Posts made by KaLeu

As far as France is concerned - if they would have responded in force to the remilitarization of the Rhineland, World War II might have never happened. With hindsight - but then again, it’s always easy to write about what everyone should have done - not sending their military into the Rhineland at that moment to enforce the Locarno treaties, was their biggest mistake. After that, it became more and more obvious that Hitler could get away with a lot.

A Franco-Soviet plot to take out Germany? I don’t see it. There was a treaty, yes, but Europe was a quagmire of treaties at the time. Some of them held for a while, others weren’t worth the paper they were written on. If France wanted to after Germany, it could very well have done so by keeping its promise to Poland, and making the phoney war a real one. Second big French mistake.

Did the Soviet Union plan to conquer Europe? Doing so would have been consistent with early communist doctrine, but the whole idea was abandoned at some point in time, when their dream of forcefully “liberating” the world’s oppressed workers (who typically didn’t want to be liberated in the first place) gave way to more traditional considerations of power and safety. If Stalin ever intended to rule the continent, he could have gone for it in 1945, when the Soviet armies massively outnumbered the western Allies.

Finally:
@KurtGodel7:

Democratic leaders showed no hesitation in allying themselves with a Soviet government which had committed tens of millions of murders. (Such as the deliberate starvation of millions Ukrainians in the early '30s.) Apparently there was no objection to placing much of Germany under the rule of the same men responsible for those acts of genocide.

Nothing ever changes. Saddam and Gaddafi were allies of the West as long as they were useful. People with high moral standards rarely lead nations, be they democratic or not.

@KurtGodel7:

@Herr:

Additional to what? As Zhukov pointed out, the Bromberg incident occurred on September 3, 1939 and could therefore obviously not have been a motive for the invasion of Poland which had started two days before. . . .

While I agree that the French handled most of World War II rather poorly, it seems pretty obvious to me that the Polish would be angry at a nation that had just invaded their country. Also, while historians disagree on what precisely happened at Bromberg, it was not a purposeful slaughter of innocent ethnic Germans by any account.

There are two separate incidents here:

1. The Bromberg Massacre, which as you correctly noted occurred shortly after the German invasion had begun.

2. The killings of German nationals to which the Toland quote refers, which took place before Germany had invaded Poland. If you go back and reread the Toland quote, you will see that Hitler ordered the invasion in response to the report he’d received from Berndt.

If the killings of German nationals had begun before the invasion, it’s at least possible that the Bromberg massacre represents the continuation of that pattern after the invasion had started. But I would like to find out more about the nature and motives of the prewar killings and the Bromberg massacre before committing myself to that view.

I stand corrected in misreading your post. I automatically assumed that the quote you provided would refer to the incident being discussed.
I don’t have a copy of the Toland book. Do you have more information on the incident to which he refers there and on which Berndt reported?

@Gargantua:

it was not a purposeful slaughter of innocent ethnic Germans by any account

People getting shot in a crossfire is not “purposeful”

And no offense - but… going house to house and executing their patrons, is the DELIBERATE slaughter of people.

Tell me if I’m wrong here bro?

You would be right if that would indeed have happened. But the thing is, that there’s not a whole lot of agreement about the actual events. I’ll quote a little bit from the Wikipedia article that I linked to earlier:

The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau investigation in 1939–1940 concluded that the events were a result of panic and confusion among the Polish troops.[14] The Wehrmacht investigation included the interrogation of captive Polish soldiers, ethnic Germans from Bydgoszcz and surrounding villages, and Polish civilians. The bodies of the victims were exhumed and the cause of death and the possible involvement of military rifles was assessed.[15] According to this investigation, a squad of Polish soldiers was sent in to clarify the situation after hearing shots being fired within the city.[citation needed] Uniformed Polish soldiers, assisted by the local Polish population, were led to houses from which shots were allegedly heard.[citation needed] In households where weapons were found, people were subject to summary executions.

Now that is a contemporary account by the Germans, so not one that would likely depict whatever the Poles did a favorable light. And even they acknowledge that “panic and confusion among the Polish troops” was a major factor, and that the action was apparently a response to shots being fired. Granted, the Bromberg killings were possibly in part an unwarranted retribution against civilians, but whatever happened, was definitely very different from any of the deliberate or pre-planned massacres that occurred later in the war in towns such as Lidice and Oradour.

@KurtGodel7:

The above quote creates the impression that one of Hitler’s motives for invading Poland may have been to prevent additional killings of German nationals.

Additional to what? As Zhukov pointed out, the Bromberg incident occurred on September 3, 1939 and could therefore obviously not have been a motive for the invasion of Poland which had started two days before.

@KurtGodel7:

In answer to the obvious question, “Why on Earth would the Polish want to do that?,” one needs to look at the false promises and lies the French government had told the Polish government.

While I agree that the French handled most of World War II rather poorly, it seems pretty obvious to me that the Polish would be angry at a nation that had just invaded their country. Also, while historians disagree on what precisely happened at Bromberg, it was not a purposeful slaughter of innocent ethnic Germans by any account.

While I hold a successful Japanese invasion of the US for entirely unfeasible for all the solid reasons mentioned by several people on this thread, I do like Clyde’s speculative scenario. If I may make a suggestion there: to overcome the huge logistic problems that the Japanese would face if they attempted a direct invasion from a far-away vantage point such as Hawaii, I’d say they could try a phased approach by first enlisting an ally on the American continent. Mexico would be ideal, and after Japanese successes in the Pacific along the lines described by Clyde, maybe the Mexican government could be convinced to join the Axis. This could be attempted by a combination of diplomatic efforts similar to Germany’s World War I Zimmermann Telegram, financial backup, and a genuine Japanese military presence.
The invasion would then come from the South rather than the West, the Texas oil fields being a tempting target. Germany might be able to lend a hand in such an operation by means of submarine operations in the Gulf.

Of course it’s very unlikely that the US would sit by and watch the progress of such very obvious preparations, and it’s also not at all sure the Mexicans would cooperate in the first place - but then again, it’s all highly speculative anyway.

I found their invasion plan:

@FieldMarshalGames:

It was almost a JOKE of the time in the pre-war years that almost everything was being “Made in Japan”.

Are you sure about that? As far as I know, the surge of products “Made in Japan” on the western markets, was a post-war phenomenon. A quick search brings up the following information:
“From 1932 until 1940, for the first time, U.S. exports to Japan exceeded imports from Japan” and “Since 1965, Japan has had a trade surplus with the United States.” (from http://salempress.com/Store/samples/american_business/american_business_japanese.htm)
and also:
“The US Customs Bureau in the 1940s stated that items manufactured or produced in Japan should be properly marked to indicate their origin with one of the following tags: “Japan”, “Made In Japan”, “Occupied Japan”, or “Made In Occupied Japan”” (from http://knol.google.com/k/gary-greco/made-in-japan/br6tphsp0a9s/2#).

So if Japan had a trade deficit with the US between 1932 and 1965, and the label “Made in Japan” itself was only introduced in the 1940’s, it seems unlikely that such products were very common on the US market in the pre-war years.

A cruel dictator responsible for the death of thousands, a supporter of international terrorism for decades…. he should have been arrested, but I for one say the world’s a better place without this guy.

So are the others.

@special:

I often read dazzling numbers of stacked troops (for ex. over 30 UK units in Russia?, 80+ tanks from Japan?)

…i don’t get it, do you people buy for 7 rounds before you do anything?

Precisely my thought! I play the game only occasionally, and have never played online. But it simply never lasted long enough to have such numbers. Perhaps I never met a good opponent?

@Imperious:

post to kill spammer

Spammer dead?

You Scored as Mussolini

You actually only wanted to improve your country, but the methods you used were not quite approved by other nations.

Mussolini
63%
Nicolae Ceausescu
63%
Mao Zedong
56%
Muammar Quaddafi
50%
Stalin
50%
Saddam
50%
Hitler
50%
Idi Amin
19%

I picked “other”, simply because the number of bad WWII movies is overwhelming, and there must be many that I haven’t even seen.
One movie that “deserves” to be mentioned in this category, is U-571. On top of a series of entirely improbable feats, it’s historically inaccurate to the point that I consider it an insult to the men who really performed that job.

But I’m sure that there are many, many other movies that I’ve been fortunate enough to have missed.

Indeed, it must have been terrible to arrive at such a conclusion.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if this had been more or less known in RAF circles at the time. At least, part of the article suggests that they were unconvinced it was a German plane. Are we looking at a cover-up here?

This was recently discussed in this thread: http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=22808.0, where quite a few people shared their thoughts on this subject.

I sure don’t mind explaining it, I’ve struggled with many a complex boardgame myself.

If you’re looking at physically discernible traits in posterity (i.e., the baby boom generation), I’d say they would require considerable epigenetic or even genetic alterations in the parents (i.e., the people living there at the time). That’s not a very likely effect from such levels of pollution. If anyone was affected in any way, it seems more probable that their overall health would suffer to some degree, but it would probably be difficult to attribute that to any specific factor. An extensive epidemiological study may be able to demonstrate some effects, but I don’t know whether anybody has done one.

Also, it’s uncertain how much of the oil even reached the beaches or the fishing grounds. It seems obvious that the marine ecosystem could handle less oil, over a much longer period of time, and at various locations, much better than the massive BP spill. So a lot of that WWII tanker oil may have evaporated, or sunk to the bottom, or gone down with the ship and slowly dissipated.

I don’t think that the war itself would have played a major role in deciding to either clean up or ignore any oil that may have landed on the beaches. If the oil would have arrived in a town like, say, Biloxi, then people would have probably cleaned it up because it posed a direct threat to the livelihood of the local fishermen. On the other hand, if it would have landed in a remote location, it would likely have been ignored, simply because environmental awareness was not exactly a major concern in the 1940’s, war or no war.

In each case, I’m only speculating - we’d need to look for contemporary reports to know the truth.

And of course, the petroleum flavor does little for the shrimps, so I don’t think too many were eaten.  :-)

Thanks for sharing. But I couldn’t help noticing that one of the comments below the article mentioned that the journalist who “wrote” this, copied the article from another site. And indeed, after a quick search, it turns out to have been published over two weeks ago at:
https://saesferd.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/b-17-flying-fortress-excavation/

Not to blame you for that of course, I really appreciate all the interesting historical information you come up with!

As a bonus, the other site also has the following article on the preservation of a German Dornier bomber found in Kent a few years ago:
https://saesferd.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/dornier-17-project/

At roughly 10,000-12,000 tons, a typical World War II oil tanker was much smaller than the giants that cruise the oceans today. On top of that, the BP oil spill happened over a much shorter period of time, and was focused towards a smaller area.

So I’m sure the Gulf Coast suffered a lot more from British Petrol than from German U-boats.

@Crimson_Raptor:

Germany has 40 IPC.

2 Battleships are purchased costing 20 IPC each.

Combat occurs and 8 Tanks are destroyed.

Germany now realizes the Battleships are not needed, and so returns them to get the 40 IPC in order to possibly purchase 8 Tanks on its next turn.

According to the rulebook, this unmobilization of units cannot be allowed because Germany has the ability to place the 2 Battleships, correct?

Yes, that’s correct - you must place the battleships. You’re right that in reality, it may be possible to reassign some of the materials (though not all of them) to the production of different units, but the rules won’t allow that. Therefore, in the example that I gave, it was financially possible to buy all the units mentioned, but they couldn’t be placed due to production limits, and you can choose which units to place and which ones to return.

So here’s another totally unlikely scenario abusing the rule:

• Japan has conquered India, and has two fighters there
• There’s a US fleet in SZ60, and Japan wants to attack it
• Japan has 38 IPC and buys 8 infantry and an aircraft carrier
• Japan attacks SZ60 using the fighters from India
• If Japan wins in SZ60, it will build the carrier there to land the surviving planes, plus 7 infantry
• If Japan loses and the planes are destroyed, it will return the carrier and build 8 infantry
  :roll:

Alright, I’m totally ruining the intent of this thread by dreaming up crazy exploits instead of providing clear explanations. My bad!  :-D