Greatest Mistakes of World War 2

Low hat is the literal translation, if it is from French. however, I am stuck on the saying as well.

 

Thanks Panzermeister.
Chapeau bas means caps from yor heads (ato honor) in French.
I don´t doubt the Finnish soldiers´spirit and skill but I am afraid I can´t aggree with your opinion on ML. In the opinion of many experts it was one of the most thoroughly executed permanent defence lines in recent history. The severe natural and climatic conditions of the Winter War made it a formidable obstacle. The innumerable lines of barbed wire, minefields, tanktraps and so on, over a 100 km deep cost RKKA dear. But they managed at last to get through. It was a horribly costly but also great achievement of RKKA. Nobody was able to break so well defended line and achieve a real breakthrough of the front in WW1. RKKA have learned a lot from the Winter War. You may consider it a general rehearsal before march on the west.

As to the greatest mistakes of the war: We shouldn´t forget the apparently smart Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, which made it possible both for Stalin and Hitler to make a supprise attack on the other, as they got the common border. So long the Polish state existed, such an attack would not be possible. Up to that War Stalin seriously considered a possibility of a joint attack of Germany and Poland on USSR. By joining borders Stalin (but not Hitler at that time) wanted to get as close to Germany as possible to make his surprize work (yes, in his speaches to the RKKA commanders as early as 1939 he made his plans against western Europe explicit) .
The result was a surprise from the other side. In 1939 it was good strategic thinking on the part of Stalin. If Stalin had attacked first, it would not have been a mistake at all.

Another, more fundamental one: Hitler´s hope that the West would not fight as a consequence of the Polish War. (Sorry if someone has discussed it before me). The famous phrase of Hitler towards Ribbentrop “And what now?!” and Goerings “God save us if we lose” express their supprise. Hitler´s attack on Poland was the real beginning of the end of Hitler. The rest was just a logic consequence of the situation. It appears that it was Stalin who engineered the whole thing by giving Hitler free hand in Poland and promising raw materials. It shows Hitler´s sick propensity for hazard with his country´s fate.

 

Izaak, I hope you check this: http://www.winterwar.com/M-Line/M-Line2.htm

 

I´m checking, PanzerMeister. If you´re right, you´ve got me here. Maybe I have been relying too much on Russian sources. Whatever, to fight through fortifications in woods at minus 35 cetigrades must have been quite an experience. Let me check and compare.

 

GP, a good, literal translaton, thanks. Chapeau bas!

 

PanzerMeister,
At the end of the Winter War both sides were, in a way, loosers. The Finns lost their defence line, many soldiers and a lot of land with important cities. The Soviets realized their somewhat chaotic organization of fighting, lost enormous quantities of materiél and soldiers. Both sides needed good explanations. It seems to me that one of the important Finnish explanations was the weakness of the ML. On the other hand, the Soviets did the opposite – stress the impervious nature of the Line.
The website you indicated shows that construction of the line started right after the end of WW1 and continued, with pauses, until the war in October 1939. Specialists from several countries contributed to build an intricate and ingenious structure. The natural conditions were favorable: few and narrow roads through thick, swampy, woods on uneven terrain. You don´t need the fortifications (and means) like at the Maginot Line because Nature itself is an ally and obstacle in itself. Go and manouver tank formation in places where you even can´t turn a tank column around. So, I can´t aggree that the line was weak. The means to build it were not large but the whole thing, together with the well trained and motivated defenders and impossible wather conditions (deep snow and very low temperatures) made it an obstacle able to stop an avalanche of men, armor and artillery. You may say I´m talking like a Russian fanatic. However, look at the fronts of WW1. After the start the fronts, essentially made of temporary field fortifications and lines of trenches, stabilized and there were virtually no breakthroughs (an exception: Brusilovs offensive on the east front, eventually strategically futile). So, the Soviet breakthrough was an achievement.

The German feat in France was peanuts in comparison. They did not engage the Maginot and they knew they were unable to do so. They just found a nice hole in the line and poured through. Notice how long they waited for the good weather. No attacks in autumn, winter or even spring. They had to wait till May to rush their weakly armored, narrow-tracked “panzers” on fast dry tarrain, around - not through - any defended areas. Same thing in Poland: good weather, no consistent fortifications, long border to chose holes in enemy lines… This was Blitzkrieg German style. The same thing they repeated in USSR. There they dashed by and through totally confused Russians who were in no way prepared for a defensive war. Just imagine Blitzkrieg against ML.

We are here pretty far from the subject of this forum: Mistakes. However, one can say that the Russian tactics in Winter War was a major mistake made good with numbers and mass.

 

Hello Izaak, and welcome to the forum. These posts of yours are indeed interesting, since little has been said for certain about the possiblities and intentions of Stalin with respect to an attack Westward.

It seems to be an agreement among historians that Hitler made no truly irrational international policy decisions (though he did take chancy ones) until the actual attack on Poland in 1939; up to that point his popularity in Germany was rising and more and more people in other countries felt that his way of government might actually work. Hitler had managed to enlarge post-WW1 Germany with Austria, the Saarland, the much-contested Sudetenland and the rest of Czechoslovakia; all this was accomplished without a drop of blood being spilt. However, from this point on he chose the path of war that led to his downfall and the world may be happy that he did, since he was quite firmly in the saddle in 1939!

Meanwhile the fact that the Russians didn't attack when they had the chance meant that history took its course; Western and Central Europe did not become a union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but was instead largely liberated by the Western Allies to take up their development where they left off in 1939. I tend to see this as positive, though the loss and destruction of WW2 was definitely a terrible price...

 

It was indeed a terrible price to pay. The cost of WW2 shows what happens when you let someone like Hitler get too powerful.

 

Thanks Roel,
Hope you don´t mind too much if I disagree about the rationality of H´s decisions prior to Poland.
For one, his Pact with the Devil of Aug the 23th was his doom. But not only that.
I think one cannot forget that there was a strange, almost fatalistic dynamics about him and his policies. You can say he could have stopped with Czechoslovakia (was it rational, not to mention – moral) to smash the Czech state? Probably the best functioning democracy east of Switzerland. Maybe it was, but only as a tool or step, if you wish, for further expansion. The Czechs didn´t want to be ruled by him but were certainly an economic asset in future wars. In no other respect did H need them. So, I dare say, it was on of his irrational steps.

The man was pent up with a strange sort of hate, a desire to destroy and conquer. Finally, after years of empire-building and creation of an army and of armament industry, far in excess of any peaceful needs, he wanted war. He wanted to see his toys move. You may say that it´s my hate speaking.
No, Sir. I have been studying memoirs of people close to him like Schmidt or Speer. You may say that they had been programmed to write as they did by what happened afterwards. Maybe yes. But you can´t call a modern European state where people get into hysteric fits on touching or seeing him close, where whole generation is being programmed to become fighters, where top state figures are morphin addicts, gangsters, schizophreniacs or intellectual cripples – normal. The period 1933 –39 had, in my opinion its dynamics as any anachronistic dictatorship has. If it wasn´t so, would he have risked so much if he could wait and get both Danzig and communications with E. Prussia peacefully? Poland was adamant, true, but the traditional policy there was to balance the neighbors. Stalin´s growing power would almost certainly throw Poland in German hands sooner or later. Patient diplomacy would eventually work.

Maybe we should take another step back and just see Hitler and the atmosphere that created him as a logical consequence of the folly of Versaiiles (I know, I am not original here) that led to hate and lust for revenge. And its always easier to ease frustration on the weaker. Maybe Hitler and a pretty large part of Germans needed the revenge, one way of another. A victory, any victory after betrayal and years of vegetation as pariahs. But many Germans feared war as well (like all other peoples in Europe). The carnage of WW1 was not forgotten. So much for the rationality of Hitler´s policies.
As for opeople in other countries who liked his policies saw the immediate results: raising standards of living, healthy youth, the olympics. All of it manifolded by conscious and aggressive propaganda. Not to forget the antijewish measures that also found grateful publicity abroad (I´ll try to hold this out of the conversation for obvious reasons). But nobody , neither the Germans nor his fans abroad understood the inherent dynamics that held the process together and led to the miserable ending. Only few were able to foresee some of the future.

As to the Russians: I tend to agree with Suvorov in his opinion that Stalin consciously chose Hitler as his tool of destruction of Europe. Prior to the last elections in Weimar Republic the communists received a severe ban on any coalition (even temporary) with Socialdemocrats against NSDAP. And such a coalition was possible and would make H´s takeover impossible. Stalin has read Mein Kampf: he got it translated early in the twenties but the book didn´t appear in bookstores of Soviet Union. Hitler even received a honorar for copyright in USSR, as far as I know.

Eventually Stalin managed to swallow half of Europe but the plan was more ambitious. Who saved your country and a couple of others? Stalin´s own mistake? Hess´ flight or Hitler? Or, maybe, eventually the A-bomb? I don´t know. Things just happened to go this way. Maybe it´s not a bad conclusion. And maybe the most profound effect of the war was that, apart from the millions of dead, for the first in newer history Europe ceased to be the center of western civilization and both halves lost their overall independence.

 

Whoa you seem to think from my previous post that I support Hitler's policies before 1939. I do not. What I meant to say was that his decisions in international politics were well thought out to increase his support in Germany and make Europe increasingly either nervous or in admiration of him. Meanwhile he enlarged his empire by "peaceful" means, giving the majority of the Germans what they wanted: a change from the Versailles terms. What I meant was that for his own goals, his policy was definitely rational and effective.

 

Notatall ! G-d forbid!
I think I have understood you as intended, but for me the means that lead to an irrational goal are also irrational. That´s all. It´s maybe little bit philosophic and a question of semantics rather than politics.

 

To put it simply - Hitler was a born opportunist.
Whenever there was a chance - he took it.
The re-occupation of the Rhineland, when the world was busy sorting out the Abyssinian war, for example.

Whether they are rational or irrational decisions, they were low-risk opportunist gambles - and they all paid off!

 

Let it be put this way, or a born opportunist polititian. Also because he recognized few if any principles on which our civilisation is built, if it served the (often imaginary) political/military interests of Germany. But can one be a born opportunist and then become a born high-stakes gambler? For me he was a man with a hypertrophied complex of inferiority, who desperately needed to be recognized as a big Someone. The way he bragged about his Germany and his weapons, the way he loved to listen himself speak for hours on end (not only at party rallies, but every day, to almost anybody).
Remember one of his secretary´s memoirs? The poor girls had to listen to his monologues on any possible and impossible subject till late at night and they even made a sort of timetable, so some of them could sleep on some nights while others were "on duty" and sat with H. and listened. Virtually every foreign visitor was subject to the torture of his monologues (with an interesting exception of Molotov, who dared interrupt him and sort of interrogated him on his visit in November ´40 – you certainly know Paul Schmidt´s book http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846 ).

 

He did not respect international rules of civilized politics because as part of Nazi ideology he regarded international politics as a struggle to the death, where obligations would only have to be carried out if the recipient could enforce it, and such strange rules of strenght-decides-all.

 

And, at the end of the day he proved right - strength decided all. Strange man - Hitler - anyways. With all his phobias, vegetarianism, his very special sexual life. Looks like a homo to me. A very frustrated homo who doesn´t really understand what is going on or why nothing´s going on.

 

Any one mention operation market garden? It got a lot of highly trained troops killed for very little gain and delayed the allied advance through france. It isnt widely mentioned as a defeat and I think was a bad decision by the allies.

 

It would be a huge understatement to simply say 'yes'.

Welcome aboard elcold.

 

It was a risky decision with a bad outcome, but the decision was made in a complicated situation with many mistakes being made and many things simply going wrong. A lot could have gone differently, but in the end I agree with you that the plan was flawed. However in the situation the Allies were in (a stabilizing front, supply shortages) some risk was required if the advance made in the previous month could be carried on.

 

The biggest problem with Market-Garden was ephoric state of Montys staff during planing. To dissmis reliable informations ( reccon photos, and ressistance info) of presance of tanks and organised troops in the area and to plan movement of entire army on single narow road is a formula for dissaster.
Assuming that tanks on reccon photos were not operational is one of most stupid mistakes i heard of. As allways:
Assumption is a mother of all f#$k up's.

 

But most of the tanks they saw were not operational; this is fact, judged afterwards by the reports made by 2nd SS Panzer Corps to Model's HQ. One of the two divisions had even sent all of their remaining armour away for reparations and therefore had no tanks left at all.