The greatest WWII blunder

[Baron Kurtz]

Erwin Rommel is the wellknown proof of that.

Yes, indeed. he wasn't daring at all, eh?

bk

 

[Spitfire]

Baron;
Don't you think Rommel made some pretty daring moves in Africa. And before that in the blitzkrieg in France?

 

[Baron Kurtz]

sorry, my sarcasm mode was on.

I was saying he was indeed daring, and should have been included on the list . . .

bk

 

["Doc" Devereux]

As should Otto Skorzeny, no matter what I might think of his politics.

 

[Harp]

I have hard that this is a myth, that the German officer was married to strict discipline and did not have the flexibility to compete wht the scrappy british and american officeers.

In fact, the german command operated under a guiding theory of warfare that emphasized flexibility, individual initiative and creative problem solving. Or so I have been told.

---Respectfully disagree; although Rommel, The Desert Fox was
exceptional and should have been listed in my earlier post.
However, the Wermacht was no more flexible, encouraged initative,
or creative than were the Allies.

 

[reetpleat]

---Respectfully disagree; although Rommel, The Desert Fox was
exceptional and should have been listed in my earlier post.
However, the Wermacht was no more flexible, encouraged initative,
or creative than were the Allies.

I wouldn't say they were moreso, but maybe as much.

O course the American mentality is very resourceful and creative for whatever reasons. It is what made this country so successful.

But my friend who was a war reenacter including civil war as well as ww II American and Geerman. (He was hardcore, living on berries and hardtack for a week or more as a civil war reenactor at a big southern meeting.)

He once explained to me that the German Army had a training paradigm and organizational system thant formed small indifvidual units fairly independant from a long chain of command and trained officers to be self reliant rather than tied to the chain of command.

I do not remember it well, but that is kind if the gist of it if I recall.

Interesting article on blitzkreig on Wikipedia.

Here is a quote:

Directive control was a fast and flexible method of command. Rather than receiving an explicit order, a commander would be told of his superior's intent and the role which his unit was to fill in this concept. The exact method of execution was then a matter for the low-level commander to determine as best fit the situation. Staff burden was reduced at the top and spread among commands more knowledgeable about their own situation. In addition, the encouragement of initiative at all levels aided implementation. As a result, significant decisions could be effected quickly and either verbally or with written orders a few pages in length.


[edit] Kesselschlacht

 

[TailendCharlie]

Interesting thought. And of course you are right!:eusa_clap

Hitlers parents should have used a condom!!!

Didn't his mother have complications while pregnant with little Adolf,or attempt to abort the pregnancy?

 

[TailendCharlie]

The Fog of War

Any one see this movie? Much of what is being discussed here is for the most part on the mark,no sane person or persons would even attempt to control the entire globe,but when things get started I guess you could call it the biggest blunder of all.
"War is all hell"
William Tecumseh Sherman

 

[reetpleat]

Maybe I am naive, but I am not sure Hitler was out to conquer the world. I think his ambitions were pretty obvious as far as Europe and Africa. ANd I suppose eventually if there wre a restored German austrio Hungarian empire if you will, and an american empire, they might eventually clash.

But did he have designs on the whole world?

Obviously, he had no immediate designs on Asia.

And the Japanese would most likely have been content with dominating asia colonially, and stopped at that.

I really do not know much about this part. But I do know every time the US doesn't like someone, or someones such as the russians, they villify him as out to conquer the world only to be stopped by us.

 

[Harp]

I wouldn't say they were moreso, but maybe as much.

O course the American mentality is very resourceful and creative for whatever reasons. It is what made this country so successful.

But my friend who was a war reenacter including civil war as well as ww II American and Geerman. (He was hardcore, living on berries and hardtack for a week or more as a civil war reenactor at a big southern meeting.)

He once explained to me that the German Army had a training paradigm and organizational system....
[edit] Kesselschlacht

--The Wermacht Blitzkreig/tactics followed Clausewitzian principles
enumerated in his work, Vom Kriege. (Rommel, a man whom I
much admire and rather absent-mindedly failed to mention earlier,
wrote Infantry in the Attack, which was required reading at
the US Army Infantry School circa Vietnam.) My prior post listing
neither meant to be exhaustive, nor exclude Axis commanders.

 

[Mojave Jack]

I'd say the Italian attack on Greece.

(1) This led them to almost certain defeat and demanded that Hitler divert necessary troops and supplies away from the upcoming Russian campaign, meaning that that campaign time-scale was lengthened into winter . . .

(2) The necessity of the German battle against the Brits in Greece, though ultimately successful, was costly to the German war machine in materiel, men, and morale.

(3) The ouster of the Brits from Crete - and this is perhaps the most important - resulted in the decimation of the German SS glider-invasion forces, the absolute best soldiers they had, and led to the postponement of the invasion of Britain.

It's all Mussolini's fault, you see, that the Germans didn't win.

bk

That was definately a costly blunder, BK!

The Italian attack on Greece very nearly cost the British all of North Africa. Churchill ordered O'Connor to halt his advance through Cyrenacia in order to send troops to support the Greeks after Hitler sent troops to support Mussolini. Every British officer from Auchinleck on down knew that the battle for Greece was lost before they even got there, but O'Connor could have easily pushed the Italians right out of North Africa had he been permitted to retain his troops. As it was, it took another two years to finally oust the Italians and Germans from North Africa, and Greece still fell nearly as quickly as it would have without the British troops. I would credit that enormous blunder directly on Churchill's meddling, though.

The battle for Crete would have been a lot more costly for the Germans if the British lines of communication had not broken down! Freyburg's defense was perfect, but the loss of communication cost them the battle. The Coomonwealth troops were most definately winning, but wihdrew from the airfields thinking that they were losing. Nonetheless, the German casulty rate was about 40%, and Hitler forbade any use of glider- or airborne troops for the rest of the war.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Well, the Uk was treaty bound to defend Greece. The thinking is clear: If we leave Greece to the wolves, Turkey (with whom we also had protection treaties) will seek to make separate peace with the demi-axis and the route is open to the middle eastern oil fields. The message that not defending Greece would send to the rest of our quasi-allies was more important than winning North Africa immediately.

And just think: If the brits had not gone to greece, the Germans would not have been diverted from attacking Russia, and everything might have been very different, indeed.

bk

 

[Harp]

...A Second World War British military cemetery is located in
Thessalonikki, Greece which rest those fallen in Macedonia and
Royal Navy personnel lost at sea.

fftopic:

 

[Harp]

Maybe I am naive, but I am not sure Hitler was out to conquer the world. I think his ambitions were pretty obvious as far as Europe and Africa. ANd I suppose eventually if there wre a restored German austrio Hungarian empire if you will, and an american empire, they might eventually clash.

But did he have designs on the whole world?

Obviously, he had no immediate designs on Asia.

And the Japanese would most likely have been content with dominating asia colonially, and stopped at that.

I really do not know much about this part. But I do know every time the US doesn't like someone, or someones such as the russians, they villify him as out to conquer the world only to be stopped by us.

...Stalin et al were quite capable of villifying themselves.

 

[carebear]

---Respectfully disagree; although Rommel, The Desert Fox was
exceptional and should have been listed in my earlier post.
However, the Wermacht was no more flexible, encouraged initative,
or creative than were the Allies.

Rommel was a tactical master and operational genius but he thought too much in terms of arrows on the map. He didn't pay enough attention to logistics, time and time again he planned operations in Africa that were flat out not possible with the logistical tail he had on hand (not enough trucks, screwed the Germans up consistently).

You don't over-extend yourself and then complain that your supply convoys aren't getting through the Med, you plan your operations on what you can manage with the resources you can guarantee.

 

[CanadaDoll]

From a military point of view(my prof was outlining this one, and I think I've got it acurate, but I may be wrong[huh] ) the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not really a great move tactically. They didn't have much military impact, and the reason they were so "successful" was the the Japanese hadn't planned on being attacked on their own soil.

 

[carebear]

Actually Hitler had a plan for post-war. I can't find the map online, I'll have to check my old Command magazines.

Basically, the US for practical reasons (too far away and strong to conquer in anything resembling short-term) would be "allowed" to retain hegemony over the entire Western Hemisphere, with Canada the new seat of English power.

IIRC, Germany would get Europe for pretty much direct rule and Africa and most of European Asia, to include the ME and most of India, as a resource base.

The Japanese would get the entire Pacific, to include Australia all the islands and they'd get Manchuria, China, basically the other half of Asia/India.

3 big empires, lots of lebensraum for the Volk and a promise of future territorial "realignments".

 

[carebear]

From a military point of view(my prof was outlining this one, and I think I've got it acurate, but I may be wrong[huh] ) the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not really a great move tactically. They didn't have much military impact, and the reason they were so "successful" was the the Japanese hadn't planned on being attacked on their own soil.

That is the new revisionist view (can't have anything positive to say about nukes can we, and we know the US is always somehow "bad" ) but it's pretty thoroughly debunked.

Serious scholarship and recently released documents/plans from both sides make it clear that Iwo and Okinawa were excellent examples of what an invasion of the Japanese home islands would become. We would have been looking at millions of American and Japanese casualties and the utter destruction of Japan. Fat Man and Little Boy were the best possible, lowest casualty and destruction option given the information known at the time by both sides at the time and even in honest hindsight.

When attending any college course, remember that the only place to find Marxist true believers in the civilized world anymore are in Western university faculties.

 

[MikeBravo]

The German has always been the best trained, best equipped and best lead army in the 20th century

Why couldn't they win a war?

 

[Harp]

From a military point of view(my prof was outlining this one, and I think I've got it acurate, but I may be wrong[huh] ) the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not really a great move tactically. They didn't have much military impact, and the reason they were so "successful" was the the Japanese hadn't planned on being attacked on their own soil.

The Americans attacked Japanese soil earlier in the Doolittle Operation,
and had bombarded prior to Hiroshima/Nagasaki. The Japanese failed to
accept surrender prior to the atomic detonations. Revisionist historians
and profs notwithstanding, the bomb ended the Pacific War.