Wich was the worst nation in the war? (1 Viewer)

Wich was the worst nation in the war?

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I checked out some books at college about the planned invasions of Japan.

Heres a summary.

Roosevelt did agree in principle to have commonwelath forces involved in the planned invasion. However, admiral King, Gen Arnold and Gen Marshall were all opposed. However, they realised the political considerations of having to give the commonwealth troops an opportunity to shed blood.

For the RN, their Pacific Fleet was involved in planning, however Adm. King was furious on the shortcommings of the RN fleet train. King had made it clear that the USN was maxed out on their fleet train, and the RN had to be more independent. The RN "time at sea" performance was not up to USN standards.

For the RAF, General Arnold was the least hostile about the idea. He solved the planning problem with the brits this way.....They could bring their 600 heavy bombers, and the 20th and FEAF airforces would be happy to include them in operations. But....... the RAF had to build, maintain and supply all their squdrons on their own, and because of the ongoing buildup of the American airforces in Okinawa, there was no place to station them. The RAF would have to find suitable locations in China, or wait untill airbase locations were available in Southern Japan.

For the ground troops. MacArthur was stridently opposed to it on political and logistical grounds. He insisted on the following.
1) The commonwealth troops must be fully trained on amphib warfare.
2) The commonwealth troops must be fully equiped on American eqmt and supplies.
3) The commonwealth troops must be retrained and reorganized more upon american lines, and use US tactics developed in the course of the war.
Surprisingly, the commonwealth govts accepted this condition, and three divisions were offered, one from Canada, Britain and Australia.. These three divisions were put into the order of battle in mid July 1945, and were designated as floating reserve/follow on forces. However, there was no hint of them being included in planning for Operation Coronet in 1946.

Surprisingly, there was a hint of the French supplying a division of troops. Discusions had begun in late summer 1945 about their role, and they probably would be added to the commonwealth countries.

On a similar note, My next door neighbor was a crew member of a LST in the PTO in the last year of the war. The ships maiden voyage was from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania down the Ohio/Mississippi rivers to NO, where they picked up a load of higgins boats. They then proceded through the Panama Canal to Pearl Harbor. There they picked up an LCI that the towed to the PI to be used in the Okinawa invasion.

For the next few months, they sailed back and forth between Okinawa and Lingayan Gulf. War supplies went to Okinawa, and exhausted and depleted USA/USMC troops back to the PI. One time when they went back to the PI, they found the whole harbor area occupied by the USN Battleship divisions. He said that there were at least a dozen new and old battleships, and dozens of supporting cruisers and destroyers at anchor.
Another time when they were at Okinawa a hospital ship sailed by. He said it smelled like death....... cause it was a morgue ship! Carrying bodies back to the PI for burial! When the war ended, they were in Okinawa still delivering supplies for the projected invasion. Their final sortie was to haul supplies up to a naval station setup near Yokohama Japan. This was in middle Sept 1945. Then they sailed back to San Francisco ( a two month cruise he added) and that was the end of his war, and the ship.
 
I think Italy. They were a drain on their Allies, the Germans as every time they fought, they seemed to get beaten and then have to plead with Germany for help. The Greeks beat them for goodness sake!! The Italians couldn't even beat the Greeks!! Romania didn't do a thing so far as I am aware one way or the other. France did fight and its Free French troops did participate in some particularly important actions.
 
Before any conclusions about "worst" can be made, one has to attempt to better define what is meant by "worst". IMO worst does not necessarily mean "least effort", or "smallest". To my mnd, the answer has to remain general, because of the general nature of the question, however, IMO "worst" probably equates to "most poorly managed"

To be honest, I dont know who is "worst", even in the terms I have tried to clarify. Perhaps it was France, perhaps Italy, or even Rumania, but it is hard to point the finger at any single nation.

If you look at France, it was the French who first worked out the theoryof how to defend with Infantry against Tanks. it was called the "Quadrillage system" and it was worked out by Weygand during the latter part of the BOF. people often overlook that approximately 1500 German A/C were lost over France in just 6 weeks of fighting, which is a loss rate to rival that which occurred in the BOB later that year.

Many people are critical of the Italians, yet, if you look closely at thair war effort, it pretty quickly becomes quite clear that their failures have been hammed up by both their opponents and their erstwhile allies. In the case of the Rumanians, few people know or realize that it was German formations, sent to bolster the Rumanians who broke at least at the same time as the Rumanian formations, and that the Rumanian formation defending the flanks at Stalingrad were expected to do that with just 6 75mm AT guns per Division. Rumanian forces were responsible for the capture of Odessa in 1941 (with only minor support from the germans), whilst the Rumanians contributed materially to the fall of Sevastopol. Finally Rumanian airpower was a significant proportion of axis air strength on the southern front of Russia right through until capitulation.
I am tempted to say the "worst" performers were the germans. There is no denying their combat effectiveness, but their management of their side of the war was attrocious. Take Hitlers decision to invade Russia. I know he had talked about it since Mein Kampf, but he had also berated Imperial Germany's mistake of undertaking a two front war, which is precisely what he did himself, when he invaded Russia. He failed to fully mobilize the german economy until it was too late, and never treated his allies as coalition partners in any sense of the word. The minor Axis partners (Rumania Hungary, Finland, and Bulgaria), were all essentially agrarian nations, who lacked the means to properly equip themselves. If they had been decently equipped by their german partners, they would have put up a better showing than they did
 

Good points. It can be argued that the Commonwealth collapse in the east in 1942 was as big of a blunder as the French deployment in 1940. The only difference is that the UK was 8,000 miles away so the consequences were not nearly the same.

The Germans missed the oppertunity in 1941 to knock Russia out of the war, or to at least improve significantly their position by the end of 1941. Personally I think the 6 - 8 week delay needed to bail out the Italians was a huge factor.

The Axis also missed the chance to do much more harm in the submarine offensive by a failure to coordinate plans and therefore failed to use perhaps their most effective weapon.

Belgium deserves a mention of course for the dithering that upset the Allied plans.

Again Parsifal i agree with you, it's hard to define the terms. Are we including the wilful blindness of the USA UK in failing to prepare for war?
 
I'm surprised I haven't seen this given my previous searches on this site, but now that I have wasted about 45 minutes reading this entire thread, I can only conclude that this thread is perhaps one of the most, if not THE most retarded thread I've ever read on a forum. I'm frankly unsure whether this is just another one of those French-bashing threads (2003-2005 being the height of anti-French revisionism), or attempt to spit on graves of over 220,000 who fought and died for the allied cause.

Either way, the BS alarm is ringing loudly. But then, I suppose it is expected of the majority of members on this particular forum.
 

Most people dont agree with you and find it interesting.
 
Wow, talk about a freakin' axe to grind, especially for a thread thats over 2 years old. Isn't that a bit harsh?

I guess we can say you're welcome for allowing us to effectively waste 45 minutes of your life.

Are these the same French Allies that kicked sand in England's face for believeing that the UK left them on the beaches of Dunkirk?
 
Njaco said:
Wow, talk about a freakin' axe to grind, especially for a thread thats over 2 years old. Isn't that a bit harsh?
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No.

Njaco said:
I guess we can say you're welcome for allowing us to effectively waste 45 minutes of your life.
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Don't worry, a bottle of Merlot at my side make things a lot easier.

Njaco said:
Are these the same French Allies that kicked sand in England's face for believeing that the UK left them on the beaches of Dunkirk?
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Strong words, considering the level of disrespect towards French KIAs in WW 2. Perhap you and syscom3 would care to review the following thread -

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/av...ance-could-ve-prevented-their-loss-11164.html

It's the result of actually having read books rather than following popular sentiment.
 
Its not so much the subject as it seems you want to shoot the messenger.

Yes, they are strong words I used in reaction to the strong words you used. And its not based on poular sentiment but from actually reading books. One that comes to mind about the French reaction to Dunkirk is Walter Lord's "Miracle of Dunkirk". Even has a pic of a French poster (from 1940) that portrays the British physically preventing the French from leaving the beaches - which we know was not true. Theres sentiment for ya!
 

Sorry, but it WAS true in more than one case.

Dunkirk: The Patriotic Myth (Nicholas Harman) "By 29 May 72,000 British soldiers had been carried across the Channel under Operation Dynamo. The number of French who arrived in England was recorded as 655.". pg.110

Later still, pg. 206, an account from General Alexander's diary "There was to be no embarkation of the French until the British were finished". When Gen. Alexander was order to do otherwise and accept the French troops on equal terms, he disobeyed. "The British government expressed no displeasure at his apparent disobedience".

I could go on from other sources, but why digress? You're mind has been made up long ago.

I find it remarkable, that after all these years, there are those who claim French cowardice when in 1940, it was clearly they who fought the most, lost the most, and made it possible for the Dunkirk evacuations to take place, that they are still labeled as cowards. Notwithstanding the actions and losses of the Free French and the Underground being consistently diminished and ridiculed.
 
The French weren't cowards by any means, they were overrun by an enemy with superior weapons tactics, there's no shame in that.

As for which country performed the worst during WW2, well Italy ranks highest here in my mind.

An old prejudice joke: The shortest book ever written was about Italian heroes of WW2
 

Nice to see you again Arsenal! Yes it is a rather silly simplistic thread, posted by some guy that was here for about 2 months. Just looking at his post confirms that it was either a kid or someone rather clueless.

Stuka-99 said:
I reckon it was france cus they had the opportunity of invaded Germany when they where attacking Poland.
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Like any forum Arsenal, there are a whole spectrum of people, from ignorant to open-minded.

You posted earlier that the "Fall of France" was subject to alot of revisionist history, and to a significant extent this is true.

However there are some results of history that will always hang on a nation. The French to a large extent will not be able to shake off the shame of defeat in 1940. You and I have disagreed about the role that the BEF played in the events of May 1940, but when you get right down to it the ultimate responsibility lies with Gamelin and the poor state of the French high command. He expected that he would not need strategic reserves because French mobilization would provide them a few weeks after war began. He ignored the very good theories of DeGaulle {and Liddle Hart etc} about the changing type of mobile warfare
 
Soren said:
The French weren't cowards by any means, they were overrun by an enemy with superior weapons tactics, there's no shame in that.

As for which country performed the worst during WW2, well Italy ranks highest here in my mind.
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Good point, as I said earlier, some countries will never "live down" their poor performance in WWII. The Italian army in 1940 that was defeated by O'Conner and the British {who the Italians out-numbered 5 to 1} is a good example.

The poor planning of the British in Singapore, surrendering to a smaller {but very aggressive} Japanese is about as bad as the French in 1940, but as I said earlier the UK had the advantage of being 8,000 miles away from this military disaster.

And I believe that each government is responsible for protecting it's own interests regardless of what others do. So even if the BEF did not do what they were supposed to, the French should have been responsible for their own security. Just as the British have been condemned for trying to eliminate the French fleet after the collapse of France, they could not take the chance, however small that the Vichy French government would turn the fleet over to germany, which would swing the Naval control over to the Axis. They did what they considered they had to do to keep Britain safe.
 
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