Defeat of the Luftwaffe

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So, AA shells and submarines do not count?. What items do count? Show me how the SU outproduce Germany. I'd like to see some facts supporting that.
 
Really? Do you think that the US policy pre-Pearl Harbour qualifies as isolationist?
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In 1939 it was almost exclusively isolationist. When war broke out it moved slowly towards beligerency especially in the ETO. This was brought about by a combination of factors, buit principally two. Firstly the efforts of FDR and Churchill to move the US administration and congress and indeed people away from isolationist attitudes to a more active role, and secondly, the insistence by the germans to carry out unrestricted mercantile warfare in the Pan american neutrality zone. so the period 1939-41 was a period of dynamic change in terms of US foreign policy stance, but certainly not one of overt aggression

And, well, Hitler definitely was really surprised (shocked actually) when the Allied declared war on 3 September
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bollocks. hitler expected and wanted war in 1939. He confided (I think to Mussolini) that his greatest fear was that the allies would make another deal as they had at Munich.
 
parsifal said:
Your attachment, which i have not cross checked, but which looks about right, illustrates in spades why the germans were outproduced by both britain and the USSR.
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Actually, it shows Germany outproducing both the UK and the USSR
The graph (Harrison, "The economics of WW2") do not show "resources", nor those absurd claims that you are making.

Not an exhaustive list. What about submarines? or explosives production?, just to name a few, that would show the SU way behind Germany in those categories.
Anyway, what would that prove? That there was no LL for Germany, or that the Germans needed to expand their industrial capacity before expand the armament production, or that the soviets factories did not have to face an "around the clock" bombing, or that the Germans were facing shortages in many key resources?. That simplistic analysis is worthless.
 
parsifal said:
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bollocks. hitler expected and wanted war in 1939. He confided (I think to Mussolini) that his greatest fear was that the allies would make another deal as they had at Munich.
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Wrong. He wanted war with the Poles, not with the Allies. From the wiki (I know... but at least this is sourced):

 
@ Parsifal


A little Offtopic, but from your personal viewpoint, do you think the Red Army had a realistic chance to overrun Romania without Barbarossa, the military learning of Barbarossa and without Land Lease, if the Wehrmacht/Luftwaffe would defend Romania?

To my personal opinion, without a deep operation strategy, such an invasion would end in a disaster for the Red Army, but this is only my viewpoint.
 
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Its hard to see the germans just standing idly by and allowing the Russians to take over such a vital area without resisting or providing assistance to the rumanians. In hindsight we know that the Germans did not view the Soviet/German pact the same as the germans did. From the Soviet perspective in 1940 they had watched the Germans giving the Rumanians a bit of a drubbing over Ruthenia, where they sided with the hungarians and ceded the territory to the hungarians. This is my take on the Soviet appraisal then. They overestimated the elevel of co-operation between the Soviets and the germans, and misread the walloping the germans had given the Rumanians. They therefopre perhaps concluded that the germans would not raise too much objection to the dismberment of Rumania. Perhaps they expected a poland style demarkation into spheres of influence with the oil areas going to germany and other parts going to Russia.

this is all speculation from me. What we do know is that the Soviets were expansionist and militaristic and were not afraid to "go it alone" if they had to. Stalin was not afraid to confront Hitler, as he had done in the Baltic States in 1940

My opinion on Soviet military capability in 1941? very low. They could have beaten the Rumanians fairly easily escept if the germans provided assistance to the Rumanians, then the equation becomes much more difficult
 

Really???

Come one now? So he had a good reason for killing 6 million Jews?



You said it.

And let alone the Jews, what about all the other groups that have been mentioned? Gays, Gypsies, etc.? Did he have a good reason for them?
 
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I'd not go through the whole text, I'll comment only the silliest points.

Easy1 said:
...Saying they killed the disabled is utterly wrong. Old people are disabled and they were not massacered. Goebbels himself was disabled with his by a clubbed foot which hindered his ability to walk
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Not all old people are disabled, where you got that idea?



You might need to check what happened tp Röhm.


Easy1 said:
As for the war in the east, there was harsh brutality on all sides. Are you saying the Germans somehow started it?
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Einsatzgruppen were formed before the beginning of the Barbarossa, so German brutality was preplanned. Saying that doesn't mean that the brutality was onesided, Soviet shot PoWs from day one but only one side, the Germans, had planned exterminationpolicy beforehand and only they had plans to wipe out certain population groups among their enemies.



SU attacked Finland on 30 Nov 39, 3 months after Germany's attack on Poland and annexed Baltic countries in 1940, during the summer IIRC.
 

Personaly I can't understand the argumentation "unless you were jewish", that's the same human beings as all other humans of the world.
And I don't want to negate in such a discussion the execution of women and childs only because they belived in the jewish church or creed!

Apart from that the sentence is quiet wrong. The SS/SD executed parts of the polish intelligence and all over Europe in every occupied country every person who was in the wrong political party, part of the country intelligence or in opposisition (not partisans) to the Nazi Party must reckon to be executed and many were executed.

Also the difference in races was one major impact, for the Nazi Party all Slav's were Untermenschen and could be treated as slaves or executed to very minor delicts. That was a fundemental proclamation of the Nazi Party! Further their were the execution of the Sinty and Roma!

So very many people/persons must fear the Nazi Regime all over Europe independent from the fact if they were "jewish" or not!
 
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DonL

I know German resentment of France's post WW1 attitudes were a major factor in what gave rise to the 1930's and all of that (some have even written that there was a brief interlude between phases of the same war).
The reality is also clouded by the fact Germany was at war during the time of the occupation, whereas France was not right after WW1.
But I do not think one can compare the (and I freely admit unnecessarily harsh) treatment the French imposed on Germany to the wartime privations Germany would later impose on France in WW2.
 
As for the rest of the commentators taking issue with what I said?

Wow.
The Hitler apologists came out alright.

I'm not going to bother addressing what in large part boils down to a shabby exercise in 'whataboutery'.

I will kill one lie stone dead though.......yes, the nazi regime did murder disabled people.
It was called Operation T4," a reference to Tiergartenstrasse 4, after the address of the Berlin Chancellery offices where the program was headquartered.

Clearly not all disabled people an I never said or implied any such thing (although citing the case of Goebbels as proof of anything here strikes me as stunningly ill-informed and worse frankly utterly sick).

There was a state sanctioned euthanasia program where German doctors medical staff killed the mentally physically 'unfit'.
.......and it is a subject which causes great offence, hurt and shame in Germany today.
German people murdering Germans, quite deliberately.
This was nothing to do with Stalin, communists, perfidious Britons, meddling American finance or Jews; one of the first great nazi crimes was against the most vulnerable defenseless German people.
The - German - estimate is between 200,000 250,000 poor souls.

I have to say I have found some of the comments on this thread quite outrageous utterly shameful.

Yes I know about sterilisation programs elsewhere and some worse but to claim or imply an equivalence in the face of the scale of the nazi crimes in this is just a gross deceit.
 
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parsifal said:
Unbelievable. im speechless. the depths of historical revisionism here are staggering
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So am I.

But probably not to the point I've seen in another forum in wich a fella stated that:

" the Americans bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki just to stop the Soviets to invade Japan, as the Russians were ready to invade and the Americans were not......"sic

I vainly tried this fella to consider just the numbers of CVA, CVE, BB, DD, LS etc. between Americans and Soviets in 1945, but with no appreciable result.
Thats was very interesting, as I had the possibility to measure one of the highest hardness of brain in my career of Structural Engineer, no less than 600 Brinell, I should say......
Did we reach these depths?
Probably not, but we are dangerously approaching.....


Mode O.T. on

In the pages of this forum several times I mentioned one of my best Friends, that aged 17 joned the R.S.I.

He spent hours telling me about his experiences, knowing that I was so eager to know first-hand about WWII.
Once he told me exactly these words:
"For what I had the possibility to know after the end, I must say that I was very fortunate for losing the war"....
So He told me.

Mode O.T. off
 
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pbfoot said:
Who paid for the lend lease goods that went to Russia it certainly was not the UK , as they were out of money , they were flat broke as of Dec 1940 ..
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Not quite, the Commonwealth and colonies still had money that Britain had available.
 
And I do not certainly say, even if some left-wing propaganda expecially here in Italy says the contrary, and even if many German Soldiers acted so, that every and each German Soldier was a bloodthirsty enraged beast.

Mode O.T. on
At September 8th, 1943, my Grandfather was the Chief-Technician in the small gauge Railway in a tiny Village in the inner part of Sardinia, where the services had been dispatched to avoid the bombings that were flattening a great deal on the main city.
In the same Village a Division of Wehrmacht was deployed.
As soon the news of the Armistice started to go around the Commander of the Division asked for my Grand-father and the Commander told him:
"We have seen you are an honest person. We are going away and we won't take with us all the provisions. Here are the keys, distribute all to the population."
And so was done: the following morning the Division went north to embark for the mainland.
As my Grand-father died when I was ten, this story was told me by several of the Villagers."
Mode O.T. off
 
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It is interesting to see how this thread has devolved from a discussion of major influences on the dcline of the Luftwaffe to one of 'which regime and leader' was the most brutal.

I would nominate Stalin as number one because he killed the most of his own people, with Hitler a plausible second. Staling killed because of ideology failures and Hitler because of genetic deficiencies. Anybody care to quibble on this point?

Mussolini was a choir boy in comparison. Hirohito/Tojo slip into third place for me for all the reasons we can bring up in China as well as treatment of POWs.

Folks, we can't discount Churchill, FDR and Truman. If you happened to be a civilian and were in or around a target that was being shelled or bombed, so solly for that. Hamburg and Dresden were high on a list that included Nagasaki and Hiroshima but the night raids on Tokyo may take supreme prizes for most civilians whacked over a span of time and of course 'one bomb kills all' set the tone for MADD during the cold war when all us chillin's were doing nuclear bomb drills at school during the 50's.

I am an American, I lived in Tokyo in 1947-1950 when my father had the 35th FBW. Few stones in Tokyo were stacked on another even though a great rebuilding process occurred. I am not ashamed of what we did - but I am sad that we don't seem to get it right no matter how many illustrations we have of bad behavior in the past. Anybody wondering if the next Flood or Armageddon is just around the corner to sweep it all away and try, try again - or has the Skipper given up?

No nation's leaders or soldiers escaped the brush of 'killers' of innocents.

Now, let us all back away from my soapbox and ask 'so what happened to the Luftwaffe, and why did they move so many of their assets from Ost and Sud to Germany in mid to fall of 1943 when the USSR was advancing in the East?" "Why was the fighter pilot survival rate, per sortie, in the West so much lower than in the East"

Regards,

Bill
 

This is easier matter, I think....
The first thing that a Structural Engineering Student apprehends, apart vulcanoes of Maths, is that every object created of the surface of the Earth is always the result of a compromise. Aeroplanes most of all.
Generally there are no extremists between Engineers ( vith notable examples: Osama Bin Laden was Graduated in Civil Engineering....)
That tends Aeroplane designers and Top Brasses of Air Staffs to a rater conservative point of view.
The position of German H.Q. was simple: they do not have sufficient planes for both Fronts and they sent the planes were they feel they were, in their own point of view, needed the most.
Like to have two creditors: you start to pay the more menacing one.......

They know perfectly that Ruhr was at a spit throw from Lincolnshire, and Germans also had read, a little bit too much maybe, like many others in those times, the book of this General



wich, strange it may sound to you, is the General Giulio Dohuet....

For the Germans Headquarters this was the best of the compromises, and at good reasons, seeing that the War lasted, in comparison to the overwhelming Forces that the Allied and the Germans throw in the respective plates of the scale, two more years.

And time was the most scarce and most needed raw material for the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe in those days.
 
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Elmas said:
This is easier matter, I think....
The position of German H.Q. was simple: they do not have sufficient planes for both Fronts and they sent the planes were they feel they were, in their own point of view, needed the most.
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But the main reason for this was a misconception of the reality. Many people say that Germany was always doomed because the industrial numbers. I don't think so. Germany started the war with planing, and that planing went wrong.

Parsifal, I don't want to get off-topic, but a question for you: do you think that if Nazi Germany defeated the Soviets in '41 or 42, they would be able to stop the Anglo-Americans? I'm skeptical about this, and many historians use this to argument a total dependency of the West from the Communists. In my view, Germany would still face a terrible air war in the West, while the Baku oilfields would certainly be targeted by the Allies, not to mention a likely scorched earth policy from the Soviets in all their resources. The Americans also certainly would not start to desacelerate their industry in '44, and would include much more air and ground units. And ultimately, there would be the Manhattan Project.

BTW, didn't the Germans already captured many of the most rich regions in the USSR? (apart from oil)
 
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Jenisch said:
But the main reason for this was a misconception of the reality. Many people say that Germany was always doomed because the industrial numbers. I don't think so. Germany started the war with planing, and that planing went wrong.
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I'm afraid to be in the position where I can't agree with your words at all.
The Germans were just planning a thing: a war.
But how to, where and when, in 1939, where for them in the glass ball and they were planning a completely different war.
Or, better still: they were planning the war they made to Soviet Union.
The French Army was considered in 1939 by Germans Generals (and Hitler...), of course wrongly as the History clearly has show, far to strong to be easily beaten, let alone in a couple of weeks.
But Fortuna audaces adiuvat, Ancient Romans used to say ( and a modern, well trained and well commanded Army, were paperworks were kept to a minimum, I would like to add....)
The Fall of France of course changed all that: I think that even in the loveliest of the dreams in 1939 neither Grossadmiral Raeder and Doenitz (that was not GrossAdmiral, then...) were dreaming to have bases in La Pallice, Lorient, Brest, Bordeaux....like a boy that receives a toy train (probably a Playstation, nowadays)......
If they had planned all this, they would have started to build flocks of submarines from 1933 instead of building Bismark, that gave the British a smart victory just at the right moment, and Tirpitz, that was, for the whole war, a rusty piece of scrap iron....
It was certainly the British political foresight ( and planning) to sign the treaty with Poland, that permitted to start in 1939 a war that should have started probably in 1945 or 46.


Jenisch said:
Parsifal, I don't want to get off-topic, but a question for you: do you think that if Nazi Germany defeated the Soviets in '41 or 42, they would be able to stop the Anglo-Americans? I'm skeptical about this......
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I don't want to be unpolite as the question it is not towards me........
IMHO, no.
But it would have been much more difficult.


Jenisch said:
BTW, didn't the Germans already captured many of the most rich regions in the USSR? (apart from oil)
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Yes, certainly. But, as I said before, their silly and suicidal politics against the local population ruined all that, and made to grow a partizan war behind the lines that wasn't in other parts of the occupied Europe.
It has to be remembered that the German garrisons of La Pallice, Lorient, Brest, Bordeaux surrendered......in May 1945, a fact generally hidden under a pity veil.......

Mode O.T. on
In these days, where German politicians are not very popular among the continental Europe, expecially in Greece, I've heard a very intelligent comment (IMHO, of course...) at the telly:

"Poor Germany! It is the same old story. Far too big for Europe, far too small for the World...."
Mode O.T. off
 
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