In which World War 2 army you should have fought?

@ABWorsham4 probably still scared the starving civilians , carrying rifles and 2 bullets each, half to death at the time though .

@axis_roll I have not watched the History Channel in years. It became to heavily involved in reality TV.

We cut the cord.

Good points, after Germany committed to full unrestricted submarine warfare to besiege the UK, the USA had to intervene in that course of events or lose its key ally.

so foolish of Kriegsmarine and H to lose the battlecruisers and makes First/Second Happy Time seems like a diversion of resources, then there may have been a more credible medium/long term threat to the allied lifeline without these unsustainable efforts

With a timely and immediate entry of the US into the Atl. war (as actually occurred), they deployed tons of planes and ships, and technology, that wasn’t effective at first but needed to mature and develop to defeat the submarine threat on one hand, while demolishing the Japanese Navy with the other.

@Narvik:

Now, that is pure speculation, man.

How could a great power like USA 1940 not take part in a world wide conflict about world domination and survival ?
Even with Alf Landan as president.
Would there be no war against terror if Obama was President during 911 and not Bush ?

In the 1930s the War Department of the US had the notorious color plans.
Green for a war against Mexico.
Black for a war against Germany
Orange for a war against Japan.
Red for a war against Britain.

Since may 1939, the Rainbow plans had been prepared by the Joint Army and Navy Board. This would have happened no matter if Roosevelt or Landan or somebody else was President.

I guess the only thing that could have delayed a US entry, was if Japan ignored the Pacific and attacked Russia only, and Germany ignored Britain and attacked Russia only. But of course the Great Powers USA, Britain and France could never accept this kind of new world order, so sooner or later USA would have to enter the war, at least for survival as a nation.

How could a great power like USA 1940 not take part in a world wide conflict about world domination and survival ?
Even with Alf Landan as president.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on the U.S. His thought was that a state of war would allow Germany a better opportunity to sink the large numbers of American transports ferrying weapons to the Soviet Union and Britain. He thought those weapons might have made the difference between victory and defeat in the planned anti-Soviet summer offensive of '42. He also believed, probably correctly, that FDR would eventually get his wish of going to war against Germany.

I can hardly claim to be an expert on Alf Landon. But for the sake of argument, let’s suppose he was a sort of “go with the flow” politician. By that I mean a politician who isn’t afraid to hit back against an attacker, but who has no ambition to initiate aggression against any foreign nation. If he was like that, war between Germany and the U.S. wouldn’t have been inevitable; and Hitler wouldn’t have had any reason for believing it was inevitable. The U.S. would most likely have provided help to the Allies; but restraint on the part of both Hitler and Landon would have prevented that aid from degenerating into outright war.

Japan’s situation is different. Prior to Pearl Harbor, there were two schools of thought within the Japanese government. One school held that Japan should expand south, to places like the Dutch East Indies and Borneo. The other school felt Japan should expand to the north, at the expense of the Soviet Union.

The FDR administration wanted the former school to win the debate. It also wanted to promote the belief that, if Japan went to war against the colonial Dutch, it would also have to go to war against the U.S. (It was a little unclear why the U.S. would go to war to protect the Dutch colonial possessions, when it didn’t go to war to oppose the conquest of the Netherlands itself. But that’s neither here nor there.)

In order to encourage the Japanese to head south (and thereby to protect the Soviet Union from a second front), the FDR administration initiated eight separate provocations against Japan. One of them was the well-known oil embargo. Another was “pop up cruises.” These involved American warships repeatedly and deliberately violating Japanese territorial waters. The emotional effect was about the same as would have been the case, had hostile foreign ships shown up off the coast of Los Angeles or New York City. Collectively, these eight provocations caused Japanese leaders to make a decision which was part rational, part emotional. A decision to focus on the south rather than the north. And a decision to attack the United States immediately; as opposed to conquering British and Dutch colonies without declaring war on the U.S. (One of the effects of the eight provocations was to convince many Japanese leaders that a state of war between the U.S. and Japan was inevitable.)

The reason I mention all this is because the eight provocations are a fairly FDR-specific thing. They’re not the sort of thing that (for example) Calvin Coolidge or Herbert Hoover would have done. I very much doubt they’re the sort of thing Alf Landon would have done; though again I can hardly claim to be an expert on Landon. In the absence of these provocations, the Japanese would likely either have turned north against the Soviet Union, or else would have gone south without attacking the United States.

In the postwar world FDR and Churchill created, the Soviet empire stretched from the Bering Sea in the east all the way to the very heart of Germany in the west. By the late '40s, the democracies could not hope to defend Western Europe in any kind of conventional war; and would have had to immediately resort to nuclear weapons in the event of a Soviet invasion. This situation was not optimal from the American point of view, especially given the fact that the stated long-term goal of Soviet foreign policy was world conquest.

Suppose instead that the Axis nations had achieved their objectives. Hitler would have conquered all the Soviet Union west of the Urals. Germany would be at peace with the remainder of the Soviet Union and with Britain. Japan would have seized the islands of the South Pacific, as well as the eastern portion of China. In this scenario, the Old World would have four major powers: Germany, Japan, Britain, and (to a lesser degree) the Soviet Union. In a world like that, America could play these powers off against each other, as best served American interests. This scenario would give America far more opportunities to exert influence, than would a world dominated mostly by the Soviet superpower and by communist China.

Far from being helpful to American interests, the Soviet victory in WWII was very damaging. FDR was driven to take the actions he did because of ideology, not because he was working to promote the nation’s best interests. If we assume that Landon would have placed American interests above the dictates of a radical Left ideology, it becomes highly unlikely that he would have pursued a Soviet victory in WWII with the same enthusiasm that FDR did. Or even at all, for that matter.

One of the major improvements to the Soviet armed forces that came out of the Winter War was the replacement of Kliment Voroshilov by Semyon Timoshenko as People’s Commissar for Defence. Voroshilov had helped Stalin carry out the Great Purge by denouncing some of his military colleagues, and (as I recall) he reversed some of the army reforms that his predecessors had carried out.  He also bungled the opening phases of the Winter War, and was eventually turfed out in favour of the more competent Timoshenko.  After the Soviets won in Finland, Timoshenko set about modernizing the Red Army.

@aequitas-et-veritas

I think you overestimate Germany’s ability to not get fooled.

Germany was fooled several times-just look at what the Soviets did:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj7mfyEm_3zAhVeJzQIHWXCB54QFnoECAUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRussian_military_deception&usg=AOvVaw3hgbVBMWuU26iUG3iTRmQK

If you’re saying D-Day and the deception in Operation Bagration (and all the other times on the Eastern Front) was all due to betrayal, it should be well known.

In response to your questions, there are several clear answers:

Most German submarines were destroyed by now, and the rest would have been near Pas De Calais, where Germany expected the Allies to land.

And there were German naval units in Normandy-several torpedo boats, or E-boats, which sunk a Norwegian destroyer, the only German naval victory on D-Day. There were also these German naval assets at Normandy: 3 torpedo boats, 29 fast attack craft, and 72 minesweepers. If there truly was sabotage these would have disappeared as well, and the secret traitor would not have been uncovered anyway by the Nazis if we don’t even know his identity today.

The stripping of Luftwaffe and anti aircraft assets were probably done to reinforce the forces in the Defence Of The Reich campaign, after the Big Week which drove German aircraft numbers down to irreplaceable levels:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Week

As for the ordering of targeting devices from Normandy, it’s the same reason why Rommel left for his wife: Inaccurate German weather reports.

As for the two agents or spies your were talking about, one of them was a double agent (like Germany’s entire spy network in Britain), and simply bad luck and quarrelling at higher levels in the German command prevented them from using potentially important information from the other agent.

I cannot find evidence about the problems with the Panzer Lehr Division that you talked about, but I do believe you on this information.

The Allies were much stronger than thought-analysis shows that even if Germany was able to get the full plan from a dead body after the Exercise Tiger disaster (which involved an attack by Germans ships against troops preparing for D-Day), and Germany transferred all of the Fifth Panzer Army to the beaches, and Rommel stayed, the Allies could not have been repelled-shore bombardment and air power would have broken up panzer forces enough to prevent a collapse. The war would have simply lasted longer, or the Soviet would have conquered more of Germany.

Honestly, I find it quite interesting that you came up or mentioned this theory, as it makes for good discussion. I hope we have some great discussions about the German side of D-Day!

Finally, as for the original question, the Fifthteenth Army was eventually used at Normandy, where it was devastated as well as at the Falaise Pocket. The main problem with Operation Market Garden were the Allies not taking seriously Dutch resistance intelligence the fact that German panzer divisions were refitting right where the Allies were going to land. I think if the Fifthteenth Army was at Normandy on the first day, it might have been much harder for the Allies, as they would not have stablished as secured beachheads.

Just noticed the German West losses I gave earlier is for  Sept 1939 to April 1945. It includes the 1940 losses, an extra 156,556.

**Heer Losses in the Polish, Norwegian, French, and Balkan Campaigns
(Organizationsabteilung d. Gen,Stb. d. OKH. 6 Feb 45, NARA T78, R414, F3226-3227

Losses in the Feldheer**
……KIA…WIA…MIA…Total
Poland …8,082…27,278…5,029…40,389
Norway …1,166…1,548 …1,091…3,805
France… 27,650…115,299…13,607… 156,556
Balkans…1,593…4,845…644…7,082
Total …38,491…148,970…20,371 …207,832

So the claims made in the Third Army  book are even further off!

November 06, 2009 
By Paul Fattig
Mail Tribune
Hugh Curthey was tired of working long hours for low pay in the gladiolus fields just south of Grants Pass in the spring of 1941 when he learned of a high-paying job overseas.

“My brother and I were working in those bulbs for a dollar and a half a day,” recalled the 93-year-old Medford resident. “That’s when we heard about this construction work on Wake Island.”

At that point, he couldn’t have told you where Wake Island was on the globe. What he did know was that he would be making at least $500 a month — good money in those days — as a construction worker for the Morrison-Knudsen Co. to help build a U.S. Navy base.

“We didn’t know what we were getting into but we sure found out soon enough,” he said during a recent visit with stepson and daughter-in-law Royce and Joyce Webber of Ruch.

“I still think about it every day,” he added. “I thank the good Lord I made it through.”

He and his brother, Robert “Bob” Curthey, were among some 1,200 civilians taken prisoner when Wake Island was captured by the Japanese on Dec. 23, 1941. Following a 16-day siege in which a 450-man Marine Corps garrison aided by civilians fought to repel the overwhelming Japanese invasion, they were held prisoner until the war ended nearly four years later. Both survived.

“It was rough on people like me because I’ve always like to eat,” said Curthey, a retired maintenance worker for the city of Grants Pass.

Meager meals were the least of his worries during an ordeal that included years of forced labor. More than 200 Americans with him died either during the battle or while in captivity.

Born May 3, 1916, in Kenosha, Wis., Curthey arrived with his family in southwestern Oregon a few years before the Great Depression gripped the nation. He attended first grade in Riddle, then went to schools in Grants Pass, a region where gladiolus were a popular cash crop in the late 1930s into the early 1950s.

Accompanied by brothers Bob and Charles, Curthey arrived on Wake Island in May 1941, although Charles returned to Grants Pass before the war erupted. They were among numerous residents from the region who had jumped at the chance for good jobs overseas.

For seven months, they helped build a naval base on the Pacific coral atoll located between Honolulu and Guam. But their balmy blue-sky world exploded nearly simultaneously with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Maj. James P.S. Devereux, the officer in charge of the Marines, told those on the island to hunker down and prepare for an assault. In addition to the Marines, there were 68 Navy personnel on the island.

During the next two weeks, the island was bombed eight times by Japanese aircraft. Many of the structures were leveled.

“There wasn’t enough rifles to go around so we didn’t have any,” Curthey said. “During the siege, Bob and I worked throughout the night changing gun positions and carrying ammunition and filling sandbags. During the day we stayed down in our dugouts that we had to dig. We didn’t have any protection. But we held out 16 days.”

He tells of a civilian who stood up on the edge of one dugout when a Japanese dive bomber swooped down. The man died instantly.

The defense was crushed by 9 a.m. Dec. 23 with 109 Americans — 62 military, 47 civilians — killed compared to an estimated 900 Japanese soldiers and sailors dead. Using their shore batteries, the Wake Island defenders sank at least two Japanese warships.

Following the surrender, the Americans were held under guard in their barracks. But one man continued to sneak out at night to dig up booze that had been buried before the Japanese invasion, Curthey said.

“He was a big man with a bull neck,” he said. “They told him if he got drunk one more time, off comes the head. He went out and got drunk again. They laid him on a block and off went his head.”

When the prison ship Nita Maru arrived to take the prisoners off the island, Curthey, by then a powerhouse operator, was supposed to stay with 98 other prisoners of war to teach the Japanese how to operate the powerhouse and other facilities.

“I told my brother I wasn’t going to stay so I went with the other POWs getting on the Nita Maru,” he said, noting that Bob was a truck driver on the island. “If I had stayed, I would have been history.”

Indeed, the 98 people left behind were executed on Oct. 7, 1943. They included David F. Chambers of Grants Pass and Wesley W. Stringer of Lakeview.

“I knew both of them,” he said quietly.

The Curthey brothers were placed in the stifling-hot hold of the ship with most of the other prisoners.

“We stayed down in that ship for 12 days — never saw the light of day,” he said. “There wasn’t enough room for us all to sleep so some people took their belts off and tied themselves to those big timbers down in the ship so they could stand there and sleep. The sweat just puddled beneath us.”

They were eventually taken to Shanghai, where they were marched a half dozen miles to the first of two POW camps where they would be held. They were given three scant meals a day.

“They confiscated all the food from the Chinese farmers,” he said. “It was a cup of white rice with a piece of meat in it once in a while. That and a cup of soup. And if we did anything wrong, they’d cut us down to two meals a day. I got a little thin.”

Each group also had a loaf of bread to divide once a week. Normally weighing about 185 pounds, Curthey dropped 50 pounds on the POW diet.

When hunger gnawed at his gut, he would pretend he was chewing gum and crack jokes to keep his mind off food.

“I’ve always had the ability to laugh at myself,” he said. “We (he and Bob) always figured we were gonna make it.”

Knowing his survival depended on it, he ate everything he was given.

“One guy when we first got there said he wasn’t going to eat their garbage,” he said. "Well, after about two weeks he decided he would eat it. But he couldn’t hold it down. He died.

“I’ve always said rice is like a drug to me — I couldn’t get enough of it,” he said. “Every so often you’d get burned rice. Tasted like toast.”

But they worked hard for what little food they were given.

“When I was a prisoner, I got down to about 135 pounds and carried 220-pound bean sacks,” he said. “The last time I had my back X-rayed, the doc asked me what I did for work. I told him about the bean sacks. He said, ‘That’s the answer. You have about five or six vertebras that are crushed. You will live in pain the rest of your life.’ Well, he ain’t been far off.”

As POWs in Japanese-occupied China, they served as slave labor, doing everything from hauling beans to moving dirt to building a rifle range, he recalled.

“And twice a day we had to stand at rigid attention and they’d come along and count us off,” he said. "One time, a group next to us weren’t ready for inspection on time. The Japanese sergeant came along and banged them all on the head with the clipboard.

“Well, the clipboard broke, so he beat them on the head with the pieces. All 36 men had blood dripping off their foreheads.”

When the war ended on Sept. 2, 1945, the POWs were placed on a ship and sent back to the states. Curthey returned to Grants Pass but not to the gladiolus fields.

“Never again, not for a dollar and a half a day,” he said. “I was ready for something else.”