decisive battle debate

Are we not missing somethng fundamental?

Name even one area of WW2 where a decisive battle was fought....

Don't mention Midway. The war went on for another three years. Observers and historians have called the Pacific wWar all sorts of things, but they all agree the issue was over right from the day of Pearl Harbour, due to the "overwhelming industrial strength" of the United States.

So, the only 'decisive' confrontation was the Bomb. Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to a halt. Decisive results.

Europe.....the war spluttered to a halt, then continued politically, before opening up again with the Berlin Airlift, and the emergence of the Cold War. No decisive battle there.
The decision was economic, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The money needed, (approx. 20% of Soviet GDP) to sustain the military expenditures was no longer sustainable.

The Barbarossa Campaign was a failure, for whatever reason. The whole point of it was to topple the Stalin government, and replace it with something more agreeable to the policies of the Reich. Instead, the Soviets traded homefront comfort and sustainability for massive capital expenditure on war material and almost nothing else. So, the decisive moves of the GPW occurred in the allocation of resources and factory space; what happened on the battlefield was a direct consequence of this, rather than removed from it as a seperate entity. Like the Pacific war, the GPW was over from the outset. no amount of tweaking by the generals or Hitler could change the military circumstances that were in place prior to. German factories needed to match soviet output at the very least to have a bulls roar of a chance to make an impact on the battlefield.

Without those changes, they were fooling themselves that it could be won with one battle, or even a series of them. No, the decisive battle of the GPW occurred in Russian factories, and on the training grounds. The manner in which the Red Army turned out many millions of men to replace their losses guaranteed a lot of things, the most important of which was their ability to recover from the severe beating that they recieved in 1941.

Without such a program of mass, with the factory space allocated, and with the consequent effect on domestic life accounted for somehow, Germany might just have prvailed with their 'knockout' blow.

The German economy, like Napolean's France, was geared for short conflicts, that were over quickly, so their economic and socio/political impact could be minimized. The longer the conflict went on, the more danger the regime was in, and the less of an influence that military matters could be on the outcome. The longer it went on, the more likely that economic factors over-rode political and military factors.

France in 1940 was bamboozeld. They had not had a stable government or a stable economy, or a military thinker of note, for a long time. No military saviour emerged from the Great War, and the political and social will to sustain military effort for a long period was non-existant.

 

When Japan attacked us and Germany declared war it meant it was not a foreign war.

 

That is entirely true but circumstances have fundamentally changed with the German declaration of war. Just look at the List of wars involving the United States and tell me is it in American tradition to fraternize with the enemy? Even though the relationships among the Allies were complex, modestly speaking, defeat of the Nazi Germany remained the unchallenged objective.

 

IMO that the big 3 felt the need for the Casablanca declaration, that pracically guaranteed the Germans would fight to the end, and probably prolonged the was for one or two years, is proof that alternatives were possible and probably considered, Stalin feared a separate peace that could allow Hitler to concentrate on the USSR. Let's not forget that fighting communism was still in Winston's agenda, a German military coup followed by a peace in the west was a possibility up to Casablanca.

 

Just noticed this...

It was a "she", Montana's Representative Jeannette Rankin, not a "he". She was a "die hard" pacifist, as such her reasoning for voting against a war with Japan, in her own words, was "As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.” Further, she was against entering into a war with Japan prior to the taking of the vote, and tried to say as much, but was refused recognition by the Speaker of the House. Additionally, she was one of 50 Representatives to vote against US entry into World War I.

As such using her as an example of "Just because a politician says something it doesn't mean he actually means it and trying to pull additional meaning from it especially with certatude is inane." is just dead wrong...She voted her beliefs and it cost her her "job", as she was shunned and ignored by the press and fellow members of the House, she declined to run fpr reelection, and retired from public office.

Jeannette Rankin was probably one of those rare few politicians who actually said what she meant, and was true to her beliefs & did not cave in to "popular opinion" to gain reelection.

 

Must of had pair of ol' gnarly's made of adamantine.

Don't agree with her, but gotta respect someone that makes a true democratic stand like that.

 

They would not help out, that is what Munich is about. ASSUMED is the key word, it was assumed that Germany would be able to bomb London with out any checking to see if it was actually possible, They just ASSUMED the Czechs could not resist the Germans and so would lose before any one could intervene. They ASSUMED that none of their planes could bomb Germany with the same effect they gave the German planes with, They ASSUMED that Germany could fight on two fronts. You know what happens when you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of your self. Fear dictated that the bomber could get through with out knowing what the actual range was. Fear dictated that the Germans were supermen who could whip the Czechs and French with two hands tied behind their backs. Fear lead to assumptions which allowed the Germans to bamboozle them.

 

The Chaimberlan-Appeasement debate split off to its own thread.

 

slime I was emphasizing the word assume, you noticed it was just the one word

 

In the eastern campaign probably the most pivotal victory for the Red Army was stopping the Germans at the outskirts of Moscow. Moscow to the Russians was their capital and a great symbol for them. The victory at Moscow was more of a symbolic victory for the Russians, but it hit the morale of the Germans pretty hard. They were lucky that they managed to stop the Russian offensive in 1942 which drove them around 100 miles from the city. You can argue that Stalingrad, Kursk, etc. were important, but it was the symbolic victory at Moscow that gave the Russians an upper hand at the time.

 

The Germans were not stopped at the outskirts of Moscow,but far beforeMoscow : there was no danger that Moscow would fall .

 

I thought they were stopped at an outskirts of Moscow. I read that at one point in time the Germans managed to see the lights of Kremlin not far from the city.

 

Yes and no : Some (a few )Germans managed to see the lights of the Kremlin,BUT,on 5 december,Guderian (the German Suvurov as he is named) who after the war claimed that he could capture Moscow,but that stupid Hitler and Kluge had prevented this,was still west of Tula,and the distance Tula/Moscow is some 170 km :even if on 5 december the Soviet resistance had collapsed,it would take Guderian a week to arrive at Moscow .And,on 5 december the Soviets started their winteroffensive .On 5 december,the danger of the fall of Moscow (which was a postwar invention) had ceased to exist .

 

I wouldn't believe such gossip. To see the Kremlin from the outskirts of Moscow is like seeing the Central park from Yankees stadium. I've been at the Red Square.

PS: Right now I have seen that LJAD has added his reply while I was writing this. Well done LJAd.

 

Okay. I just read from a very good book. I guess you shouldn't believe everything you read.

 

Don't worry, just read. You will be able to decide what is true and what is the opposite. I guess you would be interested to know why it was so difficult to see the Kremlin from 18 km (about 11 miles)?

Click here=> Maskirovka.

The page is in Russian. Either I cannot understand it but photos would tell you the whole story.

 

That makes sense. I completely forgot that the Russians did that. Thanks for sharing Tamino

 

And in the case of what I read, it probably worked

 

The story of the Germans who could see the Kremlin is as old as the hills and author A did inflate the story,succeeded by B who was followed by C,D,etc .Some officers of a German outpost claimed that they could see the towers of the Kremlin using their binoculars(something very questionable,given the weather of that day).If it was true,it would still be meaningless :in the summer of 1940,the Germans could see from the Pas de Calais the British coast .