Both my mother and father were in the US Navy during WW II; my mother served as a parachute rigger at Moffett Field in California, my father was a carrier pilot and flew SBD’s the first year of the war, initially on the old Ranger in the Atlantic on Neutrality Patrol, then was transferred to the Enterprise just before Pearl Harbor.
That inspired me to read everything I could get my hands on about the Pacific War. Currently I’m reading “Empires In The Balance” by H. P. Willmott. And next I will probably re-read “Fire In The Sky” by Eric Bergerud.
My wife is Chinese and former Australian citizen; she was born after WW II, but her parents and older siblings were on the island of Borneo when WW II broke out and experienced at first hand the Japanese occupation of that island. When I met them and heard their stories, I was appalled and fascinated at the same time.
As I indicated before, There are so many interesting questions about WW II in the Pacific, and the more I read about it, the more questions seem to be raised.
interest the germans,Japan was in the axis side,Hiter new construction was the Messerschmitt Me 264 a long range scout plane.
If Japan helps the Germans in the Soviet front that time,Hitler won the Europian,English and the African seat of war.
Take a guess if the germans captured whole Europe,England,Soviet Union&Middle East,the Kaukazus,and Afrika,who’s next?
That’s just never going to happen. The flaw in the Axis thinking was that they could attack and capture each region individually, one at a time, and while they were doing that, the rest of the world would just stand idly by and let them have their way.
It didn’t work that way. The Axis never had enough war-making capability to win their objectives and in the end three pathetic little countries were fighting practically the whole world; end of story.
The essential flaw in ‘Axis thinking’ was that it didn’t exist.
The Allies had a common aim and devoted their resources to it, being ‘Germany first’ and then Japan.
The Axis powers, as you say, just pursued their own objectives, without regard to the interests or objectives of their Axis partners. The most egregious example is Italy with its absurdly over-ambitious thrusts into North Africa and Greece which required Germany to intervene to rescue Italy, with adverse consequences for Germany’s thrust into the USSR but probably of no real consequence to Germany’s ultimate failure in that enterprise.
Although there were serious disagreements and divisions between the Allies on various issues, there was no lack of consensus about the common aim of defeating the Axis powers and devoting their resources to that aim. The Axis powers never went close to achieving that level of common purpose.
It’s true that the three major Axis partners, Germany, Italy, and Japan, did not have common goals and objectives, except in each case, the goal was to expand their respective empires. This meant that they pursued quite different geographic objectives; circumstances conspired to drive them to different political/military strategies.
The Allies, on the other hand had only one goal, to defeat the most threatening Axis power, Germany. This meant that, while there might be different military strategies advocated to achieve that goal, there was only a single objective and all resources could be committed to achieve that objective.
I think, however, to say that “Axis thinking did not exist” is to completely misstate the case.
Obviously, Hitler gave a great deal of thought to his objectives and goals; he even wrote a book about them. Hitler clearly hoped to be able to achieve his ultimate goal in a phased manner; a series of political/military campaigns, including, if required, a sequence of short, limited objective, wars against single opponents, or combinations, who were not unreasonably powerful when compared to Germany’s modest resources.
The Japanese leadership also had made certain political calculations relating to the balance of power and also considered it could achieve it’s goal of empire expansion by staging a period of aggressive military action against foes preoccupied by a major European war, followed by negotiations aimed at what they viewed as a reasonable compromise between costly warfare and acceptable territorial concessions.
In both cases, the logic, on it’s face, was not unreasonable. However, the underlying assumptions were either false, or hopelessly optimistic. In the case of the Japanese, they assumed, correctly, that the European masters of the territory they coveted would, due to the war then raging in Europe, not be able to successfully contest Japanese aggression. The Japanese assumptions regarding the material resources of the US, however, were gross underestimates, and their assumptions relative to the political will of the US were simply wrong.
Hitler badly overestimated Germany’s military might and fatally underestimated the will of both the Soviets and the British. This led to a two-front war he could not win.
Strangely enough, two of Japan’s leaders, who should have been among the most knowledgeable about American resources and will, played leading roles in, first, putting the seal of inevitability on a war between Japan and the United States, and second, starting that war in a manner calculated to make a negotiated settlement impossible.
It was Matsuoka (Frank) Yosuke who, as Japanese Foreign Minister in 1940, advocated joining Germany and Italy in the Tripartite Pact. This pact, in my opinion made an eventual war between Japan and the US inevitable. Yet Matsuoka, who had spent nine years in America as a student, and a further two as First Secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Washington, claimed that Japanese membership in the Axis would cause the US to accord Japan more respect and lead to a toned down American foreign policy.
The other personage was no other than Yamamoto Isoroku, the Admiral who spent several years in the United States, and was acquainted with many Americans in the Naval and Washington Establishments. Yamamoto was solely responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the nature of which, insured that the Pacific war would be neither limited, nor the subject of negotiations between Japan and The US.
Another point I would like to make is that, even if Japan and Germany had been willing to engage in much more war time cooperation against the Allies, neither country had the resources to make it possible. Japan and Germany did not have anywhere near enough logistical shipping to make military cooperation practical anywhere in the world. In any case, coordination of Axis military enterprises was made extremely difficult due to the fact that the British and American navies effectively controlled the sea routes between Japan and Germany. Cooperation between Japan and Germany prior to, and in, WW II was limited to exchanges of technical data relative to certain chemical processes such as synthetic fuel production, and military weapons, ships, aircraft, and vehicles
if the axis captured rest of the world,that’s meaning giant mass,attack the states from many angles,it’s impossible to hold up every way.
We don’t know about Hitler’s objectives from the US,but think about the nazi germany communist sovjet union friendship,it was not too long.
Even if the German-Soviet alliance had lasted for another year or two, a highly unlikely event, Germany, it’s western European conquests, and the Soviet Union, did not have the economic and military resources to “capture the rest of the world”.
The German-Soviet alliance was highly unstable, not in the least because the Soviets held the upper hand in the alliance, a situation which Hitler was not prepared to accept. Moreover, the alliance with the Soviets stood in the way of Hitler’s political objectives, which included the acquisition of significant portions of Soviet territory.
Not really. While I do agree that Hitler may have had some nebulous outlines to his ultimate goals, he hardly had any sort of even vaguely realistic blueprint as to how to achieve them. In fact, Hitler conducted his foreign policy in a largely haphazard manner bringing Germany into a situation of total War far faster than ever envisioned or desired. There was little in the way of rational planning for “short, limited objective wars” as Germany anticipated anything but that when, for instance, invading Poland. The Battle of France was hardly envisioned as a “limited” war it turned out to be and was largely achieved in spite of Hitler’s meddling rather than as a result of it. Hitler would have probably destroyed his regime far quicker had he not been initially tempered by his more conservative, lucid generals–many of whom hated him ironically enough…
Hitler badly overestimated Germany’s military might and fatally underestimated the will of both the Soviets and the British. This led to a two-front war he could not win.
Hitler somewhat overestimated his might, and yes, he did underestimate the Soviets. But I don’t think his ramblings can be regarded as ‘thinking.’ Because serious strategic thought implies a sort of logical basis that Hitler lacked in his vision. in fact, in his invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler was not acting on some rational predetermined ideological thread, but was reacting to what he saw as the increasing inevitable and decisive industrial power of the United States as she aided Britian…
Strangely enough, two of Japan’s leaders, who should have been among the most knowledgeable about American resources and will, played leading roles in, first, putting the seal of inevitability on a war between Japan and the United States, and second, starting that war in a manner calculated to make a negotiated settlement impossible.
It was Matsuoka (Frank) Yosuke who, as Japanese Foreign Minister in 1940, advocated joining Germany and Italy in the Tripartite Pact. This pact, in my opinion made an eventual war between Japan and the US inevitable. Yet Matsuoka, who had spent nine years in America as a student, and a further two as First Secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Washington, claimed that Japanese membership in the Axis would cause the US to accord Japan more respect and lead to a toned down American foreign policy.
The other personage was no other than Yamamoto Isoroku, the Admiral who spent several years in the United States, and was acquainted with many Americans in the Naval and Washington Establishments. Yamamoto was solely responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the nature of which, insured that the Pacific war would be neither limited, nor the subject of negotiations between Japan and The US.
Another point I would like to make is that, even if Japan and Germany had been willing to engage in much more war time cooperation against the Allies, neither country had the resources to make it possible. Japan and Germany did not have anywhere near enough logistical shipping to make military cooperation practical anywhere in the world. In any case, coordination of Axis military enterprises was made extremely difficult due to the fact that the British and American navies effectively controlled the sea routes between Japan and Germany. Cooperation between Japan and Germany prior to, and in, WW II was limited to exchanges of technical data relative to certain chemical processes such as synthetic fuel production, and military weapons, ships, aircraft, and vehicles
Interesting, I agree on many points here. BUT–if Japan had not signed the Nonagression Pact with the Soviets, the USSR would not have been so readily able to release fresh troops from the far-eastern provinces for the Battle of Moscow…
Hitler’s strategic thinking was sound enough, if, and that’s a monumental “if”, his underlying assumptions had been valid; they were not. I never said Hitler’s strategy was realistic, although it did have a certain logic, but false assumptions will always undermine the most logical of reasoning.
In fact, every campaign, including Barbarossa, Hitler embarked on was predicated on the result being a quick and decisive war. That was why Hitler was so discomfited by Britain refusing to admit defeat after the fall of France. Hitler’s military planning was entirely based on short, limited objective wars; Germany could not afford protracted attritional warfare with anyone because the German economy constantly teetered on the brink of disaster. If it had not been for the quick conquest of France, for example, and the subsequent looting of that country, Germany could not have continued the war for any length of time. In the Barbarossa campaign, Germany literally had no strategic reserves and either had to win in the first six to eight weeks or lose the war entirely.
Actually, Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union would have made perfect strategic sense if he had not so badly overestimated his own military power and underestimated the resiliency of the Soviet armed forces. And of course he was reacting to the growing industrial and military power of the United States, and correctly so. Time was running out for Hitler and he knew it. That doesn’t mean his reaction was illogical; in fact, it was most logical and would have worked save for the bad assumptions Hitler made about his military’s capabilities.
I do not disagree that the neutrality treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union had a role in allowing the Soviets to move some troops to the Eastern Front, thereby rendering German prospects even dimmer, if that was possible. But when that strategic transfer happened, Japan still had to consider the possibility that, as a member of the Axis, the Soviets who had been recently attacked by the leading Axis country, might very well consider Japan with considerable suspicion, and thus the Soviets had to keep their guard up on their borders with Japan.
But that point is irrelevant to my contentions. Japan felt it had to sign the neutrality pact with the Soviets if it wanted to make it’s move against the Southern Resources Area. But it should be remembered that when Japan signed the treaty in question, on April 13, 1941, the Soviets and Germany were still ostensibly allies. As far as the US was concerned, the neutrality treaty between the Soviets and Japan changed nothing in the balance of international politics; Japan was still part of the Axis and simply appeared to be settling it’s differences with another country that was cozy with the Germans.
I think this is a bit of a contradiction. I’d first have to understand Hitler’s strategy as I’m not sure it was ever actually predicated on anything verifiable nor workable, or whether he had any sort of predetermined strategy at all. If it wasn’t realistic or workable, it certainly wasn’t logical…
In fact, every campaign, including Barbarossa, Hitler embarked on was predicated on the result being a quick and decisive war.
Incorrect. Hitler was reacting and eventually blundering into one crisis after another rather than adhering to any grand plan. In fact, Hitler was gambling that Britain and France would not declare War and his bluffing finally failed when they called his invasion of Poland and ended the policy Appeasement (or delay). I would put forth that there sure was no such plan for a quick and decisive War against France, and none could be waged against Britain since the Kreigsmarine would not be ready to come near challenging the Royal Navy for five to ten years. This is of course the German high command assuming the French and British were not undertaking serious arms buildups and modernizations of their own, which they were…
Secondly, there was no such ‘quick and decisive’ war-plan against Germany’s ancient bloodfeud co-belligerent of France in 1939. In fact, the impetuous Hitler wanted an immediate invasion of France to be conducted in 1939–a move that may have fundamentally altered the outcome of the second World War–it was only the bulwarking of his general staff, and the confrontation between the Fuhrer and Gen. Brauchitsch, that avoided what would have been a military stalemate at best, a catastrophe at worst. The war-plan that would have been enacted in such an event would have meant the Heer plodding relatively slowly through Belgium and the projection of over half-a-million German casualties for modest gains, and a battle which would have dragged on for months if not years.
The actual battle plans used in May of 1941, Fall Rot/Fall Gelb/Sickle Cut, were the result of confrontations between Hitler and his generals as well as a host of revisions germinated from the genius of a relative small minority in the German armed forces such as Guderian, Manstein, and later, the individual initiative of generals such as Rommel and the aforementioned Guderian. It also should be noted that no one was more shocked by the speed and success of the coup de main attack into the Sedan than the German high command whom thought it would still take months to crush France, even in the best case scenario…
That was why Hitler was so discomfited by Britain refusing to admit defeat after the fall of France. Hitler’s military planning was entirely based on short, limited objective wars; Germany could not afford protracted attritional warfare with anyone because the German economy constantly teetered on the brink of disaster. If it had not been for the quick conquest of France, for example, and the subsequent looting of that country, Germany could not have continued the war for any length of time. In the Barbarossa campaign, Germany literally had no strategic reserves and either had to win in the first six to eight weeks or lose the war entirely.
The German economy was in some respects no worse that their enemies’. They outproduced both the French and British in some important areas such as aircraft, and their main disadvantage was actually in raw materials and the Achilles Heal of food production–something the Allies were hoping to put a stranglehold on as the basis for their long war strategy. The French also felt they had weaknesses to address and would only be ready to launch a full offensive into Germany, through the Belgian corridor, only during the summer of 1941 at the earliest. But while the Germans were of course greatly aided by Allied blundering, the German invasion of France was in many ways an accident of history with a chain of events rather fortuitous to Hitler’s Germany as well as the result of a true group consciousness involving Hitler and his most conservative generals such as Halder and Brauchitsch and his military progressives such as Guderian and Manstein --vetting and tweaking the plan until it was one of the finest in military history. Something that would never actually happen again…
Actually, Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union would have made perfect strategic sense if he had not so badly overestimated his own military power and underestimated the resiliency of the Soviet armed forces. And of course he was reacting to the growing industrial and military power of the United States, and correctly so. Time was running out for Hitler and he knew it. That doesn’t mean his reaction was illogical; in fact, it was most logical and would have worked save for the bad assumptions Hitler made about his military’s capabilities.
Of course it made strategic sense, unless of course you have a resilient island nation on your west flank! Hitler did envision the Soviet Union as a “rotten structure.” But I believe there was also a great deal of dissension within the Wehrmacht as to whether the vastness of the Soviet Union would be too great even for Hitler’s war machine at their zenith. It’s hard to imagine Hitler as logical when he stifled any sort of contrarian opinion in his armed forces and stifled opinions into what amounted to a cult leader’s kool aid of rigidly enforced group think and the dissenters somewhat silenced by Hitler’s high water mark after France. Yet the German analysis of the Soviets was highly racist and irrational on some points, and rather self-servingly optimistic on others. Stalin was certainly initially incompetent; the the sheer size and scale of the USSR and the fact that they outnumbered Germany almost three-to-one in everything might have tempered a more sane leader…
Just because you don’t understand Hitler’s strategic thinking doesn’t mean it wasn’t logical. It was certainly logical and workable if the assumption s that were made in arriving at the strategic plan were valid. The problem was that they were not valid. You obviously are criticizing from the standpoint of hindsight.
This is a quite fashionable view of Hitler and his strategic thinking, but it really only makes sense in the later war years after all of Germany’s options had been foreclosed by the huge alliance against her. In 1939-1941, Hitler’s strategy was quite successful. It was only after his invalid assumptions about Germany’s military power relative to the Soviet Union were prover false that Hitler began reacting to events rather than leading them.
I think you are confusing the process of strategic planning with the results. By your own argument, any plan that is workable and realistic is logical. The German plan to quickly crush France worked quite well and proved eminently realistic. To say that the Germans simply blundered into that success ignores actual history.
Your contention that the German conquest of France was an historical fluke that could never be repeated is interesting but hardly supportive of your argument that Hitler did no strategic thinking and simply blundered into history with phenomenal luck in 1939-1940. The Germans were following a plan whether it was Hitler’s alone, or a collaboration between him and some brilliant generals is irrelevant.
And the statement that Germany’s economy was no worse off than those of the Allies is ludicrous and certainly not supported by any evidence that I have seen. Being able to out produce Britain and France in aircraft production in 1940, even if true, is not indicative of the overall economic state of the belligerents.
The strategy made sense given the overall circumstances; Britain was in no position in 1941 to launch any significant offensive against Germany where it counted, on the Continent. That is why it was imperative that the Soviet Union be quickly crushed. The problem came again in the form of invalid assumptions. Those assumptions were that the German Army was much more powerful than it actually was and that the Red Army was the product of a rotten political system that was bound to implode under pressure of war.
Hitler realized that Britain would be stalemated only so long as the United States remained out of the war. Thus Hitler’s strategy was to engage, and quickly crush the enemies arrayed against Germany in sequence. This dictated that no active enemy should be able to stand against German military might for more than a few months. It wasn’t the strategy that was flawed, but the assumption that Germany’s armed forces were powerful enough to force the issue in each case.
I notice that with reference to Japanese strategic thinking, you have advanced no arguments, so may I assume that you agree with my analysis of that aspect of Axis war planning?
Nor did Germany tell Japan that it intended to attack the Soviet Union, but that doesn’t mean either nation was not considering it’s strategic options. The Japanese military went through as series of planning exercises that developed a military campaign that was quite successful in it’s first phase. It only failed because the assumptions that Japan made about American power, and it’s will to use it, were seriously flawed.
There is no question that the first phase military operations were very well planned and very well executed military strategies, and generally a great triumph of Japanese arms although they stalled a bit in the Philippines. From New Guinea onwards it became increasingly ad hoc and increasingly detached from any conception of a grand strategy.
It was the absence of a comprehensive grand strategy which was part of the reason for Japan’s eventual downfall. The problem with the “let’s grab what we can and hold it until our enemies accept it” thinking was that it was an incomplete grand strategy because, although it set out objectives for conquest, exploitation and management of territory and the associated resources, it failed to contemplate and prescribe a realistic, and necessarily a political or diplomatic, process by which Japan would conclude the war and retain its conquests.
The most glaring deficiency at the grand strategy level was that it was accepted from the outset that Japan could not and would not defeat Britain and America, but would nonetheless grab some of their Pacific and Asian territory. Somehow Britain and America would eventually accept the loss of that territory and Japan would be left alone for ever more.
Leaving aside the motivation to defeat Japan caused by the Pearl Harbor attack and the disparity in shipping, industrial and military capacity between Japan and its enemies, there was little prospect of compelling Britain and America to accept the loss of territory unless they were defeated militarily by Japan. That wasn’t going to happen and there were no political or diplomatic levers Japan could use against America and Britain to persuade them to relinquish their territory. So the enterprise was almost certainly doomed from the start because the aggressor lacked the military, political and diplomatic ability and, even more absurdly, the intention to defeat its enemies.
I agree with Deaf that Japan lacked a feasible grand strategy against the Allies.
Japan’s strategy in the Pacific War was quite feasible; it was the underlying assumptions that were fatally wrong. It was precisely what you would like to “leave aside” that made the difference.
Japan’s strategy in the Pacific was to seize the Southern Resources Area (belonging to Britain, France, and the Netherlands) plus certain vital defensive areas (Singapore, the Philippines, and New Guinea), while the US and Britain were distracted by the European war. The end game to this initiative would be diplomatic negotiations resulting in recognition of this fait accompli by the Americans and Europeans. Some minor concessions by Japan were foreseen.
The underlying assumptions were;
The European powers, fully engaged in the European war, would be unable to present significant military opposition.
The US, pre-occupied with supporting Britain in Europe, would not be able to take counter action until the second half of 1943, by which time Japan would have a solidly fortified defense perimeter based on islands in the Pacific.
When the US was able to launch a counter-offensive, Japanese defenses would be able to inflict severe casualties on US forces.
The American public, faced with such casualties, and with the prospect of an expensive military campaign simply to regain Europe’s colonies, would not support the war and would demand a negotiated settlement.
In 1941, these were not unreasonable assumptions. But, of course, they were, first of all, based on the Japanese perception of American production capabilities which they badly underestimated. So, right off the bat, Assumption number 2 was faulty; The US was able to strike back in the Pacific August, 1942, long before the contemplated Japanese defensive perimeter could be established.
Secondly, the idea that Americans were a “nation of shopkeepers” who cared solely about the financial bottom line, proved grossly incorrect. The nature of the attack on Pearl Harbor humiliated and infuriated the American public, fostering an anger that inoculated Americans against a loss of will due to a high casualty count. So Assumption number 4 was also fallacious, but after the fact. Moreover, the fact that the Japanese obviously planned and executed the Pearl Harbor attack while ostensibly engaged in “peace negotiations” poisoned American’s minds against future negotiations of any sort with the Japanese, and justified the Navy’s pre-existing plans for total war against Japan, rendering Japan’s exit strategy null.
So it was not a defective strategy that defeated Japan, but rather relying on poorly calculated data, and an event that radically altered the domestic American political situation, and negated a basic assumption as the war started. The Japanese stubbornly refused to acknowledge the errors in their assumptions and thus pursued a strategy that no longer made any sense.
I’m thoroughly familiar with the Combined Fleet web site and have read the cited article many times and even used it as an authority to support my contentions in numerous debates.
The article simply demonstrates that the Japanese assumptions regarding American productive capacity, as I have already pointed out, were gross underestimates. In fact, the Japanese government did undertake, prior to the war, a study of American war production capacity, but the study concluded that the US could only produce enough ships to support the European war, and furthermore, that such production could not be ramped up until at least the end of 1943 (thus the belief that the US could not possibly launch a Pacific counter-offensive until the latter half of 1943.), The Japanese, for example, accustomed to building times of five years for fleet carriers, could not believe that a fleet carrier could be completed in much less time than three or four years even when pushed by war time contingencies; in reality, the first batch of Essex-class carriers were completed in an average of 18 months.
Japanese strategy was logical enough in itself, provided the assumptions underpinning it were correct, but they were not. Moreover, as you say, the first bomb (on Pearl Harbor) created a situation that meant the Japanese exit strategy was no longer valid and that meant that a short war for limited objectives was no longer possible, voiding Japanese strategic assumptions.
Feel free to school me on how you understand Hitler’s strategic thinking. Because I’m pretty sure many of his generals didn’t understand his thinking either…
It was certainly logical and workable if the assumption s that were made in arriving at the strategic plan were valid. The problem was that they were not valid. You obviously are criticizing from the standpoint of hindsight.
Um, no, it wasn’t logical OR workable. And if neither were logical or workable, then how could they be valid? I don’t understand what you’re saying. Hindsight? Really? There was actually quite a bit of foresight in the German command. Especially amongst the generals who hated Hitler and wanted to kill him if the moment presented itself. unfortunately, he got very lucky in some sense. This of course led to his doom…
This is a quite fashionable view of Hitler and his strategic thinking, but it really only makes sense in the later war years after all of Germany’s options had been foreclosed by the huge alliance against her. In 1939-1941, Hitler’s strategy was quite successful. It was only after his invalid assumptions about Germany’s military power relative to the Soviet Union were prover false that Hitler began reacting to events rather than leading them.
Hitler’s strategy didn’t actually exist as he violated every tenet of his initial directive and led Germany to war far sooner than anticipated. And his “strategy” in what way? Hitler wasn’t actually a strategist. Hitler’s assumptions about military power were certainly exaggerated by his clinger-on’s in his inner circle to an extent. But then, you could argue that both the French leaders of Daladier/Reynaud and Britain’s PMs of Chamberlain/Churchill could say the same…
I think you are confusing the process of strategic planning with the results. By your own argument, any plan that is workable and realistic is logical. The German plan to quickly crush France worked quite well and proved eminently realistic. To say that the Germans simply blundered into that success ignores actual history.
Except, the “plan” didn’t exist prior to France declaring war on Germany, which sort of makes the argument that Hitler had a strategic plan a bit silly. And “ignores” which history exactly?
Your contention that the German conquest of France was an historical fluke that could never be repeated is interesting but hardly supportive of your argument that Hitler did no strategic thinking and simply blundered into history with phenomenal luck in 1939-1940. The Germans were following a plan whether it was Hitler’s alone, or a collaboration between him and some brilliant generals is irrelevant.
Sure! Tell me how! When were Operations Fall Gelb and Fall Rot actually conceived? There was actually no plan for the attack on France prior to very late in 1939. Feel free to point out any of “Hitler’s plans” to invade France in 1939/1940. He made no such plans and relied on the ironically tepid Halder for his plans…
And the statement that Germany’s economy was no worse off than those of the Allies is ludicrous and certainly not supported by any evidence that I have seen. Being able to out produce Britain and France in aircraft production in 1940, even if true, is not indicative of the overall economic state of the belligerents.
Okay, why? What evidence have you seen? And the superiority in fighters and medium bombers is one of the key reasons why France folded as the Luftwaffe’s control of the air is no small reason the Heer achieved a breakthrough at the Sedan. Not to mention that if France had had a viable tactical bomber arm supported by fighters, the war might have ended very differently…
The strategy made sense given the overall circumstances; Britain was in no position in 1941 to launch any significant offensive against Germany where it counted, on the Continent.
So? What about 1942? 1943? What kind of strategy in concerned only with the short view?
That is why it was imperative that the Soviet Union be quickly crushed. The problem came again in the form of invalid assumptions. Those assumptions were that the German Army was much more powerful than it actually was and that the Red Army was the product of a rotten political system that was bound to implode under pressure of war.
Hitler was in many cases disabused of his notion to the infallibility of the German soldier/airman/sailor/marine, and he chose to ignore such information to the extent that he actually almost came as close to fisticuffs with his senior Heer general Brauchitsch when informed that some Heer soldiers had not performed well in Poland and that much of his army needed retraining. Much of the German Army was in fact over 40 years old, needed training/retraining, and and imbalance in equipment existed. Hitler was made aware of this, but let his clouded ideological beliefs and racist notions pervert any realistic assessment…
Hitler realized that Britain would be stalemated only so long as the United States remained out of the war.
Really? I doubt Hitler ever had such a thought. I think he may have been operating on the assumption that Britain could be bombed and blockaded into a settlement provided the USA was left on the sidelines. But there was little in the way of an actual “plan”…
Thus Hitler’s strategy was to engage, and quickly crush the enemies arrayed against Germany in sequence.
There is no such coherent strategy, saying such is perpetuating a myth. In fact, Germany was prepared to fight against France for years if necessary…
This dictated that no active enemy should be able to stand against German military might for more than a few months. It wasn’t the strategy that was flawed, but the assumption that Germany’s armed forces were powerful enough to force the issue in each case.
When was this dictated?
I notice that with reference to Japanese strategic thinking, you have advanced no arguments, so may I assume that you agree with my analysis of that aspect of Axis war planning?
I can’t be bothered. I don’t fundamentally disagree with you that the Japanese war planning was largely irrelevant to whatever hitler did and there wasn’t any real coherent Axis war-planning. Perhaps on this, we agree. The Japanese were shit allies, and the Soviets were able to win their first major victory with fresh troops rolling into Moscow forever sinking the notion of German invincibility. Thank you, Japan!
One important point here is that Japan didn’t “drag” Germany into War with the United States. There was no obligation on the part of Germany to declare War if the Japanese launched and unprovoked attack–only if the Japanese were the victims of such…
What’s the point? You’ve obviously closed your mind to any possibility that Hitler may have had thoughts that in any way bore on strategic issues.
Obviously you don’t.
Strategies start with assumptions about current situations, that should be pretty easy to understand. If those assumptions are reasonably close to reality, it’s possible to chart a course of action that should logically bring one to a specific objective or goal. The strategy, or course of action, is distinct from the assumption; one can be logical (or “correct” if you will) without the other being correct. But a strategy is only “workable” if both are valid.
I’m saying that German strategy made sense provided the underlying assumptions were valid. Unfortunately for Germany and Hitler, their assumptions about the world situation, and in particular German military capabilities, and the military capabilities of their potential opponents, were NOT valid. Therefore, even though their strategy was logical, invalid assumptions made it unworkable; shouldn’t be too difficult to understand.
The mistakes the French or British made are irrelevant in assessing German strategies. And who says Hitler went to war “far sooner than anticipated”? Anticipated by whom? The timing of The European war in no way constitutes evidence that Hitler had no strategy. In fact, such a statement implies that there was a strategy that was amended for some reason.
Hitler did not expect Britain and France to declare war as a result of his invasion of Poland, but that doesn’t imply he had no plan if they did, nor does that mean he didn’t create a plan to deal with Britain and France after they declared war. Your reasoning really doesn’t make any sense and seems to suggest that Hitler existed in some sort of vacuum that insulated him from thinking about the potential consequences of any actions he might take. That’s just simply not true. It ignores all historical evidence of the period.
So what? There was still a strategic plan and it was successfully followed. Just because it didn’t exist in 1937 or 1938 means what exactly? That Hitler didn’t have a crystal ball and could foresee every event on the world scene? In that, Hitler was exactly like every person ever involved in strategic planning. Strategic plans aren’t conceived and engraved in stone, to be forever blindly followed no matter what happens subsequently; strategic plans evolve and change according to events that change situations.
You have an amazing talent for going off on meaningless tangents. Who cares why France folded?
The issue was the fragility of Germany’s economy compared to those of the Allies. The proof is the subsequent performance of each; Germany’s gradually declined in power, while those of the allies became more robust with time. Germany’s economy was unable to support the measures necessary to sustain a successful war of attrition, a war the Allied economies won.
Strategies are time-phased; Germany’s was to engage it’s opponents in sequence and defeat them in detail. Plans for 1942 and 1943 depended on what happened in 1940 and 1941.
Yes, in other words, Hitler’s strategy was based on invalid assumptions.
I don’t find your “doubt” very convincing. In fact, Adam Tooze in “The Wages of Destruction” says on page 333, “Since the spring of 1939, at the latest, Hitler had been driven forward by the sense that time was not on Germany’s side. Once war was declared, the gathering strength of the Western coalition, reinforced by the United States, contrasted with Germany’s economic vulnerability and it’s new dependence on the Soviet Union only reinforced this motive.” Obviously Hitler was, in 1939, thinking strategically about the future role of the United States.
According to who? The citation above belies any such dubious “fact”.
In 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1939, 1940, and 1941.
Of course, Japan’s action in signing a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union occurred in April, 1941. The significance of that fact seems to escape you. April, 1941, was before the Germans attacked the Soviet Union; Japan had no idea that such an attack was going to take place until it actually happened, so to imply that the Japanese disregarded Germany’s future interests indicates a complete lack of understanding as to the actual sequence of events.
However, we do agree that there was precious little coordination or cooperation between Germany’s and Japan’s war planning. But to claim that neither Germany nor Japan had any strategic plans, or did any strategic planning simply doesn’t hold water.
