Groundhog Thread v. 2.0 - The most important battle of WW2 (1 Viewer)

The airwar over Europe was the single most important thing the Germans lost I believe also. Due to the fact that they were not able to keep control of the skies they allies were able to concentrat on the ground war. Germany had to worry about both.

Dunkirk could have been a great slaughter for the brits... it was a very stupid movement by Hitler who believed that after that England would be eager ti sign a peace treaty. There would be great trouble for England the loss of 300000 troops

When BoB was over both sides where at the limits of their strength as far as pilots are concerned noone knows what would have happened if the battles continued.

A great what if for me is Germany not attacking Russia and avoiding battles in North Afrika instead taking command of Iraq (which was friendly to Germany and tking conrol of Medit and of course a great invasion in England after a good preparation.

USSR would have crumbled if the japs had left US to live in peace and attacked from behind when the Germans where actually parading in the eastern front.

I think that the invasion of England could not have been held off for too long because the US was supplying England and then England would have gotten too strong. As for the USSR I dont think they could have fought a 2 front war. They had eneough trouble fighting the Germans and would have lost to them had there not been deadly mistakes made on the part of Hitler.

''The real importance of the Air War consisted in the fact that it opened a second front long before the invasion of Europe.
That front was the skies over Germany.
The fleets of bombers might appear at any time over any large German city or important factory. The unpredictability of the attacks made this front gigantic; every square metre of the territory we controlled was a kind of front line. Defence against air attacks required the production of thousands of anti-aircraft guns, the stockpiling of tremendous quantities of ammunition all over the country, and holding in readiness hundreds of thousands of soldiers, who in addition had to stay in position by their guns, often totally inactive, for months at a time. As far as I can judge from the accounts I have read, no one has yet seen that this WAS the greatest lost battle on the German side. The losses from the retreats in Russia or from the surrender of Stalingrad were considerably less. Moreover, the nearly 20,000 anti-aircraft guns stationed in the homeland could almost have doubled the anti-tank defences on the Eastern Front.''

-from ''Spandau: The Secret Diaries.'' by Albert Speer

...Stumbled on this in my reading, and seems to be from one of the ''horse's mouth's''.......

... Also, I feel that if one has something worth writing, it is worth writing well, and good grammar etc. does reflect that.....
I am a 'one-finger' typist, never having being trained in the art....However, I am a Signwriter/Signartist by trade, and spelling mistakes are simply unacceptable - I always have a dictionary handy... The new Spellcheck is a great idea, and will be useful to some.......

Something wrong with the Apache server there....I had to rewrite all that, and then find it went-up anyway.....f**xntg!!!!... - sorry 'bout that.......

I once read, "Hitler built a fortress around Europe, but he forgot to put a roof on it."

That is funny but it is true. The airwar over Europe ulitmatly sealed Hitlers fate.

The Russians could have kept the Japanese at bay with ease. The Japanese got slaughted in Manchuria by the Soviets, they were out-classed in open field. Plus, the Japanese still had to get through China for any other way into Russia.

Albert Speer was an extremely smart man, even with increased Allied bombing he still increased German production right up until 1945. Imagine though had the Allied bombing wasn't happening, the newly created Panzer divisions at the end of the war would have actually been fully equipped.
When a German Panzer Corps managed to surround three Soviet Armies in 1943, Gen. Balck only had to fall back because of lack of equipment. Allied bombing certainly caused that lack of equipment.

Yes it did. The continuous strategic bombing of Germany kept Germany from maximizing the full potential of its military forces.

yet right up til the end of the war german production just kept growing.............

PlanD:

I do not think the soviets slaughtered the Japs on the battlefield. You are referring to the Khalkhin Gol river battle in Mongolia in 1939, which ended in a clear soviet victory; still it appears like casualties for both sides were very high and not precisely a "minimum casualty raid" for the Red Army. I read one of Zaloga´s books, and a few others, where such battle is commented.

It is of course known the Japs did never develop the kind of armor and of artillery the soviets did, however I do not think it would have been easier at all for the soviets to fight against the mighty Wehrmacht in the westernmost areas of the USSR and the Japanese army in the soviet far east.

The power of the German attack was so mean, it was not a very necessary thing to have a "top" quality Japanese allied army attacking the USSR in the far east.

plan_D said:

Albert Speer was an extremely smart man, even with increased Allied bombing he still increased German production right up until 1945.

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This was because the German economy was not fully mobilized (80%) for war production until 1944. They had a lot of non-war capacity to be converted. It took the USA just 9 months to reach a 90% war capacity (90% of GDP was devoted to the war), where Germany didn't reach this level till 1945.

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Lunatic

the lancaster kicks ass said:

yet right up til the end of the war german production just kept growing.............

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The German war economy as a % of GDP did it match the % of GDP of the USA until finally in the last 2 months of the war when there was no domestic production at all which made war production 100%, but actual production was tiny at that point anyway.

One of the big failures of Germany in WWII was their failure to take the war seriously and fully devote their economy to winning. As late as 1943 the average standard of living in Germany was still on the rise, and War production was less than 60% of GDP.

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Lunatic

I dont think you can say they did not take the war seriously. Maybe they did not expect the war to be as difficult as it was. But to not take a war seriously?

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

I dont think you can say they did not take the war seriously. Maybe they did not expect the war to be as difficult as it was. But to not take a war seriously?

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No, they didn't take the war seriously. By that, I mean they didn't take their opponents seriously, and underestimated all beyond those which immeadiately bordered Germany.

It is not taking a war seriously when, in the 4th year of that war (1943) the standard of living of your people is still rising. This means the people themselves are not only not sacrificing for the war effort, they are actually benefiting from it. The economy is still producing more and more domestic goods. In Russian, Britain, and the USA, this was not the case.

In the USA, rationing was instituded almost immeadiately, and most goods were extremely limited. For instance you could only buy one pair of shoes per child per year and one coat every 2 years, and adults got less. Meat, eggs, and dairy products were also rationed, along with rubber, gasoline, etc... Automobile production halted. By the end of summer 1942, 90% of the US GDP was devoted to the war effort. The 10% that remained was the minimum that could reasonably sustain the domestic population.

And in Britain it was far worse, and in Russia even worse still. In Britain, war product came genrally came first and only surplus went to the public. Often this left people hungry.

In Russia, a lot of people did starve, while working to produce war product. At Tankograd for instance, the daily ration for workers was 200 grams of bread a day, and often they didn't even get this. I used to have a link (now it directs to a all russian language site) which had a "thank you" letter from a woman who'd worked at tankograd. The letter said the American workers (not the government) who packed the lend-lease crates had been told of how hard things were for the Russian workers recieving them. They were on the brink of starvation when lend-lease started. Then when the crates arrived, every spare nook and cranny was crammed with canned meats and warm clothing. If it had not been for this, she said she would have starved and/or froze to death, and for that reason she always liked Americans no matter what the government said after the war was over. In Russia, 100% or even more of the economy was devoted to the war effort almost immeadiately - if civilians starved that was acceptable to Stalin!

So from a relative point of view, no the German's did not take the war seriously until it was too late.

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Lunatic

One of the reasons that German production continued to grow was that the American forces switched much of their attention to the oil industry. I am not saying Speer didn't do an incredible job but the respite the German industries received played its part. But all of that was for naught since the Germans didn't have the oil to run anything. By the end of the war Germain oil production was down to 25%. That was a huge difference to the German war effort.

It was Speer that got the German economy on to war effort, possibly the only man who realised. So, he was a smart man. Would you take your opponents seriously if you'd crushed all of Europe and swept Russia's 'mighty' tank arm of 28,000 down to 1506?

plan_D said:

It was Speer that got the German economy on to war effort, possibly the only man who realised. So, he was a smart man. Would you take your opponents seriously if you'd crushed all of Europe and swept Russia's 'mighty' tank arm of 28,000 down to 1506?

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Any time you are at war with half the known world, yes you have to take it seriously until its actually finished. Hitler was not willing to do so because his support was based upon the improving living standard of the German people, so he had to leave about a minimum of 1/3rd of the German economy to produce domestic goods.

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Lunatic

The reason that happened was because Hitler was drunk on victory after the crushing defeats he inflicted on his enemies in 1940-'41. I think a lot of people would be same, a lot of people are fools and don't realise it's over until it's over.

RG_Lunatic said:

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

I dont think you can say they did not take the war seriously. Maybe they did not expect the war to be as difficult as it was. But to not take a war seriously?

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No, they didn't take the war seriously. By that, I mean they didn't take their opponents seriously, and underestimated all beyond those which immeadiately bordered Germany.

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Okay now that you put it that way I will agree with you. Hitler did not take his enemies seriously. Wheather it was he believed that the so called "Arian Race" was so much better and could defeat anyone or it was because of the way he crushed the first countries he overan is no excuse. You can never underestimate your enemies. Right now we are a shining example of that here in Iraq still fighting and dieing every day against an enemy that we can not seem to figure out, because we underestimated the Iraqi's. This has been shown over and over through out history, even in the Revolutionary War. The British underestimated the Colonists. So yes I will agree with you and this was a major mistake by Hitler.

Whether this be true or not I am not sure but one reason about the economy and the standard of living rising among Germans could be the reason that is how Hitler came to power. He promised the Germans many things which won there hearts and minds. Now that still is not excuse for not bringing up the economy for the war effort he could have just taken it all away from them and used everything for the war effort but well he did not. I dont know if this a reason why but it could be an answer to it.