Posts made by KaLeu

Surprisingly, some German forces in Europe were still fighting until May 20th, 1945. They were involved in the so-called “Georgian uprising” which (equally surprising) happened on the isle of Texel in the Netherlands. The Georgians in question were captured Red Army soldiers who had accepted a German offer to form a battallion that was to serve on the Atlantic Wall, and had been stationed on Texel. They had risen against the Germans in early April, and the fighting continued even after Germany’s general surrender. It was only on May 20th that Canadian troops finally intervened.

Well Kurt, in a way I regret your decision, and in a way I don’t.

Your posts are always well-written. Your grammar and syntax are impeccable, your argumentation follows a logical course, and you frequently quote sources to substantiate what you’re saying. And by those qualities, you certainly distinguish yourself from quite a few others in a positive way.

On the other hand, you do have a tendency to bring up the same subjects time and again, and in some of your posts I’ve noticed what appears to be an active effort to turn a topic away from its original intent and towards matters that seem to have your particular interest. It’s not for me to determine whether such efforts are intentional or merely a byproduct of a focus on certain aspects of World War II history that you believe to be all-important. But they have resulted in the derailment of many a topic.

My overall impression is that you have a preconceived view on certain matters, and then build your discourse on the presentation of evidence supporting that view. You’re by far not unique in that respect: there are many others who have their own preconceived views, and very few, if any, spend the same amount of time and effort on defending their view as you do. But believing to know the truth in advance is not the road to obtaining new knowledge and not a solid basis for debate.

I’m generally not too optimistic about our efforts to gain a better understanding of the causes and implications of World War II on this forum. Countless scholars have written entire libraries about it, so some modesty would behoove us. I’m usually happy enough when someone directs me to a new source or points out an aspect that I hadn’t considered before, but I’m typically not too impressed by the conclusions people arrive at. Not because I have anything better to offer myself, but I do try to err on the side of caution.

@aequitas:

@Imperious:

Just because USA nukes China and USSR NUKES USA and USA and NATO NUKE USSR and WARSAW Pact invades western Europe…. does not mean WW3?

What does killing 75% of the worlds population across the globe mean?

Population control?

That doesn´t justifies a World War if the parties involved only threatning each other!

as long as there is no actual Killing there is no World War , I´m not ignoring the present World wide situation, just trying to be realistic…I agree that there is a hidden War out there but Not a World War…According to the peresnt type of Flag the U.S. shows, she is still at war, but the Federal Russian flag shows a diffrent one.

I think IL is referring to the Korean War that was mentioned before, not to the present situation.

Well, the bad guys…. not really. It’s still 47 up, 33 down.

@Gargantua:

:)

You’re people are starving!  What are you going to do to balance the equation, and feed the masses?

Now, that depends on whether I care about them starving.

If I don’t - then it’s not a problem. Letting them starve is a method applied by such leaders as Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. And it worked for them: they stayed in power for a long time, until their own deaths in fact.

If I do - then I’ll need to fire myself from office for gross incompetence. My people were obviously not starving before, or there wouldn’t be so many of them. So as their leader, I must have messed up pretty badly. Did I send all the peasants to the front to fight? Or did I make war with a former trade partner that I needed badly for food imports? Or did I neglect to stockpile food while still at peace? In each case, I’ve obviously handled the preparation for this war very poorly.
My successors might consider various measures, such as:
(a) Rationing. This seems like a very obvious thing to do.
(b) Making domestic food production a priority and assigning more people to it if necessary.
© Eating all the remaining cattle and not raising any new until the food situation improves.
(d) Finding new trade partners. Neutral or friendly countries could provide some relief.
(e) Stealing some food from conquered lands, but only as a last measure. Former enemies should become new subjects.

Popularity. A global poll of some 24,000 people on how they view different countries around the world. I’m not sure it has any scientific merit, but the former Axis powers seem to be doing quite well here.

Here are the results of the 2012 BBC country rating poll. Just check out the numbers 1 and 2.

Oh, that’s too bad. Sorry for all your work.

Anyway, I’ll fill the gap for a bit, because May 10 was an important day in the war, especially in 1940. The Low Countries didn’t fall yet - that took a little bit longer.

May 10, 1940, was the start of Fall Gelb, Germany’s major offensive in the West. German forces invaded the Netherlands and conquered large parts of the east of that country on the first day of the invasion. An airborne operation to capture the city of The Hague with the queen and the government was repulsed, however. In the east of Belgium, the German paratroopers were more successful and captured the important fortress of Eben-Emael. French forces started their drive north to confront the Germans.

May 10, 1941, was indeed the day of Hess’ landing in Scotland and his arrest there. There was also a major German air raid on London, in what turned out to be the final day of the “London Blitz” - though it was by far not the last attack on London.

Yes, I think you accused me of being a weird commie European using all sorts of pervert gibberish, or something like that. And you know, I’m proud of that!  :-D

I’d say it’s some sort of technical problem - maybe one of the forum admins can look into it.

On a side node, I thought Gargantua’s comment that was here but has now disappeared, was rather funny.

Thanks, and no, I’m not German…… speak the language reasonably well though. I know about the workaround but I like them better the other way. And I want my c-cedille and e-accent grave as well!  :-)

@KurtGodel7:

Elsewhere, I’ve read that Montgomery would attack only when he had overwhelming numeric superiority.

Where have you read this? Was that opinion offered by an authoritative source? Were those situations in which it would indeed have been a better course to attack without that overwhelming numeric superiority?

@KurtGodel7:

But my sense is that Montgomery’s advances tended to be slow, plodding, unimaginative, and therefore more expensive in terms of Allied soldiers’ lives lost. Fast advances, such as Germany’s blitzkrieg or Patton’s attacks, tend to allow any given military objective to be achieved for a much smaller cost to one’s own soldiers.

@KurtGodel7:

By the same token, Guderian, von Mannstein, or Patton could undertake rapid advances more safely than could Montgomery.

Are comparative statistics about the number of casualties and the measure of success in operations of roughly comparable scope conducted by these respective generals, available?

Just a quick question that has probably been asked before: the board apparently displays any character that is outside the 7 character ASCII set, as a small rhombus with a question mark inside. At least, that’s what it looks like to me.
For example, in this thread: http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=16779.30, in my post dated June 18, 2010, 03:19:33 pm, I quoted a bit of German text containing several Umlauts (an Umlaut is displayed as the pair of dots above an a, o or u in German). It looked alright when I posted it, but by now it looks strange with all the replaced characters.
I think I noticed this some time ago…… have there been any technical changes during the last few months that might be related to this?

@Clyde85:

I’ve based my comments on those I have read in the memoirs of Lt. Colonel Hans Van Luck in “Panzer Commander” and from Maj Gen. F.W. Von Mellenthins’ “Panzer Battles”. Both made comments to the effect of Patton being one of the best allied generals with regard to his application of armored formations in combat. Von Mellenthin having fought against Patton in Alsace-Lorraine region of France remarked that He, his immediate superior, General Balck, and the army group Commander von Rundstedt were very wary of the movements of Patton and his 3rd army as they knew he had true understanding of armoured warfare. Though von Mellenthin goes on to say that Patton’s 3rd army’s habit of including “leg” infantry was a poor choice and hampered him from greater operational success, and the GI’s were rather poor soliders, but Patton still managed to make the most out of it.

In the other instance Von Luck faced off against Montgomery in operation “Goodwood” during the break out from Normandy and made mention of a number of rather obvious and simple mistakes Monty made during the operation. For instance he commented that British tanks would move with out any infantry support, or infantry moving without armoured support, would make it very easy for the Germans to deploy effective counter-measures and inflict great casualties on Monty’s forces.

They are, I feel, the best contemporary (of that time) sources for the feeling of German officers about two of the key allied commanders. If you want I can go back into both books and cite specifics passages.

Thank you. I don’t have any of those books, so when the issue came up earlier, we only had information that was available from various internet resources.

@Clyde85:

On a side note, about Patton, I think it should be noted that all accounts from the Germans say he was “the best” or “most feared” but then say for an allied General.

Would you mind sharing the source of that information? As you can see in older posts on this topic, there’s been quite a bit of discussion a few years ago about how the Germans rated Allied generals, notably Patton and Montgomery. In the end, nobody came up with a reliable original source.

@Karl7:

The only bid I’ve seen that makes any serious difference is allied ships in the med to aid Toronto raid…

Taranto.

LOL…. you really had me there as I tried to figure out how in the world the allies would be raiding Toronto.

True, but the US can more easily afford the purchase of such fighters, and they could reach Russia in time unless Japan previously captures the USSR’s eastern territories where the fighters would need to land in between. The idea would be, to place some 10-12 fighters on Midway and the Aleutians (10-12 as a total, not 10-12 at either location) while the US is at peace, then fly into Soviet territory as soon as the war breaks out, and continue on towards Moscow. I’d say it would be very difficult for Germany to crack a big Soviet infantry stack backed up by a grand total of some 15 fighters.

So my next question would be: does the “USSR crush” typically also involve an all-out Japanese thrust into Amur and further, while simultaneously avoiding an early US entry into the war, and can Japan afford to do that and also maintain a good position in China?

@Cow:

round 8-10 depends how rushed axis are and if waiting increases odds or not.

Thanks. The reason I asked is that you mentioned the possibility of sending US bombers to Russia through North Africa. Bombers can arrive in two turns, but they are poor defenders.
So I figured that US fighters could make it to Russia in three turns (taking the Pacific route), if only they arrive in time. And I’d say that should be possible by round 8.

I’ve played Global 1940 only once, and I think we used an older version of the rules (I don’t own the game).

By what German turn do you reckon that Moscow would fall if the USSR received no significant help from its allies?

April 20 was Hitler’s birthday.

April 20, 1940: the British cancel their intended landings at Trondheim, Norway, but fail to inform the French and Norwegian troops in the area, unnecessarily causing danger to those allies.

April 20, 1941: the Greek general Tsolakoglou surrendered his army to the Germans. This angered the Italians, who had invaded Greece much earlier, but had been utterly unsuccesful. After Mussolini pressed his case, the ceremony ws repeated with the Italians present.
Much of Greece continued to resist, however. German dive bombers attacked the harbor of Piraeus the same day.

April 20, 1943: The USAAF bombed Japanese-occupied Nauru, and also Boram Airfield in Papua New Guinea.

April 20, 1944: the American liberty ship “Paul Hamilton” and the British freighter “Royal Star” in convoy UGS 38 were sunk by German Ju 88 bombers. The “Paul Hamilton” was a troop transporter, but rather foolishly also carried a load of ammunition, which exploded and killed all aboard, 580 in total.
There was another big naval explosion on the same day in the harbor of German-occupied Bergen, Norway, as the confiscated Dutch ship “Voorbode” blew up, causing massive destruction and killing 160 people. Sabotage was suspected, but it was probably an accident.

April 20, 1945: Hitler turned 56, and made his last public appearance to decorate several members of the Hitler Jugend. There’s some well-known footage that’s often associated with this event, but actually  dates from about a month earlier.
The US 2nd and 69th infantry divisions completed the conquest of the German city of Leipzig. The city was later turned over to the Soviets following the division of Germany per the Yalta agreements.