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ORIGINAL: adarbrauner

much can be found or addessed here, by Mcarthur's commission:
https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V2%20P1/ch4.htm#p45

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ORIGINAL: mind_messing

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

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ORIGINAL: mind_messing

Max Hastings (yes, THAT Max) disagrees.

warspite1

Hastings appears to be increasingly trying to stay relevant....

How so? Not read much of his work since Nemesis, which I remember as being a pretty solid book.

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ORIGINAL: adarbrauner

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ORIGINAL: Dili

Historically for oil, fuel, resources(minerals) . Anyone knows, i guess somewhere, someone might have made that calculation.

Also interesting would be to know how much they lost in transit from total.

much can be found or addessed here, by Mcarthur's commission:
https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V2%20P1/ch4.htm#p45

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

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ORIGINAL: mind_messing

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

quote:

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

Max Hastings (yes, THAT Max) disagrees.

warspite1

Hastings appears to be increasingly trying to stay relevant....

How so? Not read much of his work since Nemesis, which I remember as being a pretty solid book.

warspite1

He seems to be increasingly 'controversial' in some of his views - always helps when trying to sell books on subjects that have been written about extensively.

As for the Mukerjee book I continue to get through it. It's such a shame; this woman has a story that needs to be told but her book isn't it. There is plenty here about the famine I don't know about and want to no more but, being set during WWII, there is also plenty I do know. So when I see basic facts being falsely presented it just makes me question what else - to do with the famine (and India generally) - is being dealt with in the same way. Interesting that, despite supposedly both being from the same side of the argument, there have already been contradictory comments between this book and some of the famine papers presented to the thread previously.

Her 'understanding' - or at least her presentation of the battles in northwest Europe in the spring and summer of 1940 gives an indication of what the book seeks to achieve. Clearly not everyone reading this book will have a proper understanding of World War II and so background and context is needed if a sensible, balanced work is to be achieved.

After explaining how Hitler had made peace overtures to the British (which they rejected) the United Kingdom had instead sent troops to defend France. No further mention of what happened but simply the following sentence "and in the summer of 1940 [Britain] had dispatched bombers over Germany, some of which dropped their payloads on residential areas". Apparently this meant that "on September 4th 1940 Hitler announced that his patience had run out: he would force the United Kingdom into submission. Starting three days later, some 200 bombers at a time, escorted by hundreds of fighters, attacked London and other towns almost every night for two months straight".

So no mention of the Battle for France, of the British being ejected from the continent or the French collapse and armistice with the Germans. no mention yet of the U-Boat war (this does come but with an interesting twist). No mention of the Battle of Britain (apart from the inference that the British provoked Hitlers' attack on them by refusing his peace overtures and then bombing German cities) and that 'it' started in September 1940. This isn't history, there is no effort to present context for what is to come. Its simply a propaganda sheet.

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Wasn't that "city bombing" that infuriated Hitler a single bomber damaged by flak jettisoning its bombs in the dark and happening to hit some little hamlet? Hitler was looking for a pretext to bomb cities. After all, Goering and Hitler had shown in the bombing of Guernica that they were prepared to apply General Giulio Douhet's theories about bombing cities to break morale.

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ORIGINAL: spence

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Wasn't that "city bombing" that infuriated Hitler a single bomber damaged by flak jettisoning its bombs in the dark and happening to hit some little hamlet? Hitler was looking for a pretext to bomb cities. After all, Goering and Hitler had shown in the bombing of Guernica that they were prepared to apply General Giulio Douhet's theories about bombing cities to break morale.

When WW2 started cities were not directly targeted because all of the belligerents felt correctly, that they would be unable to defend their cities from retaliation bombing. Guernica stood out as an example of what bombers could do to a city (especially when the other side doesn't have the ability to retaliate) but since both the British/French and the Germans had "lots" of bombers everybody stood down from bombing cities for a while. Once cities became targets though a there was spiraling series of retaliations by both sides.

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ORIGINAL: spence

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Wasn't that "city bombing" that infuriated Hitler a single bomber damaged by flak jettisoning its bombs in the dark and happening to hit some little hamlet? Hitler was looking for a pretext to bomb cities. After all, Goering and Hitler had shown in the bombing of Guernica that they were prepared to apply General Giulio Douhet's theories about bombing cities to break morale.

My understanding of the sequence of events was that a German bomber squadron assigned to attack some "strategic target" got lost at night and suddenly came under fire from AAA, that it jettisoned its bombs, bombs which ended up falling in some part of London; that British retaliated by bombing Berlin the following night and that Hitler subsequently declared that the Luftwaffe would wipe out UK cities starting the first major daylight raids on London a few days later.

I have to admit that this sequence is primarily taken from the 70's movie "Battle of Britain" but I also recall that the Luftwaffe had a special unit (IIRC KG 100) that specialized in night bombing, that they were also experimenting with a radio direction system to would guide bombers to a particular strategic target at night or in bad weather and that at some point that system was successfully used (that ultimately a similar system was used by all belligerents). I don't know if the particular German unit which was supposed to attack some strategic target in the initial "attack" on London was trying to use the radio directional system or not.

When WW2 started cities were not directly targeted because all of the belligerents felt correctly, that they would be unable to defend their cities from retaliation bombing. Guernica stood out as an example of what bombers could do to a city (especially when the other side doesn't have the ability to retaliate) but since both the British/French and the Germans had "lots" of bombers everybody stood down from bombing cities for a while. Once cities became targets though a there was spiraling series of retaliations by both sides.