Your First WWII Book

Leaving the Philippines wasn’t a “strategy” by MacArthur; he was ordered to leave by Roosevelt.  It should also be noted that MacArthur’s handling of the opening phases of the Philippines campaign was sloppy; as I recall, he was caught unprepared by the Japanese invasion, even though by the time it started he had already heard about the raid on Pearl Harbor.

In 1939 the Soviet Union seized the eastern half of Poland. In 1940 it followed that up by annexing Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and part of Romania. In addition it launched a war of aggression against Finland, seizing about 10% of Finland’s total land area. Inhabitants in conquered territories were treated brutally. For example in the east half of Poland 10% of the population was lost due to deportation or outright liquidation.

FDR did not meaningfully pressure the Soviets to renounce their strategy of territorial aggression. Moreover, he did not put serious pressure on Japan to abandon its policy of expansion in China–at least not in 1937 when the wave of expansion in question had been released. FDR’s hard line stance against Japanese expansion did not manifest itself until 1941.

FDR’s warlike opposition to Japanese aggression in China was not the result of a universalist policy of opposing aggressive territorial expansion in general. If it had been, he would have been equally assertive in opposing Soviet expansion. Nor was his opposition driven by a particularist concern for the Chinese: he waited four years between the start of the Japanese offensive in China before initiating his efforts to provoke war with Japan. Those efforts started in 1941, shortly after Germany had invaded the Soviet Union.

Prior to Barbarossa, German military planners had anticipated having to deal with 200 Soviet divisions. By the mid to late fall of '41 they had already encountered nearly double that number. During the winter of '41 - '42, the Soviets shipped an additional 100 divisions west across the Trans-Siberian railway. Prior to Pearl Harbor, Stalin had held those divisions in reserve on his eastern front, to defend against possible Japanese aggression. With Japan going to war against the United States, Stalin knew that Japan would be too preoccupied elsewhere to launch much of an attack against the U.S.S.R. The hundred divisions in question could therefore be used on the German front.

None of the above could have been accomplished, had the U.S. and Japan signed a mutually acceptable peace agreement. That is why FDR’s administration ignored Japan’s various peace proposals, while pursuing a policy of deliberately provoking Japan into doing what it ultimately did.

@Clyde85:

@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.

As Worsham said, adding jets would have made it too easy: so many of us rank the 262 as the best of the war. He was mixing it up. Made me think a bit.

My first interest in WW2 was planes.

Thank you for your time and effort Worsham.

I found a hypothetical scenario that pitted the Richelieu & Jean Bart against the 11" KM battlecruisers…suprisingly it was ugly for the French.  The scenario claimed to be using the Dunkerque and Strasbourg with 13" guns, but looking “under the hood” they were actually using the Jean Bart/Richelieu and their 15" guns.  Since the editor doesn’t work for me I did text edits to put in the actual French BC’s with their appropriate arms, ammunition quantities, and hull/flotation hit points.

The French get mauled!  It isn’t even close after playing it from both sides several times.  (No wonder the designer fudged in French BB’s with BC names…it was an attempt to balance the scenario.)  The heavier armour belt/turrets of the German boats seem to handle the 13" French guns, while the fast firing 11" German guns soon take out the turrets and/or magazine of the French ships.  In about 1/4 of the engagements one of my French boats pulled a “Hood” early in the exchange from about 13,000 yards (where the Kriegsmarine ships couldn’t even identify her yet but were reliably hitting.)  Boom! went the entire magazine.

I don’t know if there is some sort of artificial difference in the 3D model, if it is a reflection of the gunnery bonus for the Germans in the game, a particular range band, or even the 5.9" secondary guns of the KM scoring (vs. 5.1" for the French), but those quad turrets and thinner belt are proving a very brittle instrument of war.

And after you knock out the French guns, the stern chase is a breeze for the Germans!

A more realistic distance is over 800 statute miles.

Zero had a range of 1,600 miles, so yes thats consistent with Sakai’s account over Java.

Also, they had over 400 Zeros in active service by July 1940.

@strategic:

I may would have been a proponent of continuing the war to Moscow to obliterate Stalin after 1945, so communism would be nothing but a fad and dead.

If I remember correctly, the USSR had something like 300 divisions in Eastern Europe at the time of the Potsdam Conference – a rather large figure compared to what the Anglo-Americans had in Western Europe.  I doubt the Americans and the British could have beaten those kinds of numbers.  I also don’t imagine that a radical move like expending one of America’s rare and priceless A-bombs on Moscow would have done anything other than get those 300 veteran Soviet divisions (who had just helped whip the Wehrmacht) really, really angry at them.  The US and the UK being democracies, they would have also found it a trifle hard to convince their war-weary voters and servicemen to start a whole new war against the country which had just helped them defeat Nazi Germany, and which was getting ready to help them finish off militarist Japan.

At any rate, if you exclude Cuba and China and North Korea, Communism today is in fact pretty much a dying fad…espcially when you consider the amount of free-market capitalism with which China has been flirting for the past decade or so.

Germany because of the SS’s elite training and morale stemming from their admirable mission to defend Europe from Bolshevism. Kurt is absolutely right about the Soviets planning to invade Europe, and yes, including Germany. This is why the Germans had such success at first by attacking a mere 2 weeks before the Soviets. All The Soviets’ airfields and other pertinent facilities and equipment was DIRECTLY behind the front lines in preparation for supporting the advancing army proceeding kilometers ahead. See Operation Groza(Thunderstorm). http://defence.pk/threads/operation-groza-soviet-invasion-of-western-europe-july-6-1941.293859/
Btw, the Germans would have won if they had implemented “total war” production practices that the British had done in 1940 and Soviet Union had done at the outbreak of hostilities with Germany. They did not do so until 1943 because they cared about citizens’ well-being and morale. This is why they were so far behind regarding equipment totals.