Unnecessary Battles of WWII

Italy, the entire battle was a waste of well trained front line troops. Look at some of the divisions envolved 3rd, 34th, 36th, 45th, 1st SSF, Goumiers..... All the British troops..... All the way up Italy it was a dreadful defensive battle. The above troops with others should of been saved for the future Southern France invasion. These southern landings should of come right after D-Day. After North Africa and Scicily we should of bolstered these troops and attacked from the north and south of France. The Germans would of still been surprised about the Normandy landings and we could of pulled the Germans out of the mountains, and the Balkins, again if done right after D-Day.

Best Regards

 

Dieppe,one or two things learned but not worth the price.

 

Its hard to name battles that were unimportant as most affected the war in some way, but if I had to choose some I would say Palau campaign, and the Dieppe raid.

 

While I would agree with Dieppe to a point, valuable lessons were learned about landing a large force on enemy held beaches and launching attacks against a defended harbour. But as Macker33 mentions was it worth the price paid? How many lives at D-Day did the lessons learned save?

If you want a completely pointless set of battles check the 1943 British Dodecanese / Leros campaign.

 

Yea, the allies did learn some valuable lessons from the raid. The commander, Mountabatten, said later that "I have no doubt that the Battle of Normandy was won on the beaches of Dieppe. For every man who died in Dieppe at least ten more must have been spared in Normandy in 1944."

However, you can't completely trust that as he might have been just trying to cover his own back.

But as I said they did pick up some stuff. They developed special amored vehicles for engineers to do their work and decieded that more bombardment with bigger guns was needed prior to any invasion. (There are probably more things but this is what I remember off the top of my head).

Clearly the raid was completely pointless in the fact that it accomplished nothing in terms of beating the Germans directly, but it clearly had some indirect value by teaching the Allies a lesson. The extent of that lesson I can't say and honestly I wasn't sure if Dieppe deserved to be there but I thought I should throw it up anyway and see what people had to say.

 

Dieppe is a very valid case for being your choice - Mountbatten had the luxury of hindsight & history to back him up when he made his quote, but was he (and all the others involved) thinking of a future D-Day when the Dieppe idea was first raised? I doubt it, and in 1942 they didn't know that D-Day was just 2 years away. German military power, especially on land, was at it's peak and America had only just entered the war. But as the saying goes "Hindsight is a wonderful thing!"

 

I can think of at least one item which the Dieppe raid managed to return to the British which was undoubtedly of major import; the German’s latest radar.

See:

SSR - Latest Word on the German Radar Station at Pourville - March 16, 2004 - By W.M. (Bill) Sutherland. Edited by C.E. Law, with thanks to former Security Sergeant Roy Hawkins, MID.

Which gives a pretty detailed account of the South Saskatchewan Regiment, and their radar technician's accomplishment (Huzzah Canadians!).

 

I agree. I hate the way we used Canadians as cannon-fodder.

 

Wasn't the employment of Canadian troops at Dieppe largely at the insistance of the Canadian Government? I had read elsewhere, that due to a long period of inactivity of Canadian forces sent to England (after Dunkirk, and before Dieppe) had raised questions in Canada about this. I'm not saying that the Canadian Government specifically pointed out that their troops be used at Dieppe, but wanted to get them in the fighting somewhere soon, due to pressure at home. Can someone more knowledgeable verify and or expand on this please?

 

I am not quite sure if the Canadian government asked or insisted that their troops be used but your idea does seem to make some sense. However, I do know that while the US and Britain were planning the operation Churchill said that he did not want to sacrifice another generation of young men and Roosevelt found that the US was heavily engaged in the Pacific and was short on warships and landing craft.

 

Pearl harbor was an attempt by japan to destroy any opposition for them to gain control of pacific territories and the natural resources needed by them to continue imperial expansion. it was a tactical success and a strategic failure at the same time. Yamamoto knew they could never win a war with the US. he had no intentions of doing so. He thought we would fight to a stalemate and renegotiate peace thus allowing Japan to keep the land it had taken. He was wrong.

 

I think i heard also that canada was pushing for some involvement in the raid.

I cant remember the guys name but the german commander at dieppe went on to plan operation citadel on the back of the good job he did at dieppe.

 

The interesting thing about Pearl Harbor is that the potential for the Pacific Fleet to intervene in the Japanese "First Phase" operations was all in the minds of the Japanese; it did not exist in reality, nor in the US war plans.

Admiral Yamamoto convinced the Japanese IGHQ that the potential for intervention by the US Pacific Fleet was real, and so probable, that Japan should risk a considerable portion of it's offensive power just to neutralize that potential.

Ironically, the nature of Yamamoto's plan of attack ensured that the one hope Yamamoto, and Japan, had, of ending the war through negotiations, was completely destroyed by the success of that attack. It was truly a case of starting a war, and losing it, all in the same morning. Had Japanese intelligence been able to determine US war plans and the true condition of the Pacific Fleet prior to the attack, they never would have launched it.

 

In my opinion, Tarawa should be added to the list of uneccesary battles. It's airfield was small, it was no use as a port or staging area, it's lagoon was too small to be used as an anchorage for large naval surface units to mention a few things right off the top of my head. What air units that the IJN had stationed there could have been neutralized by carrier air strikes, and small port facilities could have been bombed until it was un-useable. Then the garrison could have been left to whither on the vine. It's easy for one to say that amphibious tactics were learned there that saved lives down the line, as was claimed about Dieppe being the learning tool for Normandy. Too many good men were wasted there.

 

The entire "Winter War" in Finland of 39-40, a product of the paranoic mind of Josef Stalin, serving only to push an otherwise neutral country into the arms of the Germans. Russian apologists might point out that the experience gained stood them in good stead in 1941, but to my mind it was a totally unnecessary conflict from the get-go.

Russian involvement in the Pacific war was totally un-necessary, and another blatant attempt at expansion before Japan collapsed. It was all the more so for the fact that Stalins knowledge of Japanese attempts through the Soviets to negotiate their way out of the Pacific war, (this is the very thing the Suzuki cabinet strove to achieve from the very day of Tojo's resignation), make Soviet participation in the Pac war a very brutal and greedy affair.

 

Two excellent books discuss this subject in detail. Villa's "Unauthorized Action" and Whitaker's "Dieppe, Tragedu to Triumph".

Dieppe served absolutely NO MILITARY OBJECTIVES. By definition a "raid" gains but holds no ground.

It might have served as an intelligence gathering operation (had it been successful) but was far too overblown to do this effectively.

It was not a second front. It was not meant to be a second front. It was at best o bluff to the Germans. A sort of nose-thumbing at Hitler's Atlantic wall.

Mountbatten never planned it as a "dress rehearsal". All of that was face saving rhetoric after the fact.

Most of the alledged lessons learned were already known cavils that had already been adressed on paper in the planning stages (pre-landing bombing and bombardment to soften up the beach head, etc.) and were dropped because the Brittish high command did not want to commit itself.

The navy did not want to risk a battle cruiser in the channel in support of the raid as long as air superiority was not ensured. Bomber Harris did not want to divert ressources from his night bombing program. In fact the only person who fully committed was Leigh-Malory who provided full fighter cover. The fighter boys from RAF were superb all morning.

Not sure this is relevant but many of them were Canadians who for the first time were protecting their own countrymen - this is not to take away from other members of those fighter squadrons from other countries. (Just saying...)

But to say that Dieppe was not necessary would be false. It fulfilled political aims.

The Americans insisted on it to apease the Russians. The Americans wanted the British to open a second front without their help in 1942. The Brittish knew this was an impossibility and were trying to enlist America in a campaign in North Africa for 1943. They were determined to apease the Americans. The Canadian Priminister (King) was determined to apease the electorate who, he perceived did not want conscription in Quebec but wanted it in the ROC (rest of Canada). The Canadian Generals (McNaughton and Crerar) wanted to apease the Priminister. Mountbatten's team had been pushing a lot of paper around and ruffling a lot of feathers in combined operations with not much to show for it. He wanted to prove the validity of his department. So everyone wanted to put on a good show, knowing it would be a military disaster.

Again, if the raid had been 100% successful, Hitler might have shat his pants and diverted more ressources at the Atlantic wall, fearing this was a probe in preparation of a full scale invasion for 1943.

But as Herman Wouk wrote "If is the longest two letter word in the english language".

 

Hurtgen Forest October 1944 was a colossal mistake and unnecessary waste of lives. The forest itself was worthless but to capture in 1st US Army unnecessarily suffered 26.000 casaulties. Same with Battle of Brest in August-September 1944. It tied up entire US corps and harbour when captured was so damaged it was useless and Antwerp was captured by then anyway.

 

Most of MacArthur's later Philippines campaign?
The vanity of generals, and war because forces exist?

 

You beat me to it. Many suggest that the Philippines could have been bypassed. I don't think I agree but I'm wishy washy about it.
Liberating the POWs there was a big concern and starvation was an issue.

I don't know about how harsh the Japaneese occupation was. Can others add info on that? The people wanted liberation but they suffered a lot of casulites during the battles.

 

So many good ideas here for campaigns for the waste basket. And, as was mentioned, not to demean any of the supreme sacrifices made in any of the campaigns mentioned.

Citadel, Ardennes Offensive - Wacht Am Rhein (err Model and von Rundstedt argued incessantly for more limited objectives), Stalingrad ( pull back, strengthen ill-fated flanks and resupply for winter warfare and not by air, dummies).

Pearl Harbor