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re: What fascinates you concerning WW2?
Posted on 2/23/17 at 9:47 pm to USMCTiger03
Posted on 2/23/17 at 9:47 pm to USMCTiger03
quote:
Germany and Russia were never not going to go to war and they both knew it, due to inherent opposing sociopolitical frameworks.
I'm not so sure this is necessarily true. Stalin was a subscriber to realpolitik. I haven't seen much that has convinced me that he had real ambitions at launching a major war against Germany any time soon following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. The Soviets were, however, using their leverage to prod Germany to allow an expansion of Soviet influence deeper and deeper into Europe, which began to give the Germans a great sense of unease. While war from Hitler's viewpoint may very well have been inevitable, he always recognized that a two front war was not favorable. Eventually he wanted to crush the USSR, but Stalin did not recognize this as he viewed Hitler as being a pragmatist/subscriber to realpolitik like himself.
Stalin's true intentions are harder to gauge. Hitler was quite candid with his long term ambitions, Stalin much less so.
2
Posted on 2/23/17 at 9:49 pm to X123F45
General George Mothafrickin Patton
Posted on 2/23/17 at 9:51 pm to ChewyDante
If Hitler had been successful on the Russian front, how far would he have pushed? To the Urals?
Why did Hitler allow the delayed start date? Why not wait till the next spring?
Why did Hitler allow the delayed start date? Why not wait till the next spring?
Posted on 2/23/17 at 10:02 pm to Oyster
quote:
If Hitler had been successful on the Russian front, how far would he have pushed? To the Urals?
That's speculation but I'd say yes, the Urals. The general assumption was that the Soviet government would collapse by that point.
quote:
Why did Hitler allow the delayed start date?
The coup in Yugoslavia. The Germans had to invade Yugoslavia and then push the British out of Greece and Crete to secure their southern flank. This pushed the start date back. I don't think waiting another year was in the cards. Hitler was notoriously impatient and to this point, everything had gone right. Reality that his winning streak couldn't last forever hadn't set in yet, and you could make a case that Hitler never really came to terms with this reality until the very end.
Posted on 2/23/17 at 10:03 pm to ChewyDante
quote:
I'm not so sure this is necessarily true.
Well you are the guru, so I concede.
I recall some source, maybe the communist-nazi ramblings by Hitler that gave my conclusion.
Posted on 2/23/17 at 10:10 pm to X123F45
Thiking about the clean-up after the war was over. Your had an entire continent of destruction in europe. As well as massive amounts of destruction in Asia and Africa. Crazy to think about the logistics of it all.
Also the fact that the US, for the most part, escaped this. It gave them a leg up to all the other major countries in the world, post war.
Also the fact that the US, for the most part, escaped this. It gave them a leg up to all the other major countries in the world, post war.
Posted on 2/23/17 at 10:18 pm to USMCTiger03
quote:
Well you are the guru, so I concede.
I recall some source, maybe the communist-nazi ramblings by Hitler that gave my conclusion.
No need to concede, it's a legitimate question and one that is still debated today by the professional historians. One thing that is important to note is that apparently Hitler and many in the German leadership legitimately feared a Soviet invasion, thus it affected their decision making.
There's a Russian author who has written a few books and lectured on the thesis that Stalin absolutely was preparing to launch an offensive and the German concerns were correct. I haven't read them, only reviews awhile back, but I believe they were met with a great deal of disagreement from most historians.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sharing a border as they did following the partition of Poland was absolutely going to result in war at some point or another though. The real question is whether the threat from the Soviet Union truly necessitated the German strike. The Germans were not living up to their end of the bargain in the exchange of goods as dictated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviets were. This itself may have lead to problems in the future. But if the Soviets really weren't on the cusp of attacking, then obviously the invasion was a horrific blunder. One can imagine a German commitment of full military resources to the campaign in Africa and seizing Gibraltar. Had Hitler even postponed attacking the USSR until after a hypothetical victory in the Mediterranean, even with the British continuing to holdout on the Isles, the Germans could have invaded the USSR with much less risk because the Western theater would have been so secure by that point.
Posted on 2/23/17 at 10:27 pm to X123F45
Rommel, the North African Campaign, and the experimental technology
Posted on 2/23/17 at 10:32 pm to ChewyDante
Well there you go, I was right after all so frick you.
Just kidding guru.
Just kidding guru.
Posted on 2/24/17 at 9:11 am to upgrayedd
I meant american civilians.
Koreans and Chinese meant about as much to the americans as they did the Japanese. (sad but true)
Koreans and Chinese meant about as much to the americans as they did the Japanese. (sad but true)
Posted on 2/24/17 at 9:15 am to geauxtigers87
I am familiar with the war crimes committed by the Kempetai in China. I was referring to American civilians.
Though I will say, to me it is odd that we did seem to spend a lot more effort hunting Nazi's then we did hunting the Japanese military hierarchy. I know I would rather be captured by the Nazi's than the Japanese if I were a soldier.
Though I will say, to me it is odd that we did seem to spend a lot more effort hunting Nazi's then we did hunting the Japanese military hierarchy. I know I would rather be captured by the Nazi's than the Japanese if I were a soldier.
Posted on 2/24/17 at 9:41 am to ChewyDante
quote:
I'm not so sure this is necessarily true. Stalin was a subscriber to realpolitik. I haven't seen much that has convinced me that he had real ambitions at launching a major war against Germany any time soon following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. The Soviets were, however, using their leverage to prod Germany to allow an expansion of Soviet influence deeper and deeper into Europe, which began to give the Germans a great sense of unease. While war from Hitler's viewpoint may very well have been inevitable, he always recognized that a two front war was not favorable. Eventually he wanted to crush the USSR, but Stalin did not recognize this as he viewed Hitler as being a pragmatist/subscriber to realpolitik like himself.
Stalin's true intentions are harder to gauge. Hitler was quite candid with his long term ambitions, Stalin much less so.
I've read before that Stalin had his own plans for "Lebensraum" in Europe pretty much just like Germans. The difference though is that while the Germans were ready to make their move by the end of the 1930's, the Soviets, thanks to Stalin's purges of the Red Army, would not be ready for large scale offensive operations until about 1943. The Germans knew this and deducted they could either sit back and wait for the Soviet hammer to fall in a few years or they could gamble and strike the Soviets before the Soviets were ready.
Now all that of course is historic theory only and next to impossible to prove thanks to Soviet secrecy. I think there is a very good chance this therory is very much true though.
And just so there is no question, I'm not trying to defend Germanyvor the war of conquest they launched. The Nazis were pure evil. I'm just pointing out the Soviets were just as bad.
Posted on 2/24/17 at 10:17 am to X123F45
I think for me was the absolute undivided attention the government and the US people paid to the war effort. Todays society and political factions would lose interest and start to protest in short order. Also had today's media be in action during WW2 who knows how it would have been reported. Just the fact that several hundred soldiers were killed in training missions prior to D Day would have been cannon fodder for the MSM of today. You can imagine the reports saying The War Is Lost
Posted on 2/24/17 at 10:26 am to TygerDurden
quote:
I think for me was the absolute undivided attention the government and the US people paid to the war effort. Todays society and political factions would lose interest and start to protest in short order. Also had today's media be in action during WW2 who knows how it would have been reported. Just the fact that several hundred soldiers were killed in training missions prior to D Day would have been cannon fodder for the MSM of today. You can imagine the reports saying The War Is Lost
A great example of today's media is how they had a slobbering hissy fit over the first SEAL raid of Trump's presidency. The media lost their minds for days on end because the administration called a raid where one SEAL died a "success". They even rolled out that senile old fool John McCain to claim you couldn't call any raid where an American died a success.
Imagine how today's media would report something like the Battle of Okinawa where over 20,000 Americans died.
Posted on 2/24/17 at 10:41 am to Darth_Vader
quote:
The Germans knew this and deducted they could either sit back and wait for the Soviet hammer to fall in a few years or they could gamble and strike the Soviets before the Soviets were ready.
Now all that of course is historic theory only and next to impossible to prove thanks to Soviet secrecy. I think there is a very good chance this therory is very much true though.
Right, we can never really know for sure, but what we definitely know is that the Germans saw it as a very real threat and thus it influenced their decisions.
We also know from Soviet aggression in Poland, Finland, and the Baltics, that the USSR was absolutely looking to expand their power and control whenever the opportunity presented itself. But with a victorious and immensely more powerful Germany than the Soviets could have predicted, at what point would they feel that launching such an attack could be successful? The Soviets had stumbled mightily against the Finns while the Germans were smashing historic European powers with relative ease, so it stands to reason they'd have a good bit of hesitancy in respect to jumping into conflict against Germany when their standing arrangement had been serving them so well.
quote:
would not be ready for large scale offensive operations until about 1943
One interesting question is, had the Germans thrown their full military might against the British in Africa and the Mediterranean from 1941-1943 instead of against the USSR, could they have secured that theater prior to a conflict with the Soviets? This, in effect, would have secured them to take the Soviets on with full force from that point forward. On the other hand, if the Soviets launched a surprise offensive operation in mass from their holdings in Poland and into nearby Romania, they had the potential to seize Berlin and Romania and destroy Germany's political state in short order.
When you look at the situation from the vantage point that Hitler and German leaders in that time period had to, it's very difficult to argue against the preemptive strike. The danger from a potential Soviet strike was just too great to risk.
Posted on 2/24/17 at 10:49 am to theGarnetWay
quote:
British biplanes are what disabled the Bismarck, the prize battleship of the Germans.
Yes, but he said biplanes sinking battleships, not disabling them.
HMS Dorsetshire fired the killing blow although by that time the Bismarck was a burning wreck, courtesy of the Rodney and King George V.
Posted on 2/24/17 at 11:32 am to Darth_Vader
Hopefully if a real war broke out like ww2 the American people would be smart enough to wade through the msm vs. I mean the big reason that they say shite like that is because there's not any big real news to cover
Posted on 2/24/17 at 12:29 pm to foshizzle
As big a ship as the Bismarck was it was basically a WWI design. The British got incredibly lucky with the torpedo shot to the rudders of the ship. I also think the Bismarck's AA guns couldn't depress low enough to hit the incoming planes as well
Posted on 2/24/17 at 12:35 pm to X123F45
I find it interesting that Hitler wasn't actually this completely cold, lacking emphathy human being. People just assume he's this this type of person when that really wasn't hitler at all. Believe it or not he was so empathetic towards the people of Germany and his nation that he was willing to do anything to make them the rule the world. He saw the injustice from WW1 and it hurt him deeply. Osama Bin Laden also had these feelings.
This post was edited on 2/24/17 at 12:37 pm
Posted on 2/24/17 at 12:47 pm to Darth Aranda
quote:
I find it interesting that Hitler wasn't actually this completely cold, lacking emphathy human being. People just assume he's this this type of person when that really wasn't hitler at all. Believe it or not he was so empathetic towards the people of Germany and his nation that he was willing to do anything to make them the rule the world. He saw the injustice from WW1 and it hurt him deeply. Osama Bin Laden also had these feelings.
Yeah he "loved" the German people so much he blamed them for losing the war and wanted them all to die....
quote:
'The armed forces have lied to me and now the SS has left me in the lurch. The German people has not fought heroically. It deserves to perish. 'It is not I who have lost the war, but the German people'."
LINK
This post was edited on 2/24/17 at 12:49 pm
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