Biggest Mistakes the Axis made iyo.

[Dr Strangelove]

Despite what other posters have said about the level of apathy among Americans prior to Pearl Harbor I think that after the fall of Poland Americans gradually came to realise the threat of Hitler and to accept that American involvement might be inevitable. Polls show that early in the Polish campaign the overwhelming majority of Americans thought that the US should not become involved, but they also thought that France and Britain could handle Hitler on their own. After the fall of Poland the polls shifted, but still a bare majority opposed entry into the war. American interest waned throughout the "Sitzkreig", but later in 1940 more and more Americans began to feel that America should come to the Allies' aid and that eventually the US would have to enter the war. Germany's attack on the Soviet Union was simply seen as further proof of Hitler's power lust. His early success fueled American anxiety over the progress of the war. I think you'll find that most polls by 1941 found Americans favoring aid to the allies and accepting the likelihood that the US would have to eventually enter the war, but unfortunately I don't have any links.

[Cruddy]

Lots of very good points ;- I'll try to clarify a couple and then make a few of my own.

No second front before Sicily/North Africa et al

Seeing things from the German perspective, they were fighting on many fronts. Invasion of Norway before France; invasion of Greece before Russia; invasion of Yugoslavia.

Plan Orient (invasion of Russia down through the Caucasas linking up with Rommel) would have effectively given them 1 single front, but it never came off because of Stalingrad and El-Alamein.

My point here is that "fighting on 2 fronts" was the Nazi way. The bad point isn't just diluting the efforts to win on the battlefielld - it was also diluting resources to

a) Maintain the Nazi order in the conquered countries.

b) Guard the huge numbers of POWs taken in battle.

Any half decent accountant could have told them this was a losing strategy, since the more they took, the weaker their overall hold was.

Originally posted by Pekka
I also feel the Luftwaffe could have been in better hands than Goerings.

Quite right. Development of a strategic bomber force was strangled at birth - the Ural bomber was built as a prototype but never taken seriously as a useful weapons idea.

Had the Germans had such a force in 1940/41, there would have been no need to invade Britain - they could have just destroyed all the factories and port facilities and left us high and dry.

Technical development of the Luftwaffe was poor right until 1942, when Milch (?) got the boot in favour of someone who actually took an interest in building better aircraft.


Italy and Germany both failed to declare war time economies. British troops in Naples were astounded at the range and qualities of luxury goods on offer.

Germany and Japan did go to a wartime production basis, but far later than they should have.

Another blunder on the Japanese part - failing to develop a decent convoy system. Having to import over 95% of their raw materials, you would have thought they would see the sense of this. They didn't.

[SIZE=4] Originally posted by Dr Strangelove

...apathy among Americans before Pearl Harbour...

Who wants to go to war? People also forget a lot of US merchant sailors were killed in the North Atlantic prior to Dec 1941.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Sir Og


You should check out what the red army did to the Japanese in Manchuria in '45. They took a territry the size of western Europe (the terrain was even worse than that in Europe) in less than a month while totallly routing the Japanese opposition in the process. This must be the biggest Blitzkrieg ever.

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.

[Mr. Harley]

Cruddy - you have it reversed. Udet was the pretty boy who f**ked up the Luftwaffe technical section, while Milch was the technocrat that Goering replaced with Udet, and who he had to reappoint after Udet killed himself when he realized how badly he had messed it up. I have a post in another thread, I'll try to find it and repost it, I need to go to sleep. Goering was the moron who screwed up the Luftwaffe, just like Hitler was the moron who appointed incompetent yes-men to th Wehrmacht. Cronyism was rampant in the Hitler state, and that was one of the major reasons for the downfall of the Third Reich. That and the racial policies, untermenshcen (I cannot spell when I am short on sleep). The only way for the Nazis to win, is, well, for them not to be Nazis.

[chequita guevara]

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.

Au contraire, it was the event that convinced Japan to surrender, at least if the Japanese are to be believed.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Japanese leadership deciding that the USA did not have the courage to fight a country less than have its size.

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Cruddy - you have it reversed. Udet was the pretty boy who f**ked up the Luftwaffe technical section, while Milch was the technocrat that Goering replaced with Udet

Fair enough - that's why a put a question mark over Milch.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Sir Og


You should check out what the red army did to the Japanese in Manchuria in '45. They took a territry the size of western Europe (the terrain was even worse than that in Europe) in less than a month while totallly routing the Japanese opposition in the process. This must be the biggest Blitzkrieg ever.

By then the US Navy had effectively cut off Japanese forces on the Asian mainland from the home country, which meant that many types of munitions and supplies weren't reaching the troops in China. Since these troops were fighting both guerillas and the Chinese Nationalist Armies they were in desperately short supply of ammunition. The Soviets might as well have been entering a vacuum when they marched into Manchuria.

[Micha]

Excellent points.

Besides the fact that French thirst for power after WW1, which led to the Versailles treaty giving Hitler the support among the German populace to be elected, IMO started WW2 indirectly, I have to agree that the biggest mistake of the axis was their racist policies.

Would Germany have treated the "non-arian" (what a senseless term) people less harshly, like simply granting "real" Germans privileges in purchases and the like, completely avoiding the death camps and slave labour affairs, the war would have had another course. I´m not talking about winning or losing, but about the fact that many Allied soldiers wouldn´t have signed up in the first place. The war would´ve been a simple war, as was Napoleon´s conquest and the various American wars with its neighbours.
A victory on some battlefield might have led to a peace treaty, not prolongening unneccessarily. Also the plenty minorities in conquered countries could have been used easily as reinforcements and loyal allies for the Axis.

All of those things of course imply Hitler´s absense from Führerhood. Maybe von Papen shouldn´t have put him on the throne in an attempt to use him as a puppet for his own goals... Maybe Hitler should have died in a car accident prior to 1921?

There are so many possibilities of alternate history... But under the restriction that Hitler was in command, we should be grateful that the Allies won.

@ "Germany´s world domination": I guess most support for Hitler simply spawned from the losses of WW1 in Versailles treaty. Austria has never been part of Germany since 1815, since they always wanted to be the rulers in a unified Reich (which was opposed by at least 2/3 of the Germans). The annexiation of Austria was IMO a personal affair of Hitler, wanting to show his old home country who rules now...
The Sudetenland? Well, this is another story. Many Germans lived there, many cities and towns have German names. The rump Czech annexiation was without any claims.
Alsace Lorraine, well, best would be to make this region independent. France and Germany have about equal claims to it.

Danzig was, at that time, a clear German claim. After several hundred years of rule in the city it just was Germanized too much to be a Polish core. And the Corridor connecting Eastern Prussia to the Reich was a neccessity.

I think if Hitler had managed to return the German borders of 1914 (minus Holstein and Eupen-Malmedy, maybe even minus Alsace-Lorraine), the support for a war would have vanished. Individuals want power, but people as a whole want a good life. We Germans are no other than every other country in that respect.

[Adam Smith]

Originally posted by Cruddy
Another blunder on the Japanese part - failing to develop a decent convoy system. Having to import over 95% of their raw materials, you would have thought they would see the sense of this. They didn't.

My uncle served in the OSS and later in the "State Department". Before he died he gave me a number of books, including one that was a debriefing of flag-rank IJN officers just after the war. According to these interviews, real warriors don't pull destroyer duty, so the IJN vastly underinvested in destroyers. Even after they started losing merchant shipping faster than they could replace it in early 44 they still refused to run convoys. When they finally did in early 45 they were too ineffective (two or three ships with one destroyer) and far too late (US naval air power could reach any shipping lane).

Other key mistakes the Japanese officers identified included adherance to the "one decisive battle" strategy to get the US public tired of the war (e.g., Pearl Harbor, Midway, Philipine Sea, and Leyte Gulf); failure to develop an effective submarine arm (mainly used for recon, not attack); and failure to move veteran crews onto newer ships.

[Mr. Harley]

Actually, if you want to kill Hitler the best historical what-if is during that march in the early nineteen twenties when Goering took the bullet to the groin - and was saved by a Jewish couple that he got out before the final solution. If Hitler gets shot, you end up instead with Ernst Roehm maintaining control of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) and possible becoming the dictator instead, or ending up with civil war between the much larger SA and the much better equipped army, which was quite worried about him (why the supported Hitler at first).

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Micha
Excellent points.
Would Germany have treated the "non-arian" (what a senseless term) people less harshly, like simply granting "real" Germans privileges in purchases and the like, completely avoiding the death camps and slave labour affairs, the war would have had another course. I´m not talking about winning or losing, but about the fact that many Allied soldiers wouldn´t have signed up in the first place. The war would´ve been a simple war, as was Napoleon´s conquest and the various American wars with its neighbours.

The populace of the western allied nations were generally ignorant of Hitlers' racial policies ands so fear and revulsion of Nazi racial theory added very little to the motivation of Allied soldiers. Instead it was Hitler's megalomania that drove Allied soldiers. You can see this also in Allied propaganda. In fact the leaders of the western allies largely kept what was known about the concentration campa a secret. At one point actual film footage of the operation of a death camp was smuggled to the United States but was deliberately surpressed because leaders weren't certain about how the public would react. The allies did not at the time have the means to render aid to the victims, but on the other hand some were concerned that releasing the film might backfire, since Jews weren't a particularily popular subject.

[Mr. Harley]

However, as I posted recently in another thread - the Wehrmacht did a fairly good job of occupying areas of Western Russia. The commanders got pissed when the SS occupation troops moved in and created a hornets nest, this is documents both by the US Army - post war - and by complaints in writing from various Wehrmacht commanders. The Wehrmacht might have been able to invade the Soviet Union and coopt the Ukrainians, etc. The Nazis never could have, their ideology precluded any kind of success.

[Sir Og]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove


By then the US Navy had effectively cut off Japanese forces on the Asian mainland from the home country, which meant that many types of munitions and supplies weren't reaching the troops in China. Since these troops were fighting both guerillas and the Chinese Nationalist Armies they were in desperately short supply of ammunition. The Soviets might as well have been entering a vacuum when they marched into Manchuria.

The opposition was not impressive indeed but the sheer scale and speed of the invasion is unprecedented. The fact that they actually managed to move across the hostile terain in a well organized and synchronized manner is the real achievment. The Germans forces in Russia for example got stranded in the mud while in Manchuria the red army was advancing through simmilary hostile terain in the middle of storm.
The Japanese commanders BTW thought that the 750k strong force that thay had was enough to stop any Russian attack and even to drive tha red army back with succesfull counteratacks.

[Mr. Harley]

The Japanese army, versus Navy, was pathetic. It's machine guns tended to jam - badly. Their artillery was undersized, had worse fire-control than the Soviets (who had lend-lease US radios), was undersupplied, short ranged, horse drawn, and lacking in numbers. Their rifle was tolerable, though on the low energy side of things, i.e. more like the Itanlians instead of the Germans and Yankees. The Japanese army had no foward air observers to speak of. Their primary tank, the type 97, had a short 37mm gun and armor so thin that a 50 calibre machine gun easily penetrated it. They had a tendency to engage in frontal charges, and tended to badly underestimate their opponents. The Russians kicked their a** both times in the late 1930's, goolge Khalkin-gol, and in 1945 the Soviet army that had fought the Wehrmacht went through the Japanese army like a red-hot knife through softened butter.