Greatest military blunder of WWII (1 Viewer)

Greatest military blunder of WWII


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What I'd like to know is, has anyone else read "Day Of Deceit" by Robert B. Stinnett? It's sometimes hard, dry reading but there is some fascinating info here too. He alleges that not only did FDR and the USN expect an attack, it was deliberately provoked through an eight step program devised by the Navy. I'd like to know what other members take on this book is.

REVISONIST HISTORY...Reading books like "Day of Deceit" is like reading "Chariots of the Gods". Interesting? Maybe, but total fantasy. One question for the Pearl Harbor conspiracy folks...If in fact "Washington/FDR/George Marshall/take your pick" knew of the Japanese intentions, why would multiple "War Warnings" be sent to all Pacific commanders, instructing them to prepare for hostilities in the days leading up to the attack? Do yourself a favor. If you don't like to read watch "Tora! Tora! Tora! One of the most accurate war movies ever made.
 
I left the BoB off because it, in itself, was not one of the greatest military blunders. At least it wasn't on the level as most of the ones listed. Hitler's decisions in the BoB were simply a stepping stone on the path to his destruction.....In my opinion.
 
I'm going to split a hair here but think it oughta be said. I don't really consider Barbarossa a great blunder of WW2. Great mistake for Hitler, but not of the whole war.

Here is where I'm splitting the hairs. The war between Russia (Soviets) and Germany (Nazis) was not a global war. They fought between Moscow and Berlin, and extended lines along that range. But it never left the Eurasian land mass. If you look at it from the perspective of history, it was really just the Huns and Slavs going at it for the umpteenth time in their history. Hell, even the campaign was named after a guy in the same fight from 700 or so years before. Now if you take it from the perspective of casualties, you might have an arguement (also the Sino-Japanese war would be a consideration). But from the perspective of a World War, it really had little to do with the rest of the World. The rest of the world affected it (Lend Lease being the obvious example), not the other way around.

Hitler taking on the US was the Old World going at it against the New World and truely made it a World War. And it qualifies as a blunder. Meets the requirements of the thread.
 
I see what you mean Tim but should'nt the fact that Germany was involved in many different theatres qualify Barbarossa as also a "world war"? And Russia did draw in the British and Americans to join on the western flank and to supply with tanks and planes. As a blunder I'm not so sure. And along with the local hostile history, it still involved numerous nations.
 
The German invasion of the Soviet Union changed the war, and it was a World War before the U.S joined because Canada is in North America and thus already made it a global conflict. And a blunder is a mistake - whether it had a great effect on the war itself is not up for discussion; the greatest mistakes make the list... if Churchill tripping over his shoe-lace was the biggest blunder in World War II because everyone else was perfect; it would have had no affect on the war - but it'd have been the top blunder !

The invasion of Russia was far from a blunder, as Soren pointed out, it caught the Soviets off-guard. If Hitler had left it much longer, the Soviet Union would have been better prepared for the fight. Perfect timing would have been six weeks earlier - but events in the Balkans halted that.
What Hitler then proceeded to do was a mistake. Forget the whole changing direction thing; if Guderian had been allowed to withdraw to Smolensk during the winter of 1941 instead of maintaining the position then the Soviet counter-attack would have been halted and an effective assault toward Moscow could have been resumed in spring.

Syscom, sorry, but you sound like British High Command... those blunders were alright because they were really a good thing for the Allies. I thought only the British took victories from complete defeat.

Operation Market Garden was a defeat - the Allies took 90% of their objectives but it was all for nought given that the final, and only real, objective was never taken. Without the Arnhem crossing - it was all for nothing.
Soren, I'm not sure if you're aware, but Montgomery had actually wanted Market Garden earlier and, as we know, if it had been only ten-fifteen days earlier it would have succeeded as the SS Panzer Divisions would not have been present.

Stalingrad was initially to be left alone, only its northen flank was to be held while the 4th Panzer Army ran riot in the Caucasus. Sending troops into Stalingrad itself was a blunder...through and through, it shouldn't have happened.

My "favourite" blunder was that of the 21st Army Group ... it may be small; but it had the potential to end the war many months prior and allow the Allies to reach Berlin weeks before the Red Army.

THE CAPTURE OF ANTWERP!

When they had captured the city and further push would have met no resistance and the Scheldt would have been taken; there were no Germans there at the time. But it was left and Antwerp could not be used as a dock until the Scheldt was taken - but it was now fortified and took months to gain.
 
After the capture of Antwerp the lack of action afterwords was a major error on the part of the allies . Having a fully functional port that they could not use has to rate fairly high on the list
 
I meant it may be small to people who rank those on that list as the greatest - but I have to say, as you pb, that it was a major-major **** up.
 
Plan, I agree with your take on Barbarossa but with one difference. You even stated it yourself. The failure to start several weeks earlier was probably the "blunder" of the operation. The rest of your argument is excellent. After that it was a mistake.

Stalingrad, to me, was a blunder because of the decision to abandon the drive to Moscow and head for the Caucasus.
 
I think we may be putting the cart before the horse with regards to the Soviet/German conflict. The US helped the Soviet Union not because it was allied with it for ideolgical or moral reasons. The US helped the Soviet Union because it was killing Germans. Same thing with England. Roosevelt rightly saw the threat of Nazi German as the greatest to the Free world but he did not value Communism as a replacement. To him, they were more or less both dispicable systems.

As for Canada joining the war before the US and that bringing North America into the war, that is a debatable point at best. Canada declared war on Germany not as a Country in and of itself (it was not fully divested from Britian until 1982) but as a Dominion. The same can be said of any of the other countries that went to war against Germany due to dominion status. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa were all Dominion states, at various phases on the road to complete independence, but not quite there yet. The debatable point is that the war became global because the Dominions were in it. As independent states, no as they were essentially British States. From a Geographic position, your arguement is stronger. But fighting with the Dominions was very limited because neither the Germans or the Dominons could project much strength.

The US made the war global because of the reach of the US. The Soviet Union had no geographic reach (the GRU and Commitern not withstanding). None or very few Soviet Troops fought in the Desert, Or in the Atlantic, Pacific Islands ect. The war between Germany and Russia was very local in scope, horrible though it was. Meanwhile, US Troops fought all over the globe (with the exception of the war in the East). That is the meat to the arguement that Hitler's declaration of war on the US was a World War Blunder. It made it a World War.

The 2nd World War was only a world war for the English speaking peoples of the world. For most of the other combatants, it was a relatively local conflict. With the exception of the Italian 8th Army in Russia, the Japanese Carrier Forces, the Spanish Blue Division (an anomoly in itself) and some U-boat and I-Boat operations, the war was fought for all combatants within 1,000 km of their home borders. The exception is the English speaking peoples. They moved and fought everywhere. For them, it was truely a World War.

You could make an arguement that the involvement of Britian (and specifically it's dominions) made it a World War. But that would only occur when Japan attacked their possesions in the Far East (Hong Kong, Singapore, ect).
 
No it wouldn't; simply by the British Commonwealth being in the war - the war stretched across countries from every continent; making it a World War. Before the Japanese attacked the U.S - the war was in the far, middle and near East; Russia; West Europe, north and south Atlantic, North Africa. The only change was now the U.S was involved where Japan was already fighting. I don't know why you're trying to make the point that the U.S alone made it a global conflict - but no one else on this planet agrees with you, except other Americans, fact of the matter is people from all over the world were already involved.
 
If the Eskimos had joined the fight before the US, then it would have been a World War sooner.

Basically, WWI was also still a world war before the US joined it. Even though a lot of the powers fighting were in the European Region. They were the top guns.

I guess the argument that WWII isn't a world war is that a world war needs all the powerful countries in the world fighting each other. The US was one of the powerful, but we didn't realize that so well before Pearl Harbor. The US was uprepared for war, and we didn't even want to fight. So in 1940, except Great Britain perhaps, probably nobody thought the US was much of a contender and probably didn't feel like it much of an advantage or disadvantage to have us join in or not. Germany and Japan sure regretted it, a lot from our great factory production.

So, saying Canada makes it a full World War is a good bet, and if some other country like Mexico or Brazil had joined in before the US, even better.
 
Before the US got involved, fighting was in:

Europe
Africa
Meditereanean Sea
North Atlantic Ocean
South Atlantic Ocean
North Asia (Manchuria)
China
SE Asia

That sounds like a world war to me!
 
As for Canada joining the war before the US and that bringing North America into the war, that is a debatable point at best. Canada declared war on Germany not as a Country in and of itself (it was not fully divested from Britian until 1982) but as a Dominion.
).
Not exactly corrrect in 1931 Britain lost all control of our foreign policy with the Treaty of Westminister. Canada declared war independently of the UK on Sept 10 39 seven days later after an emergency recall of parliment. I believe we beat most to the punch on by declaring war on Japan Romania Hungary and Finland on 7 dec 41.
 
I disagree with most said, i believe the biggest mistake was during Operation Sealion, when Hitler switched from bombing the RAF to bombing British Cities, if it wasn't for that change Britain would have capitulated, and who knows what would have happened to the USA and the rest of the world at large...
 
I meant it may be small to people who rank those on that list as the greatest - but I have to say, as you pb, that it was a major-major **** up.
No I disagree it certainly was a diasaster nationally the Scheldt was a tough wet campaign that may not have been necessary
 
the Scheldt was a tough wet campaign that may not have been necessary
I can vouch for that PB my old man said that it was the toughest action he saw in the war and the first waves got slaughtered with LCA's and Buffalo's going up all over the place.
All the dykes had been blown and the squaddies where stuck to slogging it out along the tops of the embankments under heavy MG ART fire. All though not on Omaha he had been at Gold and Juno a few months earlier and later saw action in the far East.
 
A couple of points.

I think the starting point of World War Two is either at one of two dates. Either it starts with the invasion of China by Japan in 1937 or it starts with Hitler declaring war on the US in 1941. The reasoning is either calling it at the first major players getting into it or the last. There is a decent arguement that the WW2 did not really happen as such and is simply an extension of the first. But that is long and involved and really rather not go that far. Suffice to say, if it is a World War (and that is what the topic is about) then either date could work. But to call WW2 start in September of 1939 or June of 1941 is to consider the war greater than it was at that point.

As for calling Canada's involvement representative of the whole American continent, that is definitely stretching it a bit. While Canada was important to the war effort, at a population of roughly 11 million in 1940, it can hardly be considered the whole continent. There were probably another 200 million people in the Americas not actively involved in the war. That would mean 5% of the population was actual involved. Not really a world war at that point.

Up to the US involvement in the war, you had several different wars going on at the same time. But all of them were restricted to their geographic area. There was very limited strategic reach. And that is what makes the war a world war. A bunch of wars going on at the same time, with enemies that the players have been fighting for the last 1000 years or so, does not make it a world war. It just makes it a very busy time for arms merchants.

When the US came in, it satisfied several criteria. First, it was the last major player in the war. There were no other major population or industrial nations that were not in it. Secondly, the reach became global for the English speaking peoples. British, American, Australian, ect troops fought all around the globe. For these units, it was a global war. An American Carrier (or British Carrier) could and did fight in both Oceans (IE, the USS Wasp). The same could be said for Allied Aircrew. While that might happen for a German or Japenese Sub, that would be the extent of it. They fought local (in relative terms) wars.
 
I left the BoB off because it, in itself, was not one of the greatest military blunders. At least it wasn't on the level as most of the ones listed. Hitler's decisions in the BoB were simply a stepping stone on the path to his destruction.....In my opinion.

I would say, the BoB itself was not a major blunder, but the way the germans fought it.
 
REVISONIST HISTORY...Reading books like "Day of Deceit" is like reading "Chariots of the Gods". Interesting? Maybe, but total fantasy. One question for the Pearl Harbor conspiracy folks...If in fact "Washington/FDR/George Marshall/take your pick" knew of the Japanese intentions, why would multiple "War Warnings" be sent to all Pacific commanders, instructing them to prepare for hostilities in the days leading up to the attack? Do yourself a favor. If you don't like to read watch "Tora! Tora! Tora! One of the most accurate war movies ever made.

I don't think I would shoot it all down as "Revisionist" because some material has only been declassified in the last several years. This Stinnett also includes 11 pages of these "War Warnings" in the book. One of the earliest was on Nov 24,1941 "...A surprise aggressive movement in any direction including attack on Phillippines or Guam is a possibility..." Several warned of possible "subversive activities and sabotage in Hawaii". Off the subject but your comment about tora! tora! tora! reminded me of something. Just after "Top Gun" came out (Good flight deck scenes-lousy plot) the A-6 jocks in Norfolk VA. came out with a great bumper sticker " Fighter pilots make movies, Attack pilots make history" This refers to Top Gun of course and the retalitory strikes after the Marine barracks in Beriut was bombed.
 

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