Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forgot to switch accounts?
Dont be offended Ivan. This song was a parody and joke at the time of its creation for most people.
[deleted]
1938 vs. 1940 (2018)
61–70 of 75 posts
Re: 1938 vs. 1940 (2018)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dont be offended Ivan. This song was a parody and joke at the time of its creation for most people.
I was referring to the somewhat strange impression that you seem to be agreeing to yourself in your second post ("Yes.") but maybe you just wanted to add something and did not notice because you're not a native English speaker (neither I am).
And I was replying "Yes" to the Down Voting Crew, who did not seem to be believe some part my theory. Unfortunately they dont have to justify their votes, so I dont truely know which part was the offending part.
Re: 1938 vs. 1940 (2018)
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
The maginot line worked rather well, at the end the fortresses were surrounded, and yet most them surrendered after the armistice and were not conquered. I seems a little bit like a combination of surperiour command and control and luck on the German side, and bad luck combined with bad and lacking C&C on the allies side. I always wondered how thins would have played out, if the western allies would have invaded the…
I don't know, if the French army would have done better during the failed Saar offensive of 1939 then it would also have done better in 1940. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saar_Offensive
Yeah, good point. In the end it is just nice what-ifs. It turned out the way it did.
Re: 1938 vs. 1940 (2018)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a list of indecisive battles that changed the world? Battles like Jutland, Guadalcanal, the Atlantic, the North Russia Convoys, Stalingrad, Siege of Malta, along with all the knock-down guerilla warfare in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the Syrian Civil War, etc. These are almost more informative, because a.) they seem more representative of what most war is like b.) the turning points of most wars actually…
the logistics of assembling an army of millions and shipping them across the Atlantic in secrecy to land on hostile territory has had none that I know of. If they made a movie like that, it would be so boring. Just endless meetings, with the highest drama being some argument about the supply chain. And yet I would love it, and watch it over and over.
I mean Twelve Angry Men is a movie that is just one long meeting and it is deservedly a classic.
Re: 1938 vs. 1940 (2018)
#65Is interesting to read the words of Trotsky just after the Munich agreement was signed, predicting the upcoming Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the upcoming war:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/10/predict.htm
Re: 1938 vs. 1940 (2018)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding Guadalcanal: from page 402, Retention of Midway was important, but, more importantly, the Japanese were unable to accomplish any of their desired goals: to gain a necessary bastion to protect their Far Eastern frontier or to destroy the remaining U.S. fleet in a massive surface engagement. The U.S. loss of Midway could have spelled the loss of Pearl Harbor and the Hawaiian Islands. If Japan had taken them,…
It's a daft idea that we would have been forced to sue for peace had we lost Hawaii. Japan certainly did not have the logistical capability to take and hold Hawaii (Morison and Toll agree on this point) at any point in the war, so I'm suspicious of the argument that Midway was decisive. It represented one instance in a chain of many of Japan's fixation on the decisive battle. Guadalcanal, on the other hand, represent…
You are right but with the benefit of hindsight. Japan hoped the USA would be like Russia in 1905, in that once it became clear that regaining a lost fleet would take years Russia lost the will to continue the war. The US was ready structurally and politically for a long war of attrition.
At the time the Japanese did not know that the USSR would overcome Germany. An invasion of Midway, with US CVs sunk to boot, would give Japan at least another year of offensive operations. They could have used that time to threaten Australia, incite insurrection in India, secure ocean supply lines and train pilots. The US and the UK would have the means to resist and the US would certainly still have the means to overcome Japan eventually. But with all those challenges ahead-- in Europe and the Pacific-- maybe the US would negotiate.
Re: 1938 vs. 1940 (2018)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Geopolitically Germany had the the advantage of singular national focus, it had no allies to coordinate with either strategically or tactically (at this stage). I’d argue this was an advantage to Britain, not a disadvantage. Many of Britain’s ‘allies’ did as they were told and while theoretically had control of their troops destiny, actually did not. Having supplies and manpower that could be built up and trained w…
Which allies are you referring to? those that made up the dominion of the empire such as Canada and Australia? then yes. But they can only really supply some troops and resources. The UK needed France and they were not nearly as cooperative with each other as you might think, and France had little to no interest in an offensive war.
> The UK needed France
If the war started early, perhaps. But later on, not really. Britain and the dominion had one hell of a lot of resources.
There is a good book on this topic by David Edgerton titled ‘Britain’s War Machine’. It’s largely debunking the idea of the plucky underdog and shows the great strength of Britain relatively to Germany. It was more a question of how long it would take Germany to fall, rather than anything else. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13647996
Re: 1938 vs. 1940 (2018)
#68Germany got extraordinarily lucky at many points between 1938 and 1941 (just prior to Barbarossa), but two of its most decisive lucky breaks happened in 1939 and 1938. First break: in 1938 when Hitler was essentially gifted the Sudetenland by the Munich accords and by the inaction in an absurdly limp response from the Czech government. This particular region of Czechoslovakia was deeply protected by heavy military de…
Not only the coup against Hitler was a real possibility if Britain defended Czechoslovakia, but also the british knew about it first hand. Kleist, a german emissary of the anti-Hitler faction in the Wehrmacht, was secretly visiting Britain just before the Munich agreement talking about the coup plans with MI6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris#Munich_Agreeme...
Re: 1938 vs. 1940 (2018)
#69Piłsudski proposed to do preventive invasion of nazi Germany in 1935. At the time it would have been a walk in the partk. France and Great Britain declined because they played "balance of power" and wanted Germany to be a counterbalance to soviet Russia. WW2 and Holocaust were only possible because of all the egoistic diplomatic games all the powers played at the time.
What happens in the alternative universe where the west crushes Germany in 1935? It seems really hard to guess these things. Do they have the attention span to keep it divided for another half-century until things cool down, or do the hawks get voted out as crazy people, and they walk away after a few years leaving simmering hatred? Does the USSR get its act together and finish what they failed to do in 1920? Perhaps…
Well it's pretty unlikely it would end worse than WW2 and Holocaust.
Re: 1938 vs. 1940 (2018)
#70On the other hand, Germany would have been far more ready to face England and France in 1942 or 1943. In particular the Kriegsmarine was completely unready to threaten the UK, which it was much more able to do in 1914. More submarines, cruisers, battleships to complement a superior Luftwaffe. Another few years to prepare and Germany might have been able to knock the UK out of the war. So the allies may have been unwi…
> the fascists were probably unwise to force the issue in 1939.
They also had to get ahead of the Soviet modernization and mobilization efforts, and they did.