Why the Allies Won

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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by pp4me » Sat Jun 12, 2021 2:47 pm

Smith1776 wrote:
Thu Jun 10, 2021 1:37 pm
Neo-Nazis are alive and well. I do get concerned though that people on the left have a tendency to label people as "Nazis" just because they don't support democratic socialism, full on CRT, or other entities along those lines. This downplays the severity of what the Nazis actually did and basically amounts to an ad hominem attack. :(
Right. And that guy in your Avatar is the next Hitler, or haven't you heard? How could somebody writing a book called "12 Rules to live by" not be a secret Nazi?
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sat Jun 12, 2021 3:21 pm

Having rules is part of the white superstructure of power onslaught cum patriarchy*.


* as soon as I wrote it I really like it.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by SomeDude » Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:58 pm

I just finished Der Untergang.

The allies won because Steiner didn't attack.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by Dieter » Fri Jun 18, 2021 6:23 pm

I found this interesting -- https://youtu.be/SjgG0xW8y3A

I think Sherman should have been included

And, carriers vs specifically Essex. Replace the Essex's with Yorktowns, and, not that much difference (and probably get a few more of them). Not that the Essex's weren't excellent ships and better than the Yorktowns.

And.... 🙂
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by pp4me » Mon Jun 21, 2021 5:59 pm

Japan is around the size of California and Germany is slightly smaller than Montana. Neither axis country had an abundance of natural resources to compare to either of those states, let alone the rest of the world they intended to conquer.

So maybe Japanese and German hubris in thinking they were more powerful than they were was a deciding factor.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by SomeDude » Mon Jun 21, 2021 6:41 pm

pp4me wrote:
Mon Jun 21, 2021 5:59 pm
Japan is around the size of California and Germany is slightly smaller than Montana. Neither axis country had an abundance of natural resources to compare to either of those states, let alone the rest of the world they intended to conquer.

So maybe Japanese and German hubris in thinking they were more powerful than they were was a deciding factor.
Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland also, and volunteers from all over Europe including France. Austria although it had been absorbed into Germany. Collectively the European Axis had a larger population than the Soviet Union i think, but of course had to cover France and fight the British in Africa and the Atlantic. Lots of steel went into subs instead of tanks.

If the Brits had negotiated a peace, it's very possible the Soviet Union would have fallen. The whermacht got to Moscow and the Volga but just couldn't finish the job.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by vnatale » Mon Jun 21, 2021 9:15 pm

SomeDude wrote:
Mon Jun 21, 2021 6:41 pm

pp4me wrote:
Mon Jun 21, 2021 5:59 pm

Japan is around the size of California and Germany is slightly smaller than Montana. Neither axis country had an abundance of natural resources to compare to either of those states, let alone the rest of the world they intended to conquer.

So maybe Japanese and German hubris in thinking they were more powerful than they were was a deciding factor.


Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland also, and volunteers from all over Europe including France. Austria although it had been absorbed into Germany. Collectively the European Axis had a larger population than the Soviet Union i think, but of course had to cover France and fight the British in Africa and the Atlantic. Lots of steel went into subs instead of tanks.

If the Brits had negotiated a peace, it's very possible the Soviet Union would have fallen. The whermacht got to Moscow and the Volga but just couldn't finish the job.


You on it on that one!
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by Kbg » Tue Jun 22, 2021 10:51 am

I'm gonna venture I've studied this stuff formally by at least a factor of 2 from anyone else on the board. (How's that for a nice humble preface? :-))

My response will be very unsatisfying: It is really bad military strategy to take on most of the world. You are going to lose every time. May take some time, but the end result is inevitable...the rest is details.

"The decisive factor, Overy contends, for Allied success on the economic and technology front was decidedly effective strategic leadership."

Germany was monumentally cursed with poor strategic thinkers post Bismarck. Some historians have made the argument that Bismarck created the conditions during his life that resulted in epic strategic stupidity after he left the scene. I think the argument is a bit stretched, but clearly they probably had the worst strategic thinkers on the planet for the first half of the 20th century for whatever reasons.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by SomeDude » Tue Jun 22, 2021 6:26 pm

Kbg wrote:
Tue Jun 22, 2021 10:51 am
Clearly they probably had the worst strategic thinkers on the planet for the first half of the 20th century for whatever reasons.
What were the strategic errors in your view Kbg?
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by vnatale » Sat Jul 03, 2021 7:49 pm

From the current book I am reading on Hitler:

In the western campaign, Hitler's convictions about motorized operations and a blitzkrieg strategy ran counter to the views of the older generals, particularly General von Brauchitsch and the Chief of Staff, General Halder. The outcome of the western campaign strongly enhanced Hitler's supremacy, and Field Marshal Keitel called him the greatest military leader of all times (grdflter Feldherr aller Zeiten-abbre- viated "Grofaz"). Most of the generals agreed that Hitler had an astounding knowledge of military matters. He drew on his experience as an infantry man during World War I, but also acquired impressive knowledge about modern warfare from voracious reading-including the innovative book on tank warfare by General de Gaulle. Hitler was disinclined to stick to established cliches in battle strategy and tactics. As long as Hitler was victorious, the conflicts between him and his generals did not amount to much. He always had his way, because the German generals' belief in authority was stronger than their critique. Some of Hitler's best generals, such as Alfred Jodl and Wolfram von Richthofen, admired his intuition. However, when the fortunes of war changed in the winter of 1940/41, the disagreements became open. The first victim was Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, whom Hitler called a conceited coward. Altogether, Hitler fired half of his field marshals and generals during the course of the war. General Jodl wondered about the nature of such antagonism and weighed the question of whether it was caused by social class differences.34 In fact, this may well have been a factor, though Hitler's sensitivity to criticism and skepticism might have been more important. Hitler required support and unflinching loyalty under all circumstances, victory or defeat. The antagonism between the Fiihrer and many generals gradually became fierce, even though open disagreement was rare. Occasionally, when generals such as Heinz Guderian or von Richthofen stood up to him, Hitler yielded. First and foremost, Hitler expected his generals to be good National Socialists. General von Halder, his Chief of Staff, cited: "Anybody can carry out operations and military tasks. What is required of the Supreme Commander of the Army is the qualification to educate troops in the spirit of National Socialism.."35
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by vnatale » Sat Jul 03, 2021 8:10 pm

Kbg wrote:
Tue Jun 22, 2021 10:51 am

I'm gonna venture I've studied this stuff formally by at least a factor of 2 from anyone else on the board. (How's that for a nice humble preface? :-))

My response will be very unsatisfying: It is really bad military strategy to take on most of the world. You are going to lose every time. May take some time, but the end result is inevitable...the rest is details.

"The decisive factor, Overy contends, for Allied success on the economic and technology front was decidedly effective strategic leadership."

Germany was monumentally cursed with poor strategic thinkers post Bismarck. Some historians have made the argument that Bismarck created the conditions during his life that resulted in epic strategic stupidity after he left the scene. I think the argument is a bit stretched, but clearly they probably had the worst strategic thinkers on the planet for the first half of the 20th century for whatever reasons.


Support for your statement above?

"The destruction of the Sixth Army was a major disaster for Germany. Some 146,000 men were killed in action; 90,000 became prisoners of war, 6,000 of whom returned home. Historians consider it a turning point in the history of Hitler's war. It was the end of the invincibility myth. The summer of 1942 marked Hitler's greatest expansion. German soldiers were at the Caucasus, Ioo miles from Alexandria, and a serious threat was posed by the Japanese to capture India and Australia. The Allies had reason to worry. The fortunes of war, however, changed radically during this time, not only in Russia but in North Africa and the Pacific. The German front in Russia reached from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, and supply routes were overextended. The German air force was no longer equal to the Allied air force. The U-boat war had become less of a threat due to the Allied radar detection devices, and, most of all, the United States potential in manpower and supplies began to be felt."
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by Mark Leavy » Sat Jul 03, 2021 9:28 pm

vnatale wrote:
Sat Jul 03, 2021 8:10 pm
Support for your statement above?
Sometimes the support is that the person making the statement is a more credible expert than you will ever find in journalism.
You have to pay attention to notice such things.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sun Jul 04, 2021 9:29 am

I think kbg is correcter. On that note, kgb what are you talking about wrt your studies you bring up? CSC, functional area, what?
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by Kbg » Tue Jul 06, 2021 6:39 pm

By way of credentials/degrees:

Masters of Military Science and Art
Masters of Air & Space Power Strategy
Masters of National Security and Defense Policy
MBA, BA Economics, Chinese minor

We can debate the details of both WWs endlessly, but I think it is irrefutable Germany during that period had horrendously bad strategists. A nice simple description of strategy is the process of determining ends (your goals), ways (how you are going to accomplish your goals) and means (how much you are willing to pay to accomplish your ends/goals). The Germans themselves KNEW) there was no way they could win two front wars and yet they tried it TWICE!!! They also KNEW having their economy cutoff from the rest of the world was going to be highly problematic in sustaining their war posture for a large drawn out war...and without my bold exclamation marks they chose to ignore this knowledge twice. If Hitler would have stopped after the Sudetenland annexation he easily would have gone down with Bismarck as one of the greatest German statesmen ever (and assuming you throw out the whole Aryan/anti-Jewish ideology thing).

I think most would agree that as a general rule, pound for pound the German army was the best on the planet during the first half of the 20th century, though there are some very good arguments that the Soviets eclipsed the Germans tactically and operationally by mid 1942...that's not a typo 1942, not 1943. Also no question, the Brits had the best Navy who were then succeeded by the American Navy of WW2 and I'd say the same could be said for the Air Forces.

However, I think that was the problem for Germany in that they spent so much time perfecting their operational and tactical prowess that grand strategy went by the wayside. This is not to say there were not people in Germany saying "this is really not a good idea" but those guys never won the argument at the end of the day and during the Hitler era doing so was hazardous to one's health.

Carl von Clausewitz who is known as one of if not THE foremost politico-military theorist in the western tradition (I think rightly so and he was German by the way) said a couple of really key things which I will give the essence of.

1) Military objectives are are the servants of political objectives...Germany had a way of letting, for various reasons during the two periods, these two get switched up or generously said, a bit out of balance.

2) If you start a war, that doesn't mean you get to end it on your terms. The winner decides the terms, period. There's a corollary to this regarding escalation/use of force...just because you want violence to only go to a certain level doesn't mean you get to contain it to that level. Once your opponent raises the ante you meet, raise or fold. Eventually, one or both opponents fold. (US strategists have a really difficult time getting their heads around this one and factoring it into their plans (i.e Vietnam, Afghanistan). In WW2 both Germany and Japan thought the Allies would eventually at least agree to not raising the ante. Never happened and was never going to happen with Germany during the 2nd world war. After WW1 it was "never again." At the start of WW2 it was never again because we are going to crush Germany and destroy it's militaristic/Prussian worldview and culture...which was done.

History's best strategists always have a certain amount of humility and bad strategists almost always have none. In my humble view every strategist should compute their ends ways and mean equations carefully, but also ask themselves...what is going to happen if my foe just will not quit when I want/hope they will...is this thing worth it if that happens? In recent history Vietnam is generally viewed as a classic example of this and I'm pretty sure Afghanistan is going to end up the same way.

Bringing it full circle now to defend my WW2 argument...if you think of the simple strategy paradigm laid out in my second sentence how does anyone think it is a good idea to do anything whereby most of the world's other powers are going to line up to fight you? If this happens you are going to lose because you will not have the means to outlast foes who are willing to "raise" your every "call."

We hold these truths to be self-evident...never take on the planet, you will lose. And I will repeat, the rest is details.

Genghis Kahn, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolph Hitler, The Russian Communist Party...the list goes on...

Getting off topic, I've not been impressed with US strategy since Bush I. I think it has been both bad in that the costs and the benefits have been seriously misaligned and is also lacking any sense of humility...not good for the US long term if this trend doesn't turn around. We are super good at setting goals/objectives but we don't do too great of a job in tallying up the costs and if we are willing to bare them fully. A lot of wishing X will happen just because we want it to. To me Trump's foreign policy was completely frightening. Based on what I know, I believe getting more confrontational with China is a good thing so I was on board with the goal...but if you are going to confront a country that has 3x the people you do, on par or better in many manufacturing technologies and a close run second place economically, you better do so with as many friends as you can get to line up with you. See Clausewitz 1 and 2 above. Compare this with say our Cold War strategy which in the type of circles I used to run in is viewed as probably the first or second best grand strategy the US has ever pulled off. The contender strategy is Washington's revolutionary war approach.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by Xan » Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:30 pm

kbg, I will gladly devour anything you write about WW2, the Cold War, Washington's revolutionary war approach, etc, and I don't think I'm alone. Thanks for the great post.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by pp4me » Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:52 pm

Kbg wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 6:39 pm
We can debate the details of both WWs endlessly, but I think it is irrefutable Germany during that period had horrendously bad strategists.
Reminds me of the war in Vietnam.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by SomeDude » Tue Jul 06, 2021 8:24 pm

KBG what do you think Hitler's long term strategic goal was? I think it was pretty clear it was always to crush the Bolsheviks and gain living space for the German population to expand. Given that was the aim, what was a better way to accomplish it?

They got the Soviet army lined up on the border inside what had been Poland, and swallowed it up and drove to the gates of Moscow within months.

The thread is asking why did the allies win. From your response i got, germany was outnumbered and out produced and had no chance, which is the generally accepted reason. Do you think there's more to it, like, knocking the UK out by focusing on the Uboat arm sooner instead of the surface fleet or not switching from targeting the RAF and radar stations during the blitz to prep for Sea Lion?


Maybe instead of driving on Moscow a move into the caucus in 41 instead of 42 to secure oil? Or not diverting resources to North Africa that were needed for Fall Blau (the operation the ended with the 6th Army's surrender)? Maybe embrace a role as christian liberators in the Ukraine and Byelorussia to gain troops for the waffen SS and reduce partisan attacks?

Any thoughts on what Germany (or Japan) should/could have done differently to win the war?
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by vnatale » Tue Jul 06, 2021 8:59 pm

Kbg wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 6:39 pm



Bringing it full circle now to defend my WW2 argument...if you think of the simple strategy paradigm laid out in my second sentence how does anyone think it is a good idea to do anything whereby most of the world's other powers are going to line up to fight you? If this happens you are going to lose because you will not have the means to outlast foes who are willing to "raise" your every "call."




Three big "what if's"!

What do you think the outcome would have been if:

1) Germany pursued at Dunkirk which resulting in England then going to peace with Germany.
2) Germany did not attack Russia
3) Germany did not declare war on the United States after Pearl Harbor.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by SomeDude » Tue Jul 06, 2021 9:43 pm

vnatale wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 8:59 pm
Kbg wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 6:39 pm


Bringing it full circle now to defend my WW2 argument...if you think of the simple strategy paradigm laid out in my second sentence how does anyone think it is a good idea to do anything whereby most of the world's other powers are going to line up to fight you? If this happens you are going to lose because you will not have the means to outlast foes who are willing to "raise" your every "call."

Three big "what if's"!

What do you think the outcome would have been if:

1) Germany pursued at Dunkirk which resulting in England then going to peace with Germany.
2) Germany did not attack Russia
3) Germany did not declare war on the United States after Pearl Harbor.
1. Probably a very big error in not pressing the advantage here but France wasn't yet beaten.
2. Attacking the Soviet Union was always the end game. The reds would continue to out-produce the Germans and eventually attack, better to pre-empt them.
3. The USA was already openly at war with Germany, supplying Germany's enemies and shooting german subs on sight. Germany needed unrestricted sub warfare and needed it immediately.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by vnatale » Tue Jul 06, 2021 9:57 pm

SomeDude wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 9:43 pm

vnatale wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 8:59 pm

Kbg wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 6:39 pm



Bringing it full circle now to defend my WW2 argument...if you think of the simple strategy paradigm laid out in my second sentence how does anyone think it is a good idea to do anything whereby most of the world's other powers are going to line up to fight you? If this happens you are going to lose because you will not have the means to outlast foes who are willing to "raise" your every "call."




Three big "what if's"!

What do you think the outcome would have been if:

1) Germany pursued at Dunkirk which resulting in England then going to peace with Germany.
2) Germany did not attack Russia
3) Germany did not declare war on the United States after Pearl Harbor.


1. Probably a very big error in not pressing the advantage here but France wasn't yet beaten.
2. Attacking the Soviet Union was always the end game. The reds would continue to out-produce the Germans and eventually attack, better to pre-empt them.
3. The USA was already openly at war with Germany, supplying Germany's enemies and shooting german subs on sight. Germany needed unrestricted sub warfare and needed it immediately.


1. France did not last long. Six weeks? In comparison to KGB's description of the Germany army being the best...France's military during that six weeks performed miserably.
2. It was the end game. But did not have to be?
3. However, it was England that the United States were supplying. Therefore if #1 happened...the United States would no longer be "at war" with Germany. China supplied the North Koreans with much during The Korean War...but the China and the United States never got into a formal war. China never attempted to attack here and from my memory, we never went into China.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by vnatale » Tue Jul 06, 2021 10:42 pm

Kbg wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 6:39 pm

If Hitler would have stopped after the Sudetenland annexation he easily would have gone down with Bismarck as one of the greatest German statesmen ever (and assuming you throw out the whole Aryan/anti-Jewish ideology thing).




Not that you needed any affirmation for what you wrote above....I just finished reading this:

In the mid-thirties, Hitler's interest shifted to foreign policy and preparation for war. He scored spectacular bloodless successes in his foreign policy: the occupation of the Rhineland, Saar, and Memel, and, most of all, the triumph of incorporating Austria into the Reich and the takeover of the rich bounty of the Sudetenland. This was not enough, and Hitler made his first foreign policy mistake. When Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia he lost the last bit of trust of the Western Allies. He demanded that a corridor to East Prussia be established through Polish territory, and that Danzig become part of the Reich. The Poles balked, strengthened by promises from the British and French. Actually, Hitler was less interested in Danzig than in Polish cooperation in an eventual attack on Russia. To the world's surprise, Hitler's countermove was a treaty with Russia-the pact with the devil. Neither Hitler nor Stalin assumed that the pact would last, although Stalin did not expect that Hitler would break it as soon as he did. Hitler was convinced that war was unavoidable; he just was not certain about when and where he would start it. When he finally attacked Poland, he was surprised that England and France stood behind their treaties. He had gambled himself into an enterprise of enormous consequences.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by vnatale » Tue Jul 06, 2021 10:45 pm

Kbg wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 6:39 pm




More I just read as support for all you'd stated:

After Poland was conquered by Hitler and Stalin, Hitler occupied Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Yugoslavia, and northern France and was clearly the master of continental Europe. For a while, he considered invading England, but then, on the advice of his naval and air force commanders, changed his mind-according to General Jodi, this was the only time this happened. Hitler had become the undisputed master of continental Europe, but huge problems remained unsolved. He had not gained control of Russia's resources, and he had more Jews under his control than before the war. Attempts to induce England to join him in a war against Russia were turned down. Then, in the fall of 1940, Hitler made a fatal decision. Fully aware of Napoleon's fate in starting a two-front war, Hitler decided to attack Russia on his own. He also made the fateful decision to kill the Jews under his control through outright murder or overwork. Hitler felt certain he could defeat Russia in a blitzkrieg, and the military staffs of the Western Allies and Japan shared this opinion. He was wrong. He had an abysmally low opinion of the Russians but ambivalently admired Stalin, in contrast to his views concerning the Western Allied leaders, Roosevelt and Churchill, for whom he felt only hatred and contempt. Then he made another mistake: After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States and Great Britain. After a lightning advance into Russia in the summer and fall of 1941, Hitler was bogged down in mud and snow. His troops were not prepared for a long war under adverse climactic conditions. At that time, Hitler began to wonder whether he could win the war. In the spring of 1942, he made another impressive attempt to emerge as the victor. When his troops reached the Caucasus and were a hundred miles from Alexandria, and Japan for a short time controlled the Pacific, the prospect for the Allies looked grim. Hitler, however, by then lacked the material resources and manpower to win. After Stalingrad and further major defeats in Russia, it was clear that the war was lost. The rout in Africa, the invasion of continental Europe north and south sealed his fate. For a while, through his emissaries, Hitler tried to induce the Allies to negotiate with him on his conditions. The Allies insisted on an unconditional surrender, for Hitler an unacceptable demand.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by vnatale » Tue Jul 06, 2021 11:00 pm

Yet more support for what Kbg had written above....

Being knowledgeable about military matters was of the utmost importance to Hitler.83 According to the generals who worked under him, as well as military historians, Hitler's knowledge of military sciences was impressive. Some of this knowledge can be traced back to his personal experience as a dispatch runner during the First World War, but much was derived from studies of military publications. Hitler rarely gave credit to his sources, such as to the eminent military analyst von Clausewitz. His decisions were based more on his intuition than expertise, but they led to impressive victories in the lightning campaigns of the early period of the war. In the later part of the war, however, his intuition failed him. Several military historians noted that Hitler overvalued the personal qualities of leadership and troops, such as the will to win and the assumption that nothing is impossible.84 This -or his disdain and ignorance of military economics-led to an underestimation of the strength of his opponents, specifically, Russia and the United States. Another major deficiency was Hitler's reluctance to withdraw from conquered terrain and territory. His major mistakes, however, were not military but political-the initiation of a two-front war, the declaration of war against the United States, his disregard for the economic power of his enemies, and the brutal and inhumane treatment of the populations of conquered territories.
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by vnatale » Tue Jul 06, 2021 11:38 pm

Hitler's self-assessment regarding his strategic errors...


Amongst others, Hitler offered the following explanations in the Bormann papers: (i) The putsch had not succeeded because he had no choice but to act. (2) He did not think that the destruction of the Czech state, which cost him the last bit of trust from his opponents, was a mistake. Instead, he believed he had acted too late. (3) He did not pursue the British at Dunkirk because he was afraid of risking his tanks and did not want to humiliate the British, who he hoped would join him in his fight against the Bolsheviks. (4) He did not think the attack on Russia had been a mistake because he believed Russia would collapse quickly in a blitzkrieg (an opinion that was shared by Allied military staffs) and because the conquest of Russian soil and mineral treasures was of the utmost importance. The mistakes in Russia-the three-pronged attack with much delay, the debacle at Stalingrad, the late withdrawal in the Crimea-Hitler blamed on the lack of fighting spirit and betrayal on the part of his general staff. (5) A major misjudgment was his declaration of war against the United States, especially when he had failed to persuade Japan to open a front against Russia in Manchuria. President Roosevelt, hampered by U.S. isolationism, felt Hitler did him a favor. Hitler, however, was tremendously relieved by the Japanese actions, saying, "A millstone was lifted from my heart."
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Re: Why the Allies Won

Post by Kbg » Wed Jul 07, 2021 12:56 pm

I could have this conversation all day long. :-) Fun stuff.

Let me hit the three big "ifs" first

What do you think the outcome would have been if:

1) Germany pursued at Dunkirk which resulting in England then going to peace with Germany.

Sort of irrelevant, there was this guy named Churchill who was not going to give up and he had been elected because the British people had decided they were "all in" on the war which is why Churchill was elected. (See Clausewitz #2) Germany had no choice but to invade the British Isles if it was going to take the UK out of the war; however, the Germans feared the British Navy and knew they needed a modicum of air superiority to get the troops across the channel. To me it's a coin toss on the western front as to whether D-Day or the Battle of Britain was the most important battle/event of the entire war. For those who are army centric...one simple assertion. No Battle of Britain win, no D-Day, full stop. (Well maybe not, by late 1944 the American military machine could have pulled off a successful amphibious invasion anywhere on the plant. As a minimum a continental amphib invasion wouldn't have looked anything like that actual D-Day if we wouldn't have launched from the UK)

2) Germany did not attack Russia

No doubt this is the thing that put the Germans on the path to losing the war. But I also think this is where the German military culture/hubris comes in...so you can't pin this one on Hitler alone. It was a team decision and effort. There's SO much more behind the attack on Russia than the above though...I've spent a fair amount of time in WW1 and the interwar years and if you have a deep knowledge of what happened in that part of the world (e.g. geographically from Prussia to the Ukraine and everything in between) from say 1914 to the early 30s there was an awful lot of baggage that had built up between everyone, Hitler just happened to be the catalyst. Also, there was this guy Stalin who probably would have started war deliberately or accidentally eventually anyway. No war is foreordained, but the conditions were ripe for one even without Hitler being around. Finally, the German mindset was very similar to the WW1 one...let's have the war now as the Russians will just be stronger later.

Side note there's this Soviet guy Mikhail Tukhachevskii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tukhachevsky Most credit him with creating the Soviet military doctrine that was as good or better than Germany's blitzkrieg doctrine...but they are close cousins for sure. Deep Battle is an excellent book if you like wonking out on military theory.

3) Germany did not declare war on the United States after Pearl Harbor.

Also sort of irrelevant. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor this eliminated any excuse for the not US getting into the war. However, I'm 99.9% positive if Hitler wouldn't have declared war the US would have figured out a way to declare war on Germany. British/US combined war planning was WAY down the road by Dec 1941. Hitler was a known element by this point and everyone agreed he was the big worry. Don't forget, the Tripartite pact was signed in September of 1940 and while it was no where near the tight cooperation most of the Allied powers achieved it certainly provided enough cover for Roosevelt to have declared war on all three of its members. The only way this question remotely works is you add...and the Japanese never did anything they did in Nov-Dec 1941.

Long Term Goals of Hitler...literally, world domination. The grand strategy was to take out the Soviet Union, head down to Africa secure its west coast, cross the Atlantic into South America, join up with several South American countries and head north. He thought a war with the US was inevitable. IIRC this was all to happen 1947-48ish.

On how we won and why Germany/Japan did not

Why we won
There are a lot of reasons, but both German and Japanese generals/admirals were blown away and commented extensively in post war interviews that they were just completely overwhelmed by material superiority which I think you know I'm going to say was the most important thing. I really believe that. However, in Asia the US Navy was incredibly good as were the US Marines, US Army (who gets total short shrift historically) and the combined Army/Navy strategy for the Pacific was superlative. Also by 1944 allied generals were as good or better than any on the opposing side...war is brutal in rooting out the incompetent. Actually, I'd argue Japanese senior military leaders got stupider as the war dragged on. I don't think they were natively stupid as human beings, but their culture drove them to do really stupid things militarily.

Why they lost (beyond my main premise)
In the military there is a saying: Perfection is the enemy of good enough. In my view there is no doubt that by mid 1942 all the Allies were good enough and we just progressively got better and they just progressively got worse. While the combatants had no idea at time, I think with hindsight the decisive part of the war in the Pacific and European theaters happened in the summer of 1942

Pacific - Midway was in June 42, Guadalcanal was over by Dec effectively
Europe - German offensive definitively halted by the fall.

So, that's my .02
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