Top 5 biggest mistakes

Whats that supposed to mean?

 

You are referring to the impositions placed on Germany after Versailles?

 

The Tiger 2 was a foolish invention, why would you need a slower,fatter,louder version of an already great tank!

The Tiger itself was probably the best sort of tank for a defensive war as long as they were took care of. They were tough opponents dug in or on the move, nobody can really deny that.

By the time the Tiger came into service, the last thing the Germans needed were offensive tanks. The Tiger came in large enough numbers after the south of the boot had fallen and they had proven themselves all to capable of causing havoc among the Italian hills.

The same was true in France where the vegetation offered a natural killing ground, towards enemy tanks. The Tiger proved itself useless when they were driven to far away from repair shops and maintenance depots. It proved a miracle itself in short length engagements.

 

No,i'm referring to the munitions strike.

 

The Germans needed an armored platform capable of taking down the IS-2 units with greater ease. It was at Targos Frumos 1944 where the Germans discovered that the old 88 mm gun couldn't cut it any more against Soviet heavies. The Tiger Is with the GD division had to move in dangerously close to knock out the IS-2. And the IS-3 also made its appearance in mid 1945.

The KT, while probably the "prettiest" tank of the war (imho), was an engineering improvisation and should have never been massed produced. Its deployment on the battlefield was mostly disastrous as many battalions lost three-quarters of their units to mechanical breakdowns/fuel insufficiency/retreats.

 

Lets not forget a hidden agenda.....

The war was over but the fight for power between the two giants had just begun. The public display of such a "super" weapon is a great deterrent against any nation which might challenge the U.S....

 

Hello Iwd,

not it isn't a language problem at all, but a total neglect of facts by the means of using wordgames. It is very well known that there were extensive negotiations between the Triangle - Japan - Russia - US, such as A-58 already pointed out. Japan was using Russia as a third party and all comunication between Japan and Russia was intercepted and read by the US.

And as Sloniksp already forwarded I would like to add, that there was a very strong communist movement in Japan which was only retricted in its movement by the military hardliners - as such the Japanese did have a realistic chance of getting support through Stalin - since he could indeed expect to harvest a communist Japan after the military and the Emperor would have given in before the US could fill the gap (by occupation).

So the timeframe in between the disolvement of the Japanese Leadership and that of an occupation force was absolutly crucial to the US.
Now how do you get an occupation force as fast as possible into a country despite being no were close to having stepped on it??

Answer: try and nuke them - maybe they will give in immediatley (unconditional surrender) without even a single US soldier having set foot on their mainland beforehand.

The timespan now given, between surrender and occupation would not allow for a communist takeover within Japan.

There was nothing the US didn't know about Japans motives/requests in regards to surrender, and they were fully aware that the japanese wanted to surrender, that the military was afraid of opening a power vaccum to the plebs (commie groundstock). The US was very well aware about the bargaining issues of the Japanese - and still they simply issued a capitulation demand towards Japan that expressed as follows.

"Only an unconditional surrender will be accepted, if the Japanese will not agree to this, then the Japanese race will be exterminated"

(Oh boy that looks like a phrasing that would be worth of a Hitler forwarding to Russia)

So again I will upkeep my point of view that the A-bomb's motive was a pure political solution backed by $$ calculations, a little desire for revange (Pearl harbour) and mainly to prevent a communist takeover. It was off course a military weapon that did however never own its implementation due to mathematical calculations to save and spare Japanese lives or those of allied soldiers.

It couldn't have done so anyway, or didn't need to anyway - the US only had two, and others AFAIK would not have been ready before years end. So in the meantime the US would have continued bombing the sh...t out of Japan conventionally - $$$ there would have been absolutly no necessity to invade Japan at all "If not for those above mentioned motives". And if the Japanese would still have not capitulated (besides having more or less no more food and medical supplies between September to November 1945) well then the US could have continued to nuke them into extermination - at the cost of millions of japanese lives, which I am sure they would have done - instead of stupidly getting themselfs into a conventional landbased warfare against the japanese islands.

So this mathematical calculation of sparing millions of japanese lives and that of allied soldiers is a total bull....t.

Maybe one day the day will come were the Japanese will stand up and salute the US whilst saying: Thank you America for nuking us and saving us from becoming communists" and thats about it.

I hereby rest my case !!

Regards
Kruska

 

Maybe you could define what you mean by "political solution" versus "military solution". I do not see the distinction as far as the atomic bombs are concerned.

The decision to use the atomic bombs was clearly justified in Truman's mind by the relative disparity in projected casualties; i.e. the casualties that could be expected if the bombs were not used and a ground invasion became necessary and the casualties that could be expected if the atomic bombs were used to end the more or less immediately.

Time was also a factor and Truman did not see any advantage, military or political, in allowing the war to continue indefinitely (as would have happened had the bombs not been used)

Furthermore you cannot equate unconditional surrender with negotiating on the issue of the Emperor's status; guaranteeing Hirohito's immunity from prosecution as a war criminal and continued status as a sovereign ruler is in and of itself a condition, so unconditional surrender is out the window.

But neither the "hardliners" in the cabinet nor Hirohito himself, "knew" the war was lost and that surrender was "inevitable" before the atomic bombs were used. The Emperor fully expected that Ketsu-Go would revive Japan's fortunes. The "hardliners" were in contol of the cabinet, were backed by the Emperor, and were fully prepared to fight on regardless of the consequences. Their strategy was to wait for the American invasion and inflict such horrific casualties that the will of the American public to prosecute the war to an "unconditional surrender" crumbled; they would then negotiate terms they found acceptable, and which would allow them to maintain their influence over the Japanese polity. This was hardly an acceptance of defeat and was certainly NOT an acceptable resolution to the Allies. The only thing that changed after the atomic bombs were dropped was that Hirohito realized that Ketsu-Go would never happen, and dropped his support of the "hardliners" strategy. This was enough to tip the balance in the cabinet to favor the peace advocates.

No, the 70,000 dead Japanese civilians were irrelevant to the militarists, just as the kamikaze dead were irrelevant; the only thing that mattered to them was one last chance to inflict a "decisive" defeat (i.e. casualties on such a scale that the American public would be shocked into demaning a negotiated end to the war) on the Americans and force them to negotiate acceptable (to the militarists) terms.

That was the purpose of Ketsu-Go, the Japanese plan to counter the American ground invasion. However, the use of the atomic bombs meant that the Americans would not launch a ground invasion of Japan; Hirohito realized this and realized that continuing the war (and the subsequent rain of atomic bombs) would destroy the Japanese polity. This really didn't matter to the militarists; they were prepared to fight until every single Japanese was dead, but it was unacceptable to the Emperor. The value of the atomic bombs was that it gave the militarists a way to save face and convinced the Emperor to abandon his support for the militarist's Ketsu-Go strategy. The atomic bombs took Ketsu-Go away and left the militarists with no reasonable argument for continuing the war.

The casualty projections that justified Truman's decision to use the bomb were, of course, irrelevant and unknown to the Japanese militarists. But Truman intuited that using the atomic bombs would shock the Japanese public into a state of war weariness that translated into noticable unrest; that is why Hirohito knew the war could not continue because the Japanese polity was disintegrating, and the militarists strategy was now without the basis of the Ketsu-Go logic. Truman believed that the atomic bombs meant the war could be won (that is unconditional surrender could be achieved) without a ground invasion with all it's risks of failure and huge casualty numbers on both sides. That is why the pre-decision casualty projections were so important; they convinced Truman that it was the best way to end the war quickly and relatively humanely. They did not convince the militarists that it was logical to surrender unconditionally, but they removed their most important supporter, the Emperor.

 

Oh boy, so many errors and misstatements in this one, I hardly know where to begin!

There were absolutely NO negotiations between Japan and the Soviet Union, nor the Soviet Union and the US regarding Japanese surrender. Richard B. Frank makes this very clear in his book "Downfall". The Japanese never presented a single negotiating issue to the Soviet Union and, in fact, the Japanese ambassador in Moscow made the statement that he could hardly present a Japanese negotiating position to the Soviets when no consensus on negotiations or specific terms had been reached within the the Japanese cabinet. The meetings between the Soviets and the Japanese ambassador were preliminary and merely undertaken to see if there was a basis for opening negotiations; the Japanese presented nothing to the Soviets on which they could negotiate and the Soviets, in the process of preparing an attack on Japanese Manchuria, concluded they had nothing to talk about.

The US did intercept and read Japanese diplomatic radio traffic and very logically concluded from this source that the Japanese would not negotiate on any terms remotely acceptable to the Allies. They also received very broad hints that even a guarantee of the Emperor's status would not move to Japanese to discuss surrender terms; it's all documented in "Downfall".

The Communist Party in Japan was never well organized nor particularly effective; it certainly never enjoyed wide-spread public support nor popularity. Ironically, the Japanese communists were much stronger and influential under the American occupation, than they had ever been under the militarists (John Dower, "War Without Mercy", "Embracing Defeat"). In any case, the leading and most dangerous communists were all in jail in 1945, and remained there until released by the American occupiers. There never was any real danger of a Communist take-over of Japan, before or after the war.

I suppose you can document that this issue was seriously discussed by Truman and his advisers? I have certainly never seen any record of such discussions and definitely not as a factor in deciding to use the atomic bombs.

Yes, but not because of any phony concern about a non-existent internal communist threat in Japan. The reason was that of concern over the potential for outrageous casualties on both sides and the possibility of a failure to ever resolve the issue of surrender; THAT IS documented as a matter of dicussion within the Truman cabinet.

That is silly. What would be the timespan between an American ground invasion and the militarists losing control? And exactly how much of a chance would a weak and fragmented communist party have of maintaining control against a massive US invasion? The Soviets certainly were in no position to aid the Japanese communists, and could only stand helplessly by while the Japanese communists were surpressed.

It's true the US was reading Japanese diplomatic, and miltary, radio traffic and this gave them a pretty good pcture of the Japanese government's attitude toward surrender. The picture they got was that Japan was NOT ready to surrender and wanted one last opportunity to inflict massive casualties on the Americans (Ketsu-Go). There is absolutely no evidence of the militarists being seriously alarmed at a potential communist threat within Japan itself. Nor is there any documentation of a discussion of such a Japanese or American, concern in Washington. The US had only a general knowledge of some of the various peace terms that were circulating in discussions among Japan's leaders, and none of them were, in any way, acceptable to the Allies, so there was no reason to offer to negotiate with the Japanese

How about an attribution of this quotation so that the circumstances may be judged? (It may have been made purely for public consumption and not represent a statement of official US government policy at all.)

(Oh boy that looks like a phrasing that would be worth of a Hitler forwarding to Russia)

Again, where is the documentation supporting this conclusion? Where are the memos, diaries, and meeting minutes indicating these were the real concerns of Truman and his advisers? I certainly have never run across any, not even secondary sources suggesting this was a matter of major concern. There is, however, voluminous documentation, some of which I have already posted and referenced, of the central concern displayed by Truman about the need to end the war as quickly, and with as little loss of life, as humanly possible. Such concern was even the primary subject of a full cabinet meeting called by Truman on June 18, 1945.

Here you are very sadly misinformed.

The US had a third atomic bomb (as has been posted and documented on another thread on this board), which could have been used against Japan no later than August 19th. After that the cupboard was bare until the early part of September (approximately a two week period), when another atomic bomb would have been available. The production line that was set up by the US would have then been capable of producing one atomic bomb roughly every ten days; a total by the end of December, 1945, of approximately 18-20 nuclear bombs.

See; http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf

An odd and demonstrably false version of history, and certainly one with which reputable historians like Richard Frank and D. M. Giangreco are in total disagreement. To quote Giangreco;

"The irony of this is that for many years, various individuals critical of Truman's bomb decision regularly maintained that estimates of massive casualties during an invasion of Japan were a post-war creation, and when the copious documentation that they were wrong began to come to light a decade ago, then switched to the line that the estimates must certainly have been developed and seen only by "lowly subordinates" when, in fact, far from being considered by obscure officers tucked away in the recesses of the Pentagon, this vital--and highly secret--matter was being examined by some of the finest minds this country has produced from Henry Stimson to Michael DeBakey. Moreover, Truman had not simply seen the genuinely huge numbers, but reacted decisively to them by calling the June 18, 1945, White House meeting in which the invasion of Japan was given the go-ahead in spite of their frightful dimensions."

Note that the ground invasion of Japan was not canceled by Truman, it continued with planning and preparations until the very day the war ended. The US was determined to use every military means at it's disposal to achieve it's aim of the unconditional surrender of Japan. Only the success of the atomic bombs rendered the invasion unnecessary. But they were only used because Truman was convincced that they represented the best hope of ending the war with as little human suffering and death as possible. In fact, there is a possibility that the atomic bombs may have been used tactically in conjunction with a ground invasion; refer to the discussion of such a possibility in the memo of the telephone conversation between Col. Seaman and Gen. Hull.

The canard that Washington, or Tokyo, for that matter, were motivated to end the war because of the threat of an internal communist takeover of Japan is pure invention, without a shred of evidence that it was ever seriously discussed as a matter of policy. You clearly don't understand that the very real casualty projections that the Japanese militarists hoped to make a reality, indeed, increase if possible, and that Truman hoped to avoid altogether through the use of the atomic bombs, were the real core of the decision making process in Washington, not that they influenced the Japanese militarists one way or another.

 

I was not inferring that the Germans were or were not "stabbed in the back" at the close of WW1. It's the mindset of the German military that carried that notion with them, and that pysche that the Nazi's later expounded on. An un-conditional surrender and occupation of Japan HAD to come about to avoid anything like that, as the Allies did to Germany in the ETO. The allies crushed the Whermact and occupied the entire country. The same fate had to befall Japan to avoid going through the same thing about 20 years later. Just my opinion of course....

 

It didnt even dawn on me that the americans might be thinking 20 years down the line and war with japan,good spot.

 

For all the tiger people.

Lone Sentry: Vulnerability of German Tiger Tanks (WWII Tactical and Technical Trends, Dec. 1943, WW2, PzKpfw VI, Panzer VI)
Lone Sentry: WWII German Heavy Tank -- PzKw. 6 Tiger (Tactical and Technical Trends, May. 1943, WW2, PzKpfw VI, Panzer VI)

 

I can only think of three ones, but they are, in no particualar order,
1.) Operation Market Garden
2.) The United States failure to test their sub launched torpedo
3.) Operation Barbarossa

Number two isn't that big, but I just thought to mention it since no one else did...

 

Sure, Market Garden was huge mistake, but would the outcome of the war been any different if it had not been launched, besides possibly an earlier VE day?

 

If the resources went into opening up Antwerp possibly.

 

Right, you mean the war would have ended sooner? The primary objective of the allies was to secure a bridge over the Rhine River so that troops could ender the Ruhr region, the result was a bitter defeat for the Allies, but the operation did create a salient that proved useful in later operations. I thin that if the operation had succeeded or was never launched that yes there is a good chance that the war would have ended sooner. However, what I am saying is that I would not consider it among the top mistakes of the war because it didn't actually change the final outcome of the war. It is similar to saying that the Battle of the Bulge is the most important battle. Sure it was Germany's last effort, it had no resources left after (or before really, and even if the German's had secured their objective I doubt the impact would have been great), etc. etc. but the outcome of the war was already decided at that point. Therefore, the Battle of the Bulge is not one of the most important battles and I am saying that Market Garden is not one of the biggest mistakes.

 

I need to read things more carefully. Looking back at what you posted I agree.

 

The biggest mistakes of the war go entirely to the Axis, but I think MG and HF rank up there in the Allied Top 10.

Market Garden threw away an entire elite Airborne division, decimated two elite US parachute divisions and expended a lot of resources (fuel, material, etc.) for the loss of a few thousand second/third rate enemy troops.

Hurtgen Forest ate up and annihilated the combat elements of a few US divisions for a fraction of the cost for the enemy. And the enemy troops were largely from second/third rate units.

 

Hello Wolfy,

what defines biggest mistakes in regards to battles in your opinion if I may ask? is it e.g. the objective, or the lossratio, or to be decisive in victory so as to deprive the enemy of any counterpossibility, or to end a war in the shortest time possible? or loosing battles due to being outnumbered in almost every aspect such as the Wehrmacht towards the end of 1942?

If the allies in 1940 in Belgium/France would have been in military skills as dominant as on paper then why didn't they manage to stop the Wehrmacht in its tracks right in April/June 1940?

So in this case the biggest mistake would have been the inability of the allies to match the Wehrmacht in 1940 - were even everyone on the allied side would have known were to expect the attack - see WWI, same tactic, same place used by the Germans.

Regards
Kruska