LF: How Churchill nearly lost WW2: In a version of history many will find hard to stomach, how our greatest hero - fuelled by alcohol and self-doubt - refused to sign up to D-Day... until forced to by the US President

Title: How Churchill nearly lost WW2: In a version of history many will find hard to stomach, how our greatest hero - fuelled by alcohol and self-doubt - refused to sign up to D-Day... until forced to by the US President
Source: Daily Mail Online
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... gn-D-Day-forced-President.html
Published: May 22, 2016
Author: Nigel Hamilton For Mail On Sunday
Post Date: 2016-05-22 09:06:09 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 6286
Comments: 48

It was to be the turning point of the war: victory, rather than disaster, would now be the order of the day.

At Casablanca in 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, leaders of the two main Western democracies, had gathered with their chiefs of staff to plan their further strategy against Germany, Italy and Japan.

This would culminate in 1944 in a challenge even Hitler had balked at in 1940 with Britain on its knees: a massive cross-Channel invasion – D-Day, as it would become known.

In May of 1943, more than 300,000 troops launched the final offensive in North Africa, and Montgomery's Eighth Army entered the city of Tunis for the unconditional surrender of Axis forces there.

With plans for a million US combat troops to be ferried to Britain, Roosevelt saw every prospect of mounting a successful 1944 Second Front, and winning the war that year, or early in 1945. The President had been under the impression his partnership with Churchill, his 'active and ardent lieutenant', was a firm and happy one. Had the two leaders not motored together after the Casablanca Conference to Marrakesh, the fabled Berber city, and sat and surveyed the vast Atlas mountain range?

Why, then, three months later in June 1943, was Churchill on his way to Washington on the Queen Mary to argue against a cross-Channel invasion, even in 1944, and reverse the agreements he'd made at Casablanca? It was to become one of the most contentious strategic debates in the history of warfare.

I had long venerated Churchill, not least for his six-volume memoirs, The Second World War, which won a Nobel Prize. But as a military historian I became increasingly sceptical about the veracity of his account.

Years of research among the Churchill and Roosevelt archives and among papers and diaries kept by those closest to the great war leaders, allowed me to piece together a very different picture from the unreservedly heroic that one that Churchill had portrayed – and that is the story of how he covered the traces of his repeated attempts in 1943 to abandon Allied plans for D-Day.

At heart, Churchill remained the dashing cavalryman who'd fought the Mahdi in the Sudan and, even as he approached 70, his ever-fertile mind was changing from day to day.

In the President's study at the White House on May 12, his lengthy speech, delivered with characteristic rhetorical flair, failed to dispel the US chiefs' fears. The British, it became clear, were not serious about crossing the Channel any time soon, unless the Germans collapsed.

After securing Sicily, Churchill argued, the Allies ought to invade Italy, obtain its surrender, then exploit the huge gap in the Adriatic and the Balkans to attack the Third Reich from the south and south-east.

A cross-Channel invasion, he allowed, 'must be made at some time in the future' – but not 1944.

More disturbingly, the British chiefs of staff seemed to be agreeing. The American generals were speechless. All eyes turned to the President.

In the nicest yet firmest way the President categorically 'expressed disagreement with any Italian adventure beyond the seizure of Sicily and Sardinia'.

As the chief of staff to the Prime Minister, General Ismay, recounted: 'It was clear there was going to be a battle royal.' Even Churchill's wife, Clementine, was worried the US might choose to redirect its efforts to the Pacific, sending him cable after cable at the White House, pleading: 'Surely the liberation of Europe must come first?'

The President was shocked. Almost two million Jews had already been 'liquidated' by Hitler's SS troops – how many more by 1946? Would the Russians lose faith in the Western Allies and seek an armistice with the Third Reich, leaving Hitler master of Europe? Roosevelt didn't think Stalin would stoop to that, but it could certainly undermine Soviet participation in the post-war United Nations he had in mind. And all so that Britain could sit out the war in Europe, hanging on to India and waiting for the US to win back its lost empire in the Far East?

The best way to coax the British out of their funk, the President felt, was not to berate them but help their generals recover their confidence. Extreme hospitality would be the order of the day. The President took Churchill fishing, the wheelchair-bound Roosevelt 'placed with great care by the side of a pool,' Churchill recollected, where he 'sought to entice the nimble and wily fish'.

The leaders' weekend in Williamsburg, Virginia, went so well that when talks resumed on May 18 the wholesome food and wine and civil conversation seemed to have done the trick.

General Alan Brooke, Churchill's Chief of the Imperial General Staff, had dropped his call to postpone a cross-Channel operation, if operations in the Mediterranean were allowed to continue. Then – by November 1 at the latest – the best battle-hardened divisions were to be transferred to Britain to prepare for D-Day, and a target date for April 1944. However, Brooke's position was not shared by his boss.

At six o'clock on May 18, Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King went to see Churchill and found him already in bed, wearing 'a white night-gown of black and white silk' and looking 'very frail' after seven hours working on the draft of his address to Congress the following day. 'As far as he was concerned,' King wrote later in his diaries, 'the plan was to follow the decisions of the Casablanca conference'.

And Churchill now claimed that this had authorised landings in Sicily, but had not explicitly gone further than that. Pressed by King, Churchill confided he remained as implacably opposed to a cross- Channel Second Front – indeed more so since the catastrophe of the Dieppe Raid, a disastrous failed assault on the German-held port in 1942. Was Churchill, with his 'glass of Scotch' beside his bed, living in an alcohol-laced cocoon? Alcohol seemed to fuel his rhetorical skills, but did it help him listen to Roosevelt and the Combined Chiefs rather than his own voice?

The Churchill plan: An invasion of Italy, which would lead to the Italians' surrender and allow Allied troops to attack Hitler's forces from the south and the Balkans

On the afternoon of May 19, Churchill told US congressional representatives he favoured an Allied offensive through Italy and the Balkans. Yet, inexplicably, by that evening when Churchill joined the President and the Combined Chiefs in the Oval Office, he had changed his mind.

King wrote: 'The Prime Minister indicated his pleasure that a cross-Channel operation had finally been agreed upon. He had always been in favour of such an operation and had to submit to its delay in the past for reasons beyond control of the United Nations.' Had he truly had a Pauline conversion? Even General Brooke was disbelieving.

Churchill was back at the Oval Office on May 24 for the final terms of what was now called the Trident agreement. However, 'the PM,' Brooke recorded with exasperation, 'entirely repudiated the paper we had passed, agreed to, and been congratulated on at our last meeting!!'

Brooke had known his Prime Minister to be an occasionally maddening individual, but to behave like a spoiled adolescent in front of a US President not only directing a global war but furnishing the materials and fighting men to win it, seemed the height of folly.

Though the Prime Minister meant well, his doctor was worried he might be approaching a mental breakdown, or 'a gradual waning of his powers, brought on… by… doing the work of three men.'

In the President's Map Room after dinner, Roosevelt pulled no punches. The President sternly told the Prime Minister he had better shut up. The date for the cross-Channel invasion was now set. Period. With that, the Trident Conference was over, and D-Day, to be called Operation Overlord, would take place, come hell or high water, in the spring of 1944.

This still left the question of its supreme commander – an appointment that the President had suggested at Casablanca should go to a British officer to bolster the tentative British commitment. Now he was not so sure.

At the White House on July 9, Roosevelt's naval aide brought news that Allied troops had landed in Sicily, and the invasion was proving brilliantly successful. Soon, with complete naval and air superiority and Patton and Montgomery's ground forces threatening to strike out from the beaches, there arose the prospect that the Italians might overthrow Mussolini and submit to unconditional surrender without the Allies needing to invade. However, the President was soon worried by what he was hearing from London.

Once again the Prime Minister was plotting a new course. On July 13, he had minuted his chiefs of staff with an immortal phrase epitomising his irrepressible spirit.

Why, he'd asked, should the Allies merely land on the toe of Italy and 'crawl up the leg like a harvest bug, from the ankle upwards? Let us rather strike at the knee' – landing north of Naples.

'Not only must we take Rome and march as far north as possible in Italy, but our right hand must give succour to the Balkan Patriots.'

If the Americans declined to co-operate, 'we have ample forces to act by ourselves.' Only ten days after the landings in Sicily, he was contemplating dumping the Second Front, and now favoured Allied assault landings in Norway.

On August 10, Roosevelt emphasised to his Joint Chiefs of Staff that only by relentless concentration of force would the Allies win within a reasonable time frame. He was not averse to opening a front in Italy – limited to a line just north of Rome.

But when one of his admirals proposed abandoning Overlord if the British wanted to postpone, Roosevelt, to his advisers' amazement, 'said we can, if necessary, carry out the project ourselves.' And with that the President prepared to meet Churchill two days later.

His remark about the Americans mounting D-Day by themselves was as ridiculous as Churchill's claim the British could single-handedly liberate Italy, but the two statements indicated how much the two Allies' war strategies were separating.

The President drove Churchill and his daughter to Hyde Park, and there explained to Churchill that the imminent surrender of Italy was most welcome, but would not win the war against Germany, nor could be counted upon to keep Russia as an ally. Now Roosevelt decided to use his trump card.

For months Churchill had been pressing the US for an agreement to pool research on an atomic bomb. With only a cadre of theoretical physicists, the British had no possibility of producing such a weapon by themselves.

If Churchill would not commit to Overlord, the President now quietly indicated, the US would have to withhold such an agreement. But stand by the agreed strategy, and he would sign an agreement to share atomic research with the British –and not the Russians. The Prime Minister was shocked.

An agreement on the atomic bomb would have to remain as secret as the research itself; Churchill would not be able to reveal, let alone explain, why he had backed off his opposition to Overlord.

But after swallowing the bitter pill, he recognised he would have to agree to the President's terms.

There was one further potion, the President made clear, that Churchill must take before the two men left Hyde Park. The supreme commander of Overlord must be an American, since the largest contingent in the invasion would be from the US. It was a blow to Churchill's patriotic pride, but there was nothing that he could say other than: Yes, Mr President.

Because Roosevelt did not live to write his own account of the war, his true role as US commander-in-chief has often gone unappreciated.

Churchill's six-volume The Second World War was, however, near- devastating for Roosevelt's memory, since its magisterial narrative placed Churchill at the centre of the war's direction, and the President very much at the periphery.

But had Churchill prevailed, the war might well have been lost for the Allies. The struggle between the two leaders took most of 1943, and in its outcome Roosevelt may justly be said to have saved civilisation – but it was a close-run thing.

lCommander In Chief: FDR's Battle With Churchill, 1943, by Nigel Hamilton, is published by Biteback on June 7, priced £25. To get your copy for £18.75 (25 per cent off) with free P&P call 0844 571 0640 or visit www.mailbookshop.co.uk, up until May 29.

FDR got it. He got it all along. His strategy was good, and he was the only Western leader whom Stalin respected. FDR and Stalin worked together pretty well. Truman and Stalin markedly less so. Churchill and Stalin detested each other.

This was important. FDR was trying to win a war in a way that would bring Russia back into the community of nations as a cooperative ally, as opposed to see a new risk of war immediately following WW2. Had FDR lived longer, there were decent prospects of that happening.

Had he lived out his fourth term, to 1948, it is very doubtful that there would have been a Berlin Blockade. History's course would have been very different.

But FDR died. And Truman became President. And Churchill became the experienced face of the West treating with Stalin. And that didn't work out well for anybody.

I'd bet that millions of people, formerly behind the iron curtain, would disagree.

Outside of an appointment as an assistant secretary of the nave (pre wwI navy), Roosevelt had very little military experience.

There are three kinds of people in the world: those that can add and those that can't

How would it help them if Balkan campaign went wrong? Or if Stalin signed a separate peace with Germany? Or if Soviets overrun Germany?

It was a complicated game, do not forget that Hungary, Romania and others were allies of Germany. Churchill was certainly a fierce leader but not a professional general.

It was a well-known FACT even while WW-2 was going on. He had good historic personal reasons for being cautious about invading foreign shores.

Hard to believe anyone could grow up and obtain a university degree in GB and not know about this,so the question is "What causes this idiot and this paper to write and publish this story like it is breaking news of a long-held secret?"

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Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

American Indians had open borders. Look at how well that worked out for them.

Maybe not,but he was the only world leader of a major power at the time that had ever experienced personal combat,and who had let others in combat.

As for King Franklin,all he cared about was saving his lust bunny,"Uncle Joe" and preserving communism. He never actually planned anything military that I know of,and he had no interest in anything military. All he cared about or took a hand in was politics and promoting communism.

His cousin-wife DID take an interest in humping a Army Corporal that decoded WH messages,though. Which caused King Franklin to make the only military decision he ever made,which was to get that Corporal transferred to a combat unit in the Pacific.

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Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

American Indians had open borders. Look at how well that worked out for them.

Hitler had experienced personal combat. He had the German equivalent of a medal of honor for it

Once France fell, the leader of Free France, General de Gaulle, had experienced a great deal of combat, been grievously wounded multiple times in WWI.

A true statesman during the war is able to chose great generals and use their advice or even delegate military decision making to them.

Personal experience does not cut it, unless you are really a born/self-taught genius.

FDR was lucky. The Germans thought an invasion might come to one of two spots, Calais or Normandy. Rommel knew it would be Normandy and asked to move his Panzers close to Normandy to squelch the invasion. His advice was refused by hitler and his General Staff who were jealous of Rommel. Had they listened to Rommel, he would have crushed the invasion on the beach and the result would have been a disaster. Hitler had two of the finest generals in the war, Guderian and Rommel. On occasion he would refuse to listen to either of them with disasterous consequences.

I forgot about Hitler being a corporal in WW-1,but IIRC,his award was closer to being a bronze star than a Medal of Honor. Technically,he wasn't even a combat troop. He was a foot messenger that carried messages from one outpost to another. IIRC,he got wounded and got a wound badge and the rough equivalent of a Bronze Star.

Once France fell, the leader of Free France, General de Gaulle, had experienced a great deal of combat, been grievously wounded multiple times in WWI.

I seriously doubt that. I think he was John Kerry before John Kerry was born in America. He damn sure never took any risks during WW-2,and Patton considered him to be a coward.

BTW,Churchill had been an officer during the Boer War,and lead some attacks. He was even captured at one point and made a POW,but escaped from the POW camp.

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Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

American Indians had open borders. Look at how well that worked out for them.

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Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

American Indians had open borders. Look at how well that worked out for them.

Great general has to be also like a talented thinker and a scientist. Being an experiences nurse does not make you a great surgeon.

Great soldiers are good in combat and help win battles, great generals win wars.

There was a great Roman general who avoided risk and tarried, so they called him Cunctator (lingerer) as an insult. Later it became an honorific title, after "braver" generals almost lost the war, and he was given the victorious leadership.

I've read from the casablanca conference through the quebec conference churchill was unwaveringly foursquare for the invasion and stalin's claim that churchill was backing out of the invasion was baseless.

Also, I'd never read that fdr claimed the us could pull off the invasion without great britain.

There are three kinds of people in the world: those that can add and those that can't

No, it was a full-on Knight's Cross, at the level that was normally granted only to senior officers, very unusual for one of his low rank.

I have read that hitler had assumed personal command of the panzer reserves and was sleeping when the invasion occurred. His staff (usually, jodl) was afraid to wake him.

There are three kinds of people in the world: those that can add and those that can't

During the German invasion of France, he led a French armored column that punched a hole in the German lines in the Dunkirk sector and allowed allied troops to escape. This was the only French victory of the 1940 campaign.

DeGaulle was very seriously injured three times in combat during World War I. After the war, he commanded Polish forces in the field against the Soviets during the Russian Civil War period, helping to secure Polish independence.

To malign deGaulle as a soldier is unjust. He was a stubborn bastard, very prickly and difficult. But he was personally heroic, and when the rest of France was folding, he said "No" and became the head of the resistance.

You should go read about him. Dismissing him because he was French and aggravated FDR and Churchill and other commanders is fine, but questioning his personal valor isn't. He was no John Kerry.

Stalin was pushing for the invasion of Europe before we invaded Sicily or Africa. He wanted us to do that in order to get the Germans to pull units from the USSR to send to the beaches.

I am GUESSING Churchill was opposed to that because he was an intelligent man,and understood that the Nazi's and the Soviets bleeding each other dry was a good thing. I don't know this to be a fact,though.

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Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

American Indians had open borders. Look at how well that worked out for them.

I will take your word for that,and there can be no doubt it was unusual for a signals Corporal who was a messenger to get a Knight's Cross. I can't even imagine how a messenger boy would earn one.

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Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

American Indians had open borders. Look at how well that worked out for them.

He did something heroic. I think maybe he got himself wounded delivering some crucial message under fire at the front, and soldiered on.

One of the reasons World War II was so hellish is that all of men leading all of the countries had been through World War I in some capacity (if not necessarily as combatants). which made them horribly hard-minded, xenophobically nationalist, and grimly determined that THIS time, it would be DIFFERENT.

And in the age of modern combat, what makes for a great general doesn't make for a good admiral, and what makes for a good ground commander doesn't perforce make for a good air commander. The battlefields are so utterly different, and the dependence on equipment and teams, or individuals, is so different.

This is why modern warfare training strives so hard to be "joint", because any major operation will involve all three warfare types, and they're just so different that the mastery of one's field of expertise does not in any way prepare one for being able to effectively wield all of the different elements of modern war. Combined air/land/sea is the mother of all bitches to coordinate and do well, but a commander who is able to do it has huge force multiplication advantages over any adversary.

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Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

American Indians had open borders. Look at how well that worked out for them.

Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union (contrary to Gudarian's advice at that time of the year) was the worst blunder of WWII. The Germans didn't have winter clothing and weren't familiar with the Soviet cold. When the word got out as to what was heppening, patriotic German Women were even sending their fur coats to the front to try to save the German army. German panzers would not operate in the Russian winter. The Germans got to within 10 miles of Moscow, but couldn't go a step further. In their retreat the Germans left a great percentage of an entire army in their retreat path as frozen bodies. The men who survived were too broken and crippled to be worth anything. At that point, Hitler had lost the war.

It was only a blunder because it failed. If it had been successful,it would have been hailed as a stroke of genius.

The truth is the Germans defeated themselves due to piss-poor planning,something shocking for the Uber Anal Germans. They (The Hitler "they") put all their eggs in the "we will be in Moscow before the first freeze" basket so they had given zero thought to having winter or any other supplies pre-staged and ready to go,and then they (the Hitler "they") doubled down by going full insane and deciding to "punish" the invasion troops by half-assed supplying them and forbidding them from retreating to defensible positions so they could better defend themselves. Hitler called the troops that surrendered cowards and traitors,and thus lost all support from the army.

I actually met the adult children of WW-2 German POW's on my last trip to Russia. They decided to just stay in Russia after the war and had wives,jobs,and obviously,children. Their children told me their fathers lived like and were treated like Soviets. The fathers had given up on Germany for the way they were treated and talked about by the Nazi's,but their adult children were claiming German citizenship through their fathers and trying to get the hell out of Post-Communism Russia,where the Ruble bought nothing and there were no jobs.

Then again,the Soviets lost so much manpower during WW-2 and had so much of their inferior infrastructure destroyed they were probably glad to have the warm,breathing male muscle around to do some of the reconstruction work and to pump out a few new Soviet citizens. Given the large number of Soviet women and the small number of available Soviet males,I'm guessing they had a pretty good social life before getting married,too.

As far as I could tell,there seemed to be no WW-2 resentments going either way with the children. None of that "yore daddy wuz a Nazi!" crap. From what I could tell,if the Russian economy hadn't gone in the tank,they would have been happy to stay there and would have never claimed German citizenship.

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Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

American Indians had open borders. Look at how well that worked out for them.

Why was he so brave? Before the war he was a desperate, very unhappy and lone outcast. In the war he found meaning of his life, respect and comradeship. So he had nothing to lose.

German soldiers on the Eastern front had a bitter joke (passed around with great caution). "There are only two men in the history that did not know that Russian winters are very cold"

No, blunder is a blunder. If you make a stupid move in war, but a meteorite or volcano destroys your enemy, you are still a fool, only a lucky fool.

The Germans, with a population of about 70 million, invaded a country the size of the moon with a population of about 190 million. The German economy was only about 12% larger than the Soviet at the time of the invasion, and that included the extensive German consumer economy. The Soviet military production exceeded the German before the Germans crossed the border.

Germany had a non-aggression pact with Stalin. The Russians were not on the verge of breaking it. So, the Germans invaded a continent that was stronger then they were, and relied on a gimmicky strategy that had only really worked against countries that were outnumbered by Germany.

On the other hand, the Germans did win World War I in Russia. The Russian government fell and came to terms. The Germans were overconfident that that would happen again. They thought the same thing about France in World War I, because of their experience in 1870.

look we know the germans weren't the smartest people on the block. Who would create a situation where you were surrounded on all sides by the most powerful nations on Earth? Hitler was stupid enough to think the others actually believed his bullshit

The German people saw the economic recovery that his actions took in the 1930s, so they followed him.

When they saw the French and British back down before him as he remilitarized the Rhineland and occupied Austria and Czechoslovakia they believed, as he did, that the West was afraid of war.

Well that was true, the French and British WERE afraid of war. Where the Germans lacked sense was in not being more afraid of war than they were. Germany was devastated in World War I and it aftermath.

The German problem was that the Germans were coiled up and hissing with anger, looking for REVENGE, as opposed to realizing that they were too weak and could not actually WIN.

When Hitler overran Poland and parts of Scandinavia in quick succession, and the Soviets were stopped in Finland and had a non-aggression pact, the Germans became more confident.

But the REAL head exploder, the thing that made the Germans go collectively mad, was the sudden conquest of France.

The Fall of France was a black swan event. The French Army was surprised and the Germans actually GOT to Paris, but that should not have been the end of the war by any means. The French inflicted a lot of casualties on the Germans, and those casualties got worse and worse as the campaign went on, because the French military in the field adjusted to the German tactics. There was fight left in the French Army, and the Germans could have been bogged down in France for a long time.

But the French government failed. It snapped and surrendered. THAT changed everything, and made the Germans MAGNIFICENTLY overconfident. After all, it had been in FRANCE that the German Empire failed in World War I. And now Russia was peaceful and France was out of the war. What could stop the Reich now!

The Germans were so confident that they did not even go to a total war economy until 1942, AFTER the blitzkrieg in Russia had failed. They figured that the British would surrender. (WHY they thought that is an indication of the unreality of Germany thinking. The British Empire was vast.)

The French campaign of 1940 was the only great German victory of the war. Overrunning tiny countries with poor military forces is not much of a victory.

And the circumstances of defeat in France were unique: the political will of the government collapsed long before the will or ability of the French Army to fight. There was no particular reason why the fall of Paris had to mean the complete collapse of the French military effort - and it DIDN'T. The French Army was ordered into its barracks by the French government, because the government had lost its nerve.

Once France surrendered by surprise, the German strategic victories ended. The UK never considered surrender. The Royal Air force defeated the Luftwaffe head- to-head, and the Germans were unable to conquer Britain. In the North African desert, the Axis forces won some battles and bedeviled the British, but they could achieve nothing of value. When they approached the Suez, they were crushed at El Alamein. The Battle of the Atlantic was a war of attrition, and the Americans were already pumping in the Lend-Lease, ensuring that the Germans would never win that war.

Then came Italian fiasco in Italy and Yugoslavia, German intervention that broke the governments but never suppressed the resistance, a German airborne fiasco on Crete against the Greeks and British that essentially destroyed the German airborne capacity.

And then Russia. Sure, the Germans surprised the Russians with the new tactics, just as they had the French. But Paris is 120 miles from the border. Moscow is closer to 1000 miles. And there was no reason to think that Russia would surrender just because Moscow was taken. Napoleon slept in the Kremlin and look what that got him.

The winter came, the blitzkrieg fell short of all of its strategic objectives, and the Germans in the aftermath FINALLY went to total war... If the Soviet Union was going to fall at all, it was going to be like France, because of a political collapse. And that was never going to happen, especially given that the Germans were barbarians who provoked hatred among the Russians once their intentions were visible (which was very quickly).

In 1942, the Germans were lurching around looking for victory. Moscow was fortified and looked like an unappealing target for tanks. So they swept south, scything their way across empty farmlands until they hit Stalingrad. And then it was over.

Stalingrad was a meatgrinder like Verdun had been, but it was a battle that the Germans were never going to win. They didn't.

In 1943 the Germans tried the twice-failed blitzkrieg a third time, and drove right into the Soviet anti-tank forces and lost their entire army.

The only German strategic victory of any substance was the fall of Paris in Summer 1940. That was their high point. And even then, sober, objective military minds - such as Franco's - were skeptical about German prospects. Franco considered an alliance with Germany, but only if the Germans first put troops ashore in Britain, demonstrating their irrevocable commitment to the conquest of the UK. Then, and only then, would Franco risk Spain. Truth is, the Germans didn't have the ability to successfully mount an invasion of England. They could get ashore, maybe, only to get caught there and cut off.

So, what DID they really achieve? They conquered France, a country they outnumbered nearly 2:1, whose government snapped like a twig. That was really it. Germany overrunning Holland was like the US overrunning Grenada. Big deal. There was no heavy lifting involved in vast Germany overrunning little countries. The French, Italians, English - ANY great power could do that.

But the Germans were angry, vengeful, vastly overconfident, and when France fell - their one and only major strategic victory of the war - they turned and broke the peace with Russia, and then were smashed all into pieces.

The truth is you can't just anyone's inner strength and character by looking at their outsides,or even their pasts. Sometimes it take the adrenaline from stress to wake them up,and then they instantly become a new person.

I know of a 6'+ 220 lb Ca beachboy/surfer/weight lifter that volunteered for the US Army Special Forces during the VN war,and aced all the exams and graduated at the top of his medic class. He got orders for VN and all he could talk about was how he couldn't wait to get there and volunteer for Special Projects so he could teach the NVA a lesson.

When we all reported in to Ft.Lewis to process through to VN,Macho Man was a deserter.

I have also seen guys that looked like total skinny geeks seem to come alive during firefights,and be laughing and having the time of their lives.

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Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

American Indians had open borders. Look at how well that worked out for them.

True. Anybody that doesn't think it doesn't get cold in Germany has never been there,and it is ludicrous to believe the German Army didn't have any idea of how cold it got in Russia. Hell,the German Army spent several years IN Russia working on developing their new equipment and tactics. Stalin leased them huge tracts of land so they could do this.

The problem was Magnificent Leader decreed that the Red Army would be smashed and the Nazi's in control of the USSR before winter got there,and God help anybody that tried to correct him.

Truth to tell,I place more blame on the senior German Army brass for not getting together and killing that SOB before the invasion even took place. They were the pros that knew better,but they just didn't have the balls to stand up to Magnificent Leader and tell him so.

When you take and follow orders from a crazy man and fail,the failure is YOUR fault. After all,the other guy was crazy and you knew it,but followed his orders anyhow.

BOYCOTT PAYPAL AND CLOSE YOUR PP ACCOUNTS NOW! ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO DO SO,TOO!

Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

American Indians had open borders. Look at how well that worked out for them.

Every word in your post true,but the quote above is the most telling of the intellectual failings of the German General Command.

IF the Nazi's had tried to insert covert teams to organize the citizenry to forment revolution and take over of the country,they could have made some progress. Stalin was only popular in the cities because only the Party Faithful were allowed to live in the cities,and they were the only ones that benefited from communism. Ukraine would have been the easiest place to form a revolution because other than the local commisars,the locals pretty much hated Stalin and communism.

Even after invading Ukraine on their way into Russia proper,the locals were greeting the German invaders as saviors,and throwing flowers at their tanks,and giving them wine as they passed through. Then the square-head Kraut showed up after the front line troops,and instead of building a new pro-German government in the freed towns and forming locals into fighting units to help them overthrow the USSR,they did charming little stuff like herding the whole local village of people into the village churches,nailing the doors shut,and setting them on fire with flamethrowers. That's the kind of thing that does,and DID result in you having a guerilla army forming in your rear that is destroying your resupply efforts and killing your senior officers.

When it comes to the Russian themselves,most hated Stalin and communism,and if they had of had even an inkling that the Nazi's were going to remove them from power and leave Russians in charge of Russia the Nazi's would have had a huge base of recruits right there.

Where things went sideways the most was ignoring the Russian character. They might hate their leaders and their form of government,but anybody that thinks they don't LOVE "Holy Mother Russia" with all their hearts is a fool. The instant a foreign soldier steps foot on the soil of Holy Mother Russia with the intent to take over,things start going horribly wrong for them. Grandmothers will pick up rifles and go to war.

If the Nazi's had focused on defeating the POLITICAL LEADERSHIP AND SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT in Russia they could have won easily. The instant they started making war on RUSSIA HERSELF and her people,defeat became a sure thing.

Truth to tell,I'm not sure it is possible even today to conquer pretty much any modern nation by making war on the nation and it's people if using conventional weapons.

BOYCOTT PAYPAL AND CLOSE YOUR PP ACCOUNTS NOW! ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO DO SO,TOO!

Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

American Indians had open borders. Look at how well that worked out for them.

I agree with you. A cardinal weakness of the German nation at that time in history was their rigid adherence to protocol, law and order. They followed orders, and died for it, and their cause didn't win, the orders were wrong and the law itself was evil.

I think that the two World Wars beat the fight out of Germany, and that the Germans are the least likely Europeans to attack their neighbors.

Right. Napoleon and Hitler both left entire armys frozen to death on the Russian plaines. The Russians were accustomed to living there and were prepared for it.

Actually, the harsh Russian conditions pretty much wiped out the Russian Army too. Napoleon's march into Russia destroyed a great deal of Russia, and left the Russians suffering in the winter without supplies also.

When Napoleon went into Russia, his army (which was actually more German than French) was about 750,000 men. The organized army that crossed the back out of Poland had only 10,000 organized men. That doesn't mean that 740,000 men died in Russia. 400,000 died, 100,000 were captured, and the rest deserted. The army fell apart.

The Russian Army that started the war was 200,000 men. That army also attrited from repeated battles with the French (which the Russians lost), and from the weather, disease, lack of supplies. The ranks were swollen by local peasants along the way, and by further mobilization. Still, by the time the French left Russia, the Russians had also lost 210,000 men, and the Russian army pursuing the French to the border only had 15,000 men left.

Pretty much both armies died in Russia. The Russians are more inured to the Russian winter than French and Germans were, but even Russians cannot endure endless cold.

When the 1812 campaign season ended, the French were out of Russia, but the Russians were not hounding them with a great big army back across Europe. Actually, the Russian army was ALSO dead.

In 1813, the French and Russians raised new armies. But the sudden turn of fortune emboldened the Prussians and then the Austrians to both revolt against Napoleon, and the Swedes to come is as allies, at the same time that the Spanish and their British allies were pressing hard in Spain.

Russia is a shitty place to wage war in winter even for Russians. By World War II, Soviet logistics were much better than the logistics of 1812. And of course in 1941, Moscow was in Russian hands with the Germans freezing outside of it, so the Russians did have the means in many places to largely shelter their troops from the worst of the cold. The Germans were all exposed in the field, and died hideous deaths.

The French and Allied army was prepared for the winter...to the extent that men marching on foot can be...but when there's no food, and no housing, even winter clothing isn't going to protect men from endless snow and below zero temperatures day after day.

The Russians were prepared too - to the extent that men can be. But when you're marching through blizzards on foot in Russia in January, lots and lots of people are going to freeze to death no matter what.

Well put, and a mini version of what we were taught in basic (55) about the Nuremberg Laws, and 'just following orders'.

Which is why I'm not worried about Trump as CnC. --- If he does something crazy, he won't be obeyed...

This is what we should be emphasizing in the 'war on terror'-- the terrorists will never win by killing our civilians with conventional weapons. -- Bio/nuke weapons are the real problem.

Along with losing our freedoms in a panicky effort to fight conventional attacks..