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August 24, 2011 7:00am by Kokila Patel

Cigar Also Burns Paper

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John Stringer

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Viking2

G’mornin’, early today.

You w2ill upset the no.1 er’s if you keep doing this. 😆
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August 24, 2011 7:13am
KiwiGreg

But the bigger moustache REALLY won the war

http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/stalin_victory.jpg

(at least the immediately violent part of WWII)
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August 24, 2011 7:33am
James Stephenson

Nonsense Greg, if Britain hadn’t held out, Hitler would have had only one front to fight on when he eventually turned on Russia…

Anyway the real truth here, is that if you want to win, then the drug of choice is booze and lots of it.
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August 24, 2011 7:48am
mikenmild

The meat eaters beat the vegetarian?
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August 24, 2011 7:58am
Lance

Or real heterosexual men beat rent boys.
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August 24, 2011 8:03am
tvb

If Britain had collapsed, Europe would have eventually fallen to Stalin. But Britain holding out probably saved Western Europe. Or it was the Americans using Britain as a base saved Western Europe.
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August 24, 2011 8:17am
cha

Well something beat the Bellamy salute.
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August 24, 2011 8:54am
ben

Ha this a good. Gave me a good laugh.

Amen to booze James. Not sure Britain really gave Hitler a second front to worry about. Stalin beat up Churchill at every opportunity asking him to actually establish a second front, in Norway I think.
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August 24, 2011 9:57am
Psycho Milt

Unfortunately the analogy falls over when you get to Mussolini – rock didn’t beat scissors…
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August 24, 2011 10:15am
iMP

People underplay the British in WWII.
1) They fought for France against the Nazi blitzgrieg when underprepared (remember those placators, Chamberlain etc who mocked Churchill who had been warning Britain for years).
2) They fought in north Africa, Italy, the Pacific, the Atlantic.
3) They broke the German military codes (Bletchley park was awesome)
4) They broke Germans at Alalmein
5) They PAID the Americans for all the hardware to save Western civilisation
6) They fought the Japanese as well (BEFORE Pearl Harbour).
7) Outnumbered Brits beat the Luftwaffe in the skys
8) Brits invented radar to beat the plane attacks and submarines.

America was a Johnny-come-lately; and the 20th C dibs belong to Britain, who stood alone.

facts, ain’t they enlightening?….
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August 24, 2011 10:43am
Ed Snack

iMP, yep fought in France, and some fought quite well, very like the start of WW1, but unlike WW1 the French didn’t fight very well at all. They had Petain still going instead of Joffre, and Petain always was a defeatist. But the British strategy in France was gravely deficient.

Certainly they stopped Hitler after that, from invading, and that primarily by preventing the Luftwaffe from dominating the channel for an invasion. But I believe that Hitler always believed that Britain would come to terms, and he offered quite reasonable terms at the time.

Alamein was late 1942, after Pearl Harbour, and was certainly helped by American equipment especially Sherman tanks. Also majorly helped by the appointment of perhaps the only senior British commander who had any understanding of battlefield strategy, Montgomery. Personally rather strange and with definite ego problems, but without Montgomery the British would probably have lost Egypt.

And when did the British fight the Japanese before Pearl Harbour ? Japanese aggression against the USA and Britain did not start until 7 December 1941. Japan immediately attacked Hong Kong following Pearl Harbour, but not before, and the attacks on Malaya, Singapore, Burma, etc followed on from there.
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August 24, 2011 11:25am
kowtow

The wowsers in the unis and health boards are constanlty whining about booze and alcohol. Churchill loved both and also took long hot baths.

Adolf on the other hand,didn’t drink or smoke and took cold showers.

Which of these 2 men are the modern control freaks most like?

IMP, it’s unfair to say the Americans were j come lately.The European war was deeply unpopular with the American public and being a democracy it was the electorate that counted. Even after Pearl Harbour there was a ? over US invovement in a war against Germany, Hitler did everyone a favour by declaring war on the USA and soling FDR’s dil.ema. He had already agreed with Churchill before all that that the prime threat was Hitler, thus the bigger and primary US effort in Europe.Japan was secondary.
And to the anti American pro communists out there always remember Uncle Joe collaborated with Hitler to start WW2 and divide Poland between them.That fact is often conveniently overlooked.As well as commintern interference with the British war effort while she stood alone.
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August 24, 2011 11:30am
mikenmild

Montgomery’s role will probably always be controversial. The key to saving Egypt was probably the First Battle of Alamein, fought in July 1942 under Auchinleck, that halted the German drive towards the Nile.
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August 24, 2011 11:32am
kowtow

Ed Snack

You raise an interesting point about French defeatism.
I’d go a bit further and say they actively collabored. I suspect the French perfidy is overlooked as it does not sit well with the post war notion that an “ally” could have been so treacherous.

Vichy allowed the Japs to leapfrog through Indo China for the attack on Malaya.
The huge Fr navy could have gone over to Britain but instead forced the Br action at Oran and Dakar.Syria and Madagascar had to be fought for.The Vichy air force attempted to bomb Gibraltar.
Even the famous Torch landings in North Africa were opposed by French forces. French soldiers who assisted the Allied landings were even shot by Vichy loyalists after the allied occupation!
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August 24, 2011 11:57am
iMP

Good stuff Ed. Yup, the French were definately a bit ‘iffy’ but they get let off, cos their country got overrun by the Hun.

American isolationsim is dangerous. If they’d stayed out, Nazis were only perhaps 12 months from their long range USA bomber scheduled for New York (what was called the 1000/1000: 1000 km range, 1000 lb bomb). That woulda woke the USA up. And what if they’d succeeded in getting the nuke bomb first (they got close). Thes eare the issues facing USA today, re Iran.

The Israels know what to do. Go in early and go in hard (viz Egyptians in 6Day war). Otherwise, zero hour. Or as the Turkish Ambassador to NZ once said:

Disarm the palestinians = peace
Disarm Israel = Holocaust II.
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August 24, 2011 12:33pm
kowtow

From WS Churchill The Second World War, Part III,Chap 32

THe Japanese attacks in Malaya and the Far East occurred within a few hours of Pearl Harbour. This is not readily apparent owing to the different times kept. The following table shows the sequence of events,related to Greenwich time.

Local Time Greenwich Time

1st landing in Malaya 1225 am Dec 8 455pm Dec 7
Attack on Pearl Har. 8 am Dec 7 630 pm Dec 7
1st air raid Philipines Dawn Dec 8 9 pm Dec 7
1st air raid Hong Kong 8 am Dec 8 1130 pm DEc 7
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August 24, 2011 12:56pm
mikenmild

kowtow

The Germans never came close to getting a strategic bomber project under way. This was one of their main weaknesses in prosecuting the war against Britain. It probably was not so much its use against the US (it would have needed bases in the Azores) as its potential in the Battle of the Atlantic that the Germans (fortunately) missed.
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August 24, 2011 1:19pm
Lance

Britain had an enormous advantage in the skies over British soil due to force multiplying effects of local airfields and radar.
In effect they appeared to be a force much larger than they were as they could engage in several actions each day.
They had a brilliant well honed information gathering and dissemination system and some bloody good aircraft to boot.

Their biggest danger was running out of pilots.
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August 24, 2011 1:26pm
David Garrett

Shit this can be good informative site…but no-one has mentioned the British bombing offensive throughout the war. The historian Vincent Orange argues that this WAS the second front….While Harris was wrong to argue they could win with bombing alone, I suppose logically if things had dragged on into ’45 before a land offensive began the dirty hun would have received a “Fat Boy” or “Little Man” out of sky courtesy of the Americans…

I recall a very interesing book at Uni called “Hitler’s Mistakes”…the author argued that his greatest mistake – more than the invasion of Russia or failing to invade Britain – was depriving the German war effort of the input of the Jews…It’s quite scary to consider what would have happened if the patriotic German Jewish physicists hadn’t been driven out and gone to the US… a German nuclear weapon combined with the V2….
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August 24, 2011 2:44pm
Ed Snack

Mikenmild, I would beg to differ, there was no “first battle of Alamein”, but rather a confused series of engagements fought without any clear plan. There is some dispute on this to be sure, but I suggest that conceiving as it as a “battle” would be rather gilding the lily.

The Auk was relied rather on the decidedly eccentric and unsound thinking of one Major General (acting, actually Colonel) Dorman-Smith. DS was a staunch advocate of the “brigade group” tactics that bought the British close to defeat, and although some credit him with the plan used in the Alam Halfa battle I prefer sources that suggest otherwise.

Lance, although Radar gave a very definite advantage it wasn’t that huge. The Luftwaffe could have potentially won the battle but their strategy as dictated by Goering was inadequate. Their original concept of attacking the radar stations and the airfields was correct and if maintained for longer could have crippled the RAF. Their tactical nous was superior, and the ME109 although rather too short ranged, was a match for the Spitfires and Hurricanes and they had a lot of them. The battle is now much mythologized; the RAF were not all that well led in some respects, their tactical approach for example was poor, but they did enough and force the abandonment of any plans for the invasion of Britain.

Interestingly enough, once the first attempt failed, the Germans lacked the aircraft to have another attempt as the RAF was growing significantly faster than the Luftwaffe, in terms of fighter aircraft the UK was producing close to double the number that Germany was by the end of the Battle of Britain. Hitler had decided that it would be a short war (and it nearly was) and so industry did not ramp up production until much later. By the end of 1940 the RAF fighter defense of the UK was a lot stronger than it had been mid-year whereas the German attacking forces were if anything weaker.
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August 24, 2011 2:46pm
mikenmild

Ed
Fair enough, but it seems Rommel never had enough strength to make it all the way. The Germans and Italians were in a pretty bad way after First Alamein and Alam Halfa.

David
I’ve also seen argument that the greatest Axis mistake was not operating as an alliance. According to this thesis, the Japanese should have adopted a more limited Pacific perimeter and moved more strongly against India while Germany should have attacked more strongly in the Middle East.
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August 24, 2011 2:53pm
David Garrett

Mikey: I cant see an alliance between the Aryan Supermen and small yellow men would have lasted very long….But good point…if the Japs (as they then were) they hadnt bothered with the wider Pacific and instead concentrated on India…
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August 24, 2011 3:02pm
kowtow

A major factor in the British and Allied defeat of Germany was “Ultra”. Churchill called it the golden goose that never cackled.
IMP raises this at his 3 above.
It lead to victory in the Battle of Britain,Atlantic ,NorthAfrica and Normandy.

The role of Bletchley Park is often overlooked.

http://dave-harris.hubpages.com/hub/World-War-Two-The-Enigma-Code-Breakers
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August 24, 2011 4:01pm
Ed Snack

Counter-factual history is rather fun, but subject to a lot of difficulties with what is realistic. Recall that the Japanese went to war because the USA was blockading it from oil supplies (sourced primarily from the Dutch East Indies) in an attempt to prevent the Japanese taking over China. They didn’t have the capacity to attack southwards through Malaya and on to Burma and India leaving the US on their flank and assuming that the USA would remain neutral. A prime target of the early Japanese attack was the oilfields in the East Indies.

The Japanese also lacked military manpower, their ground forces were very stretched as they had the majority of their army in China. They worked wonders with very limited (if well trained and led) forces in Malaya and Burma, but could have had major problems expanding into India. They were also helped by incredibly inept generalship by the British in Malaya and by short sighted policies as well. One thing that helped the Japanese overrun Malaya was that they had a limited number of tanks, not very good tanks but since the British and associated forces had no tanks and astonishingly, no anti-tank weapons at all, those tanks were very effective.

British generalship and tactics remained poor until 1945, for example the Arakan campaigns of 1943-44 were very poorly managed with several British divisions nearly defeated by a couple of Japanese regiments. By 1945 though the disparity in numbers and fighting ability was so marked that although the Japanese in Burma fought very tenaciously, the British basically massacred them.

Mikenmild, indeed Rommel’s forces were weak by Alamein although not that weak. Had the Auk remained in charge it seems pretty likely that the Aalm Halfa attack might have succeeded as the planned response to a German attack as set out by DS were unsound in the extreme, and there were no credible plans to actually garrison Alam Halfa. Also the German plans at this stage relied on a so far well tried technique, threaten the British forces with armour, wait for the British armoured forces to come charging back at them, and then shoot them to pieces at a distance with their superior anti-tank weapons. At Alam Halfa Montgomery specifically ordered the remaining British armour to stay put and not to counter charge. They still lost a few tanks to the superior range of the German “long” 75 guns on PzIVs, but no where as many as they would have lost had they gone forward. British anti-tank weapons at the time were only the 37 mm and 57 mm weapons of inferior range.

There’s another story about how for some reason the British failed to utilize their equivalent to the German 88, the 3.7″ (94 mm 33 pounder) which had superior range, more penetration, and was designed originally in that role. During the whole desert campaign there were hundreds of these weapons in place as AA guns around Alexandria that barely fired a shot in anger the entire war. A new and more portable carriage would have been necessary as well as production of the planned anti-tank shell for it. but except for some impromptu use in the Tobruk siege the 3.7 was never deployed as an anti-tank weapon. And that when the Army was in awe of the capabilities of the German 88. It wasn’t until later in 1944 and the advent of the 76 mm 17 pounder that the British (and Americans) had a decent medium to long range anti-tank weapon
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August 24, 2011 4:29pm
RRM

And when properly scientific design of laminar-flow aircraft wings (first applied to P51 Mustang and Supermarine Spiteful) retrospectively examined the older design of the Spitfire’s wing, it was found that its aerofoil cross-section – drawn years earlier by Reginald Mitchell on a piece of paper with a pencil – it was uncannily close to the optimum thickness for a high-subsonic fighter aircraft.

To put the era in context, this was an aircraft originally specified with a two-bladed wooden propeller, such was the technology of the time…

Had the wing been slightly thinner, it would have been excessively flexible, and the design would have been abandoned or delayed years. Had it been slightly thicker, it would have demanded far more power to push it through the air, and the aircraft’s class-leading performance would have been lost.

Either way, had a few of the designer’s pencil-strokes been slightly different the British superfighter would not have been the weapon it was, and the outcome of the Battle of Britain could have been quite different…
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August 24, 2011 5:11pm
Ed Snack

Well, although the Spitfire was good (edit, very good), the Hurricane was a lot more numerous and shot down more enemy aircraft. Having two designs was a good idea to spread the risk. Another interesting issue, before he designed the Spitfire, Mitchell designed another prospective fighter that failed to get the backing to be produced. It was downright ugly with a fixed undercarriage and a gull wing. The body though looks a lot like a Spitfire’s. The type was rejected and (albeit under a different specification) the Gloster Gladiator biplane was selected. This was around 1934-5, so not that long before the war and probably a bit early for an all-metal monoplane with retracting undercarriage to be readily accepted.

Another WW2 aircraft to have a laminar flow airfoil was the Tempest, a big change for a Hawker design as Camm was not generally in favour of thin section wings up to then.
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August 24, 2011 5:22pm
adam2314

” America was a Johnny-come-lately; and the 20th C dibs belong to Britain, who stood alone. ”

Britain launched the first 1000 bomber raid only weeks after the Americans entered the war.

” the Arakan campaigns of 1943-44 were very poorly managed with several British divisions nearly defeated by a couple of Japanese regiments. By 1945 ”

The Japanese top General Matguchi was beaten into retreat at Kohima by a vastly out numbered group.. ( My father was one of about 200 survivors ).
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August 24, 2011 9:23pm
Ed Snack

Adam2314, yes, Kohima was a defensive battle and suited the British and Indian troops far better, unlike Arakan where they were trying to go over onto the offensive. Also, in total in that theatre the British outnumbered the Japanese once Slim realized that the Japanese were sending significant forces to the area. At Kohima until relieved though, the garrison was only around 2,500 with only 1,500 fighting troops. The Japanese had most of a division. They were relieved though by most of two divisions plus several independent brigades. At the related Imphal battle the Japanese were also out numbered but not by so much.

Supply difficulties played a big part in the final outcome with the British troops able to be supplied by air when isolated, but the Japanese became severely under supplied as the campaign went on and they failed to capture enough to replace what they used.

The first “1,000” bomber raid was of course a propaganda event rather than anything terribly effective, they really scraped the bottom of the barrel to get close to 1,000. The early raids were not very effective die to poor accuracy. I’d agree with the historians who conclude that the overall strategic bombing campaign had a limited impact on the war, greatest perhaps in establishing air superiority which at the tactical level at least in the West, was overwhelming. By the end of the war the destruction did have a huge impact, but until then it’s only in some areas that the air onslaught made a large impact. Fuel being an important one though, but production levels for many items reached their peaks in late 1944. A bigger impact for some time was the incompetent management of the economy, it wasn’t until Speer took over the control of production that really serious efforts were made to improve production.
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August 25, 2011 4:43pm

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