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re: One of the great points of contingency in military history took place 84 years ago today
Posted on 7/22/25 at 5:20 am to TigerHornII
Posted on 7/22/25 at 5:20 am to TigerHornII
I hope I wasn't taking anything away from the RAF. My point was that Hitler gave up on invading Britain because he just couldn't.
He had no surface force with which to challenge the Royal Navy. Your suggestion that the Luftwaffe could have defeated the Royal Navy is just not supportable. If such capability existed, it was never demonstrated.
He also did not have the amphibious capacity to mount anything like what was required to conquer Britain.
So, he tried to go toe-to-toe with the RAF and lost. Without the possibility of using
large ground forces, the Third Reich was as weak as a kitten. Germany and Russia have always been unbalaced in that way. That's what makes the Eastern Front so intriguing.
He had no surface force with which to challenge the Royal Navy. Your suggestion that the Luftwaffe could have defeated the Royal Navy is just not supportable. If such capability existed, it was never demonstrated.
He also did not have the amphibious capacity to mount anything like what was required to conquer Britain.
So, he tried to go toe-to-toe with the RAF and lost. Without the possibility of using
large ground forces, the Third Reich was as weak as a kitten. Germany and Russia have always been unbalaced in that way. That's what makes the Eastern Front so intriguing.
quote:
Want a reading list?
This post was edited on 7/22/25 at 5:22 am
1
Posted on 7/22/25 at 6:40 am to Reagan80
quote:
Germany was defeated before they launched Operation Barbarossa because they couldn’t knock Britain out of the war.
If they would have kept going after the RAF airfields instead of bombing civilian centers, they would have.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 7:18 am to udtiger
quote:
If they would have kept going after the RAF airfields instead of bombing civilian centers, they would have.
Frankly, even the Brits were surprised by the pivot. Ultimately, with the V-weapons it became a war of terror. Hitler understood people, but only to a point. Likewise, he understood military power, but only to a point. He was an odd mixture of strengths, quirks, weaknesses and insanity.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 10:27 am to Lonnie Utah
quote:
Battle of Fishguard bro.
Was that the battle with the Norsemen on the northern coast?
Then the English army had to rush south to confront the French coming to Hastings.
Such are the fortunes of war.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 10:42 am to ChineseBandit58
quote:
Was that the battle with the Norsemen on the northern coast?
It was in Wales.
quote:
The annals of history record the name of Hastings as the site of the last invasion of mainland Britain by Norman forces in 1066. True, this was the last successful invasion. However, little is reported about the French invasion of Fishguard, which took place in southwest Wales in 1797, nor of the brave resistance offered by Jemima Nicholas, also known as “Jemima Fawr” (Jemima the Great), who single-handedly captured twelve of the invading soldiers.
LINK
This post was edited on 7/22/25 at 10:43 am
Posted on 7/22/25 at 10:47 am to Ace Midnight
quote:
So, he tried to go toe-to-toe with the RAF and lost. Without the possibility of using
large ground forces, the Third Reich was as weak as a kitten. Germany and Russia have always been unbalaced in that way. That's what makes the Eastern Front so intriguing.
Germany was oil poor. They could only go in so many directions with their armed forces. It's why their surface fleet was limited and why they only had a tactical air force (i.e. no strategic bombing force).
Can you elaborate on the bolded section? Not a right or wrong thing; I might learn something I didn't know.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 10:53 am to Tigris
quote:
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.
Could have been a bit earlier had France and Britain been willing to stand with Czechoslovakia. That Germany used Czech weaponry and equipment (their tanks were on par with Germany's) to arm themselves for Barbarossa meant the Czech army had some teeth.
Appeasement was understandable considering the leaders of the time lived through WW1, but hindsight shows it was a terrible decision. The world could have been spared a lot of wasted blood and treasure had the Allies stood up earlier.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 12:43 pm to RollTide1987
Germans.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 1:46 pm to DakIsNoLB
quote:
Can you elaborate on the bolded section? Not a right or wrong thing; I might learn something I didn't know.
Throughout the history of Europe, the French, the English, the Spanish and the Italians were the seafarers, and the Germans and Russians were the landlocked "land" powers. The (pre unification) Germans and Russians had worked together against Napoleon just a century before The Great War.
As it is, today, the concept of a "united" Germany is only about 150 years old - younger than the U.S. Civil War. Even under the Holy Roman Empire it was kind of a different thing, but that's a different analysis for a different day.
So, to have a post-industrialization Germany and Russia go toe-to-toe was intriguing, brutal and tragic. There was a glimpse in the East during WWI where the 20th century mobile battlefield was truly born, but logistics was still far enough behind to make the Russian loss more of a logistic (and socio-political one with the collapse of the Romanovs) than one of purely military might, just the sheer scope of WWII's eastern front boggles the imagination.
Take the big one, Kursk, that was a Summer-long battle (Citadel and then Soviet counteroffensives) that saw almost 3 to 4 million men in the field, 10,000 tanks, 60,000 guns and mortars, 5000 to 6000 aircraft, with the battle raging over 1200 miles. That's the distance between Birmingham and Los Angeles. (Correction - should be Austin and Los Angeles)
This post was edited on 7/23/25 at 5:25 am
Posted on 7/22/25 at 1:53 pm to Ace Midnight
I see what you meant by unbalanced now and how that translated into two almost exclusively land based powers engaging in the costly conflict in the world to-date. The scale of the Eastern Front in WW2 is truly unprecedented in history.
Great response. Thank you.
Great response. Thank you.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 2:42 pm to Ace Midnight
quote:
but even bigger was Hitler not allowing the generals to dictate strategy.
What strategy in particular should Hitler have followed, as suggested by his generals? Many of the common ones cited in popular history are incorrect.
Attack Moscow and not Kiev? Guderian said "Do it", but, a logistical study completed by the experts (they were Generals) informed the invasion planners before it started that the Germans could not count on being able to supply the armies to the East of the Dvina - Dnepr River lines.
Attack Moscow in November and December 1941? Hitler's generals urged him to do this. Most people think that Hitler overruled his generals on this one, but, that's incorrect. The Eastern Front Generals urged Hitler to continue attacking towards Moscow in Nov and Dec 1941.
So, no blanket statement is possible. Sometimes the generals gave Hitler good advice and sometimes they were wrong. Hitler was right sometimes, too.
This post was edited on 7/22/25 at 2:48 pm
Posted on 7/22/25 at 3:18 pm to ChineseBandit58
The battle with the Norse was at Stamford Bridge
Posted on 7/23/25 at 4:08 am to FightinTigersDammit
quote:
The battle with the Norse was at Stamford Bridge
thanks - my memory is very faulty - but that was quite a feat = defeating the Norsemen and then moving his army hundreds of miles in a matter of weeks to confront the French at Hastings!
Turbulent time in the British Isles - bunch of folks wanting to be king.
Posted on 7/23/25 at 5:35 am to Champagne
quote:
So, no blanket statement is possible. Sometimes the generals gave Hitler good advice and sometimes they were wrong. Hitler was right sometimes, too.
Fair enough and one of the challenges of a dictatorship. Generals worried about their careers would tell Hitler what he wanted to hear. And his instincts were surprisingly good at times, although clearly they were deteriorating from 1941 onward.
His anxiety about not repeating Napoleon's mistakes hurt(and this infected subordinates), as did his mystical and supernatural beliefs. Maybe the Soviets were unbeatable? Stalin, for his part, was better under pressure than Hitler. His top level big decisions consistently beat Hitler's once they recovered from the initial shock and surprise of Barbarossa's early successes.
This post was edited on 7/23/25 at 5:36 am
Posted on 7/24/25 at 10:08 am to Ace Midnight
My personal opinion has evolved over the years to the point that I do not believe that Nazi Germany ever had the means to accomplish the objectives set forth in the Barbarossa plan.
And as you say, the generals had to please hitler because he took control of all Officer Promotions processes just before the war.
And as you say, the generals had to please hitler because he took control of all Officer Promotions processes just before the war.
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