Largest Strategic Mistake(s) Made By The Allies

But wernt alot of the rails the Germans had ben using stolin from the French in the first place?

 

They were waggons - and it doesn't much matter where they came from - the Germans needed them....

 

Butmy point is that they lost most because they were loast to the USSR or the USA/GB

 

And to think that many were used for moving people into the concentration camps still...!!!

 

That's true, but the vast majority of rolling stock was needed to move war materiel. Ironically, the 'dispersed-production' brought about by Allied bombing made Germany more heavily reliant on the railways as parts needed to be moved from factory to factory before final asembly.

 

But what's the basic line of these facts?

That bombing carpets against German cities indeed were a mistake, and precision bombing would have ended the war earlier?

 

I think that even Sir Arthur Harris would have agreed that precision bombing would have ended the war much earlier.

Sadly, the technical capability and combat conditions to deliver such precision attacks were not available until too late to make sufficient difference.

 

That is because early in the war the only persition bombing was done by dive bombers. Witch the best of witch were German!

 

And were blasted out of the sky by the RAF in the early stages of the Battle of Britain to such an extent that they were hurriedly withdrawn from the conflict.

The Ju-87 could only operate effectively where there was no serious aerial opposition.

 

Did the allies use dive bombers though in the European theater? Cause i dont ever remember reading bout them using them.

 

No - the concept was too vulnerable.

They were suited to 'blitzkrieg'-type attacks against a weaker enemy, and were very effective against merchant shipping ( such as the Malta convoys ).

But the Pacific Theatre saw dive-bomber use and the British Fleet Air Arm had an oddity called the Blackburn Skua ; a pre-war design.

 

I reread "Bomber Command" by Max Hastings (1979, 2nd printing, '82) whose conclusion raised a number of points about the bomber offensive:

P.420: "...Churchill made a major error of judgement in the winter of 1941-42by committing British industry to the enormous heavy bomber programme which came to fruition at the end of 1944. The Prime Minister could have achieved his strategic purpose with a far less extravagant use of resources....Tizard said after the war " ....The actual effort expended on bombing Germany , in manpower and resources, was greater than the value in manpower and resources of the damage caused."

"Webster and Frankland suggest that the bomber offensive only used up 7% of the nation's manpower...but AJP Taylor argues around one third."

 

Propaganda wise I guess the strategic bombing was a bull´s eye, but otherwise not, I think.

Even the British knew from the Battle of Britain that it did not work to bomb cities and hope it will bring the country to its knees. The Germans did not win that war, did they? We know the Germans lost loadsa planes and good pilots that would have been of major help in operation Barbarossa. How about 1,500 more planes for Barbarossa and probably some 1,000 experienced pilots more? Or for the Mediterranean?

 

If had had those they may have won there!

 

Kai, I think they may not have helped to win 'Barbarossa' and the war in the desert, but certainly would have helped to defend the Reich and the very different fronts much better in 1942 to 1944.

 

The war for Africa wasn't lost in Africa but was lost in the fact that Hitler under supplied the troops that were fighting in Africa!

 

He didn't undersupplied anyone. The war in the Mediterranean was lost in the air. Thanks to marshal Rommel's lack of strategical view and excess of influence in the Führer, an imperative airborne assault in Malta never happened, thus causing that Royal Navy's ships and submarines and RAF's bomber-fighters sunk 40-60% of Axis Armies' supplies.

The rest of the problem is that even after capturing Tobrouk, the supply convoys had to carry those supplies for hundreds of kiloemetres along the coast motorway, being vulnerable to mechanical failures and RAF attacks. All this put together meant that Rommel's forces could deploy on the battlefield a maximun of 20% of the total ammount of supplies sent from Italy.

 

But the fact is that they still weren't geting the supplies!

 

That's not only a fact but the most important reason why Germany lost the war in the Mediterranean. What isn't a fact and is incorrect is your statement about Hitler undersupplying his troops in Africa. Another fact might be that those little amount of Germans in Africa were getting to much resources, badly needed in the eastern front, where european WWII was decided.

 

What i ment is Hitler was not geting it to them im sorry i phrased it wrong!