Why would you think I was offended or upset? So far as I’m concerned, this was a simple fact-based discussion. Enjoy.
Chunky, I seem to have hurt you in a way you did not quite deserve. I apologize, and hope you will accept that. Shall we say that we had a communication failure, that I did not understand where you were coming from? In return, I’d like to suggest that when everyone else here (or elsewhere on the Internet) tells you that you’re mistaken about something basic, you at least consider the possibility they are correct? If you do not, I fear you will have more experiences such as what happened here.
I hope you enjoy your time on the Internet and our forum.
Hi Ardee
In no way have you hurt me, I have been around to long for this, what I will say though, every one has they’re own opinions as to what happened and what did not happen, and I respect your views, after saying this though, I do have my own opinions, on what did or what did not happen, and if they clash with the majority, then I’m not sorry, I am not a robot that accepts every thing their told.
Chunky
Hi Chunky,
It’s good to read your feelings were not hurt. Your posts certainly seemed to suggest otherwise.
We all had actually been disagreeing over your interpretation of the word “novel,” and whether or not a non-fiction book was actually fiction. And while it is certainly not a good thing to think like a robot, it can be just as bad to not listen when everyone else tells you that you are incorrect. Since you have “been around” so long, I’m sure you’ve already learned that when everybody else is telling you that you’re wrong about such basic facts, they will be correct more than 99.9% of the time. Forming your own opinions about things is great, but being unable or unwilling to admit when they are mistaken and change your opinions accordingly is…something else.
And with that, I’ll consider my part of this side discussion to be closed. And like I said before, I hope you enjoy your time on the Internet and our forum.
Declaring to the USA because the USA got a big strong army so they got enough soldiers USSR got a big army too but Germany can handle them because they are powerful (1940-1944) 1945 Germany is weak because the German army got old man and children.
In 1941 the US had a relatively small army and had next to no armour - much of its equipment was outdated or in short supply - it did however have the industrial potential to rectify that in a reasonably short time.
The German army even in 1940 was starting to suffer from lack of sufficient manpower and equipment - this only grew worse as the war continued. Standards of entry were lowered long before 1944 with children (Hitler Youth) and women making up a large part of the AA defences, the so called stomach battalions amongst others. Large numbers of former POW’s formed into static Divisions with obsolete and captured equipment (even the Wehrmacht especially the Heer suffered from 1939, forced to use captured equipment that was often not fit for purpose).
Yes, the US military was, at least as far as land forces were concerned, tiny when they were drawn into WW2, and was generally quite ill-prepared (except in the matter of horses and mules, of which they had an abundance). However, any intelligent observer could have worked out that, once roused, the US would be a very formidable adversary. At least one intelligent observer did so. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto commented at the time that, following Pearl Harbour, he could “run wild” in the Pacific for one year, perhaps two. After that, he held out no optimistic scenario - “anyone who has seen the oilfields of Texas, or the automobile plants of Detroit, understands this.”. Yamamoto had himself seen the oilfields, vehicle plants, steel mills and so on when serving as a Naval Attaché to the Embassy of Japan to the US. There is a lot to be said for flexible thinking based on good information … Best regards, JR.
It should be noted that while the U.S. Army was relatively small at the end of 1941, it was still a vastly bigger and more capable army than the one fielded in 1939, where the U.S. had less than 200,000 soldiers under its command. Conscription was instituted in the United States, for the first time in its peacetime history, and the Army expanded to over one million men under arms, IIRC. Still not nearly approaching the mobilized armies it was to face, but enough to form a training cadre to vastly expand manpower in the coming months and years. But yes, the tank force was still quite in a sad state of affairs in 1941, but newer types were already in production such as the stop-gap M3 Grant/Lee tank and plans for the M4 Sherman were well underway…
In my personal opinion was the fact that he declared war on the U.S.A and the U.S.S.R. Now with two major super powers that want Germany to fall Hitler’s chances of winning the war went from 80% to just 10%. The fact that he attacked Russia was out of pure stupidity and on top of that unspeakable to declare war on America right after
Well, the late unlamented Fuhrer attacked the Soviet Union - in line with his usual practice, he did not declare war on it. In general, Hitler did not believe in such formalities. As regards the great exception, his declaration of war on the USA, I have to say that I have never completely understood this. Practice both in WW1 and WW2 showed little respect to mutual treaty obligations as regards entering into conflicts involving treaty-bound allies, and one might imagine that Hitler’s ultimately disastrous declaration of war on the US was avoidable. Perhaps he hoped for strategic advantages from direct support from Japan ? Perhaps he subscribed to the Japanese view of the corruption and decadence of the US that would result in a lack of determination to sustain a war against Germany; and, in any event, the US seemed a long way away at the time. Perhaps he had just become pissed off at what he might have regarded as the undeclared war of the US against Germany that involved increasingly substantial material support to the UK, facilitated by various legal and constitutional subterfuges. Who knows ? In any event, the declaration of war made Roosevelt’s work in involving the US in a general world war that much easier. One point - getting back to the Soviet Union, this was campaign was an essential part of Hitler’s pseudo-Wagnerian programme for the establishment of “Living Space” in the East. The power of general-purpose nuttiness should never be underestimated, especially when assessing the actions of crazed dictators … Best regards, JR.
You’re tripping over yourself rather less than, as demonstrated by you incisive comments on my posts, I am.
In the interests of not embarrassing myself further, I think it would be a very good idea to drop this whole line. :oops:
Me neither.
But if one churns through this link on Hitler’s justification for declaring war on the US https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/hitler_declares_war.html the thing that stands out is the strong thread of German victimisation thought which goes back to the 19th century which in the minds of some Germans saw Germany as encircled by hostile powers without Germany recognising that its belligerence contributed to the concerns of those powers about Germany as a threat, e.g. Tirpitz’s capital ship race with Britain to gain ascendancy on the seas.
To declare war to URSS was not a mistake. Prior to the war, Hitler´s power was based on his ability to stop urss to conquer european countries. Only after the war and with Hitler`s defeat, urss was able to take the eastern european countries. That happened because urss was one of the winners.
Hitler´s hugest mistake was to make enemies in both sides. If he would just keep himself within German boundaries, he would be able to continue having occidental support and possibly he would be able to win the war with his occidental allies. There is no way to win a war when you make enemies all arround. No war was won without other powerful countries support.
Regarding the last couple of comments - yes, the issue of being surrounded by hostile powers was a significant consideration in the development of WW2. This did, actually, go back to the WW1 and pre-WW1 period. There is a pretty compelling argument that Germany’s pre-WW1 naval arms race with Britain triggered a situation in which the latter felt impelled to intervene in Continental politics to secure alliances that would produce a sort of balance of deterrence/terror on the Continent to counter the German seaborne challenge to Britain. This sort of thinking has a distinct mid–19th century flavor about it. Furthermore, as an exercise in the establishment of a new, post-Metternich, post-Bismarck “balance of power”, it clearly did not work. It produced a sort of military clock that, once triggered, resulted in a general war. Maybe those involved in the current Ukraine crisis should give consideration to this process … Yours from the EU’s Eastern Front, contemplating the Krimean “historical injustice”, JR
In general German isn’t the best to fight a war. they are surrounded on all sides by other countries. It is just not a wise decision. A foolish mistake really
In order to establish regional hegemony, the state will need to rearm and balance against those enemies by either diplomacy or threats. France, for example, desired a strong Eastern Europe in order to balance a resurgent Germany to the east; and Great Britain desired a strong Royal Navy to contain Germany and prevent an invasion by a resurgent European power in the case that soft power or balancing fails. The goal of hegemony is to become the strongest economic or military force in the region, so that no power can challenge that force. A great example is the United States. No country in that hemisphere can pose a serious challenge to the United States; no other state can project that kind of power overseas: that’s the legacy of the Monroe Doctrine and the World War II conventions.
That’s not to say that challenging geography isn’t impossible or foolish, just that countries surrounded by enemies often resort to force and threats rather than diplomacy in their foreign policy relations because survival of the state and the fears of being encircled when attacked are the two most important considerations of the belligerent state.
I’m currently reading Paul Ham’s new book “1914 - The Year the World Ended” http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/paul-ham/1914-the-year-the-world-ended-9781864711424.aspx which covers the reasons leading to WWI. He’s not my favourite military topic author as I found his much applauded (largely by reviewers who clearly had little or no prior knowledge of the topic) work on Kokoda http://www.harpercollins.com.au/books/Kokoda-Paul-Ham/?isbn=9780732282325 rather pedestrian and with mistakes of the sort journalists attempting to write history typically make in overstating things or failing to research them properly. It falls well short of Peter Brune’s and Raymond Paull’s much better informed, more restrained, and less journalistic accounts, but that’s the way of modern military, and other, history down here where some very readable writers have large followings because they give life to history, if not always a correct life. Still, better to create interest in lively written history than to have a population utterly ignorant of it.
Be all that as it may, Ham’s 1914 book, albeit fairly clearly based largely on trawling through a lot of secondary sources from various historians, is illuminating in tracing the causes of WWI in far more detail and in drawing together a much wider range of historical threads than I’ve encountered in my limited moderately serious and long ago reading on the topic by authors such as Barbara Tuchman.
I’m only half way through it, but for the first time I’m beginning to understand why an assassination in the seemingly obscure Balkans lit a fuse that exploded a bomb that detonated other European bombs that became WWI.
I’m also beginning to see Hitler’s anti-Russian sentiments and aggression as merely an extension of sentiments and aggression which existed in Germany, and Austro-Hungary before and which led to WWI.
I don’t see anything like the same background in the current Russia / Ukraine issue (not least because Germany is dependent upon Russian energy, and knows it), although there are undoubtedly ancient and festering animosities within the former USSR which threaten to plunge parts of it into the same sort of obscenities which have been common in those parts for the past century or so, and most recently and most obscenely in the former republic of Yugoslavia.
What was it said by Harold Macmillan - “events, dear boy, events” ? Events, triggered by the European Union’s incredibly ill-judged courtship of the Ukraine, seem to proceeding along a trajectory that is beyond anybody’s control. As regards parallels - one that might be considered is Russia’s political imperative in 1914 to protect “little Slav brothers” against Austrian aggression. Something similar now appears to be motivating Russian actins in Crimea and (possibly) eastern Ukraine. It is very difficult to predict where this might lead - but we must sincerely hope that the process can be controlled - by someone. Best regards, JR.
I apologize for lengthening this already extensive discussion, but I have just finished reading all the replies and stumbled upon yours, Nickdfresh. After reading Ribbentrop’s adjutant (or Secretary’s) typewritten notes and Ribbentrop’s letters to Hitler, I came to a completely different conclusion. Throughout 1940, Ribbentrop seemed to encourage Japan’s Foreign Ambassador, Oshima, to ignore British and American sanctions and attack in the Phillipines and Singapore. Ribbentrop, bolstered by the victories in Poland and France, told a surprised Oshima that Germany’s might in the war was at its climax, and the alliance is thus secure, as the US navy could not hope to compete with the combined might of German and Japanese naval armour. (Raeder, I believe made this comment; other wise, the voices are not marked.) Ribbentrop further assured Oshima of Germany’s commitment.
But Ribbentrop did express some misgivings, stating that Germany could no longer avoid her obligations to Japan, as the Far East didn’t immediately concern Germany. In fact, when the United States reacted to Japan’s attack, the ambassador swiftly called on Ribbentrop’s promises and Mussolini’s treaty obligations and demanded a timely response to the US’s entry into the war.
It appears that Ribbentrop’s informal diplomacy and ostentatious puffing sealed Germany’s fate.
both U.S.S.R & U.S.A would eventually declare war on Germany, we saw it comming, as did Stalin.