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Interesting. Odd that they would pull the same trick twice and have it work.

 d-usa wrote:
Found it:



I just always thought it was a weird response. Germany invades France during WW1 by largely ignoring their shared border, so to prevent another attack France reinforces the border only for Germany to ignore it again during WW2.

Well the French and the Belgians were intending to co-operate on a line of fortifications all the way to the coast.

Unfortunately for the French the Belgians never got around to their part.

So its all Belgium's fault

What's that line from Red Dwarf about Rimmer's fantasy of his favorite time period to go back to and what he would do/be?

"It would be the 19th century for me. One of Napoleon's marshals. A chance to march across Europe alongside the greatest general who ever lived. And kill Belgians."

They got waffles, I'd let them live.

And chocolate. And excellent beer. And Bruges; "it's like a fairy tale city".

Heck, I'd be tempted to conquer them.

 d-usa wrote:
Found it:



I just always thought it was a weird response. Germany invades France during WW1 by largely ignoring their shared border, so to prevent another attack France reinforces the border only for Germany to ignore it again during WW2.

Well what actually happened what the German's got their forces through the Ardennes, which the British and French thought were impassable. So yes and no, it was similar but also very different. Not to mention massive failures the French Command structures

Demonhammer, you do realize that even if the Allies had invaded Germany proper, Poland would have fallen under soviet control regardless of the outcome....

I'm pretty sure that the Allied plan in case of German attack was to advance into Belgium and hold them along a much smaller front that that would extend from the Maginot Line to the Flemish coast. Remember that Belgium and the Netherlands were still neutral until the German invasion in 1940.

The French Army was almost entirely a static defensive force. They lacked the mobility or the logistics to prosecute a war away from their fortress lines. Most of their divisions were either reserve divisions or fortress divisions that either existed mostly on paper or were so hunkered down in their defensive lines as to be useless on the attack.

Basically, it was decided (somewhat reasonably) that the Belgians would be able to hold the river Meuse and that the allies should focus their forces further north in the more armor friendly regions of Belgian-Dutch plains.

Their entire plan was to contain the German attack and at all costs not allow a breakout into the wide open countryside in France where everyone knew the greater mobility of the Germans would wreak havoc. Of course, that's exactly what happened.

Btw. Belgium (and Holland) build a lot of forts and stronbgpoint, which were not the same strength as the French Line, propbaply because they just dont have the same ammount of res. as whole France.

This strongpoints were mostly raided by Germany Fallschirmjäger (paratroopers) and Brandenburger (Commandos), which were also quite a surprise that days.




And in WWII they went through the Ardennes because they knew the allies would expect the same route as in WWI because it is the best rout into France.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Interesting. Odd that they would pull the same trick twice and have it work.

According to B.H Liddell Hart's book, IIRC, the original German plan would have seen them meet the Allies strongest forces head on, but a Nazi staff officer carrying the plans was forced to land in enemy territory and so the Germans actually opted for plan B.
Also, the Allies were under the impression that they would have plenty of time to mobilise reinforcements to cover their advance; obviously they were not prepared for the speed of blitzkrieg. He also claims that the fall of France may have been prevented had the French and British not left the weak hinge of their deployment unprotected while pushing forward. Apparently some French officers had wanted to mine the region, and even fell trees but were denied so that scouts and messengers would have an unobstructed path. I wonder how history would have played out had that blitztkrieg been checked?

 Daemonhammer wrote:
In theory you could blame the British and French for causing WWII.
If they kept their promises, and attacked Germany from behind when they invaded Poland the war would have been over before Christmas and wouldnt have evolved into a world wide conflict.
But no, they were too afraid of Hitler and just waited, and look what happened, Germans defeated the combined British-French forces faster than the Polish army.

It didn't help that the French lacked the moblie logicistical capability to even go the - what, sixty miles? - from the Maginot Line to the Ruhr industrial area. And the BEF lacked the numbers to do it alone.

This thread descended into farce several pages ago, I'm also sick of reading the royal "we" whereby one pasty youth claims "we" won the war, and "you" fethed everything up....

When neither of them are old enough to remember the Falklands, let alone WW2

 mattyrm wrote:
This thread descended into farce several pages ago, I'm also sick of reading the royal "we" whereby one pasty youth claims "we" won the war, and "you" fethed everything up....

When neither of them are old enough to remember the Falklands, let alone WW2

We're all armchair generals here who would have done things perfectly mattrym. Of course, we'd all be able to deduce exactly how the war, post war, and coming Mole Men uprising would play out without the aid of 70 years of research and the internet to tell us how we're geniuses.

PS - exalted your post mattrym

PPS - another Nazi thread by Inquisitor whats-his-face?

 mattyrm wrote:
This thread descended into farce several pages ago, I'm also sick of reading the royal "we" whereby one pasty youth claims "we" won the war, and "you" fethed everything up....

When neither of them are old enough to remember the Falklands, let alone WW2

]

I know, I don't even identify as British but it''s good to use that int 2 history

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:
People are also starting to blatantly ignore the historical context behind Allied "crimes." While such crimes were not "right," it is profoundly a-historical to separate any reactionary atrocities from their historical context. It is completely inappropriate to give the impression that the British suddenly started bombing German cities, when the fact is that they were engaged in a war started by the Germans. Providing the historical context is not justification either, as there is a major difference between explaining the reason why something happened, and justifying it. The fact is that the Germans supported a murderous regime that started a war and determined the terms on which it would be fought; what followed was natural. The Germans started a war that killed 60 million people, directly killed 20 million, and raped over 10 million Russian women. Now we're starting to see Nazi sympathetic revisionists gaining acceptance in spreading the idea that the Nazis were somehow victims and that "we weren't really much better then them."

The basic failing in your logic above is to confuse the idea that the Western Powers did very bad things indeed, they must somehow be on the same level as the Nazis. The simple fact is that many actions undertaken by the Allies, most notably the Strategic Bombing campaign, were as immoral as they were pointless.


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 Testify wrote:
No there isn't. The Soviets may have been war criminals but the western allies definitely were not.

There were criminal actions undertaken by the Western Allies. Pretending otherwise is to ignore reality.


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 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:
Yes, we stayed out, even after Pearl Harbor, until the Germans specifically declared war.

Factually incorrect.

While the German declaration of war made it easier to sell the Germany first policy to congress and to quiet the Isolationists, the policy of Germany first had been at the centre of Roosevelt and Marshall's war strategy for some time before that.

Look up the ABC-1 conference between Roosevelt and Churchill.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Which is odd considering that Japan was the agressor.

The only war crime the US might be guilty of is that Japanese warcriminals weren't prosecuted for their treatment of POWs and civilians.

Wrong. Several incidents of execution of prisoners were hushed up during the war.

On the whole the US fought the war with an admirable level of discipline and morality, but to claim no war crimes were committed is just nonsense.

We really would have remained at peace had Japan not attacked us. We would have eventually declared war on Germany, but Japan was not our main concern and they remained so until Germany was defeated.

The idea of the USA just drifting along peacefully until Japan attacked out of nowhere is a total fiction, born out of complete ignorance. The US had set containment of Japanese expansion as a major policy goal, and was strcitly limiting resource supplies to Japan to achieve this goal.

The US were right to undertake that policy, because the Japanese policy of military expansion was unacceptable, from either a strategic or moral point of view, but the attack on Pearl Harbour hardly came out of nowhere. In one form or another war was inevitable.


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 Squigsquasher wrote:
Of course I have my suspicions over the authenticity of the Nanking massacre but it makes gak turn ugly.

Evidence of atrocities at Nanking are overwhelming, and recorded by multiple sources including many Western workers and press officials who were trapped in the city. There is simply no reasonable doubt possible.


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 whembly wrote:
Why does that matter? In WWII, there wasn't much precision bombing... so, in order to be effective, carpet bombing is a tactic.

And the mistake in your answer is to conclude 'and therefore we should carpet bomb'.

The British RAF was politically committed to being a seperate wing of the armed forces, and so grossly overstated their ability to destroy German industry and public moral with strategic bombing (while steadfastly ignoring how little impact German bombing had had on the English). The American Airforce grossly overstated their precision bombing (while the bombing aids were excellent in ideal conditions, flying into heavy flak, under attack from German aircraft, with limited reconaissance of targets and commonly flying in very cloudy European conditions left almost all bombing raids far from ideal conditions) and so they quickly shifted from precision raids to area bombardment... without ever considering the idea that perhaps strategic bombing was a concept that didn't work.

The reason it went largely unquestioned, politically, is that both Churchill and Roosevelt had promised Stalin a second front in Western Europe years before such an operation was practical. Stalin was able to bully each of them because of this and feign at offering Hitler a seperate peace deal, and so wildly exaggerated claims of the effect of strategic bombing became a handy counter to Stalin's claims that the Western Allies were doing little to aid in the war.

It was, at best, a collossal feth up that tied up immense resources in war machines that would have been far better off directly supporting allied operations in the field, and at worst slaughtered of hundreds of thousands of people (including thousands of allied airmen) for little gain.

Let me ask you this: Is there such thing as conducting a "Moral" war?

Yes, and the best argument for a moral war is WWII. But that doesn't mean we should just ignore the things that happened during the war that were really fethed up.

Again... what are these "war crimes" really about?

Simply put, the victor makes the rules.

No. Shooting an unarmed man is a war crime, no matter who ends up winning. Getting away with a crime does not stop it being a crime.


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 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Absolutely not, but I don't think you can find a single example from the US or another Western military in theater that even vaguely comes close to the atrocities (well documented, historical facts) perpetrated by Imperial Japanese occupation forces in China.

Just because someone else is doing something even nastier, it doesn't make your action acceptable.


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 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:
The bombing of cities should have never happened. It had to happen, as there was not enough advancement to bomb any more accurately.

While there were deliberate raids against entire cities that were unjustified, it is inappropriate to condemn the entire air war.

You've made the same mistake as Whembly, and as allied air planners at the time - once they realised there was insufficient technology for more accurate bombing, they concluded that they had better just target cities as they could at least be confident of hitting them.

At some point it should have considered that the best use of bombers should have been in more integrated use with forces on the ground, that bombers simply weren't a strategic air weapon in and of themselves.


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 cpt_fishcakes wrote:
Thats why we were the good guys, any one says different is a moron of epic proportions.

No. But anyone who leaps from 'we were on the right side' to 'and therefore everything we did is just fine' is a moron of epic proportions.


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 DOOMBREAD wrote:
I'm afraid that's not exactly the case. Here's how it happened:
1. Japan bombs Pearl Harbor
2. US declares war on Japan.
3. Germany and Italy declare war on US.
So, we entered the war right after we were attacked, unless you consider the US vs. Japan war to not be part of WWII.

While the events you listed are technically correct, they leave out a very important fact - Roosevelt and Churchill had met in March of 1941 and agreed to a Germany first policy - nearly eight months before Pearl Harbour. The issue of the US was a question of when, not if, and when it happened Germany would be the priority target.

Although, that viewpoint isn't totally invalid. The Japanese weren't that closely associated with Germany and Italy. They were kind of doing their own thing.

The Germans weren't actually informed by the Japanese they were about to attack Pearl Harbour. Despite this, and despite the German Japanese alliance being a defensive pact that didn't require a German response after the Japan began hostilities, Hitler declared war anyway.

It probably didn't mean anything, though it did make it politically easier for Roosevelt to prioritise Germany over Japan.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
The Japanese were actively training their citizens, including young children to oppose the invaders. They were training people in the use of bamboo spears. children were taught to carry hidden grenades up to US soldiers and detonate them.

So were the Germans, and while it had some effect no-one is silly enough to claim the Germans fought to the very last man, woman and child. In fact, Berlin was only crushed as utterly as it was because Stalin wanted revenge.


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djones520 wrote:
If you want proof all you have to do is look at how the Battle of Okinawa went down. 150,000 civilian casualties. Mass suicides were rampant.

A single conquered island holding the last elite troops of the IJA is a really terrible comparison to the old and young men pressed into makeshift divisions on the mainland.

On the home islands, 28 million Japanese civilians were being prepared to take part in combat operations.

And the Germans did the same. And yet they didn't have to wipe the entire German population from the planet to secure victory. Hell, the Russians kind of wanted to wipe the Germans from the face of the Earth and it still didn't happen.


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Jefffar wrote:
Keep in mind this was based on the assumption of a fairly short (6 month) campaign to conquoer Japan. Had things not gone well things would have spiralled upwards.

So while not expecting to exactly commit a total depopulating of the Japanese home islands, there was a long, hard bloody fight anticipated.

Yeah, and the difference there is vast. It is accurate to state 'the invasion would have been incredibly bloody', and absurd to state 'the Japanese people would have been wiped from the Earth'.


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djones520 wrote:
And 1940's Japan was quite a differant culture from what this world has ever seen. Bushido was still alive and well in that day. Death by combat, never surrender. They did not think on the same wave length that we do.

Oh look, it's 1940s style racism. How quaint.


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 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
I will point out to this comment, that yes, America interred many Japanese-Americans into camps. BUT, we did so because many (not all) of these same citizens were actively spying against the US, and its interests. We didn't go off one day not liking the Japanese in our country and locking them up like the German Government did to Jews (and anyone else they got their hands on they didnt like), we had a cause which drew the effect of prison camps.

No, they weren't spying against the US. And there was a vast amount of anti-Japanese racism in the country, with anti-miscegenation laws, and laws to prevent the Japanese becoming naturalised citizens.

Seriously, in the late 80s then President Reagan formally apologised, stated it was an act of racism against Japanese American citizens and organised a compensation fund. That stuff you've claimed above is at least 25 year old nonsense.


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 whembly wrote:
WW2 was total world war... in that, anything and everyone were legitimate targets. So, yes, Civvies were valid targets.

Yes, but that doesn't justify any and all action that will kill civilians. Proportionality must always be a guide. You always, always have to ask 'what's the point of this operation' and before going ahead you always, always have to confirm that the good done in bringing the war closer to a satisfactory end is worth the loss in your people and their's.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Compared to many other countries, including some that are supposedly quite cosmopolitan, the US has a fairly unbiased worldview of historical events.

It can be shocking what other country's historical revisionists do with history.


Of course we have our own share of them here too. They especially like to mess with early colonial facts.

US revisionism over the founding fathers is pretty bad. And we've seen plenty of myth making in this thread over WWII. You should have seen the outrage people showed about a year back when I pointed out that Soviet Russia beat the Germans, and the Western Allies were useful but not essential to that.


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 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I feel like the west is really undereducated about the entire Pacific war in general. Lot of people don't even know there was a war between Japan and China or that like 10,000,000 Chinese where killed (I'm not even sure that's right actually. If someone knows correct me.)

Chinese casualties were about 2 million soldiers (about 1.5 million nationalist troops, and another 500,000 communist troops), and another 20 million civilian casualties.

To be fair to all of us, though, it isn't as though the Chinese as a whole know much about the war either. Most of them believe the Nationalists spent the war hiding away while communist forces fought the Japanese, but the opposite is true.


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 Ratbarf wrote:
A pretty good quote that I got from a documentary on Dresden was, "The most immoral thing the Allies could have done in WW2 was lose." Which I think is pretty accurate, because even if some of the things that were done by the Allies were reprehensible, what would have followed an Axis victory would have been far far worse. Unless of course you're white and Germanic, then it wouldn't have been way too bad.

Sure, but it's a complete nonsense to pretend that Dresden in any way advanced the allied war effort. It's something more akin to claiming 'we must do everything in our power to stop the Nazi scum, so I'm going to kick this puppy'.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Seriously, look up Bushido. It calls for some pretty fethed up things.

Heck, even today suicide is a socially acceptable response to just about any failure in Japan. Failed to get into the school of your choice? Commit Seppuku. A student gets a C on an exam, commits Seppuku.

The Japanese mindset was, and is, radically different to other parts of the world.

At this point I'm basically waiting for you to say 'inscrutable'.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
I said it because its the truth.

The actual estimates of the time, already mentioned in this thread, estimate 5 to 10 million civilian casualties, which is short of complete genocide by a factor of 10. Out by a factor of ten, and you just keep posting, pretending like what you're saying matches reality.

You're absurd.


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 Lynata wrote:
That's ... not entirely true. Yes, the means for pinpoint attacks were not comparable to what is available today, but precision bombing was possible and did happen.

It was attempted, the US in particular were extremely confident of their accuracy, but Air Force review found about 3% of bombs landed within five miles of the target. Once you have bomber formations under flak fire, fighter attack, in heavy clouds common in Europe, and trying to hit target with limited reconaissance, you start missing by a really long way.

There's a huge difference between leveling, say, a couple house blocks surrounding a factory and razing half a city with incendiary bombs. The fact is that, at some point, tactics were simply adapted to maximise the effect on the civilian population, as it was believed that eroding the fighting spirit of the general population would bring a quicker end to the war, regardless the collateral damage. Some allied military officers (unsurprisingly more within the USAAF than the RAF) even disputed the concept of carpet bombing, stating that it had little effect on the enemy's war machine - which gets more obvious when you consider those attacks where industrial areas were intentionally left unharmed because they were not situated in/near residential areas.

Harris, leading the RAF bomber command, was absolutely committed to carpet bombing the belief that it would destroy German moral and end the war in and of itself. He was wrong, and stupidly wrong, because the British had suffered direct attack on their civilian populations and never even slightly considered negotiating for peace.

Le May, leading the Eighth USAF (? I think) was convinced the accuracy of US bombers could cripple German war machinery. I think we can have a fair bit of sympathy with that mistake, but once the issues became clear the US response to shift to basically carpet bombing is a lot less understandable.

Sometimes I get the feeling that lots of Germans would like to render "Nazi" a separate entity from "German" altogether, as if it was a different species. At least that's what I occasionally get from various comments on the interwebs whenever a topic like "legacy of guilt" comes up, with people posting stuff like "let it go, that was them not us". Unfortunately it's not as easy, considering current trends and issues within the populace.

There's also the near complete absence of meaningful resistance among the German population against the actions of the Nazi leadership.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
For the majority of our history people have had to spend every waking moment looking for food.

Once settled society emerged war became inevitable. It comes with the territory of being a social creature.

Even Ants and Primates wage war on each other. Out genocide to be honest. So you can't say war isn't a natural thing.

Fighting is a natural thing. War is the product of the very unnatural circumstances we call modern society.


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 whembly wrote:
Shuma... are you arguing that had we invaded Japan, that the initial casualty assessments were too high?

That's a pretty universal position held by military analysts today. Study of Japanese cabinet documents have shown that they were pretty close to surrender as it was, and their ability to supply even the hastily formed civilian brigades was almost nil.

Truman didn't, and couldn't have known that, so his decision based on estimates of the deaths in Japan, to drop the bomb instead is entirely fair. But people here claiming the Japanese would have fought to the death is just plain crazy.

Can someone correct me, didn't the local peasants in Okinawa fight the Allies forces? The results of that battle may have been the driving force in the belief that the peasants on the mainland would fight as well.

No, the local Okinawans had to be pressed into service by the IJA. The Japanese used them as human shields during the fighting. After the fighting they helped the Americans identify Japanese people hiding among the civilian population.


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 Ratbarf wrote:
I don't exactly see the large difference between a conscript soldier who used to be a sharecropper/fisherman and has only had a month or so of training to change that and a current sharecropper/fisherman who is currently receiving training the handling of firearms and explosives? Especially as in Imperial Japan military rules and ideaologies started in elementary school.

The first difference is in the amount of training the soldier recieves, and how this impacts his skill and discipline in the field. The teenagers and old men thrown into service in Berlin in 1945 were nothing like as effective as the troops in service in Barbarossa. For obvious reasons.

The second point is that Japanese military indoctrination was a highly focused thing - you were raised from birth as a soldier, and had all manner of cultural values instilled into you, or you were not. By 1945 all those raised as soldiers were dead.


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 ShumaGorath wrote:
What is total war? Why does that suddenly allow for the killing of innocents, but insurgencies or geurilla warfare doesn't? How is it different from conventional warfare that doesn't? If it makes it all ok, why did we have all those war crimes trials? This just sounds like a defense of the indefensible so that the greatest generation can keep being great.

Total war began as a concept in the 19th century, differentiated from a limited war, in which the total survival of the nation was at stake.

It developed over time until it reached notoriety when Hitler used it for his first speach following the retreat from Moscow, chanting 'total war, short war' over and over again. The speach basically invented the fantasy that by being utterly ruthless you can win war more easily. Within a couple of years that was line of bitter comedy in Germany, as they were suffering total war as the bombers flew over every night.

The idea didn't die, though. Internet hard men still like to pretend that any inhumanity is justified if it might advance your cause one step further.


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Jefffar wrote:
The city bombings of WWII wre horrible things and morally repugnant, even if they can be justified in the circumstances.

Which is one of the true tragedies of war. In war, good men learn to do bad things and be okay with it.

Well, the bombing is either morally repugnant, or justified in the circumstances. Had the bombing had a realistic chance of reducing the length of the war or collapsing German moral and forcing a surrender, or even had such a belief been reasonable, then it would have been justifiable.

But the simple fact is that very early on it was apparent that the bombing was not effective enough to justify the cost in allied lives and German civilians.


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 DemetriDominov wrote:
The answer:

Everyone is a war criminal because war is criminal.

That's hopelessly simplistic.

There are necessary wars, and WWII is the classic example of a war that simply had to be fought because the regimes that waged it. But when that war is waged it simply cannot be denied that some actions are needed to successfully win that war, and others increase the suffering far more than they bring the war to a likely conclusion. It is of the absolute most importance that people understand that, and develop tools to assess which actions are and are not justified, to reduce suffering as much as possible.


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 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
However, I do not think that World War 2 will ever be considered a war of American aggression for the simple reason that America didn't get involved until the war had progressed quite a bit. It may eventually be considered a war of Allied aggression - after all, it was the Allies that declared war on Germany, wasn't it?

That day will not come soon though. It's clear to anyone who knows anything about World War 2 that it was a direct result of Nazi warmongering and expansion.

In the wake of the fall of France, as Britain stood alone, Hitler accused Churchill of being a warmonger. It was a laughably stupid claim then, and it's even more stupid now. Someone may some day attempt to claim otherwise, but it will never be taken seriously.

And yeah, fair point on some Allied officers never being charged with war crimes. Raeder was charged at Nuremburg with undertaking unrestricted submarine operations, when the US undertook the exact same policy from the day after Pearl Harbour.


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 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
That's not quite true. Hitler wanted Lebensraum, or living space, for the German people. He said so in Mein Kampf. By doing so he wanted to expand Germany's borders but never wanted to take over the world, only to assert Aryan dominance. Kind of like what America has done now.

Lebensraum involved conquering territory, depopulating through forced sterilisation or containment in forced work camps, while Aryan citizens moved into the land. It's nothing like anything the US is doing.

The Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere is a lot closer to waht you're talking about, which had a notion of guiding the other Asian people with benign Japanese guidance. But Hitler's policy were pretty much flat out explicit doom to anyone who wasn't Aryran.

They also wanted revenge against the Allied nations for the Treaty of Versailles which they rightly viewed as unfair. I mean, if you had to pay ridiculous amounts of money, lose a lot of your land and disband your armed forces, you'd be pretty pissed off as well.

Don't think it really justifies undertaking a genocidal war of slaughter, personally.


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 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
The declared war for Poland, like when the Germans invaded it.

And then did nothing.

And not all the German manpower/resources was deployed in the east.

It was almost overwhelmingly deployed in the East. A concerted push on Berlin could have reached the city without great resistance. Hitler had gambled on the passivity of France and Britain, and succeeded in achieving it. And what forces were there were almost entirely incapable of effective defence, having a handful of shells for each artillery piece.

And the French put too much faith in the Maginot Line and were caught off guard by the blitzkrieg going around the side of it

It's a lot more complicated than that. Certainly the drive through the Ardennes allowed the Germans to run havoc through the allied lines, but the British and French still held numerical superiority, and the Germans lacked the mobility to actually deploy fully through the breach. After the Dunkirk evacuation the British made further landings to continue the war, only to find the French capitulards had basically arranged a coup and negotiated the surrender of France (largely to prevent their own largely fantastical fear that Communists were about to sieze power in Paris).


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 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Maginot I believe

and you have to admit it's a brilliant tactical plan.

France: "Hahah try getting through our massive wall!"

Germany: "What if we go around it?"

France: "....gak"

First up, it wasn't a wall, but an extensive, deep series of foritifications and underground supply dumps.

Second up, everyone including the French knew the Germans were going around it. That was the point. When war is declared the French and British advance to meet the Germans as they moved through Belgium and Holland to avoid the Maginot line, and then grind down the Germans on that narrow front in an attritional war. And to a large extent it would have worked, as the German plan was originally to attack through Holland and Belgium, but the plans for that attack were abandoned after the Mechelen incident, a forced landing by a German plan carrying the plans for this attack.

Instead they went to the lightning war of manouevre argued for by Manstein - driving mechanised units through the Ardennes to complete the encirclement of British and French units as they marched into Holland and Belgium. It worked rather well, though it was largely dependant on the collapse of morale within the French forces and Guderian's personal initiative in continuing the attack despite having advanced far further than senior planners could ever have imagined.


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 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
They did start to mobilise and the BEF did land in France and advance towards the germans before getting beaten back but for the most part they were peace time armies in Europe apart from the Germans. The 6 years of Appeasement gave some time but they were still updating equipment and recruiting men which takes time and Poland was on the other side of Europe.

The Germans were making do with an piece meal army in the process of modernisation as much as anyone else. They had chronic shortages and woefully inadequate tanks, same as everyone else.

The difference is that the Germans, knowing that the long game favoured the better resourced French and British, took to gamble with new military concepts, particularly a return to manouevre warfare. The Western Allies, on the other hand, responded to their limitations with passivity. The German approach worked better.


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 Daemonhammer wrote:
Neither England or France attack Germany before you were attacked by them.
Both England and France promised us that they would attack Germany if they attacked us.
Not only did you Betray us then, you even sold us (and a few other countries) to the USSR after the war.

To be fair to the British, Churchill argued strongly in favour of denying Stalin control of Poland after the war, but by this time the nature of Britain as a second tier power was well established. At the same time Roosevelt made noise about it to ensure he wasn't hurt by the Polish American vote during his re-election, and immediately afterwards gave up Poland to the Russians.


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 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
Yet Britain and France weren't able to launch an effective strike at any of the German forces
- The Maginot Line was directly opposite the Rhineland, the only French-German border,
-The rest was neutral or opposing countries (Netherlands/Belgium to the north, Italy and Switzerland to the south)

Without either exposing and overextending themselves by trying to fight the Dutch before the Germans as the forces available at the time were still deploying with antiquated technology.

And after the war the USSR would of had a war if we and tried to get more than what we ended up and all that would of succeeded in doing was to have the cold war between Europe and the US instead fo the USSR and Nato

No, it wasn't that Britain and France couldn't launch an effective strike, it's that they didn't. They held an overwhelming advantage in men and material, but French defensive doctrine was so deeply ingrained that they managed nothing more than a few recon efforts across the border.


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 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
The Sudetenland incident was probably one of the lowest points in British history in the past 100 years, it was an absolute disgrace but at the time Britain had a peacetime army with no real technology to speak of, the years of appeasement bought Britain enough time to update thei technology and start training new soldiers so that when war came we weren't destroyed and invaded by the Germans

Yeah, for all the talk condeming Chamberlain for "Peace in our Time" pretty much as soon as he got back to Britain they started driving a range of modernisation initiatives through the armed forces. The military had been left to dwindle for too long, and so by the Sudetenland they British were simply in no position to oppose Hitler.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
The allies only advantage in military hardware was in tanks. In other areas the Germans were equal if not superior. Especially in tactics.

German airpower was far greater, but at the time of the Polish campaign it was hopelessly short of resources and would have been unable to maintain any kind of protracted campaign. German collapse was inevitable.

The only real disadvantage the Germans had was that they didn't have the manpower or resources to do what they did. Hitler also was not a great tactician, his general were. When he took over direct command is when things went south.

That's a common myth, achieved by ignoring the points in which Hitler's directives led to greater success. It was Hitler that rejected Halder's original plan to advance through Belgium and Holland, and go with the much less popular plan from Manstein, as he understood that given Germany's terrible strategic position a gamble on lightning war was the only way to win. And it was Hitler that refused the retreat from Moscow, understanding that retreat would collapse into a route.

It's interesting to contrast two orders given to von Paulus. The first was when he was struggling to resist the Kharkov offensive, and requested permission to withdraw, Hitler denied this, Manstein deployed tank divisions in a flanking manouvre and the overextended Russians were cut off and destroyed. But it is Hitler's direct order to von Paulus to hold in Stalingrad, so that Manstein could undertake an offensive to break the offensive that is famous as a blunder, while no credit is given to him for the first.

Now, as the war continued Hitler became increasing unstable and made many costly errors, but by that stage the war was basically over. If you want to talk about people that interfered and fethed things up constantly, you talk about Churchill.


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Relapse wrote:
This is true. Historical hindsight is almost always 20/20, but Churchil pretty well had the bastard pegged.

True, but at the same time Churchill still wasn't popular enough to claim power. It took until the debacle of the Norwegian Campaign for Chamberlain to be replaced by Churchill (the irony being that Churchill's interference in that campaign was a pretty major reason for its failure).

The other piece of often forgotten history is that Chamberlain remained part of Churchill's cabinet, and after the Fall of France Chamberlain was Churchill's strongest supporter that they could not negotiate peace with Hitler.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, no. The Maginot line was built after WW1 as a precaution against further German invasion.

Wrong. By being a fortified line right across the border the idea was to force the Germans into attacking through Holland and and Belgium, exactly as d-usa said.


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 d-usa wrote:
I just always thought it was a weird response. Germany invades France during WW1 by largely ignoring their shared border, so to prevent another attack France reinforces the border only for Germany to ignore it again during WW2.

The idea was that much of France was left devastated by WWI, and so the Maginot line would force any future war into Belgium and they could get fethed up instead.

There was, at some time, an idea that they line would be expanded across Belgium, but the Belgian's refused.

It's worth pointing out Poland had a similar line of defences, but this was completely outflanked by the German annexation of Czechoslovakia.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Interesting. Odd that they would pull the same trick twice and have it work.

It wasn't really a trick the second time around. Everyone expected the Germans to hook through Belgium. In fact, when the first German attack was aborted early in 1940 the British and French thought the attack had begun and were already marching into Belgium.

Then when the attack did happen, the German attack into Belgium was a deception, and the real drive came through the Ardennes, the thickly wooded, mountainous region between the Maginot line and the Belgian border. The Allied troops marching into Belgium were suddenly outpositioned, and only escaped by the evacuation at Dunkirk.


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Sgt_Scruffy wrote:
I'm pretty sure that the Allied plan in case of German attack was to advance into Belgium and hold them along a much smaller front that that would extend from the Maginot Line to the Flemish coast. Remember that Belgium and the Netherlands were still neutral until the German invasion in 1940.

The French Army was almost entirely a static defensive force. They lacked the mobility or the logistics to prosecute a war away from their fortress lines. Most of their divisions were either reserve divisions or fortress divisions that either existed mostly on paper or were so hunkered down in their defensive lines as to be useless on the attack.

Funnily enough, the French actually had vastly more motorised units than the Germans. Most of the German troops that advanced through the Ardennes were walking - the Germans had about two properly motorised divisions for the attack.

The French, on the other hand, had an excellent supply of vehicles, which the Germans captured when the French capitulated - those vehicles were the backbone of Barbarossa.

I'm not disagreeing with your summary of French and German actions during the war, the French were static and the Germans mobile, but that was a product of tactical doctrine, not actual capability.


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 Vulcan wrote:
It didn't help that the French lacked the moblie logicistical capability to even go the - what, sixty miles? - from the Maginot Line to the Ruhr industrial area. And the BEF lacked the numbers to do it alone.

The logistical capability of France was far greater than that of Germany. In fact, it was French vehicles and horses that were the backbone of the German drive into Russia.

I think Sebster just won the award for longest post.

A very informative post, long as it was, though!

And I think it is really noteworthy that at the beginning of WW2, the French tanks were very much superior to the Panzer IIs, Panzer IIIs and early Panzer IVs that the Germans mostly used in the early years. There's a nice story about this fact...

Next to the village of Stonne, south of Sedan, the french Char B1 tank "Eure" from 1st Company, 41st tank battalion encountered a German column of 11 PIIIs and 2 PIVs. With its Baneblade-style 75mm hull howitzer and the 47mm turret gun, it managed to destroy ALL of them (by killing the first column vehicle with the hull gun and the last column vehicle with the turret gun, trapping all other German tanks inbetween) and blowing up two AT guns somewhere inbetween.

This Char B1 was hit 140 times (!) during this battle, but the armor was never penetrated by the small 5cm KwK L/42 of the Panzer IIIs (which were designed to destroy tanks) or the even worse shells from the early PIVs or Pak 36s.

That's one hell of a tank on the French side right there.

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 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
That's not quite true. Hitler wanted Lebensraum, or living space, for the German people. He said so in Mein Kampf. By doing so he wanted to expand Germany's borders but never wanted to take over the world, only to assert Aryan dominance. Kind of like what America has done now.

Lebensraum involved conquering territory, depopulating through forced sterilisation or containment in forced work camps, while Aryan citizens moved into the land. It's nothing like anything the US is doing.

The Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere is a lot closer to waht you're talking about, which had a notion of guiding the other Asian people with benign Japanese guidance. But Hitler's policy were pretty much flat out explicit doom to anyone who wasn't Aryran.

They also wanted revenge against the Allied nations for the Treaty of Versailles which they rightly viewed as unfair. I mean, if you had to pay ridiculous amounts of money, lose a lot of your land and disband your armed forces, you'd be pretty pissed off as well.

Don't think it really justifies undertaking a genocidal war of slaughter, personally.

Daemonhammer wrote:You AGREED to let the USSR take over the countries! And none of us had any say in it!

I find this concept that the British are somehow ultimately responsible for the fate of Poland amusing. We may have drawn lines on a map with the USSR, but that in no way forced the Polish people to adhere to them. If a country wants freedom and independence, it should acquire the capacity to maintain and defend that freedom and independence. It is nobody else's responsibility to defend it for them. Other countries may choose to do so for their own reasons, but the buck doesn't stop there.

Poland lost a war, and badly so. It paid for that failure to defend its people by no longer being a player internationally for a period of time. It lost so quickly and so badly, that there was not a long enough period of time available for the British to intervene in any real way. I don't see why it would somehow become the responsibility of the British to risk engaging in a second major war five years later, to restore a country that was unable to even begin to defend itself against the first wave of German aggression.

These whole comments reek to me of passing the buck and being unable to admit that Poland had its own duty to defend itself, and that it was one it failed to do adequately.

Sebster wrote:Well, the bombing is either morally repugnant, or justified in the circumstances. Had the bombing had a realistic chance of reducing the length of the war or collapsing German moral and forcing a surrender, or even had such a belief been reasonable, then it would have been justifiable.

But the simple fact is that very early on it was apparent that the bombing was not effective enough to justify the cost in allied lives and German civilians.

I'd dispute this. But I have a sneaky feeling we've hashed this one out at least once before.

EDIT:-http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/436484.page

The damage to the economy highlighted here more or less indicates that the end of the war would have been sped up by damage to the German industrial base. If you're referring more to the civilian targeted raids, then it would appear to be the case that we should have either been MORE ruthless, or not have bothered.

 sebster wrote:
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 Vulcan wrote:
It didn't help that the French lacked the moblie logicistical capability to even go the - what, sixty miles? - from the Maginot Line to the Ruhr industrial area. And the BEF lacked the numbers to do it alone.

The logistical capability of France was far greater than that of Germany. In fact, it was French vehicles and horses that were the backbone of the German drive into Russia.

It was also all centered well inside France, to move supplies TO the Maginot line, not AT the Maginot Line to move supplies PAST it.

A very informative post, long as it was, though!

And I think it is really noteworthy that at the beginning of WW2, the French tanks were very much superior to the Panzer IIs, Panzer IIIs and early Panzer IVs that the Germans mostly used in the early years. There's a nice story about this fact...

Next to the village of Stonne, south of Sedan, the french Char B1 tank "Eure" from 1st Company, 41st tank battalion encountered a German column of 11 PIIIs and 2 PIVs. With its Baneblade-style 75mm hull howitzer and the 47mm turret gun, it managed to destroy ALL of them (by killing the first column vehicle with the hull gun and the last column vehicle with the turret gun, trapping all other German tanks inbetween) and blowing up two AT guns somewhere inbetween.

This Char B1 was hit 140 times (!) during this battle, but the armor was never penetrated by the small 5cm KwK L/42 of the Panzer IIIs (which were designed to destroy tanks) or the even worse shells from the early PIVs or Pak 36s.

That's one hell of a tank on the French side right there.

The problem with the French tanks though is that they had no means of communicating outside of naval flags or actually getting out and talking. The Germans use of radios in every tank made it much easier to evade, surround, outflank, etc while still maintaining unit coherency and unit effectiveness.

The French also spread out their tanks throughout an infantry line while the Germans ran in Panzer formations which made it easier for the Germans to neutralise any opposing armour

 Frazzled wrote:
I think Sebster just won the award for longest post.

Yeah, uh, once I'd corrected like eight people on the first page, and there was seven pages of this thread I thought if it was worth doing. Then I saw my month end processing on my PC was about 5% done and figured I had the time.

 sebster wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
I think Sebster just won the award for longest post.

Yeah, uh, once I'd corrected like eight people on the first page, and there was seven pages of this thread I thought if it was worth doing. Then I saw my month end processing on my PC was about 5% done and figured I had the time.

Yeah dude... that looks epic...

Still trying to catch up.

 Witzkatz wrote:
A very informative post, long as it was, though!

Thanks!

And I think it is really noteworthy that at the beginning of WW2, the French tanks were very much superior to the Panzer IIs, Panzer IIIs and early Panzer IVs that the Germans mostly used in the early years. There's a nice story about this fact...

Next to the village of Stonne, south of Sedan, the french Char B1 tank "Eure" from 1st Company, 41st tank battalion encountered a German column of 11 PIIIs and 2 PIVs. With its Baneblade-style 75mm hull howitzer and the 47mm turret gun, it managed to destroy ALL of them (by killing the first column vehicle with the hull gun and the last column vehicle with the turret gun, trapping all other German tanks inbetween) and blowing up two AT guns somewhere inbetween.

This Char B1 was hit 140 times (!) during this battle, but the armor was never penetrated by the small 5cm KwK L/42 of the Panzer IIIs (which were designed to destroy tanks) or the even worse shells from the early PIVs or Pak 36s.

That's one hell of a tank on the French side right there.

Yeah, they were, however, very slow, and like all tanks vulnerable to attack from the air. In the chaos de Gaulle cobbled together a mechanised brigade to counter the advance through the Ardennes, but lacking decent support (in large part because other French generals obstinately refused to give it to him) and the speed to exploit success his actions were eventually beaten back by artillery and air attack.

It's interesting that the Germans basically failed to learn from their own successes, and from the failures of their enemies, and proceeded to build bigger and bigger tanks at the expense of numbers and operational range.


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 Vulcan wrote:
It was also all centered well inside France, to move supplies TO the Maginot line, not AT the Maginot Line to move supplies PAST it.

Sure, which is a choice made due to tactical doctrine, not one made due to capability. French supply could well have been advanced forward, had they been willing to attempt to advance on Germany.


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 Ratbarf wrote:
The problem with the French tanks though is that they had no means of communicating outside of naval flags or actually getting out and talking. The Germans use of radios in every tank made it much easier to evade, surround, outflank, etc while still maintaining unit coherency and unit effectiveness.

Sure, which was a product of German doctrine wanting more aggressive deployment and adjustment on the field, while the French thought tanks would be acting in response to carefully planned, slowly played out operations ordered from above.

Thats a common assessment Sebster. An interesting codicil would be the argument that more capital should have been expended on fighter bombers who could take out the heaviest armor at will. Indeed even today putting an M1 against an armed P 47 thunderbolt, I'd take the thunderbolt with its 500 lb bombs.

 Frazzled wrote:
Thats a common assessment Sebster. An interesting codicil would be the argument that more capital should have been expended on fighter bombers who could take out the heaviest armor at will. Indeed even today putting an M1 against an armed P 47 thunderbolt, I'd take the thunderbolt with its 500 lb bombs.

Yeah, take the resources sunk into the strategic air campaign, and instead put them into fighter bombers that can hammer German positions in support of the Allied drive. Wonder if that could have got the Allies to Berlin before the Russkies?

Maybe if the Mediterranean campaign ends with Sicily and doesn't drag out that Italian meatgrinder, then you'd have more resources to make D-Day happen sooner?

 sebster wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Thats a common assessment Sebster. An interesting codicil would be the argument that more capital should have been expended on fighter bombers who could take out the heaviest armor at will. Indeed even today putting an M1 against an armed P 47 thunderbolt, I'd take the thunderbolt with its 500 lb bombs.

Yeah, take the resources sunk into the strategic air campaign, and instead put them into fighter bombers that can hammer German positions in support of the Allied drive. Wonder if that could have got the Allies to Berlin before the Russkies?

Maybe if the Mediterranean campaign ends with Sicily and doesn't drag out that Italian meatgrinder, then you'd have more resources to make D-Day happen sooner?

It depends though. The strategic bombing campgin did strongly impact Luftwaffe production capacity and refining capacity, which was the real deal. It also effectively drained the Luftwaffe such that they had very few remaining interdiction fighters to contest the invasion.

But thats a bit of a special case. Germany and the USSR, should have been out the wazoo in fighters and fighter bombers. I think the numbers were intense, especially on the Soviet side, byut the German's really should have focused on it more. Neither of them develeoped the level of spohistication the Americans had however in local ground force / air force interaction to turn fighter bombers into roving artillery. It woulod be interesting to see anOperation CObra carried out not by a thousand heavy bombers, but three thousand fighter bombers continuously clearing the way in front of allied tank columns.

Obviously the Pacific War was a different.

 sebster wrote:
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 Vulcan wrote:
It was also all centered well inside France, to move supplies TO the Maginot line, not AT the Maginot Line to move supplies PAST it.

Sure, which is a choice made due to tactical doctrine, not one made due to capability. French supply could well have been advanced forward, had they been willing to attempt to advance on Germany.

Fair point.

It still doesn't fix the operational problem that in September 1939, the French army did not have the logicstical capability to go the 60 miles to the main German prodiction facilites in the Ruhr.

 Frazzled wrote:
It depends though. The strategic bombing campgin did strongly impact Luftwaffe production capacity and refining capacity, which was the real deal. It also effectively drained the Luftwaffe such that they had very few remaining interdiction fighters to contest the invasion.

Spaatz' impact on oil production is about as overstated as Harris' efforts against German cities.

As you point out, the major impact of each was the damage inflicted on the Luftwaffe. But much of that damage was done not with by the bombs dropped, but in the drain of fighters as German fighter losses mounted in countering the constant bomber raids.

I don't know, I'm just an armchair general, but it just seems to me that there would have to be a better way to draw down the power of the Luftwaffe.

But thats a bit of a special case. Germany and the USSR, should have been out the wazoo in fighters and fighter bombers. I think the numbers were intense, especially on the Soviet side, byut the German's really should have focused on it more. Neither of them develeoped the level of spohistication the Americans had however in local ground force / air force interaction to turn fighter bombers into roving artillery. It woulod be interesting to see anOperation CObra carried out not by a thousand heavy bombers, but three thousand fighter bombers continuously clearing the way in front of allied tank columns.

One of the most significant advantages the Germans had at the beginning of the war was the close co-operation between air and ground assets, so that dive bombers could hammer key enemy positions in preparation for lightning attacks, without needing the slow build up of conventional artillery. It was far more effective than the more independant, strategic focus given over to the RAF.

I mean, I agree that when the US entered the war they did it much better (and co-ordinated conventional artillery better as well), but at the start of the war the Germans did it better than anyone else.

I don't think the Russians were ever in a position to do anything like that. The fighter bombers they had were pretty good, but the kind of command and control needed to engage in those kinds of operations was just beyond an army that was, basically, conscripted from among a peasant population. You don't purge your officer corps once, have most of the rest killed in Barbarossa, and then shove peasants into junior officer positions to direct close co-ordination with aircraft


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 Vulcan wrote:
Fair point.

It still doesn't fix the operational problem that in September 1939, the French army did not have the logicstical capability to go the 60 miles to the main German prodiction facilites in the Ruhr.

And that's a fair point as well.