Why the Allies won WW2
19 Oct 2011, 8:59 pm
Raptor wrote:
Hitler picked a very good time in history to attack Russia because the people were disillusioned with Stalin’s purges and his other heavy handed methods of governing. The Red Army had been purged of a lot of its officer corps and wasn't at its best in terms of anything.
The Russian peasants saw the invading Germans as liberators at first but then the atrocities began against captured Russian soldiers and the civilian population. From that point on the Russians were fighting for Mother Russia against an invader and not for Stalin. Of course, when winter came that made things all the much worse for the Germans.
If the order of business had been to win the hearts and minds of the Russian citizenry, and the time was ripe for that, the whole campaign in the east would have turned out differently.
The Russian peasants saw the invading Germans as liberators at first but then the atrocities began against captured Russian soldiers and the civilian population. From that point on the Russians were fighting for Mother Russia against an invader and not for Stalin. Of course, when winter came that made things all the much worse for the Germans.
If the order of business had been to win the hearts and minds of the Russian citizenry, and the time was ripe for that, the whole campaign in the east would have turned out differently.
He might have picked a good time, but his command ruined the war in Russia. He could have went straight to Moscow but branched to Stalingrad and Leningrad. I keep forgetting which one it was, but a siege could have been avoided since the Russians forgot to close the gates to the city. Unfortunately a halt order was given to the troops, so winter had a chance to set in. Then Zhukov appeared and routed them.
I learned about Zhukov later, and wondered why he was not taught in schools. You would think it would be a major achievement surviving a purge and saving Russia from the German invasion. Plus he won at Kursk, a well-known battle of the war.
raisedbyignorance wrote:
If 20th century history has ever taught us anything, it's that you don't mess with Commies. Rarely have we ever won a war against them.
The Finns should have. At the beginning of the war after the purge, they were decimating the Soviet troops. The reason why they were so hard to beat was because there were too many of them. If Britain and France started a Western front and slowed the entire German army from invading Poland (which was more than able to defend itself given equal numbers) and help was given to Finland, I wonder what the outcome would have been.
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"You just like to go around rebuking people with your ravenous wolf face and snarling commentary." - Ragtime
19 Oct 2011, 9:35 pm
JakobVirgil wrote:
Cuz, Hitler was a cretin and his plans were impossible even if he was not incompetent.
Every good move the Allies made where just shortening the war.
Every good move the Allies made where just shortening the war.
Author and astrophysicist David Brin was asked to contribute to a collection of short stories on the theme of "what if the Nazis had won WWII?"
He told the editor, after considering the matter for three months, that he couldn't come up with a plausible scenario because, in his words, "they were just such schmucks!"
(Eventually, he did contribute a story, now freely available on his website - Thor Meets Captain America, which almost certainly isn't about what you think it's about.)
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Sodium is a metal that reacts explosively when exposed to water. Chlorine is a gas that'll kill you dead in moments. Together they make my fries taste good.
20 Oct 2011, 1:09 am
ruveyn wrote:
The Allies had better Boffins than did the Germans. Also the U.S. had better Jewish physicists than did the Germans which is why we got the A-bomb and the Narzis did not.
ruveyn
ruveyn
this may be so, but they couldn't have been so far behind, given that the us of a poached a large amount them afterwards.
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?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?
Adam Smith
20 Oct 2011, 9:30 am
peebo wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
The Allies had better Boffins than did the Germans. Also the U.S. had better Jewish physicists than did the Germans which is why we got the A-bomb and the Narzis did not.
ruveyn
ruveyn
this may be so, but they couldn't have been so far behind, given that the us of a poached a large amount them afterwards.
We poached mostly their rocketeers. We did not need the German nuclear physicists because they were reluctant to use "Jewish Physics" -- you know, stuff like relativity theory.
All kidding aside, the Germans educated excellent scientists and for a while quantum mechanics was a German cottage industry. But the Hitler Regime radically cooled originality and imposed racial issues on matters of science. Heisenberg himself was detained by the Gestapo briefly for making too liberal use of "Jewish Physics". He got out of trouble because his Mom knew Heinrich Himmler's Mom and they saw to it that the matter was sorted out without becoming unpleasant.
It was shanannigins like these that impeded the German effort. Hitler and his thugs were thoroughly anti-intellectual. The abstract approach was "too Jewish" for their liking.
ruveyn
14 May 2021, 5:28 pm
The best explanation I've ever seen is at Jonathan Parshall's Combined Fleet historical website. It's well-written and concise, and the statistics cited are staggering.
ruveyn wrote:
The Allies had better Boffins than did the Germans. Also the U.S. had better Jewish physicists than did the Germans which is why we got the A-bomb and the Narzis did not.
ruveyn
ruveyn
There are several things wrong with that:
1: The outcome of the war was already decided well before Hiroshima was bombed. Germany was occupied, and Japan was so devastated that not a single fighter was launched to intercept the Enola Gay. (It was standard Japanese practice by that point to only intercept flights of multiple bombers, on the assumption that lone bombers were reconnaissance planes. Japan simply didn't have the fuel.)
2: Most of the other 'wonder weapons' arrived too late in the war to have much effect. For example, by the time the Fritz X guided bomb was first used, the Allies had taken Sicily and the Soviets were routing the Wehrmacht in the East. Within a few months there were so many Allied air raids launched from northern Italy that the Luftwaffe took a more defensive role and launched relatively few raids over Allied territory. (Fritx X was used for just two months.)
3: One of the Jewish physicists you allude to, Samuel Cohen, acknowledged in his memoir that the early atomic bombs would have been ineffective against a city like Berlin due to its strong air defenses, masonry buildings and good bomb shelters.
4: The Manhattan project itself was a triumph of industrial prowess as much as physics. If anyone doubts that, consider that the physics of building a bomb (including the basics of initiator design and avoiding pre-detonation) have been known publicly for several decades, yet only a few countries have succeeded in making one. That's because they're hard to build.
14 May 2021, 6:00 pm
NobodyKnows wrote:
The best explanation I've ever seen is at Jonathan Parshall's Combined Fleet historical website. It's well-written and concise, and the statistics cited are staggering.
There are several things wrong with that:
1: The outcome of the war was already decided well before Hiroshima was bombed. Germany was occupied, and Japan was so devastated that not a single fighter was launched to intercept the Enola Gay. (It was standard Japanese practice by that point to only intercept flights of multiple bombers, on the assumption that lone bombers were reconnaissance planes. Japan simply didn't have the fuel.)
2: Most of the other 'wonder weapons' arrived too late in the war to have much effect. For example, by the time the Fritz X guided bomb was first used, the Allies had taken Sicily and the Soviets were routing the Wehrmacht in the East. Within a few months there were so many Allied air raids launched from northern Italy that the Luftwaffe took a more defensive role and launched relatively few raids over Allied territory. (Fritx X was used for just two months.)
3: One of the Jewish physicists you allude to, Samuel Cohen, acknowledged in his memoir that the early atomic bombs would have been ineffective against a city like Berlin due to its strong air defenses, masonry buildings and good bomb shelters.
4: The Manhattan project itself was a triumph of industrial prowess as much as physics. If anyone doubts that, consider that the physics of building a bomb (including the basics of initiator design and avoiding pre-detonation) have been known publicly for several decades, yet only a few countries have succeeded in making one. That's because they're hard to build.
ruveyn wrote:
The Allies had better Boffins than did the Germans. Also the U.S. had better Jewish physicists than did the Germans which is why we got the A-bomb and the Narzis did not.
ruveyn
ruveyn
There are several things wrong with that:
1: The outcome of the war was already decided well before Hiroshima was bombed. Germany was occupied, and Japan was so devastated that not a single fighter was launched to intercept the Enola Gay. (It was standard Japanese practice by that point to only intercept flights of multiple bombers, on the assumption that lone bombers were reconnaissance planes. Japan simply didn't have the fuel.)
2: Most of the other 'wonder weapons' arrived too late in the war to have much effect. For example, by the time the Fritz X guided bomb was first used, the Allies had taken Sicily and the Soviets were routing the Wehrmacht in the East. Within a few months there were so many Allied air raids launched from northern Italy that the Luftwaffe took a more defensive role and launched relatively few raids over Allied territory. (Fritx X was used for just two months.)
3: One of the Jewish physicists you allude to, Samuel Cohen, acknowledged in his memoir that the early atomic bombs would have been ineffective against a city like Berlin due to its strong air defenses, masonry buildings and good bomb shelters.
4: The Manhattan project itself was a triumph of industrial prowess as much as physics. If anyone doubts that, consider that the physics of building a bomb (including the basics of initiator design and avoiding pre-detonation) have been known publicly for several decades, yet only a few countries have succeeded in making one. That's because they're hard to build.
You are aware, I hope, that this thread ended ten years ago.
The guy who started the thread (who is also the guy whom you are responding to in this post) we all have reason to believe passed away some time ago, and cannot read your response (he was in his mid seventies when he started this thread).
Interesting post though.
