Biggest Mistake of WWII

[jimbotosome]

In my opinion, the biggest mistake of the war was a tie between three different things that might have produced the same result and therefore are equivalent:

1) Not assassinating Churchill.
2) Not finishing with Britain before attacking Russia or before the US could get into the war.
3) Not realizing that the invasion of Calais was a ruse for three weeks.

[spidge]

Originally posted by jimbotosome@Sep 25 2005, 06:49 AM
In my opinion, the biggest mistake of the war was a tie between three different things that might have produced the same result and therefore are equivalent:

1) Not assassinating Churchill.
2) Not finishing with Britain before attacking Russia or before the US could get into the war.
3) Not realizing that the invasion of Calais was a ruse for three weeks.

Quoted post

Would you actually call these mistakes?

1 & 2 are basically theoretical - that is - you are making the assumption that if they occurred they would have changed the course of the war.

3 - The invasion of Normandy, was the greatest and most successful deception in the history of warfare. Hitler and the German High Command to have ignored this information on Pas de Calais ad hoc, would mean they would have had to question every piece of intelligence throughout the war.

[jimbotosome]

Originally posted by spidge+Sep 25 2005, 08:51 AM-->

Would you actually call these mistakes?

1 & 2 are basically theoretical - that is - you are making the assumption that if they occurred they would have changed the course of the war.

3 - The invasion of Normandy, was the greatest and most successful deception in the history of warfare. Hitler and the German High Command to have ignored this information on Pas de Calais ad hoc, would mean they would have had to question every piece of intelligence throughout the war.

Quoted post

[/b]

As to 1 & 2, making the assumption that if Britain had fallen, without the British Isles, the US would not have been able to mount a proper challenge and would have probably opted to stay out of the in Germany for lack of a sufficient front to attack Germany. You may be underestimating the devastation that the long range strategic bombing did to Germany's ability to continue wage war. Seems like people are so shocked by the initial losses to allied bombers in daylight raids before fighter escorts that they fail to recognize how utterly devastating precision bombing (relative term) was to Hitler's war industry especially the Luftwaffe itself. The fact that the Luftwaffe was not able to mount an assault in June 1944 is more than a trivial details of the success of a massive ship borne invasion through the channel. Imagine if it had to be done across the Atlantic. With the full support of a beefed up Luftwaffe able to launch defensive raids from continental Europe as well as the Isles.

As to #3, the opinion of the ruse in Calais constituted intelligence of an imminent invasion there even after the invasion itself, was not shared by the German generals. Had he released all the divisions in the north, there probably would not have been a surrounding at Caen and COBRA would not have been possible either. As Bradley said a simple count of divisions would have told them that the Allies had no other troops to send. You could say the primary intelligence that was ignored was actually the number of Allied divisions in Normandy. Just my opinion.

[laufer]

In my opinion Western Allies should have concentrated theirs attention on Mediterranean, continued campaign in Italy with better results (took the chance at Anzio) and established a main second front in Balkans in 1943 or 1944 instead of France. They should made every political effort to break the alliance of Germany with Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria as well.

[spidge]

[quote=jimbotosome,Sep 26 2005, 02:24 AM]
[quote=spidge,Sep 25 2005, 08:51 AM][quote=jimbotosome,Sep 25 2005, 06:49
[/quote] As to 1 & 2, making the assumption that if Britain had fallen, without the British Isles, the US would not have been able to mount a proper challenge and would have probably opted to stay out of the in Germany for lack of a sufficient front to attack Germany.[[quote]]

I have contributed to a "What If" Britain had capitulated thread and it may have lead to American non participation in the ETO however I do not think that would have been the case.

Would Hitler still have declared war on America? Probably more so than before.

Hitler having empowered himself of Western Europe, would still be confronting the Soviet Union. North Africa would still have been an allied win as that is where most of the British forces Land & Sea & Air would have ended up and Italy would still have been put out of the war. Rommel would still have suffered the same logistical issues.

Germany would still have had to garisson the British Isles and feed the people however I concede he would have inherited the manufacturing facilities of Britain.
I also feel that most of the war production capability in Britain would have been destroyed before Germany marched in and reaped the benefit.

Scandinavia would have become more important to both the Russians and America. The remaining allies alliance with the Soviet Union would have been forged stronger by necessity.

The Japanese would still have been defeated albeit not as early as 1945

Germany would still have been defeated while this too would have taken longer


[[quote]]You may be underestimating the devastation that the long range strategic bombing did to Germany's ability to continue to wage war. Seems like people are so shocked by the initial losses to allied bombers in daylight raids before fighter escorts that they fail to recognize how utterly devastating precision bombing (relative term) was to Hitler's war industry especially the Luftwaffe itself. [/[quote]]

That is due to the fact that the Germans did not conquer Britain.

[/[quote]]The fact that the Luftwaffe was not able to mount an assault in June 1944 is more than a trivial details of the success of a massive ship borne invasion through the channel. Imagine if it had to be done across the Atlantic. With the full support of a beefed up Luftwaffe able to launch defensive raids from continental Europe as well as the Isles. [

]

There would have been The Soviet Union. Different arrangement - Same "Theatre" - same result.

As to #3, the opinion of the ruse in Calais constituted intelligence of an imminent invasion there even after the invasion itself, was not shared by the German generals. Had he released all the divisions in the north, there probably would not have been a surrounding at Caen and COBRA would not have been possible either. As Bradley said a simple count of divisions would have told them that the Allies had no other troops to send. You could say the primary intelligence that was ignored was actually the number of Allied divisions in Normandy. Just my opinion.

Quoted post

Bradley was speaking of the physical and the visible. In Operation Quicksilver the Allies created an entire fake army. FUSAG, the First United States Army Group, was largely fake except for its leader, General George Patton, some token units and a complete signals outfit sending made up traffic. Patton was unpopular with the Allied high command, but he was regarded by leaders on both sides as one of the Allies' best mechanized warfare experts. The Germans knew this and other "forces" were still facing them at Pas de Calais so the ruse even at this late stage was still working magnificently.

"The key event in the BODYGUARD plan was GARBO's (Double agent) message. This one message had a tremendous operational impact on the movement of German Panzer reinforcements in the critical few days after D-Day.

GARBO stated that he viewed it as a diversion, and the primary target was Pas de Calais.

At no point were the Germans fed false documents describing the invasion plans. Instead they were allowed to construct a misleading order of battle for the allied forces. To mount a massive invasion of Europe from England, military planners had little choice but to stage units around the country with those that would land first nearest to the embarkation point. By placing FUSAG in the south-east, German intelligence would (and did) deduce that the center of gravity of the invasion force was opposite Calais, the point on the French coast closest to England and therefore a likely landing point.

The Allies were able to easily judge the effectiveness of these strategies. ULTRA intelligence — that gained from the breaking of German codes and ciphers, such as the Enigma machine — was able to provide an indication of the German high command's responses to their actions. They maintained the pretense of FUSAG and other forces threatening Pas de Calais for some considerable time after D-Day. This was vital to the success of the Allied plan since it forced the Germans to keep most of their reserves bottled up waiting for an attack on Calais which never came, thereby allowing the Allies to maintain and build upon their marginal foothold in Normandy.

[jimbotosome]

Counterfactuals like these are very complex and get based on a series of compound assumptions. But they are a lot of fun.

Would Hitler still have declared war on America? Probably more so than before.

I don’t believe Hitler would have declared war on the US until he had his full strength after defeating Russia. He had to view the industrial might in the US as a threat and had to make sure he had taken care to not induce a battle on two fronts with a major enemy capable of mounting serious offensives. I don’t think he viewed Britain as a major enemy, especially after the Dunkirk. Hitler declared war on the US since he viewed it as a foregone conclusion. If Britain had fallen, the US would not have declared war on him since it would be a much more difficult win and the US would not want to be so divided between two theatres, both of which involve long distance warfare. A friendly Britain was an incredible asset to the success in Europe. You might make a case that it was not impossible to win without the launching base of the British Isles but it would have been a much more intense war for the US, lacking both the great military resources that British brought to the party and the huge isolated base that could only be attacked by Germany from the air. Japan would have fallen much sooner not later because they would have the entire US forces arrayed against them.

Hitler having empowered himself of Western Europe, would still be confronting the Soviet Union. North Africa would still have been an allied win as that is where most of the British forces Land & Sea & Air would have ended up and Italy would still have been put out of the war. Rommel would still have suffered the same logistical issues.

It all depends on if the US had stayed out of the war with Germany, things would have been different. Again it is critical to note that Hitler only declared war on the US because he was certain they would declare war on him. I don't think he would have thought they would or that they actually would have if the British Isles were gone because it would have been too difficult to fight was a long distance war in the Pacific as well. Such a war would be too naval-centric and the US would not have a Navy that could take on the Japanese, the Italians, the German navies. I don’t think that the British would have been victorious in North Africa if it were not for the presence of the US troops and reinforcement of armor and artillery from the US, as well as lots of new tanks and equipment supplied to them at the onset of the US entry into WWII. The British were in pretty bad shape when the US entered the war. I doubt El Alamain would have occurred if the German troops having to fight Patton were freed to direct their efforts and equipment at a far less equipped Monty. It may have been that the green US troops took a real beating at Kasserine Pass, but you cannot ignore the fact they also drove Rommel back through the pass immediately after that. Once Patton took over, Rommel had a much bigger problem because he faced much more artillery from the US which was his undoing in North Africa. Patton was not green but seasoned and highly aggressive. With the capture of the British Isles, the British, at the least, would have run out of sufficient supply. Without supply their armor would become ineffective and broken down quickly because of the environment they were in.

Germany would still have had to garisson the British Isles and feed the people however I concede he would have inherited the manufacturing facilities of Britain.
I also feel that most of the war production capability in Britain would have been destroyed before Germany marched in and reaped the benefit.

True but it would not have taken near as many divisions as garrisoning the Atlantic wall from invasion forces did. These troops and armor would have been directed at Stalingrad. Had Stalingrad have fallen, so would Russia. With the control of the Caucuses, Germany would have had all the resources needed and a great deal of impunity to fight the US along with the production capacity and work force of Russia as well.

Scandinavia would have become more important to both the Russians and America. The remaining allies alliance with the Soviet Union would have been forged stronger by necessity.

That’s a bit of conjecture because all of Europe was terrified of communist expansionism of the Soviet Union and of Stalin. Stalin was thought of as more brutal than Hitler (especially before the end of WWII) I believe that Hitler looked like the lesser of two evils to them.

The Japanese would still have been defeated albeit not as early as 1945

Again, I believe that Hitler would have not have declared war on the US if Britain had fallen. His worse fear was an alliance based in Britain because he then would have to think of Britain as a major threat because they would suddenly had the resources to mount an offensive war against him. I think that the reason Hitler attacked Russia is because he viewed Britain not as a front capable of mounting an effective offensive but rather a defensive position alone. Had the US have declared war on Hitler before he attacked Russia, I think he would have kept his pacts with Russia until he defeated the Allies and waited until he had his strength from the conquest of the Allies. Its true he might not have beaten the Allies even with Russia as neutral but my point was that he didn’t believe Britain to be a threat until they were linked up with the US.

That is due to the fact that the Germans did not conquer Britain.

You seem to be concurring with me here. Is this misstated? It looks like you are saying that if he had conquered Britain that there would be no strategic bombing that crippled his ability to wage war with Russia. That was my point. Are you conceding that here?

There would have been The Soviet Union. Different arrangement - Same "Theatre" - same result.

The reason I don’t believe this is that the Soviet Union survived by the “skin of their teeth”. The lack of additional divisions and the timing because with the extra divisions of the western front, Yugoslavia would have fallen easier and they would have been able to invade at least two months earlier making the Russian winter a lot less of a saving factor. In addition, Russia would not have received lend-lease support from the US. They were not a friend to the US but rather a necessary ally when there was war. The lend-lease act was developed because of Britain in response to Churchill's friendship with Roosevelt who lobbied congress to set it up. Roosevelt would not have gone to bat for Stalin. The only redeeming attribute the Soviets offered as an ally was that they divided Hitler's fighting forces. I believe the US would have looked at Russia as a loosing cause and would not have supported them both for lack of desire to "save" an expansionist communist state and desire not to waste war materials when they thought they were going to need them (which they would). The US trusted Britain. They did NOT trust Russia. They only reason they supplied Russia is because Russia aided Britain by dividing Hitler’s armies. There was no love between the US and Russia. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. There is a big difference between a communist nation led by a ruthless dictator and a like-minded civilized nation.

Bradley was speaking of the physical and the visible. In Operation Quicksilver the Allies created an entire fake army. FUSAG, the First United States Army Group, was largely fake except for its leader, General George Patton, some token units and a complete signals outfit sending made up traffic. Patton was unpopular with the Allied high command, but he was regarded by leaders on both sides as one of the Allies' best mechanized warfare experts. The Germans knew this and other "forces" were still facing them at Pas de Calais so the ruse even at this late stage was still working magnificently.

I do believe Hitler was duped. He had enough spies in Germany to find out it was a fake if he were so inclined to do so. Also, low level reconnaissance would have revealed that most of the units were fakes. I do agree you could have a point here, but it is a major mistake to allow yourself to be duped by not doing the intelligence due diligence in the evaluation of your enemy’s true strength. It was probably a real dup for mistaking the landing beach. I would think you would want to get a closer look at FUSAG when you see enumerated the divisions on the beaches because it would certainly have exaggerated the number of divisions you believed the allies to have. When you went to count the divisions of FUSAG it would have revealed the fake. But I will give you that #3 is the weakest case of my three.


The bulk of my argument here based on the premise there would not be war between the US and Germany at least until Russia was in the bag which I believe would have occurred much quicker.

[morse1001]

Counterfactuals like these are very complex and get based on a series of compound assumptions. But they are a lot of fun.

its okay to think that, but i'll stand back and hold the jackets! :P :P

[jimbotosome]

Originally posted by morse1001@Sep 27 2005, 07:11 PM
its okay to think that, but i'll stand back and hold the jackets! :P :P

A counterfactual is another name for a "What if". A type of hypothesis where the facts are known but an alternative is conjectured. It is not a derisive term and does not mean to lie. Is that what you thought?

[spidge]

[quote=spidge,Sep 26 2005, 11:46 PM]
[quote=jimbotosome,Sep 26 2005, 02:24 AM]
[quote=spidge,Sep 25 2005, 08:51 AM][quote=jimbotosome,Sep 25 2005, 06:49

[[quote]]You may be underestimating the devastation that the long range strategic bombing did to Germany's ability to continue to wage war. Seems like people are so shocked by the initial losses to allied bombers in daylight raids before fighter escorts that they fail to recognize how utterly devastating precision bombing (relative term) was to Hitler's war industry especially the Luftwaffe itself. [/

]

That is due to the fact that the Germans did not conquer Britain.

I was responding to that point in isolation which in hindsight was incorrect in the context of the thread. My point was that there are other areas from which Germany could have/would have been confronted by American warpower.

The Soviet Union - Scandinavia. These "theatres" would have altered inexplicably and the diometrically opposed idealologies would also have been confronted.

Your hypothesis is based on your three criteria with the main "mistake" that Hitler did not assassinate Churchill, whilst at the same time we are unable to adequately project if the "replacement" in the event of Churchill's demise would/could have carried on the fight.

We look at the "main" possibilities now and say no, however the successor may have been a "shot out of the blue". While I would maintain that if Britain was going to fall, Churchill with that doom looming would have fought the war from other areas of the Empire, (Canada etc) as his successor may well have done.

I will revert to the other areas over the weekend as I have a load of quarterly bookwork to catch up on before the end of the month.

The tax man is the master of us all!

[jimbotosome]

Originally posted by spidge@Sep 27 2005, 09:47 PM
I will revert to the other areas over the weekend as I have a load of quarterly bookwork to catch up on before the end of the month.

I look forward to your subsequent posts. I know you have thought through this scenario and probably have some ideas I haven't considered.

There are couple of additional points I wanted to make. First of all, the 1, 2, and 3 were "either or" scenarios in which any one of them might be claimed as a “worst” mistake. #3 was Hitler and the FUSAG ruse. To me it was like ignoring the intelligence at Market Garden of the Panzer groups refitting. I believe he was told by his generals and intelligence that it was a feign and chose to disbelieve it. I will read what Rommel had to say about it. But I think his generals were not accustomed to challenging his “wisdom” that often transcended military logic.

Then there was Churchill’s assassination. I read a book on Roosevelt where his relationship with Churchill was detailed. Unless you understand this relationship you don’t realize how tenuous US support would have been without it. Churchill’s appeal to Roosevelt reminds me of when Ben Franklin appealed to the French for help in our Revolutionary War. Franklin persuaded the French to give us help in supplies and Naval support even though we had been at war with the French only 20 years before. Franklin absolutely charmed the sox off of Louis XIV with his quips and wit. Without this intervention, Cornwallis would never have been trapped at Yorktown and the British would have won the war and the US might still be a colony of Britain. You could even say Franklin was the father of this country instead of George Washington.

The British made a terrific ally in WWII. I don’t know of another nation (allied or axis) I would rather have in the fight against Germany because of their relative strength, quantity of men, and brash determination. But, I believe if I had a choice between the British military OR the British Isles as a base of US operations alone, I would take the Isles instead. That’s not a statement against the British military, which was an absolutely terrific, but it is instead a statement of how important the geographical location was to waging a war against Nazi Europe. It was perfect.

I personally believe that what won the war was the destruction of the Luftwaffe. Air superiority was the definition of victory. Without the Isles, no air superiority. Without air superiority no mobile victory of any sort, no supplies. No supplies, a quick surrender. I don’t think there is a way to stress that point enough. Between you and me, in the ETO, I think both Patton and Monty were in a relative sense, inconsequential. Not that there was anything wrong with either one of them but I think that there were relatively few places where “tank tactics” were effective. In North Africa, ok, they were out in the open. Tactics and strategy help there. But in rural fighting in Europe where there were many ways to hide and ambush with armor, the artillery and the air strikes by the tactical groups did most of the work. The tank divisions were for mopping up. Neither Shermans, Churchills, nor Challengers or their variations were any match for German armor. German armor was dominated from the sky. I am not trying to make light of armor, I just know that whoever has air superiority will dominate the enemy’s armor regardless of what kind it was and their armor would go relatively unchallenged. How do you overstress the importance of air superiority, again, I don’t think you can. (Boy I hope there are no WWII tankers reading this post).

I bought the book “The Rommel Papers” which is the letters and communications of Rommel in WWII and in it he sends a letter to Hitler telling him that he no longer believes the Germans can win the mobile war, not because of air superiority alone but because the German armaments industry could no longer keep up from its ongoing destruction. Imagine if the Luftwaffe had been able to attack ground troops and the US’s armor with fighter/bombers like we did theirs. It was a death sentence. The annihilation of supply, the sinking of merchant ships of the supply by an unchallenged Luftwaffe, the fact the US Navy would not have been able to get into range of Europe for fear of Luftwaffe attacks, it would devastate any fighting force. You have to have boots on the ground to clean up but without wings in the sky the boots on the ground are on dead men. The only time the US saw German fighters ruling the sky was in North Africa and it devastated them. They were eventually stopped by the RAF and the USAAF but before that it showed that tactics and strategies are useless against air superiority. I don’t think the US could have defeated Germany on the ground with the air superiority probably even with the British fighting beside them they still could not have stopped the German armor. It was simply better and the Germans were better trained from the fact they had been preparing for war and learning and polishing their tactics and equipment from the Spanish war.

The destruction of the Luftwaffe in the 1942-mid 1944 timeframe so that they could not interfere with the Channel crossing was crucial. There was a composite reduction in the Luftwaffe not just by shooting down aircraft but also diminishing the rates at which they could replace them by the continuous bombing. Had the bombing been thwarted, the Luftwaffe could have swelled in size both with planes and trained pilots (much easier to train new pilots without allied fighters patrolling). The Germans would also have had heavy bombers (Wellingtons, Halifaxes, etc) and the plans to and facilities to make new ones. The US could barely mount raids from Britain into Germany. Any other country would have made it virtually prohibitive. Fighter support would never have “saved daylight bombing”. The US would have had to have used Superforts (B-29s) which were very expensive and less robust than the B-17s. Long, long range bombing would have had prohibitive losses with a huge and unchallenged Luftwaffe, Jets would have been perfected, Germany would have a super variation of the T-34, massive heavy artillery. The US would have been deep do-do. I have to believe that I Hitler had had all his divisions in the Eastern front that Russia would have fallen easily just from being overwhelmed by the numerical strength of a better army and defeated before the winter had even set in. V1s and V2s would have been used in Russia to take out their factories deep into Russia. With Russia out of the way, the production capability of Germany would have eclipsed the US’s production capability. The capture of one major city in Russia, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Moscow, would have set up a base with which to launch offensives that would have divided Russia and conquered it.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming the war on the Eastern front would have been the same. It would have been radically different. There would have been no Lend-Lease with Russia (none) and probably not with Britain (in the no Churchill scenario). With Churchill, Roosevelt knew that Britain was in it to win it and were worth investing in. He knew they would make life hell for the Germans should they invade. The Lend-Lease was offered to Russia, not because of their friendship to the US but rather because they were a help to Britain against Germany keeping the Eastern front tied up. For that reason only were they included. Without Lend-Lease, aircraft, armor, artillery, food, fuel, Russia could not have withstood the Germans under the pressure of the offensive. Britain and her allies was the hope of Europe as far as the US was concerned.

The affect of Britain has to be viewed as a whole, with the whole being much larger than the sum of its parts.

Jim