War’s Paradoxes: From Pearl Harbor to the Russian Front to the 38th Parallel
From time to time, I take a break from opinion writing here at Works and Days and turn to history — on this occasion, I am prompted by the 71st anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Here are a few of the most common questions that I have encountered while teaching the wars of the 20th century over the last twenty years.
I. Pearl Harbor — December 7, 1941
Q. Why did the Japanese so foolishly attack Pearl Harbor?
A. The Japanese did not see it as foolish at all. What in retrospect seems suicidal did not necessarily seem so at the time. In hindsight, the wiser Japanese course would have been to absorb the orphaned colonial Far Eastern possessions of France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain that were largely defenseless after June 1941. By carefully avoiding the Philippines and Pearl Harbor, the Japanese might have inherited the European colonial empire in the Pacific without starting a war with the United States. And had the Japanese and Germans coordinated strategy, the two might have attacked Russia simultaneously in June 1941 without prompting a wider war with the United States, or in the case of Japan, an immediate conflict necessarily with Great Britain.
But in the Japanese view, the Soviets had proved stubborn opponents in a series of border wars, and it was felt wiser to achieve a secure rear in Manchuria to divert attention to the west (the Russians, in fact, honored their non-aggression pact with the Japanese until late 1945) — especially given the fact that the Wehrmacht in December 1941 seemed likely to knock the Soviet Union out of the war in a few weeks or by early 1942.
In the Japanese mind, the moment was everything: it was high time to get in on the easy pickings in the Pacific before Germany ended the war altogether.
While the United States had belatedly begun rearming in the late 1930s, the Japanese were still convinced that in a naval war, their ships, planes, and personnel were at least as modern and plentiful, if not more numerous and qualitatively better than what was available to the United States. The growing isolationism of the United States that had been championed by the likes of icons like Walt Disney and Charles Lindbergh, the persistent Depression, and the fact that the United States had not intervened in Europe but instead watched Britain get battered for some 26 months from September 1939 to December 1941 suggested to many in the Japanese military command that the United States might either negotiate or respond only halfheartedly after Pearl Harbor. Especially after the envisioned loss of the American carrier fleet.
Japanese intelligence about American productive potential was about as limited as German knowledge of the Soviet Union. In Tokyo’s view, if Japanese naval forces took out the American Pacific carriers at Pearl Harbor, there was simply no way for America, at least in the immediate future, to contradict any of their Pacific agendas. Nor on December 7 could the Japanese even imagine that Germany might lose the war on the eastern front; more likely, Hitler seemed about to take Moscow, ending the continental ground conflict in Eurasia, and allowing him at last to finish off Great Britain. Britain’s fall, then, would mean that everything from India to Burma would soon be orphaned in the Pacific, and Japan would only have to deal with a vastly crippled and solitary United States. In short, for the Japanese, December 1941 seemed a good time to attack the United States — a provocation that would either likely be negotiated or end in a military defeat for the U.S.
II. The Russian Front — June 22, 1941
Q. Why did the Germans attack the Soviet Union so recklessly at a time when they had all but won the war?
A. Once more, what seems foolhardy to us may not have seemed so to Nazi Germany. True, the Germans each month were receiving generously priced Soviet products, many on credit; but Hitler (wrongly) felt that he could nevertheless steal food, fuel, and raw materials from the east more cheaply than buying them. And while the Germans were paranoid about opening a two-front war — like the one that had plagued them between late 1914 and 1917 — Hitler argued that the western front was all but somnolent. British strategic bombing in 1941, remember, was still mostly erratic and ineffective.
In any case, Hitler was more paranoid about a British embargo and blockade that might cut off fuel and food in the manner of 1918; with the acquisition of the great natural reserves of the Soviet Union, especially its Caucasian oil, the Nazis believed that they would become immune from the effects of a maritime blockade.
In addition, the war was never intended to be entirely rational in the purely strategic sense; instead, it was seen also as a National Socialist ideological crusade in which the complete destruction or enslavement of Europe’s supposed Untermenschen was impossible without access to the huge populations of Jews and Slavs in Russia. To Hitler, Marxism was a Jewish perversity and Operation Barbarossa meant that he could kill two birds with one stone. The perverse notion that a Germany with 30% more territory and a population of 80 million — similar to its population today — still could not live without “Lebensraum” apparently appealed to many German elites who had visions of eastern estates and baronies, worked by serfs, with vacation trips on super-autobahns to the Crimean beaches — at least if all that cost only a month of war.
With the conquest of the Balkans by June 1941, the ground war in Europe was all but over. Great Britain was alone and isolated, and had scarcely survived the Battle of Britain. There was no reason to believe that the United States would enter the war; if America had not declared war to aid Britain, it most certainly would not do so to save the communist Soviet Union.
Moreover, the German army had proved almost superhuman in its invasion of Poland and Western Europe; even the messy conflicts in the Balkans, Crete, and the recent deployments to North Africa had not slowed the Wehrmacht’s progress. Hitler, just to be sure, took no chances and assembled the largest invasion force the world had yet seen, over three million Germans and 500,000 allies. Operation Barbarossa was truly a multilateral effort, with contingents from most of Eastern Europe, Spain, and Italy joining the German effort. By mid-1941 there was nothing comparable, at least in adequate numbers, in the east to the ME-109, the Panzer Mark IV, or the .88 mm flak/anti-tank gun. Such technological superiority blinded Hitler to the reality that there were few modern roads in Russia, and most of the invasion would still be powered by horses, with inadequate air, train, and truck transport.
Still, in contrast to Germany’s string of successes, the Soviet Union’s recent military record was dismal. Stalin had liquidated many of the officer class (although not as large a percentage as was once thought). The Red Army had not performed well in carving up Poland in September 1939 and appeared almost incompetent in the early stages of the Soviet invasion of Finland in late 1939 (Hitler foolishly did not distinguish between the Red Army when fighting on home soil and when it was deployed abroad). Such impressions confirmed Hitler’s racialist views that the Russians were backward and incapable of waging modern mechanized war — an inferiority supposedly only enhanced by bankrupt Leninism. Given poor German intelligence about the quality and production of Russian artillery, tank (cf. the new T-34 that was about to go into full production), and aircraft, the Germans assumed that Russia would fall rather easily — relying on a comparative World War I calculus. France had held out for four years, while Russia had fallen in about three; thus, the next time around in 1940, France’s fall in about seven weeks suggested a Russian collapse in about four.
Japan, at war in the east with Russia during 1938-1939, had felt betrayed when its Axis partner had signed without warning the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, effectively ensuring the Soviets could focus on one front against the Japanese. A defeated Japan repaid the treachery in kind, by signing a similar neutrality pact with Russia in April 1941. That bargain assured Stalin, in turn, that the Soviets would have only a one-front war should Hitler break his agreements — a fact that might have saved Moscow as reinforcements from the east poured in.
In short, had Hitler maintained his pact with Stalin and focused instead on North Africa and the Persian Gulf oil fields, perhaps in conjunction with the Japanese advancing toward India and Suez, Great Britain would have probably lost the war. But by invading Russia, and declaring war on the United States on December 11 (when Army Group Center seemed on the verge of taking Moscow, when Japan seemingly had destroyed the Pacific fleet and had ensured both Britain and America a two-front war, and when U-boat commanders assured the Nazi high command that with free rein to attack the East Coast of the United States they could destroy the shipping lanes of the convoy system between North America and Great Britain), Hitler chose about the only two courses of action that could have lost him the war.
III. A Divided Korea?
Q. Why did the United States stop after spring 1951 at the 38th Parallel, thereby ensuring a subsequent sixty-year Cold War and resulting in chronic worries about a North Korea armed with nuclear weapons and poised to invade its neighbor to the south?
A. Americans were haunted by the nightmare of November 1950 to February 1951. After the brilliant Inchon invasion, and MacArthur’s inspired rapid advance to the Yalu River and the Chinese border, the sudden entrance of an initial quarter-million Chinese Red Army troops, with hundreds of thousands to follow, had sent the Americans reeling hundreds of miles to the south (in the longest retreat in American military history), back across the 38th Parallel, with Seoul soon being lost to the communists yet again. Matthew Ridgway had arrived in December 1950 to try to save the war, and had done just that by April 1951, when he was replaced as senior ground commander by Gen. Van Fleet and in turn took over the theater command from the relieved MacArthur. But the Americans had been permanently traumatized by the Chinese entry and the North Korean recovery after the all-but-declared American victory of October 1950.
Ridgway, after the UN forces’ amazing recovery in early 1951, was in no mood to go much farther across the 38th Parallel. From his study of MacArthur’s debacle in Fall 1950, he knew well that the peninsula in the north became more rugged and expansive and would swallow thousands of troops as they neared the Chinese and Russian borders, and had to be supplied from hundreds of miles to the rear. Such a second advance through North Korea was felt, accurately or not, to risk a regional nuclear war with the Soviet Union, to draw in hundreds of thousands more Chinese Red Army troops, and to ensure another year or two of war at a time when the American public was thoroughly tired of this new concept of a “police action” and an “accordion war.” And while critics railed at silly political restraints on U.S. airpower that might have destroyed Chinese or Russian staging areas across the border, they did not appreciate that such attacks might also have prompted similar enemy attention on U.S. supply centers in Japan.
Moreover, the UN coalition had been created under quasi-coercive premises in Fall 1950. The war was seen as about over, and allied deployment might well amount to only garrison duty. European participation in Korea was also predicated on ensuring an American commitment to keeping the Soviets out of Western Europe. But by the time UN troops arrived in Korea, the Chinese were invading and slaughtering the coalition in the retreat to the south. Most European participants simply wanted a truce at any cost and an end to the war.
Further, the U.S. had been drawn into a depressing propaganda war. We were responsible for rebirthing Japan, Italy, and Germany as pro-Western democracies, while Russian and Chinese communists posed as the true allies of the war’s victims that were continuing their war against fascism, against a capitalist American Empire that had joined the old Axis. In the case of Korea, Americans took over constabulary duties from Japanese militarists and supported South Korean authoritarians, while Soviet and Chinese-backed hardened communists in the North posed as agrarian reformers — or so the global leftist narrative went. For many Americans, the thought of fighting a nearly endless civil war was less desirable than an armistice and an end to the hostilities, even though after three years of fighting and 36,000 American dead (and over a million Koreans lost), the borders remained almost unchanged.
Was that stalemate wise, given the later trajectory of North Korea to the present insanity? Perhaps not — but the American effort nonetheless jumpstarted the South, which eventually evolved into a nation with consensual government and the world free-market powerhouse of today.
Lessons?
As historians we must remember not to evaluate what happened solely on the basis of what we now know in hindsight, but rather weigh the information available to the warring parties of the time — albeit with ample attention paid to their own shortcomings and prejudices.
Moreover, most blunders in war follow from the fruits of perceived success (e.g., Germany after victories in the West, Japan after sensing the colonial powers were all through in the Pacific, MacArthur after Inchon, the Chinese after successfully crossing into Korea, and perhaps even the United States in Iraq after the quick victory over the Taliban and the three-week disposal of Saddam Hussein’s regime), when the winning side rarely evaluates its ongoing success in terms of tactical means and strategic ends, the changing tides of war, and the advantages that will soon begin to accrue to the defenders. Few dared challenge the purported genius Hitler in 1941, or the supposedly all-knowing Isoroku Yamamoto in late 1941, or the brilliant MacArthur after Inchon.
Finally, no one can quite predict what will happen when the shooting starts, as even the past can be a deceptive guide. Hitler believed that the Czar’s Russians, who did not fight as stubbornly as the French in World War I, would collapse like the French did in June 1940. When the Chinese crossed the 38th Parallel, they did not anticipate that their communist supermen were subject to the same facts — long, vulnerable supply lines, bad weather, and an enemy with easier logistics — that had plagued the Americans on the way to the Yalu. And while Hitler may have had grounds to doubt the initial effectiveness of the U.S. Army, its sudden mobilization, and its inadequate equipment, he had no appreciation of lethal American fighter-bombers or a growing strategic bombing arm, no appreciation of the brilliance of American generals at the corps and division level, and no appreciation of what Henry Kaiser and Charles Sorensen were up to back in the United States.
Fine summaries – I would go further on question two, and suggest that the conquest of Russia was Germany’s prime war objective, just as it had been in WW1, before Bolshevism was heard of, or National Socialism even existed.
Hitler declared war on the United States purely through a treaty obligation to Japan. I wonder if President Roosevelt would have been able to persuade Congress to enter the European War if Hitler had ignored that treaty?
Incorrect…
Adolf actually had NO treaty obligation to Tokyo.
Their treaty specified that he would be obligate to come to Japan’s aid ONLY if attacked by this or that European ( Dutch, French, British ) power — or America.
There was absolutely no provision whereby Germany was obligated to join Imperial Japan on its conquests.
The reverse was true: Japan had no obligation to come to Germany’s aid should Hitler invade this or that European nation.
Funny that: Japan never did come to Hitler’s aid.
Beyond the emotions of der Führer — he was pressured by his navy to permit unrestricted U-boat warfare.
What an idiotic strategic blunder on the part of the German Navy.
Blert
the Brit Historian Ian Kershaw has another explanation on Hitler’s logic:
“This attack is the logical consequence of Hitler’s ideological obsessions, that he felt for 20 years. But what I’m trying to show is that the invasion of the USSR had strategic reasons. Hitler failed to end the war in the West, as he needs to prevail entirely in Europe before the United States gets time to enter into the conflict. If he succeeds quickly to put the USSR on its kneels, Britain would agree to negotiate his terms, forcing the United States to stay out of this war. It is often said that the invasion was a huge mistake, but on paper, this is a decision that is understandable, that makes sense.”
http://www.regards-citoyens.com/article-la-folie-de-hitler-etait-tres-methodique–propos-recueillis-par-fran-ois-guillaume-lorrain-pour-le-point—aout-2009–37344199.html
I think that Ian Kershaw grasps well the German “psyche” of the era
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw
I think Hitler and Japan each hoped the other would draw off the United States. It was in Japan’s interest to have Germany defeat the USSR so that Japan would have a free hand in Manchuria, which was a Russian interest. Hitler wanted Japan to attack the US and promised to declare war on the US as soon as Japan attacked. Japan almost got what it wanted, as the agreement between the Churchill and Roosevelt was that the war in Europe would be the primary theater and Japan would be dealt with after Germany was defeated. Unfortunately for Japan, the US had the resources much sooner than anyone thought, including the US, to start really beating back Japan long before Hitler was finished. The Japanese were a little less enthusiastic about fully committing their sea surface resources than they were about committing ground troops and they withdrew from several important sea battles before they were really defeated, opting to try and preserve their expensive and almost irreplaceable warships. This resulted in the island hopping bringing real results sooner than anyone had originally thought possible.
The alliance between Germany and Japan was real, and Hitler was loyal to it (just as he was to Mussolini). Both Hitler and Japan got what they wanted out of the Pearl Harbor attack and Germany’s declaration of war on the US – they split the US into two fronts, but it was not enough.
Neither Berlin nor Tokyo believed that the US could fight a “two-ocean war” (to use Morison’s book title). They also underestimated the ability of the country to become the arsenal of democracy.
But if others often “misunderestimate” us, it’s also true that nobody (Saddam Hussein was the sole recent exception) is so foolish as to challenge us head-on.
This is where I think the lesson we gave opponents by our self-limited operations in Korea and Vietnam worked very much to our detriment — and is still doing so.
Once others figure out where you’ll stop short in military actions, that gives them a boundary not to be exceeded. And within those bounds, they can fairly safely cause us a lot of trouble.
You don’t do this haphazardly, but every now and then it’s important for the world’s chief power to reduce a bad actor to rubble in order to keep everybody on edge as to just how far we can be pushed. That uncertainty, plus self-preservation on the opponents’ sides, will keep the world situation more favorable to us.
Who would we do it to? Iran’s my choice. To be followed by Serious Talks with Saudis regarding their fondness for Wahhabist theology.
Hitler declared war on America in part due to Roosevelt’s undeclared naval war against Germany (and in part because he was a stark raving lunatic). For some time, American navy ships had participated in British convoy escorts. There were clashes between American ships and German U-boats such as the sinking of the USS Reuben James months before Pearl Harbor.
Hitler’s declaration of war against the US did us a favor, in a sense. Before Pearl Harbor, US and British military and civilian leadership knew that Germany posed the bigger threat. Had Hitler not declared war on us, it would’ve been harder for Roosevelt to go to war against Germany in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Within minutes of the first bombs falling, American isolationism was swept away and all eyes turned towards Japan.
In OPERATION PLAN 7-41 Admiral King set out to do whatever he could to lessen the threat of U-Boat attack against American and British shipping.
King and many in the Navy’s top brass dragged their feet. Read the book Operation Drumbeat, author’s last name Gammon, if memory serves. It is the story of the U-boat’s foray into the Caribbean, Gulf, and US east coasts in late ’41 and ’42.
The idea that Hitler was a raving lunatic really isn’t true. He was inspiring to his people and charming to Western leaders. Only Churchill refused to meet him and subject himself to Hitler’s charms. The charm was very real. Canada’s Prime Minister King, for example, after meeting Hitler wrote in his diary that Hitler was a man after his own heart.
There are two reason for Hitler’s reputation as a raving lunatic. The first is that this is how Allied propaganda successfully depicted him. The second is that as Germany’s defeat became more and more likely as the war turned, the pressure on Hitler became almost unbearable and his behaviour increasingly became erratic, volcanic, and unpredictable. Hitler was no where near this stage at the time the USSR was attacked.
The other reason Hitler was considered a raving lunatic (aside from his impassioned speeches) was his bizarre paranoia regarding the Jews, and his genocidal project concerning them, as well as the Russians as Poles. To believe that loyal German-Jewish citizens, even those who had served honorably in WWI, were all somehow secretly plotting against Germany does not seem like the beliefs of a sane man, but rather of someone suffering from a very extreme paranoia.
Unfortunately, this sort of thinking was not uncommon up until relatively recently, and is still common in many parts of the world (at least parts of Eastern Europe and of course Islam) even today. Michael Hay in Thy Brother’s Blood show how even history books had all sorts of nonsense about Jews.
I prefer not to give Hitler the credit; he was evil, not crazy.
That the Jews were responsible for Germany’s defeat in World War I was a widely held belief in Germany, not Hitler’s personal paranoia. Anti-semitism has persisted from the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, through Russian pogroms, right up to the present day in various Arab states where children are traught the same things Nazi children were taught. The belief in lebensraum in the East had been popular in Germany since the nineteenth century.
I agree with mzk1 that “evil” would be a better description of Hitler’s than “stark raving lunatic”. Either way, whatever the proper description, Hitler was not the cause of beliefs that were shared by many of his compatriots. The Nazi party had sufficient support to become an important party in the German parliament before Hitler achieved power.
Anonymous was me.
I’ll just add that “was a lunatic”, in general, is a cop-out when it comes to understanding why something was done. Hitler did not declare war on America because he “was a lunatic”. He declared war on America because he had promised Japan that he would do so if Japan attacked America in the Pacific. He did this in order to draw America off into a war in the Pacific. His promise to declare war was to encourage Japan.
“Lunacy” (really a comedy word – there is no such thing) plays no part in the explanation. Hitler’s calculus was erroneous. He made a mistake in a play with big stakes.
All over the Internet you can find Muslims promulgating exactly those same beliefs. Yes, they’re crazy and paranoid, but they’re also backed up by mainstream Islamic doctrine in the Qur’an.
When Hitler got his Iron Cross, (1st Class) he got it from the hands of a Jew, his company commander.
That gentleman outlived the war, and I believe was able to move to the US.
The OSS behavioral profile of Hitler begs to differ:
Almost everyone who has written about Hitler has commented on his rages. These are well known to all of his associates and they have learned to fear them. The descriptions of his behavior during these rages vary considerably. The more extreme descriptions claim that at the climax he rolls on the floor and chews on the carpets. Shirer (279) reports that in 1938 he did this so often that his associates frequently referred to him as “Teppichfresser”. Not one of our informants who has been close to Hitler, people like Hanfstaengl, Strasser, Rauschning, Hohenlohe, Friedelinde Wagner, and Ludecke, have ever seen him behave in this manner. Moreover they all are firmly convinced that this is a gross [Page 62] exaggeration and the informant of the Dutch Legation (655) says that this aspect must be relegated to the domain of “Greuelmaerchen.”
Even without this added touch of chewing the carpet, his behavior is still extremely violent and shows an utter lack of emotional control. In the worst rages he undoubtedly acts like a spoiled child who cannot have his own way and bangs his fists on the tables and walls. He scolds and shouts and stammers and on some occasions foaming saliva gathers in the corners of his mouth. Rauschning, in describing one of these uncontrolled exhibitions, says:
“He was an alarming sight, his hair disheveled, his eyes fixed, and his face distorted and purple. I feared that he would collapse or have a stroke.” (110)
It must not be supposed, however, that these rages occur only when he is crossed on major issues. On the contrary, very insignificant matters might call out this reaction. In general they are brought on whenever anyone contradicts him, when there is unpleasant news for which he might feel responsible, when there is any skepticism concerning his judgment or when a situation arises in which his infallibility might be challenged or belittled. Von Weigand (492) reports that among his staff there is a tactic [sic] understanding:
“For God’s sake don’t excite the Fuehrer – which means do not tell him bad news — do not mention things which are not as he conceives them to be.”
Voigt (591) says that:
[Page 63]
“Close collaborators for many years said that Hitler was always like this – that the slightest difficulty or obstacle could make him scream with rage….”
Kind of sounds like a lunatic to me.
Hitler was a popular “star” in Germany, constructed like our pop stars today.
Ian Kershaw: “Hitler: A Profile in Power”
http://tinyurl.com/cualqj7
Shirer is not a credible historian.
The OSS behavioral study of Hitler relied on second hand anecdotal sources culled from European gossip and media. It’s a juvenile piece of “alleged” intelligence work.
It’s soothing to the self delusional that evil is lunatic and raving. In fact Hitler was evil but neither raving or lunatic. For grown up reading, by a premier historian, I suggest “The Hitler of History” by John Lukacs. He specifically deals with the wishful thinkers who would like to comfort themselves by dismissing the evil of Hitler as insanity. He also outlines in detail the strategic thinking behind the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Hitler was extremely charming in person. Stalin could be the same way, convincing Henry Wallace, US VP at the time in the early ’40s, that he was a wonderful philanthropist and hail-fellow-well-met.
Ted Bundy could charm the birds out of the trees and many females fell for his good looks, but more for his winning ways.
Both Hilter and Stalin weren’t quite as good looking, but like a Mafia don, could give a kiss-of-death to an unsuspecting colleague before executing him soon afterwards. A la Ted Bundy.
Hitler’s view of America was distorted to say the least. He saw America as a “half Negrified” country run by Jewish bankers such as Morgenthau who were Roosevelt’s marionettes, where the only thing that mattered to America was capitalism and profits. In his feverish, convoluted mind he could not understand how a country with such an “impure mix of races” could be a serious challenge to Nazi Germany. He never understood that the melting pot of America was the glue that bound our country together and provided the strength to ultimately defeat him. Roosevelt was irritating to Hitler as FDR challenged Hitler right up until we entered the war. If you have a moment, listen to Hitler’s speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzgQXRdXr2Q where he rails against Roosevelt. FDR was the one person who stood in the way of Hitlers dream of world conquest. Always taunting and irritating Hitler, Hitler decided to declare war against America in part due to his visceral hatred for Roosevelt.
Hitler didn’t read his history about how Napolean was defeated by the Russian weather. The Russian scorched earth policy as they withdrew didn’t help Germany advance and Hitler like all dictators appeared to not think about all the ramifications of continuing to move into Russia in winter. He didn’t care about how many troops died but had a blind obsession to defeat Russia.
Every leader should learn from history because many of the mistakes have already been made.
“many of the mistakes have already been made”
As in Afghanistan.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Over.
What are you talking about?
and though the Napoleon army had many german bataillons
http://www.napoleonguide.com/campaign_russ_1812comma.htm
I cannot imagine that he didn’t know that.
Well, these days we see Obama blindly forging ahead with domestic and foreign policies that haven’t worked, that can never work, and that will bring ruin to the US. On some level he knows what the outcome must be.
Sometimes I wonder whether, on some level, Hitler actually wanted to bring ruin to Germany because it couldn’t live up to his fantasies.
“Leaders,” all too often, think like toddlers.
I vaguely remember something from Hitler where he swore that if the world wouldn’t permit his dreams, then he would drag the world down into ruin.
So, it’s not so much that he saw the German people failing him as he saw the world in general failing him.
That’s quite an ego.
Disease had more to do with fatalities in the retreat than the cold.
The USSR traded American-provided weapons and materiel to the Japanese in exchange for rubber throughout WW II. The article mentions in passing, the Red Army’s occupation of Eastern Poland at the same time the Germans were occupying Western Poland.Yet the Allies declared war on Germany for invading Poland but not the USSR. Why? Because the governments of every European country (and the US) were crammed with Soviet spies, agents-of-influence, and fellow-travelors. This is one reason why the Communists, at all times, posed more of a threat to the US than the Nazis ever did.
and still do I might add. Reading the history of celebrities in the 40′s and 50′s and how openly communist they were (and of course very influential) is very startling. To think that mindset still infects Hollywood today. Take away the holocaust (i don’t say that lightly) and we had a lot more common with Hitler and the Nazis then we did with Stalin and the Soviets.
It is too soon to take the Holocaust out of the analogy – and I also don’t say that lightly. After all, our socialist media and governmental elites are only too happy to sell out Israel’s continued existence. If Israel were to be destroyed, how many more Jews will die?
You are so right.
Hitler used to ask “Who remembers now the destruction of the Armenians?”
In the future, it’ll be “Who ever wrote about the destruction of the Jews?”
Interesting that the Russians were selling US aid to the Japanese, because many of the Nationalist Chinese generals were also selling American aid and weapons on the black market to the Japanese. Got to love those allies.
Almost as bad as the allies we have now!
Would YOU want to be an ally of “this” pResident? Imagine a phone call at 3 am and no one is home but Susan Rice,Chilling!!
Whereas of course all the ‘Good ol’” USA did was sit sit on the sidelines in BOTH World Wars selling to BOTH sides and becoming disgustingly rich in the process (as a side note US Oil Companies from South America and Motor Companies such as Ford and Chrysler continued to supply Germany throughout WW2). The money “earned’ by this selling to BOTH sides enabled the USA , a third world financial and military power prior to WW1 who had found it difficult to beat mighty Mexico, to become one of only two major world powers subsequent to WW2. However this ‘Military Financial’ Empire that the USA created is now in disarray brought down by Politically Correct Socialist Left Wing moonbattery, Green Nazism, Islamophile antisemitism, Gay loving,Black Racism and half educated STUPIDITY. It is proving to be one of the shortest living Empires the world has ever known.
Well, hopefully before we collapse altogether we get to put your sorry ass up against a wall.
Not so fast. Some US corporations and wealthy entrepreneurs most certainly DID collaborate with the Third Reich on a very large scale. Such as this one.
Actually, I was told pretty much the same thing by my WWII generation parents (papa was an army train engineer, mom proofread copy at a newspaper)…additionally, they claimed that the U.S. had covertly supported Hitler in his aggressions against communist Russia, before Pearl Harbor was the game changer.
I think we’re generally played by most government/military/industrial bigwigs who are in control of huge money, huge armaments, huge territory. Difference being, they used to do it behind our backs…Iron Triangle, you know.
Speaking of which, I suppose I’d better get in the line against that wall, too. Like Tom Sowell, who said he was glad to be too old to be around when it all hits the fan, I think it’ll probably be the better option than waiting for the *just as well funded civilian national security force* Obamaphonebots to drag me off to the camps.
And take away my phone, too.
Well, an alternate view is that Europe – too stupid to do anything else – decided to commit suicide in August 1914, continued the process in 1939, and, as last man standing, America became a world power by default.
They also serve, who only stand and wait, you know. When your opponent is bent on self-destruction, why get in the way?
I’m sure this will not satisfy your conspiracy theory of history, but I give it to yo, in hopes that is will penetrate the six inch thick rock-hard cement casting that serves as the skull which preserves your walnut-sized proto-brain.
The US declared war on Germany because htey declared it first. Regarding Europe, they gave Germany Checkoslovakia; when they didn’t stop there, they declared war. I do not differentiate between Communists and Nazis, but Nazism was the greater danger, they simply did not have time enough to murder as many people as the Communists. If left unchecked, they would have outdone them in spades.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, information has become available stating that Stalin secretly offered to send Red Army units into Czechoslovakia to prevent Hitler from further expansion of the Reich. However European leaders who were let in on Stalin’s proposal were adamant that if worse came to worse, they would much prefer Hitler to take over Western Europe than let Stalin in because under Hitler the major industrialists of Germany (and of any enlarged Reich) prospered, whereas under Stalin the major industrialists throughout the USSR were murdered. If these Red Army units had come into Czechoslovakia, Hitler would not have moved in because he was not ready yet for war, and there would have been an excellent chance he might have been overthrown by the German Army. How the world would have changed !
It is really interesting to speculate just what might have happened if these Red Army units had arrived. Of course letting the Red Army in would have been much easier than getting it to leave.
Dr Hanson, where the hell were you when I was in college in 1969. Everytime I read your writings I realize that I missed out on a huge part of a real education. Thank you.
To everybody else that has the “real skinny” on the wars, all I can say is “the best laid plans of mice and men”. This, I think, is what I take away from the “perfesor”. Oh!, and also, “Man plans, God laughs!”.
Thank you, Mr Hanson, for yet another fine article. I didn’t know about the contributions of Mr Sorensen to the war effort,until your mentioning him at the end prompted me to look him up. Funny how we Americans were victorious in part because the enemy DIDN’T know what or how much we had or whether or not we could and would fight and sacrifice for victory.
“Article” does not do this useful lesson in history justice. “Thank you for the free analysis on the history of the wars of the 20th century” seems more apt.
Hah! Always thought you were “Chris Bolt Soviet Socialist Republic” on NRO even though it didn’t at all fit with your stated opinions, positions. Wishing you a chuckle at my expense.
Agreed. I always feel smarter after reading Dr. Hanson.
“To Hitler, Marxism was a Jewish perversity….” This is true, but Hitler viewed the Soviet Union as a fraud; that its leaders were masking the rule of [Jewish] “finance capital.” As a historian, I find the relations between the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany to be murky, with much disagreement about whether or not they were always in cahoots. I addressed some of the mysteries about the historiography on Hitler and the Jews here: http://clarespark.com/2011/06/19/index-to-links-on-hitler-and-the-big-lie/.
The last words have yet to be written on this vexed subject. The closure of the Soviet archives (briefly opened after 1989) could do a lot to settle the matter, but we are still all in the dark.
Clare: Is there a site online that has a comprehensive collection of the Soviet archives?
I had a field day when these archives were publically available for that short time. What got out now seems to have vaporized into digital oblivion.
Of particular interest, and would go a long way in defining the root modus and causes, is the Soviet program of subversive infiltration of communists into all the institutions in the USA (ie BHO).
Any help appreciated.
chukalukabus, FBI just declassified part of so-called SOLO files and the rest will be coming out soon. Check it out. It may answer many of your questions.
I don’t know if there is a single site that contains all the briefly opened documents in the Soviet archives, but see the work of Mark Kramer, Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Alexander Vassiliev, most published by Yale U. Press. I summarized the work on the KGB written by the latter three scholars here: http://clarespark.com/2012/07/19/communist-ideas-go-mainstream/. Mark Kramer edited a controversial work The Black Book of Communism that was terrific, and that was of course ferociously attacked by communist sympathizers, who are everywhere in academe these days.
Well Clare, for copies of Soviet archives I’d first ask around at the Hoover Institution.
“To Hitler, Marxism was a Jewish perversity”
That’s a paradoxical comment coming from a collectivist of Jewish ancestry… but then leftists, like those of other religions, often engage in fierce in-fighting over the tiniest of doctrinal and personality differences.
The Japanese signed their non-aggression pact at a time when it appeared that the German Army had written off campaigning in Russia during 1941.
The Balkan Campaign drew massively from Army Group North, fatally so, to make the campaign a blow-out success.
Hence, rather than treachery, the Japanese signed on to duplicate in the Far East what the Germans had already done in the West.
Tokyo simply never imagined that Hitler could blow through the Balkans — of all areas — in a matter of weeks and then be positioned to campaign in Russia.
If you’d asked any sane military men at the time, all would’ve agreed that the Balkan Campaign meant no Russian blitz that summer.
The treaty was no sooner signed but the Eastern European theater was in Hitler’s pocket.
It was more shocking than the fall of France. Just look at the terrain.
That was fun. And a reminder of how much richer life is with a solid knowledge of history. I also like to go back in time to ponder what could have happened differently and the huge role of hubris in impacting trajectories that may now seem invincible. John Boehner, are you listening?
To understand the Cold War, for example, I find it helpful to go back in time when the outcome was unknown and see the events through those eyes. In particular I found Revel’s The Totalitarian Temptation helpful in understanding both the 70s and today’s seeming willingness to accept servitude. There will always be a certain segment who wants to be taken care of whatever the price. The difference is today education globally is being used to enlarge that class of malleable takers to an electoral majority.
Thanks for the reminder that the answers may lay back in time when things erroneously seemed so clear.
About the temptation of tyranny. We can be pretty sure Michelle will take Kirk’s seat in the senate in 2014, and reasonably sure she will be elected President in 2016. What do we do then, submit to a majority infatuated with the idea of an elected dictatorship, like Argentina under Peron?
Wash your hands, and then disinfect your keyboard!
Rinse,repeat.
Please carry on with reasons why Mouchelle will be the next usurper in the Oval Office.
Why Michelle as President? Because if the elections of 2008 and 2012 taught us anything it is that the electorate is immature, silly and generally an unthinking mob. Obama was elected and re-elected for reason only, it was fashionable to vote for him. One made a statement about oneself by voting for him. And that same statement is only argument to vote for Michelle, it will be the fashionable cool thing to do. With the current American electorate, made silly by 60 years of historically unrivaled peace and prosperity, it should be enough.
we can hope that, due to the continued trashing of our way of life (or such of it that remains) over the next four years, enough people will feel the pricks and thus be prodded out of their slumber and realise HOW it came about that we suffer thus. If we’ve not learned out lessons by then, true enough we will have earned the further trouble to come upon us. If that happens, any wagers as to the size of the mass exodus to ensue? Witness a similar exodus from California these days, for many of the same reasons.
Why Michele Obama? Isn’t Madonna available to run? How about Snooki or Sandra Fluke or one of the Patreaus babes?
What the hell is happening here within our electorate when a scowling, tax-wasting professional vacationer and former $350k-per-year college diversity director can be taken seriously as a candidate for President?
I am sure Snookie is too young to Constitutionally qualify.
However, given the natural born controversy involving the current President, why shouldn’t the mass-media proclaim a waiver for Snookie based on “unfair” age discrimination?
Constitutional qualifications be damned! The Constitution is supposedly a dead document, right? [that was sarcasm]
Hey, Sol! How about Honey Boo Boo for president? But…, nah, she’s too young, too. But she would make a great advisor to the preident if one of those you named should be elected. She would fit right in! Honey Boo Boo’s wisdom is probably boundless, so why not get her as an advisor? After all, look at the ones that Obama has! He’s hard to top? Uh…that is, to beat his senseless tax and spend policies, plus acting as if he is going to turn America over to Islam. It may be remotely possible for that to happen, and if it did we would not have pastors and preists, but Moolahs and Imams!
Snooky is the perfect candidate to defy our Constitution. Shes hispanic, born in Chile, and is under 35. Plus shes a woman with an illegitimate baby. If you are going to shred the Constitution and get away with it using Obama, the next President needs to cover it all. She is the ideal candidate.
Yes, knowledge of history is enriching. Unfortunately, the ignorant of history are so much more numerous, and the vote accordingly.
Japan Invaded China in 1931. Over the next decade Japan committed atrocities on a horrific scale, and USA sent supplies, support and personnel to China to assist its fight against the Japanese.
In 1940 President Roosevelt moved the main US pacific Fleet from California to Pearl harbor, and ramping up American support for China through many avenues, one of which was the Flying tigers. This was comprised of American pilots that resigned from US military in order to fight Japanese forces in China.
We cut off Japan from Oil exports, which at the time USA was one of the worlds largest Petroleum exporters. Japan was looking at increasing American involvement in China, and watching the US navy flexing its muscle closer to its expanding Pacific holdings. Japan saw war with America as inevitable.
The invasion of Soviet Union was a monumental mistake by Hitler as outlined, his own generals fought this decision but over ruled. Otherwise the full resources of Germany would have been brought to bear on the Allies and the outcome of WW2 would have been far different.
It is my understanding that Mao knew in 1950 many of his Chinese officers were still thankful to the US for having provided so much support to them during the Japanese occupation of China, and many of these Chinese officers did not want to fight against the US (UN) forces in Korea. Neither did hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers who were veterans of fighting against the Japs, and then had fought against the Communists before Mao was victorious. However many of these anti-Communist Chinese officers specifically blamed Gen George C. Marshall and the many communists in the US State and War Departments for the defeat of the anti-Mao Chinese forces because Marshall had refused to resupply them after the Jap defeat.
Therefore in order to rid his Communist Red Army of a possible rebellious group of officers and men, Mao deliberately sent these Chinese divisions of dubious loyalty into Korea first, so they would be “expended” in the initial fighting against UN forces. No one knows how many tens of thousands of these early-entry Chinese troops froze to death during that first horrible winter, in addition to all those killed by UN forces during the retreat to Pusan. In any event, Mao had no more problems with possible disloyal Chinese generals and forces since these old veterans who had greatly admired the US were now dead – ironically killed by their old US friends.
I served as a US Army Ordnance officer in South Korea in the late 1960s, and heard stories similar to this from our KATUSA friends there, who also said many of these old veteran Chinese officers deserted to quietly disappear into the US. If anyone out there has also heard these stories, please reply.
I’ve always wondered what would have happened if MacArthur stopped after capturing Pyongyang and didn’t push to the Yalu.
I’ve heard somewhere that was what Truman wanted.
Been There- That is terrific information and would make for a great read. I wonder if there is any more information on this out there somewhere. It sure sound like something Mao would do.
I first heard this about Mao expending his disloyal divisions at the start of China’s entry in the Korean War from several South Korean soldiers ca. 1966 while I served in South Korea. However I read accounts of this in several books since then, one reference I believe is in the cited book; but can’t find it in my home library at the moment:
ENTER THE DRAGON (KOREA 1950-51); c.1988, by Russell Spurr, (Newmarket Press, NY)
Jung Chang blames Eisenhower’s pressure on Chiang Kai-Shek to show restraint in hunting Mao and to appoint a “liberal” who was a likely agent as one of the reason’s Mao took over (and was able to murder 70 million people).
A lesson for those of us in Israel, althoguh I’m not sure what we can do about it.
Sorry to say this, but in my opinion it is already too late for Israel. When Obama destroyed the secular government of Egypt, it sealed the doom of Israel because sooner or later Muslim religious fervor will force a massive invasion from the south which the IDF will no longer be able to contain (at least using conventional weapons).
Now the question is what the last remaining Israel Air Force pilots will do as the Muslim hordes complete their sweep over Israeli cities, murdering everyone they find still alive. I suspect these last Israeli pilot will choose to expend the Israeli nuke arsenal rather than allow it to fall into Muslim hands. The question then becomes what targets will these pilots choose, and will these targets be limited to the Middle East?
One on the Aswan dam, and Egypt ceases to exist as Egypt. For good measure, first take out the dams above the Aswan…
Generally accurate. Chinese on Taiwan so informed the US. Those of us in Korea fighting learned it from those we captured.
This was a comment on the Chinese trained by the USA being sent to fight Americans in Korea. If you want more see the Armiger Cromwell Center web site.
Andrew Salmon’s To the Last Round: The Epic British Stand on the Imjin River, Korea 1951 is a great read. He wrote of generally friendly Chinese captors of some of the British 29th Infantry Brigade, to include raised weapons to prevent North Korean troops from taking their prisoners for execution. Salmon refers to the Chinese being former Nationalist soldiers and the view that to enter Korea was to enter the gates of hell.
this matter was somewhat addressed in the recently published The Last Stand of (Fox?) Company. Chinese troops were sent into the maw of marine artillery to devastating effect. It appears these were troops of questionable loyalty. I also suspect that the Chinese were on the verge of starvation, so it was also a method of eliminating useless mouths.
Germany really did need the land though, and it needs land more than ever now. It’s extremely densely populated for its climate. Russia is now beyond degenerate and melting before our eyes, but it’s not from a lack of room; Germany’s horrible fertility today is! The borders need to shift, period. Nations have the right to take land to secure their right to exist, or else fertility declines and foreign immigrants are used to displace the native population.
If Germany did not take advantage of its gifted generals and experienced soldiers, Russia would have eventually mobilized and overrun the whole West.
No, Germany is not extremely densely populated. As you correctly pointed out, but for the wrong reasons, Germany’s fertility is in a tailspin. Rather than being densely populated, they are having the opposite problem, insufficient population to keep things like sewage flowing. Sewage systems need a certain input to keep things moving, and now there are not enough Germans flushing their toilets.
Germany’s fertility rate of decline is similar to many other countries. Lebensraum has nothing to do with it. Finally your argument that declining populations will be replaced by immigrants unless more lebensraum is provided is illogical. If it is too crowded for natives, then it would be too crowded for immigrants, too.
“If it is too crowded for natives, then it would be too crowded for immigrants, too.”
Or, the once great nations of the West will all look like Mumbai by 2100.
If ever there was a place where the dyphemism, “Make Love, Not War” was needed, it is in Europe.
Both Germany and Russia face population decline. Also true of the U.S. The birth rate per woman in the EU in 2009 was about 1.59; in Russia it was about 1.62; in the U.S. it is about 1.9. Anything below 2.1 in the “developed” world means the population is in natural decline.
The ‘Birth Rates’ that are declining in Europe are those of the ‘White’ indigenous people the birth rates of the ‘third world, mainly Muslim, IMMIGRANTS’ to Europe are booming. Which is what leads Muslims to boast ‘we will conquer you with the wombs of our women’.
I believe if such a survey was done in the USA you would find the same disparity there, immigrant boom indigenous decline, which will very shortly lead to an ‘Hispanic’ America.
“From time to time, I take a break from opinion writing…”
I’m a big fan of your work in general and I’d love to see more writing on the media. For instance, have you had a chance to check out TCM’s “THE WALKING DEAD?” This is the end of the year and we’re getting a wave of serious movies. I’m curious about your reaction to Kathryn Bigelow’s “ZERO DARK THIRTY,” Affleck’s “ARGO” or Spielberg’s “LINCOLN.”
“Work and Days” has a pretty freewheeling format and anything that interests you would likely interest your readership.
I’ve wondered how the Spartan phalanx would work against zombies.
BTW, the campaign in Greece — particularly Crete was the turning point in WWII.
Why?
Hitler’s miracle troops — his parachute division — took so many casualties that he refused to use them again.
Further, they, and the rest of the critical support echelons for the entire Balkan-Greek Campaigns came exclusively from Army Group North.
This last factor is almost never known — let alone written about — by most historians.
There loss took all of the punch out of the drive on Leningrad. The original-original scheme was to drive on two fronts: Leningrad and Moscow. As time went by, Hitler kept shifting southward, eventually making Army Group South as strong as Army Group Center.
The ultimate result was that Leningrad did not fall during 1941, and the rest of the campaign went downhill from there. Hitler even pulled his panzer force out of the north to focus on Moscow. In the original scheme, Leningrad was to have already been taken by then.
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Lastly, the biggest secret of Barbarossa was the failure of the Luftwaffe. It’s the reason that Ernst Udet committed suicide November 17, 1941.
His failure, the Luftwaffe’s failure was the Ju-52. I have not seen ONE German account that does not try to obfuscate this failure. It couldn’t be blamed on Hitler. How embarrassing!
For, you see, the Luftwaffe’s plane couldn’t land in Russian rough field conditions without breaking its landing gear. This fiasco was so complete that the entire active fleet was grounded in Russia — literally all over the place.
Because these broken planes were so spread out their universal failures could be hidden from the troops — and most historians.
It was because of these broken planes that the assault on Moscow was delayed for weeks.
Hitler visited the front because of this fiasco. It was so astounding, he wanted to see it for himself.
Guderian was directed south for one sole reason: such a strategic move could envelope a massive Soviet force — within the logistical constraints now imposed by having no more ‘flying fuel trucks’ — i.e. the Ju-52s.
Until they’d been crippled, these planes made it possible for Guderian to defeat the Soviets by one single basic tactic.
You see, Stalin had never built up his rail net. Instead, fresh factories were merely placed where the rail lines already existed.
The facts are astounding: Russia’s rail system used un-ballasted lines and single tracks, too. The only line that Stalin built up were those going to Karkov. It was double-tracked and ballasted. He wanted those foodstuffs taken away from the Ukrainians and secured in warehouses around Moscow. The other ballasted line was a single track to Leningrad.
It’s hard to believe, but the entire remainder of the Soviet rail net was single and un-ballasted lines. This meant that when Guderian drove deep into the Soviet rear areas he only had to seize a handful of critical rail junctions — and the entire front 200 km to the west was thrown out of supply.
Obviously, no motor transport existed to replace lost rail hubs.
Guderian was only ever able to drive so very deeply into Russia because he was getting his gasoline by Ju-52. That was the whole story of Germany’s fantastic successes in the early going.
They broke through, then drove and drove, refueling by air delivery, until they’d seized this or that critical rail junction — of which Russia had so few. It was a tactic that could only work against Russia. Every other nation had too many rail lines for this to work.
Guderian — and others — had been in Russia years earlier. They knew all about the paucity of Russian rail lines.
So the loss of the Ju-52 fleet meant the end of the easy victories. Had it not broken down so easily, Guderian could’ve rolled in to Moscow before Stalin could’ve concentrated his Reserve Armies.
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BTW, if you Google the Ju-52, the very first page lists a Ju-52 that broke its landing gear. No one knew that it was the most important story of the war. It blew up Barbarossa.
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The parachute troops were to jump east of Leningrad to cut off the north from Moscow. In late 1941, Stalin would’ve had no defense against airborne ski troops in the arctic.
So much for Lend Lease convoys.
I don’t think I’d heard about the JU-52 being used for supply. I will admit that fits in well with the adage that to win wars you study lggistics. Infact prior to WW1, the students who did best at teh German equivlent of West Point were not posted to combat units, but to the Rail/Logistic units in Germany for planning the movment of troups and supplies in 1910.
I recommend ‘Rise of the Luftwaffa’ for info on the German between the war airforce. There were other missteps made by the Germans. Invading, oddly enough might not have been one. There is some suggestions that the Russians were getting ready to attack the Germans.
The Ju-52 was the transport workhorse of the Luftwaffe; their equivalent to our C-47/Dakota. Like all slow transports, the “Iron Annie” was very vulnerable to both FLAK and fighter attack. As more and more of the Luftwaffe was pulled back to Defense of the Reich duties, the Soviet fighters had a field day with German air transport. Goering promised Hitler and Paulus that he could supply the 6th Army by air through the winter so that it could be relieved in the spring. The Luftwaffe never came close to the tonnage required to provide even meager food and ammunition to the troops invested in Stalingrad.
While the US developed larger, faster transports such as the C-54, the Germans never really developed a reliable sucessor to the Ju-52. The Condor was never really reliable and too frail for rough runways. The Luftwaffe made considerable use of towed gliders. Much of Rommel’s re-supply was by the huge Messerschmidt Gigant glider towed by either three Me-110s or the special glider tug, the Heinkel Zwilling which was essentially two He-111s on a common wing. There weren’t many of them and when they didn’t have fighter escorts were dead meat for Allied fighters. The Germans made some use of the Gigant on the Eastern front as well and developed a six-engine powered version, though not many were produced. Most of the features we take for granted in military transports today were introduced in the Gigant; large, multi-wheel undercarriages that are suitable for rough fields and allow the craft to sit fairly low to the runway, a “flip-up” cockpit and nose area that allows front loading or Ro-Ro use, a rear cargo ramp that is integral to the rear fuselage, etc. Until we developed the big jet transports starting with the C-141, all US military air transports had a very German heritage, but the innovative designs never came to full use and development in the Luftwaffe and the Ju-52 remained the workhorse throughout the war and many soldiered on long after the war in Spain and in other German client nations or in nations which wound up with a lot of them still around after the German capitulation.
“It couldn’t be blamed on Hitler. How embarrassing!”
Thank you for this, blert. Lots of Germans and WWII buffs blame all of Germany’s WWII failures on Hitler, but he was not the only one to make mistakes. And, to give Hitler his due, he was able to rouse the Germans to some incredible achievements. Many German generals were very supportive of Hitler while they were winning.
This last sentence
“And while Hitler may have had grounds to doubt the initial effectiveness of the U.S. Army, its sudden mobilization, and its inadequate equipment, he had no appreciation of lethal American fighter-bombers or a growing strategic bombing arm, no appreciation of the brilliance of American generals at the corps and division level, and no appreciation of what Henry Kaiser and Charles Sorensen were up to back in the United States.”
overlooks the soon-to-be-available atom bomb which ended the war in the pacific. If Hitler had played his cards better and was still around — indeed, even in a position of dominance — in 1945, he also would have had to face its unimagined destructiveness. Nobody in charge of the military strategies of WWII imagined something like this could even be possible, and no matter how the various nations and tyrranies managed their militaries in the run-up to 1945, the newly discovered atom bomb would almost certainly have had the effect of freezing all the armies in place after its first use. The world would have ended up with a multiplayer cold war, with communists and nazis against the west, instead of the bipolar cold war that actually occurred.
This essay makes most sense as an analysis of what might have happened had the European intellectual elite not escaped to North America and developed the world’s first superweapon.
“No one imagined it”???
A German scientist–Otto Hahn–had done early theoretical work on nuclear fission. And the Nazi German government set up its own project to build an atomic bomb, headed by Werner Heisenberg (yes, that Heisenberg).
The Japanese were also interested in atomic weapons. Their project was headed by scientists like Yoshio Nishina, and the Japanese Army began investigating ways to produce Uranium-235.
So it’s not like the American atomic bomb took the militaries of the Axis powers by surprise. It’s just that the American project won the race for several reasons:
Greater productive capacity;
the Jewish scientists who had immigrated to America to flee Nazi persecution;
the Japanese lack of access to heavy water and uranium; and
a systematic but top-secret Allied bombing campaign to deny Germany heavy water and uranium and other raw materials. (The Allied fliers who were dropping the bombs were not told why those targets were so important.)
I said nobody in charge of the military strategies imagined it — if they had, clearly they would not have bothered with invasions etc., etc. but instead concentrated on being the first to build one. Gathering together a big army or big fleet when your opponent has an atom bomb is just providing a bigger and harder-to-miss target. Remember, until the first atom bomb exploded it was just one more technological possibility among many others that were kicking around in the background.
People without experience in engineering do not realize how often ideas that sound very good on paper end up, after development, being more or less as good as what you already have. Very very occasionally the idea that looks good on paper turns out to be much more effective and game-changing than anyone could possibly have known ahead of time. That’s what the atom bomb turned out to be.
The greatest game-changing effect of the atom bomb was to put every nation’s elite on the front line — in the cross hairs — and if both sides have it then “winning” a world war tends to look as unappetizing as “losing” one.
Totally false.
In fact, mobile armed forces are more easily dispersed than fixed homeland military bases or civilian populations.
Nuclear weapons don’t occupy territory, they contaminate it.
Hitler didn’t want to make the USSR uninhabitable; he wanted to capture the Ukraine farmland and the Ploeisti oil fields intact and habitable by Germans.
Even during the Cold War, it was assumed that the initial hostilities between NATO and the Warsaw Pact would be army vs. army. Backed up by tactical nuclear weapons, to be sure; but still a land battle.
It’s now admitted by both sides that, given their mutual doctrines, the conflict would’ve gone atomic within the first hour — if not even sooner.
You’re entirely incorrect WRT the Soviet’s doctrine.
After analyzing NATO, the Soviet Generals ‘Plan A’ was to hit the West with tactical atomic rockets from the outset.
The hope was that they’d catch NATO’s atomic troops away from their active warheads — not normally released from their bunkers.
NATO doctrine was to counter-strike with atomics promptly should the Soviets use them.
It took Chernobyl for the Soviet High Command to wake up and smell the radioactive roses.
Chernobyl was a psychic body-blow to the Red Army, within Communist Party circles.
So much so, it was pivotal in Gorby’s climb-down from tactical atomic warfare, hence the treaties.
The final blow to Red Army prestige was Desert Storm. The in-fighting led directly to the attempted putsch; which then triggered the Russian Revolution #2.
That such would follow was so obvious, I predicted it in the Spring of 1991 — with a target date of mid-August.
Why?
That’s when all of the Moscow power players head off to Sochi for vacation. (You can’t overthrow Gorby while he’s in town.)
I’d call August 15, 1991 mid-August, wouldn’t you?
No good scientist doubted that a self-sustaining fission reaction was possible after Hahn and Meitner’s 1939 results. But the $100,000 question was the size of the critical mass of U-235.
If the answer was “tons” then atomic bombs could not possibly be an issue in the current war, because it would take decades to extract enough U-235 from natural sources to make even one bomb, and it would be so large it would be an extremely clumsy weapon.
In fact, there is a quick and easy way of estimating the critical mass which *does* give an answer of tons, and the Farm Hall transcripts (transcripts of conversation among Heisenberg and his associates when they were interned in England after the war in Europe but — importantly — before Hiroshima) strongly suggest Heisenberg did just that calculation and concluded that atomic weapons were as far off as we now think of colonies on Mars or practical fusion reactors. Something for the post-war world to think about. (In fact, IIRC Heisenberg’s first response when told the United States had delivered by air an atomic weapon over Japan was: “that’s impossible!”)
The fact that the United States undertook the development of nuclear weapons successfully may well have far more contingency than is comfortable. I believe the evidence suggests that Fermi also made the incorrect back of the envelope calculation as well — but, for reasons that we may never know, then went on to make a better calculation, which gave the correct answer, that the critical mass of U-235 was measured in kilograms, not tonnes. My own speculation is that Fermi, unlike Heisenberg, was not only a brilliant theoretician but also a gifted experimentalist, and more inclined to doubt and double-check theoretical calculations.
Because Fermi came up with the right order of magnitude, Szilard and he were convinced an atomic weapon was barely feasable in the present war, and on that basis they approached Einstein, and therein hangs the tale.
And if atomic weapons had continued to rely on just enriched uranium, they might not have taken on the immediate awesome postwar influence they did, because there just would not have been that many of them. Even the enormous input at Oak Ridge only ended up producing enough U-235 by 1945 to make about one Little Boy per month, and Little Boy had quite a modest yield, only 20kt. The real breakthrough was plutonium, which could be made from plentiful natural uranium in a reactor and easily separated chemically. Furthermore, the critical mass was about 1/5 as large, and could be shrunk still further with a good implosion design.
But nobody knew about plutonium in 1939. It was serendipity that it would prove so amazingly useful in atomic weapons so quickly.
Just re-reading George O Smith’s Venus Equilateral and in 1943 he talks about Plutonium and U-235 together. I’ll let you decide where that goes.
(In the same story that he mentions a “whiteboard”, which is a tablecloth the scientists are using for thier disgrams.)
I thank Dr. Hanson, and the other contributors, for insightful consideration of US war policies, and technical advantages. I too consider the development of the fission bomb, and fission energy, as a strategic game changer in WWII, Korea, ‘Nam, through today’s launch of a North Korean multi stage missile.
In 1939, in Berlin, a speculative design (concept) of a fission weapon was published in an international physics conference. In hindsight, it would have worked. All of the major combatants had experts working on the weapon through the war. Within hours of the Hiroshima attack, the Japanese high command knew what had hit them. But there were massive gaps in understanding. Eisenstein thought the device would be the size of a ship; thus only ports could be a target. My dad, an high level engineer, frantically working to get the B-29 Super fortress in the battle, with access to all allied munitions, was asked, and angrily declined to build a factory which would consume the electric power of New York city, in some mud puddle name Oak Ridge Tenn. He did not want to work with dummies. Once the ever changing production lines were bug free, and oceans of B-29s were envisioned, he was asked to build ten special variants: no armor, all fuel tanks, and a special bomb bay which would take a nonexistent weapon. He exploded. Idiots would lose the war.
A close friend, a statistician by training, headed a bomb assessment unit, which went into recently captured targets, recorded and analyzed bomb damage, actual vs. planned. He was ordered into Japan, immediate to the surrender to study a target, Hiroshima. He was certain there was a screw up, and he would be instantly killed upon arrival. But he, the first American to set foot in the city, and one of the first in the conquered nation, was met by courteous Japanese soldiers who took him into the center of destruction. All of his charts were worthless. He, an effects expert, knew nothing of radiation sickness. If you were alive seconds after a bomb explosion, you were safe. His sole conflict occurred when a soldier motioned him to move off a stain in the concrete. To his horror, he comprehended, human remains.
The fear of an atomic energy has shaped every conventional conflict since 1945, and society. The engineered multistaged weapon, a fusion bomb, enhanced in power, reduced in size, weight and mounted on an ICBM, dominates all military considerations in all nations. Today, people seem to dread the trace amounts of radiation from a civilian nuclear power plant (fission), while obvious to the national extermination danger from a single weapon detonation. One high level H bomb explosion over the central US is judged to destroy all electronics, fry all chips, and reduce our existence to the early 19 th century. It would mean death for tens of millions.
It is dangerous to be ignorant of history, and dual use technologies.
It is so good, informational and inspiring to read what you World War II history buffs, or scholars, have to say about what was taking place. I have been aware of what some of you have written, but you have provided much information that is new to me. Thanks a lot, and keep it up! I love it! Do any of you have much to write about the Korean War? That was the one I was in.
The policy conflict between Gen. D. MacArthur and President Truman/ the US military high command, on the use of the A bomb and where it would be used led to his dismissal as Allied Commander. It is summarized in MacArthur’s statement, “In war, there is no substitute for victory.” He wanted to expand the Korean conflict into China, using nuclear weapons, with a steely eye on Russia. America had the bombs and delivery systems, but that would be WWIII, following the exhausting struggle against the Axis powers. President Truman fired him, basically because he would not follow orders, hold Korea to a “Police Action”.
America has never resolved this policy question: how do we use fission, for peace, or war. The conundrum currently involves our nuclear power plants, Iran’s weapon development, and N. Korea’s delivery system. World history changed today with that launch.
My uncle was a merchant mariner during WWII. Took until the 70′s before he realized why his ship transported a load of black Brazilian beach sand to the United States in the middle of a war. Lot’s of mysterious things went on during the war that left people not in the know befuddled.
Well, you are mystified by the German invasion of Russia because you believe that America entered WWII in December of 1941. America had one foot in the war when the attack at Pearl Harbor happened. Roosevelt, the body politic of D.C., and American capital and industry, entered the war on March 11, 1941 with the enactment of Lend-Lease.
Look back at the argument in Congress against Lend-Lease. The argument was that Lend-Lease would be an act of war. The Germans saw Lend-Lease as such and recognized that Germany’s only hope of survival was to take out the Soviets; and because the Germans believed that Roosevelt was acting at the behest and on the behalf of jews… well, you know the rest of the story.
Please also see:
via Google “Neutrality Act Of 1939″.
“The Neutrality Acts were passed by the United States Congress in the 1930s, in response to the growing turmoil in Europe and Asia that eventually led to World War II. They were spurred by the growth in isolationism and non-interventionism in the US following its costly involvement in World War I, and sought to ensure that the US would not become entangled again in foreign conflicts.”
Personally, as one whose father was a U.S. Army Surgeon in France during WWII, I grew up thinking that staying out of War was a pretty good idea, but of course wasn’t aware that that was called “Isolationism” and was puzzled why Charles Lindbergh was so reviled.
Continuing into December of 2012, I think it’s an excellent idea right now, considering the bickering and continual anti-Americanism floating to the surface from time to time; truncated attention spans now have seemingly deleted most American efforts on behalf of others since…..1917.
Our guerrilla warfare against our current Muslim enemy would seem from my armchair to be better fought without our massed troops and those required endless pipelines spread all over that sponge-like Asian continent.
Euro-Asia absorbed the Nazis, East/South East Asia has absorbed too many American lives, look now at the apparent impasse in Central/West Asia.
I say it’s past time to re-assert “America First”. We’ve contributed vast amounts of our blood and treasure, again since 1917, for……present day anti-Americanism.
As I understand it, Molotov really jolted the Nazis soon after the non-aggression pact between the two countries was signed. Basically the Soviets declared Rumania to be in their sphere of influence and moved troops to the region. Hitler regarded the Polesti oil fields as crucial to his war machine and so Molotov’s declaration added a note of urgency to a possible German invasion to the East. Since the invasion apparently caught Stalin by total surprise, it seems unlikely he and Molotov were aware of the potential impacts of their power grab. I guess you could draw some sort of parallel of the US moves to deny oil to the Japanese. I am incredulous that in both instances that those nations that became a threat to vital war materials for such aggressive regimes did not put their guard up and keep it up to avoid unpleasantness and needless losses.
You’re the historian, but I’m confused about theb it about the carrier fleet. Isn’t the reason the US was able to fight because the Japanese missed several carriers, that were out to sea? And did the Jappanses really realize that carriers were now much more important than battleships?
Both the Japanese and the British (see “Battle of Taranto”) realized the offensive potential of the aircraft carrier. However, only the Japanese subscribed to the use of massed carriers operating in concert. This was because the Japanese naval commander, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, truly believed in the power of naval aviation. Both the British and American navies, however, were controlled by the “gun club”; admirals who still believed in the battleship.
The Americans were incredibly lucky at Pearl Harbor. The three carriers assigned to the Pacific fleet were away from Pearl on December 7th; Yorktown was on the West Coast undergoing repair, while Lexington and Enterprise were engaged in ferrying aircraft to the Pacific outposts at Midawy and Wake. The destruction of the battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor forced the gun club admirals to rely on the carriers to prosecute the war – there were simply no other major ships available. Note that at the first three major American operations of the war – the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, the Battle of the Coral Sea, and the historic Battle of Midway – no battleships were involved. Not that it would have made any difference. In none of the three battles did the opposing forces come within visual or gun range of each other; the battleships’ big guns would have been useless.
Three other factors figured heavily into the Japanese defeat in the Pacific:
1. The Japanese industrial capacity was insufficient to build new ships and/or replace combat losses effectively due to a lack of capacity and raw materials. During the entire war, Japan fielded only something like twenty carriers, while the United States built around 150 (of all types). One shipyard alone – Bethlehem in Quincy, Massachusetts – built more carriers than the entire country of Japan.
2. The loss of four carriers and their experienced pilots at Midway left the Japanese at a disadvantage both quantitatively and qualitatively.
3. The Japanese tended to leave pilots in combat until they were killed, replaced by comparatively inexperienced personnel coming out of training. The Americans, by contrast, rotated pilots out of combat for rest and retraining. In addition, experienced pilots would be brought back to the continental United States to train new pilots. Further, Japanese pilot-trainees suffered two other disadvantages:
A. Japan did not have an active civil aviation culture. As a result, most Japanese pilot trainees had no prior experience with aviation. In contrast, many American pilot trainees had prior experience as light aircraft pilots.
B. Japan suffered a lack of raw materials, most notably fuel, which restricted the flight hours of their trainees. Many Japanese replacement pilots joined the fleet with as few as 100 hours (or less) at the controls. American pilots generally had 500 or more hours of flight time before they went into action.
As a result, American replacements were better trained and generally had more flight experience than their Japanese counterparts.
Correstion to the above: strike “Yorktown”, replace with “Saratoga”.
Luck had nothing to do with the fact that US carriers were safely at sea when the Japs struck Pearl Harbor. Neither luck nor brilliant strategy had anything to do with the critical US naval victory at Midway, and the fact that we did not fall for the fake Jap attack and token landings in the Aleutian Islands.
These great US naval victories were due solely to the US having broken the Jap codes at least a year or more BEFORE Pearl Harbor. We knew what the Jap fleet was going to do, and we decided the only way for the US Navy to survive was to keep our surface ships away from as much of it as possible. US strategy was to hit Jap surface warships only with US airpower, mainly because that was the only important weapon we had for the first half of the Pacific War. And because the Jap heavy battle fleet was just so damn good.
This is also the reason the US never engaged in an all-out slugfest between Jap and US battleships during the entire war. At the beginning of the war, Jap battleships were grossly superior to US battleships, and if the US battle fleet at Pearl had been alerted and met the Jap battlefleet in deep water, the entire US battle fleet almost certainly would have been sunk – in deep water with total loss of life, instead of being sunk at Pearl in shallow water with minimal loss of life. In fact if the Arizona had not suffered that one catastrophic hit, US loss of life at Pearl would have been insignificant – except of course for those who actually died.
Throughout the entire course of the Pacific War, the Japs always wanted a “decisive battle” between battleships, but the US did not because we knew the Jap battleships were at least as good – if not better than even our newest ships, and when Jap battleships approached, US battleships usually headed in the opposite direction. The few times the US Navy heavy cruisers slugged it out with Jap heavy warships, the Japs usually won.
You are right in saying that when US battleship-admirals saw what Jap airpower did to our battleships, and to British battleships at the start of the war, even the most ardent battleship-admiral had to admit the era of the battleship was over. Consequently, even those huge & powerful US Iowa-class battleships spent the entire war providing only shore-bombardment artillery support.
“This is also the reason the US never engaged in an all-out slugfest between Jap and US battleships during the entire war.”
Uhh…
The Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (Nov ’42) – Japanese battleship Kirishima vs. U.S. battleships Washington and South Dakota
The Battle of Surigao Strait (Oct ’44) – Japanese battleships Yamashio and Fuso vs. U.S. battleships West Virginia, Maryland, Mississippi, Tennessee, California and Pennsylvania
We can play the conspiracy theory game, but while I think US code breakers had alerted the Navy that there might be a Japanese attack the where and when were unknown, the location of the Japanese fleet was unknown, and, I beleive, the fact that the carriers had sortied from Pearl Harbor was pure luck or divine intervention, depending on your worldview.
With the losses of battleships in the Pearl Harbor attack, the US simply didn’t have many battleships available early in the war, a couple of North Carolinas and a couple of South Dakotas in the Pacific in ’42, and even though I sure as Hell wouldn’t have wanted to be in one of them, US cruisers and destroyers as well as our few battleships once they were brought to the western Pacific weren’t reticent to mix it up with Japanese battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Admittedly the Japanese had much better night gunnery and much better torpedos early on. It was mid-war before the US had a reliable torpedo and also by mid-war the US radar fire control was much superior to the Japanese optical fire control. That said, USS Washington sank IJN Kirishima with gunfire off Guadalcanal. The Iowas weren’t even available until ’44 by which time the IJN was a mere shadow of its former self though the Yamatos still survived – awhile. The superior fire control alone would have made any of the South Dakotas or Iowas more than a match for any IJN battleship, even the “super ships” Yamato and Mushashi.
I was aboard USS Missouri in Pearl Harbor a few years ago and noticed a gaggle of middle-aged Japanese men having an animated conversation near the A Turret. I don’t speak Japanese but I know the names of most of the US and IJN’s capital ships. It was obviously a discussion of whether an Iowa Class could take a Yamato Class. We never got to find out but my money would have been on the Iowa.
The codebreakers were good, but they didn’t have the material to tell them about Pearl Harbor. The entire operation was carried out in radio silence. No signals, no codes.
On 6 Dec 1941 there was a clue that something big was going to go down the next day. The Japanese diplomatic code (Purple) had been broken, and the Washington embassy was sent the declaration of hostility (or whatever it was called) to be presented the next morning, along with instructions to destroy codes and cipher material. This was decrypted by US cryptanalysts but, for unknown reasons, its significance was not understood or conveyed to the right people. IIRC, Cordell Hull had a copy in his briefcase when it was presented to him the next day by the Japanese ambassador. A scheduling snafu caused the message to be delivered after the attack had started, thus setting the stage for the “day of infamy.”
Rusty Bill makes some good points. While Britain did have aircraft carriers building before WW2, the idea behind them was as support for the battleships. However, the I-class vessels were also designed to withstand heavy attack – armoured flight decks and 16 4.5″ HA/LA guns. This meant a reduced complement of aircraft.
Another drawback in UK shipboard aviation theory was the insistence on carrier planes having to have a navigator on board, which added weight and led to loss of performance. As far as I am aware, neither US nor IJN aircraft were so required to have such a crewmember.
Add to that the seemingly ingrained prejudice against radial engines; the Fleet Air Arm wanted the Fairey Fulmar to be radial-engined(presumably with a Bristol Hercules engine), but instead had a Roll-Royce Merlin infliced on them. Brilliant as this engine was(look what pappened to the Morth American P51 after it was refitted with a Merlin!) this excessive reliance on one type of engine did much to reduce the effectiveness of the FAA. By contrast, as far as I observe, not one shipboard plane of either the USN or IJN had liquid-cooled engines; all had radial engines, and were none the worse for it. Sad that was, for besides the Hercules there was the even more powerful Centaurus, which, alas, never saw WW2 service.
Yet there was a positive side. The armoured decks of the I-class carriers helped save the “Illustrious” from destruction in 1941 – she took hits from at least four armour-piercing 1,000 lb bombs; when British ships took part as Task Force 57 in the invasion of Okinawa the Japanese kamikaze attacks made nothing like the impression they did on their US counterparts.
As you say, the British considered carriers to be, in large part, support for the battle line. As a result, they were expected to stay with the battleships and cruisers even during gunfire combat; this is why they were so heavily armed and armored.
Another factor reducing the size of the British carrier’s air wing was the fact that all aircraft were required to be parked in the hangar deck. The British did not use the “deck park” like the Americans and the Japanese.
Not entirely true.
The original Japanese plans for the Pearl Harbor attack had included the option for a second strike against the carriers, if the first strike had failed.
But the Japanese admiral (forgot his name) who led the attack force chickened out and didn’t wait long enough to locate the American carriers and launch that second strike.
Partly that’s due to the Japanese misunderstanding of America. The Japanese assumed that once the Americans had been dealt a crippling blow (and the first strike at Pearl Harbor was pretty crippling), America would look for a negotiated settlement. Meanwhile the Japanese feared a counterattack from U.S. carriers could come at any time.
Nagumo. Chuichi Nagumo was the Admiral.
And btw, absent American carriers or not, Nagumo messed up badly by not bombing the oil storage facilities at Pearl. Knocking those out might have forced the Pacific Fleet back to San Diego.
Actually, oil storage is (relatively) easy to replace – anchored tankers. Where the Japanese really screwed up was in failing to hit the ship maintenance and repair facilities and the sub base. That would have definitely crippled Pearl as a forward base.
I add to Rusty Bill’s knowledge and judgment.
The Japanese fought US warships, months after Pearl Harbor,which they had thought were destroyed, due to the miracles performed in the ignored repair facilities. However, their primary tactical error was to ignore the power plants. Fuel tanks are spectacular when hit, but easy to replace. Replacing a 500 ton main transformer, or a destroyed turbine-generator might take years to replace. And without juice, a repair facility is reduced to hammers and files.
Kill a grid and you kill an industrial society, then and now.
And yet, as Herman Wouk points out at the end of his fictional account The Winds of War, they waited several hours for the sun to come up at Clark’s Field, and still caught the Army Air Corps sitting in the field. Perhaps the carriers would have been different. (Does anyone know if they heard about Pearl Harbor at the time and launched their planes?)
P.S I go for Divine Intervention; you blieeve what you like. Same for 48, 56, 67, and 73 here in Israel.
It has always been interesting to me that General Short and Admiral Kimmel were canned after the surprise attack; but MacArthur, who lost his whole air fleet the next day, was promoted…
I believe in Divine Intervention, but acknowledge it is above my pay grade.
One aspect of Pearl Harbor stays with me. I am a distant family member of the lowly boss of a new flanged radar station, which detected the incoming Japanese air armada. The technology had been largely ignored by the brass, but the inevitable post-mortems thundered in the high command,” You mean to tell me that we saw these attacking planes with whatyamacallit, radar? We can see at great distances!! I order radar in every out house by tomorrow night!!!”
His career, and the weight of American technology quickly advanced our deployed detection and weapons vectoring far beyond other combatants. It led to such unique capabilities such as the proximity fuse, a force multiplier that effectively made our military many times more powerful.
The down payment of blood at Pearl paid,a lot, for total victory. I believe.
Nagumo did order a second strike – which was carried out. He did not order a third strike. The IJN lost one plane from the first strike, and, IIRC, 35 from the second. The attack on Pearl from the 1st and 2nd strikes were as successful as the IJN had hoped, but the aircraft losses from a third strike could have made it much more expensive for little gain. Remember also that the IJN did not realize how quickly the navy could repair ships: at the battle of the Coral Sea, Yorktown was badly damaged but restored to operability in 3 days, and so could take part at Midway, whereas IJN Shokaku, less damaged than Yorktown at the battle of the Coral Sea, was not returned to opeartions for months.
So, at the time, Admiral Nagumo’s decision to stop after two strikes looked good. It turned out to be not good enough.
Confederate Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest is credited with the observation that battles are won by whoever gets there “firstest with the mostest.” That worked for Japan and Germany early on, but they couldn’t sustain the “mostest” part. They were both overwhelmed by the industrial might of the U.S. which produced the “mostest” stuff in the shortest period of time that the world has ever seen. Could we do it again? probably not.
Interestingly and ironically given events of today, that prodigious feat of war production in the US was almost all done by union labor, in union shops (there were no right to work states between passage of the NLRA in ’35 and Taft-Hartley in ’48) under contracts that were essentially what we’d today call “project labor agreements.” Labor agreements for war production were supervised by the War Labor Board and almost all mandated grievance arbitration and prohibited strikes during the contract period.
If you recall that scene the day after D-day in “Saving Private Ryan” where the view is from the ridge above the beach out to sea and there are ships, vehicles, men, and materiel from horizon to horizon, the ONLY things in that scene, and it is a reenactment of an actual photograph, that existed on December 7, 1941, were a couple of WWI battleships in the bombardment fleet and the men themselves who were mostly in high school in ’41.
How the US went to a war economy, and the people involved is discussed in the book, Freedom’s Forge. Union labor contributed to the domestic production effort as Art says. Unions were not always cooperative, the book mentions various strikes and labor actions, although that is not the book’s focus.
That lack of cooperation, increasing radicalism and communist sympathies, and, especially, bad behavior immediately after the War led to the “Had Enough” Republican campaign and the Taft-Hartley Amendments to the National Labor Relations Act which sought to rein in union abuses and corruption an in section 8A (I think) created the ability of a state to prohibit compulsory membership, the “right to work” notion. Old union goons still get teary-eyed lamenting the passage of Taft-Hartley and you can tell immediately if someone’s background is union or management. Taft-Hartley renamed the Act as “The Labor-Management Relations Act; management types will refer to it as the LMRA, but a union guy who knows his history will never, ever refer to it as anything but the National Labor Relations Act, its name before the hated Taft-Hartley Amendment.
Interesting. When I lived in the south I learned that the phrase “the Civil War” is not used by all. Alternatives are “The War Between the States,” and, not as common, “The War of Northern Aggression.”
Take this latest perspective of yours and do an “overlay” of what is happening today with our neo-Marxist, muslim loving, Jew hating, anti-capitalist metrosexual dictator Obama-Mao running the show here in America, while other nations go about their self interests.
Is there not a pattern where others may wish to “make a grab” at things they desire, thinking others won’t stop them? Enter a grand, modern war…
Then again, what happens after the US political leadership allows inflation to take it’s course when our economic problems still won’t be changed for the better?
“Hot potato” then becomes the game of choice…which could mean WAR!
Place your bets gentlemen…and ladies too!
Oh…lest I forget: Obama our true Dictator in chief is evil for the United States. Watching all my fellow citizens, a majority who voted for this little man, kneel before his image makes me sick. They will follow him and lead us others way beyond a fiscal cliff, into the valley of the shadow of death I fear.
So, let’s hope that our dear leader follows in the footsteps of his true and late father, that communist who returned to Kenya and died early. In other words, let this play which Shakespeare would understand play out sooner, rather than later.
I don’t know the end, but I think it will be “dreams of his father redux” for early retirement due to excessive decisions which Americans finally realized were designed to cripple the USA before this know it all!
Tacitus…
The timing is a little off. Army Group Center seemed on the verge of taking Moscow in October 1941, not December. By the time of Pearl Harbor, Army Group Center seemed on the verge of collapse, and was saved only by Stalin’s incompetence.
One of the reasons Japan didn’t want to take on the Soviet Union
was because Stalin sent Zhukov, one of his best generals, to the
Soviet Far East to counter Japanese military action in Mongolia.
Zhukov was successful in routing the Japanese on several occasions
and left them bloodied and reluctant to fight again.
The history of the Korea split and the 38th parallel is more complex than depicted, even granting the limited space the author had to work with.
IIRC, By 1945, Americans were shocked by our losses and by the physical expense of the war. After the end of open hostilities, pressure was on to shut everything down and bring our people home. Internationally, there were growing diplomatic conflicts between the allies. One of which led to the Cold War.
In Korea, after the end of hostilities with China and the North Koreans…the Russians were coming.The Russian bear had taken a mauling during the war, and they were out to make sure another such mauling wouldn’t ever happen to them again.
The final call on the 38th parallel ended up in the hands of a colonel, who’d been studying all of the interlating issues for some time.
How do we stop the Russians, and where do we put the line of demarcation?
The acknowleged expert, and being ‘in country’ and on the scene, he had half an hour to make a decision and pass it up the chain of command.
He was a shirt-tail relative of mine.
Colonel, later General, C. H. Bonesteel III.
This is about how the 38th was selected in 1945 at the end of World War II, not why the UN forces did not push on up to the narrow neck of Korea in 1951.
Wiki, even…
“On 10 August 1945, with the 15 August Japanese surrender near, the Americans doubted whether the Soviets would honor their part of the Joint Commission, the US-sponsored Korean occupation agreement. A month earlier, Colonel Dean Rusk and Colonel Charles H. Bonesteel III divided the Korean peninsula at the 38th parallel after hurriedly deciding that the US Korean Zone of Occupation had to have a minimum of two ports.
Sounds like the end of WWII, to me.
Even that much is a synopsis. …’cause the Russians were, literally, on their way.
Very nice job. I’d add a couple of things:
1. The Japanese navy, having actually studied the question, was much less optimistic about war with the U.S. than the army was. Unfortunately, the army dominated the government and forced the issue. The navy came up with the Pearl Harbor plan because they believed it was essential to score a decisive victory at the outset; in a long war, U.S. industrial capacity would inevitably win.
2. The entry of China into Korea didn’t just shape U.S. strategy in that war; it also, in my opinion, was a major factor during the Vietnam conflict. American planners assumed that a full-on invasion of North Vietnam would provoke a Chinese intervention, and therefore avoided what would otherwise have been an obvious alternative strategy.
See Alan D. Zimm:Pearl Harbor 2011 for a revisionist version of Dec7 based on the discrediting of Fuchida mitsui by Japanese historians, finally noticed by American students of the subject. Also, Parshall and Tully: Shattered Sword, a view of Midway that corrects Fuchida’s merectricious book: The Battle That Doomed Japan. For the origins of the Korean War, see John Lewis: Uncertain Partners. Lewis is professor Emeretris of china studies at Stanford. It was written during that brief interval of revelations at the beginning of the ’90s and is based on information provided by Yeltsin’s people and by the Chinese government. There was much opposition to Mao’s decision to intervene.
Your response;”The Japanese did not see it as foolish at all.” is more than a little shallow. Much blood was spilt to obtain the Imperial Japanese Navy’s compliance. These, of course, were the best and the brightest, with an understanding that the US Navy would not be the push-over the Army believed.
Two comments by Isoroku Yamamoto indicate just how foolhardy the war was considered by the Imperial Japanese Navy’s high command.
First, “Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it would not be enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians (who speak so lightly of a Japanese-American war) have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices.”
Second, ” We can successfully combat the US Navy for six months. If the war continues our prospects of success will diminish.”
Those who had first hand knowledge of the US, its capacity and people were considerably less optimistic than Tojo and his group. Murder carried the decision!
The split between the forerunners of today’s ruling elite (Democrats and New Deal Republicans) and the public were really sharpened by Korea.
Many, many Americans belong to what Walter Mead calls the Jacksonian camp: Be slow to go to war, but when you do, you use every weapon you have with utmost ferocity, and don’t stop until the enemy’s country, economy, and society have been blown to rubble and thoroughly bounced. Unconditional surrender is demanded and gotten. At which point, you go home, perhaps after a short occupation to make sure the troublemakers from the former regime are gone.
This approach works for approaching 70 years and counting, at least in the cases of Germany and Japan. (Italy, seeing where things were headed, wisely capitulated early.)
I can’t help but think that if used more often, this approach to waging war — all out or nothing — would greatly reduce America’s subsequent international problems. Korea makes a good example of why. And Vietnam was a second lesson in why you should never wage a limited war.
(…Just to note that Robert-of-22 isn’t the same as Robert-of-21!)
Here’s a reference to Mead’s Jacksonian Tradition essay:
http://denbeste.nu/external/Mead01.html
(Cited thus because it’s easier to find than digging down into the original site.)
I agree with you about the war in Vietnam. The United States fought (?) the war according to principles of Hubert Humphrey – i.e., pacifism. During the 1964 presidential election, the Republican candidate Barry Goldwater called for mining Haiphong harbor, a good military tactic. President Lyndon Johnson denounced him as a “war-monger,” this during what was supposed to be a war! President Johnson’s strategy was to “send signals,” not to wage war. North Vietnam was a small country and should have been easy to defeat – as President Richard Nixon did later.
The so-called “anti-war” movement was organized by Communists, as David Horowitz recounts in his memoirs. Such people gave not a fig for the people of Vietnam – I know some – who claim that President Eisenhower in 1956 said that Ho Chi Minh would have won the election in 1956 – was this Communist propaganda by the KGB agent I. F. Stone? – when hundreds of thousands of people in North Vietnam actually FLED to the South to escape the Communists. The Congress of the United States in 1965, under the influence of the “anti-war” Communist lie, betrayed South Vietnam by refusing to give it the military aid promised by President Richard Nixon. Hence the boat-people refugees from Vietnam, so that the United States and Canada now have many Vietnamese.
By the 1960s, the goal was to avoid escalation to a nuclear exchange.
There were Russians on those ships and offloading those supplies in Haiphong Harbor. Had we killed a whole bunch of Russians and sank some Russian ships, who knows how that would have ended up.
Why assume the Soviets would have been less afraid of a full strategic nuclear exchange than the Americans? That was commonly assumed during the Cold War, when we though the Soviets were cold-blooded communist robots, but we need not sink to that level of caricature now.
Indeed, there is historical evidence that Moscow valued the lives of Red Army soldiers less than Washington valued the lives of GIs — consider the carnage at Chernobyl. For all we know, the USSR might well have backed down from an aggressive American stand in Korea, for fear of what a full-scale nuclear war would do to them.
The Soviets sent fighters to engage our Air Force in Korea and didn’t bat an eye when they shot down U.S. reconnaissance aircraft over international waters. They also held on to some of our servicemen who fell into their hands during WWII and Korea and killed some of those. I’d be surprised if they returned any of our guys at all but perhaps some got out.
We tiptoed around the idea of doing anything mean to the Soviets lest we “provoke” them. Their outrages continued with the assassination of Maj. Nicholson while acting as an observer in E. Germany, and doubtless there were many other such.
The Soviets correctly assumed our political leaders would not react to THEIR provocations. It seems never to have occurred to our presidents to make our enemies worry about provoking US.
Bush ’43 had the right idea about swift retribution and had the Iranians and Libyans quaking in their boots for fear we would decide to punish them as well. Thus, Afghanistan and Iraq were for a brief moment educational on the point of American power and patience but it all was for nothing once Bush decided to make it into a ridiculous, deadly, costly, and futile exercise in “nation building.”
You mean the US aid in 1975 was not forthcoming. By that time south Viet-Nam had but collapsed on its own. The Communist were not even planning to take the country that year, they give it a slight push and the whole army run away!
That said I have always maintained that if you took ten people off the street and trained them for a day nine of them would have been able to run that war better than the US did for 10 years.
A significant number of ARVN units fought until they were out of ammunition. At that point, running away or surrender are your two options. Running away gave a better chance of avoiding re-education camps. Correct me if wrong, but I don’t recall any ARVN units actually surrendering at the end. For the most part, they dissolved in place.
As regards Vietnam -
“Indochina is devoid of decisive military objectives and the allocation of more than token US armed forces in Indochina would be a serious diversion of limited US capabilities” (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 26 May 1954).
“The United States could not have prevented the forcible reunification of Vietnam under communist auspices at a morally, materially, and strategically acceptable price.” (The US Army War College Quarterly, Winter 1996-97).
See “Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam” by H.R. McMaster.
Congress basically gave authorization for the Vietnam War with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a resolution based on ‘events’, part of which were highly exaggerated and part of which never happened. 50,000 more Americans then went on to die.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are examples of why you must be very discerning about when you wage unlimited war. Queen’s Gambit in chess is one thing, Queen’s Gambit in Total Global Thermonuclear War is another.
And, no, I’m not naive; I know the US grossly overestimated the destructive capabilities of the USSR, but that overestimation would have been inconsequential had you been under one of their 100 Megaton missiles that actually worked. I spent most of the late ’70s and the first half of the ’80s within 10 miles of Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. I knew that I was going to be among the first at the scene of the nuclear war. It really isn’t a good feeling when you’re awakened at three in the morning by the sound of a flight of F-4s screaming out of Elmendorf on burners and shaking half the town doing so. You don’t know if it is just some Colonel wanting some flight pay, a Soviet Bear playing peek-a-boo out in the Arctic Ocean, or the end of the World.
Very nice, VDH, plus some interesting notes by others in the comment section.
One might also add a note on Vietnam and what the strategic view was on both sides about initiating that war, in the shadow still of WWII and certainly of Korea, and also under the much darker shadow of a nuclear WWIII between the US, NATO and USSR.
I disagree with Been There’s notion of the superiority of Jap batleships over ours for at least two related reasons; radar and advanced fire control systems. There was one battleship battle between us and them late in the war and our superior fire control systems saw them whupped good. Add to that our great destroyer screens around our capital ships and eventually proximity fuzes on at least our 5″38 guns which was the main armament on our tin cans (and 20 of them in twin gun turrets on our fast battleships) and I can see few bases for the notion of any inherent Jap technical advantage.
Relevant to other comments on Jap use of carriers is the key role the British navy played in helping the Japanese design their first carriers, how to successfully take off and land on the things and how to use single engine planes for effective bombing and torpedoes. That happened in the ’20s but several British naval aviators trained them into the ’30s and one traitorous “Lord” flag officer gave them top secret RN documents pertaining mostly to carrier operation right up to and even three weeks after Pearl Harbor. He personally trained the brilliant Yamamoto.
Can you cite a reference for this, please? I’m at least familiar in passing with most of the other information in these comments. I had never heard of this before. Thank you very much.
Bob, the US surface fleet as it existed at Pearl was so utterly obsolete that it would have had no chance in a decisive deep water battle against the Japs. However 3 years later the US fleet was far superior in numbers, technology and firepower.
The powerful new US battleship North Carolina (commissioned April 1941) was the first US battleship to have been built since 1923, but she was soon joined by 5 more new battleships, each carrying nine 16-inch main guns & enhanced armor protection: Washington (May 41), South Dakota (Mar 42), Indiana (Apr 42), Massachusetts (Aug 42), & Alabama (Aug 42). Following these were 4 more even larger US battleships with further enhanced armor: Iowa (Feb 43), New Jersey (May 43), Wisconsin (Apr 44), & Missouri (June 44). The USS Missouri was the final US battleship ever built, since a further order for 5 even larger battleships, with twelve 16-inch main guns, will be cancelled as it became obvious that they would not be needed against either Germany or Japan, & that the day of the battleship had ended.
I’m not sure there’s any one outstanding reason. Early in the Pacific War, the Japanese Navy did quite well, inflicting significant defeats on us on several occasions.
At the outset, they were ahead in several key weapons. For example, it took us forever to find and fix the problem with torpedo detonators, and even then the Japanese Long Lance remained a far superior torpedo.
But as the war continued, our ability to repair and replace warships (and ground- and air-materiel as well), plus the development of new types of ships (Liberty ships, escort carriers, etc.) and airplanes simply outran Japan’s ability to do so.
The Zero was great — in 1941. It remained great through 1942 perhaps, but thereafter it was increasingly overwhelmed and overmatched by new US aircraft. (And tactics: the Thach weave, for example.)
In all fields, the Pacific War shows what happens when a First World power goes against a Second World power equipped with some top-notch elements. In essence, Japan simply couldn’t produce a “second bench” to continue the fight once the first benchers had been killed.
Also, as Ronald Spector (I think) has noted, Japan’s strategy was fundamentally self-contradictory. They wanted to hold a “decisive battle” with the US in the western Pacific, believing that they could inflict unacceptable losses on our navy, and get either an outright capitulation or a favorable (for Japan) negotiatiated result.
But their very idea of a decisive battle embodies strategic passivity: to maintain the home advantage, it required them to hold the main force of their ships in near-Japan waters, waiting for us to attack them. (Truk was as far east as they dared go.) Yet at the same time that this decisive-battle idea was governing their overall war strategy, they had pushed out an immense perimeter into the Pacific Ocean and even into the Indian Ocean.
Such a front line could only be hard to hold, and defending it must require the continuing use of just those ships and forces which need to be held back for the coming decisive battle. This was inevitable: defending Guadalcanal or Rabaul (say) has to be done in the vicnity of those places and thus far from home waters.
How much of this Yamamoto recognized, and at what point he did, is unknown to me. But it’s clear that by misunderstanding the national character of the United States, Japan committed itself at Pearl Harbor to a battle it could never win.
My biggest fear today is that other powers are also misjudging our character, and we’ll likely have to take action. I just hope that if we do, we’ll have the political resolve to use overwhelming power right from the outset. In this light (and many others), I think Obama’s about the worst president in the country’s history.
Agree about Obama, but he is a symptom of something worse, a rot in the electorate.
All America’s enemies must have loved the outcome of the 2008 and 2012 elections.
Maybe you are not aware, but Jap is a slur.
442 Regimental Combat Team would have been offended if you used that term.
Not my usage and not my posting, but — it is authentic for the period, which is one of the points VDH is making.
And moreover, the discussion here will be far more interesting and informative if nobody stages a Theater of Sensitivity, and tries to enforce some cockmamie notion of political correctness.
Just keep in mind that they (the Japanese) had already decided (mid-1945) to kill all the prisoners of war in their hands if we had invaded. Given that, I can overlook a few terminological insensitivities by today’s standards.
I am with you on this, Robert. Many Midwesterners of German origin were viewed with extreme suspicion as “Huns,” and had problems in the Army as a result – as was my maternal grandfather. Can anyone tell me whether the same thing happened in WW2 with German descendants being referred to as “Krauts”? I cannot testify from family history on that – my father was Anglo-Scotch-Irish, so did not have a Germanic name.
I don’t think anyone could have predicted that North Korea would degenerate into the weird, dangerous, intractable little nation it’s become.
Actually, Bugs, anyone who watches what Stalinist systems do could predict the situation perfectly well. That said, NoKo’s own wrinkle on the formula is the Kim Family Dynasty(tm).
But there are no important unknowns when it comes to predicting what communist/socialist/fascist regimes do to the people who live under them.
As I recall from William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, Hitler had to divert essential troops to the Balkans, and thereby delay the start of the invasion into Russia by about a month or so.
If the invasion had started as planned, the Russian winter probably wouldn’t have mattered.
If the Nazis had had another month of good enough weather, they likely would have taken Moscow. What a different world it would be if the USSR had been obliterated by the Nazis.
Too bad this didn’t happen!
Then, when the USA and her allies beat Hitler, eventually, ALL three of the totalitarian monsters would be kaput.
Of course, maybe Hitler’s German empire would have been impregnable, and we’d have had it in power over all of Europe as well as Russia, et al.
That is a pipedream! Had the USSR fallen, the only way the Allies would have defeated Hitler would have been if we had beaten him to developement and use of the atomic bomb. ALL the Western Allies never faced more than 15% of the Wehrmacht.
Some of the bad things of the Cold War might, just might, have been prevented had Roosevelt/Marshall/Eisenhower listened to Churchill and made a determined and early advance from the Adriatic into the Balkans and Austria; Hungary, Romania, Czechoslavkia, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia were just looking for somebody to surrender to. The Soviets got there first and fifty years of communist tyranny ensued. This is one area where I think Soviet/communist influence in the US government really made a difference because the US adamantly resisted any move that would have relieved southern and eastern Europe allowing all of the Balkans to fall to the Soviets and making keeping Austria and even Italy in the Western orbit a close run thing. The Brits had to actively campaign in Greece to keep it from falling to the communists and there was, and even remains, commmunist led strife, some of it leading to combat, long after the end of the war.
No one has mentioned an outstanding and very curious fact about Pearl Harbor. Yes the Japanese through that Nazis were about to finish off Moscow and with it the Soviet Union when they attacked. But the very day they attacked the Russians successfully counter-attacked and drove the Germans back. If the Japanese had a week to digest that news and concluded that the Germans would be tied down in Russia for a lot longer than they supposed would they have dared attack the US knowing Germany would not be able to cover their back?
BTW does anyone else consider the Battle of Moscow the real turning point of WW2? It was there Hitler found himself unable to win what looked like an easy victory.
Maybe, but it was still a close-run thing in ’42, at least until Paulus got invested in Stalingrad. I really think Stalingrad is a better candidate for “the end of the beginning” in Europe.
The “end of the beginning” in Europe took place in September of 1941, when the snow began to fall in Russia.
That is simply presentism of the worst sort. sure we can see it that way now, but at the time nobody did. The Germans had been thwarted, mostly by General Winter, before Moscow but they had heretofore been invincible. There was no reason to believe that they wouldn’t continue to be invincible in the Spring, which in fact they were until AG South split resulting in the 6th’s investment in Stalingrad. Stalingrad was the first real defeat in Europe; the end of the beginning.
To hear the British talk, it was El Alamein…
After the Communist Spring Offensive of 1951 and subsequent stabilization of the front around the 38th parallel, the US Army attempted two probing attacks at Bloody Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge. What they discovered was that the Chinese and North Koreans, armed with the latest Soviet weapons, were formidable defensive fighters. The end result of these two battles was 6,500 US casualties and zero tactical advantage gained.
It was at this point that the US military realized that attacking a line held by half a million well disciplined infantry with superior Soviet small arms would have resulted in a situation much like Okinawa .. times ten. And the initial reaction of the American public to the first two operations made it clear that public opinion wouldn’t stand for this. And this, as much as anything, forced the decision to go on the strategic defensive
The Japanese high command may have thought the US would be easy meat at Pearl Harbor, but Yamamoto thought otherwise. Yamamoto’s view did not prevail.
What a fantastic thread. Very thoughtful, interesting information and ideas… and I read the whole thing while on hold trying to get through to a government office. I have no insights not already given, but I think if this givernment had to mobilize to figh an actual meaningful war, we’d be doomed. They can’t even answer the damn phone!
As far as the nazi invasion of USSR goes, it makes sense to look into an alternative reasoning proposed by Suvorov, a former GRU officer. He speculated that Stalin was preparing a sneak attack on Germany (don’t forget that USSR had about 5:1 advantage in tanks and airplanes in 1941), and Hitler understood this, and attacked first.
Such alternate theories make for interesting conversation, but don’t hold much water. Stalin was warned of the German attack by spy Richard Sorge, but refused to accept Sorge’s information because he knew the Soviet Union was not ready to prepared to defend itself. Credible accounts of Stalin’s behavior in the weeks after the German invasion indicate that he believed all was lost and had little confidence in the Soviet Union’s military capabilities. He is reported to have disappeared from public view and was preparing to abandon Moscow. That is not the behavior of a man preparing to attack Germany. Being such a devious and treacherous individual himself, he probably could not comprehend the resolve of the average Soviet citizen to fight. Only after the Russians rallied and drove the Germans back from the edge of Moscow in late November and early December 41 did Stalin emerge as the indomitable hero of the Soviet Union, who would never abandon Moscow.
There were multiple sources of information all providing Stalin with more than enough intell than Russia was going to be attacked. Supposedly the British gave the Soviet Ambassador details German plans for the invasion.
Stalin was very paranoïd, and wouldn’t trust even his agents
What may be called the Suvorov Hypothesis – the 1941 Soviet Union Offensive Plan Theory – presented in Suvorov’s work “ICEBREAKER” is not just a “coctail party” piece. There are several Russian historians supporting this view. Icebreaker makes for much more than just an interesting “coctail party” conversation. I am very curious if Mr. Hanson knows this book.
Stalin had already grabbed part of Romania while Hitler was busy with France. I doubt that he wanted a direct confrontation with Hitler, but he certainly was willing to go after the other Eastern European countries. Hitler was right to fear the rising power of Stalin.
Theory and hypotheses are one thing, supporting it with the bulk of evidence is another. The Soviet Union’s armed forces were in a poor state in early 1941. Their vast stores of tanks and aircraft were obsolete and mostly useless. The new designs, T-34s and good combat aircraft were just being delivered and crews not yet properly trained. The Soviet performance in the winter war with Finland had been disastrous.
Stalin’s compliant behavior with regard to Germany was also an indicator that he knew the Soviet Union was weak. He was doing all he could to provide the Germans with what they wanted to keep them from attacking. Remember, the military had also been purged of much of its leadership just a few years earlier. Stalin may have eventually intended to attack, but not in 1941.
As it was, it took the Soviet Union about 2 years of absorbing huge losses to fully integrate their new weapons, which in many cases were the equal of German weapons and it also took that long for talented officers to learn modern warfare. June 22, 1944 was the date that it all came together and the unsung, but most talented staff officer Vasilevsky deserves huge credit.
Stalin had an iron grip on his nation and could afford to wait. Hitler was always in danger of being ousted by his generals. He had to go while his popularity was high due to his victories.
Ivan Bustoff
uh I think that Hitler had a charismatic power, none of his Nazis comrads would have thought and or dared to question it, except some expat military on the ground, but still difficult to plot in Germany all devoted to the Führer cult.
uh like you said Hitler was busy in france, not quite, he had won what he wanted in france, a friendly government, the army was dismentled, the Navy inoperative, he annexed the resting arms, planes, and manufactures were working for Germany’s needs.
What was worrying him it’s Britain, he’d like that Britain would haved opted for Neutrality after the Dunkirk retreat, but Churchill chose to carry on the war, everywhere it could be fought, If UK had stayed neutral, soon she would have been deprived of her ressources, UK wasn’t a auto subsisting country, it was a question of death and or life for a island to keep the sea lanes access.
Everything you write is contradicted in The Chief Culprit by Russian historian Viktor Suvorov. He makes a detailed accounting of Soviet vs. German arms and concludes the Soviets were vastly superior. He says that Stalin used Hitler as a pawn to clear the way for his own eventual conquest of Europe. But Stalin’s aggressive moves in 1940 tipped off Hitler to the likelihood of a Soviet attack, and made a preemptive attack by Hitler necessary in June 1941. Furthermore, Hitler’s early successes were due to the fact that he caught the Soviets in the midst of a clandestine buildup of forces in Poland when they were in an exceedingly vulnerable position; e.g., tanks still on train cars.
Stalin was warned of the German attack by spy Richard Sorge, but refused to accept Sorge’s information because he knew the Soviet Union was not ready to prepared to defend itself.
Actually, Stalin received plenty of mutually contradictory intelligence about the impending invasion, much of it German misinformation. Documents predicting that Germany would strike on some specific date in April or May, turning out to be false, cast doubt on later intelligence that correctly predicted the true date of the invasion. All that can be deduced from Stalin’s behavior — the unprompted official announcement of his peaceful intentions, the scrupulous adherence to German-Soviet economic treaties, the constant reiteration of his willingness to submit to any additional German demand — is that Stalin certainly did not want the Germans to strike first. But this circumstance says nothing about the merits and demerits of Suvorov’s thesis.
Credible accounts of Stalin’s behavior in the weeks after the German invasion indicate that he believed all was lost and had little confidence in the Soviet Union’s military capabilities.
But that was in light of the catastrophic defeat of the Red Army in the initial border battle. Such a defeat amounted to a shocking reversal of expectations for Stalin, which explains his nervous breakdown during that period. There’s still nothing here that contradicts Suvorov.
Being such a devious and treacherous individual himself, he probably could not comprehend the resolve of the average Soviet citizen to fight.
He comprehended such “resolve” perfectly, which is why he lost little time in ordering the establishment of blocking detachments (to shoot his own troops for making “unauthorized withdrawals”) and in threatening to execute the families of officers who should be taken captive.
Only after the Russians rallied and drove the Germans back from the edge of Moscow in late November and early December 41 did Stalin emerge as the indomitable hero of the Soviet Union, who would never abandon Moscow.
Not so. He had complete control of all aspects of the war after his brief nervous breakdown mentioned above. It is at least conceivable that, if not for Stalin’s actions, the Russians would have given up perhaps as early as mid-July.
For what it’s worth, I think Suvorov is probably wrong. But who knows?
Stalin, and most of the planet, thought that Hitler’s Balkan adventure would tie the German Army down in a long drawn out bloodletting.
If the campaign had turned into a morass, then a way would be clear to jump Berlin.
However, Stalin always operated wheels within wheels. (Like the boys in Tehran.)
In which case, his operational plans to invade Germany was, like Hitler’s winter invasions of France, merely a pretext to goad his generals into urgent action.
The fact that the Red Army was not ready to attack never slowed Stalin down from making war.
He overruled his staff all all times previous. Indeed, it took staggering calamities during the German invasion for Stalin to listen to anyone. He kept screwing the pooch right up through the Winter of 1943.
Astoundingly, Stalin admitted to Churchill the lowest point of his war was March 1943 — well after Stalingrad. The Germans had ripped a hole in his front — clean through — that exposed his critical rail link to the south from Moscow. He had no reserves to cork it up.
Fortunately, the weather changed, and mud immobilized the German panzer force. For four months the Soviets and Nazis stared each other down. Then Kursk.
Finally, the Anglo-American forces caused Italy to drop out of the war — and depose el Duce.
(Circa, September 8, 1943)
THIS was the turning point for a blow-out Soviet victory.
It’s a forbidden topic in Russia — but passes as common knowledge in Italy: The Italian Army in Russia simply laid down their weapons — overnight — and without notice to the German Army.
The Soviet Army simply walked forward — into a hole 80 miles wide — without firing a single shot.
Next stop: Kiev.
You’ll notice a total absence of battle maps for this period. It’s too painful to admit that the biggest Soviet advance of the war occurred directly as a result of British strategic thinking.
The Italians never were the spearhead of the Nazis Campains, most of them disagreed with the duce cooperation with the Nazis.
Seen them in Greece and in the Balkans, they weren’t the fierce troops
My high school political science had a relative in the Greek Army who fought the Italians. He told this story; it was a cold night and nobody on either side felt like fighting so his particular Greek unit and an Italian unit called a truce for the night and bedded down in a warm house for the evening.
I heard similar stories from someone who had a relative in the Italian forces. Roughly put, it was a complete mess.
“Japanese intelligence about American productive potential was about as limited as German knowledge of the Soviet Union.”
I doubt this. Yamamoto had been an attache in the US and well knew our capacity. He was hesitant to go to war with the US because he knew that if we chose to fight it would go badly for Japan.
Was it Yamamoto who said the best Japan could hope for would be to run around in the south Pacific for a year and half before US production destroyed Japan’s fighting capability?
Close…he said that for six months, he will run wild.
Ah so. The wise Mr. Hanson has written a parable for us disquised as a history lesson.
Let’s hope that his lessons about overreach in wartime apply equally to our own modern day dictator.
What an a-feakin’-mazing collection of commenters collected around VD Hanson in PJM. The brevity and concise explanation of Hanson’s writing just blew my mind- and then the expansion of it by commenters’ bits and pieces made it even better and more satisfying. Imagine reading this with comments placed in the narrative body, outline-style. That would be a fine learning tool.
Unlike Butpygmies who was felicitously trapped on hold by a government office while he read the whole thing, I was fighting to stop reading in order to make an appointment on time. I couldn’t quit til I read the whole thing. Now I’m late. When I get there I’m not gonna explain why. Can’t wait to get back home so I can find out what happens next! Thanks to all.
The “outline” feature showing comments attached to specific points in the narrative may work well with the Drunkblogging columns. Its a bit of a hassle to read the comments and then try to place them with the exact Stephen Green passage.
Yes, this post and the comments quite derailed my afternoon.
Excellent, excellent reading. Thanks to all.
I am my colleagues here who are old enough to have lived through these events of which we are discussing appreciate it when someone finds what we have to say interesting.
Your and Katherine’s notes are much better to hear than what a teenage bookstore checkout girl said to me a few months ago when she asked me about a book I was buying on the Cold War. She said she had heard about that in school and wanted to know if it came before or after the Civil War. I thought she was kidding and said it was a direct result of World War-2. Then she wanted to know who had fought who in World War-2, and who won. I told her, and then she said it did not really matter who won since it was so long ago.
Unfortunately, I am afraid in another decade or so none of us old guys will be around to tell the kids who won what war; and the way this country is headed, it probably won’t matter.
I share your views.
We dinosaurs can’t accommodate attention spans that don’t go beyond “….so yesterday..” and this new-think, immediate-”relevant” or….”not”.
That cliff that we’re being pushed towards, resisting, is all newly technological….if it ain’t like techno, man, it ain’t like nowhere, man. Un-cool, man.
Cursive writing no longer necessary….not many checks are going to need to be signed soon, Twittering, Tweeting, Texting…the “Three T’s” replacing our Three R’s. It’s all now so very….electro-mechnical-in-our-hands, man, wired-in-our-ears, man……blotting out all of the, like, irrelevant, man.
All of this is a much greater leap than merely going from the elegant 1620′s KJV Bible cadenced prose to Justin Bieber’s syrup [forgive me here, but that crassness seems to sum up the new "culture"], it’s all very dehumanized, techno, and abbreviated, man….explosive, flying objects in color….man.
I must demur…
1) The Japanese decision to strike at Pearl Harbor (as part of the larger ‘Strike South’) was based upon two key factors, the American embargo on oil and scrap metal (which threatened to essentially shut down the Japanese economy by mid/late 1942, and could only be replaced by seizing another source of these critical strategic materials), and the continued Japanese involvement in China and south-east asia. The Japanese disinclination to strike at Russia (the ‘Strike North’ option) was heavily influenced by their disastrous experience with the Red Army in 1939, which led to their interest in a non-aggression pact with the Soviets shortly thereafter. While the Army was less inclined to support a Pacific strategy (which diverted resources from their China project to their hated enemy….the Japanese Navy), they certainly weren’t interested in a war with the Russians after the drubbing they took at Zhukhov’s hands in 1939. Certainly by early 1941 (before Barbarossa), the Japanese were well on their way towards ‘pulling the trigger’ on an attack against hte US, the planning of which had been in the works since late 1940. Finally, the Japanese had a fairly clear idea of the economic capabilities of the US (Yamamoto, who had lived in the US in the 1920s, wrote eloquently about it’s vast warmaking capacity), but they believed that their warrior spirit (and technological superiority in aircraft, fighting ships, and weapons) would more than offset the American’s material advantages.
2)I am surprised that you ignore the role of ideology in Hitler’s decision to strike east. The destruction of the Soviet Union and its subjugation to the German nation was an essential part of Nazi ideology, and a cherished dream of Hitler’s. The war against Britain was a regrettable diversion (in Hitler’s eyes, and he repeatedly tried to end it) of resources from the much greater priority of destroying the Soviet Union and communism. He made no secret of this (any number of his generals wrote at length about this after the war), in fact only Stalin was blind enough to ignore this overt obsession.
3) Your comments regarding German weapon superiority are far off the mark. While the Me109 (at least the later models) was probably better than anything the Soviets had (certainly the pilots were!), they were badly outnumbered, and very limited in range. As for tanks, the Panzer IV (especially as it existed in mid-19411) was grossly inferior to the T-34s that were already in use, not to mention the KV-1s that were being deployed in the Leningrad military district. Further, the overwhelming majority of German tanks were the Panzer III and various Czech models (the 35 and 38t), which were unsuitable for the terrain, lightly armored, and badly undergunned. The German tanks did have excellent crews (diluted somewhat by Hitler’s decision to double the size of the Panzer force following the invasion of France the year before), and their use of radio was far advanced over the relatively primitive Red Army, but they were outnumbered 6:1, and were technically inadequate for the theatre. Finally you mention the 88mm FLAK/PAK guns….superb weapons, but once again, there were only a few of them. most of the German anti-tank weapons (the 20mm, 37mm, and 50mm guns that made up well over 90% of their inventory) were completely ineffective against even some of the lighter Soviet tanks, not to mention the T-34s and their heavier brethern. Soviet anti-tank weapons were more than adequate, by contrast, and their artillery (particularly their 130mm guns and after November of 1941, the katyusha) was far superior to anything the Germans could field. Hitler did believe that the superior training and leadership of the the German forces would prevail over Soviet material superiority (his famous comment to the squeamish High Command was “You need only kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down around you”), but events proved him to be utterly mistaken on this point.
Interestingly enough, in both cases the Japanese and Germans felt (incorrectly) that their percieved superiority in weapons technology, training, and leadership would prevail against their enemies numbers and ‘depth’. If I may be so presumptuous, I believe that this is a stronger point to make regarding lessons from these failed despots.
With great respect….
Curious that in the run-up to the war, both Germany and Japan failed to understand that a superiority in weaponry is not a forever thing. Moreover, while fighting spirit can work wonders on occasion tactically, it’s no substitute for sheer quantity — i.e., economic power — over the long run.
For example, the Sherman tank was considerably inferior to those the Germans were fielding — but we simply outbuilt them and kept sending more Shermans against them.
I think that on the ground and right up until the very end, no front-rank German unit had anything to fear from an equivalent front-rank Allied unit. A German late Mk. IV or Panther was better than any Allied tank, though only a little better than a T-34 or JS-1. A Tiger was in a league of its own and there weren’t many of them. A German platoon was better armed, better equipped, and better trained than an equivalent Allied platoon, though not always better led; the Allies had better tactical flexibility at the unit level.
The Allies had elite units that were just as good as anything that the Germans could throw at them, but fundamentally the Allies defeated the Germans with quantitative rather than qualitative superiority. The scary thing in the modern world is that the US has dedicated itself to qualitative superiority; we still have the best of most things, but we don’t have many of them and we’ve worn a Helluva lot of our stuff out in desert shitholes for no particularly good reason over the last few years.
Actually I would tend to rate the 1944 vintage Shermans as superior to the T34. It hasd a faster turret, a better designed fighting compartment allowed for a higher rate of fire a,nd was less tiring for the crew, its 76 mm long gun had superior armor penetration relmative to the T45′s 85 gun (I am not refereing neither to tha British 17 pounder nor to the medium 75 of the standard Sherman but to the American 76). the “debugged” 44 Shermans were less prone to catch fore than the T34 and due both to the technologies used (welded instead of rolled armor) and metal quality T34′a amor was prone to spalling: that is a hit who doesn’t penetrate armor can still send metal splinters who will wound or even kill the crew. The Sherman was also far more reliable.
The late-model PanzerIVs weren’t bad tanks, but they were clearly not better than the T-34s or KV (later JS) series that the Russians produced (those these tanks had huge manufacturing and design deficiencies that tipped the edge back to the Germans), and certainly not (as another poster points out) better than the 76mm Shermans. The Panthers and Tiger Is had stupendous reliability issues that undercut their technical superiority to the T-34/85s, but ultimate it was two things that gave the Germans the edge in armored warfare. Their use of radios (though the Americans bested them here in 1944/45), and their excellent tank crews (a result of training and doctrine). Unfortunately for them, these advantages eroded over time (casualties and their opponents learning)….
As far as infantry platoons, I must disagree with your assessment. The Germans certainly made better use of machineguns (their MG34s and MG42s were excellent weapons, and they developed an effective doctrine for their use), but their other small arms were grossly inferior to those of their opponents. The M-1 is well known, the Allies had better grenades, SMGs, and sniper weapons as well. The Germans certainly led in fielding effective infantry anti-tank systems later in the war, but the late war American Bazookas were at least equal to, and probably better than, the German Panzerfaust and Panzershreck. American doctrine was especially flexible, and while nobody is going to accuse the Russians of tactica brilliance, their urban combat tactics far outstripped those of the Germans. Finally, the Germans also faced serious erosion in manpower quality over time, as the casualties of war drained their manpower reserves and forced them to work with less promising material.
Read Gavin’s accounts…
Right to the end, the Bazooka was considered seriously inferior to the panzerfaust.
It’s purely a matter of size. The larger the face of the shaped charge warhead, the deeper the penetration.
The panzerfaust beat all in this regard. It’s range was not too hot, though. In 1945, only panzerfaust could defeat heavy German armor. Our guys swept up every battle for extra panzerfausts — and carried them back into Germany.
Bazooka came to be used — like crazy — as personal portable artillery — for such duties as reducing pillboxes and clearing out rooms during urban fighting. This was a use totally unforeseen during its development.
Today, every army expects to use rocket propelled grenades in such a fashion.
I believe that you may have missed my point.
The comment regarding the relative merits of the Bazooka vs the Panzerfaust and Panzershreck were made in the broader context of weapons in general, not simply which antitank weapons were best. The Panzerfaust was, for instance, not terribly useful against anything other than tanks, and even then, it was crippled by its very short range. Useful, absolutely (and an excellent design), but it was far less useful as a general weapon than as a special purpose one.
As for Gavin, remember that he is writing about what weapons were POPULAR. The Panzerfaust, designed for use by just about anyone, was of course more popular than the Bazooka, which was typically deployed in special purpose teams, and thus by it’s very nature far less accessible. The Panzershreck, which should be considered a more useful comparison, was not at all popular among the troops, as it was considered to have range issues and very poor reliability.
Don’t get me wrong, the Panzerfaust was a great weapon for some things, and if I had to face tanks (particularly in an urban environment or some forest hell like Hurtgen), it was an obvious favorite. But as an general purpose weapon, I’ll take the Bazooka, or better still, the post-war Super Bazooka.
The M-26 Pershing arrived just in time to refute your assertion that front line German armor held the advantage to the end.
The reverse was true.
At the end Russian and American tanks had pulled ahead of German designs. The British answer just missed the conflict. So, from the Spring of 1945 onwards, Germany didn’t even have a qualitative edge.
BTW, you’re seriously overrating the Mark IV. By 1945 it was canceled by Berlin. Just no longer considered competitive by the German Army/ Guderian. (And, he created it.)
Oh, c’mon man! How many M-26 or, what was it, Cromwell, tanks actually arrived and served meaningfully? It doesn’t matter how good it is if you don’t have enough to make a difference, see, e.g., Me-262, Ar-234, Ho-229. The only thing that really matters is how much combat power you can RELIABLY apply with a unit or a piece of equipment. You can’t dispute that the Allies relied on quantitative not qualitative superiority. My basic point is that for today’s world, at some point quantity becomes quality.
Actually, the lesson of the last decade or two is that quality has a quantity all its own. The numerically inferior American forces routed the Iraqis, for instance, despite being substantially outnumbered. The old Soviet model of ‘swamp them with adequate hordes’ has failed pretty much every time it has been tried.
This was my whole point about Shermans vs. the various German tanks. And elsewhere in this discussion in regard to the Japanese navy vs. ours in the Pacific.
Details of various weapon systems matter, but the tipping point comes when you can funnel weapons and men into combat faster and in greater numbers than the enemy can.
If that differential holds, it’s just a matter of time — and, I suppose, national will.
Tell von Manstein, whom I consider maybe the best of the lot, about the merits of quality over quantity. A lot of “good enough” just beats the shit out of a little of really good.
And the Iraq thing isn’t a good example; we had a lot of really, really good and really well commanded; they had a lot of Ok with really bad command. You can’t really draw a conclusion from that. We can ask ourselves if the Soviets had come pouring out of the Fulda Gap, could we have done to them what we did to the Iraqis using pretty much the same equipment and command systems. Hell, I dunno, how much smarter are Russian tank commanders than Iraqi tank commanders? It gets down to that. I think a free-thinking boy inured to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of grabbing the bow over the door is a great asset in battle.
von Manstein was certainly talented, perahps almost as good as his memoirs are designed to make us believe. Lost Victories does have a bit of an axe to grind you know….
More to the point, the industrial war of WWII bears very little resemblence to the information war of today. The Israelis routinely destroyed Arab armies outnumbering them by as much as 10:1, a triumph of quality over quantity. As for the relative merits of Iraqis over Russian tank crews, the Russians pointed to the Iraqis as ‘their star pupils’, which should suggest that they were probably not entirely without merit. The fact of the matter is that the last time the ‘quantity’ side of a war was victorious over ‘quality’ was in 1945, before most of the technology we take for granted today even existed in fiction, much less on the battlefield.
Consider that precision guided weapons lets one or two aircraft do what fleets of them couldn’t do in 1945, small units of infantry decimate large armor formations, not to mention improvements in medical technology that vastly reduces casualties in the ‘advanced’ militaries. Meanwhile, war has become expensive, even for the ‘primitive’ militaries, making mass mobilization problematic at best, impossible at worst.
Like it or not, the only place that the hordes win is in the pages of fiction or rather distant history…
“Nations have the right to take land to secure their right to exist, or else fertility declines and foreign immigrants are used to displace the native population.”
No Sir! Might have the need but that isn’t same as having the right. Germany doesn’t have the might either. So those of us that recognise the triumph of might makes right over the “fluffy bunnys” of the UN aren’t worried about a 5th Reich (I consider the ongoing fiscal conquest of Europe by Germany to be the 4th Reich).
China’s planned expansion in the Pacific on January 01, 2013 will violate the UN Charter for perhaps the last time.
When the UN became a tool for the permanent Security Council members to use against the other members it invalidated it’s reason to exist.
Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, O Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal.
-Ezekiel 38
Or, leader (Nasi) and Head (Rosh). President and PM, Chairman and President, etc.
I am somewhst amazed by claims as to the IOWA class superiority in gunnery and ARMOUR.
As is evidenced by my spelling of armour…I subscribe to a classical definition of battleship/battlecruiser types.
The IOWAs are BATTLECRUISERS, in that they sacrifice armour for speed.
The IOWAs were designed with carrier warefare in mind….as escorts to the fast carriers…..due to their size they were excellant AAA escorts….their reduced armour was adequate to protect from cruiser guns…which they could easily overwhelm.
They were never intended to slug it out with battleships…especially the Yamata class, that silliness ended at Jutland….they were intended to screen the fast carriers from cruiser attacks…AAA escorts as a secondary role. It was intended the fast carriers aircraft would interdict…keep the enemy battleships at a distance.
This was a role that battleships such as the North Dakotas could not fill…they lacked the speed and range to keep up with the fast carriers.
No worries….the scale of the Iowa’s armour was a closely held secret and exadurated claims of 18′ or greater were propaganda, still published BTW….which any naval architect knew/realized that such an armour load would restrict speed. The IJN were not fooled for a momment.
Yeah, we know; that’s why Japan won the War.
As a side note, the Iowa just got parked here in Los Angeles a couple months ago. What I find amazing is that she is dwarfed by the cruise ships that berth next to her.
Then you’ll gag if you see her draft.
Most of a battleship, because of its steel, is below the waterline.
By that standard even a Nimitz Class carrier is nothing special beside a Panamax cruise ship; there’s a little difference in displacement and equipment though.
You’re technically challenged, for sure.
From the outset, the Iowas were designed for gun duels with both the Bismark class and the Yamato class opfor battlelines.
In both cases it was determined to beat them with speed, range and radar.
The USN seriously studied going to 18″ guns — decided that such monsters would require the wrong compromises. ( Go top-heavy, slow or reduce the gun count, etc. )
Because we had more respect and fear of the Germans, the Iowas were specifically designed to out Bismark the Bismark.
8 15″ guns were bested by 9 16″ guns — etc.
The 18″ guns of the Yamato class were determined to be no more devastating than German 15″ rounds for one reason: both would completely penetrate all viable armor schemes.
It is a widely broadcast lie that the big ships could stave off each other’s shells.
The truth was that all battleships were packing guns bigger than the armor could defend. So the rate of fire really dictated just how lethal your ship was — that and your accuracy.
In a multi-ship night action, radar figured to eclipse even the best optics. The Japanese licensed German optics before the war. So, it was no surprise that after the war, both nations had the best cameras. At the end, the Japanese out did the original German firms — and are the world dominant producers of optics even today.
However, it was radar that won the war. A technology which was led by the British, with America as its understudy. WWII American radar sets are dead nuts knock-offs of British designs. Counter-radar technology was made an America-first effort. Meaning that radar jamming sets were American designs (MIT & Bell Labs) — even when flown by the RAF.
Now that’s a buddy system. Development was so rapid that Britain went from being 24 months ahead of Germany to 48 months ahead. Japan didn’t even get into the play. Considering her post-war electronics development, that’s pretty ironic, no?
=====
My HS Calculus teacher was an ensign (crows nest) on the New Jersey, a ‘plank-owner.’ (V-12 program)
The ship consensus was that the Admiral would never permit a battleship duel. ( It was his flagship, BTW. ) But, if they were that lucky, it would be strictly a night action, with a new moon and radar directed fire. The IJN line wouldn’t stand a chance.
The Iowas can’t be considered battlecruisers because they packed as much armor as any USN ship — and then some. No attempt was made to sacrifice armor for speed. Instead, the USN simply paid up for super-size engines and fuel tanks to match. ( 6,000 tons, IIRC ) Any Iowa could steam at battle speed to Europe and back on ONE TANKFUL. (!) That put them in a class beyond all other peers.
In sum: the Iowas were full armored battleships faster than the fastest British battlecruisers ever built. They could do so because they had the most advanced, high performance boilers and engines yet put into a warship. Their high temperature, high pressure design gave them unprecedented fuel economy and power… and power per cubic foot of engine room. It was these engines that made the Iowas even practical to bring back in the 1980s — generations after all their peers were museum ships — or sunk.
Given that Halsey was quite anxious to engage his gunline at Leyte Gulf (leading of course to the famous – or more correctly infamous – “Bull’s run”), I think it likely that the ship’s consensus (that the Admiral would never permit a gun battle) would likely have been proven mistaken. I absolutely concur with you, however, that radar was the deciding factor…
When Halsey made his run — he was ensconced in BB62 — it was his flagship.
VADM Lee was expecting to fight without her.
The fact that Halsey was most unlikely to surrender his flagship to the battle line was all a part of the crew’s calculations.
Obscured by time and publications, for the most part the fast battleships were buddied up with fleet carriers — as ‘flakwagons.’
Once this took hold, the admirals would no longer tolerate diverting them to their classic role.
You are correct about the ship that Halsey was in, but the rest of the battleline was certainly expected to be used as just that…a battleline. Given Halsey’s rather ‘excitable’ nature, I am not as sure as you are that he would have held his flagship out of what was likely to be the ‘decisive battle’ that it was expected to be. Perhaps so, but one never knows…
Your point regarding the use of Battleships in WWII (primarily as AA escorts) is of course correct, but I suspect that you are confusing cause and effect. Using BBs as BBAAs made sense because the enemy did not sortie significant BBs to make forming a battleline worthwhile. Even in the few cases where they did (Guadacanal and the Surigao Straits), sufficient non-BB assets were already in place to make it unnecessary. The influence of The Gun Club on naval thinking in the USN was certainly on the wane, but just as certainly it was not extinct until the last days of the war. One might argue that the embarassment of Halsey at Leyte helped bring out its demise….
Whether or not the explosive power of 18″ shells was overkill is a valid point that apparently encouraged US battleship big guns to remain at 16″. However you guys seem to have missed another important point – namely range. It would seem that if one ship could fire on another while staying out of range of any return fire, the ship with longer-range guns would have a massive advantage regardless of the diameter of her shells.
Perhaps, but as has been demonstrated over and over again, a weapons range is far less important than the range at which it can detect its enemy. American battleships weren’t operating in isolation, but rather as part of a fleet, and that fleet had far better C3I capabilities than those of their Japanese opponents. It would be unlikely that any putative range advantages inherent in 18″ vs 16″ weapons could have been exploited under such circumstances.
Even the German guns could shoot to the horizon. If the opponent could be seen then both ships were within gunnery range.
So your calculus doesn’t hold. There was scarcely any combat range difference between any of these colossal guns.
It was this flattening out of gun practicality that had the Germans stopping at only 15.”
At all times prior, it was Krupp that ‘went large.’
It became the consensus of German, British and American designers that 15″ to 16″ was the practical upper limit to design. Even Yamato scale armor couldn’t hold such shells at bay.
Bigger rounds didn’t get the job any more ‘done’ than complete penetration — which was now being achieved. Further, bigger shells took up so much more space that their count had to drop — or the entire ship had to grow large.
Yet, a larger ship becomes a larger target. Worse, the number of such ships one might afford plunges. This latter fact is why the IJN could only build 2.5 Yamato class ships. (The last 0.5 BB was converted to a carrier — and sunk on preliminary trials by a USN submarine.)
Yamato was done in by torpedoes launched by aircraft.
Musashi was done in by torpedoes launched by submarine.
Somehow, I feel a trend building….
I believe you are referring to the Shinano which was torpedoed and sunk by the Archerfish as she left Sasebo harbor, but not for preliminary trials. Our B-29s were hitting Sasebo, so Shinano was being moved to a safer location. However, she did not yet have watertight doors and hatches, and so she sank within two hours after 3 torpedo hits. The Archerfish torpedo officer, Lt(j.g.) Bobcynski, became my amphib squadron commodore 20 years later.
You’re way past your effective range in this discussion. As technology existed in WWII, naval gun range beyond the nautical horizon was meaningless. No aiming system extant then or now could see over the horizon. We can aim over the horizon today only because we have the World much better mapped and can use satellites and GPS guidance to find a target over the horizon. Even today, hitting a moving target over the horizon is a game of chance.
If you get into the world of actually using modern navigational tools, you find out that they too have serious limitations and inaccuracies. In WWII, you couldn’t reliably hit any moving target that you couldn’t see, and your technology to hit fixed targets wasn’t so great either. Having done a LOT of dead reckoning navigation and some celestial navigation, the most amazing thing to me about WWII is that B-29s could actually arrive over Japan with the technology of the day. Those guys were GOOD! I’ll never forget the looks on my kids’ faces as they watched Apollo 13 with the astronauts doing the calcs for their return with a pencil, a yellow pad, and a slide rule; it was incomprehensible to them. I passed all the tests to prove I could do dead-reckoning and celestial navigation, but Goddamn I’d hate it if my GPS, redundant ones, and radar broke!
“I passed all the tests to prove I could do dead-reckoning and celestial navigation, but Goddamn I’d hate it if my GPS, redundant ones, and radar broke!”
My wife laughs that I still keep an old dog-eared free atlas in the car. I drove from Düsseldorf, Germany to Dublin, Irleand simply with that atlas back in 1999. I taught her how to find the North Star and some other land-nav I learned back in the Army. Before I left for boot camp, my dad told me to “pay attention to the land-nav and call-for-fire training..it will save your life.” It did.
@Buckeye Abroad – I’ve found that GPS makes you stupid! Don’t get me wrong; I like it, really like it, but you get so dependent on it you forget you know how to read a map or chart and look at road signs or marks. On the water or in the air, a good watch and some sense of sixty D-street calculations can save your life. If your watch and your brain tells you things aren’t right, things probably ain’t right. I’ve been close to or a part of several serious aviation and maritime accidents; every one of them was caused by the master/pilot not believing what his eyes and brain were telling him.
@Art
“I’ve found that GPS makes you stupid!”
It does. I know an instance of an Ohio bus driver trusting GPS, taking the wrong exit outside of Atlanta and going straight over an embankment and killing a number of people belonging to a college baseball team.
“I’ve been close to or a part of several serious aviation and maritime accidents; every one of them was caused by the master/pilot not believing what his eyes and brain were telling him.”
My uncle taught me to fly in an old Piper Cub. Rule number one. Trust your instruments.
“In WWII, you couldn’t reliably hit any moving target that you couldn’t see, and your technology to hit fixed targets wasn’t so great either. ”
Actually, the Yamato could fire over the horizon. It carried a seaplane along to scout and direct fire. It was never tested in combat though, because it was the pride of the Japanese navy and the Japanese didn’t want to risk losing it. So they waited until the rest of their navy was sunk, and then sent it on a suicide mission to destroy the American carriers. It was sunk by carrier planes before it got within 100 miles.
Actually the Iowa class was built with the philosophy of instead of trying to protect everything with medium armor that battleship shells would pierce with ease in a nacal version of Napoleon’s sentence ‘the one who defends everuthing” it was better to have virtually no armor in non-essential locatioons and use the saved weight for making it thicker where it really mattered ’1). I point you to the Gaidalcanal nayyme where the smaller South Dakota (not the same class but the same philodophy) took quite a beating but nevver came close to sink or blow uo.
’1à Actually all battlehips had thick armor is some places and thinner in other places. The Iowa and Soth Dakota clases just went much farther
That philosophy of design was American — and guided the construction of WWI battleships Pennsylvania and Arizona.
No points.
Perhaps you could post a link to an actual reference.
You don’t hear much about the main reason Truman went out to Wake Island to confer with MacArthur. Truman’s poll numbers were hitting rock bottom while MacArthur’s were sky high. It was a great press idea, but did nothing to set guidelines on what kind of war was to be fought.
I can sympathize with MacArthur’s problems; however, his solutions would not have worked. His basic question remains – how do you draft young men into combat, in a democracy, and tell them we can’t fully support them?
General MacArthur would have fought and died in the Malinta Tunnel. General Marshall moved him out. General Wainwright should have been taken out also. The P.I. commander should have been no nearer than Mindanao. To surrender Corregidor, Wainwright had to surrender the entire US Army in the P.I. Those who became guerillas violated direct orders.
General MacArthur in the lovely Fall of 1950 in Korea ordered the Air Force to drop the bridges over the Yalu River to prevent mischief from China. That order was countermanded by General Marshall. The Chinese later came over the bridges, moving at night. In daylight they would be standing in peasant huts, trying to catch a few winks in the crowd. They ate the harvest of the natives. Finding them was very difficult and probably could have worked by on-site insepcting. The Chinese invasion of N. Korea was suicidal. The Navy-Army team prepared a series of 5 amphibious landings to turn the Chinese into terrified suchi. President Truman learned of this and ordered that henceforth there will be no more amphibious landings on the Korean Peninsula.
P>M> Tojo asked the Japanese Navy what they thought about a war with the US. The Army is ready to go. Is the Navy up to it? Will things be just fine for a few years with no problems? The Navy agreed. Admiral Yamamoto at that time was at sea with the fleet. Adm. Yamamoto had read AMERICA’S MUNITIONS 1917-1918: REPORT OF BENEDICT CROWELL, THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF WAR, DIRECTOR OF MUNITIONS. This was frequently found in used bookstores up to a few years ago. In arond 1922 Crowell published a 2-volume expansion. Anyone reading it would see WWII production, just with different stuff. Yamamoto was a naval attache in DC in the early 1920s and undoubtedly read both. Later on a cross-country trip in 1931 from the Pacific to DC in his new Chevrolet, it broke down in Kansas. A native appeared, did something under the hood, and the car started an ran. It horrified him. Industrial mechanical skills were present in the peasants to an alrming degree: the native was below the age one gets a driver’s licence, and a girl to boot. The Germans were not readers. Not reading this book led to German-Japanese gross underestimation of US productive capacity, the greatest intelligence analysis failure in history.
A reply to PAthena, who wrote: “The Congress of the United States in 1965, under the influence of the “anti-war” Communist lie, betrayed South Vietnam by refusing to give it the military aid promised by President Richard Nixon. Hence the boat-people refugees from Vietnam, so that the United States and Canada now have many Vietnamese.”
Any chance PAthena was off about ten years? Nixon got to be president in 1969 and resigned in 1974 . . .
The agreements were largely made under Nixon and Ford, under pressure of the Watergate Congress. The betrayal of South Viet Nam by the Democrats and the MSM is one of the blackest chapters of American history. Ironically, the situation the Nixon was in also led him to decide to finally resupply Israel (almost too late) in 1973.
Any re-supply of South Viet-Nam would have resulted in that much falling into communist hands. No amount of re-supply could have saved Viet-Nam.
Robert, maybe not, but a superiority in technology can be. Weapons come and go but the technological edge that produces those weapons tends to grow.
Pre WW2 the problem faced by all airforces was the speed of aircraft had surpassed the speed of the humans flying them. At 300 KPH a human can aim a gun at an aircraft and have a hope of hitting it. Get over 1,000 KPS and it’s impossible. Even seeing an aircraft is made difficult by speed.
The Germans actually had Radar before the Brits, they just didn’t understand what they had. The Brits wanted a death ray and asked Watson to build one. He didn’t think that would work but before any weapon could be used you had to locate the target and he was pretty sure radio waves would do that. The Americans took that and ran with it.
By the mid 60′s the US advantage in EW (Electronic Warfare) was for all practical purposes insurmountable. Then we developed stealth ( A soviet discovery BTW) and now EVERYBODY is playing catch up.
Anyone familiar with stealth theory can look at the so called stealth fighters trotted out by China and Russia and see them for the propaganda efforts they are.
Canards on radar resemble the disco ball at your favorite dance spot. Yet they are important if you are planning a modern fighter that can get into the furball. The other alternative is thrust vectoring. The Chinese stole the plans for thrust vectoring exhaust nozzles that are used on the F-22 and F-35. They couldn’t steal the manufacturing process. So now they know what to build but have no idea how to build it.
So they slap canards on their “stealth” fighter, which makes it about as stealthy as Halle Berry walking naked thru Wal-Mart the day before Christmas. Russia doesn’t have the resources to catch up for the next several decades. China does, they are too wedded to stealing tech to develop their own. Things like stealth and robotic vehicles depend on multiple technological advances. Too many are needed to be easily stolen.
So unless China makes a serious effort to develop their own technology, they will always be a step or two behind.
“The Chinese stole the plans for thrust vectoring”
And rocket/missile guidance hardware and software, and operatings systems source code and hardware into which they have been building back-doors for over a decade… It seems hardly a year goes by that we don’t hear of yet another such US national security failure that happened simply because the US didn’t conscientiously make the attempt to secure the research techniques and the technology (just as the US government is adamantly opposed to any conscientious measures to secure the borders, run background investigations on visa applicants, etc.).
They’ve been sending their best spies to US universities for several decades (Russia for nearly a century), and congress are eager to have them send more, keep them in the USA and have them work on our cutting-edge tech in industry… anything to avoid employing the several million unemployed and out of field US citizen STEM professionals.
Why no mention of our F-ups? Vietnam? Afcrapistan?
Iraq? Libya? Egypt? Syria?
Well Yamamoto, who had been Naval Attache, and had attended Harvard, told them, straight out, because he knew of our manufacturing prowess, they would succeed for a year, recall he was the ‘moderate’ in the InterWar Defense Ministry (re; Toll)
One reason that Yamamoto was sent to sea was to keep him safe from some of the hypernationalists in the military (typically upper-level field grade officers) who had an unfortunate tendency to assassinate those who weren’t sufficiently committed to an aggressive foreign policy.
1) Why didn’t the Japanese invade Hawaii instead of just bombing the US fleet? The US would not have been able to re-take it – the longest stretch of open water in the Pacific is between Hawaii and California, much too far for an invasion fleet. The US would have been forced to fight across the Aleutians, and it still could have won the war, but the correlation of forces (as the Soviets used to say) would have been different.
2) Yamamoto well understood the industrial strength of the US. (The US built over 100 aircraft carriers in WWII to Japan’s less than 15.) The Japanese were counting on the US lacking the will to fight.
And just what would the Japanese carry their troops (for the invasion/occupation…remember, the US had a significant force in Hawaii) in, and how would they keep them supplied? The IJN was a very impressive force, but their logistical tail was underdeveloped and poorly organized. Sending a force to, and sustaining one in Hawaii would have been beyond their logistical capabilities, unless they were willing to cancel one of their other operations which quite frankly, had far higher priority for their war aims.
As far as production, the Japanese believed (incorrectly) that the Americans would not fight, or if they did (even after being confronted with the early japanese victories) their material advantages would be counterbalanced by Japanese spiritual superiority (fighting spirit). Seems to me that our jihadi enemies are making the same mistake now….
Read Harry Turtledove’s Days of Infamy books (all two of them):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Turtledove#Days_of_Infamy
Japan does invade Hawaii….
Robert,
Turtledove writes FICTION, and not terribly believable fiction at that. All you need to do is look at the logistical problems that the Japanese ran into in Malaysia (where they were 1/4 of the distance from home and dealing with a far weaker enemy) to get an idea of how much of a problem moving and supplying the necessary troops would be. Don’t get me wrong, I find Turtledove’s work entertaining (he has a great hand at making characters), but his abilities as a military analyst are shall we say, limited…
Hey, f1b0nacc1 — that recommendation was not intended as Serious Analysis. Nor are John Birmingham’s time-travel-meets-WW2 books, which are also good reads.
For what it’s worth, John Costello’s The Pacific War is an excellent one-volume history, but of course anyone really interested in the subject needs to go a lot further.
What may have been the worst miscalculation by the Japanese was their delay in giving the U.S. government a Declaration of War AFTER Pearl Harbor was bombed. The “sneak attack” polarized the American people like virtually no other event or politician could have done, since the sinking of the Maine.
All the popular histories of the Pacific War say that the delay wasn’t intended by Japan’s government, it was due to circumstances just plain going badly wrong at Japan’s embassy in Washington along with planning bungles compounding the last-minute problems encountered by the embassy staff in decoding and typing the war declaration. In hindsight, maybe Tokyo should have sent their declaration of war in the clear to their embassy an hour before the scheduled strike.
The news of Germany’s demographic death spiral is somewhat premature. Many regions of Germany have birthrates at or above replacement levels (mostly in Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg, the country’s tech and modern industrial areas). East Germany is where it is worst; it might take a another generation or two to normalize.
The history of Europe is a bloody one, and likely will be again some day if the remaining indigenes take to arms to defend whats left of their culture. The “problem” is intermarriage. It is quite possible that in 75 years there will be hardly anyone left that can be identified as “German”, “French” etc in the traditional sense. Eastern Europe is a different matter; they are not so much into the whole multikulti experiment, but their birthrates are very low also. Eastern Europe’s low birthrate is the result of a lack of prosperity and the resulting diversion of many of its more attractive fecund females into the global sex trade.
In an over-crowded, over-populated district/province/state, country, continent and world, population decrease is a positive thing.
“Normal” or “normalization” is a bad thing if the standard for which you are aiming is bad.
Hopefully, people are able to preserve the better elements of our cultures and weed out the bad.
Intermarriage is not a problem.
it’s ignoring the German protective laws, ever seen children born from a mixed marriage, in case of a divorce, it’s always the German bride, husband that wins, children are kept in Germany. The foreign spouse is only allowed to pay a pension and can’t see his/her children
So a advice if you marry and or date a German, don’t make Children with him/her, or you’ll have only your eyes for crying
The statistics do not bear this out. Germany’s fertility rate is at 1.3 children/female. Bavarian and Swchwaebish birthrates have averaged no better than 1.7 children per female the last 40 years. That’s considerably better, but still significantly below replacement levels. Southern Germany has enjoyed mass internal migration since 1992 -mainly from Eastern and Northern German provinces. As a whole Germany will lose at least 30% of its population by 2060 if trends do not change. That includes people living in Southern Germany. In many hospitals the only women having babies are Muslim women (they make up 70% of all births in Frankfurt.
The median age of German went from 26 in 1968 to 45 in 2010.
“That includes people living in Southern Germany. In many hospitals the only women having babies are Muslim women (they make up 70% of all births in Frankfurt.”
My wife gave birth to our daughter in Wiesbaden in 2009. We were the only white couple on the maternity ward. Go shopping for childrens clothes in Germany and it will awaken you to what tomorrow’s reality is going to be.
I’ve said it before, Mark Steyn is a prophet.
VDH shows once again why he is the greates living writer on history and public affairs. One small correction: there is no such aircraft as an ME-109. Willi’s design was built by another firm originally, so the designation was Bf-109.
You’re correct — right up until the Germans re-badged the Bf-109 when the final models came out.
To sum up: in the early years it was marked Bf-109…
But, at the end, it was marked, officially, by the KLM as Me-109 — as in Me-109G, the predominant anti-bomber version flying during the 8th Air Force campaign.
Do not expect consistency with the Nazi government or its organs.
( The KLM really screwed up an excellent plane with the G model. They let it become too heavy. This wasn’t such a crippler in the Autumn of 1943. By the Spring of 1944 it was a lethal handicap. )
With respect to limited Japanese knowledge of US manufacturing capability, Admiral Yamamoto, among a small group of officers, had studied in the US and were opposed to attacking Pearl Harbor, afraid of awakening a ‘sleeping gorilla,’ or whatever term he used. He/they were, of course, overruled by Hirohito and the Army.
The unverified quote usually attributed to Yamamoto is “We have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.”
He is also supposed to have said, “You cannot invade America. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”
The quote is surely bogus, but it’s a fine principle.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto#Misattributed
the article is well done, although i would put forth that one of the pressing element in both the German and Japanese attacks was the nature of the dictatorial-type government in those two countries.
it is often, if not always the case, necessary for a dictator to create a real or perceived external enemy in order to justify the limitation of freedom imposed on his population.
whether that perception is carried all the way to war or not depends on other factors.
As for the Korean conflict, the concept of limited warfare that was created then and haunts us till now, was born out of fear of a nuclear confrontation with Stalin.
Personally in Truman’s shoes I would have let MacArthur, together with the Kuomintang dispatch Mao and turn China in another western democracy as he had done so well in japan.
Had Japan focused solely on British and French colonies using its fast carrier strike group, and stayed away from the Philippines, then converged on the Suez, Britain would have collapsed due to the loss of communications with the Raj, the ME, and Australia.
That strike group, Kido Butai, devastated the British fleet in the Indian ocean in the winter of 1941. Had the troops used for invasion of the Eastern Pacific been used to seize bases in the Raj and in North Africa, Japan could have built a string of bases across the Indian Ocean to Egypt and the Middle East Oil fields. It could have then secured a very long supply line of oil, metals, and food very far from the British or American Fleets.
I also wonder what effect a Kido Butai in the Med or the Eastern Atlantic combined with the German fleet and u-boats would have had on Britain’s final supply lines. By late 1942 a collapse of Britain would have been very likely.
More crucially, for the war in Europe, the Lend-Lease route to the USSR via Iran as a result of the joint Soviet-British invasion of Iran in Fall of 1941 would have collapsed. This would have denied the Soviets the critical war material that was the decisive means to their win at Stalingrad and then at Kursk. Furthermore, a strained or collapsed Britain in the fall of 1941 or early 1942 could not have supplied the war material it did to the Soviets in 1942.
The story of lend-lease aid to the Soviets and its logistic impact is still misunderstood by many historians. The majority of the fuel, most avgas, key metals, trucks, explosives, chemicals, and rolling stock, spare parts, and most importantly – the majority of food and clothing – came from lend lease. This material in most cases was delivered directly to the troops ready to use – rather than having to be made from raw material the Russians did not even have nor could have found or even manufactured. Through this link the Russians were able to tap the resources of not only the Raj and Middle East, but the entire world’s industrial output.
Another point is that the Russian troops who held Moscow were trained under Zhukov and had fought the Japanese in Manchuria. They were used to long range maneuvers in bitter cold. When Japan pivoted to the East and became mired, the Soviets were able to pull the forces out of Siberia and focus in the West. Had Japan not fought the Russians at all, there might not have been the large and well trained armored reserve in Siberia.
Japan did not develop alternate strategic plans during the war. The lack of candor and open discussion among the military planners, Emperor, Ministers, and the Royal Council precluded the consideration of all alternatives. By the time the Japanese realized that the Indian Ocean was theirs for the taking, they had to pivot back and face the US Carrier fleet. Again, a frank discussion might have caused them to use land-based planes to hold off the US while taking the Indian Ocean.
On the other hand, Roosevelt in 1940, based on his observations made during WWI, abandoned his New Deal principles when he hired arch-capitalist William Knudsen (and others) to lead the rearmament effort. This completely freed up the dormant US business sector which in two short years was outproducing the entire world in armaments and other goods. By the time of Pearl Harbor, most of the production elements for victory were in place – ships, guns, planes, etc, many of which in the first years went to Russia. Japan missed this heavy rearmament effort in 1940 and 1941 and did not understand its strategic significance.
http://www.amazon.com/Freedoms-Forge-American-Business-Produced/dp/1400069645
The decisive point of World War II was when Japan attacked the US. It handed the strategic initiative to the US and removed it from the Axis Powers. It then made decision to hire Knudsen by Roosevelt the key turning point in WWII.
“That strike group, Kido Butai, devastated the British fleet in the Indian ocean in the winter of 1941. Had the troops used for invasion of the Eastern Pacific been used to seize bases in the Raj and in North Africa, Japan could have built a string of bases across the Indian Ocean to Egypt and the Middle East Oil fields.”
The IJN hardly laid a glove on the RN in the Indian Ocean — for one reason — the British were already reading IJN signals.
So they just kept bobbing and weaving out of reach. Indeed, they did have to back up quite a ways. Still, the RN lost nothing of import after the Singapore fiasco.
Both Hitler and Tojo missed the strategic ‘back-door’ that you’re pointing to. The optimal gambit would’ve been for the Axis to entirely omit Russia and America — and just gut the Western European colonial possessions. It was this gambit that had Churchill and FDR tossing in their beds.
BTW, Eastern Pacific = Califonia’s coast to Hawaii.
Lastly, the IJN’s ‘string of pearls’ was already built: top of the list after Singapore was Aden.
By contrast, India/ Raj was a resource pit. Just too many natives for the IJA to even begin to handle. The gambit would’ve been to clip the sea lanes — and let Gandhi & Co. take over.
When FDR hired on ‘Dollar a Year Men’ he was absolutely true to his Fascist impulses: he’d reduced capitalist talent to slave wages. Everything about them was politically correct — and on FDR’s terms.
The crony nature of their connections to the wise and wealthy were slickly repressed by FDR’s media enforcement wing.
it’s not counting with the International finance. Remember the Nazis had their bank accounts in Switzerland
“…The decisive point of World War II was when Japan attacked the US. It handed the strategic initiative to the US and removed it from the Axis Powers.”
That’s certainly true because it removed all limits to Roosevelt’s “arsenal of democracy” and that guaranteed the Axis would lose.
If nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition, then it’s also true that everybody “misunderestimates” the United States.
Mark D
You can get more information on how the Royal Navy and especially two high ranking naval aviators who later became spies for the Japanese enabled the development of Japanese naval aviation from a UK documentary entitled “Churchill’s Traitors”.
It is based on secret documents recently released in the UK.
http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/2309216636/Churchill-s-Traitors
Excellent piece.
“As historians we must remember not to evaluate what happened solely on the basis of what we now know in hindsight”
This essay is welcome relief to the 20/20 hindsight pseudo-historians who have been bloviating in popular culture lately.
Fast forward to 2012, why isn’t North Korea as much or more of a concern than Iran? As former American soldier who was stationed in South Korea in recent year was told by his superiors in response to the question of a North Korean invasion, “we are nothing more than a speed bump”. We worry about Iranian nukes yet N.Korea seems the far greater menace. And… what we we do in response to an old fashioned N. Korean ground invasion?
My guess is we’re leaning on China (and perhaps Russia) to keep North Korea in line. After all, Kim the Third is their neighbor, not ours.
But aren’t the Norks ideological soul-mates?
Well, yes and no. Yes, formally, for China, but I doubt that makes for much mental comfort in Zhongnanhai.
Ask yourself: How serious a breach with the US is China prepared to tolerate for the likes of North Korea?
The Kim Family Business can’t even feed the troops rice while they’re still in the barracks.
The ROK Army will stop the Kim crew in their tracks. The DMZ is fortified on the southern edge, too.
The ONLY fear is Northern bombardment of Seoul, the capital of the South. Such a red line would be met by atomic retaliation.
While it has been presumed for years that it would be America that launched the counter-strike; from here on in one must presume that the South has their own atomic warheads.
Likewise, Taiwan surely has atomic warheads for its host of IRBMs. They’ve built way too many missiles at too great an expense to not provide them with atomic warheads. Thirty IRBMs without atomics — utterly useless.
Naturally, Taiwan’s IRBM force can reach, like magic, every significant Red Chinese target.
We will probably see Japan following Taiwan’s atomic approach — now that Barry’s calling the shots.
I understand that the Australians are also deep into paper studies as to when they’ll need their own atomic deterrent force. They already have a long range bomber force. (FB-111)
If true, then the availability of nukes on both sides of these disputes probably will act as a moderating force, just as it did in the original US-Soviet faceoff.
But for this to work, both sides in a dispute need to be rational actors. Provisionally, I’d assume this holds true of Taiwan vs. PRC, and Japan vs. PRC.
But I don’t feel that way about North vs. South Korea. The Norks may be playing a weak hand as canny as all get out, but there’s a strong smell of irrationality all over that government.
And Iran, I think, is similar to North Korea, and won’t transform itself into a rational actor if it has nukes. (However, I’m convinced that if anything is done about Iran, it’ll be Israel that does it, not BHO.)
…a strong smell of irrationality…
Are the NORKs really being irrational or is this “smell” something that exists only in the minds of US smart diplomats who are full of an indignant sense of How Dare They! and therefore attribute NORK behaviors to “irrationality”?
After all, since Saddam got whupped in 1991 the conventional wisdom became – for a short time, at least – that a rogue regime’s self-interest requires having some nukes on hand.
Until it’s too late, it may not be possible to sift genuine irrationality from a well-done act. (KimIII’s dad loved movies, remember, even to the point of kidnapping Japanese directors and actors/actresses.)
Or does irrationality appear when grotesque personality cults continue into a third generation?
http://thenorthkoreablog.com/2012/10/26/north-korean-officials-not-permitted-to-pour-one-out-for-the-homies/
I think the Chinese have tried, on several occasions in recent years, to wean the Kim Family Regime away from this, but so far it’s no go in NoKo.
Russian officers visiting Germany in the 1930s were surprised by the tank industry they saw. They believed they were being shown the low end of German tanks (the Mk III and IV), rather than the “real” Wermacht battle tanks.
Guderian himself wanted WWII to be delayed by about five years so the Germans could perfect their tanks.
Then the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, they estimated the Russian tank strength at about 10,000 – and mostly obsolete models like the T-26. The T-34 came as a real shock, and caused the development of the Panther and Tiger tanks, with high-powered 75 and 88 mm guns. The actual Russian tank park was about 20,000. Hitler later remarked that had he known it was that huge, he’d have reconsidered his invasion.
The Germans went into Russia with tanks like the Mk II, mounting a 20 mm popgun. Their best all-round tank was the 38t, which they only got by invading Czechoslovakia.
I’ll stop ranting now.
It is an interesting problem, the estimation of enemy tank production. There is a good article on it in Wikipedia under “The German Tank Problem”.
German propaganda efforts tried to potray tank production at 1400 a month, so many that there would be despair rather than resistance. Statistics of uniform distributions and a few captured tanks gave insights that permitted British intelligence to whittle that down to about 275. Post war captured German documents proved that low estimate was very accurate.
Great article. Thank you.
The idea that American “fighter-bombers” turned the tide of war is an entirely new one to me. The only “fighter-bomber” that could possibly qualify is the P-47 Thunderbolt, as the F4U Corsair appeared too late in the war to really qualify as a game-changer.
Is it really your contention that the P-47 was the most important aircraft fielded by the Americans in WWII? Or by “fighter-bombers” did you mean to say “fighters and bombers”? (Or is it your contention that any fighter pressed into CAS earns it a reclassification to “fighter-bomber”?)
“the .88 mm flak/anti-tank gun”
Please correct.
Unmentioned was the core of Japanese military thought at the time, caught up in a quasi- Samurai / Bushido revival (after having spent the previous 100yrs quashing the real samurai). Their planning was full of ‘the killing stroke’. It was the height of samurai mastery to kill on the draw. One slashing movement, from rest. That was the zeitgeist of their Pearl Harbor planning. Had they known the carriers were not IN Pearl, or stalled their attack until they were, their strategic aims would have been well met / served. Just a failure of intel and a quirk of fate that they were not. Along with a subsequent series of typical American luck and drive successes, we would smash the shit out of their strategic offensive naval firepower only six months later, at Midway. They never recovered from that massive loss of carriers and trained pilots. Never regained the strategic initiative in any broad sense. Their remaining gun-ship navy would plaque us in the Solomons campaign and threaten us throughout micronesia and the Philippines right into the ‘Marianas Turkey Shoot’, even while our submarine forces gutted their shipping fleet. After that, our major island hopping campaign started gobbling up big islands, hopscotching our way into range for massive strategic bombing campaigns.
Ironically, the Germans was pretty much already grinding to a halt by the time the Pearl / Adak strikes set sail. The last / 4th phase of Hitler’s ‘Operation Barbarossa’ was a 4th down failure to convert. Falling well short of both Leningrad and Moscow, as Hitler pressed much of the effort thru the southern steppes and Crimea. Giving the Soviets the entire winter to continue fortifications, translocate much of their industrial base to the east of the Urals, FAR out of reach of the already faltering Luftwaffe. Giving the Soviets the room to breathe and churn out massive numbers of tanks and artillery for the future.
Hitler’s advance ground to a halt, his summertime offensive launched without any provision for winter. The Russian winter did to the Nazis what it did to Bonaparte. The Soviets, well really the Romanovs, with perfect russian paranoia, had deliberately built their rail system to a different gage from the rest of europe. Part of the Soviets ‘scorched earth’ retreat was to withdraw or destroy any rolling stock for their rail system. The Wermacht had to re-set all the tracks as they moved forward deeper into Russia. Then there’s Georing, all his bland assurances came to naught. The Luftwaffe had utterly failed to produce strategic bombing assets. Their Condor 4-engine bomber was so-so, and wound up in limited numbers and used as a sea scout for spotting atlantic convoys for U-Boat Wolfpacks. The Junkers Ju-88 was likewise limiting, not up to the task of supplying the Wermacht by air. At their farthest reach, washing up against Stalingrad and the Volga the following winter (as the southern advance increased, as the soviets continued to trade land for time), the Ju-88 fleet was burning as much fuel as they managed to deliver to the front. An unsustainable proposition, as the US is foolishly failing to re-learn in Afghanistan, where our fuel convoys must travel thru Pakistani Taliban lands to get thru the Kyber pass and on into Afghanistan.
The winter of ’42 would see the death of the Nazi campaign in Russia, and the death of General Paulis’ 6th Army surrounding Stalingrad, itself surrounded in turn by the Soviets. The Spring saw the Nazis pushed back, the summer was the huge battle of Kursk, where the full armored / mechanized strength of the Soviets was finally gathered, crushing much of the remaining strength of the German invasion army. They’d be fighting backwards to Berlin for the next two years.
The Germans’ problem all along was the strategic and tactical acumen of an Artillery Corporal / message runner. Time and again when presented choices of action or manufacturing, he invariably picked the wrong choice. Re-directed the Battle of Britain assualt to the cities instead of against the British air force, when the latter was about to collapse. Failure to effectively support Rommel in N. Africa. ORders to use the Me-262 as a BOMBER and then not building enough of them. Choosing to peck at England with V-1 and V-2 rockets, assailing and stiffening the British population, rather than holding the weapons to use against massive land armies. Failure to properly read D-Day intentions or respond effectively once it was underway. Failure to mechanize and modernize the Wermacht sufficiently once the war began. For all the supergadgets in Nazi R&D, their ‘Blitzkrieg’ still had friggin’ HORSES in it.
I will not Fisk….
Please read the above posters ^^^^ who’ve covered the ground very, very well.
Your ‘popular history’ snapshot is mistaken in many, many details.
The above posters are a fount of good leads for study.
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BTW, the ISAF has been getting ALL of its fuel from the north for virtually all of 2012.
The Pakistanis have been so touchy and torchy that for half a year no supplies have come that way at all.
I thought you’d want to know.