WWII–-75th ANNIVERSARY DISCUSSION--#34---MAY 1942 (3)

@barnee

An incident would not have been needed-Pearl Harbour still would have happened, just without Hitler declaring war on the US. The Battle Of The Atlantic would still have been won by the Allies, it just would have taken longer without the US fully committing to it. US participation would still have increased though, and if Germany did not declare war (which they should not, to make this scenario more likely), the US would have declared war on Germany in 1943. It might have been a different situation with a truce though.

@gen-manstein

Good man, I also play Battle of the Bulge on December 16 every year ;)

Note that the typical Allied excuse for terror bombings and mass aerial exterminations of German and Japanese civilians was that such actions might “shorten the war” and “save the lives of Allied servicemen.” Had FDR cooperated with the German generals who’d wanted to overthrow Hitler, he could have shortened the war in Europe by two years, and saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Allied servicemen. FDR was not interested in shortening the war, or in saving the lives of Allied servicemen (black ants). Nor was he interested in preventing Soviet hegemony in the postwar world (which the German generals’ plan might also have accomplished).

No. They needed Hitler alive to guarantee victory, to kill him would result in some smarter leader taking over and extending the war. Thats why they didn’t kill him in 1940. Read your History. Heydrich was killed because he was too dangerous. Same reason they didn’t kill Goering. They just had to bomb the nearest Shakey’s Buffet, but they didn’t. That fat idiot was the best weapon the Allies had. And Carpet Bombing is not “extermination”. Gets the facts straight. Hitler destroyed Rotterdam for nothing as well as many other cities by bombing.

It looked like a PT-6. They must be pretty similar.

Thanks Marc. Exactly right. Wi try and paste and post in the right place, although I suspect Worsham will see it here.
Was at work when I posted and my head was in the wrong place, obviously.

I’m going to go with a guy not on the list, Col. Aaron Bank. This type of mission sounds right up his alley…

Also on the subject of Italian POWs: some Italians captured by the British in North Africa ended up being interned in the Orkney Islands, where they were put to work constructing concrete barriers to seal off the eastern entry route into Scapa Flow (the route taken by U47 when it torpedoed the battleship Royal Oak in October 1939).  Sometimes, arguments would break out between the Italians and the British personnel supervising the work, and an Army interpreter would be called in to sort out the dispute.  After one such altercation, a Navy officer took the interpreter aside and asked him why he had been translating for the Italian man who’d been complaining, saying that, “This fellow can speak English!”  The interpreter retorted that the man couldn’t “even speak Italian!” – an answer which no doubt baffled the Navy officer until the prisoner later confided that he’d been speaking in dialect.  (“Churchill’s Prisoners: The Italians In Orkney, 1942-1944.” St Margaret’s Hope : Orkney Wireless Museum, 1992.)

CWO Marc

It was built, Panzer Leader.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Ise