Posts made by KurtGodel7

Good topic, Zooey.

Traditionally the German economy has been structured as follows:

Germany imports food –> foreign currency flows out of Germany
Germany imports raw materials for its factories --> foreign currency flows out of Germany
Germany exports manufactured goods --> foreign currency flows into Germany

Note that without the third item on the list, it would be impossible for Germany to pay for the first two items. Paying for those first two items became considerably more difficult due to the massive reparations payments required by the Versailles Treaty. The burden of that treaty was (temporarily) eased by large loans from the American government. On the other hand, most of the reparations payments went to Britain and France, which meant that the combination of U.S. + Germany was helping fund France’s + Britain’s appetite for money.

In the late ‘20s, the U.S. government was able to convince Britain and France to cease requiring further reparations payments from Germany. In exchange, Britain and France demanded (and received) American forgiveness of those nations’ remaining debts from WWI. But by this point, Germany owed vast sums of money to the American government. Interest payments alone were a very difficult burden for it to bear.

During the '20s, Britain and France closed themselves and their empires to German imports. The United States later followed suit, with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. With much of the world refusing to accept German imports, Germany could not export enough manufactured goods to even out its balance of payments. The result was an economic collapse which began in Germany, and which quickly spread throughout the Western world. The politically moderate Weimar government lost credibility because it was no longer able to feed the German people. (They didn’t have the currency necessary to pay for food imports.)

Hitler inherited an economic disaster, and immediately began taking ruthless measures to improve the situation. He stated that if any nation refused to accept German imports, Germany would default on 100% of its debt to that nation. In particular, Germany defaulted on all its debt to the United States. On the other hand, if a particular nation agreed to accept German imports, Germany would repay a large percentage of the money owed to that nation. A number of nations which had formerly refused German imports began accepting them.

These measures were ugly, and many Western politicians found them offensive. They also worked. By 1937, Germany’s economy was booming. The unemployment rate had plummeted, real wages had significantly increased, working conditions improved, the work week had been reduced to 40 hours, and workers had been given extensive vacation time. Improved clean air and clean water standards were enacted. Profits for German companies rose considerably.

I think there are at least two lessons to be learned from all this. 1) A nation should not accept narcissistic, one-sided economic/trade arrangements from other nations. The Weimar Republic allowed itself to be economically exploited by the Allies (especially Britain and France). Ending that economic exploitation was an absolutely essential part of Germany’s subsequent economic boom. In the modern world, China is engaged in currency manipulation. That currency manipulation makes it too easy for Chinese firms to export their products inexpensively; too difficult for other countries to import into China. Ending that currency manipulation would significantly improve the economies of the United States and of China’s other trading partners.

2. If a large, modern government commits itself to achieving a particular economic objective, and if that government knows what it’s doing, that objective can often be achieved. But at least in the United States, running for office is very expensive. Politicians must therefore accept large sums of money from large corporations, public sector unions, wealthy individuals, and other lobbyists and special interest groups. It is necessary for these politicians to act in the best interests of those who fund their campaigns. That goal is often incompatible with the objective of growing the economy as a whole. American politicians are far more likely to be former lawyers than former economists; which means that most of them probably don’t understand the economic damage their policies create. Even if they did understand it, they might not have any choice but to inflict it anyway. There is a tendency for politicians who aren’t willing to “play the game” to get weeded out. Large media corporations have a very, very strong vested interest in preserving the importance of money in politics. If any politician attempts to reform the existing system, the media will either a) kill him with silence, or b) give him only negative press coverage.

Good post and good thread, Zooey. :)

Both Anglia and Saxony are part of Germany. The English (Anglo-Saxons) are primarily of German descent. They were considered Aryans by the Nazis. Englishman captured by the Nazis were not subjected to worse treatment than non-Aryan POWs. I could be mistaken, but I imagine that the same considerations which led the Nazis to forgive some people of German descent (the English) for fighting against Germany would also cause them to forgive your German-ancestry grandfather for doing the same. It’s normal for someone born and raised in the United States to be loyal to America, and I think the Nazis understood that.

In answer to your question, my paternal grandfather served as a doctor for the US Army during WWII. (European theater.) My maternal grandfather was Polish, and had been born and raised in Poland. He served in the Polish military police in the opening stages of the war. He was in the eastern half of Poland, and fell into Soviet custody. He was tortured for a time in a Soviet concentration camp before being released. He was luckier than many. From 1939 - '41, the Soviet Union decimated the popuation of eastern Poland. One person out of every ten was either killed outright or deported. (Typically to a gulag.)

@WraithZer0:

Wow, man.  You really did want the Nazis to win.  You wanted us to help them conquer Stalin, and, in turn, probably cede to letting them take over most of Europe.  Until this long-storied analogy, I believed you were just defending a well-read argument for the hindsight of the goings on of WWII.  I was really intrigued by taking a neutral look in to things, but I knowingly can’t ever choose any side other than my own country in this venture.  I am sure you say patriotism be damned, but out of your “3 evils” of the western allies, Russia, and Nazi Germany, I will always choose the allies.  Sorry, Kurt.   :-(

I appreciate the sincerity and candor of your post. I also respect your patriotism.

When a soldier turns traitor, you shoot the soldier. When a general turns traitor, you hang the general if you possibly can. But what happens when a nation’s leader betrays the nation he’s charged with ruling? What happens when, as a result of that cynical treason, he leads his own nation down the road to its own destruction?

When FDR died, Truman inherited his administration. A number of the members of that administration owed their loyalty to Joseph Stalin and to communism–not to the United States. According to Herbert Hoover’s book Freedom Betrayed, members of Truman’s state department talked about their desire for South Korea to fall to the communists. But they wanted to avoid the appearance of having pushed it over.

In 1946 the U.S. government embargoed weapons deliveries to the Chinese nationalists, because members of Truman’s administration thought those weapons shouldn’t be used in a civil war against the communists. Also, the nationalists were pressured to cede more and more to the communists–to meet them halfway. But the United States government never pressured the communists to be more reasonable to the nationalists. After WWII ended, Stalin had plenty of American Lend Lease weapons lying around. He gave a large portion of those weapons to the Chinese communists. The communists also received Japanese weapons caches which the Red Army captured during its invasion of Manchuria. Chinese communists had access to more and better weapons than did the nationalists–which proved an important factor in the ultimate communist victory in China.

That same cynical, deliberate treason against the United States was also seen toward the end of WWII. Harry Dexter White was a known Soviet agent within the FDR administration. (One of many.) He was also the original author of the Morgenthau Plan. The central objective of the Moregenthau Plan was to create hunger (and outright starvation) in the democratic portion of postwar Germany. Partly, that was intended as revenge against Germany for having gone to war against the Soviet Union. But the main (communist) reason for formulating the Morgenthau Plan was so that West Germany would go communist.

It took two years (1945 to 1947) of death and disease, and fears that starving Germans might “go Communist” before U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes made his Stuttgart speech.

Given the Soviets’ stated long-term goal of world conquest, starving West Germany into the acceptance of communism represented deliberate treason in the face of an avowed (and very powerful) enemy. The Morgenthau Plan was formulated under the FDR administration, and FDR himself was a strong supporter of the plan. It was implemented under the Truman administration, in the form of JCS 1067. Not only was JCS a crime against humanity, the apparent motive for that crime was the advancement of a treasonous objective.

At what point did the “contain Germany, appease the USSR” crowd knowingly commit treason? When did they first decide to cynically betray the nations they were tasked to lead? For the most part, I do not think that the “contain Germany, appease the USSR” politicians of the Versailles Treaty era were guilty of treason. Many or most of those politicians were fairly despicable human beings, granted. But they were not (so far as I can tell) traitors.

At least in the United States, the transition from non-treason to treason probably occurred in the election of 1932. FDR (deliberately?) allowed his administration to become a rats’ nest of Soviet agents, fellow travelers, and sympathizers. Whenever there was an internal disagreement within FDR’s administration, FDR typically sided with the Soviet agents. The Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin were therefore able to exert considerable control over the FDR administration, especially when the most important decisions were being made.

Stalin wanted a one front war, in Europe. It was therefore important that Japan be distracted. Fairly early in the Chinese civil war, Mao captured Chiang Kai-shek. Mao’s instinct was to shoot him. But before doing so, he radioed Moscow for instructions. The instructions came back: “Do not shoot him. Force him to fight the Japanese.”

But the war between the Chinese nationalists and the Japanese was not alone enough to distract the latter from a possible attack on the Soviet Union. Stalin used his (considerable) influence in the United States, and his influence in Japan, to encourage war between the United States and Japan. The United States government embraced eight separate provocations against Japan; the most serious of which was the oil embargo. (Some of the provocations included moving the U.S. Pacific Fleet from California to Hawaii, basing American strategic bombers in the Philippines, and deliberate violations of Japanese territorial waters by American destroyers and cruisers.) These provocations ultimately resulted in the Pearl Harbor attack. Once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Stalin knew that the Japanese could no longer afford to launch a serious invasion of the U.S.S.R. He transferred 100 divisions from his eastern front to his western front. Given that the Germans had used only 100 divisions in their initial invasion of the Soviet Union, the appearance of 100 additional Soviet divisions proved devastating.

After the end of WWII in Europe, General Patton began speaking out against the Soviet-influenced war crimes then being committed by the American government. He strongly disagreed with the decision to ship many or most American-held German POWs to France or the Soviet Union. He pointed out that in French or Soviet custody, many of these men would die of starvation.

Patton died a few months after having first pointed out the Truman administration’s war crimes. Evidence strongly indicates, but does not prove, that he was assassinated. Patton was the patriot, the men who ordered his assassination were traitors. Traitors who deserved to be hanged not just for the war crimes they had committed, but for having betrayed the nation they’d sworn to protect.

The Soviet Union was stronger than Nazi Germany in terms of population size, industrial capacity, and access to raw materials. Perhaps even more importantly, it was also much stronger than Nazi Germany in terms of its ability to influence the behavior of Western democratic governments.

When a man contracts rabies, the rabies virus overrides some of his brain’s programming. Specifically, the virus causes the man to want to bite the people and animals around him. Biting allows the virus to spread. Eventually the rabies virus will kill the man’s brain; and therefore the man. But unless the man has been physically restrained, odds are that before he dies he will have bitten a significant number of victims. His infected saliva will seep into his victims’ wounds.

The governments of Western democracies had been infected with the communist virus. Due to that infection, they experienced a strong desire to “bite” any nation which stood up to communism. That desire to bite was motivated not by patriotism, but by a treasonous illness.

@Private:

@CWO:

Chamberlain “held the line” largely in symbolic rather than concrete terms.�

Quite right Marc. I used the phrase to mean that Chamberlain did at least go to war when Poland was invaded.

He then proved himself the opposite of the great war leader that Churchill subsequently proved himself to be. That same lack of willingness to fight I referred to in my previous post.

Thought by responding to you I might get this thread back on track. Pigs might fly ….

You and several of your friends are on board a ship. The ship also contains a grizzly bear and a mountain lion. The bear is murderous, and has already killed ten people so far. While the mountain lion hasn’t killed or maimed anyone (yet?), it’s still a wild animal.

The ship crashes near a remote island. The bear uses the opportunity to kill a few more people before it swims to shore. You and the other surviving people from the ship are now trapped on this island–along with the mountain lion and the bear. It turns out that the mountain lion and the bear hate each other. They are determined to fight, and it’s likely that only one of them will survive the fight. All the weapons went down with the ship, so the human involved have only the very primitive weapons they’ve been able to contrive from island-based materials.

The grizzly bear greatly out-masses the mountain lion. It has far more muscle mass, and can take a lot more punishment, than can the feline. However, the mountain lion has faster movement speed and reflexes than the bear. He’s also more intelligent. The bear’s victory over the mountain lion is less than completely certain.

That absence of certainty results in a debate among the humans. Some favor neutrality between the mountain lion and the bear. Others favor helping the bear! After an acrimonious debate in which people call each other a lot of names, the pro-bear faction wins out. As the mountain lion and the bear face off against each other, people use what primitive weapons they can to inflict as much punishment on the mountain lion as possible. Whenever there is a lull in the fighting, the humans use the opportunity to mend the bear’s wounds or to give it primitive armor. Others seek to deprive the mountain lion of fresh water to drink between bouts.

Thanks in large part to human help, the bear wins the fight and devours the mountain lion. Then he goes to his cave for a time, to rest and recover from the injuries the mountain lion inflicted upon him. Once the bear is finished with his rest, he will awaken with blood red eyes. He will awaken with a murderous heart. He will awaken with the desire to exterminate every last human on the island. And there will no longer be a mountain lion to stand up to him.

In the meantime, the humans congratulate each other on their courage in killing the mountain lion. They celebrate their great “victory,” and sing pseudo-patriotic songs. They congratulate themselves on having gotten rid of the “real threat.” They ignore unpleasant truths, such as the fact that most of the island has now been claimed by the bear; and is off-limits to humans.

He then proved himself the opposite of the great war leader that Churchill subsequently proved himself to be.

Churchill was a “great war leader” against the mountain lion. He actively aided and abetted the bear.

@Imperious:

Your attempt to yet again somehow point out false statements about how the Soviets/Allies were more evil than Nazi Germany are not relevant to this thread’s topic.

Stop denying where evil came from during the war.

This thread is a discussion of Neville Chamberlain’s legacy. In 1939, Chamberlain reverted to the traditional Allied policy of containing Germany while allowing Soviet expansion. Chamberlain’s (and later Churchill’s) consistent policy of appeasing the Soviet Union led directly to Soviet domination of postwar Europe. A situation in which European democracies could not possibly have defended themselves against a Soviet invasion even with the assistance of non-nuclear American aid.

Had the Soviet Union successfully invaded France, western Germany, and perhaps even Britain, what would the consequences to those nations have been? For an answer, we can look to the experience of other nations the Soviet Union had annexed. The below text is a description of the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States.

The Soviets had previously carried out mass deportations in 1940–41, but the deportations between 1944–52 were even greater.[79] In March 1949 alone, the top Soviet authorities organised a mass deportation of 90,000 Baltic nationals.[81]

The total number deported in 1944–55 has been estimated at over half a million: 124,000 in Estonia, 136,000 in Latvia and 245,000 in Lithuania.

Deportation is a vague word. The below text paints a clearer picture of exactly what deportation meant.

According to the Serov Instructions, the deportations were swift and efficient and came in the middle of the night. Deportees were given an hour or less to get ready to leave. . . . The families would then be taken to the railway station. That was when they discovered that the men were to be separated from the women and children. " . . . the head of the family be placed separately from his family in a car specially intended for heads of families."

The trains were escorted by a NKVD officer and military convoy. Packed into barred cattle cars, with holes in the floor for sanitation, the deportees were taken to Siberia. Many died before even reaching their final destination because of harsh conditions. Many more perished during their first winter.

Also, there is this:

In 1941, to implement Stalin’s scorched earth policy, destruction battalions were formed in the western regions of the Soviet Union. In Estonia, they killed thousands of people including a large proportion of women and children, while burning down dozens of villages, schools and public buildings. A school boy named Tullio Lindsaar had all of the bones in his hands broken then was bayoneted for hoisting the flag of Estonia.

Had the Allied policy of appeasement toward the Soviet Union reached its natural conclusion, British boys would have been tortured, then bayoneted for hoisting the Union Jack. French men, women and children would have been packed into cattle cars, with holes in the floor for sanitation. NVKD officers would have knocked on Italian families’ doors in the middle of the night. Belgian fathers would have been separated from their wives and their children. Good fortune prevented the nations of Western Europe from feeling the full effects of Chamberlain’s (and later Churchill’s) pro-Soviet foreign policy. Those behind the Iron Curtain were not so lucky. By the mid '50s, a third of the world’s population lived under the evil rule of communism. That is Chamberlain’s legacy. That is also Churchill’s legacy, Daladier’s legacy, and FDR’s legacy.

@Imperious:

Thats why Hoover was seen as insane and marginalized by his ridiculous views. In addition, the ‘trick’ of labeling prewar mass murder as something knowing fully well the totals of murdered during war in terms of deaths caused by Nazi Germany was 1,000 fold greater than what the Soviets did. And those murders are not war deaths but rather systematic extermination of entire groups of people.

As long as you got that clear

Your libelous statements about Hoover and misrepresentations of mass murder during WWII are not relevant to this thread’s topic.

@Imperious:

You are quoting a post from 2007? WTH?

Germany’s opportunities to treat the Slavs well were limited by its severe wartime food shortages. That being said, there were a number of German government officials assigned the task of administering the eastern occupied territories. Those officials should have been drawn from the more pro-Slavic ranks of the Nazi Party or the German government. Instead of that, Hitler often appointed officials who were strongly anti-Slavic in their outlook. Those who saw Slavs as potential allies against the evil of communism might have been able to garner far more support and cooperation than those who viewed Slavs as cattle.

Those food shortages were deliberately manufactured as part the the Nazi hunger plan which deliberately sought to make excuses to murder people. That was already proven to you. Nazi fake overtures of helping the Slavs was only to make the die easier for Hitlers long term plan of extermination.

I think i have posts from 2004 if you like to reply to those as well…

Those food shortages were deliberately manufactured as part the the Nazi hunger plan which deliberately sought to make excuses to murder people. That was already proven to you.

We’ve discussed this in other threads. I don’t think this thread’s OP would be very happy with either of us if we derailed this thread by debating it here.

What’s that? You’re the OP? Never mind then.

I think i have posts from 2004 if you like to reply to those as well…

Definitely! :) Clicking on the last page of this forum’s posts only brings me back to 2007. If there’s a way to get earlier posts than that, let’s do it!

The main goal of the Versailles Treaty was to weaken Germany. Several measures were undertaken to effect that objective:

• Germany was only allowed a token military. It was not allowed to have tanks or planes.
• Pieces of German land were given to Germany’s neighbors. Poland was given West Prussia and Danzig, Czechoslovakia was given the Sudetenland, and France was given the Rhineland and the Saar. This created a permanent bone of contention between Germany and its neighbors, and ensured Germany would always be encircled by enemies.
• The above-described territorial arrangements also served to weaken Germany in terms of industrial capacity, population size, and access to natural resources.
• Germany’s colonies were taken from it, and awarded to Allied nations.
• Germany was crippled economically due to truly staggering reparations payments. As a result, it was unable to afford the food purchases necessary to feed the German people.

One of the (many) problems associated with this approach was that it represented an open, ongoing invitation to the Soviet Union to invade all of Europe. The Soviets first attempted to take advantage of that invitation in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921. Step 1 of the Soviet plan was to conquer and annex Poland. Step 2 was to move into Germany. Germany was weak and disarmed because of Versailles, and was on the brink of a communist revolution. Upon arriving in Germany, Soviet communists would join forces with local German communists, and together would seize control over Germany. With the exception of a few French military advisors, the Allies did precisely nothing to help Poland. Polish victory in the Polish-Soviet war was due to two factors: 1) The courage and ability of the Polish military. 2) The fact that the Soviet Union was still in a state of civil war.

As a result of its defeat in the Polish-Soviet War, (and as a result of Germans communists’ failure to seize control over Germany), the Soviet government decided to postpone its plans to annex Germany. The purpose of this delay was to build up Soviet strength, so that the next attempt to conquer Germany would be more successful. During the delay, the communists destroyed their opposition in the civil war, industrialized, and militarized.

During the '20s, the leaders of Western democracies did not provide solutions to the long-term problem of Soviet aggression. The Western democracies did not guarantee the nations of Eastern Europe against Soviet attacks. The understanding was that if the Soviet Union invaded any nation in Eastern Europe, the Western democracies would do nothing more to help that that nation than they’d done to help Poland defend itself against the Soviet invasion of 1919 - '21.

During the Battle of France, the Allies fielded 144 divisions. By the late fall of 1941, the Red Army consisted of over 600 divisions. If the Soviet Union was allowed to absorb Eastern Europe and Germany without Western democratic opposition, Allied strength would have been insufficient to prevent a subsequent Soviet conquest of France. During the 1920s American presidents were isolationist. Starting in 1932 they were pro-Soviet. Neither an isolationist president nor a pro-Soviet president can be relied upon to resist Soviet expansionism. At no point prior to 1948 did the American government sign any treaties or take any military action intended to prevent Soviet expansion.

At least for some Allied politicians, the lack of interest in preventing Soviet expansion was due to a primitive, almost tribal hatred of Germany and of all things German. They were so focused on their idea that Germany was the enemy and the problem that they were blind to the tens of millions of innocent people Stalin had murdered. Blind to the Soviets’ stated long-term goal of world conquest. Blind to the implications of Stalin’s aggressive industrialization and militarization. Racial slurs such as “Hun” were used to describe Germans. Western democratic leaders almost never employed similar hate speech when describing Stalin or his henchmen.

Western democratic politicians were unwilling or unable to defend Europe from Soviet invasion–a fact which Hitler understood. Hitler’s proposed solution to that problem was for Germany, alone and unaided, to oppose Soviet invasion. In order to bear that burden, Germany needed strength. Upon taking office, Hitler rapidly grew Germany’s economy and its military. He began efforts to reclaim the German land taken from Germany at Versailles. Western politicians were alarmed by Germany’s growing strength, but (oddly enough) were not alarmed by Stalin’s massive efforts to industrialize and militarize the Soviet Union. Stalin’s efforts began well before Hitler took power; and were offensive, not defensive, in nature.

Some politicians–such as Hoover–felt that the Nazis and the Soviets were equally bad, and that they should be left alone to fight things out among themselves. However, the “equally bad” theory is not supported by mass murder totals. There were 1000 victims of Soviet prewar mass murder for every one victim of Nazi prewar mass murder.

For a time, it seemed as though Chamberlain had chosen the same “let them fight it out” perspective as had Hoover. His decision to allow the Sudetenland to be restored to German rule was consistent with a larger policy of allowing Germany to become stronger, so that it could better resist the Soviet Union. But due to the lies told by his political opponents, Chamberlain’s reputation suffered after Munich. In 1939, Chamberlain might have been motivated by the desire for political self-preservation, or by the desire to revenge himself against Hitler for perceived wrongs done to him. But whatever his motives may have been, he discarded his previous policy of neutrality in the Nazi-Soviet cold war. In place of that neutrality, he adopted the same kind of thinking the Allies had employed at Versailles, and that was also embraced by the British government during Churchill’s regime. Germany alone was considered the problem. German expansion alone must be contained. (While allowing Soviet expansion.) Poland was guaranteed against German invasion, but not against Soviet invasion. This was the second time in less than 20 years in which the Western democracies had chosen to do nothing at all in response to a Soviet invasion of Poland. From 1939 - 1941, the population of the eastern, Soviet-occupied half of Poland was decimated. One person out of every ten was either executed or deported to a gulag. Under Stalin, deportation to a gulag usually meant slow death due to cold and hunger.

In 1939, the Red Army was much better prepared to take advantage of its “free pass” to invade all of Europe than it had been during the Polish-Soviet War. How strong was the Soviet Union militarily? During the Nazi-Soviet War, the Red Army could expect to lose about 500,000 men in a typical month. That’s more men than the United States lost during the entire war. At the end of the war, the Red Army in eastern Germany outnumbered the democracies’ armies in western Germany by a margin of about 3:1. That numerical advantage continued into the postwar era. In the late '40s, the Truman administration decided that the Western democracies could not resist a Soviet invasion of Europe by conventional weapons alone. If the Soviet Union invaded, it was expected that Stalin’s armies would quickly push west. The only plan for stopping them consisted of dropping nuclear bombs on advancing Soviet soldiers. The Germans were less than delighted with this plan, considering that the nuclear bombs would be dropped in West Germany, and would have killed large numbers of Germans as collateral damage. The point here being that even after the Red Army experienced staggering losses in its war against Germany, and even after the United States had chosen to station large numbers of troops in West Germany to defend against Soviet invasion, the Red Army was still strong enough to conquer all of mainland Europe. Up until his death, Stalin had been making preparations to launch an invasion of Western Europe.

The policies of Chamberlain in 1939, and later of Churchill, represented the completion of the failure the Allies began at Versailles. Europe was to be left defenseless against the Soviet threat. The one European nation which might have had the strength to resist that invasion had been smashed to rubble. The western part of Europe was saved from the consequences of that failure by pure good luck. That good luck consisted of the following.

1. American foreign policy unexpectedly became anti-communist. Prior to 1948, American politicians typically came in one of two flavors. Anti-communist isolationists, and pro-communist interventionists. The idea of an _anti-_communist interventionist was almost unheard-of–at least prior to 1948.

2. Stalin died sooner than expected. His death appears to have been the result of having been given rat poison.

3. The United States invented nuclear weapons.

Had even one of those pieces of good luck not occurred, it’s very likely that Western Europe would have fallen to the Red Army. France, western Germany, Italy, and perhaps even Britain would have experienced the terror of the NKVD.

@WraithZer0:

Neither were great leaders, Kurt.  That is true.  I agree with you that Chamberlain may have been the lesser of the two evils.  However, he wouldn’t have survived the cancer, anyway, probably.  Churchill failed horribly with the Gallipoli campaign in WWI and was forced to lead ground troops from the trenches as a “demotion,” which I wouldn’t have put him in, either.  Then, he failed to make any headway with any British campaign for most, if not all, of WWII (Fall of Dunkirk, Market Garden, etc.).  Apart from defending the islands during the Battle of Britain.  Yeah, man.  While a lot of your rhetoric can be hard to swallow, or I may disagree with, I find that these two, including the French, were way more a part of the problems than the solutions for this war.

He gave cool speeches, though.

Good post, and I agree with what you’ve written. In North Africa the British did very well against the Italians. But when fighting against the Germans, they did not achieve significant victories until after they’d achieved overwhelming numerical superiority. Subsequent British offensives (such as the one into Italy, or Operation Market Garden) were not exactly what one would have expected from Alexander the Great.

While a lot of your rhetoric can be hard to swallow, or I may disagree with . . .

In the past, a boy would be born into a kingdom, and would grow up to be a man. He was told that his king had his nation’s best interests at heart. He was told that his king’s enemies were his enemies, and that a mutual loyalty should and did exist between the people and their king. That system worked reasonably well as long as this mutual loyalty was upheld by both the people and the king.

Today most nations no longer have kings. But we have the same genetics–the same hard wiring–that people had 1000 years ago. Instead of kings we have various leaders: politicians, powerful business people, etc. We assume that the relationship we have with those people is roughly similar to the relationship yeomen once had with their king. We assume that our leaders’ enemies are our enemies; that their friends are our friends.

One of the reasons some people find my posts hard to swallow is that I do not assume that our leaders have any loyalty at all to the people or to the nation. Nor do I assume they are necessarily better human beings than some other, foreign nation’s batch of leaders. I do not assume that their friends are my friends; or that their enemies are my enemies.

When a king is loyal to his nation, loyalty to the king and loyalty to the nation are the same thing. But when a king has cynically and callously betrayed his own nation, it becomes impossible to be loyal to both king and nation.

@Imperious:

top 10 list:

1. should have enlisted the Soviets into the Axis block by assigning territorial spears of influence to each partner. Molitov and Von Ribbentrop had such a discussion in late 1940 of this and Molitov was more worried about Finland and Bessarabia to give it the reflection and potential it deserved

2. Left Yugoslavia alone ( save 6 weeks for barbarossa)

3. should not have demoblised 40 divisions after the fall of france

4. began total war mobilization ( didnt start till jan 1943 and the results were not achieved untill 1944)

5. making Leningrad and Moscow the prize. No shift of forces in Oct 41 from AGC to AGS ( e.g the Kiev pocket). The loss of moscow was a central tie to all other parts of western Russia and deployments in the south would have been cut off to the north. Archangel would have fallen and Finnish troops would have been freed up– and more couragious for garrison duty in Leningrad and archangel, while Whermacht forces would still have cut the kiev pocket and bagged even more Soviet armies.

6. stripped reinforcements from western front ( allies had no prospect of landing in 1942 and a few additional forces would have carried the campaign to conclusion)

7. preparations for winter fighting. In the first winter hitlers no retreat order saved the german army, but he still had horrible loses due to inefficient logistical systems, and all germanys victories were “on the cheap” they had no intention of long term campaigns.

8. The unity of command was a blessing and a curse. The original strategy should have been maintained and any flexibility should have been decided by the generals in charge … not a corporal from WW1

9. Hitlers declaration of war on dec 11th 1941 was a waste of unimaginable proportions

10. Inability to create a 5th column in Ukraine. Germany treated the slavs as cattle and that the campaign was a war of extermination. A total waste of potential manpower and the ability to sap the vital strength of the Soviet system with a replacement system that would potentially impart less harsh conditions for ordinary people. That could have been the propaganda and it would have been taken at face value. Soviet forces would have surrenderd much easier if the whole affair was a crusade against communisim.

1. should have enlisted the Soviets into the Axis block

This may not have been an option. Evidence strongly suggests Stalin was planning to expand westward at Germany’s expense. Stalin might have agreed to join the Axis bloc–right up until the day his tanks rolled across the Nazi-Soviet border.

2. Left Yugoslavia alone ( save 6 weeks for barbarossa)

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, six extra weeks of invading the Soviet Union before winter sets in sure sounds like a good idea. On the other hand, my understanding is that spring rains had been heavy that year, and that the six weeks in question might have been associated with muddy roads and a bogged down advance. I don’t like the idea of getting only partial benefit from the first six weeks of surprise.

3. should not have demoblised 40 divisions after the fall of france

Agreed. According to Suvorov, Hitler did not anticipate a Soviet invasion of Germany in 1940. (Which would explain the demobilization of those divisions.) But due to massive Red Army troop movements to the Nazi-Soviet border, and due to forcible Soviet annexation of Finnish and Romanian territory, Hitler figured out what Stalin had brewing. Then decided to launch his own invasion of the Soviet Union, before the Soviets’ preparations to invade Germany were complete.

4. began total war mobilization ( didnt start till jan 1943 and the results were not achieved untill 1944)

In addition to agreeing with the above, I also feel that Albert Speer should have been put in charge of armaments production several years earlier than had been the case.

5. making Leningrad and Moscow the prize. No shift of forces in Oct 41 from AGC to AGS

Another good point. Also, von Manstein should have been placed in charge of Barbarossa. Von Manstein was the best general on either side of the war. Had he been in charge of the invasion of the Soviet Union, Moscow and Leningrad would have fallen.

6. stripped reinforcements from western front

Agreed. Too many troops were tied down in places like France and Norway.

7. preparations for winter fighting. In the first winter hitlers no retreat order saved the german army, but he still had horrible loses due to inefficient logistical system

You make a good point, but this is a rather complex subject. Germany has almost no oil deposits. During WWII, it relied partly on synthetic fuel (made from coal), and partly on Romanian oil. But even in combination, those fuel sources were not sufficient for more than the first 2 - 3 months of Barbarossa. After that, there was a need for Germany to alter the tempo of its operations due to fuel shortages.

It’s possible to have an oil-free supply line. A coal-powered train moves supplies most of the way to the soldiers. Horses then carry the supplies the rest of the way. However, the Soviets’ rail system used a different gauge than Germany’s, and Stalin’s scorched earth policy resulted in the destruction of a significant portion of Soviet rail lines. As a result, supplies often had to be transported over long distances via petroleum-powered trucks. Manufacturing large numbers of winter uniforms in Germany was not necessarily as big a challenge as was getting those uniforms to Germany troops. By the time winter set in, German soldiers lacked ammunition, food, medical supplies, and yes, winter uniforms. The supply situation was abysmal due to lack of petroleum, inadequacy of rail lines, and the difficulty of moving supplies during a Russian winter.

8. The unity of command was a blessing and a curse.

Agreed. But it would have been strictly a blessing, had command been unified under von Manstein.

9. Hitlers declaration of war on dec 11th 1941 was a waste of unimaginable proportions

Obviously, war against the United States offered no possible benefit for Germany. Hitler had recognized this, and had exercised restraint in the face of FDR’s undeclared naval war against Germany. But it was felt that sooner or later American political and economic leaders would succeed in getting America into a war against Germany–regardless of the wishes of the American people. Herbert Hoover noted that prior to the election of 1940, FDR made numerous promises about keeping America out of war. After FDR won that election, he ceased providing such assurances, and his rhetoric became more warlike. Had Hitler not declared war in late '41, America would probably have gone to war eventually–much like it had in 1917.

Hitler felt that since war against the United States was inevitable anyway, better to speed the process up a bit so that he could sink the Lend Lease aid being sent to the Soviet Union and to Britain. To put the quantity of that aid into perspective: Erich Hartmann was the highest scoring fighter ace in history. He fought exclusively on the eastern front, and all his victories were against Soviet-operated aircraft. About 1/3 of the aircraft he shot down were American-made.

10. Inability to create a 5th column in Ukraine. Germany treated the slavs as cattle

I disagree with your use of the term “fifth column.” Do we call America’s Founding Fathers “fifth column” because they lacked loyalty to King George III? No! Neither should we apply that label to the brave Ukrainian men and women who resisted Stalin’s evil regime. Some of the chief complaints against George III involved his tax on tea, and the fact that British soldiers were sometimes quartered in Americans’ homes. Some of Ukrainians’ chief complaints about Stalin involved the fact that he used an artificial, government-created famine to murder 7 million Ukrainians, including 3 million children. The Boston Massacre (five people killed) was an important factor in many Americans’ decision to rebel. Stalin murdered over a million Ukrainians for every one victim of the Boston Massacre. If the men and women who stood up to George III were “patriots,” why not also use that word to describe the men and women who stood up to Stalin?

Germany’s opportunities to treat the Slavs well were limited by its severe wartime food shortages. That being said, there were a number of German government officials assigned the task of administering the eastern occupied territories. Those officials should have been drawn from the more pro-Slavic ranks of the Nazi Party or the German government. Instead of that, Hitler often appointed officials who were strongly anti-Slavic in their outlook. Those who saw Slavs as potential allies against the evil of communism might have been able to garner far more support and cooperation than those who viewed Slavs as cattle.

Under the Versailles Treaty, the Rhineland had been under hostile French occupation. One of Hitler’s first acts upon taking power was to restore the Rhineland to German rule. Winston Churchill stated that German ownership of the Rhineland was a moral outrage–an offense which should not have been tolerated. In taking that position, Churchill made it abundantly clear that he rejected the ideal of self-determination. He again rejected that principle at Munich. The Sudetenland was German territory under hostile Czech occupation. The principle of self-determination would have required this land be restored to Germany–exactly as the people of the Sudetenland wanted. What was misleadingly called the “appeasement” of Germany was simply a case of upholding principles Woodrow Wilson had said he’d cared about during and after WWI. (Principles which bore no relationship at all to anything the Allies did in the Versailles Treaty.)

In the months leading up to the German invasion of Poland, Britain sought an anti-Nazi alliance with the Soviet Union. Stalin’s asking price for the alliance was the eastern half of Poland, the Baltic States, and Finland. Chamberlain refused. In a speech in the House of Commons, Churchill denounced Chamberlain’s decision, and stated that Britain should agree to Stalin’s asking price. Not only did Churchill believe that self-determination should not apply to Germans, he also felt it should not apply to Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, or Finns. Also, Stalin had murdered millions of innocent people prior to the outbreak of hostilities–a fact which did not seem to dampen Churchill’s eagerness to appease the expansionistic Soviet dictator. Churchill’s proposed appeasement (letting Stalin have all that territory) was a much more extreme act of appeasement than letting the people of Sudetenland have their wish of rejoining their German homeland (which is what Chamberlain had agreed to at Munich).

In the early part of WWII, Hoover had been involved with famine relief efforts in German-occupied Poland. Those efforts ended when Churchill came into power and imposed a food blockade. Through that food blockade, Churchill demonstrated the same cynicism and contempt for the lives of innocent people that he’d shown in 1939, when he stated that Britain should have given Stalin his asking price. Based on Stalin’s track record, it was certain that giving him large swaths of territory could only result in mass murder.

Was Chamberlain a better human being than Churchill? Absolutely–there is no question at all on that point. Chamberlain’s compassion has been lyingly represented as weakness. Chamberlain had the kind of courage which causes a man to stand up to a lynch mob. Churchill had the “courage” which causes a man to lead such a mob.

However, Chamberlain’s character was far from perfect. In 1939, Britain and France made two promises to Poland. 1) If Germany invaded, Britain and France would go to war against Germany. 2) If Germany invaded, France would launch a general offensive within 15 days of mobilization. Promise 2 had been an outright lie from the day it was made. Chamberlain knew it was a lie, because his own nation’s joint military plans with France included no general French offensive. Also, one questions why Britain and France had guaranteed Poland against German invasion but not against Soviet invasion. There were 1000 victims of prewar Soviet mass murder for every one victim of prewar Nazi mass murder. Was it really so important for Poland to fall to the Soviet Union instead of Nazi Germany?

Chamberlain’s policy towards Poland tainted what would otherwise have been a reasonably good legacy.

DizzKneeLand wrote:

4.  All games will be played using real dice.

I like what you’re trying to do here. I’m also familiar with many of the maps you’re using in this tournament. Each map with which I’m familiar is a good map.

However, the above is a deal breaker for me. I’ve played about 100 games of New World Order. Every single one of those games has been with low luck. (The default option for that map, and the one option for which it was designed.) Low luck is just as important for Rising Sun as it is for NWO. Even for a casual game I’d be unwilling to play NWO with dice. That reluctance is at least doubled for a tournament game. The outcome of a tournament should be decided by skill, not by luck. Because I’ve always played New World Order with low luck, I’ve never had the outcome of any NWO game decided by anything other than skill. Back in the old days (when I used to play Classic and Revised with dice) there were a number of games in which luck, not skill, was the deciding factor.

WraithZero wrote,

I like to call them the “traitor/occupied/Vichy French” and the “free French” for the other side.  It just makes me feel better, haha.

I would disagree with that characterization. I strongly believe that those who joined Vichy France never wavered in their loyalty or love for France. Love of France and war against Germany are not analogous concepts. It’s also worth noting that England and France had been at war against each other for more years than the United States has existed. Churchill’s decision to sink the French navy may have brought some of those memories to the surface.

On the other hand, many of the so-called “Free French” were communists. The stated objective of communism is to overthrow the world’s existing governments and to replace them with one world government. A communist government. Undoubtedly, many or most of these communist Free French still felt love or loyalty toward France. Perhaps communist leadership felt it would be better to wait until after the war was over to ween these men of their love for France; and to attempt to replace that love with a love for a global dictatorship of the proletariat.

Karl wrote,

What I’ve read, and it’s a lot, is Germany best at the start, Russia the worst

By the summer of 1941, 80% of German men ages 20 - 30 were members of the military. (The other 20% were considered too vital to industry to be released for military service.) Over 80% of German military losses were incurred on its eastern front. Together, these two facts meant that the enormous losses Germany would sustain on its eastern front would be made good not by drafting men of military age, but by adding men who were of non-ideal age. At first it was adding men who were maybe a few years older than that ideal range. But as the war progressed and casualties mounted, the age range of German soldiers broadened. By mid to late '44 there were plenty of old men and boys in the German Army. Also, the percentage of non-Germans in the German Army increased as the war progressed. Military historians describe the German Army of '44 as having been a shell of the German Army in '41.

Stalin tended to downplay the accomplishments of the pre-Barbarossa Red Army, so as not to alarm his neighbors. But if that propaganda effort is stripped away, we see that the Red Army had some remarkable achievements in 1939 and 1940. In 1939, the Soviet Union found itself in an undeclared war against Japan. The Red Army won a crushing victory in '39 in the Battles of Khalkhin Gol. They achieved an offensive victory over the Japanese by having a weak center, strong flanks, a high level of mobility, and excellent air power. The objective was to use enveloping tactics and mobility to surround an enemy force; while using air power to knock out roads and bridges the enemy had needed. It was a sound philosophy, soundly executed. However, Stalin ordered total censorship of this Soviet victory. The Japanese were of course less than eager to advertise their defeat. As a consequence the rest of the world did not learn of what the Red Army had accomplished in 1939.

Prior to WWII, Finland had built multi-layered defenses on the Karelian isthmus, to guard against Soviet invasion. Many or most military experts considered those defenses impregnable. Due to the layout of the land, it was impossible to bypass those defenses. The only way to conquer Finland was to go straight through some of the best-defended terrain on the entire surface of the Earth. The Red Army achieved exactly that in 1940–albeit with substantial losses. Soviet propagandists claimed that the Red Army performed poorly in that engagement; and that it would be years before it was ready for war. Those claims are evidence that the Red Army performed well; and that Soviet leaders were planning a war of aggression. (Had the Red Army actually performed badly, Soviet leaders would hardly have wanted to advertise that weakness to their expansionistic neighbors.)

It’s true that the Red Army performed poorly in Operation Barbarossa. Germany achieved a 10:1 exchange ratio in the summer and fall of '41.

Well prior to Barbarossa, each Soviet officer had been issued a sealed packet. A packet was only to be opened upon outbreak of hostilities. When Germany invaded, each officer opened his packet. Upon doing so, he found plenty of information about what to do if the Soviet Union invaded Germany–and nothing at all about how to respond to a German invasion of the Soviet Union. The Soviet military’s deployment, weapons mix, troop movements and doctrine would have made perfect sense for a Soviet invasion of Germany in August 1941. They were completely unsuited to defending against a German invasion. The fact that the Soviet military leadership was taken completely off-guard was the main reason Germany achieved a 10:1 exchange ratio in Barbarossa. (As opposed to the 3:1 ratio which would become normal later in the war.) Also in '41, Soviet generals had a far less sophisticated understanding of tactics and strategy than did their German counterparts. During the Nazi-Soviet war, Soviet generals learned by example from German generals; thereby partly closing the sophistication gap. “We taught them too well,” General von Manstein remarked.

@Gamerman01:

I read it all

Didn’t the Germans have a significant advantage of being on defense and often having higher ground in Italy, too?

Yes, but that’s something which was taken into account when the U.S. military performed the study I’d mentioned. There were times in Italy when the German Army attacked, and of course times when the British or American armies attacked. The study looked specifically at what happened when the German army attacked, and compared those results to events when the British or American armies attacked. Same thing with defense. By looking at all available data, they were able to develop a composite picture of relative combat effectiveness.

Gamerman01 wrote:

I’d be interested to hear analysis on USA troop performance in Europe (or any other country, just specifying USA because they had the 2 very different campaigns a world apart)

In late 1942, American troops invaded Algeria. The result was a battle between the Americans and the French. The two sides soon negotiated a peace treaty. But before they did, America achieved a 2.5-to-1 exchange ratio against the French. As you pointed out, an exchange ratio is not necessarily a good measurement of infantry effectiveness. If one side (such as the United States) happens to have an overwhelming advantage in air power, equipment, and numbers, one would expect such a nation to achieve a favorable ratio.

In 1943, the U.S. and Britain invaded Italy. In the opinion of the U.S. military officer who performed the study I’d mentioned earlier, that combat represented the best example of American and British soldiers going up against Germans. However, he pointed out that the German force in Italy was relatively small, that it was a reserve force, and that as such it did not have the same equipment as a front line force of equal size might have had. Also, a significant percentage of its soldiers had been sent there for rest and recovery (recovery from battle wounds, for example). Based on his analysis of Anglo-American performance against this force, the author of the study concluded that American soldiers were 80 - 100% as combat-effective as the Germans, and that the British were 50% as combat-effective. (Elsewhere, he acknowledged the possibility that he’d overestimated American soldiers’ combat-effectiveness.)

In the Soviet Union there was a strong dislike for Stalin. When Hitler invaded, he found that a significant percentage of the population was willing to join the German Army, so that they could fight against communism. One would think that the logical place for these volunteers would be on the eastern front, against communism. However, in 1944 Germany was experiencing a dramatic troop shortage, and needed to quickly transfer soldiers to its western front to prepare against American and British invasion. Many of its best western front soldiers were placed in Calais, because that is where the Germans expected the blow to land. On most of the Normandy beachheads, American and British soldiers faced mostly Russians. Only at Omaha did the Allies face actual German soldiers. Hence the phrase “Bloody Omaha.” The U.S. lost 3000 men at Omaha, in exchange for 1200 Germans. On the one hand, the Americans enjoyed air supremacy, the benefit of battleship bombardments, far more weapons and equipment than the Germans, and a 5:1 numerical advantage over the German defenders. On the other hand, the Germans had the advantage of being the defender, and the advantage of having had time to prepare their defenses. The analysis of the Italian campaign probably provides a more accurate picture of relative combat effectiveness than does this one isolated battle.

During the initial phases of the Battle of the Bulge, bad weather prevented the Allies from receiving much benefit from their air supremacy. That’s useful, because we want ground battles, without the complicating factor of one side pummeling the other side from the air. The Battle of the Bulge was useful in another way as well, because it consisted of both attacks and counterattacks. Over the course of the battle each side was given opportunities to be on offense and on defense.

Many of Germany’s best soldiers were sent to the Battle of the Bulge. However, that battle occurred in late 1944. By that point, Germany was running very low on “best soldiers” it could send. To fill out its numbers, many of the German soldiers in that battle were old men or boys. A number of infantry divisions were poorly equipped. Germany’s tanks in that battle were often immobilized due to its fuel shortages. The exchange ratio in that battle was approximately 1:1.

The Battle of Berlin began just three months after the Battle of the Bulge. While no American troops were involved in the Battle of Berlin, that battle nevertheless illustrates the types of problems the German military faced at the time.

The German defences were mainly led by Helmuth Weidling and consisted of several depleted, badly equipped, and disorganised Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS divisions, the latter of which included many SS foreign volunteers, as well as poorly trained Volkssturm and Hitler Youth members.

The Volkssturm consisted almost entirely of old men and children; while the Hitler Youth was of course children. The Soviets experienced 81,000 losses in the Battle of Berlin; as compared to about 95,000 losses for Germany. Just two years earlier, the usual exchange ratio between Germany and the U.S.S.R. had been 3:1 in Germany’s favor. The fact that the Soviets later attained–and even slightly exceeded–a 1:1 ratio is one of several pieces of evidence which demonstrate Germany had reached the very end of its strength.

I’m less familiar with the Pacific war than I am the European war. That said, I know that during the early stages of the war between the U.S. and Japan, Japanese military doctrine called for the bulk of their defenses to be placed on or near beaches. That doctrine made them vulnerable to shore bombardment and attack from the air, and was a significant factor in the favorable exchange ratios American forces obtained. Late in the war, a maverick Japanese army officer used a different approach. His defenses on or near beaches were light. Once his beachhead defenses had been conquered, the Americans assumed that since the shell had been cracked, the whole defensive structure for that island would crumble. Instead of that, the Japanese officer and his men conducted a long and effective defensive campaign from the interior of the island. They used natural and artificial tunnels, caves, mountains, etc. Their plan was to hold out as long as possible while inflicting the maximum possible damage on the enemy.

However, it’s difficult to translate that one battle into an overall comparison between Japanese and American soldiers’ combat-effectiveness. The Japanese had the natural advantages of being on defense, and the island in question had a physical structure very, very well-suited to defense.

The Barbarossa aspect of this could be argued two ways. Would a six week head start been to Germany’s benefit? The attack caught the Soviet Union completely off guard, and resulted in the rapid encirclement and surrender of millions of Soviet soldiers. Germany achieved a 10:1 exchange rate during Barbarossa.

The problem with starting all that six weeks earlier was that spring rains were worse than usual that year, and persisted later into the spring than expected. The effect of surprise would, at least initially, have been largely counteracted by muddy roads. That would have given the Red Army the chance to get the worst of the surprise over with, and at least begin the process of getting its legs back underneath itself, at a time when Germany could not take maximum advantage of the situation. It’s possible that they could have accelerated the beginning of Barbarossa by a week or two without running into the muddy roads problem. But not six weeks.

A second point to bear in mind is the value of not having the British military on the European mainland. Italy might have eventually been able to defeat the Greek army. But as Britain sent more and more reinforcements to Greece, the combined Anglo-Greek force would have quickly become too tough a nut for Italy to crack. Britain could draw troops not just from its home islands, but also from its enormous colonial empire. The last thing the Axis needed was for Egyptian or Indian soldiers to gain a stronghold in the Balkans. If that force grew strong enough Germany might eventually have been forced into a two front land war, even without American involvement. There was also–as I mentioned earlier–an absolute necessity to keep British bombers from bombing Romanian oilfields. Without that oil the German war machine could not function.

I don’t think that the invasion of Greece was responsible for the full six week delay in Barbarossa. If Hitler had gone for Greece only, maybe it would only have been a three to four week delay. That’s acceptable due to the late spring rains. Unfortunately for the Axis, the government of Yugoslavia was overthrown in a military coup. As Hoover pointed out in his book, FDR encouraged that coup by falsely promising members of the Yugoslav military that, if they overthrew their own government, the United States would provide military aid against German retaliation. With perfect foresight, the Germans would have allowed Yugoslavia to remain neutral, instead of pressuring it to join the Axis.

But let’s say their foresight wasn’t quite as good as that decision would have implied. The next-best decision would have been to launch Barbarossa even while mopping up opposition in Yugoslavia and/or Greece.

Initially Greece had a two part response to the Italian invasion: 1) Beat the Italians. 2) Don’t provoke the Germans. Consistent with 2), the Greek government did not attempt to conquer large amounts of land from Italy, and did not invite the British Army to Greece. Due to this restraint, Germany did not intervene.

However, those policies proved unpopular with the Greek people. The above-described Greek government was voted out of office; replaced by a new more aggressive Greek government. The new Greek government discarded the “don’t provoke Germany” element of its predecessor’s strategy. The new government had no objection to acquiring as much Italian land as possible, and the British military was invited in. Also, the Greek Army sold out in its bid to conquer as much Italian territory as possible, leaving itself open to a German invasion. (The German invasion would have come from someplace other than the Italian/Greek front.)

Needless to say, this second Greek government seemed far more . . . lobotomized than the first one. Inviting the British in called for a German response, especially because of the importance of the Romanian oilfields. On the other hand, there was no reason for Germany to intervene as long as the Greek government was showing restraint. That’s why I voted for intervene historically. Historically, Germany did not intervene until after the British were invited in. Given what they knew and when they knew it, I think that was the right call.

If I’m designing a new tank in 1941, my assumption is that it won’t be used in large quantities until 1942. Designing the tank itself would take time, as would getting factories ready to produce the tank. Therefore I need to ask: what kind of tank would Germany need in 1942 and onward?

The perfect tank should have the following traits:

• Mechanically simple, reliable, and easy to produce
• Sloping armor
• Able to destroy a T-34 at a range at which the T-34 cannot respond
• Reasonably fast
• Reasonably fuel efficient
• Wide treads to spread out the weight on muddy roads

There probably wasn’t any WWII era tank which deserved a perfect score on all the above listed criteria. But one tank which would have come the closest to doing so would have been the E-50. The E-50 was part of Germany’s planned Entwicklung series of tanks. These tanks were intended to replace all previous German tank designs. Unlike those previous designs, E-Series tanks would be mechanically simple and easy to manufacture.

The E-50 could travel a very respectable 60 km/hour. It was to be equipped with an 88 mm gun. This was the same gun used by the Tiger II (King Tiger)–a gun which proved devastating against nearly every type of enemy tank (including T-34s). The E-50 weighed about as much as a Panther or Tiger I. The Panther was only slightly more expensive to produce than a Panzer IV. The E-50 would have been considerably less expensive to produce than a Panther. The E-50 came equipped with an advanced rangefinder, making it more accurate than its predecessors. It employed a narrow turret. The narrowness of the turret allowed for an increase in turret armor and a decrease in turret weight.

Had large numbers of this type of tank been added to Germany’s anti-Soviet armies in 1942, the result would have been potentially war-changing.

Mallery29 wrote:

Second, I have to establish that this would fall under “last stand” conditions.

Stalingrad probably cannot be considered a last stand–at least not for the Soviet Union. But it can potentially be considered a last stand for Germany. (Albeit not a particularly successful last stand.)

Military aircraft production is a reasonably good proxy for overall military production. In 1942, the Allies produced about four times as many military aircraft as the Axis. While both sides increased production between '42 and '44, the Axis increased at a faster relative pace than the Allies. As a result of which, the Allied advantage in military aircraft production had been shaved to merely 2:1 by 1944. But even that represents an overwhelming advantage. Moreover, both Germany and Japan had severe oil problems in 1944, so neither nation got as much benefit out of that massive production increase as you might think.

In addition to the above-described industrial advantages the Allies enjoyed, they also had a very significant advantage in manpower (as I partially described in my earlier post). The German Army was not strong enough to fight a two front war against the Soviets in the east and the British/Americans in the west.

In order to prevent its own destruction, Germany needed to negotiate a peace treaty with at least one major Allied nation. Neither FDR nor Churchill showed any interest at all in negotiating; which means Hitler’s one real option was Stalin. If Hitler had been able to negotiate an end to hostilities against the Soviet Union, with German gains left intact, he would then have been in a reasonable position to wage a defensive war against Anglo-American air attacks. In such a defensive war he would have required the following:

1. Industrial capacity (to build the large numbers of German planes and Wasserfall rockets needed to counter Anglo-American aircraft production)
2. Manpower for his factories
3. Access to raw materials, such as metals
4. Access to food (most of Hitler’s portion of Europe ran at a food deficit)
5. Access to oil

Conquering a sufficient amount of Soviet territory would have given Hitler access to all five of those things. But the other, absolutely essential thing Hitler needed to accomplish in 1942 was to convince Stalin that he was better off with a peace treaty than he’d be without one. The more Soviet territory Hitler conquered, and the less strength he lost while conquering it, the more likely Stalin would have been to have accepted a peace agreement. Granted, that peace agreement almost certainly would have been violated eventually, by either Hitler or Stalin. But even a temporary cessation of hostilities would have worked to Hitler’s advantage.

The possibility of a negotiated settlement might or might not have existed earlier in 1942. But if it did, the Battle of Stalingrad took it off the table. The more Soviet soldiers got traded away for Germans, the more Stalin would want to keep trading; so that he could ultimately conquer Eastern and Central Europe. In order to maintain a strong bargaining position, Hitler needed to consistently inflict proportionally more harm on the Red Army than the Red Army inflicted on him. Which is not what happened at Stalingrad. (But that is what happened during the German summer offensive which preceded the Battle of Stalingrad.)

Germany’s prewar population was 69 million, as opposed to 169 million for the Soviet Union. It’s also worth bearing in mind that the Soviet Union expanded after the war began; and that many people in Soviet-occupied territories were coerced into fighting for the Soviet Union. For example, the Soviets convinced the people of Soviet-occupied east Poland to fight for them, by threatening to liquidate the family of any man who refused to fight. That didn’t necessarily result in very effective soldiers, but it swelled the Soviets’ numbers over and above what you’d expect from that 169 million. Germany added territory as well, but unlike the Soviets, it did not use coercion to force captured foreign populations to fight for it.

Neither the Soviet Union nor Germany could afford to devote its sole attention to the other. The Soviet Union had soldiers tied down near its border with Manchuria, to guard against a Japanese attack. (Most of those soldiers were released for duty on the Soviets’ western front after Pearl Harbor.) Germany had large forces tied down in Norway, France, and north Africa, to guard against the possibility of British (and later American) invasion. The Soviet Union could devote a greater portion of its military strength to Germany, than Germany could to the Soviet Union.

During 1942, the Soviets produced nearly twice as many military aircraft as Germany–not to mention the large numbers of planes they received through Lend-Lease. During 1942, the Soviets produced 3 - 4 times as much as Germany in nearly every major land weapons category (such as tanks and artillery). In 1942, Soviet tanks (such as the T-34) were better than their German counterparts. From 1941 until near the end of the war, the Red Army added men at the astounding rate of 500,000 per month. Germany could not come remotely close to matching that rate. By the summer of 1941, 80% of German men between the ages of 20 and 30 were already part of the German military. The other 20% performed vital industrial functions. Due to the Soviets’ far greater capacity to replenish losses, they were better positioned to win a long war than Germany.

In spring of 1941 the German Army consisted of 150 divisions–100 of which were used to invade the Soviet Union. In late '41 the Red Army’s size peaked at 600 divisions. Losses on the German front would later reduce that army to 450 divisions. It was more or less able to maintain a 450 division army for the rest of the war–using its 500,000 men/month recruiting to offset the men lost to Germany. While a Soviet division was somewhat smaller than a German division, those numbers nevertheless illustrate the numerical superiority the Soviets enjoyed.

A typical German soldier was about three times as combat-effective as his Soviet counterpart. It’s also worth noting that of the top 100 flying aces during WWII, all 100 came from Germany. The skill of German pilots allowed Germany to maintain air superiority on its eastern front in 1942, despite the production numbers I just mentioned. The Soviets did not achieve air superiority until (IIRC) 1944.

Despite the effectiveness of German infantry and German pilots, the overall strategic situation clearly favored the Soviet Union in 1942. However, there was an element of risk. The Soviets derived 80% of their oil from the Caucasus oilfields. If all of those oilfields were destroyed or conquered by Germany, a lack of oil would significantly alter the Soviets’ overall war effort. Of course, they could still achieve something with that remaining 20%. Also the United States had plenty of oil, and could have sent some of it to the Soviet Union. The loss of the Caucasus oilfields would not necessarily have been fatal to the Soviets’ war efforts. (Though the acquisition of those oilfields would have helped Germany solve its own oil-related problems.)

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Germans had succeeded in their objective of breaking through to von Paulus’s 6th Army at Stalingrad. Simply saving the 6th Army would have been a far, far cry from conquering all the Caucasus and its oilfields. The Caucasus is a vast area. The vast majority of the Caucasus area would have been unconquered, even if the Germans had gained complete control over everything within a 20 mile (~30 km) radius of Stalingrad.

The German summer offensive of 1942 had initially produced impressive gains. Stalin had expected the Germans to strike against Moscow, and has positioned the bulk of his forces in the center to guard against such an attack. Instead the Germans attacked in the south. But after the Soviets figured out what was going on, they transferred large forces south. Those forces would have been sufficient to prevent additional large German gains, even if the Germans had simply bypassed Stalingrad. Even if the Germans had captured some of the Caucasus oilfields, they had lost the chance to capture the entire Caucasus oil-producing region. (Assuming, of course, that there had ever been such a chance.) It is for these reasons that I do not see Stalingrad as a last stand. However, WWII was the largest and most important war in human history; and a case could be made that Stalingrad was the most important battle of that war. The Axis suffered 850,000 men killed, wounded, or captured during Stalingrad, as opposed to 1.1 million men for the Soviet Union. Given that Germany initially invaded the Soviet Union with only about 3 million men, Stalingrad represented a serious alteration in the strength of the German Army.