It’s an interesting point, 1000, but have we forgotten that during the invasion of North Africa, a very large proportion of the ships staged directly from the east coast of the US to Morocco with no intervening stops? My father-in-law served on a coast guard corvette escorting a convoy of ships to North Africa.
Although it would have been very difficult without England, an invasion of England from the US would not have been unthinkable. The issue is more moot than we realize for the simple reason that the Germans had no ability, and no capacity whatsoever for successfully invading Great Britain. Sea Lion makes for great toilet paper, but it is more of a fantasy than a plan. No landing craft; no seaborne assault vessels; no fighters capable of staying over England longer than 20 minutes because of fuel shortages (no range); no heavy bombers of the strategic variety; and no navy worthy of the name compared to the Home Fleet. It would have been a slaughter in the Channel and the Germans would have been its victims.
My God, “a good man”? Mr. Speer, congratulations! You are living proof that you can be swimming in a vat of facts and be drowning from a lack of knowledge at the same time.
Naturally, you can say anything you like, but aren’t you just a little embarassed?
Since you so graciously offered up your opinion of Herr Hitler, let me offer up my own: He was evil incarnate, a murderous, mangled soul masquerading as a human being and living among a people who defied logic and proved to the world that you can indeed fool most of the people, most of the time. If Hitler was a “good man”, who do you think was a “bad man”?
I don’t like to gainsay you, Mr Rising Sun, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was just about the most stupid folly imaginable. If the Japanese had actively desired to show the world how foolhardy and unrealistic they were, this was it. We talk a lot these days about the importance of having a strategy to win a war ahead of time, and a strategy for ending it (successfully) as well. The Japanese had neither. Beyond a sneak attack on a Sunday morning, their plan was…er…ahhh, well… nothing.
For one thing, had the Japanese NOT attacked US interests but merely attacked the British and Dutch interests, the US would have done precisely nothing. Not because that is what Roosevelt would have wanted, but because Congress - unlike today - would not have declared war on a country that had not attacked us.
The Japanese were ignorant in the extreme about how the US would react and did not appreciate that a President (then) couldn’t simply do what the Japanese warlords could do, which was, whatever they wanted.
The other side of this bizarre coin is that Hitler made exactly the same error in delcaring war on the US! If he had not done so, Roosevelt would NOT have been able to declare war on Germany because constitutionally he could not have done it. Hitler walked into the propeller blade and lived to regret it big time. At least long enough to put a bullet into his mouth.
The Japanese did not actually “persuade” themselves that they needed to “liberate” the peoples of Asia, but did use that interesting lie to gull the peoples of Asia for a time. They didn’t give a tinker’s dam about liberating anyone - what they wanted was resources, specifically oil from the Dutch East Indies, which they succeeded in getting. The Chinese were well aware of what Japanese “liberation” looked like.
Since the Japanese had no plan beyond sinking ships at Pearl Harbor - the Japanese version of “shock and awe”- they would then be subject to other people’s plans from then on. It is safe to say that Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was the surest guarantee that they would would lose the war. The seeds of their own defeat were contained in their first victory, an event rich in irony.
Consider that the Japanese sank not a single carrier at Pearl Harbor despite the fact that their own primary weapon in carrying out that attack was the carrier. Consider as well that they did not attack the massive oil storage tanks on the hillsides above Pearl, and did not significantly damage the port facilities themselves. Finally, consider that in only six months after hostilities began the main first line carrier strength of the Imperial Navy lay at the bottom of the sea around Midway Island. It was over, but in typical Japanese fashion, admission of defeat was simply not an option.
What were they thinking? A textbook case of one stupid decision after another leading to its inevitable denoument.
I don’t for a moment challenge the fact that Japan embarked upon its war to grab an empire by conquest and to replace the European colonial powers with Japan, but there was quite a deal of popular and intellectual discussion before Pearl Harbor on Japan’s philosophical bases for exapanding into Asia.
I think that many Japanese managed to persuade themselves that they were on a noble mission to free the colonial peoples in Asia from the yoke of the same oppressors that were frustrating Japan’s ambitions, notably America and Britain.
It was similar to the process of justifying something they wanted to do as we see now with politicians and influential people and ordinary people in America, Britain and Australia justifying their attack upon Iraq as being a noble mission to bring liberty and democracy to the Iraqi people (but only after the war to deal with WMD’s and definitely not to effect regime change didn’t actually find any WMD’s and converted into a democratic crusade to change an evil regime, which a lot of people think it was about from the beginning because nobody in government ever mentions WMD’s now but just bang the democracy drum).
Here’s something I wrote in another thread.
[i]Here’s a probably contentious proposition, which I happen to believe, for consideration: In WWII Japan’s expansionist theories had moral justification according to Western thought, and Germany’s didn’t. In this area Japan was morally and intellectually superior to Germany.
There was a lot of vigorous intellectual, press, political and commercial discussion in Japan in the 1920’s and 1930’s about Japan’s destiny and place in the world. It was stimulated by Japan’s inability to provide the resources for its rapidly expanding industries and to accommodate its rapidly expanding population. This led to what appears, superficially, to be a Japanese version of lebensraum. Unlike the German example, Japan’s theory was based on more noble principles of liberation of colonial peoples rather than the Nazi idea of killing and displacing untermensch to make room for the conquerors.
[Tatsuo Kawai’s relatively short 1938 book “The Goal of Japanese Expansionism” is a concise and masterly exposition of Japanese thinking, which covers some of the following aspects of Japanese thinking. Unlike most pre-war Japanese thinking, it’s still available in English translation.]
Many Japanese quite reasonably saw that the European and American powers had subjugated and exploited Asia and Asians, in the widest geographical and cultural senses, for their own benefit. India, Burma, Malaya, Indo-China, Netherlands East Indies, and so on. Japan saw its destiny as using its power to liberate these oppressed and exploited peoples from the Western colonial yoke. While there is an element of rationalising Japanese territorial and economic expansionist ambitions in these views, they also represented a genuine expression of the resentment Japan and other Asian nations felt for the humiliating treatment and exploitation they had received from the West.
Unlike Nazi lebensraum, which essentially was the idea that Germany’s wants constituted imperative needs which justified the slaughter and displacement of untermensch too weak to hold their territory against the racially and militarily superior Germans, the Japanese expansionist theories were based on a genuine desire to overthrow the colonial powers and to liberate people in those colonies.
The Japanese idea was that the liberated peoples would join a mutually beneficial trading bloc freed of Western exploitation for the benefit of all Asian peoples. Although when we cut through the noble liberation philosophy we end up with Japan conveniently at the head of and benefitting most from this trading bloc.
The reality was that Japan would largely replace the colonial powers at the head of this Japanese controlled trading bloc of Asian nations. Despite the notorious Japanese brutality in various events in China and during WWII, the fact remains that the positive Japanese ideas lacked the negative murderous brutality inherent in Nazi lebensraum ideas.
Viewed in their contemporary context, Japan’s ideas actually represented positive and advanced colonial liberation thinking along the same lines that became orthodox human rights ideas in the West following the collapse of European colonialism in Asia, paradoxically brought on by Japan’s war 1941-45.
Conversely, Nazi lebensraum ideas represented the ‘might is right’ / ‘we do it because we can’ thinking underpinning the colonial expansion of the Western powers before Germany achieved national unity in the latter part of the 19th century, after which it wanted to catch up with the colonial powers when there wasn’t anything left to grab that was worth having. These imperial desires in part underpinned Germany’s ambitions in WWI. By the time the Nazis got into power, these, by the standards of early 20th century Europe unremarkable, imperial desires had been turned into a wholly negative and utterly brutal and inhumane concept which was an aberration in European thinking since the Enlightenment, and earlier.
Japan’s expansionist ideas underpinned by liberation of colonial peoples were much more consistent with the European Enlightenment and with today’s thought on human rights and self-determination.
Japan’s intellectual and moral position was consistent with its rapid adoption of the Western ideas forced upon it as a consequence of Commodore Perry’s blackmail.
Germany’s intellectual and moral position, to the extent that it is represented by Nazi ideas, constituted the abandonment of all the noble principles of European thought that Japan took up.[/i]
i think that the bigest mistakes are that first had to take Moscow rather than ukraine… second lost to many time to take yugoslavia and of course greece and kreta.
I would like to chime in on this discussion, I didn’t read all the replies. But I have read most.
I voted for the sake of voting because I believe both hitlers Soviet Campgain and the mere fake he was ignorant enough not to listen to the greatest minds of his army.
His field Marshals were some of the best military minds on the battle field most of which had many, many years experience on the battlefield, If I was him I would of definatly been leaning on them for a overwhelming german victory, I mean look at some of the key battles of ww2 that had The furher listened to his appointment field commanders would claimed victory.
I also agree that the effort of taken the soviets, was a little bit futile but not impossible, I believe a couple of members stated that at the time of invasion USSR was econmically weak and wasn’t able to produce the nessecary equipment. With that said if that butthead LISTENED to his commanders they have completed they’re mission. Also noone has mentioned the fact that the russian winter contributed to many delays and unneeded causlities.
just my 2 cents feel free to correct me if I’m wrong I’m here to learn.
I’d say attacking the USSR. The German military actually suffered about 88% percent of its losses on the Eastern front. If the entire German military was on the Western front, WWII would definitely have been a German victory.
I would say his biggest mistake was being born. However when it comes to the war which I assume is the intended purpose of the question I would say to generate a two front situation yet again.
As long as Britain was still in the war I would’ve never started anything like Barbarossa, even if Britain wasn’t exactly a threat in 1941. It is never a smart idea to leave a business unfinished, so to speak.
I highly doubt that Stalin would’ve ever tried to challenge the Wehrmacht in the east, as long as germany wasn’t heavily commited in major land battles in the west. He was much to cautious for that, he always feared, that the west would then cooperate with germany. And without battles in the east I doubt the Allies would’ve ever been able to seriously challenge Germany on the continent despite overwhelming superiority at sea. So war would’ve dragged on with Uboats vs. Convoys and RAF vs. Luftwaffe until no one really would’ve wanted that anymore. Maybe major help to the African ToO. No declaration of war on the US of course, instead a letter of condolence about the treacherous attack on pearl harbor :D. Roosevelt would never get the Congress to declare war on germany when they were already at war in the pacific. Especially if Germany continues to show willingness for a negotiated peace with gb. Churchill would never agree to that, but I assume sooner or later the british public wouldn’t see any more sense in the struggle, as neither side would be capable to seriously threaten the others position.
To be sensible Hitler thought he knew it all… over all an idiot… But… you have to give him credit he and Roosevelt united their nation and turned it into a superpower after a great depression.
Now to the facts… had Hitler not been elected chancellor and some one like say Rommel was in charge of every thing wed be doomed, nuff said. But as history tells us we got the idiot who invaded Poland witch wasn’t too bad then Belgium fallowed by France and Denmark.
Then, when he was bombing the British air fields he got madd over a couple of bombs the British placed in his capitol of Berlin. So he bombed London instead, big no no.Then there was Russia, now that was stupid now Britain had her air power somewhat relived and Hitler has two fronts. Not to mention the fact that Donitz wanted more U-boats before the war ever started and would have liked to have waited until say 43 or 44 to really go all out.
What a question.
Ofcourse Hitler’s biggest mistake was attacking USSR when it was almost winter.
Besides that Hitler was turned completely nuts in that period, that’s why his 2nd biggest mistake was eliminating Rommel and a bunch of other German soldiers.
Ignoring the fact that Rommel was only one of many competent commander the Germans had, he’d already been eliminated from the fighting about six weeks after D Day when he received a head wound when strafed by Allied aircraft on 17 July.
It’s unlikely that his return to the front, which was prevented by being implicated in the 20 July assassination attempt against Hitler, would have altered the eventual result. He didn’t manage to stop the Allies consolidating their beachhead and advancing while he was in command from D Day.
It’s debatable whether he was part of the plot; or just guilty by association with some of the plotters; or unwittingly implicated by the plotters among themselves proposing him as a future German leader if the plot succeeded; or wrongly implicated by enemies who used it to sink him; or a combination of some or all of the above.
His wife always maintained that he was opposed to any coup d’etat.
Google it and you’ll probably find all the theories.
If summer wasn’t the time to launch the attack, when do you suggest Hitler should have launched it to avoid the 1941-2 winter? Mid-winter 1940-1?
Instead of making ill-informed comments which merely display your ignorance and arrogance, do a bit of research and find out why Barbarossa was launched when it was and why it failed to achieve the aims it very nearly achieved on the intended timelines.
Most things went wrong by the attack on moscow.
On the 30th of september, Guderian started with operation Typhoon the attack on Moscow and reached the Orel. Two days later the Germans started the attack in the north and within a week there were nine Soviet army’s cut off and isolated in smaller area’s at the west of Vjazma and Brjansk, that’s why another 600.000 soldiers of the Red Army surrendered.
Not Stalin, not Stavka could have imagined that the Germans started their offensive so late in the year.
But the weather helped them. At the end of the first week of october the heavy fall rains started. They slowed the German advance down and turned the landscape into mud.
Already in the first week of october there was snow in Russia. Most of the German units were fighting from the 22th of june without substitution.
Hardly nobody had winter clothes with him so it was impossible to stay outside at night. The warm food was mostly frozen when it reached the frontlines. Many soldiers stayed alive by stealing clothes of dead soviets.
At the 27th of november the German panzer troops had reached the Wolga on less then 32 km of Moscow.
But the Germans needed to fall back on the 5th of december.
The next day, when the Germans were falling back, Zjoekov attacked them with all his force.
Hitlers dream of ruling the Soviet Union before september was lost and the German people realised that the war could take long.
The air defence of the Reich was priority now.
The losses of operation Barbarossa were enormous. At the beginning of december the Ostheer lost 743.000 men and they needed 340.000 more men, that was like the half of the infantry. In Germany there were only 33.000 soldiers available.
These losses were nothing in comparation with the losses of the Red Army.
Between june and december there were almost 3.000.000 soldiers dead and almost 3.500.000 men were prisoners of war.
The German command consoled themself with the thought that these massive lost, the battle of the Soviets was done.
But this wasn’t true.
