Posts made by Zooey72

@KurtGodel7:

@Zooey72:

Something that kind of annoys me is when people say that the Germans were defeated in the Battle of Britain.  I just don’t see it that way.  The reason England was not invaded was more due to Hitler losing interest and wanting to invade the USSR.  If the Germans focused on England and were not preparing for Barbarossa England could not have stopped them.  While the air war was going badly for the Germans the Army could have made contributions that would have knocked England out.  Had Rommel been supported he could have taken the Suez canal.  I don’t think it would have taken much to get Spain to allow German troops to access their country to attack Gibralter.  The U-boat war given more resources could have starved England.  Preperation for the attack on the USSR (and the Balkans) is what saved England.

I am not trying to take anything away from England, but to say they beat Germany is a bit of a stretch.  The Germans didn’t invade England because Hitler was an idiot and wanted to attack Russia.  The Germans may not have been able to invade in 40, but if instead of attacking Russia they focused on England in 41 England would have collapsed.  With the fall of Gibralter and the Suez Canal you could argue that England would have made peace (that or starve to death) making an invasion unnecessary.

Anyhow, any thoughts on this?

Good post.

It’s worth bearing in mind that, in 1940, Britain produced more military aircraft than Germany. Britain also received large numbers of military planes from the United States. Britain rapidly expanded the size of its army; and was far better-prepared against invasion in '41 than in '40. If Germany was going to invade, the best time would have been in the summer of 1940.

Von Manstein believed such an invasion could have succeeded–if done the right way. Air battles deep inside British territory gave the RAF the range advantage. To avoid this problem, von Manstein wanted the Luftwaffe to stay near the coast; providing overwhelming air support shortly before and during the invasion.

During the Dunkirk evacuation, the British shipped large numbers of soldiers across the Channel without having complete control of the sky. Germany may have been able to achieve the same.

Hitler rejected the tactical risks associated with such a plan, and therefore had to accept the much more serious strategic risk of war against the Soviet Union. German military planners had thought the Red Army had 200 divisions. By the fall of 1940 it had 600 divisions. For most of the war, it added 500,000 men a month: a pace Germany could not possibly hope to match.

The British having a higher production of aircraft?  BAH!  Let me point out the obvious.  Germany makes 32IPC a turn and England only makes 30.  Don’t you feel foolish…

A&A kidding aside, between the submarine threat and the bombing of the airfields Churchill himself thought England could be done for.  The few weeks the Germans were doing it right the RAF lost more aircraft than what it made, not to mention pilots they lost.  That kind of pressure being kept on England would have made them crack.

The diversion of the German airforce to the Balkans and Barbarossa is what saved England.  And again, lets not forget, massive German man power and material that Hitler designated for Barbarossa could have been used capturing the Suez Canal and Gibralter.  With the Germans securing both of those, even the Italians couldn’t screw it up as far as the Med goes.

Interesting question.

England lost a ton of material at Dunkirk but kept the men.  Had they lost the men it is hard to say how Germany would have reacted.  After Crete Hitler never wanted to do another airborne operation because the cost was too high.  England being a softer target having 100k less men may have made an airborne invasion more viable (and Hitler may have allowed it).  All they would have to do is seize one port and they could have funneled in the rest of the Wermarcht.

But it does come down to the air war.  Even having a very weak army on the ground Germany could not pull it off w/o control of the air.

Something I never really understood is why the Germans didn’t do small attacks on radar stations across the channel.  Prime target that could be easily gotten to.  Hell, they landed a dozen or so guys in America, why not cross the English Channel and knock out England’s eyes when it really counted.

Something that kind of annoys me is when people say that the Germans were defeated in the Battle of Britain.  I just don’t see it that way.  The reason England was not invaded was more due to Hitler losing interest and wanting to invade the USSR.  If the Germans focused on England and were not preparing for Barbarossa England could not have stopped them.  While the air war was going badly for the Germans the Army could have made contributions that would have knocked England out.  Had Rommel been supported he could have taken the Suez canal.  I don’t think it would have taken much to get Spain to allow German troops to access their country to attack Gibralter.  The U-boat war given more resources could have starved England.  Preperation for the attack on the USSR (and the Balkans) is what saved England.

I am not trying to take anything away from England, but to say they beat Germany is a bit of a stretch.  The Germans didn’t invade England because Hitler was an idiot and wanted to attack Russia.  The Germans may not have been able to invade in 40, but if instead of attacking Russia they focused on England in 41 England would have collapsed.  With the fall of Gibralter and the Suez Canal you could argue that England would have made peace (that or starve to death) making an invasion unnecessary.

Anyhow, any thoughts on this?

@SS:

Yes by Executive Order.

What he is doing is not what an executive order has the power to do.  By your logic we should just name the president (whoever that is) king since he can do whatever he wants by executive order.  Can a future president bypass congress with an executive order and outlaw abortion?  How about busting the teacher’s union?  Drop the legal drinking age?

He should have been impeached the second he said he refused to enforce the laws on the books because he disagreed with them.  The fact of the matter is that he is the EXECUTIVE branch.  If he wanted to legislate he should have stayed in the Senate.

I can not respond to any of that w/o being political.

“The EU has joined in”, what a joke.  They get 40% of their natural gas from Russia, do you really think that they are going to commit economic suicide?  Closing that trade would also kill Russia’s economy, but Putin is betting they will back down - and they will.

How exactly did Kennedy and Reagan fail?  There are no nukes in Cuba, and the USSR doesn’t exist.
So you support a leader of another country that makes reckless decisions and can operate in such a manner, than your own president - one that by nature of our nation and Constitution can’t do whatever he wants?  Please tell me that you’re not one of the people that also complains he’s a dictator

How many times has Obamacare been amended w/o congress?  The executive branch of government does not have the power to change/make laws.  He may not be a dictator, but he has set the stage for a dictator.

@Whackamatt:

In regards to the Big Bang Theory, I disagree with you all.  It’s a comedy show.  LOL.

I believe they DID know how the game plays.  Everyone here is being “too serious” about the game.  i.e., you’re all too close to the subject matter to find any humor in it.
Asking “Individuals or teams?” is in-line with Leonard’s character, is it not?  Perhaps it would be a way of proving his intellectual superiority over the others or some such.  It is CLEARLY a team game, so when he suggests individuals…it’s a joke.  It isn’t in Leonard’s character to do too many team activities anyway.

Also, did not the Classic version have production stipulations where you could still declare an individual winner?  Thus the US player could “win” over the UK player; even though they were both on the same side they could compete.

I’m going to go find the episode now.  I believe had I seen it first-hand, I would have laughed at the joke instead assuming the cast/crew didn’t know anything about the game.  They knew enough to include it and write a few jokes about it, which is all that really matters.

The original game did have that, and it was stupid right out of the gate.  I played the game first when I was a child in 1984.  Even though the rule book had a chart on who was the “winner” based off of IPC no one took it seriously.  The game is a team effort, either the Axis or the Allies win/lose.  If the ‘winner’ was based solely off of IPCs than you better hope you don’t get the USSR.  In most games they are treated like the red headed stepchild by both Germany and Japan.  They do most of the heavy lifting, but they are not going to be winning in single player terms.

I am more impressed that it looks like the board was set up correctly.  It is hard to see, but it does look like right.

The long and short of it is Putin is a leader and BO is a politician.  I mean that in a very nonpartisan way.

Putin is evil, and you can even argue that he is stupid because he is trying to re-establish a form of government that fell apart quarter of a century ago because it was unsustainable.  That being said, his evil/stupid antics makes him come across as a leader because he is decisive.  I am not saying that is a good thing for the world at large, but when the shit hits the fan most people want to think the guy in charge knows what the hell he is doing.

When it comes to BO… I think his only interest in foreign policy is to distract from how bad Obamacare is going.  His biggest concern is the next election, not the future of America.  The man is a great speaker, nobody can take that away from him.  However words only go so far.

We have had 2 presidents who knew how to deal with the Russians.  Kennedy who told them “screw you, get out of Cuba NOW!” and Reagan whose foreign policy for the USSR was “we win, you lose”.

Ultimately I think all of America’s problems would be solved if we just harvested our own natural resources.  The reason Russia has so much strength is because of oil and natural gas.  If we dumped a ton of oil onto the world market the price of oil would drop like a rock.  That would crash the economies of the people who hate us (not just Russia, lets give a shout out to Iran!)

I happened to watch this again a few days ago and it occurred to me - these guys are war criminals.  Their objective was a military one, but holy crap if they didn’t break every Geneva Convention rule.  All of those Germens were willing to surrender, but instead they doused an air raid bunker with gasoline and than threw grenades into it.  :?

You could argue the men were in uniform so it can be assumed they were military, but their wives sure as hell weren’t (or any of the females that they burned alive).

I always liked the movie, even being as old as it is.  What is disturbing is that my recent revelation about the movie really does show that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s patriot”.

Hindsight being what it is, go for peace.

Russia knew it was beat. Germany should have dictated terms (Russia gave up in WW1, why not in WW2?)

If the military solution is the only one, than I would say ‘drive on to Moscow’.  The shift of forces for Germany cost them time they did not have.  The Caucus may have been a better initial goal, but leaving a corporeal in charge of the military leads to screw ups.

Being a WW2 geek I have read/heard my share of horrible things that happened during the war.  That being said, what is the worst story you have ever heard?  I am not talking The Holocaust or Bataan Death march, I think we all know the numbers (unless you know a personal story).  But what is the most horrific thing you have read/heard?

For me the biggest villain in WW2 was a Jew in a concentration camp.  Let me explain.

I found out about this story on the History Channel.  It was an interview with an old (Jewish) guy who survived the Holocaust as a child.  He woke up one night to a man on top of him ripping off his pants.  He shoved some bread in his mouth and did what you would expect.  In the morning ‘it’ felt ashamed for what it had done and took the boy’s cap.  The boy knew showing up w/o your cap meant a death sentence from the Nazis.  Out of desperation he stole another boy’s cap.  He had to watch as that boy was executed by the guards.

We all know Nazis are evil, but some times evil kills evil - I hope the Nazis made that SOB suffer.

This is a no brainer.  You got Hitler in 33 chomping at the bit to get in power so he can wage his war for “living space”, than suddenly he gets the weapon of his dreams…  IMO he nukes Paris and London.  He now knows his western flank is secured because they can not compete with that kind of weapon.  Than he goes after Russia with his last 4.  The war is over and all of us should invest in Roseta stone to learn German.

The best piece of German hardware that came out during the war was the StG44.  Rockets and jet planes are pretty, and can be effective, but they cost a lot.  88’s did serious damage and were ahead of their time, but they are only artillery.  However if you give the standard soldier an assault riffle and his enemy only has a bolt action riffle… the war is over.

Thank God Hitler liked his flashy big weapons and forbid the Sturmgewehr from being mass produced.

The reason the English were able to come to the ‘aid’ of Norway so quickly in 40 is because they were planning to invade Norway themselves.  The would be invaders turned into saiviours (although bad ones).  The only reason Norway was important (at least in 40) was because it gave access to Sweden which supplied Germany with most of it’s iron ore, without which Germany could not fight the war.  Not only was England prepared to attack Norway, (which was neutral) but that was just stage 1.

For it’s part Sweden played a political game with Germany and won.  They threatened Hitler “if you attack us, we will blow up every mine and you won’t get a thing”.  To which Adolf responded with “DOH”!

What sparked the invasion of Norway was this:

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

It is not PC, but read the story and tell me if anyone ever deserved to be in a concentration camp it is this PoS.  This is not from my college class, I saw this story on the History Channel.

This was an old man crying when I saw it from what happened to him happened when he was a child.  He was in a Concentration camp and put in a kid’s bunker.  In the middle of the night a guy grabs him and forces him down on his bunk.  He shoves bread into his mouth as ‘payment’ and than rapes the kid.  In the morning the guy runs off, but feels some degree of shame (or whatever) and steals the boys cap.  If the kid shows up to formation without his cap Germans will kill him (which I am sure was the intent of the rapist/thief).  Being raped as a child is horrible, but it did take second place to what was going to come if he didn’t show up with his cap.  He stole another kid’s cap, and than had to watch as that kid was executed.

I hope to God the guy who did this was a patient of Josef Mengele.  I also hope that whatever horrors that happened to him while he was in a Concentration camp were just a taste of what he is now getting in Hell.

Sorry to keep going to my college class, but my prof was writing a book on these personal stories when I was attending his class.

After we crossed the Rhine and were pushing deep into Germany there was a guy in a recon unit who was pushing ahead with his jeep.  The ‘convoy’ (if you want to call it that), was just the jeep and a truck.  The road ran parellel with some railroad tracks and while they were driving along, a train came up next to them.  The doors on one of the cars swung open and Jerry opened up on them with MGs.  The truck was destroyed and the jeep was damaged.  All total there were about 8 people who were hurt (not counting the dead who were left behind), only one guy got out of it unscathed.  The jeep was still functional and he had to put all of the bodies onto it.  Jerry was coming so he could not be very neat about it.  He raced back to camp with wounded all over the jeep, including on the hood.  The bleeding was so bad from the guy on the hood that it was splashing on his face.

The ‘god sniper’ from “Saving Private Ryan” was BS.  The first thing we blew up when we entered a town (and vice versa) was the church steeple for the EXACT reason the god sniper was there.  No one went up there because it was standard protocol to blow the thing up.  It was also a great location to call down artillery, so it had to go.  Funny how in the Iraq war we had to tip toe around Mosques because we were afraid of offending someone, but in WW2 blowing up a Church was a ‘no duh’ moment.

This story I really like because it is kinda funny.  Again, pushing further into Germany after the Rhine crossing.  Jerry is fighting back like crazy.  A Sgt. and his platoon take a town and are told to hold it, and to expect a counter attack.  They take the town and dig in.  Intel. was correct and the counter attack comes.  He is in a foxhole with the guy who has the anti tank equip (who was trained in it, Sarge was not).  They see a Tiger coming over the horizon and the private shits his pants and runs away.  Sarge has not been trained how to fire the thing but he gives it his best shot.  He loads it and fires at the Tiger ding, the round bounces off and never detonates.  He takes a bead and fires again, same result.  He tries a 3rd time and still no bang, however this time the Tiger backs off.  Enough dings apparently made the Tiger gun shy.

Apparently there is a safety thing you have to pull out of the AT round before you fire it.  Better lucky than smart I guess lol.

A sad story I was told when I was in college was about a German soldier who had married a Jewish woman.  He married her before Hitler took over, and had children with her.  From his perspective you can be pretty sure he was no Nazi lover.  However he probably fought harder for the Reich than any other German soldier.  The powers that be said 'fight or your family goes to a Concentration Camp, and if you die - than  your family goes to a Concentration camp".  He survived the war, but his wife did not.  She died in a Bombing Raid.  The kids did live though.

I disagree with that.  Before Kursk you can argue the Germans had a chance of winning.  After you can not.  We were shooting for unconditional surrender, there would be no armistince.  Time was not on the Germans side and they did need to do something.  Kursk was doing something, but it was doing something stupid.  Had the Germans played defense all they would have achieved is prolonging the war for another year or 2, but they would lose.

I don’t think so, the only thing that would have changed Kursk is not having Hitler in charge.  The dumb ass knew that the Russians knew that the attack was coming, but he still went through with it.  Because as everyone knows magic Aryan blood is a perfect substitute for sound military tactics.

Had he attacked east past the saliant and than south (bypassing the defenses), ya, that could have changed things.  Trying to figure out the best way to attack those defenses is like trying to find out the best way to punch a running chainsaw.  There are probably better ways of punching a chainsaw, but punching a chainsaw is stupid to begin with.

Had Hitler done to the Russians in 43 what he did to the French in 40 and bypassed the defenses, the war could have ended much differently.

A sad story that I had heard when I was in college taking a WW2 class.  As the war continued to go badly for Japan food shortages because a big deal (obviously).  There was a show elephant at the Tokyo Zoo that the government decided would not be fed any more.  They did not want to spare the large round (or chemicals) to kill it.  They just let the thing sit there and starve to death.  The trainer was an older man who couldn’t fight (hence he didn’t find himself at Iwo Jima or some other such place).  Every day he would pass the Elephant and it would start to do tricks on its own, begging for food.  Eventualy the trainer killed himself because he couldn’t stand the sight of what was happening to his Elephant.