Biggest Mistakes the Axis made iyo.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by Ned
As to no one listening to me, I hardly think that is the case. But if it is, I will stop bothering you kind folks, as my presence here is not welcome.

you contribute in your own way ned, as do i, but for the love of god, stop being so goddamn ridiculous, ALL THE TIME.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by MRT144
ned, youre against anything that questions right wing america, even if its absurd. you go to great lengths to take on leftist america etc etc.

i am not arguing that democrats are good or bad. im arguing that your purported beliefs and stated beliefs on this board are entirely at odds, and this is why people dont listen to you, and give you no credibility.

Actually Ned, unlike the true and faithful left on these boards, has on more than one occasion said the right was actually in the wrong.

It would be more correct & consistent to say Ned is virulently anti-left and leave it at that.

Ned

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dissident
yeah I know what they did in 45. Too late for any meaningful defeat of Japan. But it was a nice land grab for communism though.

I don't know how many times I have to correct this - the KMT took control of most of Manchuria, including all the major cities, with US assistance. In fact, the Soviets handed over the land to the KMT officially.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger




I don't know how many times I have to correct this - the KMT took control of most of Manchuria, including all the major cities, with US assistance. In fact, the Soviets handed over the land to the KMT officially.

Right, stuff like factories and weopondry were largely trucked back to the Soviet Union as "reparations" rather than turned over to any of the Chinese.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


Huh? what do you mean to imply?

Gosh, you don't remember Munich, Chanberlain and Herr Hitler's signature on a piece of paper ?

I suspect Adolf thought Neville was a particularly keen and dotty autograph hunter.

Japan had treaties with China too- didn't stop them manufacturing the Marco Polo Bridge incident, did it ?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Boshko
Right, stuff like factories and weopondry were largely trucked back to the Soviet Union as "reparations" rather than turned over to any of the Chinese.

The Soviets had little use for the obsolete weapons the IJA had - and I have no idea where you got the factories part from.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by molly bloom



Absolutely. An uneasy truce had persisted between the Soviet Union and Japan in Asia after all, despite the Soviet's previous military successes against them, and despite Japan being Germany's ally and the German triumphs in the early Russian campaign.

I suspect that German sinking of American merchant marine would have eventually constituted a sufficiently big enough casus belli- but it's still a 'what if?' .

Even as the IJN task force was sailing for the waters north of Hawaii German submarines were moving towards the Caribbean Sea. I sincerely doubt that Americans would have long tolerated the shifting of the war at sea to the American lake. A couple of sinkings near Florida would have been all that was required to motivate Congress towards a declaration of war.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove


Even as the IJN task force was sailing for the waters north of Hawaii German submarines were moving towards the Caribbean Sea. I sincerely doubt that Americans would have long tolerated the shifting of the war at sea to the American lake. A couple of sinkings near Florida would have been all that was required to motivate Congress towards a declaration of war.

As I said, it was a 'what if?' . Pro-German feeling (the likes of Lucky Lindbergh) was strong, as was isolationism. I suppose Churchill having an American mommy may have helped- as did those terrific broadcasts from London in the Blitz and of the Battle of Britain.

[Brundlefly]

I dont know if this has been suggested already, but Iraq and Iran would have been easy conquests for Hitler and would have cut off valuable oil supplies to the Allies.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by bfg9000
I dont know if this has been suggested already, but Iraq and Iran would have been easy conquests for Hitler and would have cut off valuable oil supplies to the Allies.

I think it was mentioned in a 'what if' post, but you're absolutely right- Hitler should have eschewed Barbarossa and gone for Cyprus or through Turkey.

Vichy French forces in the Levant, Italian occupied Dodecanese, an anti-British revolt in Iraq, and bingo! he has the oil fields in Iraq and Iran and is able to sit between British India and the forces in Palestine and Egypt.

Again, troop transports may have been a problem, but it's still a possibility whioch should have been examined. But then an irrational hatred of Jewish Bolshevism and Slavs did characterise Herr Hitler, and does rather preclude the notion of his undertaking a logical long term military strategy...

[Ned]

The linked article http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p-41_Braun.html by German diplomat Karl Otto Braun is a must read for people truly interested in this topic. It details the diplomatic maneuvering that lead to Japan, WWI allies of Great Britain, joining the axis and why Japan eventually attacked the US. Among the points made, I found the following intriquing:

1) The NYTimes almost single-handedly whitewashed the terror of Stalin and was a primary cause of American pro-Soviet attitudes.

2) Had Roosevelt not cancelled the economic cooperation treaty with Japan in August 1939, Japan would have realligned its relations to accommodate the US in reaction to the German-Soviet non aggression pact. Instead, unflagging American hostility forced Japan back into alliance with Germany in 1940.

3) A soviet spy in the German diplomatic staff informed Stalin of Japan's decision to not attack the Soviets in Siberia. Upon receiving this info, 200,000 crack troops were dispatched West in time to rescue Moscow in 1941.

4) The US/Soviet union was behind the overthrow of the pro-German Yugoslavian government in 1941 forcing Germany to delay Barbarossa by 5 weeks.

5) TE Lawrence (of Arabia) was assassinated by the Brits to prevent him from meeting with Hitler.

6) An Indian national army organized by the Japanese and which fought the Brits in Burma was the central reason why Britain withdrew from India as it could no longer trust the Indians.

7) Roosevelt was informed 60 days prior to Pearl Harbor of the impending Japanese attack.

8) The conventional wisdom about the harsh treated of Soviet citizens contributing to German defeat is also shared by the Germans.

"The next major event was the visit of Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka to Berlin, Rome and Moscow. I accompanied Matsuoka in Hitler's special train from Berlin to the Italian border. We had dinner together. Matsuoka was deeply impressed by his conversation with Hitler and spoke enthusiastically of "the Führer." Hitler had urged Matsuoka to attack Singapore while strictly avoiding any steps against the United States. Matsuoka was unable to give any military assurances, but he hinted that Japan would be ready for action in May.l5 The Japanese Ambassador in Berlin, Hiroshi Oshima, traveled with Matsuoka on his return journey to Malkinia, the new German-Soviet border crossing. Confidentially I learned from Oshima that Hitler had not mentioned the strained relations with Stalin to Matsuoka, but he (Oshima) had warned his superior not to sign a neutrality agreement with the USSR, as Molotov had been urging. Through the train window Oshima pointed out the long German trains at Posen transporting weapons. But Matsuoka had his instructions and Hitler, whom he had informed about the forthcoming agreement, avoided contradicting him. And so the Soviet-Japanese neutrality agreement was signed. The Soviets promised 100,000 tons of crude oil from North Sakhalin as an added inducement. Matsuoka had been Americanized from his youth and was a talkative character. Hitler was also understandably fearful of revealing his secret plan to attack the USSR. And yet, long after the war I learned, to my great embarrassment, that Hitler had revealed-four weeks before Matsuoka's visit-to Prince Paul of Yugoslavia that he would attack the Soviet Union in early summer.16 Paul was Anglophile and had a Russian mother. The American Ambassador in Belgrade, Arthur Bliss Lane, immediately reported the news of Hitler's plan to Washington. Washington informed Moscow at once! This contrast proves that the German-Japanese Pact was in reality not a functioning alliance. Poisonous sacro egoismo prevailed on both sides. In this respect Roosevelt treated his allies much better. Morgenthau was very generous to Britain with American taxpayers' money because he was always afraid that Britain might be seduced by German peace proposals or that Stalin might change sides again. Even today most Germans are convinced that Hitler's attack against the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 was a serious blunder. I do not share that view. In his memoirs, Malaya Zemlya, Leonid Brezhnev openly admitted Soviet intentions to attack a weakened Germany.o7 But apart from that, the best proof of Soviet intentions is the fact that the attacking German armies encountered an enormous concentration of Soviet forces being mobilized against the West. That's the reason for the enormous numbers of Soviet prisoners taken in the summer of l941.t8 It is ironic that Hitler's armies crossed the Soviet border exactly 129 years after Napoleon began his campaign against Russia. The overthrow of the pro-German government in Belgrade, which was well organized by Roosevelt and Donovan with Stalin's help, delayed Hitler's original timetable against the USSR for five weeks. This was perhaps Roosevelt's greatest triumph during the war. He saved Stalin! *

Hitler failed in Russia primarily because he waged war only militarily and not politically. In Norway, Holland, Belgium and France he had carefully observed the golden rule of Alexander the Great in Asia and Egypt-magnanimity towards the vanquished. However, against the Bolsheviks Hitler was blind with a rage that resembled Roosevelt's hatred of him. It was Hitler's error to occupy the Soviet Embassy in Berlin instead of having it put under the protection of a neutral power. It was Hitler's error not to have formed national Russian and Ukrainian governments. It was Hitler's error not to have abolished collectivized agriculture and given land to the peasants. If he had done these things, a fire of popular insurrection would have swept away Stalin's tyranny. Russian armies shoulder to shoulder with the German forces would have smashed Bolshevism forever.

In 1983 I discovered a lengthy report by Felix Frankfurter in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Roosevelt sent Frankfurter to the USSR in 1941. He visited the retreating Soviet front near Rostov in October 1941 and, along with Allied military specialists, speculated that Hitler's armies might reach the Ural mountains, leaving only Vladivostok as the last American supply line to the Reds. Therefore he considered Japan a "stumbling block" between California and Siberia. Frankfurter argued for an American war of aggression against Japan. He wrote: "In Japan we have a 'dagger in the back' type of enemy waiting and anxious only for the place and moment when it can sink that dagger to the best advantage. In this show-down war, reasons multiply for annihilating this kind of enemy."t9 Annihilating a whole nation is genocide. Remember Hitler's prophesies regarding Japan and about whom her annihilation would serve best. If the standards applied to the defeated Axis leaders at Nuremberg and Tokyo had been applied to Frankfurter, I doubt if he would have escaped death by hanging."

[Serb]

What a pathetic thread!

Concidering that Red Army destroyed 3/4 of Hitler's army (including Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, Finns, Slovaks, Czehs, Spainish, French, Dutch, Norwegians, Latvians, Estonians, guess I forgot sombody),
it's pretty obvious that it was the biggest mistake for the Axis - to attack the USSR.

F*ck the AXIS.

[Micha]

How Ironic that both symbols of extremist governments - The Reich for Fascism, the SU for Communism - have collapsed while fighting each other, leaving two superpowers as their heirs with almost the same political setups... When those two begin fighting each other, the wheel of history might stop spinning at last...

Anyway, thanks Ned for the quote! That´s quite an interesting one. Do you know what was meant by "Remember Hitler's prophesies regarding Japan and about whom her annihilation would serve best." ?

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Serb
What a pathetic thread!

Concidering that Red Army destroyed 3/4 of Hitler's army (including Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, Finns, Slovaks, Czehs, Spainish, French, Dutch, Norwegians, Latvians, Estonians, guess I forgot sombody),
it's pretty obvious that it was the biggest mistake for the Axis - to attack the USSR.

F*ck the AXIS.

Yes, but destroying the SU was virtually the raison d'etre of the Nazi party. The rest of the war was merely a prelude to this main event.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Ned
The linked article http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p-41_Braun.html by German diplomat Karl Otto Braun is a must read for people truly interested in this topic. It details the diplomatic maneuvering that lead to Japan, WWI allies of Great Britain, joining the axis and why Japan eventually attacked the US. Among the points made, I found the following intriquing:

No, the main reason that Japan changed it's alliance was the opposition of wesdtern leaders, particularily FDR, to Japan's war against China. Japan had nothing to gain from joining the line up against Germany, since Japan had already taken Germany's Asian possessions. The US, France and Britain OTOH were positioned to thwart Japan's ambitions, were not offering to be helpful to Japan's cause in exchange for an alliance, and had tempting choice tidbits of territory which could be taken under the right circumstances. The US embargo of raw materials was the straw that broke the camel's back. The witholding of American scrap metal and oil promised to be as damaging to the Japanese war effort as an outright declaration of war.