Congratulations to Mr. Prewitt. It should be noted, however, that France’s highest order of merit is called the Legion of Honour (Légion d’honneur), not the Legion of Armour, and also that France doesn’t actually have knighthoods in the same sense as Britain does. “Chevalier” (knight) is indeed one of the Legion of Honour’s five levels, and the name is a holdover from the days when France still had an aristocracy, but the French nobility system went out the window with the French Revolution. I once saw a series of amusing cartoons depicting what life in France would be like today if the Bourbon monarchy hadn’t fallen, and one of them showed an irate air traveler standing at the ticket counter of “Royal Air France” and telling the ticket agent “But I’m a baron and I have a confirmed reservation!” The agent replies, “I’m sorry, sir, but the Duke of So-and-so has precedence over you, so we gave him your seat.” In fairness, the same sort of thing actually happens in real-life republican France. A few years ago, there was scandal involving one of the major D-Day anniversaries (I think it was the 50th one), when the French government contacted various hotels in Normany and appropriated some of their existing reservations so that various French officials could have rooms for the event. Some of those rooms, however, had been reserved by foreign veterans of the D-Day invasion. When the story broke on the front page of French newspapers (under such headlines as “Our Liberators Insulted!”), public opinion was outraged and the French government beat a hasty retreat. The prevailing editorial opinion over this affair was: Do this to our own citizens if you want, but don’t do this to the heroes who ended the occupation of France.
If you could take one WWII Weapon, back to WWI, what would it be? (1942 limit)
-
It’s the middle of 1942, the axis is at the high water mark.
Suddenly a genie appears and a portal opens back to 1914 opens in front of you. The genie says you must take yourself, and 1000 of any one thing or persons from WWII (1942) back to WWI, or be killed.
What do you choose?
-
I’m going to call it first :)
1000 Bismarck’s.
-
Navy is a good idea.
U-Boats. -
1000 Maginot lines stretched all over France. (Or Germany)
-
Assuming that by 1914 Garg means the Western Front after it had settled into a pattern of trench warfare (not the early period of mobile warfare of the early months), I’d take back 1,000 pieces of tracked, self-propelled artillery. One of the chronic problems that each side ran into on the Western Front was that, even after they had achieved breakthroughs by whatever means (mass infantry attacks, tank attacks or infiltration tactics, all preceded by artillery bombardments on variable scales), the attack always bogged down when the advancing infantry outran its artillery support. SPA would have helped them to fully exploit those breakthroughs, especially in the second half of the war when large numbers of tanks were being added to the equation.
-
Love the question!
I would be aiming for a German victory in WWI, the Allies had their chance and screwed up.
1000 Ju-87 would open the Western Front to Paris falling. I would try to get a few German Generals who were great WWI soldiers like Rommel and Paulus to win the ears of the current General Staff of using the Storm Troopers earlier in the war.
-
oooo Stuka Dive bombers…. VERY good call.
Definetly liked the word on SPA too.
-
How about a bunch of historians who already know what’s going to happen? “By the way, you might not want to do that attack at the Somme.” :-)
-
@ABWorsham:
I would be aiming for a German victory in WWI, the Allies had their chance and screwed up.
A German victory in WW1 would be ideal here, but I believe that you wouldn’t need to bring and weapons back with you, just a history book, and point to the few mistakes Germany made and say, “ok, now don’t do that, do this instead”.
If I had to choose a weapon though, i’m kinda torn. On the one hand, bringing back the StuG III would be great to help the Germans break the dead lock without a doubt, but I wonder how well German industry could support them once they went into action, long enough to break the front? Maybe. On the other hand, if I were to bring back the MG42, I know that German industry could support and and keep these weapons running, meaning longer usage and a greater chance of this weapon tipping the balance for a German victory.
-
@ABWorsham:
I would be aiming for a German victory in WWI, the Allies had their chance and screwed up.
A German victory in WW1 would be ideal here, but I believe that you wouldn’t need to bring and weapons back with you, just a history book, and point to the few mistakes Germany made and say, “ok, now don’t do that, do this instead”.
If I had to choose a weapon though, i’m kinda torn. On the one hand, bringing back the StuG III would be great to help the Germans break the dead lock without a doubt, but I wonder how well German industry could support them once they went into action, long enough to break the front? Maybe. On the other hand, if I were to bring back the MG42, I know that German industry could support and and keep these weapons running, meaning longer usage and a greater chance of this weapon tipping the balance for a German victory.Â
Awesome points, the MG 42 would have shredded Allied ranks between the lines.
Suggested Topics
