Today is the 1st of September (WWII start in Poland)

They were lucky alone for geographical reasons. If they had shared a border with Germany they would had been overrun like everybody else..
Nothing to be proud of actually!

That too, but the main reason they were lucky in Dunkirk was that the Germans halted their advance because of Hitler's irrational fear that the troops would be attacked in the flank. But there was no enemy army to attack and had they just advanced to Dunkirk, they would've taken the entire British army prisoner. That would've been the end for Britain.

>^..^<

M-G (the puppy killer has been caught!)

Hitler was an idiot, I think here we all agree...;)

But I'm not sure an invasion was ever on the table or if that had been feasible. The german army was overstretched from the beginning.

I would had chosen a blockade with our wolf packs....some starving blockade medicine back from what they did to Germany 1918/1919...
At one point they would be forced to negotiate and not so much hassle with urban warfare and all that entails.


YAY!!!! :):):)

Oh yes there was. I think it was called "Fall Seelöwe" (Operation Sealion). They were already gathering the boats in the French harbours for it. The Battle of Britain was meant as a prologue and it failed. The only feasiblity of the operation would be that the war would last longer. Germany would've lost eventually anway. No country can stand against the entire world and win in the long run. It's simply not pssble.


I knew you liked that news. I wonder why you didn't know yet - she was found yesterday already, as police announced it. That's all I'm going to say about this in this thread. Perhaps we can discuss this in the animal abuse thread? (sorry mods, this was a one-off)

>^..^<

M-G (tiens)

Yes it was, there were troops massed and all but BoB went south real fast and then there was invasion of Russia.


Actually it was not, in 1941 Germans have the manpower of Germany, Austria, Czech Germans, Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, the industries of France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria so in 1940-41 Germany has all the juice it needs but UK was still unassailable with RAF intact.


Well in real life blockade with submarines was attempted and didnt work out.

It was never even started...there had been alot of thought games by the smarties in the general staff which never had seen the eventual light of the day.


Agreed of course!


I can't find anything about it! :(


Actually it was. Look at the map...There is only so much of Europe an army of the size of Germany can conquer and occupy to NOT call it overstretched.

Today even the combined force of the US and UK call themselves overstretched in Iraq alone...


It did work quite well actually....the Brits got into mean problems, but again, Hitler wasn't with his heart innit...(Dunkirk, BoB, U-boats)
Only half of the concentration as against Russia and they would had barely a problem but somehow he had a soft spot for them Brits....

Apart from Poland Germans didnt really need much, France was by and large a bunch of ***** collaborators, Low Countries were small, Poland required some effort but even it was occupied by some 200.000 men and that was the most Germans ever put into one country as occupying force.

Also you got Italians, Hungarians, Romanians etc.


Heart had nothing to it, not having a fleet or means to build it up and US joining the party was what made the blockade impossible.


Half of what? UK didnt have an army to speak of and airforce was much more then half.

So, the only ones fighting actually had been the Poles...everybody else just rolled over?
Hitler didn't need the Wehrmacht actually? ;)


Compare Hitler/Dunkirk and Hitler/Stalingrad....his heart just wasn't innit.
There just wasn't the "I want it at all costs and if you all have to croak for it!" spirit!

Untill Russia was invaded and Yugoslavia got its act together yeah and since its 1940-41 than the only people resisting are the Poles.


You missed the point, destroying the Brits wouldnt change much, they still had the navy and airforce and thats what mattered.


It still wouldnt be enough to bend Britain over, he wanted Stalingrad like that and look how it ended.

Their airforce and navy wouldn't had stopped them from being blockaded into surrender...
Destruction wasn't necessary...isolation would had done the trick!


Hmmm.....not wanting to go into another p*issing match but the war with Poland was over after 4 weeks in 1939 and there wasn't that much happening till the France war.


I really wouldn't compare GB with the eastern Front! ;)
I doubt that GB would had been able to kill 80 percent of our best forces...

They did historically.


It didnt do the trick though.


Occupation wise i meant, 200.000 police force is a lot and thats not counting some 30.000 Italians.

The point is however that untill 42-43 Germany didnt really expand much resources on occupation, even Poland was small fry for an alliance that fielded over 4 milion soldiers.


In land battle GB would be taken in something like six days, thats about the time it takes to drive across the island but we're talking sea and air war here.

That brings us back to my first statement:


;)

PS: Any news from your friend with the photos about the gendarmerie?

Ah completely forgot going to give him a call now.

I think we'd agree that the only comparison is one of contrast: Stalingrad cost the Germans enough men and material to supply a quarter of the Wehrmacht.


I am not sure the Germans could have invaded Britain.

Goering's real mistake in the Battle of Britain was his change in strategy: he stopped going after the RAF at a point where the RAF was close to the end and instead turned his attention to the cities.

I think Hitler wasn't going to make the same mistake twice in regards to blockades - the blockade was what took American into WW1 and he may not have wanted to provoke the Americans further in doing so.

Nope he didn't make the same mistake twice; he committed the mother of all blunders: he declared war on the US.

I still can't work out why he put so much effort into this - America might very well have left him alone if he had left the UK and themselves alone!

I would say invading Russia in winter was a bigger mistake.

Hitler was a man of his word you cant take that away form him. USA declared war on Japan and Germany honoring their alliance in turn declared war on America.

You're kidding right?


While the invasion of the SU was a bad decision the declaration of war on the US permitted the industrial might of the US to swing into action stocking England with all sorts of war material and manpower. All of this permitted the western allies the ability to wage total war on Germany.

Both were a mistake, but in a way unavoidable: the US were (kinda covertly) already participating in the war and had already taken sides by sending goods to GB and the SU was the nemesis; after all, he had proclaimed so many times that Communism was his archenemy. If he were in some crazy way true to his own ideology, he just HAD to attack the SU. And he could have gotten the SU on her knees, if it weren't for Yugoslavia and Greece. The "necessary" invasion of those two countries after Mussolini screwed up once again in Greece and a switch in Yugo from pro-Nazi régime to anti-Nazi régime, delayed the attack on the SU with about 6 crucial weeks, without which there would've been a very real chance that he would've conquered Moskou before the dreaded winter started. I'm not sure, but I seem to remember that the original date for the attack on the SU was planned for early May instead of the 22nd of June. He could've waited a year, but the SU was building up for an inevitable attack on Nazi Germany too, so it was catch-22 for Hitler.

>^..^<

M-G (tiens)

The "six weeks earlier" argument has been trotted out there over the years and there is absolutely no truth to it what so ever.

He was about 100 away from Moskou when winter set in and the Russian troops didn't have any substantial answer at the time, so chances may very well be he would've captured Moskou. So there may be some truth in there. But it didn't happen, so we have to revert to "if-history" and that's not really my favourite style of history.

>^..^<

M-G (tiens)

The moral component was more important.Greece was the first country to defeat an axis force.We kicked italian butts in Albania big time in 1940 and italian army never recovered from the humiliation.When Germans attacked in 1941 to save their allies Italians our troops were concentrated in albanian front and we had very few divisions in yugoslav border from where Germans invaded.(Yugoslavia was considered an allly so we had not troops in this direction).

It would be interesting to see what would happen if the bulk of our army had fought against Germans since in Thrace we managed to stop them in heavily fortified positions in the greek-bulgarian border.

WB, hardly anybody was a man of their word in those times of broken international agreements. It was all about maneuvering and taking steps that could be taken.

Crow, just curious. What prevented Serbia from sending troops up to Poland to help out in the WWII cause?

Because before the 27th of March 1941, the Yugoslav govt was pro-German. Plain and simple. The overthrowing of this govt on that date was reason for Hitler to invade Yugo.

>^..^<

M-G (tiens)

Basically Hitler needed to have his flanks secured while he attacked SU that is why he invaded Balkans.He was especially afraid that planes from greek airports would bomb oil fields in Romania which were of particular importance for the german military effort.

Why on Earth would they be pro-German given what the Germans had done to them over the years? It doesn't make any sense, M-G.

Yugoslavia was a complicated case.First of all it had signed agreement with SU for mutual help in case of german attack.Second the old serbian-greek agreement for common action in case of enemy attack to any of these countries was still valid.Probably the croat element was.pro-german and croatian soldiers surrendered in mass to german army with the dissolution of yugoslav army as a result.

Surrendered? They were onboard with the Nazis through people like Ante Pavelić, southern. They welcomed the Nazis in.

They surrendered and our common front in Macedonia was screwed.Damn traitors.