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Posted on 7/21/25 at 11:47 am to Penrod
quote:
GBR wasn’t falling no matter how long he waited. The only way to make them fall was to cross that channel, but Hitler lost The Battle of Britain to the RAF, and there was no way he could cross the Channel.
GB had no answer. GB was literally ready to fall.
Once Europe had fallen all Hitler had to do was establish a naval blockade, then rain down the V2 rockets.
There would have been some serious naval battles, but Germany could way out produce Britain. They could build more ships to replace their losses. GB could not keep up in that respect. The blockade could have starved the UK into submission.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 11:55 am to TigerHornII
Incredibly, into the summer of 1940, the RAF's Training Command was still running at a peacetime pace. Lack of pilots hurt the RAF in the Battle, not lack of aircraft.
Four years later, it was reversed. America had a shitload of well-trained, competent pilots, many of the great German aces were dead or out of the fight, and they didn't have the fuel to train new pilots.
Four years later, it was reversed. America had a shitload of well-trained, competent pilots, many of the great German aces were dead or out of the fight, and they didn't have the fuel to train new pilots.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 12:03 pm to TigerHornII
quote:
Not exactly. The Brits were sending them plenty of American gear by the time of Moscow.
Not arguing, but in late 1941 we weren't even in the war and hadn't ramped up our manufacturing to wartime output. We didn't even have a modern tank, or much of an ability to produce one.
While some American equipment was sent all over the world at the time because it was the best available, it wasn't what stopped the Germans in Russia.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 12:03 pm to Gemini Jim
quote:
GB had no answer. GB was literally ready to fall.
This is just dead wrong. GB was being supplied by the US in increasing amounts and had already DEFEATED The Luftwaffe. GB had air superiority over GB and the Channel. I don’t understand how they could have fallen. To whom? How?
Posted on 7/21/25 at 2:57 pm to FightinTigersDammit
quote:
Incredibly, into the summer of 1940, the RAF's Training Command was still running at a peacetime pace. Lack of pilots hurt the RAF in the Battle, not lack of aircraft.
Four years later, it was reversed. America had a shitload of well-trained, competent pilots, many of the great German aces were dead or out of the fight, and they didn't have the fuel to train new pilots.
It was worse than that. They couldn't replace planes fast enough either. Churchill had his very own version of Elon Musk. Lord Beaverbrook was a self-made multi-millionaire entrepreneur who knew nothing about aviation or the military.
When his version of DOGE arrived at the RAF, they found thousands of aircraft unaccounted for. Within a matter of months, production was at 4x the rate it was when he took over, the RAF was rebuilding aircraft from cannibalized parts from wreckage, and he had found something like 20,000 aircraft MGs squirreled away in RAF storage facilities without anyone's knowledge. Most other than Churchill hated him for it.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 2:59 pm to TigerHornII
Not that Beaverbrook's contribution is overrated, but the Brits were closer to running out of pilots than they were to aircraft
Posted on 7/21/25 at 2:59 pm to Mahootney
quote:
Fair.
I seriously doubt the Germans could have pulled off a reverse Normandy.
They had no way of getting across the channel, and even if they wanted to, they didn't have the transport capacity to pull it off.
Maybe force a peace treaty with England.
You're right about the lack of sea transport, but with air superiority and the shattered Royal Army, I'm no so sure they couldn't have just loaded up in barges and sailed across with paratroopers securing harbors and beachheads. There were no fortifications to speak of in England, in contrast to the Atlantic Wall in France four years later.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 3:04 pm to RollTide1987
Barbarossa was a strategic blunder, but even bigger was Hitler not allowing the generals to dictate strategy. He was so haunted by Napoleon's failure he was superstitious and irrational in many of the decisions made.
I'm still not sure it was a winnable operation, but having an amateur (Hitler) at the head, making decisions based on superstition and irrationality made defeat certain.
I'm still not sure it was a winnable operation, but having an amateur (Hitler) at the head, making decisions based on superstition and irrationality made defeat certain.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 3:10 pm to TigerHornII
quote:
the shattered Royal Army
Meh. There hasn't been much weight to any British Army since the Middle Ages - expeditionary forces on steroids, relying heavily on colonial troops at that.
The reasons Hitler gave up on the idea of invading Britain were:
1. The Royal Navy
2. The relative lack of amphibious capacity of the Wehrmacht
3. The RAF
4. Increasing American logistical support for Britain, despite neutrality until December 1941
(More or less in that order)
This post was edited on 7/21/25 at 3:11 pm
Posted on 7/21/25 at 4:39 pm to TT9
quote:
It was over for the Germans after Stalingrad.
It was over the day the panzer divisions of Army Group Center had to assume defensive positions outside of Moscow.
That date was December 6th, 1941.
Folly.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 4:50 pm to Harry Boutte
For more info on Barbarossa and the Eastern Front, I recommend any/all the books by David Stahel.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 6:09 pm to Reagan80
quote:
Germany was defeated before they launched Operation Barbarossa because they couldn’t knock Britain out of the war.
Zero chance of that happening, other than British politicians striking a political deal with Hitler. Not a big chance of that, but it wasn't out of the question either.
There was an excellent podcast a month ago that covers a lot of this:
What was surprising to me was that England had done a good job of preparing air defenses, going back to the late 1930's. They had radar installations, and observers on the ground, and a central control room to consolidate the information coming in. The idea that the fighter war was a terrible mismatch favoring the Germans is something he considers to be romantic propaganda. The British outproduced the Germans in fighters by 2/1 or more in every month of 1940, and it got worse for the Germans after that. German airfields were concentrated and good targets for the British bombers while early warning kept the Brits from losing planes on the ground. The Brits also had an advantage in fuel use since they were near the supply. It was inevitable that the Germans were going to lose the Battle of Britain.
Even worse is the idea of Germans landing troops in England. England had the best navy in the world (the US and Japan not far behind but Germany wasn't in the conversation). The Germans had this absurd idea of using Rhine barges, with one barge pulling two others. And doing it without air superiority or control of the seas, and barges in the Channel? Just lunacy.
Probably the most interesting thing he had to say was that if France had launched into Germany as Poland was falling, that the French could have driven all the way to Berlin. The Germans had committed everything to the Polish front, and had a harder time with it than most people realize.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 6:20 pm to KiwiHead
The Muzzies have done it without firing a shot.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 6:25 pm to CapstoneGrad06
quote:the year was 1955 - I was a junior in HS - went to history class - teacher standing unusually stiff and concentrating hard - usually very social and greets everyone - everyone took their seats - nobody said a word for about 2 minutes - Teacher finally says very quietly and very solemnly:
1066 Norman invasion of England
= = = "I am going to tell you something you will never forget" = = =
--- silence for a minute ---
then she said:
1066 - the last time England was invaded by a foreign power.
She was correct - I never forgot it.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 6:47 pm to ChineseBandit58
quote:
1066 - the last time England was invaded by a foreign power.
She was correct - I never forgot it.
Battle of Fishguard bro.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 6:55 pm to RedlandsTiger
quote:
Good thing he did attack the Soviets
Attacking the Soviets was the entire reason for the war. Hitler had no desire for war with the west and especially Britain. He would have avoided if he could. France had guaranteed Poland's sovereignty, Britain stood with France and so it was on.
Posted on 7/21/25 at 10:52 pm to Ace Midnight
quote:
Meh. There hasn't been much weight to any British Army since the Middle Ages - expeditionary forces on steroids, relying heavily on colonial troops at that.
The reasons Hitler gave up on the idea of invading Britain were:
1. The Royal Navy
2. The relative lack of amphibious capacity of the Wehrmacht
3. The RAF
4. Increasing American logistical support for Britain, despite neutrality until December 1941
(More or less in that order)
I'm not sure you have a concept of just how bad off the Brits were after Dunkirk. The Army was beaten. The Royal Navy knew it could not defend if the Germans had air superiority. Stukas would have done the same thing to the RN that the RN itself had done to the Italian fleet. The RN's carrier aircraft at the time would have been dead meat for the Luftwaffe.
The RAF was the last thing standing in the way. Churchill meant it when he said "Never have so many owed so much to so few" when speaking of the RAF's stand. Want a reading list?
Posted on 7/22/25 at 4:53 am to Gemini Jim
quote:
Once Europe had fallen all Hitler had to do was establish a naval blockade
Except Germany did not have the navy to establish an effective naval blockade. Their surface fleet was small and Dönitz did not have enough u-boats to adequately raid the North Atlantic convoy system, let alone blockade Great Britain. Hitler was never a big proponent of the Kriegsmarine and believed any decisive battle involving his Third Reich would be fought on land and not at sea. As a result, Britain remained a far superior naval power to the Germans.
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