Nazi Germany, overhyped?

originally posted by: Noodle174
They were able to fight off England Europe and Russia, they were pretty powerful.

I respect your opinion.........................But that is not true. You are fundamentally confused. The Germans were not able to fight off England and Russia, they were soundly thrashed by them with the help of the British Empire and the Yanks of course. Indeed Germany never stood a chance against those two formidable superpowers in the 1940's. I don't know how to do maps but someone really needs to put a comparison of Germany in 1939 as a comparison in land mass size to both the USSR and the British Empire. Only then will it become obvious that the combination of these two superpowers made victory for Germany totally impossible bordering on madness. Those Nazis were drugged up idiots in believing they could compete with the British Empire and the USSR. Quite simply their combined resources totally dwarfed what the Nazis could draw upon................... and that's why Germany lost the war and one third of it's territory plus all the ancient German communities all over Europe were liquidated by the winning side and the survivors forced to flee to the massively reduced state we know today as Germany.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: nwtrucker
The jeep units weren't combat units. The U.S. had a horrendous supply line. Out of curiosity, how many carriers did the U.K. have during the war and how old were they? I can only recall The Ark Royal and wasn't she rather out of date?

Jeep units still waged war and carried aircraft.

The Royal Navy had roughly 20 mainline carriers throughout the length war. Not all were in service at the same time but it was more than anyone other than the United States.

Thanks, that was a gap in my knowledge.

a reply to: ufoorbhunter

For 'totally impossible' they sure came damned close.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: nwtrucker
Exactly. Goering who promised no bombs would ever fall on Berlin. The Brits did so. That's the political turning point. Militarily, the Mustang P-51D. Small nod to Rolls-Royce.....

Yeah, in the book I mentioned above this point really infuriated Hitler. It details how he personally commanded Air Marshal Fat Ass to have the bombers divert to civilian targets.

Interesting. Earlier works attributed the decision to Goering, himself.

originally posted by: nwtrucker
a reply to: ufoorbhunter

For 'totally impossible' they sure came damned close.

Sorry?

originally posted by: ufoorbhunter

originally posted by: nwtrucker
a reply to: ufoorbhunter

For 'totally impossible' they sure came damned close.

Sorry?

Sorry on my part.......................... See where you're coming from

originally posted by: ufoorbhunter

originally posted by: nwtrucker
a reply to: ufoorbhunter

For 'totally impossible' they sure came damned close.

Sorry?

No need to apologize....

Long term memory tends to block bad memories while maintaining the good ones.

If you cannot see that one, just one event, the bombing of Berlin, completely turned the tide of the Battle of Britain around, then try smelling salts and read history books written closer to the actual events. It was the Brits that couldn't keep up. Factories, air fields and ports were the target and it was working. Starvation only days off. Aircraft of wood.

Then that bombing. Gerry lost on that day via changing tactics to bombing London in retaliation for the 'accidental' bombing of Berlin.

Moscow and Stalingrad very nearly fell. A stalemate for months. Without Commonwealth and U.S. support, the UK would have fallen. You have been starved of provisions and materiel...without being invaded! The UK would sued for terms.

Deal with it.

That is how 'close' would be defined in even The Oxford English Dictionary.

Lord love a duck. The only people more stubborn than a Brit is an Israeli.

originally posted by: nwtrucker
Interesting. Earlier works attributed the decision to Goering, himself.

I'll see if I can locate the footnote in the book, it may take me some time as it's 1,600 pages long.

a reply to: DISRAELI

It's questionable if Roosevelt even had the votes to declare war on Germany, without the idiocy of Hitler doing so first.

He probably did, but it's not a surety. Pressure was deal with Japan. The US military was of like mind, as well. Especially Ernest King, commander in chief US Navy.

Nazi Germany may have been corrupt, and was, but there was never a doubt, even to the last, who was in charge.

Overhyped? No. They came uncomfortably close to taking all of Europe, and keeping it. It would have been hard, but if he forces a cross-channel invasion before invading the Soviet Union (which was a horrible idea, by the bye...), I can't help but wonder what happens? The US in forced to fight a war from the east coast of the United States, rather than just across the Channel...how does that turnout?

It's an interesting what-if?

I've always been of the opinion that Canada joins with the US--whether it joins is another topic. Does the US move into Alexandria via the Red Sea ahead of the attack on Pearl Harbor? I don't think so, as that would have been a step too far for a still very isolationist America. But it sure is interesting conjecture.

a reply to: crazyewok

The US built over 100, I want to say around 130 but I'm probably misremembering, carriers of all sorts. The big Essex class carriers get all the glory and press, but the little jeep carriers did the dirty work. Arguably, the most glorious moment of the Pacific war involved a flotilla of jeep (escort) carriers and their destroyer/destroyer escort consorts off Samar in the Philippines.

Actually, I had to look it up, it was bugging me that I couldn't remember...

It was 158 carriers of all Classes during the second world war. 24 Essex class (CV), 9 Independence class (CVL)-built on light cruiser hulls, and the rest were Escort Carriers of various classes, and training carriers (3, I think). Plus the seven pre-war carriers (Lexington*, Saratoga, Ranger, Yorktown*, Enterprise, Hornet*, and Wasp*--* denotes lost in battle. The first escort carrier Long Island also survived the war. The US navy's first aircraft carrier Langley had been relegated to aircraft ferry duty just prior to the start of the Pacific conflict, and was later sunk by Japanese bomber in the Java Sea. Only the Ranger never served in the Pacific, it was in the Atlantic for the duration.

Sorry, I get going and it's hard to stop...

originally posted by: nwtrucker


You have been starved of provisions and materiel...without being invaded! The UK would sued for terms.

Deal with it.

Yeah but it didn't happen that way did it? Great Britain was in control of the greatest Empire the world has ever seen with all of its amazing resources both in man power and raw materials. We were never going to lose against what was a modern invention 'Germany.'

Please remember this thing we know today and even bak in the 1940's was a brand new invention. Germany was a new thing. It never existed before just 70 years ago pre WW2. It never has the history that we had in being a national group. Germany was a modern invention and was a loose collection a similar linguistic central and eastern European states that were forced to submit to a brand new central state with a capital, Berlin, that was virtually non existant a few hundred years before. Germany meant nothing until only recently, it was hot air and the creation of alcoholics and taken to almost total destruction by a group of amphetamine sulphate addicts and what you see today of Germany is the result of both these groups actions. It was back then and is today really nothing on the world stage but a menace and a pest to the rest of humanity and that is why the Germans are condemned to a sort of nothingness in the polics of planet Earth to this day.

Nazi Germany................ Totally overhyped for sure

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

If he wasn't, he was in the conversation.

Deputy Fuhrer (whose name totally escapes me) was another who was fairly bright.

a reply to: Raggedyman

He flat couldn't invade Britain. He didn't have the sealift capability to do so.

It's an interesting premise, but the reality was he couldn't. He hoped to bomb them into submission, and save for an accidental bombing of London, and the retaliation against Berlin, which shifted the focus from destroying the RAF to destroying London (bad mistake, I doubt Londoners can be destroyed), it maybe might have forced some form of armistice...though I doubt it.

But invade? Nope. Not happenin' in 1940, certainly not at any time after.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Not sure I'd go that far...

But I don't think people realize just how powerful the Royal Navy was. If they hadn't had the Japanese to worry about, the battle of the Atlantic wouldn't have been the close run affair it was during the early days.

a reply to: crazyewok

The slave labour actually hindered, rather than helped. what incentive does a slave have to go above and beyond?

While the Western democracies had just about everyone, certainly close, mobilized in one form or another into the war effort. The Soviets were, as well. Once that happened, the Axis were doomed. Germany and Japan had no shot, and the truly forward thinking military types in both nations knew this.

My dads mother ran the family farm, while her sons, two of them, the others were too young, went off to war. My grandfather was a sheriff who was working closely, during the war years, with FBI and military intelligence to protect projects involved with the Manhattan Project.

My moms mom, and my mom, worked in metal reclamation, and ran a USO club (well my grandma did--it was a speakeasy during prohibition), while my mom did office work as a civilian on a couple of different military bases in the area.

a reply to: Raggedyman

Irrelevant?

Umm... Wow, not even sure what to say to that...

So, their roll in stopping the U-boats in the Atlantic is irrelevant. The roll they played in keeping Malta in the fight was irrelevant? The roll they played in protecting the African landings is irrelevant?

Dude. Really.

a reply to: Raggedyman

Ended in Stalingrad in 1943...

Hmm... that's an interesting take. So the necessity of fighting throughout the rest of '43, all of '44, and a third of '45--total of almost two further years--to roll back the Nazi's in both the east and the west, not to ignore Italy/Sicily, were what unnecessary?

That's a very unique view. Not shared by many.

a reply to: Shamrock6

Every navy had that argument. In the United States it was figuratively blood on the sand. Same with Britain. In Japan, it was quite literally blood in the sand, with attempted assassinations on high ranking Japanese admirals, or threats of same, add to that the conflict between Army and Navy interests...it lead to some outstandingly bad decisions.

a reply to: nwtrucker

They built 158 of 'em, in all classes. From big Essex class, down to training carriers on the Great Lakes. Every ship yard of any size was building ships.

a reply to: nwtrucker

Umm... No.

The US definitively proved quite the opposite. During attacks on Truk, and Rabual during '43/'44 they stayed with in easy range of land based air power and essentially annihilated it in a matter of days.

Later in the war, Formosa suffered the same fate. Utter annihilation of the defending air force. Other than from Kamikazes, during Okinawa and later Japan, the US pacific fleet, and its allied British aircraft carriers had little to fear from conventional attack because of utter superiority in the air over land based squadrons of the Japanese Army and/or Navy.