on June 08, 2016, 10:52:20 AM
I've always thought that if you were going to make a wargame of the Eastern Front in the manner that Germany thought the war would work out, you would have some system for modeling "Soviet Political Failure" that would result in a political collapse of the Soviet Union (meaning a coup that overthrows Stalin, or Stalin is simply shot, a revolution, or something like that resulting in a structural collapse of the soviet nation).

Each time some milestone is reached, the Soviet player would have to roll on the "Political Collapse" table. Like

Standing Soviet Army 90% destroyed - roll
Kiev captured - roll
Moscow threatened - roll
Moscow captured - roll+1

Etc., etc.

In the German thinking, at some point these blows would result in the Soviet government collapsing, that at some point their hits will result in the Soviet player rolling that '6' needed, and they get to make a "Brest-Litovsk" like treaty with the remaining government.

You could look at their failure (in that context) in one of two ways:

1. Their table odds were not actually as good as they thought - in reality, they didn't need to roll a 6 on d6, but rather a 12 on 2d6, hence it just wasn't as likely as they thought..., or
2. Their table odds were fine, they just never managed to roll that 6, and if you re-fought the war 10 times with the exact same operational results, 7 out of 10 times the Soviet Union does in fact collapse and they "win" the war. The historical result just happened to be one of the 3 out of 10.

It is, of course, impossible to say which scenario was actually true. Was the USSR even close to simply collapsing, but simply did not? Really hard to say.

But I think that is the thought process that went into Hitler's decision to attack - that at some point the Soviet will to fight will break and he will be able to consolidate his gains.

That would be an awesome game.  :D

I think that the Soviet Union came reasonably close to collapse, early on. My evidence: that Stalin suffered what appeared to have been a nervous breakdown on the news of the invasion; and that when his officials went to his dacha, he thought they were there to arrest him. Had they done so, it likely would have triggered a power struggle among the surviving Soviet leaders, most of whom hated and feared each other and with good reason. It is highly possible that the Soviets could not have survived a prolonged leadership failure at the top at the very moment when the Nazis were dismembering their armies - it may even have been the case that some Soviet power contenders would have sought to make deals with the Nazis for survival. 

If we look back at WW1 Russia collapsed but Germany was still brought to the brink of starvation and lost the war. So even if they smash the SU is that enough to win? I don't think so, they have to deal with the British somehow, and to deal with the British they have to go wild with the submarines in a way that offends the USA.

Perhaps it all turns on summer 1940 and the possibility of a successful operation Sea Lion?

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on June 08, 2016, 11:05:57 AM
If we look back at WW1 Russia collapsed but Germany was still brought to the brink of starvation and lost the war. So even if they smash the SU is that enough to win? I don't think so, they have to deal with the British somehow, and to deal with the British they have to go wild with the submarines in a way that offends the USA.

Perhaps it all turns on summer 1940 and the possibility of a successful operation Sea Lion?

Ahh, but in WW1 they made the "mistake" of taking them all on at the same time. In WW2, they succeeded in removing one of their strongest opponents completey right at the start, which in their view they had already succeeded in doing what Germany tried and failed to do in WW1.

Taking the Russians out of the war in 1917 during a war that lasted from 1914-1918 is not even remotely the same as taking France out of the war in 1940 in a war that went 1939-1945. In WW1 taking Russia out was "too little, too late". In WW2 taking France out seemed to be a decisive action.

From the standpoint of 1939, there was another *huge* difference. The alliance with Russia allowed them to isolate their Western opponents in a manner they could never hope for in 1914. WW2 was a fine example, at least in theory, of how to win a war against stronger opponents by politically isolating them from one another so they can be defeated in detail.

The political machinations pre-war were really quite brilliant - assuming that you have already decided that you must go to war. Which certainly was not so brilliant, of course.

I always wondered what would've happened if some Soviet officials were quick-thinking enough to go "Arrest?  What are..  Oh, yes, yes, you're under arrest, put your hands behind your back", instead of  "Oh, no, God no, comrade Stalin, we just came to chat about that war thing."

Quote from: DGuller on June 08, 2016, 11:17:58 AM
I always wondered what would've happened if some Soviet officials were quick-thinking enough to go "Arrest?  What are..  Oh, yes, yes, you're under arrest, put your hands behind your back", instead of  "Oh, no, God no, comrade Stalin, we just came to chat about that war thing."

I remember reading in the Red Tsar's Court (most excellent book) that Stalin feared his "war council" was visiting to arrest/overthrow him in his dacha during the early days of Barbarossa, I don't remember after exactly which fiasco.


And also, very informative discussion guys! :cheers:

I think all this points out how in WW2 the Axis powers tried to turn a trend that was already dead set against them from the very start. In WW1 at least it was more or less a coin toss, even if time favoured the Entente.

Quote from: Berkut on June 08, 2016, 10:29:58 AM
The English, however, were not "reasonable" and just said "Yeah, we are going to just keep fighting. Sure, we have no way of getting back onto the continent, but we don't care. We can blockade you and be a pain in your ass, so take your peace feelers and shove them."

I still maintain that this was the crucial turning point in the war, the decision made that doomed the Axis - the UK just giving Germany the bird and fighting on even when it seemed pretty reasonable for them to make a deal.

Clear historical precedent there from the Napoleonic Wars. 
A cursory review of that precedent might also have suggested the potential downside of responding via a massive invasion of Russia.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 08, 2016, 12:37:58 PM

Quote from: Berkut on June 08, 2016, 10:29:58 AM
The English, however, were not "reasonable" and just said "Yeah, we are going to just keep fighting. Sure, we have no way of getting back onto the continent, but we don't care. We can blockade you and be a pain in your ass, so take your peace feelers and shove them."

I still maintain that this was the crucial turning point in the war, the decision made that doomed the Axis - the UK just giving Germany the bird and fighting on even when it seemed pretty reasonable for them to make a deal.

Clear historical precedent there from the Napoleonic Wars. 
A cursory review of that precedent might also have suggested the potential downside of responding via a massive invasion of Russia.

:lmfao:

Excellent point. :P

Quote from: Berkut on June 08, 2016, 10:29:58 AM
Germany at least tried to deal with the issue in the manner that makes sense - when you have foes that are in aggregate larger and more powerful than you are, you have to either not engage them, or make sure you take them on (and defeat them) one at a time.

Germany, kind of reasonably, thought that once France fell and the Brits were pushed off the continent, they would make peace of some kind or another. In the face of an occupied France, a alliance/treaty with the USSR, and England standing alone, what choice would they have but to accept the status quo and a cease fire? They didn't know Germany would be throwing themselves at the USSR, right?

So the plan seems pretty rational, even if it made necessary assumptions that turned out to not be the case:

1. Take out Poland.
2. If France and England fight, take out France.
3. Negotiate some kind of deal with England.
4. Turn attention to the real target - the USSR.

Yes, Churchill really screwed with the Nazis plans :D

The idea that England could be submitted/starved while waging war on the USSR at the same time was pretty silly.  First, defeat England, or at least sign a status-quo peace, then focus on the USSR.
be a pain in your ass, so take your peace feelers and shove them."

Quote
Japan? There war against the US never made any sense - there was no reasonable response form the US that could have possibly had an outcome other than what happened. The idea that the US was ever going to just negotiate a peace after Pearl harbor? No real chance of that, and no rational reason for the US to even contemplate it. The US certainly had the capability, will, and opportunity to crush Japan on their own.

After seeing the movie Midway, I was reading on Yamamoto, and apparently, when asked by the Emperor how he would fare in a war against the US, he was quite blunt and honest: I shall be on the offensive for 1 year and half, maybe 2 years, then I will be forced to retreat until the final defeat.

The whole war was illogical, despite US support to the UK against Nazi Germany, the Americans did not want to enter the war.  It is doubtful the US public opinion would have been moved enough to enter the war by the UK (and other Europeans) losing all its colonies to the Japanese.

Quote from: Malthus on June 08, 2016, 10:36:47 AM
3. The Soviet leadership was deeply unpopular, having persecuted various ethnicities and segments of society horribly. Many in the Soviet Union would welcome a German invasion.

That was a strenght so long as Nazi Germany was willing to cooperate with these people, to arm Stalin's ennemies, integrate them to the Whermacht or the SS like the Waffen SS.  But Hitler viewed them as inferior and potential ennemies that he would not arm, for the most part.  Until 1944, but then it was too late.

And threating the populations like under-men, subjecting them to brutal tortures, privations, mass executions, that did nothing to convince the locals they were better than the Soviets, even if they welcomed their liberators at first.  Just like most of them welcomed their Russian liberators later, it did not turn out exactely as they expected.

Quote
4. The Soviet system was rigidly hierarchical, with decision making concentrated on the dictator: military officials feared to show initiative. If Stalin's morale collapsed, or there was a fight at the top among Soviet grandees, the system could not recover.

Yes, but on the other hand, Stalin was not the kind of men that would be demoralized by huge lossess of civilians or even soldiers.
Heck, the entire Soviet strategy relied un numbers: small tanks that could be be built faster hence overpower the Germans by having much more tanks on the front at any time, disposable infantry that could force the Germans to fight until they ran out of bullets and still have troops to attack.  And it was likely the same for their fighter planes.

Quote
The Nazi grand strategy was that they realized they could not successfully invade England, and so they thought that if they eliminated the Soviets they would have a unified European empire as an accomplished fact. Britain would have to make a deal then, or be totally cut off by submarine blockade. Also, the US would be tied down dealing with Japan. True, the Nazis could do nothing to the US - but with the Soviets defeated and UK neutralized, the US could do nothing to the Nazis, either. There would be a new cold war, between US and Nazi continental blocks. 

The problem with their reasoning is that they could not block England.  They could not cut off England from its line of supplies and they could not reach the factories of Scotland.

So England could keep on receiving supplies and it could keep on producing what it needed with less costs to the civilian population than the Germans.

Thrusting into Leningrad to cut off Murmansk and Archangelsk would have been a good strategy. Aiming solely for south-east of Stalingrad and the oil fields might have been good (despite the difficulties of exploiting oil so close to the front and shipping it back to Germany).  Dividing their forces in 3, insisting on taking Stalingrad instead of bypassing it, that was a total mistake.  Moscow and Stalingrad had no real strategic value. 

Russia did not collapse under Napoleon when the French reached Moscow, the Russians burnt their cities instead.  With an even more fanatical leader in place, how would they do something radically different, like surrendering after a couple of months?  If Moscow falls, they move further East, that is all.  The supplies line of the North are still intact.  And at the time, I guess

Quote from: Berkut on June 08, 2016, 10:52:20 AM
Standing Soviet Army 90% destroyed - roll
Kiev captured - roll
Moscow threatened - roll
Moscow captured - roll+1

historical nazi behaviour (i.e. einsatztruppen etc): all following rolls -2/3/whatever seems right.

that said: interesting thread.

Quote from: viper37 on June 08, 2016, 01:09:02 PM
That was a strenght so long as Nazi Germany was willing to cooperate with these people, to arm Stalin's ennemies, integrate them to the Whermacht or the SS like the Waffen SS.  But Hitler viewed them as inferior and potential ennemies that he would not arm, for the most part.  Until 1944, but then it was too late.

And threating the populations like under-men, subjecting them to brutal tortures, privations, mass executions, that did nothing to convince the locals they were better than the Soviets, even if they welcomed their liberators at first.  Just like most of them welcomed their Russian liberators later, it did not turn out exactely as they expected.

Absolutely true, yes. But then, the Nazi project was filled with insane contradictions.

The Nazis had at least three different plans for the Slavs:

(1) Enlist their cooperation against the Soviets;

(2) Enfeeble them by culling the intelligentsia, then using them as slaves and serfs; and

(3) Murdering off the lot of them and replacing them with "Aryans".

Obviously, these plans could not all be carried out at once, as they contradicted each other (why would anyone cooperate if they were to be enslaved or murdered off and replaced? Why murder off your slaves? Etc.). Yet that's just what the Nazis attempted to do - not deliberately, but because different factions of Nazis had different notions, and there was no really sensible overall plan in place.

A truly methodical Nazi plan would have been to engage these plans sequentially, over a much longer period of time (that is, engage their cooperation until the Soviets were beat; then enslave the Slavs, once the Nazis had won; then, gradually get rid of the slave-state, as sufficient numbers of "Aryans" were born over a couple of generations, etc.). That's not what the Nazis did, though. 

QuoteYes, but on the other hand, Stalin was not the kind of men that would be demoralized by huge lossess of civilians or even soldiers.
Heck, the entire Soviet strategy relied un numbers: small tanks that could be be built faster hence overpower the Germans by having much more tanks on the front at any time, disposable infantry that could force the Germans to fight until they ran out of bullets and still have troops to attack.  And it was likely the same for their fighter planes.

Stalin was a remorseless sociopath, but he certainly could be demoralized by fear of defeat - and in fact, he was, at least for a while. By all accounts, he had what amounted to a nervous breakdown, but got over it.

QuoteThe problem with their reasoning is that they could not block England.  They could not cut off England from its line of supplies and they could not reach the factories of Scotland.

So England could keep on receiving supplies and it could keep on producing what it needed with less costs to the civilian population than the Germans.

Thrusting into Leningrad to cut off Murmansk and Archangelsk would have been a good strategy. Aiming solely for south-east of Stalingrad and the oil fields might have been good (despite the difficulties of exploiting oil so close to the front and shipping it back to Germany).  Dividing their forces in 3, insisting on taking Stalingrad instead of bypassing it, that was a total mistake.  Moscow and Stalingrad had no real strategic value.

England certainly could have been isolated had the Nazis the resources - the Battle of the Atlantic was, as Churchill later stated, a "close run thing". If the Nazis had a hundred more subs at the outset, things may have gone very differently - instead, they put resources into building battleships, which did them little good. 

QuoteRussia did not collapse under Napoleon when the French reached Moscow, the Russians burnt their cities instead.  With an even more fanatical leader in place, how would they do something radically different, like surrendering after a couple of months?  If Moscow falls, they move further East, that is all.  The supplies line of the North are still intact.  And at the time, I guess

The Nazis simply figured things had changed over the last century. "Lighting war" had demoralized the French high command; they saw no reason why it couldn't demoralize the Russians.

Quote from: Malthus on June 08, 2016, 01:52:11 PM
England certainly could have been isolated had the Nazis the resources - the Battle of the Atlantic was, as Churchill later stated, a "close run thing". If the Nazis had a hundred more subs at the outset, things may have gone very differently - instead, they put resources into building battleships, which did them little good. 

Yes, of course, anything is possible with the proper resource.  I was simply stating that they could not block England with what they had in 1939-1940.

You need boats and you need sailors.  Unlike the Whermacht and the Luftwaffe, they were pretty much starting from scratch with the Kriegsmarine, they did not have a large experienced officer corps to begin with.

Quote
The Nazis simply figured things had changed over the last century. "Lighting war" had demoralized the French high command; they saw no reason why it couldn't demoralize the Russians.

France has one side to the German, the other to the sea, and there's 1000km between both.  That's a lot less than what the Russians lost between mid-Poland and Moscow/Leningrad/Stalingrad.

And I can't imagine the French army burning every town and every factories in sight to deny the resources to the Germans.

Once the Russians have backed off by 1000km they are still in Russia.  Once the French have backed off 1000km, they face the Atlantic.  As it was proven during the war, it is much easier to evacuate through land than to embark on ships.  The French and the British that tried to evacuate from St-Nazaire were mostly sunk by German aircrafts, unlike Dunkirk where they could muster air support and even then, the majority of the French rearguard fighting to protect the British retreat had to be abandonned to the Germans.

In hindsight, in 1940 I think I could be more easily convinced that the USSR would quickly crumble and collapse than I could in 1939 that France would quickly crumble and collapse.

Granted, there was almost two decades of distance between the events, but Poland fought off the USSR, and Poland was but a speedbump for the Germans. Combine that with how the Finns were doing against the USSR, and how the French/British did against the Germans.

Quote from: viper37 on June 08, 2016, 02:40:43 PM
Yes, of course, anything is possible with the proper resource.  I was simply stating that they could not block England with what they had in 1939-1940.

You need boats and you need sailors.  Unlike the Whermacht and the Luftwaffe, they were pretty much starting from scratch with the Kriegsmarine, they did not have a large experienced officer corps to begin with.

The issue though is whether it was realistic for the Nazis to think they could isolate England if they defeated the Soviets & could put more resources into to U-Boat campaign.

I think it was realistic. But it is based on a pretty big "if".

QuoteFrance has one side to the German, the other to the sea, and there's 1000km between both.  That's a lot less than what the Russians lost between mid-Poland and Moscow/Leningrad/Stalingrad.

And I can't imagine the French army burning every town and every factories in sight to deny the resources to the Germans.

Once the Russians have backed off by 1000km they are still in Russia.  Once the French have backed off 1000km, they face the Atlantic.  As it was proven during the war, it is much easier to evacuate through land than to embark on ships.  The French and the British that tried to evacuate from St-Nazaire were mostly sunk by German aircrafts, unlike Dunkirk where they could muster air support and even then, the majority of the French rearguard fighting to protect the British retreat had to be abandonned to the Germans.

Yes, there are significant differences between Russia and France.

Had France sought to fight to the last, those differences would have been important.

But notice, the French leadership's morale collapsed *before* there was any question of the Nazi armies advancing 1000km. It was the apparent defeat of their armies in the field that caused the collapse.

The Nazis thought that even more massive defeats of Soviet armies ought to trigger a similar collapse of leadership morale among the Soviets. In hindsight, yes, we all know that given that the Soviet leadership did not collapse and the Soviets decided to fight to the last, the Germans were unlikely to win. 

In Hitler's defense the profound weakness of the German volk wasn't painfully obvious in 1940 when he decided on Barbarossa.

I think you also have to realize that in the context of these decisions, they are being made by people (both in Germany and Japan) who have a completely fucked up set of priorities.

For Hitler, his position is that he would rather drag Germany into a war they will lose than accept that his vision of the future was not possible.

If you accept that basic premise (which of course is fucking crazy itself) then the following decisions make more sense.

Japan was in a similar place, but for different reasons. If you accept that you would prefer to get into a war you cannot win instead of backing down to US demands in regards to the ongoing war in China, then the plan they put into place was likely one of the best possible options.

Quote from: viper37 on June 08, 2016, 10:26:06 AM


No one in the Whermacht pushed for Barbarossa.  They kept telling Hitler how bad an idea it was, but they said the same for France...

I don't think this is true.

Quote from: Berkut on June 08, 2016, 03:02:15 PM
I think you also have to realize that in the context of these decisions, they are being made by people (both in Germany and Japan) who have a completely fucked up set of priorities.

For Hitler, his position is that he would rather drag Germany into a war they will lose than accept that his vision of the future was not possible.

If you accept that basic premise (which of course is fucking crazy itself) then the following decisions make more sense.

Japan was in a similar place, but for different reasons. If you accept that you would prefer to get into a war you cannot win instead of backing down to US demands in regards to the ongoing war in China, then the plan they put into place was likely one of the best possible options.

Yes there is tendency to look at the actions of Germany or Japan and say they were stupid. Some were stupid, generally though they were a logic response to the needs of the regimes.

For instance, one criticism sometimes levelled against Japan is that they failed to plan for a war of attrition (didn't mass train aviators, prioritized firepower over survivablity yada yada), but surely the only chance Japan had against the US was a short sharp war, however unlikely. Tsushima actually happened, it's not like it was automatically outrageous to plan for something similar.

You see the same argument with the decision of Germany to focus on making fewer, but much more capable, armored vehicles. (For now I am ignoring the related issue of just making too damn many different vehicles, which was much more clearly a mistake).

On the one hand, it is easy to point out that they needed to build a LOT more tanks, and producing much fewer, but presumably much better tanks was foolish.

On the other hand...well, was there any chance that Germany could product enough tanks to compete with the USSR on a quantitative basis anyway? If they had focused on the basic PzIV instead of the Panther, or just didn't build any Tigers and used those resources to build another few thousand PzIVs? Would that have been better? Would being outnumbered 2:1 in equivalent vehicles be better than being outnumbered 3.5:1 but have much better vehicles?

I suspect maybe not - could 3 PzIV's have done a better job than the job 1 Tiger did, for example (assuming that is the trade off)? I don't really know, I do know that the threat of the Panthers and Tigers meant that they had an effect on battles they were not even in - the existence of them as weapons forced Allied commanders to account for them. And there are many examples where small numbers of these vehicles had incredible results (and of course plenty of examples where they just broke down and did nothing as well).

I don't think it is a simple answer. I suspect each combatant made decisions that aligned with their capabilities in some fashion, and I hesitate to conclude that their choices were wrong for their situations...even if the overall result was defeat.

Hindsight invariable wins in historical discussions; I suspect most of the leaders involved, perhaps with the exception of FDR, thought at various times during the conflict that it could go either way and overall was a much closer run affair, than the production statistics now suggest. 

The Panzer IV took longer to build then the Panthers and cost only slightly less.  The panthers were meant to have a more streamlined production.  It didn't work that well.

Quote from: Berkut on June 08, 2016, 03:02:15 PM
I think you also have to realize that in the context of these decisions, they are being made by people (both in Germany and Japan) who have a completely fucked up set of priorities.

For Hitler, his position is that he would rather drag Germany into a war they will lose than accept that his vision of the future was not possible.

If you accept that basic premise (which of course is fucking crazy itself) then the following decisions make more sense.

Japan was in a similar place, but for different reasons. If you accept that you would prefer to get into a war you cannot win instead of backing down to US demands in regards to the ongoing war in China, then the plan they put into place was likely one of the best possible options.

Remember also that, in the case of Japan, they were faced with a time limit; when the two_ocean Navy Act started completing ships, the IJN would be rendered irrelevant, and the US could impose conditions on japan pretty much at will.  By 1944, Japan would have been in an impossible position, unless she was willing to give up her campaign in China (which she couldn't win, anyway, but that's another story).

Germany's timing for war was also limited by British re-armament.  The British knew in 1936 (and so did, presumably, the Germans) that 1939 was "the Year of Maximum Danger" for Britain.  The British and Germans grossly over-estimated the impact of bombing cities, but even in terms of non-airpower considerations, the Germans had a window to act in 1939 that they'd never see again.

It is rather ironic that the Germans considered that their U-boat campaign in WW1 was a failure, and so focused resources on surface raiders, while the British saw that campaign in exactly the opposite terms.  Britain came far closer to defeat in the battle of the Atlantic in WW1 than in WW2.

Quote from: grumbler on June 07, 2016, 07:21:33 PM

Quote from: Valmy on June 07, 2016, 06:59:55 PM
Germany didn't have a chance. I am always amazed by how determined they fought on given that fact. I mean I understand why the leadership didn't give up. I understand that their families were threatened back home etc...

But the fact that things occured like the garrison at Saint-Nazaire holding out until Germany surrendered when they just could have given up at any time just boggles the mind. I can get why they might put up a token resistance than give it up, but it was clearly more than that they fought like hell killing tons of Western Soldiers...and for what? I mean I can get resisting the Soviets but holding up the Western advance with such ferocity seems rather counter-productive to saving Germany from Soviet reprisals. And far from saving their families it just meant more of Germany got bombed to hell.

Because they fought for their buddies, not Hitler's shiny Reich.  You can't give up because it fucks your buddy, your brother, whatever, who would otherwise have to face the forces you are tying down. The Germans at Stalingrad knew they were doomed, but knew that they were tying up forces that would otherwise have cut off Army Group A.

Ok so when the German soldiers started to refuse to fight and mutiny in World War I it was because they hated their buddies?  I thought it was they knew the war was lost and saw it was a pointless loss of their lives to keep fighting. Yet in WWII they threw away their lives pointlessly in huge numbers.

Quote from: grumbler on June 08, 2016, 07:55:50 PM
Britain came far closer to defeat in the battle of the Atlantic in WW1 than in WW2.

They didn't really come that close to losing in WW1 so...oh wait I get what you are saying.

Quote from: viper37 on June 08, 2016, 01:09:02 PM
Moscow and Stalingrad had no real strategic value... 

...If Moscow falls, they move further East, that is all.  The supplies line of the North are still intact. 

Stalingrad I'll grant you, but as for Moscow, take a look at the Soviet rail net in 1941.  Pretty much everything ran through Moscow--the supply lines to the North wouldn't really be intact if Moscow fell.

I used to think that the idea that the Soviet Union would have collapsed/fallen if the Germans had taken Moscow was just an Axis fantasy, but now I'm not so sure.  Had the Germans managed to take it in 1941, it might have won them the war (at least until the U.S. developed the A-bomb).

The 1942 campaign, though, had no possibility that I can see of winning the war for Germany, even if Germany had won the campaign (which I would define as capturing the entire Caucasus region and having their main line facing the Soviets anchored on the Volga roughly from Stalingrad south to the Caspian).  That wouldn't have won the war, just left them in better shape for 1943, and possibly only marginally in better shape at that--I'm not sure that they could have held the Caucasus and the oil fields long enough to get significant amounts of oil production out of them--Axis forces in the Caucasus and along the Volga would have still been vulnerable to a Soviet counter-offensive from north of Stalingrad toward Rostov.

Yeah if Moscow had fallen the Soviets would have been fucked it was the key to their entire system. Hitler noted that capturing Moscow didn't help Napoleon but 1941 was not 1812, the rail road links between different parts of the country wouldn't run if they lost it.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 08, 2016, 12:37:58 PM

Quote from: Berkut on June 08, 2016, 10:29:58 AM
The English, however, were not "reasonable" and just said "Yeah, we are going to just keep fighting. Sure, we have no way of getting back onto the continent, but we don't care. We can blockade you and be a pain in your ass, so take your peace feelers and shove them."

I still maintain that this was the crucial turning point in the war, the decision made that doomed the Axis - the UK just giving Germany the bird and fighting on even when it seemed pretty reasonable for them to make a deal.

Clear historical precedent there from the Napoleonic Wars. 
A cursory review of that precedent might also have suggested the potential downside of responding via a massive invasion of Russia.

Lulz, good one.


I do agree with Berkut's premise; and as I have stated before, I have no problem sticking with Lukacs-inspired hyperbole when it comes to those crucial days in May, 1940, when Churchill very much saved the world.

Quote from: Razgovory on June 08, 2016, 03:09:00 PM

Quote from: viper37 on June 08, 2016, 10:26:06 AM


No one in the Whermacht pushed for Barbarossa.  They kept telling Hitler how bad an idea it was, but they said the same for France...

I don't think this is true.

What, regarding Barbarossa?  The professional generalship of the Wehrmacht did not appreciate having to fight a war with Russia that Hitler had all but promised them wasn't going to come until 1944. 

Quote from: Berkut on June 08, 2016, 04:08:57 PM
You see the same argument with the decision of Germany to focus on making fewer, but much more capable, armored vehicles. (For now I am ignoring the related issue of just making too damn many different vehicles, which was much more clearly a mistake).

On the one hand, it is easy to point out that they needed to build a LOT more tanks, and producing much fewer, but presumably much better tanks was foolish.

On the other hand...well, was there any chance that Germany could product enough tanks to compete with the USSR on a quantitative basis anyway? If they had focused on the basic PzIV instead of the Panther, or just didn't build any Tigers and used those resources to build another few thousand PzIVs? Would that have been better? Would being outnumbered 2:1 in equivalent vehicles be better than being outnumbered 3.5:1 but have much better vehicles?

I suspect maybe not - could 3 PzIV's have done a better job than the job 1 Tiger did, for example (assuming that is the trade off)? I don't really know, I do know that the threat of the Panthers and Tigers meant that they had an effect on battles they were not even in - the existence of them as weapons forced Allied commanders to account for them. And there are many examples where small numbers of these vehicles had incredible results (and of course plenty of examples where they just broke down and did nothing as well).

I don't think it is a simple answer. I suspect each combatant made decisions that aligned with their capabilities in some fashion, and I hesitate to conclude that their choices were wrong for their situations...even if the overall result was defeat.

I don't think that one could argue that the Tiger I was a waste/unnecessary dispersion of German effort, given that it was produced in limited numbers for a limited role, and filled that role well.

The Panther was more arguably a mistake, given that it cost much more in terms of man hours and resources to produce than the Pz III and PZ IV.  It was also significantly more fuel-thirsty and significantly less reliable.  However, a driving factor in the decision to produce it was that it was capable of being upgraded, whereas the Pz IV was at the end of its life in terms of upgrades and the PZ III (which was the tank being replaced by the Pz V) was obsolescent and also not upgradable.  If the Germans had known, when the decision to go ahead and convert to Pz V production was made, that they wouldn't even have two years of war left, they might have converted from Pz III production to Pz IV production, and left the PZ V on the drawing table.  But they couldn't know that.  They were going to pay conversion costs anyway going from the Pz III to Pz IV.

Probably the biggest problem the Pz V faced was that, by the time it was a mature design with the teething problems sorted out, it was no longer manned by effectively-trained crews.  Creighton Abrams's armored regiment with 75mm Shermans killed Panthers at a ratio of something like 4 Panthers for every Sherman lost, because the German tank crews were so green.  Even fifty percent more PzIVs with green crews would have fared no better; maybe worse.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on June 08, 2016, 08:28:46 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on June 08, 2016, 03:09:00 PM

Quote from: viper37 on June 08, 2016, 10:26:06 AM


No one in the Whermacht pushed for Barbarossa.  They kept telling Hitler how bad an idea it was, but they said the same for France...

I don't think this is true.

What, regarding Barbarossa?  The professional generalship of the Wehrmacht did not appreciate having to fight a war with Russia that Hitler had all but promised them wasn't going to come until 1944.

I'm pretty sure at least one member of Wehrmacht did.  My understanding is that much the professional generalship were in favor of it at the time, though they changed their tune after the war when they wanted to shift all blame for defeats on Hitler and all glory of victory squarely on themselves.  Like the Germans officers of the first world war, they weren't entirely honest.

Quote from: Valmy on June 08, 2016, 08:05:59 PM

Quote from: grumbler on June 08, 2016, 07:55:50 PM
Britain came far closer to defeat in the battle of the Atlantic in WW1 than in WW2.

They didn't really come that close to losing in WW1 so...oh wait I get what you are saying.

They came very close to defeat in WW1.  In April 1917 more than one in four ships bound for Britain was sunk, and Britain's armaments industry was six weeks away from shutdown due to the lack of strategic materials.  Convoys starting in May 1917 turned the tide (though losses remained unsustainable), but one can imagine the possibility that an earlier resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare may well have led to Britain's defeat.

Britain never really came close to such a defeat in WW2, though the Germans did inflict losses greater than replacement capacity in multiple months of the war.

Quote from: Razgovory on June 08, 2016, 08:41:59 PM
I'm pretty sure at least one member of Wehrmacht did.  My understanding is that much the professional generalship were in favor of it at the time, though they changed their tune after the war when they wanted to shift all blame for defeats on Hitler and all glory of victory squarely on themselves.  Like the Germans officers of the first world war, they weren't entirely honest.

Save it, Himmlerazgovory.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on June 08, 2016, 08:45:43 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on June 08, 2016, 08:41:59 PM
I'm pretty sure at least one member of Wehrmacht did.  My understanding is that much the professional generalship were in favor of it at the time, though they changed their tune after the war when they wanted to shift all blame for defeats on Hitler and all glory of victory squarely on themselves.  Like the Germans officers of the first world war, they weren't entirely honest.

Save it, Himmlerazgovory.

:lol:  Invading in 1941 was probably the optimal time for the invasion.  Later on Russian industry would eclipse Germany, the army would have time to reform and get settled down and the new fortifications on the frontier would be complete.  Hitler had a knack for hitting at the right time to cause maximum destruction.

Quote from: Valmy on June 08, 2016, 08:08:34 PM
Yeah if Moscow had fallen the Soviets would have been fucked it was the key to their entire system. Hitler noted that capturing Moscow didn't help Napoleon but 1941 was not 1812, the rail road links between different parts of the country wouldn't run if they lost it.

To add to that, the major cities were the power base of the Soviets in the civil war - and the two most important were obviously Moscow and Petrograd/Leningrad. Leningrad was effectively neutralized, and had Moscow fallen, the Germans would have had a real opportunity to see the Soviets undermined from within.

Though as Malthus and others have noted, German behavior didn't facilitate such a reality.