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The Churchill was pretty well-loved by its crews. It could get over boggy ground and had a reliable engine.

Not glamorous I know. I can't report whether it had the tea-making station that the Matilda has, I don't have access to that vital information.

Beevor says there were more German armoured division over a 20 mile front, for the Goodwood operaton, than the Soviets faced over a 200 mile front. Not decrying anyone's efforts - it wasn't a cakewalk anywhere.

One amazing hero of all of this is Albert Kahn. He designed factories for Chrysler etc. Then in the great depression the work tailed off - so he designed tank and other factories for the Soviet Union. Hundreds of them.

If you look at a T34 production line, just like a car one, and a Tiger production line, with one team hand-crafting one tank at a time, you can see why the Germans buckled. All because an architect from Detroit had some time on his hands.

   
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The Great State of Texas

Latin America did well also.
-India was awesome. Within half a decade they were free at last free at last thank God almighty they are free at last...

-Didn't Singapore and Malaysia gain their independence then as well?


-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
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-

 Frazzled wrote:
Latin America did well also.
-India was awesome. Within half a decade they were free at last free at last thank God almighty they are free at last...

-Didn't Singapore and Malaysia gain their independence then as well?



They got their independence in the 1950s, and 1960s. The Malayan emergency broke out, and Britain had to face down an insurgency and won. I could be wrong, but I think it's the only time in modern history that a guerrilla movement was defeated.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Vaktathi wrote:
 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Of the 3 nations that started WW2, Germany, France, UK, only Britain came through unscathed at the end. I call that a British victory
Hrm, maybe they weren't totally burned to the ground the way other nations were, but the war broke the grip of Britain on its Empire and left it with massive debt and financial pressure and material shortages for years. France was certainly scathed, with huge parts of the country having been fought through and was occupied for years, and its overseas empire likewise fatally weakened.

The US was the only big winner that emerged largely unscathed and significantly better off.


Pre-WW2, Britain was facing a very strong Indian independence movement, so even without the war, Britain would probably have lost India.

If you go purely by casualty figures of the main combatants, only the USA had a 'better' war than Britain...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/23 14:31:49


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On moon miranda.

Britain probably would have lost India no matter what, I dont think anyone will argue that, but probably not as quickly or as completely or abruptly as it did, and that certainly accelerated the loss of the rest of the Empire. Britain never again held the same dominance in trade, global reach, sea power, or financial strength after the world wars as before. The USSR paid the Iron Price for victory, Britain paid in Gold, but they paid all the same. That said, I will totally accept that they ended up *better* off than France and Germany, but I just dont think they could be said to have gotten off unscathed.

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Personally I thought the T34 was rubbish.

The amount of loses they sustained, even with overwhelming odds on their side, is still rediclous.

I also bring evidence!

http://www.operationbarbarossa.net/the-t-34-in-wwii-the-legend-vs-the-performance/

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/23 15:09:06


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-

 Vaktathi wrote:
Britain probably would have lost India no matter what, I dont think anyone will argue that, but probably not as quickly or as completely or abruptly as it did, and that certainly accelerated the loss of the rest of the Empire. Britain never again held the same dominance in trade, global reach, sea power, or financial strength after the world wars as before. The USSR paid the Iron Price for victory, Britain paid in Gold, but they paid all the same. That said, I will totally accept that they ended up *better* off than France and Germany, but I just dont think they could be said to have gotten off unscathed.


There's a lot of new revisionist history on the market these days, and some of it has argued that Britain wasn't as weak after WW2 as is made out to be. Yes, the USA was booming, but Britain still had big chunks of the empire, was working towards the bomb, had some really good modern fighter jets, and of course, it's main rivals in Europe, were all struggling to rebuild.

The 1950s was a boomtime for the UK as well. It was Suez in 1956 when the gak hit the fan. A bad move on Ike's part to shut it down.

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The Germans built the highly over-engineered Panther and made the go ahead of the Tiger to counter it.

-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
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-

 welshhoppo wrote:
Personally I thought the T34 was rubbish.

The amount of loses they sustained, even with overwhelming odds on their side, is still rediclous.

I also bring evidence!

http://www.operationbarbarossa.net/the-t-34-in-wwii-the-legend-vs-the-performance/


I don't think it was a bad tank - I just think the crew training was a liability most of the time.

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Poor training, poor leadership, limited radio sets vs. German units. Using flags on a mobile battlefield is an interesting concept.

-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
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-

 Frazzled wrote:
Poor training, poor leadership, limited radio sets vs. German units. Using flags on a mobile battlefield is an interesting concept.


Which is why I'm consistently making the point that Soviet losses were higher than they should have been, and modernization (lack of radios) was a key reason for that.


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UK

It didn't help that the Russian officer corps had been massively purged tbh.


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The Great State of Texas

Indeed. Imagine the Soviets competently led before 1943. Yikes.

-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


They got their independence in the 1950s, and 1960s. The Malayan emergency broke out, and Britain had to face down an insurgency and won. I could be wrong, but I think it's the only time in modern history that a guerrilla movement was defeated.


Che Guevara's campaign in Bolivia?

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The Boer War.

Guevara's force in Bolivia was too small to call the situation a war.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/23 16:06:19


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avoiding the lorax on Crion

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
 Frazzled wrote:
Poor training, poor leadership, limited radio sets vs. German units. Using flags on a mobile battlefield is an interesting concept.


Which is why I'm consistently making the point that Soviet losses were higher than they should have been, and modernization (lack of radios) was a key reason for that.



Russian high command did not care. Always more to send up.
They paid the iron price without worry

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 jhe90 wrote:
 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
 Frazzled wrote:
Poor training, poor leadership, limited radio sets vs. German units. Using flags on a mobile battlefield is an interesting concept.


Which is why I'm consistently making the point that Soviet losses were higher than they should have been, and modernization (lack of radios) was a key reason for that.



Russian high command did not care. Always more to send up.
They paid the iron price without worry

They also did not have much choice. The Germans captured most of the Soviet army's modern equipment in the early days of the war, and the Soviet Union simply did not have the capability to rebuild its armies and modernise their equipment at the same time. Before the war, the Soviet army had actually been one of the most modern and advanced armies in the world, more so than the Germans. But just like the French, it did not help them much against the superior German tactics.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/23 23:09:18


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 Freakazoitt wrote:
I was looking at the stats for how much damage and casualties the Allies inflicted on Germany during the Normandy campaign, and it's astonishing. Nearly 60 German divisions wiped out, and an entire theatre of German operations removed from the map, as they were chased back to Germany.

The common reaction of the Soviet soldiers on the news about the opening of a second front was a "but where were you been when we were dying in a bloody mess?".
Of course, this is a major operation and preparing for years and of course no one is obliged to run to the enemy and die to save is not very friendly to them USSR. But anyways.

I think the idea was to capture Moscow and then hold the Russians to ransom and get a peace treaty with them. But then one group decided to go far to Leningrad, and one went far south to the oil fields. If they had only done one or the other, it might have been better.

It is worth mentioning that the Winter of 1941 was one of the coldest on record.

According to Soviet generals, Germans took too much force for capturing Kiev and is therefore not managed to capture Moscow before winter.
In addition, Stalin was preparing for the loss of Moscow and had plans to continue the war if it happens


If the Germans had treated people in the areas they took over like humans, Stalin would have been in a very bad spot. The Japanese were too busy fighting the Allies in the Pacific to have any serious chance of invading Russia, although with their efforts in China, that probably would have overextended them too much anyway, even if they weren't tied up in the Pacific.
   
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Southern California, USA

 welshhoppo wrote:
Personally I thought the T34 was rubbish.

The amount of loses they sustained, even with overwhelming odds on their side, is still rediclous.

I also bring evidence!

http://www.operationbarbarossa.net/the-t-34-in-wwii-the-legend-vs-the-performance/


The T34 was an excellently designed machine with poor crew training and terrible comms. The only thing that could consistently destroy them during Barbarossa was the legendary 88mm Flak 36 gun. Y'know, the one they stuck on the Tiger? The tank that was put into production to counter the T-34?


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Relapse wrote:
The Japanese were too busy fighting the Allies in the Pacific to have any serious chance of invading Russia


The Russians also gave them a series ass kicking. The Battles of Khalkhin Ghol in 1939 were regarded as a disaster, and Japan pretty much gave up on the "Northern Strategy" in the aftermath. But yeah. Germany couldn't pull off Barbarossa. I highly doubt Japan could have every mounted an even remotely successful offensive against the USSR. Their army was still using WWI combat concepts in WWII, had no modern armor or mechanized vehicles, and the Kwantung Army in particular confused being a brutally oppressive occupying force with military acumen.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/06/23 23:52:06


   
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 TheCustomLime wrote:
 welshhoppo wrote:
Personally I thought the T34 was rubbish.

The amount of loses they sustained, even with overwhelming odds on their side, is still rediclous.

I also bring evidence!

http://www.operationbarbarossa.net/the-t-34-in-wwii-the-legend-vs-the-performance/


The T34 was an excellently designed machine with poor crew training and terrible comms. The only thing that could consistently destroy them during Barbarossa was the legendary 88mm Flak 36 gun. Y'know, the one they stuck on the Tiger? The tank that was put into production to counter the T-34?



If you call the German attempts to make tigers production.

The training and crews only goes so far, they will still taking heavy loses over four years after the war with Russia began. How much combat must they have seen overall before the training became good?

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Russia throughout its history can only count on one thing to aid them, the fact that they are courageous to the point of near suicidal. Courage alone would not have been enough. It really did take all the allies working together to defeat Germany. Miss any of those pieces and they could very well have won.
   
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Back from suspension in time for a WWII thread


 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I've never doubted Russia's contribution to victory in WW2, but I agree with you regarding North Africa. For years, I've heard the bullgak argument that if only the Germans had sent more men to North Africa/ Britain was lucky the Germans didn't have more men etc etc

which overlooks the fact that the Royal Navy was stopping the Germans from getting more men sent over in the first


Sort of. Once the Germans held Tobruk they effectively isolated Malta. At this point they could have pivoted to capturing that island, and thereby given themselves much greater capacity to protect their own shipping and sink British ships. Indeed, that was originally what Rommel envisioned for a successful campaign, but after his remarkable victories that led up to the capture of Tobruk he thought he could win it all himself with what he already had. Which to be fair was the kind of gamble that got him that far. But it was a clear mistake in hindsight.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Paradigm wrote:
Hitler letting his ideological priorities get in the way of conducting an effective war. His unwillingness to listen to the generals telling him how unsound these plans were exacerbated what was already an insurmountable task.


Blaming it all on Hitler's bungles was the popular story for a long time after the war. Unfortunately, it was mostly based on books written by senior generals after the war. Unsurprisingly, those books were very self serving. Historians have now gone back and looked at primary records, and they've found basically no evidence of any of the high command protesting against any of the key strategic mistakes. The great blind spot in German decision making in the war was in logistics and industry, and that blind spot that was basically cultural to the German way of war.

Sure, in the last year or last 18 months or so of the war then Hitler's 'no retreat' led to a bunch of disasters that could have been avoided, but by then then the war was lost. While the war was up for grabs it there weren't really any 'Hitler only' blunders.

For instance, all evidence points to the high command fully supporting and being on board with Barabarossa. The only guys who were saying anything about how disastrous it could be were the logistics guys, and those guys weren't allowed at the big boys table. Another example is Case Blue, which was heavily criticised as a crude offensive along a single axis, which it was, but at the time it was proposed by the German High Command and endorsed by Hitler. Kursk has also been blamed all on Hitler, but there's scant evidence of people saying it was a bad idea before it happened.

It's often said that history is written by the winners, actually it's written by the survivors. And that includes people on the losing team with a personal motive to blame others for their own screw ups.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Paradigm wrote:
In Bismark's time, I'd agree. But I don't see any situation in which a) Stalin would be open to negotiating with the Nazis and b) Hitler would accept anything less than the total annihilation of the Slavic people and the communists. The war on the Eastern Front was 100% ideological in character, there was never going to be surrender on either side.


Except there were overtures of peace before in early 1943. The two sides were well apart on what they wanted, but they were a lot more pragmatic than the common understanding of two nations committed to a war of annihilation. The Soviets wanted a return to pre-Barbarossa boundaries. Germany wanted to keep everything it currently held. Eventually the talks fell over as Hitler understood he was arguing from a position of weakness, as the last major action was Operation Uranus, the capture of the 6th inside Stalingrad, and the failure of Case Blue. He knew that you negotiate after a victory, not after a defeat. So instead they planned Kursk as a major defeat of Soviet forces, to allow Germany a stronger position at the table... it didn't go to plan.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 feeder wrote:
If Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had not signed a treaty, and therefore Germany not declared war on the US, how would the war have gone differently?
Would the US still have entered in to the Lend-Lease treaty with their mortal enemy, the Communists had they not had a mutual foe in Nazi Germany?


Lend Lease to Soviet Russia began in March 1941, many months before the US entered the war.

And there's a common idea that Germany was dragged in to war against the US because of its treaty with Japan. But actually Germany was encouraging Japan to attack the US, and had been doing so since the failure of the Battle of Britain, when Germany realised it couldn't force a ceasefire on the British.

This meant that as long as Britain remained in the war, Germany was cut off from raw materials by British blockade. Germany's only option then was starve Britain, which the subs couldn't do unless they declared open war on the sea and started sinking everything. Which meant that the US would come in on the side of Britain pretty much straight away.

So Germany hoped that as long as US entry in to the war was inevitable, hopefully they could be distracted by a war in the Pacific. It didn't work out that way, but it wasn't a terrible idea - the US policy of 'Germany First' was extraordinary in a lot of ways.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 jhe90 wrote:
Stalingrad showed how much names mattered. It was Stalins city. To Hitler a big red flag.
Both fought a titanic battle over the very concept of the war. Stratigic but the name. The name mattered as a symbol of defying the enemy, holding the line.


The symbolism of the names has been vastly overstated. The city itself was a key strategic point that justified the importance it was given by both sides - it's where the Volga meets the rail line to Moscow. It was the key anchor to the Case Blue offensive.

When it was encircled it allowed the Soviets to advance and threaten to cut off the forces that had advanced in to the Caucasus. It was really only because the 6th was denied the option to retreat that the Soviet advance was delayed long enough to allow hundreds of thousands to get out of the Caucasus.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Orlanth wrote:
Shore bombardment normally meant battleship or heavy cruiser, and naval fire support was for large scale targetting. A bit like using heavy bombers, you could soften up a town prior to sending in a brigade, but you couldnt feasibly use same to tactically support a platoon against a tank.


Sure but artillery doesn't just kill, it also causes massive disruption. Allied naval bombardment was used on many occasions to break up German counter-offensives against beach landings. This is because effective offensive operation requires a gathering of force and then a co-ordinated offensive, all things that are infinitely harder to achieve when there's naval rounds landing amongst your troops.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Vaktathi wrote:
Operation Bagration I think could strongly lay claim that it did far more to break the German war machine than Operation Overlord did.


D-Day and Overlord shouldn't be compared as much as combined. The former began on the 6th June, the latter on the 22nd. That wasn't a coincidence. Co-ordination between the allies had been increasing for a year, and this was really the culmination - hammer strikes on both theatres struck within a couple of weeks of each other, leaving the Germans with two desperate situations and without the resources to properly respond to either.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 welshhoppo wrote:
Curiously enough German production actually increased in 1944 and 1945, because Speer was a God of industry, despite the bombing campaigns.


There's something of a myth surrounding Speer. German production increased* despite the bombing because shockingly enough Germany wasn't in total war before then. Even after the defeat at Moscow Germany still believed they would win the war through superior manoeuvre, that production was secondary. And at that point much of Hitler's popularity was still based on delivering easy wins, so he was reluctant about demanding full production from the citizenry.

It sounds incredible, but the US pulled the trigger on total war production straight after Pearl Harbour. The Germans suffered the defeat at Moscow a month after that... but wouldn't be anywhere near a total war economy until about 18 months after that.


*And even that's debatable, production of tanks increased, but fuel production was miles down. 88mm guns were produced, but production of shells was miles down. Overall production was up on paper, but there was a constant issue of acute shortages in key areas, as you'd expect from a country trying to produce whatever it could while at the whims of Allied bombing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 welshhoppo wrote:
Personally I thought the T34 was rubbish.

The amount of loses they sustained, even with overwhelming odds on their side, is still rediclous.

I also bring evidence!

http://www.operationbarbarossa.net/the-t-34-in-wwii-the-legend-vs-the-performance/


I think the analysis shows a big blind spot. It assumes that losses in the field automatically flow from the inherent capabilities of the tank, but it is actually how well they are deployed and operated that matters more than anything.

The enormous Soviet tank losses in the early stages of the war are more the product of crude counter offensives along obvious points of attack, coupled with the heavy losses that come from retreat/encirclement.

I read an interesting observation of WWII tanks a while back, that said if you want to see which side won a tank duel, then the best question isn't what tank each side had, the best question is who shot first, which mostly comes down to who's advanced in to the face of enemy - who won the tactical battle. Because even if the first shot misses or bounces off, then the guys in that tank have to locate who fired on them, all while going through a whole lot of very powerful emotions In that time the first tank can load and fire again, maybe twice.

This message was edited 8 times. Last update was at 2016/06/24 03:43:38


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