WWII: How Close Were We?

[Freddy]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

This was Churchill's fear.
That's why he wanted to invade thought the underbelly of Europe up though the Baltic States- to thwart Russia. The US would not agree to this strategy

After the war the US appropriated much of the Nazi Anti-Russian intelligence service which formed the bases of the post war CIA and hence the irrational and ultimately unfounded fear of Russia's military might.

I still think breaking the Enigma codes, early in the war, was the major reason the Allies won the war.

The pacific
I agree about a third strike to Pearl Harbour. They goofed there.

Midway was more of a stalemate but it was the first major blow to stopping the southern advance of the Japanese. The Allies were still about Churchill's "Europe First" strategy.

it is interesting that the Japanese are now talking about re-arming. If i lived next to N. Korea I guess I would want to too. What frightens me is that they have still not confronted their history of aggression in 1930-1945. school kids are still taught Fairy Tales about the War
I saw a show on the four "boats' they have in the Navy. Wow! Each is worth a Billion $ and bristles with the latest in technology.

Midway was a stalemate? How so? Japan lost four carriers and their offensive naval capability and strategy in one battle and from then on was forced on a defensive naval strategy. The US losing only one carrier gained an offensive naval capability and strategy against the Japanese. Exactly, what Yamamoto had feared had taken place. The sleeping giant had awoke and was going to take retribution all the way to Japan's home islands. It took three long years of island hopping and terrible battles at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima along with Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history enabling the US to defeat Japan. If the US had lost its three carriers at Midway it may have lost the war.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Freddy

Midway was a stalemate? How so? r.

Look I am no expert;
but I have read that the blow was mainly that
Japan could not replace carriers like the US industrial system.

all four Japanese carriers - "AKAGI", "HIRYU", "KAGA" and "SORYU" went down. "YORKTOWN" was badly damaged and finished off by a Japanese submarine on the 7th.
The Japanese forces retreated, Midway was spared, and the Allies had their first major strategic victory of World War 2.
However, the Japanese Navy remained strong, with more carriers in the Pacific than the Americans. The occupation at this time of Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians was of little consequence.

http://www.naval-history.net/WW2RN14-194206.htm

Psychologically it was a very important victory, especially to Australians.

Again Midway would not have happened at all if code breakers had not done their job of breaking Japanese codes (due to the little known work of an Australian cryptologist).

[myspip90]

There were many turnpoints in the war, and if it hadn't been for those turn points, Nazi-Germany would have had a much larger chance of winning the war; the largest contributing factor was probably the strategic mistakes Hitler made.
In 1940 Hitler planned an attack against Great Britain after having defeated France; Operation Sea Lion. But first they had to neutralize the RAF; which the German Luftwaffe didn't succeed with. With another strategy, this could have been succeeded. German Airbases could have been built at the coast of the Lowlands in order to support an amphibious attack across the English channel (much like Operation Overlord, but in the other direction); German submarines could have helped a lot in order to "clean" the channel from British naval war vessels. Britain wasn't totally prepared for such an attack; there were not many ground defenses in Great Britain, due to that no one had expected such an attack from a foe. As the Soviet Union wasn't a threat to Germany at that time; Hitler should have relocated most of his troops to the western front; it was quite obvious that if Britain still remained as a foe, total conquest of the mainland Europe would be nearly impossible.
In addition, Italy could have done more against Greece. In the end Germany was forced to help them. This delayed Germany's attack against te Soviet Union (which tured out to be catastrophical). But this is a controversy (whether to attack the Soviet or not): If Germany hadn't attacked Soviet, Hitler could have focused on conquering Britain and might then have succeeded. But after conquering Britain there will only be one major potential enemy left, the Soviet Union. Then the Soviet union would have been aware that the Germans were to attack them (of course Africa could have been conquered, but that wasn't a major objective). Stalin knew that Hitler always wanted more and more, and thus Hitler would have probably attack the Soviets. And against a well-prepared Soviet, there isn't much to do. (But as Germany's weapons were far superior, the Germans could have easily defended itself against the Soviets and cause lots of casualties for the Soviets... and then attack them).
Instead Hitler chose Operation Barbarossa; a suprise attack against Soviet. This was a Win-or-Lose strategy. And due to the procrastination of the operation Hitler was bound to lose (the weather was way too harsh).
And due to these major mistakes by Hitler; some of his best field marshall (e.g. Erwin Rommel) turned against him [which led to the failed plot against Hitler] and conseqently these conspirators were forced to suicide...

Of course Code Breakers was involved in many major battles. (E.g. Battle of Britain and in the previously mentioned war between America and Japan)

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by myspip90

There were many turnpoints in the war, and if it hadn't been for those turn points, Nazi-Germany would have had a much larger chance of winning the war; the largest contributing factor was probably the strategic mistakes Hitler made.
In 1940 Hitler planned an attack against Great Britain after having defeated France; Operation Sea Lion. But first they had to neutralize the RAF; which the German Luftwaffe didn't succeed with.

I read an interesting comment that seems to reflect on both the English and German Psyche about the "Battle of Britain"
Churchill said EVERYTHING had to be in the air no matter how "seaworthy". Planes were thrown into the German onslaught with glue, sealing wax and fencing wire.

The Germans however had a 1/3rd+ or more of their planes on the ground waiting for the "proper" parts to come from Germany.
When the Germans saw what GB threw into the air they assumed that the English force was 1/3-1/2 more than what they could see in the air.
This apparently discouraged further GB attacks by the Luffwaft.

Having restored both an old Austin A40 and a Mercedes 190 car You can see the difference in attitude. You could "jigger" things to work with the A40 but not the Mercedes. The REAL parts were needed for the Mercedes to work properly.(beautiful engineering but a pain)
PS
myspip90
Could you please break up your post a bit into paragraphs or even sentences It is very hard to read "in block"

[alexander]

i honesty did not read through all the posts, so if i state some points again, i appologise ahead for doing so, no disrespect to the original writers

Ok, the original question.

There were quite a few more much more closer calls that could have altered history then the ones described in the first post of this thread, namely: first off, by estimations in by both british and non british investigators both in early and late post war era it has became clear that brittain was about 3 months away from collapsing has the war not ended when it did in europe, if brittain was to collapse, when the war was still going on, adolf would have surely repositioned his missile battery to a more easternly locations, and who knows how much longer the war in europe would have lasted... Another lesser known fact about the war in Japan, did you know that adolf set out a u-boat carrying quite a few tonns of enriched uranium to Japan, and it was something like 2 weeks away from hitting its port. Along with uranium there were instructions on how to make a dirty bomb and various proposed ways of deliveries, and if i am not mistaken, there was also a missile or at least blueprints aboard as one of the proposed methods of uranium dust delivery system.

Speculations on the war in Russia. I'm only russian, my great grandfather died in the offensive stages of freeing 9 month long seige of Leningrad, my grandfather started working at a factory when he was 14 and my grandmother lived by Moscow most of her life. Oh and i have also read, watched movies and shows and heard lectures on WW2 in both russian ane english with viewpoints from both sides, so i have both of them to compare... Nevertheless i do not claim to be an expert in this by any means.

It began before Adolf became a real threat, but has already started building up for his invasions. Sometime in 1938, the communist regime (and i'd like to point out that russia itself never became a communist country, and that i totally support their motion to REAL democracy *caugh unlike the US*), in the beginnings of Josef Vissarionovich Dzugashvilli's rule he wanted any antisoviet propaganda removed from the army in an effort to clear it of non-soviets. Basically people lived in fear, anything you said that could even remotely be understood as anti soviet, or someone who didnt like you ratted you out, would simply be taken by the NKBD (one of two parts of what would later become the KGB), interrigated and shot. Many people didn't like their commanders in the Russian army, and more and more old and experienced generals were captured and interrigated and thrown in jail or heard about their capture and commited suiside (and its not uncommon for russian officer does not loose his dignity by doing such a thing). So then comes what, 1939, Hitler starts his invasions of Polland (side note, in 7 days) and other small countries, and Russia is in deep shit over in an insignifficant little Finland, soldiers realize that their newly appointed commanders are full of crap and cant command to save their lives, winter war ends, Russia retreats (they lost and my great grandfather was there as a soldier, they didnt give him any weapons, just told him, you will hear the front, and on your way there you will see killed people, weapons and ammo are out there in the field (ice shelf on the Gulf of Finland) pick up whatever weapon you want).

So USSR is completely unprepared to plunge into another war, and Hitler makes pland with Dzugashvilli, that if USSR holds off and does not join the allies, a great piece of Finland will be given to them. At the same time, he promisses Finland that they will defend them from russian invasions and having to give up their land (or basically he was doing anything to prevent a 2 front war). It is almost clear that Adolf wanted to invade russia, but he wanted to first invade europe, and by no means wanted to start a 2 front war, but he had no choice.

However by 1941 even Dzugashvilli realized that Germany would eventually attack, Brittain said that it would bankroll any country on the allied side, Russia was recovering from the Winter War, and Germany saw that a lot of attention was now being put towards building up russian army (and at some point something like 90% of the budget was going towards the army in Russia). Frankly, Germany could not wait to attack much much longer, because with more and more time it would be more and more difficult to attack russia as they would develop a better and bigger army.

The plan was brilliant, a new tactic employed by German forces was known as blitzkrieg; where you first bomb an area and then send infantry and tanks to occupy it, and on that note, did you know that german Tigers had the biggest canon out of any tank ever made, and the thickest armor of any tank as well? Infact they had to put extra wide tracks and extra large amounts of wheels on them, the tank wighed so much that even stationary it was putting pressure on the transmission, oh and it could only fire from a stationary position as well. Anyways, the plan was to invade Russia quickly, progressing in as fast as they could before winter. But, that did not quite work out as Russian forces finaly strengthened and they were able to put up a decent defense and germany got stuck in russia for the next 4 years. But anywas, Buffy, basically Germany had to attack and put on a 2 front war on themselves, Hitler would later resite that attacking russia was the biggest miscalculation in his life...

Oh concerning burning of Moscow in 1812, that was a quite a calculated, smart and daring strategy of general Kutuzov, who btw to many millitary historians seems to be the best general in the history of millitary action, they fought right up to moscow while in the backgroud people were taking food and stuff out of the city, then set it on fire, and din't fight for Napoleon occupation of the city itself, saying fine have it... First Moscow was not the capital of Russia at the time, so it wasnt like a really huge loss, and second, Kutuzov gambled and got Napoleon to spend that winter in the city. Oh and russian troops learned of a spanish style of warfare known as guerilla warfare, so they were attacking the supply convoys going to Napoleon hence his troops were sick and dying that winter.... and then there was Borodino...

[alexander]

oh and tomorrow i'll try to post how desparate russia got by 1943 to beat Germany and what was happening on the front lines and what role NKBD played and what survailence by attacking is....

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by alexander

i honesty did not read through all the posts, so if i state some points again, i appologise ahead for doing so, no disrespect to the original writers

Ok, the original question.
There were quite a few more much more closer calls that could have altered history then the ones described in the first post of this thread, namely: first off, by estimations in by both british and non british investigators both in early and late post war era it has became clear that brittain was about 3 months away from collapsing has the war not ended when it did in europe, if brittain was to collapse, when the war was still going on, adolf would have surely repositioned his missile battery to a more easternly locations, and who knows how much longer the war in europe would have lasted... Another lesser known fact about the war in Japan, did you know that adolf set out a u-boat carrying quite a few tonns of enriched uranium to Japan, and it was something like 2 weeks away from hitting its port. Along with uranium there were instructions on how to make a dirty bomb and various proposed ways of deliveries, and if i am not mistaken, there was also a missile or at least blueprints aboard as one of the proposed methods of uranium dust delivery system.
Speculations on the war in russia, and i mean what do i know, i'm only russian, my great grandfather died in the offensive stages of freeing 9 month long seige of Leningrad, my grandfather started working at a factory when he was 14 and my grandmother lived by Moscow most of her life and i have also read, watched movies and shows and heard lectures on WW2 in both russian ane english with viewpoints from both sides... It began before adolf became a real threat, but has already started building up for his invasions. Sometime in 1938, the communist regime (and i'd like to point out that russia itself never became a communist country, and that i totally support their motion to REAL democracy *caugh unlike the US*), in the beginnings of Josef Vissarionovich Dzugashvilli's rule he wanted any antisoviet propaganda removed from the army in an effort to clear it of non-soviets. Basically people lived in fear, anything you said that could even remotely be understood as anti soviet, or someone who didnt like you ratted you out, would simply be taken by the NKBD (one of two parts of what would later become the KGB), interrigated and shot. Many people didn't like their commanders in the Russian army, and more and more old and experienced generals were captured and interrigated and thrown in jail or heard about their capture and commited suiside (and its not uncommon for russian officer does not loose his dignity by doing such a thing). So then comes what, 1939, Hitler starts his invasions of Polland (side note, in 7 days) and other small countries, and Russia is in deep shit over in an insignifficant little Finland, soldiers realize that their newly appointed commanders are full of crap and cant command to save their lives, winter war ends, Russia retreats (they lost and my great grandfather was there as a soldier, they didnt give him any weapons, just told him, you will hear the front, and on your way there you will see killed people, weapons and ammo are out there in the field (ice shelf on the Gulf of Finland) pick up whatever weapon you want). So USSR is completely unprepared to plunge into another war, and Hitler makes pland with Dzugashvilli, that if USSR holds off and does not join the allies, a great piece of Finland will be given to them. At the same time, he promisses Finland that they will defend them from russian invasions (or basically doing anything to prevent a 2 front war). It is almost clear that Adolf wanted to invade russia, but he wanted to first invade europe, and by no means wanted to start a 2 front war.
However by 1941 even Dzugashvilli realized that Germany would eventually attack, Brittain said that it would bankroll any country on the allied side, Russia was recovering from the winter war, and Germany saw that a lot of attention was now being put towards building up russian army. Frankly, Germany could not wait to attack much much longer, because with more and more time it would be more and more difficult to attack russia as they would develop a better and bigger army. The plan was brilliant, a new tactic employed by german forces was known as blitzkrieg; where you first bomb an area and then send infantry and tanks to occupy it, and on that note, did you know that german Tigers had the biggest canon out of any tank ever made, and the thickest armor of any tank as well? Infact they had to put extra wide tracks and extra large amounts of wheels on them, the tank wighed so much that even stationary it was putting pressure on the transmission, oh and it could only fire from a stationary position as well. Anyways, the plan was to invade Russia quickly, progressing in as fast as they could before winter stroke. But, that did not quite work out as Russian forces finaly strengthened and they were able to put up a decent defense and germany got stuck in russia for the next 4 years. But anywas, Buffy, basically Germany had to attack and put on a 2 front war on themselves, Hitler would later resite that attacking russia was the biggest miscalculation in his life...

Oh concerning burning of Moscow in 1812, that was a quite a calculated, smart and daring strategy of general Kutuzov, who btw to many millitary historians seems to be the best general in the history of millitary action, they fought right up to moscow while in the backgroud people were taking food and stuff out of the city, then set it on fire, and din't fight for Napoleon occupation of the city itself, saying fine have it... First Moscow was not the capital of Russia at the time, so it wasnt like a really huge loss, and second, Kutuzov gambled and got Napoleon to spend that winter in the city. Oh and russian troops learned of a spanish style of warfare known as guerilla warfare, so they were attacking the supply convoys going to Napoleon hence his troops were sick and dying that winter.... and then there was Borodino...

Look there is so much to reply to your excelled post.
Could you please break it down for "Bears of little brain"
Break it up into digestible bits?

I always feel so sorry for Russia. The last 100 years has been shit for them.
I cried after reading "Stalingrad". An incredible battle; sad for both the Russians and the Germans.

I agree 2 and a half years the Brits held out. Three months more could have been the end.
How did Hitler manage to go from a 1929 depression economy to a world power?
It still amazes me.
How come we don't use the same economic principles today?

I have just read about the Japanese secret hoards of Gold and precious gems in the Philippines and the highlands of Japan. Ton and Tons of precious gold and gems ripped off from Korea and China. They traded this with the Nazis for Uranium. Were they further advanced than Germany in developing an A -bomb??
It is interesting that the Japanese treasure troves were used by the CIA to fund their activities after the war + keep the ruling conservative power in Japan in power.

[alexander]

Sorry it took a bit longer then expected. school starting and all... And i have modified my previous post to add some spacing and stuff.

oh and tomorrow i'll try to post how desparate russia got by 1943 to beat Germany and what was happening on the front lines and what role NKBD played and what survailence by attacking is....

Aah right, so maybe not that tomorrow, but i'll try to expand on that today...

Less see here.
Ok, so how desperate USSR was to beat Germany and how bad the conditions were during the war. Well, by like 43 most able and remotely so man was at the front fighting, only older men were left as warehouse guards and young kids, kids who were able to work (so like 12-14 years of age or so), did. But the country that before the war had something like 1-2 million homeless kids, now had about 20 mill. Most places the homeless kids were like they are today, causing very little trouble. But in the cities some started organizing into gangs and they would rob supply stores and warehouses, killing guards, robing houses and killing the women insode and whatnot. It got so bad that by 1943 Joseph Gzugashvilli signed an act in which every kid over 14 years was liable for their actions and punishable as an adult.

Food shortages were getting more and more worse, Leningrad that remained unoccupied but under seige for 900 days was perhaps the worst of many places. In the first days of seige, German troops bombed food warehouses, water plants and power lines. grain had to be smuggled in via barges and bread contained more then just bread, some ingredients included wood dust, other seeds and stuff. People had food stamps, that would get them 150 gramms of bread if you were a widdow, 200 if you were with a child and 250 if you had a relative serving, and that was it, water you could get from the river and nothing else was provided. Winter 42-43 was extremely cold as well, no heat, no electricity, people were burning whatever they had and could find in the bombed buildings to stay warm. Yet every day people were found frozen solid in the streets, and if you wanted to be nice, if you found a corpse, you would take it to a place where you would dump it, and there was literaly a pile there every day. Some reserved to cannibalism and snuck into places of those piles and tried to cut some meat off for themselves and the family (and if you were seen engaging in such an activity, you were shot).

Now the soldiers on the front lines. They needed any able man to defend the country, so they went to prizons (and Joseph put a lot of political and other ppl in prisons) and gave people a choice of continuing to serve the sentence or a chance to reclaim some statute and serve their nation. So a lot of people went, but it wasnt much better then prizon. Basically you would get thrown in a cargo train, transported somewhere for 3-4 days with brief stops and no food, split into batallions and taken by other prisonters who have gotten an officer status (usually they were POWs who ran away from their captors, but since the army was all screwed up, they would be considered to be deserters and if they were officers perhaps they would get a chance to command such a batallion rather then be a part of the team (not that that was much better). In russian these prizoner batallions are called "Shtrafbat" (or Penal Batallion) , and such a batallion would have a batallion of NKBD (NKVD) positioned a few dozen meters behind the trenches of the soldiers (somehow army did not consider them as such). And the order would be like tomorrow at 8 in the morning you guys will occupy the trenches ahead of you, yeah there are mine fields and they would do a minor artillery prep before the attack, but at the captains signal you were to raise up and run to the next trench over and if you made it, kill everyone in your path. If you stayed behind or decided 1/2 way to run back, the NKBD had a few machine guns that would take care of the deserters.

Most of the time you would have intelligence reports bofore running of how many weapons they had, tanks and whatnot, but not all the time, if there was no time to do intelligence prep, then they would call it survaillence by attacking, now in such cases you are running and you have no idea how many germans were ahead, whether they had machine guns and how many, and whether there is a batallion of Tigers behind the positions... Go figure, there were something like 600,000 troops ordered to shtrafbats in USSR, and they were not considered to be regular troops and i think 9/10 people died in such batallions and it is next to impossible to find lists of people from there, and most WWII monuments do not have any mention of these troops.

... Anything else you wanna expand on?

[Racoon]

Check out this Neat Link!

A WWII Russian tank dredged out from a lake complete with story, pictures, and video.

English Russia » Russian Tank Recovered from the Lake After 50 Years Been There