Biggest Mistake of WWII

[Paratrooper]

What do u think the biggest mistake of WWII was?
personaly i think there are 2

1.Russia Invasion-After germany lost the battle of britian they should have halted there offenceive and rebuild and invaded britian and not bomb it..but they instead invade russia unprepared for winter and lose costing them many lives..they still had a chance 2 win if the USA was not in the war..thus read on

2.Pearl Habor-Im not saying Pearl Harbor wasnt a good attack but it came too soon..if japan would have waited for germany 2 win over europe w/o usa they could have attacked and had germanys navy help w/ theres and beaten the usa..

[blacksheep]

Failure to defeat England in th Battle of Britian, should have focused on air bases instead of cities. this halted the germans and turned the tide.

[strangelove]

Originally posted by blacksheep@Jul 25 2004, 03:01 AM
Failure to defeat England in th Battle of Britian, should have focused on air bases instead of cities. this halted the germans and turned the tide.

i fully agree with u black, germans lost war because they didn't crushed england. hitler knew that.

[BeppoSapone]

Originally posted by Paratrooper@Jul 24 2004, 07:57 PM
What do u think the biggest mistake of WWII was?
personaly i think there are 2

1.Russia Invasion-After germany lost the battle of britian they should have halted there offenceive and rebuild and invaded britian and not bomb it..but they instead invade russia unprepared for winter and lose costing them many lives..they still had a chance 2 win if the USA was not in the war..thus read on

2.Pearl Habor-Im not saying Pearl Harbor wasnt a good attack but it came too soon..if japan would have waited for germany 2 win over europe w/o usa they could have attacked and had germanys navy help w/ theres and beaten the usa..

The biggest mistake was that there was ever a WW2 at all, and it was because of the Americans that there was.

At the negotiations around the WW1 Peace Treaty American President Woodrow Wilson promised the French that America would guarantee their borders. The British agreed to take part.

Congress refused to ratify the "Anglo-American Treaty of Guarantee" and America retreated into Isolationism. So, when Hitler came to power there was no means of stopping him already in place.

If Congress had backed Woodrow Wilson's promise to the French, IMHO there wouldn't have been a WW2 because a forerunner of NATO would have stamped him into the ground the first time he ever invaded anywhere, if he ever tried.

[DirtyDick]

As above, the biggest mistake was WW2 ever occurring, and aside from the obvious fault of Germany, significant blame lies with GB, France and USA for their inaction during the 1930s (the latter's almost total isolationism after the T. of V. was especially damaging and also helped give rise to Japan choosing war.)

During WW2: I seriously believe that if the Germans had won the B. of B. they could not have mounted a realistic invasion to conquer GB, especially not for many years, by which time the British Army would be far, far stronger than it was in mid-1940. Without air superiority over only the South of England, RN vessels and convoys could still come in as before to ports in northern England, NI and Scotland, out of range of German 'planes.

As for an invasion:
When the Germans invaded Crete their paratroop force was almost wiped out by 35,000 recently evacuated GB NZ and Australian troops possessing only about three tanks; and had these tanks been placed on the landing strips the Germans would have had great difficulty in taking them. Given that demonstration, any airborne landings in 1940 would have been far more bloody. Equally, the sheer scale of the RN and coastal defences would have, arguably, destroyed any invasion flotilla in spite of enemy aircraft, but at great cost. IIRC, British bombers were having a field day whilst blowing up masses of German barges waiting for this purpose.
GB would have been far constrained and vulnerable to unchecked bombing, but unless there was a change of govt or PM, they would have carried on fighting

Thus, hardly a mistake, but the best chance AH had was by destroying the Atlantic convoys.

As for Russia: if AH had not rejected the manpower of the anti-Stalin forces in the occupied areas and treated them as allies rather than sub-humans, and not made any number of decisions that overrode his generals' advice, it could have seen a German victory.

[blacksheep]

What do u think the biggest mistake of WWII was? This was the question posted, not the biggest mistake prior to WW2. Yes their were many political factors following WW1 that contributed to WW2 but that was not the question posted. I do believe had Hitler and the luftwaffe been able to strategically remove Britain's air power they could have potentially won The Battle of Britain. This leads to all sorts of possibilities, Britain is removed from WW2 for a much longer period, the Americans are not able to train and build up for Overloard for much longer or never who knows. This could surely have turned the tide of WW2. The truth, I believe is that Hitler still would have been defeated because of his poor insight into the requirments operationally to make war on the eastern front. So had germany won the Battle of Britain they still would have lost the war, it would just have taken the allies a few years more to defeat them. Maybe an atomic bomb would have been required which is only speculation on my part. My last point had the germans won the Battle of Britain and maintained their treaty with Russia who knows how things would have turned out. Sure makes history interesting though.

Sheep

[DirtyDick]

Re: mistake during rather than prior to WW2.

Depends on how the question is defined: if we are talking of WW2, are we talking of events subsequent to USA, Russia, Brazil and Japan etc, entering hostilities, thus representing the Globe? Otherwise one could call the period 1939-41 merely a major European war, like so many others in the past.

Additionally, had AH not spent so much time and effort in building prestige or terror weapons - and had not spent so much time and effort in his policy of ethnic cleansing - he could have had a far more formidable fighting force. Again, not enough to tilt the balance away from the GB-USA-USSR coalition in the long if the War maintained its schedule, but enough to lengthen the war.

For example, during WW1 the German battlehip fleet had been little more than an expensive novelty and drained resources from both the Navy and the Army: only the U-boats came close to forcing GB to pull out of the war effort in 1917.

Thus, if in the '30s the German Navy had spent more resources on developing and expanding their submarine fleet, they could have had a great impact during the hostilities. The Germans' need for fast long-range submarines had been noted in WW1 and the schnorkel was already in service in the Dutch Navy. The Type XXI had been developed and produced from German resources in the last years of the War: imagine a score of these vessels being available during the first years of the conflict, when the RN was severely stretched and ASW techniques were that much less sophisticated.

This could be considered a big mistake during WW2, although the seeds of this fall outside of the 1939-45 period; thus, one could argue that appeasement and indiffernce to AH prior to 1938 had a significant affect upon the outbreak of WW2 itself, in terms of opposing forces, etc.

Richard

[DirtyDick]

Re: mistake during rather than prior to WW2.

Depends on how the question is defined: if we are talking of WW2, are we talking of events subsequent to USA, Russia, Brazil and Japan etc, entering hostilities, thus representing the Globe? Otherwise one could call the period 1939-41 merely a major European war, like so many others in the past.

Additionally, had AH not spent so much time and effort in building prestige or terror weapons - and had not spent so much time and effort in his policy of ethnic cleansing - he could have had a far more formidable fighting force. Again, not enough to tilt the balance away from the GB-USA-USSR coalition in the long if the War maintained its schedule, but enough to lengthen the war.

For example, during WW1 the German battlehip fleet had been little more than an expensive novelty and drained resources from both the Navy and the Army: only the U-boats came close to forcing GB to pull out of the war effort in 1917.

Thus, if in the '30s the German Navy had spent more resources on developing and expanding their submarine fleet, they could have had a great impact during the hostilities. The Germans' need for fast long-range submarines had been noted in WW1 and the schnorkel was already in service in the Dutch Navy. The Type XXI had been developed and produced from German resources in the last years of the War: imagine a score of these vessels being available during the first years of the conflict, when the RN was severely stretched and ASW techniques were that much less sophisticated.

This could be considered a big mistake during WW2, although the seeds of this fall outside of the 1939-45 period; thus, one could argue that appeasement and indiffernce to AH prior to 1938 had a significant affect upon the outbreak of WW2 itself, in terms of opposing forces, etc. Hence, the situation created by the outbreak of war could have had a grave impact in setting the scenarios in which more obvious mistakes were made.

Richard

(Oops, forgot you can't delete on this Forum setup.)

[blacksheep]

Isn't it generally agreed that WW2 was from 1939-1945, the question still states biggest mistake of WW2, not politcal or military factors prior. Sure we can debate on 1939-1941 as being only war in Europne minus the other countries. I re: 1939-1945 as more accurate a time frame for the question posted than the period of WW1 - 1930's. Had the question been what was the biggest mistake contributing to ww2 and or during ww2 then that would be a different discussion. The ques is biggest mistake of ww2, the important point is" of "

[thunder7]

I agree, Hitler should have focused on defeating Britain instead of starting up a war with Russia. He also should have focused on military targets instead of bombing civilian areas. Also, halting the advance of his troops at Dunkirk and allowing 338,000 to escape to fight another day would have been his first major blunder.