Question For Members

What areas of WWII study do you think are underrepresented?
For starters,I'll say submarine warfare.With the exception of of the US and Japan in the PTO,it seems the vast majority of information concerns Germany's U-Boats.

 

i say the italian fleet. it did more then you think (but still less then it should have done)
the resistance -> apart from the maquis (french resistance), tito and the russian partizians there is little known about them
and last, how patriotic of me, the air war above belgium. i have a book out of the local library that goes about it. i'll start to read it in a couple of days after i read a book on the battle of the bulge

 

The 'Home Front' in Russia & Japan. Everybody knows about Brit, German, American etc civilians, but information on conditions for the average Soviet or Japanese civilian is scarce.


And almost any study of logistics that is not the Atlantic convoys. or the 'Red Ball Express'

 

Besides those already mentioned, naval warfare at Indian Ocean.
I know next to nothing about it and I am enthusiastic!

 

The China-Burma-India campaigns.

Tim

 

The Iraq Campaign

The various actions / campaigns against Vichy forces

The Japanese forces in China (even the good CBI books tend to leave China out of it aside from the bits that impacted on Burma or the Pacific)

The Soviet invasion of Manchuria.

 

I'd go with the the CBI as a whole (1931-1945), including the Soviet-Japanese conflicts (1939 was more important, if much smaller, than the 1945 Manchurian campaign).

 

Define "under represented." When I go to the local bookstore, it would seem that the predominant forces in WWII were the US Airborne, and the Waffen-SS. There are a few books on Marines, too!

Granted, that's exagerating a little, but not much. There are still many areas of the war, just the military angles, that could use more exposure.

 

I'm interested in entire war but at the moment my top 3 list:

1. A.O.I. (Africa Orientale Italiana = Ethiopia, Somaliland) campaign from the begginig of the war to last Italians capitulating in november 1941.

2. Soviet military assistance to nationalist China and operations with Soviet personell (aviators),

3. Duch East Indies campaign in 1942 (especcialy air component).

There a few very good books in russian (sorry) dealing with Halhin-Gol (jap. Nomohan) and lake Halka incidents - especcialy air component. It is hovever true that when i was searching for english translations i found almost none (except few articles).

 

Good list, I especially agree with the Dutch East Indies campaign, wish I had thought of listing it. After all Japan started the Pacific War to gain the resources of the DEI. The best treatments I've seen so far are the old S.E. Morrison Historyof the US Navy in WWII and John Toland's book "But Not In Shame". Neither deals exclusivley with the DEI and ae rather old.
It is truly unfortuante that there are so few good treatements of the Japanes-Soviet conflicts, the beating the Soviets gave the Japanese helped seal the decision to go to war against the "soft westerners" and make sure the Japanese always maintained a strict neutrality with the Soviets. This in turn allowed the mass movement of troops west following the disasters of the summer of 1941. The US Center for Military History on-line collection has a good, if short pamphlet on Nomohan.

 

Unfortunatly that is the only article i could find of the incident from Japanese stand point. Soviet side is rather well covered but unfortunatly mostly by russian languge books.

I was searching for informations about USAAF units and airplanes in NEI and Philippiness campaign (for scale modelling purposes) but it seems almost that US are ashamed of these campaigns even though they gave good account of themselves. All i could find were mostly Japanese photos of captured US, ML-KNIL, RAF planes and Duch pics of their planes (very interesting topic in their own right). Duch planes and their use (H-75A7, Buffalo,CW-21, Do-24...) is relatively well documented compairing with US.

 

TISO;
Have you tried contacting the USAF museum and asking if they have any of the info you need in their archives?

 

If we go by school standards, everything except the Holocost and maybe D-Day

The Russian front is really untouched by most things involved in WW2 here in America

 

I gave up a bit on them upon entering my VVS modeling phase. I still have plans to build couple of these planes (just a bit later). The P-40's that i already got for NEI and Philiphinnes will get Soviet markings.

Something for CrazyThumbs:
MyVVS P-40Bwill be i colours and markings of Chlobystov's white 58 (in this article is a photo of his plane with sqashed wing tip - look at the bottom of the post), P-40E will get decals and markings for Pokryshev's white 50, .

leytnant Alexey Chlobystov of 20. GIAP VVS SF and his taran's
(taken from short article: The P-40 in Soviet Aviation (here is also pic of him and his plane):

 

Heavy German tanks, especially the Tiger and King Tiger...

 

TISO;
Thanks for the link!

 

Well, the resistance movement in occupied Europe: tying down hundreds of thousands of german troops, wiping out Hitler's heavy water supply, disrupt communication, supply intelligence and rescuing down airmen....

How about the Sino-Japan conflict in 1937. When you consider that China has 1/5 the world's population, it's hard not to consider the Japanese invasion in 1937 as part of WWII. I guess to most historians, any conflicts that takes place outside European theatre is considered insignificant.

Then there is the heroics of free foreign soldiers (French, Poles, Dutch, Belgians, fins...) fighting againts the Nazis.

Oh let's not forget the chemical-biological experiments conducted by the Nazis and the infamous Japanese 731 unit, the latter of which performed barberic tests on live chinese citizens and allied POWs. Of course decades later it's disclosed that most of the Japanese commanders and "scientists" in that unit were granted immunity by US government, in exchange they cooperated with the US army in its own development of CBW.

And they need to make a movie about the all Japanese fighting unit which fought bravely in European theatres and earned the highest % of purple citations.

Then there's the Tuskegee's all-black fighter squadron....

The flying Tiger's heroic

Japanese blitzkrieg in Phillipines,Maylaysia, Singapore....

Massive British and American aide to Russia...

The Liberty ships...

 

The Norwegian Campaign. It wasn't the most glorious campaign of the war from the Allies point of view, but it lasted for two whole months and saw the first allied victory of the war.

 

Notmi asked about "naval warfare at Indian Ocean"
---------------
Here's one example, involving the French Battleship Richelieu and HMS Queen Elizabeth -
Between 30 April - 6 May 1945, they fired bombardment of 641 rounds of 15" in support of the invasion of Rangoon; targets were airfields and shore targets of Nicobar & Andaman Islands.
The operation included also 6 CVE's, 5 cruisers, 10 destroyers + attending oilers; and the Rangoon landings themselves involved other groups of escort frigates etc, including the Indian Navy.
Just one of many obscure Royal Navy operations in the Indian Ocean; separate from the (somewhat) better known British Pacific Fleet's ships and operations.

 

Soviet small boat operations are also very interesting and little known topic. Some of the boats had very impressive records, like this bronkater i.e. armoured river boat BKA-1125 class :

from: http://sovnavy-ww2.by.ru/ - in top menu go to link "Боевые катера "

And make no mistake all these operations included some extremly heavy fighting. In addition, normal service of these boats was very demanding as they operated as fast gunboats operating close to enemy shores.

BTW Operations of all Soviet small units ( G-5, D-3, Komsomolets torpedo boats, BKA's, tenders (small landing and transport boats), MO-4's, BMO's....) are almost unknown.