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RangerJoe -> RE: The question to ask about The Italians (8/26/2020 3:57:31 PM)
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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
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ORIGINAL: warspite1
I think this says much about how you’ve approached this whole scenario. You are not trying to understand the time, the personalities, the motivations and how all the various factors came together and could be tweaked to provide different outcomes. In other words, you’ve ignored much of what makes such exercises so interesting.
Essentially you are approaching this as some sort of war game where you can just do as you please with the ‘counters’, no matter how gamey, no matter how unrealistic. After all, in your world there are no personalities to win over, no ego’s to massage, no diplomatic battles to be won.
The Luftwaffe in Northern France is a case in point. The Luftwaffe out-numbered Fighter Command massively. They were full of confidence having seen off all before them, despite their own not inconsiderable losses during Yellow. The Luftwaffe fully expected to take centre stage in the prelude to Sea Lion and were supremely confident of the outcome. They had been fed the propaganda about the RAF being on its last knees. They wanted to get at them.
Sadly for them, Sea Lion is not going to happen. Hitler has been persuaded that there is a better way to take out the British. But the war isn’t over – and the war against the British isn’t over. It’s just going to be focussed in the Mediterranean for a while. But there is a job to be done against the United Kingdom as an important part of that. The very last thing the Germans want to do is give the British time and space to recover from France. That would be madness and would allow the British to prepare for what is to come elsewhere. The best the Germans can do is to keep the pressure on, don’t let up.
But not according to you. The Germans, with the massive advantage (no hindsight allowed – they don’t know they would get beaten in a BoB) decide to do…… nothing. They will ‘demonstrate’, leaving British factories, dockyards, aircraft manufacturers, and not to forget Fighter Command, alone to build up. The FAA and branches of the RAF suffered as a result of the BoB and the desperate need for pilots. Now this won’t happen. The Germans are happy apparently to sit in Northern France and ‘demonstrate’, allowing the British to recover. Right…….
So, your whole argument boils down to "Hitler wouldn't do this." That's not what this exercise is about. It's about whether it will work. Once that's established - and it pretty much has been - we can work on Hitler.
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I’ll not bother mentioning the ‘night invasion’ rubbish again. I don’t know what you are talking about and you obviously can’t be bothered to explain it so perhaps you don’t either. If you believe what you’ve been writing then – let’s be kind and say you are a tad off-base - if you’ve written it for some other purpose then I’ll leave you to explain it or not – I can only ask so many times.
I don't know how it could be any simpler. Everything happens at night instead of in the day. At night the RAF isn't a factor, while the RN is. By day the RAF is the factor and the RN isn't.
But the important point is that the British can't discount the threat the Germans pose just because some action they presume to be essential isn't happening. They don't know the nature of the German plan, and those plans can have wide variance.
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Excellent, you are clearly as clued up as Goering, although you have the benefit of hindsight…. Great, let’s get those stuka assembly lines going.
Already going. Just have to be ramped up a bit.
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Your whole treatment of Japan and the choices she faced is perhaps the most illogical, and ill-thought through of all you’ve suggested. It’s not just military matters you’ve failed to grasp. You seriously believe that Japan would play such stupid games with their economy, with their oil? There is no positive outcome on which Japan can rely here with any certainty - we know that but we need to place ourselves in Japan's shoes. If they remain in China – which they have chosen to do - then their economic, military and industrial position is going in one direction… fast. There is nothing like a war to make dwindling resources disappear even faster – and Japan is at war with China. But you suggest the Japanese Government takes one of two choices, neither of which make sense given the options:
- Waits for a Barbarossa that may or may not happen, and reduce their stockpiles of strategic assets to dangerous levels in the mean time – and who knows, maybe even exhaust them if they get the calculations wrong. Do you genuinely not understand what you are suggesting here?
- Attack just the NEI from Indo-China, an Indo-China that remember ACCORDING TO YOUR OWN ARGUMENT they have not seized the southern airfields from because of their fear of the USSR. You need to pay more attention to what you are spouting out.
And while we are talking about your arguments being totally contradictory, let’s see if I’ve got this right.
According to you the Japanese can’t possibly move into French Indo-China:
a) because Wiki says so (did you really post that?? [8|]), and
b) because they know the Soviets might attack them. These are the Soviets that are currently being surrounded in the west and also Soviets that Japan signed a treaty with just three months previously.
BUT
According to you the Japanese can attack the NEI without dealing with the British and USA because the Japanese know the British and USA won’t attack them if they do.
Convenient what these Japanese do and don’t know isn’t it????
Sorry the ugly wiki article is ruining your beautiful theory!
It clearly shows that, without Barbarossa, there isn't even an invasion of French Indochina. That means the embargo doesn't happen. That means your entire line of reasoning is a collapsed house of cards.
Barbarossa was a prerequisite for the Rising Sun offensive. That's clear from the wiki article.
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And speaking about what is and isn’t known…..
You don’t know when the Battle of Britain was,
I know when Eagle Day was - which is what counts.
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when the 8th Army was formed,
No. That was a boneheaded misunderstanding on your part.
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you think the stuka was the pre-eminent bomber in Germany’s arsenal going into 1941,
Pre-eminent DIVE bomber.
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you appear to have no understanding of Sea Lion,
Even if so, so what? It isn't happening.
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you don’t know when the Italians moved into Egypt, you don’t know when Operation Compass started and you have absolutely no clue what Operation Compass was designed to do and why it panned out the way it did.
I actually feel I may have designed a pretty good scenario about that.
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And this brings us back to my opening response. You are playing a boardgame with counters.
No. I'm just pointing out that plenty of military simulations support my position.
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You have no clue what you are talking about, you have no concept of politics or reality. What the Italian Army was best suited for has nothing to do with what Mussolini will allow them to be used for until such time as the choice is taken from him – and that time isn’t even close. That is not my guesswork - that is fact; that is what happened.
Once clued in, Mussolini will see the opportunity and act accordingly. But, even if he doesn't, things will still get very bad for the British in North Africa, once overwhelming force comes down from Turkey to Suez.
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And now you’ve raised another example. You have heard of something called Vichy France. You appear to have not concerned yourself with how and why it existed and the peculiar set of circumstances that brought about it’s creation. You just think oooohhh that sounds really neat, let’s have a Vichy Spain, headed up by no less a luminary than the man who betrayed Hitler, General Franco, gee that’d be swell. You have spent the whole time coming up with one liners, sound bites, detail-free ideas that you don’t trouble to think through.
Seems it would be easier in Spain than in France. Think what implacable enemies the French had been. Contrast that to Franco.
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You have told us this scenario has been proven to work. Well if the lack of detail, lack of explanation, lack of actual facts and lack of anything really, that you’ve been providing is anything to go by, then no wonder it works. The rules are simple: The Germans do everything right in every department, the Japanese and Italians work for the Germans (as does everyone that comes into contact with the Germans – especially the Spanish and Turks who love being invaded without warning) and the Allies are only allowed to make the same mistakes they made in WWII. Yes that is a war game even I could win as the Germans.
If I really know so little, you should have no trouble easily producing evidence to establish what you're saying. Yet all you seem to be able to do is declare yourself to be right and how dare I think otherwise.
A night invasion with no follow up reinforcements would be crushed. There would be few if any tanks and heavy weapons landed. The Royal Navy would come down and make lots of divots where the Germans where.
Adlertag was not the start of the Battle of Britain, it was just one day:
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The losses of the spring campaign had weakened the Luftwaffe before the Battle of Britain. The service was forced to wait until it had reached acceptable levels before a main assault against the RAF could be made.[24] Therefore, the first phase of the German air offensive took place over the English Channel. It rarely involved attacks against RAF airfields inland, but encouraged RAF units to engage in battle by attacking British Channel convoys. These operations would last from 10 July-8 August 1940.[25] The attacks against shipping were not successful; only 24,500 long tons (24,900 t) was sunk. Mine laying from aircraft had proved more profitable, sinking 38,000 long tons (39,000 t).[26] The impact on Fighter Command was minimal. It had lost 74 fighter pilots killed or missing and 48 wounded in July, and its strength rose to 1,429 by 3 August. By that date, it was only short of 124 pilots.[27]
In the second phase of attacks, shipping, coastal airfields, radar and stations south of London were attacked during 8–18 August. The Luftwaffe gradually increased the frequency of attacks. German bombers also raided targets as far north as Liverpool during night hours.[28] The first major raid inland and against RAF airfields came on 12 August. RAF Hawkinge, Lympne, Manston and radar stations at Pevensey, Rye and Dover were to be destroyed. Portsmouth docks were also targeted.[29] The results of the raids were mixed. The Radar station at Ventnor was badly damaged and others targeted were also damaged, but not destroyed. All were in working order by the following morning. The attacks against the harbour and RAF stations had failed to destroy them. All were not in fully working order by the end of the day, but were back in action the following morning. Unknown to German intelligence, Lympne itself was not even an operational station. This sort of intelligence blunder contributed to the failure of Adlertag.[30]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlertag
The emphasis is mine.
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