French make their own "ultimate army" game, ultimate surrender!

[Pavlov]

Originally posted by Ecthelion
Very Stalingrad.

Exactly. They should have known better. *Pavlov hums "Where have all the flowers gone?"*

[Rasbelin]

Something to bite on

More on France and Italy in WWII...

The French were not so sophisticated when it came to modern 20th century warfare in general. Their weaponry got outdated quite soon after the Great War, and so did their strategies. Yes, the development didn't perhaps stop completely but it was slow (as did the Brits too). And the French still seemed to live in somekind of belief of Napoleonic supremacy. One of the few things that was actually strategically wise was the planning of a new defense line on the German border, but already when the Maginot line was on the drawing board, they hadn't learn about their misstake in the Great War when the Germans used the Benelux countries as a launch pad for their attack to France. That's one misstake in their WWII history. But the positive thing in this case was the Maginot line itself, not the location (it was the right place to have it, but it should have covered the whole Eastern border from the Channel in North to the French Riviera in South). Two other interesting far less known facts about the French in WWII are that the French donated the FAF 60 Morane-Saulnier fighters in 1939/40, because the little nation of Finland had been attacked by the big bad Soviet union. Sure it was nice for FAF to get 60 fighters for free, but let's just remember what the situation was for the French in Central Europe. The Reich had entered Poland, and France was in war with their neighbours, but they still gave away 60 of their soon much needed air units. Of course we can now say easily say that when know what happened in May 1940, but they were at the time already at war. And what about those fighters then? Yes, they did fly and took part in combat, but because they were probably not that good, they didn't have an important role in the Continuation War (the war between Finland and the Soviet union when Finland was allied with Germany and took part in the Barbarossa plan). The second thing to mention is that the French (this is much more wicked than the fighters) also planned to aid Finland by playing with the idea that the Allies (France and Brtitain in this case) should send 4 divisions as supportive units in the struggle to defend the country from the Red Army. Those units were planned to land in Petsamo and their first mission was to capture Murmansk and then (with the assistance of the British forces that were also supposed to be sent as assistance for the Finns) from there launch attacks to Caucasia and the Russian oil fields in that area. Those attacks would mainly (at least in the beginning) consisted air bombardments. As known the Russians were much dependable on those, and so did the Germans as they received supplies like a gasoline from the Soviet union. If that source of fuel would have been disrupted, the German army would have been stopped due to lack of fuel. But because of many obstacles, the plan never was carried out. The British were the first to forget about sending units (and that was actually reasonable in one way) to Finland, but the French were that eager to do this so the kept on planning, even if Finland had officially refused that aid (the Brits didn't pull out just because of that, but a war with the Soviet union wouldn't have been beneficial for them). The plan was deserted by the fact of the German invasion of France. The plan had of course man weaknesses, (these are brain stormed by me) i.e. the French troops wouldn't have had that training needed for winter conditions (except perhaps those from the French Alps who had at least seen snow in reality ), insufficient bombers for carrying out any bombardment of targets in Caucasia from possible bases in the Murmansk area and the attack should have been carried out swiftly, and not when it was suitable for the French generals, as the best season for doing a landing like that (IMO) would have been the summer, and as it was delayed and still under consideration in May, that would even under the best circumstances meant an attack as early as late summer or autumn, but that wouldn't been favourable due to bad terrestial conditions. Not to mention if the attack would have been timed in late autumn and a quick fight would have been expected, but instead those French soldiers would have been forced to camp in very bad wintry climate.

And what about the Italians?

They were perhaps not as bad as you often think. At least I assume they had somekind of will to fight and defend their homeland, but the problem was more like bad leadership. We do know that Mussolini was abit too much just generalissimo and things like that, but IMHO the officers were more to blame. The weaponry was comparable to the French when it comes to how modern and sophisticated it was. They could have done more with it, but as the Winter war proved, good and excellent weapons don't always guarantee victory. But also that Italian nationalistic (yeap, I know there was some argue about German "nationalism" here recently and Heresson flamed German Apolytoners about that, but I don't want to see any relations with this and that bull) view about having a war to capture land like Abessinia, and as they tried on the Balkans, caused them to loose the idea on strategic warfare. It was more like proving that the Italians were at least as mighty as the Germans. But that just didn't work. One more Mussolini styled culmination of this nationalism than those wars (an unknown one) was the decission to send 4 MAS motor torpedo boats to take part in battles on Ladoga. And the reason was of course that Italians wanted to take part in the conquest of Leningrad. Those boats actually didn't gain much, one sunk Moskva class gunboat and one freight barge. They returned back to Italy after a few months of duty up here. So that was quite wicked, IMO.

That's all from me for the moment. Didn't come up with anything else this time.

[Pavlov]

What? The French (well the dude who came up with the plan) thought they could land at Murmansk and with 3 (!) batallions just waltz through all of Russia and attack the Caucasian oilfields?! Bleedin' fools...

Interesting article, Rasbelin. Poor Italian sailors who had to serve at Ladoga.

[Ecthy]

that Murmansk - Caucasus part had me puzzled as well

[Rasbelin]

Had to do some as editing as the statistic on the possible landing troops was way to large; 4 division of British and French troops was the right figure. Those 3 batallions had nothing to do with this; stupid me . Saw that when I was checking for details on those MAS torpedo boats.

[Pavlov]

Originally posted by Rasbelin
Had to do some as editing as the statistic on the possible landing troops was way to large; 4 division of British and French troops was the right figure. Those 3 batallions had nothing to do with this; stupid me . Saw that when I was checking for details on those MAS torpedo boats.

A bit more reasonable, a very small bit. The Germans needed more than ten times more divisions to even get to the Caucausus.
To quote Apu: "I mean really, what the hell were you thinking, banana bread!"

[Rasbelin]

Read more carefully! The point was that the capture of Murmansk, Petsamo and other areas in that region would have made it easier to launch air bombardments to Caucasia from there, as I previously said. That means they didn't necessarily plan to use ground troops to destroy the oil fields.

[Pavlov]

Yes, so it says. I only read the "launch attacks"-bit. I have to get some sleep.

This plan is sounding more and more clever every time I have the facts explained to me though.

[Rasbelin]

An another interesting thing is that the British plan of helping Finland also included stoping German exports of Swedish iron ore from the Kiruna region in Lapland by having a strong military presence there. That would have done by preventing ships from departing with iron ore to German ports from Trondheim, Narvik and Luleå. The military presence would also have (according to the British plan) had a chance to slow down any likely German operations in the Scandinavian theatre. Do notice that this was before operation Weserübung. The plan was halted due to the disaproval of any presence of Allied troops in Sweden or Norway by the local governments (they didn't want to have war) and Finland's denial of unreliable help, but as Churchill suggested between the lines, that still wouldn't have been a problem for sending units over to Scandinavia.

[Adalbertus]

I'm not eager to offend French people (at the moment), and in a bit more than one year in England I fell to love to one English girl (maybe two but blocked by another German) and in a bit more than two years to one French (maybe two, but blocked by another French) ... so far about my preferences.
But I'm proud to be born in the city which styles herself to have had the worst army of history, celebrating the surrender to french troops as the greatest achievement.

[Rasbelin]

Originally posted by Pavlov

This plan is sounding more and more clever every time I have the facts explained to me though.

Hmmm... now I'm also starting to think that the landing in Murmansk wouldn't have been bad at all.



Wake up, Rasbey! What the hell were you thinking?

[Imran Siddiqui]

I'm kinda amused at all the Euros that say this French bashing is bad and causes French posters to be mad at us.... when the teasing about America is twice as worse .

[Pekka]

Imran, Naah.. I mean.. who wants a girl with all those hair in armpits! AAAARGH!

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Dan Severn
Know how to sink an italian battleship?

Put it in the water.

Lol, here's another Italian navy joke. Why does the new Italian navy have glass bottom boats? So they can see the old Italian navy.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Pekka
Imran, Naah.. I mean.. who wants a girl with all those hair in armpits! AAAARGH!

The French obviously do .

Oerdin: I've never heard that one before!