|
Shimrra Jamaane posted:If Germany transformed itself into a full war economy as soon as the war started in 1939, including conscripting women to run the factories similar to how the allies did, would it have been possible for the war to have turned out differently? I happened to read about this just yesterday, and the fact that often goes unmentioned is that a significant number of German women were in fact already employed in critical sectors like agriculture. Tooze probably has the exact figures, but in some Länder it was up to 60% of the female population. Essentially the Germans never actually really had problems with industrial production, rather the problem was transportation and raw material shortages combined with fuel shortages starting from 1944 on. The only scenario where going into a full war economy would have actually helped was that if the offensive on France in 1940 would have stalled, since at that point the Germans didn't have much ammunition reserves and so on. Adding to that, the problem in industrial production as it was mostly stemmed from disorganized acquisition and bad strategic planning, like Hitler's obsession with prioritizing bomber production instead of fighter production.
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2010 10:27
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 23:24 |
|
|
Comrade_Robot posted:If you are referring to Suvorov's Icebreaker thesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebreaker_%28Suvorov%29), this is not accepted by a vast majority of historians, notably David Glantz who refuted this in his book "Stumbling Colossus". This also fails to take into account that Hitler did not exactly hide his desire for lebensraum. The Icebreaker theory also doesn't take into account how careful Stalin was. One of the major reasons why he settled for peace in the Winter War was the fact that the Allies might have entered the war on the Finnish side of the conflict. Mostly likely if the Soviet Union would have initiated aggression, they would have been worse off in the conflict than what happened historically.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2010 16:57
|
|
|
Shimrra Jamaane posted:Since it has been pretty much agreed upon in this very thread that victory in WWII was beyond Germany's grasp not matter what they did I need to ask; Was victory in WWI a possibility for Germany if things had gone a bit differently? Would the Schlieffen Plan have succeeded if they didn't run into unexpected Belgian resistance or not? A major part of why the Schlieffen plan did not work out was that Moeltke lost his nerve due to the Russian attack into East Prussia and he transferred some 180000 troops to the East Front, which actually only arrived after the Russians had been defeated at Tannenberg. The logistical issues were also rather large and it's quite possible that they were insurmountable. The failure of the Schlieffen Plan as implemented by Moltke is really dependent on a large number of various factors and you can't really point at one single thing as the definitive cause of failure.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2010 08:44
|
|
|
Shimrra Jamaane posted:Since it's been agreed that the Germans plainly could not win an extended war against the Soviets no matter what they did, was it ever possible that Barbarossa could have succeeded and knocked them out of the war quickly? Would this have ended the war on the Eastern Front before the Soviets could mobilize their massive military and industry? For example, if they took Moscow would the Soviets have sued for a quick peace or kept on fighting? Germany probably was unable to defeat the Russians, but a successful 1941-1942 campaign could have meant that the Russians would have ended up in a position where they are unable to defeat the Germans. The wild card of course is if Stalin could have withstood a blow like losing Moscow (and probably Leningrad along with it).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2010 22:09
|
|
|
Holding a grudge against Sherman seems kinda odd. The ACW happened 150 years ago, one would imagine that people in the South would get over it. It's not like he burned my house or your house. We had a much more bloody civil war (one of the bloodiest in Europe ever) in Finland a hundred years back and no one cares anymore, since the historical split between sharecroppers/industrial workers and landowners no longer exists. If someone wants a short presentation of the Finnish Civil War, I can give one.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2010 20:21
|
|
|
The Finnish Civil War has it's background in a tremendous amount of really dumb political games. So, initially this is really boring. At least this first part is. So, it was 1917. And not all was well in the Russian Empire, of which Finland was part back in the day. The difference between Finland and most of the other regions in Russia was that when Russia invaded and annexed Finland in 1809, Finland actually remained an autonomous duchy, eventually managing most of it's own business, though there occationally were attempts at russification. This meant, that even while the Russian state was gradually breaking down with provisional government never actually getting their poo poo together after the February Revolution, Finland continued to have a functioning state apparatus in the form of the Finnish Parliament. However, the toll of WW1 was clearly showing when the economy ground to a halt after the February Revolution. Food shortages became common, and the Parliament was unable to restore public order or deal with most issues raised, mostly because the Senate (what you would call a cabinet today) was weak and did not have the full cooperation of the Parliament. The Senate, led by Oskari Tokoi, should have had a clear majority in the Parliament by being a compromise Senate consisting of six socialists and six non-socialist members, but Tokoi was for the most part unable to govern the country. Among problems faced were wide-spread strikes, unemployment, food shortages and the general breaking down of public order due to the old police forces disbanding. Another major problem was that Finland was a Grand Duchy, and Nicholas II had been the Grand Duke. There was really no legal provision for him being ousted from power and transferring the powers of the Grand Duke to anyone except another Tsar. Which were quite in short supply at the time, mind you.  (look at this smug motherfucker) So, the question was: who actually governs Finland? Is it the provisional government in Petrograd or the Finnish government in Helsinki? There were attempts at dealing with the situation in the form of legislative attempts, but the abortive coup attempt by the Bolsheviks in the summer in Russia lead to Kerensky refusing to delegate power to the Finnish government. In addition, he disbanded the Parliament and sent additional troops to Finland. Elections were held in October and the socialists ended up as the opposition party, and the conservatives ended up controlling the Senate. Considering that the conservatives in the parliament had been cooperating with Kerensky, this was not too good really. The conservatives feared the socialists getting too much power in the parliament, so they had ended up blocking the attempts to Finnish self-rule. And then Lenin came along and ended the story of Kerensky's provisional government. This left the conservative right pretty much holding their dicks in their hand, as their main backer had vanished into thin air and Russia started tearing itself apart for real, and emboldened the Social Democrats, especially the more radical ones. The Social Democrats so far resisted bolshevik calls for revolution though, but the lines were drawn very clearly. The unions organized a general strike in November, and this was when militia groups started appearing for real. The conservatives had their Civil Guard and the socialists had the Red Guard. During the general strike, the leaders of the revolutionary socialist movement voted about if they should start the revolution. Revolution lost 14-11.  Women of the red guards there. By about the same time, the conservative-controlled parliament said gently caress it and announced that they were by law the sole source of legislative power. A delegation was sent to Petrograd to present the Finnish declaration of independence to Lenin and his government, and Lenin said what the heck and signed. This meant that Finland was independent and that it was now internationally recognized as such. Yay. What still remained was the deep rift between the socialists and the conservatives, the general lack of any public order whatsoever and the catastrophic economic situation. And a whole bunch of Russian troops inside the country. And with the situation in Russia making the revolutionary socialists more bold, something was bound to happen sooner or later. Part two is coming as soon as I have smoked a cigarette and typed a lot.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2010 22:00
|
|
|
Part 2: How to end up with two illegitimate governments and how to start a civil war in Finland. So 1918 comes along and there is still two armed organizations in the country, the Civil Guards and the Red Guards. Neither of which are controlled by the government. There had been a number of violent confrontations during the general strike of November and people had died. As the main socialist party, the Social Democrats, lost control of the Red Guards it meant that the revolutionary wing of the socialist movement now had armed forces. The only answer that the conservative right-wing Senate had was to call the former Russian cavalry officer C.G.E. Mannerheim to lead the Civil Guards and to pass a law to create a force to keep public order. Seeing this as a threat (which is certainly was) the Red Guards now either had to move on to revolution or disband. When a law was passed making the Civil Guards the official army, revolution came. It's commonly considered that the war started officially by two independent actions: in late January, Civil Guards acting on the orders of Mannerheim started disarming Russian troops and on the 28th the Red Guards seized Helsinki, which became the capital for the Finnish People's Delegation. A number of senators managed to reach the coastal city of Vaasa in western Finland, which became the temporary capital for the rump senate. Some remained underground in Helsinki. At this point, front lines were drawn fast. The industrial centers of the country, most in the southern part of the country were staunchly Red and the North was for the most part White (which is what the side of the rump senate ended up being called). The war had actually started in Karelia before the actual revolution, with a number of skirmishes between Red and Civil Guard troops due to Russian arms being sent into Finland by the Soviet government. Some Red centers in eastern and northern Finland quickly succumbed to being isolated from the rest of the Red-controlled territory. The opening phases of the war were very chaotic: it's worth remembering that neither side had any real officers or soldiers at this point. Here is a nice map to show you the situation in early February when most initial skirmishes had settled down and the situation was somewhat stable:  At this point of the war, the Red Guards were more active on the main front. The White forces were instead cleaning up behind the main front, for example the coastal town of Oulu up in the North. Some areas had remained in White hands near Helsinki and on the northwest coast. As far as numbers go, both sides were rather equal throughout the war. About 90000 soldiers fought on each side, and in addition there was about 60000 Russian troops in the country. However, beyond the initial stage, very few Russians actually bothered to fight for the Red government. Behind the lines on the White side, most Russian troops were disarmed without violence. What could have won the war for the Red side instead became a total non-factor. Strategically, the Whites were not in a good position. The areas that gave them most support were on the opposite sides of the country: Karelia in the east and Ostrobotnia on the west coast. Lines of communication and supply were threatened, since there weren't many railroads running across the country at that time. If you look at the map, you see the railroad that runs from Vaasa through Jyväskylä and towards Karelia. Cutting off that track was the major strategic goal for the Red forces during their offensive in February and early March. The main thrusts are noted on the map by red arrows. And the offensive was a complete failure. Not because the Whites were better, but because the Red Guards had no working leadership anywhere between the level of the high command in Helsinki and the company chiefs. The strategy was sound, but the forces available simply could not carry out a grand offensive. On a local level, some forces fought well but it did not matter much since on the whole, the Red forces didn't manage to accomplish much. Some attempts to educate officers for the Red forces were made by the Red government, but the war was over before that actually became a reality. Most former Russian-trained officers fought for the Whites. CGE Mannerheim turned out to be a pretty good commander-in-chief too. At the same time, there was a plot twist. 1300 German-trained troops that had earlier left the country to get trained in the Imperial German army for an eventual independence struggle, returned to Finland. All but a few of them joined the forces of the Vaasa rump senate. The Jäger troops ended up being used as officers and NCO's in the White army, making it virtually overnight vastly more effective than the Red one. The Red offensives petered out by late March, around which the White army started to show actual competence. Up until the arrival of the Jägers, it had been a war of armed civilians against armed civilians. Now, when the White side got the initiative, it was a war of armed civilians against somewhat better trained armed civilians with an occasional actual soldier thrown in the mix. And the Russian troops mostly were content with leaving the country the best they could. So, it's not hard to see what happened.  (Blue lines show white forces and red lines, eh) During March, there had been talk of a German intervention against the Red forces, but Mannerheim was determined to have a battle that would show that the Whites could have handled the war themselves. The largest industrial area of the country at the time was the city of Tampere, which is where the largest battles of the war took place. It was in fact the largest battle ever fought in the north up to that point, and the only real battle of note in the entire war, to be honest. On the attacking side, there were 16000 white troops, including a brigade of swedish volunteers. On the defending side, there was 14000 Red Guards. So, about equal in numbers which according to traditional military thinking is not very good for a major offensive. Except that the battleground looked like this:  The city of Tampere is situated between two lakes, with a river running through it. The general ineptness of the Red Guards quickly lead to the city being surrounded with a pincer movement. The local Red commander, Hugo Salmela was not too bad, for being a former actor with no military training, but was killed before the city was taken, because a drunken dude with an armed hand grenade blew up the Red general staff by mistake. Note: do not throw armed hand granades into a box of hand grenades. As a defense, the guy who blew up the staff wasn't the only one who was drunk on duty. Overall, the whites lost about a thousand men in their operations in and around Tampere, the Red Guards lost a bit more but 11000 Red soldiers were captured. And since this was a civil war, the Whites figured out that it was time for some revenge now and several Red soldiers and politicians and other public figures were just flat out murdered after having surrendered. Vae Victis:  With Tampere lost, the next disaster soon came after that. German troops, led by Rüdiger von der Goltz landed on the Hanko peninsula and another unit of Germans from the Ostsee Division landed in Loviisa which is to the east from Helsinki. It meant game over for Red Finland. However, the fighting didn't stop just because of that. Time for a cigarette and then the last part of the war.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2010 23:13
|
|
|
Part 3: The war being practically over doesn't mean the dying stops. The Germans had landed on the 3rd and 7th of May and the last major offensives started.  The gray arrows show the German offensives, and by this time the focus of the fighting moved to Karelia, towards the third largest city in Finland at the time, Viipuri. The Germans reached Helsinki by the 10th of April and by the 14th the city was in German and white hands. A number of White troops took part in the battle, but they were quite unneeded. For the most part, the Red Guards by that time were fleeing towards Viipuri and the Soviet border as fast as they could. And who could blame them, considering that summary executions of prisoners and assorted tortures were quite certain by that time.  Germans manning a machine gun in Helsinki, probably after the fighting. The Germans managed to cut the area controlled by the Red forces in half which probably shorted the war by quite a bit and made the strategic position of the Red forces untenable. Western Finland and southern Finland were now lost to the Germans and the Whites. And as a side note, Sweden briefly occupied the Åland Islands for about two weeks around this time. The situation around Viipuri turned into the last major battle of the war, and the city ended up in White hands by the 29th of April. Almost 20000 White troops fought against a remnant of the Red Guards that numbered probably less than 7000 men. About 4000 Red soldiers were taken prisoner after the battle though, so most didn't even fight in the defense of the city. Around a thousand prisoners were executed by the White forces after the battle. With Viipuri lost, all that was left to do for the remains of the Red army was to surrended or go into exile in the Soviet Union. Most of the Finnish Worker's Delegation ended up in the Soviet Union and most of them died in Stalin's purges later on. Quite a few Finns who decided to go into exile later died in the gulags, too. There was no treaty or peace that would have ended the war: it just tapered off with a few skirmishes and cleanup actions. By the 15th of May, no resistance to the White army remained. With the war being won by the White forces of the rump Senate in Vaasa, there began in earnest what has been known later on as White terror. A significant number of Red soldiers and sympathizers were murdered both during the war and immediately after that. At least over 7000 people were murdered, mostly by shooting. Over a thousand went missing and in addition to actual executions after a brief trial, a large number of Red Guards were shot without a trial. For those who managed to avoid being murdered, there awaited a long period in a prison camp. Over 80000 people at best were housed in prison camps following the war. It was probably the largest humanitarian disaster in Finnish history, since there was practically no preparations whatsoever to house this many prisoners. Over 12000 prisoners died overall during the summer of 1918. I live about a half a mile from a former prison camp site which before that was a Russian garrison. Only about 20% of the prisoners there died, in the worst camp in Tamminiemi over a third of the prisoners died of malnutrition and disease. During and after the summer of 1918, 70000 people were charged with different crimes and sent to trial. All in all, most of the ones who actually were sent to trial were convicted, most with prison sentences of various lengths. Suspended sentences were used, but many people got sent straight back to the camps, up until most sentences were commuted and the prisoners paroled. By late 1918, over six thousand Red prisoners remained in various prisons, the last ones being pardoned in 1927. The final cost to the war was over 95000 people dead from a population of a bit above three million. That's quite a bit. And here so we don't end on a too gloomy note, is a picture of people being executed during the war. 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2010 23:55
|
|
|
KurdtLives posted:I have always wondered if in a desperate move Himmler said something along the lines of "You know we have taken the Jews and work them to death and mistreat them, but what you don't realize is that we actually have been systematically slaughtering them. We will cease if you and the US stop your advance in Germany." Or something along those lines. Churchill could say yes, but he couldn't say no either with out everything falling apart. Well, towards the end of the war the camps were actually mostly shut down (with the prisoners being marched cross-country towards areas still occupied by Germany) due to the Soviet advance, so this is not very likely.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2010 06:24
|
|
|
Hob_Gadling posted:The class distinctions and perceived unfairness that started the war have pretty much disappeared, and the young generations speak of the civil war as something that has no relevance in life anymore. The class distinctions did not disappear, but successful land reforms after the war (and less successful land reforms after WW2) made most of the agrarian supporters of the Red faction into landowners.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2010 06:27
|
|
|
Gumby posted:Any sort of deal between Himmler and Churchill wouldn't have worked: the Nazis had proven themselves completely untrustworthy by that point, and the welfare of the Jews was not considered much of a priority by the Allies. Your show was probably just a list of counterfactual hypotheses. Not to mention that anything like that would have severely pissed off the Soviets. Stalin had suspicions throughout the war that the western Allies were going to backstab him and he did several times threaten to pull out of the war.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2010 17:15
|
|
|
lilljonas posted:ctually, the "in case of a German invasion" scenario is pretty difficult to figure out. A lot of the officer staff of Sweden were pro-nazis, while there was also a sizeable socialist and communist resistance movement, partly forged in the Spanish Civil War, who were in contact with Moscow and were set to both kill off officers and blow up infrastructure in case of an invasion. Wasn't the situation more like that the Swedish upper class and the middle class were more like pro-German, less pro-Nazi? There's a distinct lack of officers or prominent politicians in the member lists of the nazi organisations in Sweden at the time.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 22, 2010 06:41
|
|
|
lilljonas posted:Prominent political figures like the king and the prince? While not members of the nazi party, the royalty had pro-nazi sentiments, and king Gustav V sent a congratulatory telegram to Hitler when he invaded the Soviet Union. And here is the infamous picture of prince Gustaf Adolf giving money to a Nazi campaign in Berlin 1939, dressed in military uniform: Note that I'm not going for the traditional whitewash of recent history, but I think that the case for Swedish support for Hitler was very much a complex issue with various elements playing into it. Traditionally Sweden was very germanophilic and for example almost everyone in academia for example learned german because it was the language of academia at the time. Germanophilia and anticommunism might have been more important reasons than the actual nazi ideology for aligning with Germany at the time, at least for many. The absence of a nazi party with significant and widespread support in the elections would at least to a degree support this view. It would be interesting to read the files on people that were assembled by the predecessors of Säk during this period of time.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 22, 2010 10:48
|
|
|
Averrences posted:What would have happened if the Japanese Navy had launched a second strike against Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941? There were actual plans to invade Hawaii pre-Midway. The margin of success would not be good tho, and perhaps is best left ignored. Losting the naval facilities at Hawaii would have made the war much harder for the US Navy, since the nearest viable and secure military bases would have been the ones on the West Coast. So, pretty much everything would change.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2010 12:12
|
|
|
Zorak of Michigan posted:A Japanese invasion of Hawaii would have been a blunder of astonishing proportions. It would effectively bring the war closer to US shipyards, require long supply lines that the Japanese would have enormous difficulty supporting, and possibly tilt US policy toward dealing with Japan first. Well, being closer to the shipyards wouldn't matter much, since fighting over the distance between Hawaii and the West Coast would make American logistics a nightmare too. That would in a case where Pearl Harbor is effectively neutralized, also have the effect that any Japanese advance south and west of Hawaii would be hard to counter, leaving Australia more isolated since the lines of communication and supply to the US would be cut off and only the eastern lines would remain open.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2010 12:07
|
|
|
Mr. Sunshine posted:The russians beat themselves bloody against the finns, and the only reason that they managed to salvage a semblance of victory from the Winter War was because they had a hundred times the manpower and resources of Finland. Actually, by the time peace was made in March 1940, the Finnish Army was in a completely untenable position since the main line defense line had been breached in the Russian offensive during February. The main reason why Stalin agreed to peace with almost the original terms was the fact that in his mind, the Allied countries might just decide to get involved which certainly would not benefit him.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2010 14:09
|
|
|
About recent military history, there is a neat little detail from the Georgian war about unit sizes and tactics. Apparently, the US-trained Georgian army was a pushover for the Russian troops simply because the Georgian army had been training mostly small-unit tactics and COIN operations, so there was great difficulty in coordinating troops for any sort of counterattacks or even static defense against the Russian armored units.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2010 16:05
|
|
|
Rodrigo Diaz posted:Perhaps but 18th century warfare is the most boring thing on the planet so it doesn't count. The battle of Poltava is a fascinating one because it was pretty much the battle that decided the future dynamics of Europe for 300 years. Not to mention that despite the fact that the Swedes were outnumbered and outgunned, they almost broke the Russians.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2010 12:03
|
|
|
Bulgaroktonos posted:This was a flawed plan in many respects, but what is interesting is that Lee was still thinking of the "grand battle", even after it had lost all strategic significance. He never perceived that the war had gone far beyond the mere military realm, and that the Confederacy was beaten on the moral, economic, and political levels. To me, this charge seems sort of unfair. After all, history is full of cases where the militaries of a country have kept the war going for even years even despite realizing that defeat is inevitable. Sweden in the Great Northern War, Poland in WW2, Germany in both World Wars, Japan in WW2, France during Napoleon, and so on. The more important question is that why do militaries keep fighting despite the realization that the war is lost.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2010 13:40
|
|
|
WebDog posted:During the second world war my grandfather admired the Russian's ability to make soup out of anything, reportedly even boots.  Photo taken by finnish war photographer after the surrender of a Russian encirclement during the Winter War. Yep, that's human bones.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2011 11:43
|
|
|
Rabhadh posted:Care to cite a refrence? That kind of thing was easily staged for propaganda The picture is from a series of 300 photographs which were classified until recently. Taken by finnish war photographs on the Finnish part of the East Front, the content of the pictures was seen as too grisly and possibly harmful to Finnish-Soviet relations. Wikimedia has about 70 of them for viewing. I think we can count on the propaganda angle as not being present, because the pictures were in fact classified and not published at all during WW2.  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Declassified_photos_of_the_Winter_War
|
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2011 12:41
|
|
|
The French used Panthers for a while after the war, and a bunch of German equipment was sold off to the Middle East, off the top of my head. The Syrians used PzIV's. Of course, Finland too kept PzIV's in use after the war.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 23, 2011 22:23
|
|
|
Cjones posted:I completely disagree with this, by the way. The powers that be certainly don't have to follow many of these rules (for who will enforce them?) and many simply don't follow the rules, full stop. The modern rules for war have only existed for a little longer than a hundred years. Most of the concepts, like not killing prisoners straight away, would have seemed strange for a 18th century army.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 5, 2011 23:05
|
|
|
Nenonen posted:Btw. Germany didn't switch to war economy until 1942. One interesting question is how much could an earlier mobilization of economy have helped in the material war against USSR and USA. Or would it just have led into civilian morale breaking up as store shelves would have been empty already in 1941? I think that most historians would agree on that this worry about civilian morale was something that in hindsight proved false, since there was never any civilian uprising in Germany at all.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2011 07:06
|
|
|
Herv posted:How many millions of Slavic/Jewish/Etc stiffs were already on the books by January 43? I'm not sure I would be accepting anything but unconditional surrender. What the hell can you even compare this situation to? If this wasn't 'game on' at that point, when is it? Remember who called the shots. Stalin. Stalin was most definiently one man who rather got 50% of a sure thing than 100% of something uncertain. Never mind that the Soviet Army outnumbered the Germans: they had serious manpower issues coming up and Stalin knew that. The Soviet industrial base was wrecked and was not able to keep up current production rates indefinitely. Never mind the industrial manpower problems they had. And Stalin absolutely did not trust the Western allies at all, and he was well aware of the fact that the second front he had been promised might well turn out to be one of those Churchillian strokes of stupidity. Which it actually pretty much was.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 18, 2011 07:49
|
|
|
If Rommel would have been the strategical genius people think he was, first thing he would have done before going on the attack in North Africa would have been to take out a map and stab his index finger at Malta. Then he should have told everyone that place needs to be taken before any real offensive can happen. But he didn't. The fairest opinion I've seen on Rommel was that he was good when commanding a division but worse at commanding an army corps, especially since he didn't care about logistics too much. Also most people seem to not realize that Rommel was one of the political opportunists who got in bed with the Nazis to further their careers.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2011 00:25
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:This kind of thing tends to come up more after the fact, as when you're in the midst of a tough defensive fight you really aren't thinking about how they're in a trap. I don't think you can really blame Stavka for not trying to get fancy with this because if you let the Germans go further you risk losing a lot of men. And the Soviets didn't do that good in Kursk anyway. While the Soviets won the battle, it was very costly for them, too. They won, they were able to win the war unlike the Germans, but it was still a bloody affair for everyone involved.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2011 14:29
|
|
|
INTJ Mastermind posted:So what was the closest the Allies came to losing the war? When Doenitz's U-Boat blockade was in its heyday? Summer 1941: if Stalin never gets out of his funk, the Germans might have well won. Of course, this has more to do with the personality of Stalin and less with anything the Germans did. Summer 1940: the funniest way of getting a counterfactual scenario where Germany wins is that by that time, Hitler could have gotten the bright idea of taking his ball and going home from Western Europe. If the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Denmark and Norway are left alone, most of the UK's momentum of keeping the war going with Germany is lost.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2011 06:41
|
|
|
wdarkk posted:Well, here's an examination of "US loses Midway badly" which isn't quite the same thing, but is close. Paul Kennedy sucks, though. His ideas of the development of nations are pretty drat stupid in their simplicity. Wars are not decided by simple manufacturing capabilities or the number of men available. If Kennedy was actually right, Finland, for example, would have been occupied by the Russians in WW2. A not-botched Midway battle wouldn't screw over the Japanese any worse than starting the war did.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2011 21:59
|
|
|
Das Butterbrot posted:And what difference does this make? Yes, alot of people knew that something horrible was happening to the jews, as you mentioned. But if they spoke up about it, something horrible was going to happen to them aswell. Actually not. The Germans raised a stink about the T4 euthanasia program during WW2, and the response of the Nazis was to officially shut it down.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2011 11:23
|
|
|
Someone asked about the Roman-Persian wars earlier, here's the situation in short. There was a shitload of conflicts along that border for hundreds of years, so I won't be detailing those conflicts at all. The key issue to understand here is that the eastern border was a border that the Romans were utterly unable to secure on a permanent basis. Much to do with the general geography of the area, and the fact that the Persians were way too strong to be a simple local power like Macedonia or Armenia. Not to insult the Armenians who caused the Romans a shitload of trouble over the years. During the Roman expansion period, the Romans might have won a decisive war against the Persians, but it was pretty unlikely considering the overland distances involved. And there was really no political will to do that. The Persians tended to attack when the Romans were weak, for example during periods of civil wars which were pretty much the standard state of affairs after Augustus. The Romans still thought of themselves as superior to the Persians as a state in this period, but after the West fell, the Constantinople emperors found themselves dealing with Persia as equals. The main thing is to see these as a border conflict, not an all-out-war even if occasionally the situation escalated to larger invasions and such. Neither side was really able to defeat the enemy on a more than limited scale. So, cities and forts in the border region tended to change owners from time to time. Kinda like Elsass-Lothringen, but in the Middle East.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2011 07:04
|
|
|
Konstantin posted:Keep in mind that naval services are very big on tradition, even more than other sections of the armed forces. US Navy officer candidates had to spend significant amounts of training time learning how to navigate with a sextant and star chart until 1997. At least around here in Europe, those are still required skills for 1st mates and captains in the merchant navy. A friend of mine is currently studying navigation for a boat license and I think navigating like that is still part of the curriculum. It's good to know if your more modern equipment fails.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2011 07:45
|
|
|
I'm writing a game that's set in a world where everyone fights with black powder weapons and 18th century tactics, and I'm looking for a bit of feedback on it and this seems to be the thread to ask in. Here's two blog links: http://lionsofthenorth.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/death-or-glory-glory-preferred-military-matters-in-lotn-part-i-weapons/ http://lionsofthenorth.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/god-himself-cannot-make-them-stand-military-matters-in-lotn-part-ii-military-units/ If I'm flat out wrong about something or have presented something wrong, please tell me.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2012 14:57
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:Do these rifle-muskets of yours use the minie ball? If so, then why isn't everyone using rifles? If not, why don't they have minie balls? The minie ball hasn't been reinvented at the point where the game is set. The development of more modern weapons might be just around the corner in the setting, but I'm thinking of leaving it in as a possible secret for some faction or another. The main issues of course are the lack of modern machine tools, material sciences and modern chemistry, since even the Afghan gunsmiths have access to modern tools and parts. SeanBeansShako posted:I would however give the female Dragoons a slightly less silly name, something to do with the first wife of Adam perhaps Lilith? It's a reference to the WW2-era Soviet aviators: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches Anyway, back on topic: While doing research for the game I've been re-reading "Poltava" by the Swedish historian Peter Englund. Anyone interested in the period where Sweden became a Great Power for a short while, he's the guy you want to read. His book "Years of War" (Ofredsår) is an excellent description of how drat bloody the 17th century was. The entire century saw only two years of peace in Europe.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2012 19:56
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:They do? Can someone confirm/deny this? I remember seeing a documentary done by some guy who ventured into the Khyber Pass region. The equipment used by those guys looked fairly modern to me. As far as I understand, the work done in more primitive conditions is more about putting together new parts for old guns, such as new barrels and stocks to old Enfield rifles, for example. You don't really need modern gear to make a barrel, but you need a certain degree of sophisticated blacksmithing and decent quality materials.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2012 21:49
|
|
|
Mr. Sunshine posted:Sorry to go back to WWII chat, but the tragicomically fast collapse of Allied defenses in the west in 1940 got me thinking - what was the actual British-French plan for waging war with Germany in 39-40? "Sit behind the Maginot Line and wait" does not seem like a useful strategy in the long run, and I'm fairly sure even the outdated French planners knew this. Everyone thought the Germans would do WWI part 2: go through Belgium to invade France along the same lines of approach as in WWi. The idea was to meet the Germans in battle there and defeat them. The fun thing is that this wasn't such a bad plan, considering the Germans were going to do exactly this, until the last moment when a set of the plans went missing in Belgium and Hitler decided to listen to Manstein and Guderian. The main force of the Allied army thrusted northwards, while the Germans bypassed their main force by going through the Ardennes. If the Germans wouldn't have been as lucky as they were, it would have been a disaster for the Germans, and the German military planners were very conscious about an attack on France possibly failing. On a local scale, whenever French forces managed to fight the Germans in a cohesive manner, they tended to stop the Germans in their tracks. This of course didn't help the Allied at all, considering that the German spearheads were racing to the coast behind them.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2012 14:12
|
|
|
Boiled Water posted:What did Manstein and Guderian say and did Hitler often not listen to them or any of his advisors? It pretty much boils down to luck, since Hitler wasn't much involved in the initial plans to invade France anyway, it was the OKH and OKW that did the original plans, and when those plans got compromised (which they actually didn't since the Allies thought that the plans they got in their hands when a Wehrmact courier mistakenly landed into Belgium, were some kind of elaborate ruse) Manstein and Guderian were the only ones who had some kind of alternative to the original plans. Hitler liked the plan and so it was chosen, despite the inherit risk in invading through the Ardennes. As with all things relating to Hitler, it's kinda hard to get a grip on what he usually did at any given point, but by 1940, he still paid attention to what the army leadership had to say. What's actually interesting about the invasion of France is that post-war history made up a myth of Blitzkrieg as a miracle doctrine and something the Germans had invented, when in reality, the whole "defeating France in a few weeks" was more about amazing luck and a couple of dudes who managed to get Hitler's support for a very risky plan.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2012 17:07
|
|
|
Flippycunt posted:This is something I think a lot of people overlook when they study military matters. When democracies go to war the entire course of the war can be drastically changed by an election at home. I think that the central thing when looking at the possibility of a German invasion of England in 1940, is that there are in fact other considerations than the purely military aspect. One thing is that with the benefit of hindsight, committing the Royal Navy into the Channel is the smart thing. However with the Royal Navy being the linchpin to carry on the war even if the British Isles are lost, sending the fleet into the channel might not have been an easy choice, since the Royal Navy was concerned about the Luftwaffe. Also if an invasion would have happened, it would have happened in the context of the Germans being perceived as unstoppable after Norway, Denmark, Poland and France, which might have been a serious issue for British morale. Any indecisiveness on part of the Brits might cause serious problems.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2012 12:11
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:Also there's a difference between island hopping and a full scale invasion of an entire country. Canada/US to the UK would be like going straight to Japan from Pearl Harbour. As far as I remember, the Torch landings were staged from the US.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2012 12:16
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 23:24 |
|
|
There's a pretty awesome War in the East LP by Grey Hunter going on in the LP forum: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3420660 It has had some sporadic discussion about what-if's in WW2 and for one, I think the idea that admiral Raeder and Göring presented to Hitler sometime in 1940-1941 about adopting a southern strategy instead of attacking Russia is fascinating, since it would seem that when looking at the historical events, the Germans had much more chance of success in North Africa if it would have been their focus during the middle stages of the war. Pasting from some silly german wankery forum, this seems to be match pretty well of what I remember about Raeder's proposal. quote:1, German units move through Spain to invade Gibraltar. fake edit: http://bevinalexander.com/excerpts/world-war-ii/victory-strategy-raeder-hitler.htm I think Raeder's plan was much better than what was historically done, since it would play the German strengths against Allied weakness, and at least in theory give them a better position for attacking Russia, if that was to be done. However, one thing Raeder did not take into account was the fact that the Soviet Union was reforming its military and possibly trying to create a larger buffer zone by invading Finland again to protect Leningrad. Also the idea of sending an entire Army Group to Iran doesn't seem to take into account the terrain on the Iranian-Russian border.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2012 10:27
|
|