I feel that I only answered part of your question, really. The part I did not answer in detail was this:
I don’t have GQ worthy cites to answer this, but I don’t get the impression that Hitler had the patience for statistical analysis of stuff, whether they be military strategy& logistics, or social and economic planning, or whatever. I believe he relied on his “gut instincts” and personal experiences a lot. (Many people do. I do. )
I also think that there is (even today) some belief in the “morale” aspect of warfare, in that highly determined and motivated force will achieve results on the battlefield that just a dry numbers comparison would otherwise indicate as likely. (For example, the Japanese belief in the spirit of Bushido to act as a counter-weight to the fact that, unit for unit, the Japanese infantry did not have as many heavy [artillery, heavy machine guns, mortars] weapons as their European counterparts.) Sometimes it works, too, I guess. Sometimes it don’t, though.
But anywho, I believe Hitler (in '44) was hoping that the shock of an attack delivered with speed and elan would demoralize the Allies on the western front. Maybe he didn’t realize that nothing remains static forever, including the “national character traits” and determination of the enemies opposing him (contributing towards the stereotypes that he relied on as part of his reliance “on his gut” in decision making).
The idea that Churchill, for one, would not put up with his Generals disagreeing with him is plain wrong. Churchill argued at length for many things, most of which were as bat-crazy as anything Hitler could have come up with and most of which he was persuaded to abandon by the Joint Chiefs of Staff - chiefly Alan Brooke (CIGS).
Up to when the USA was brought into the War, Churchill was probably a net military asset but after that he increasingly was a liability who chief asset was in the realm of morale and, to a degree, international diplomacy. The invasion of the Dodecanese Islands, in late 1943, was one of his projects that he managed to get through. It was a predictable disaster.
I am not so knowledgeable as to Roosevelt, but from what I have read whilst he may have manipulated things a little more subtly than Churchill he did not primarily direct USA military strategy either. More a role of “approving” the proposals of others.
Allied strategy and, especially operations, were developed and directed by professional soldiers rather than their political masters. It was one of the chief reasons we prevailed.
Churchill could cause dozens of military disasters and still win the war, because his major use as an asset was in smoothing the alliance with America. It is sometimes taken for granted that the Western Allies would closely cooperate on every level - but in the history of warfare, few alliances have worked as well as that between the Brits and the Yanks (once the Yanks were in the game).
Major successes by Churchill include: (1) managing to restrain the Americans from attacking in Europe prematurely; and (2) managing his own general’s egos, collaborating in putting an American of limited experience - Eisenhower - in charge of that attack. Both were significant in crafting victory.
Perhaps the best previous example of allies cooperating was the Marlborough/Prince Eugene of Savoy partnership in the war of the Spanish Succession …
That may be your view but I understand that he wanted to take the islands much earlier, before the Germans could prepare a defence. If the Americans had not withdrawn the offer of some squadrons of P-38 Lightning long-range fighters, the Germans would not have had control of the air and the result may well have gone the other way.
It is true he did want to launch the operation earlier - but then he had little idea on logistics and how quickly a significant amphibious operation could be laid on. He was throughout his life an undisciplined believer in on-the-hoof exploitation when it came to military planning. He hated operating to a plan, but always wanted to have every asset in battle all the time rather than preparing for success.
On the subject of long range American air cover, that was requested but never granted, let alone promised but then withdrawn.
Without air cover, the operation was a disaster waiting to happen and should have been cancelled but Churchill had been promised his operation and insisted it take place, even when the basic conditions for success could be shown to be no longer in place. I believe it was largely cooked up behind Brooke’s back - he thought the time for it had long passed and did not know it was still being advanced. Hence his failure to stop it.
As regards the Bulge, Hitler did not - even after Normandy - want to understand the key different condition existing in the West versus the Eastern Front. Air power. I don’t think anybody has sufficiently stressed this factor yet.
Western Allied air power largely parallelized Germany armoured movement during daylight unless weather conditions prevented air operations. The early days of the Bulge offensive operated in bad winter weather that prevented allied air operations. As soon as the weather improved the operation was doomed.
Then it’s a good thing that I didn’t put forward that idea, isn’t it? I never said that Churchill or Roosevelt would accept no disagreement, I said that they wouldn’t accept the level of “talking back” heard on some recordings and read on some transcripts that German generals got away with. Disagreeing while still maintaining decorum is really different than shouting and lecturing, and German generals got away with a lot.
I misunderstood your use of the phrase “talking back” then - no problem! However from reading Brooke’s diaries there seemed to be quite a bit of shouting and hectoring taking place. Overwhelmingly by Churchill when he couldn’t get his way.
Brooke simply discovered early that the best way of winning the argument was not to play Winston’s game, and simply calmly dismantle his proposal with hard facts as to why it was not a good idea.
CIGS apparently had quite a temper on his that he was quite willing to deploy on others to get his own way. I believe he and Admiral King almost got into a fist fight at one Conference. He just choose not to with Churchill as it was not effective.
In a closely related note, both the Germans and the Japanese built their narratives around highly racist ideologies. The fundamental premise was that they could not be defeated because their racial attributes were inherently superior to their enemies. This had some very real impacts on the battlefield.
For example, the Japanese do not appear to have given much thought to the possibility that the Allies might break their codes. Japanese cryptographers experimented with breaking Allied codes but quickly gave up. They then reasoned that if the noble and brilliant Japanese could not break the codes of the ignorant Americans, then surely it was impossible for the ignorant Americans to ever break the brilliant Japanese codes. This idea did not end well for them, to say the least.
I’m not sure I’d want to go too far in proposing a direct causative link between racism and codebreaking prowess - in America during WW2, anti-Japanese racism was pretty endemic, but that didn’t stop the American codebreakers.
Perhaps a better way of looking at it is that early Japanese military successes encouraged a culture of complacency, that the Japanese themselves, in rueful retrospect, labeled ‘the victory disease’ - that encouraged them to be lax about code security (among other things). Racism played a part in that no doubt.
I recently read Eisenhower’s “Crusade in Europe” and one thing I found of interest was his comment of coalitions. Eisenhower said while studying the Napoleonic Wars at West Point he never could quite understand why it was so difficult to beat Napoleon. Then in WWII he found out…coalitions are so damn difficult to pull off because different countries have different aims and they feel their strategy is the best. Eisenhower had problems with British generals such as Montgomery and Brooke and as a college football player Eisenhower valued teamwork highly. His relations with Royal Air Force and Royal Navy brass was much better.
The Japanese military was designed for fighting in China which didn’t require as many heavy weapons as would battle against Western powers. The Europeans and Americans had had centuries of experience battling against each other – or themselves – and had a better idea of what was required.
Even the infamous banzai charges were first deployed against shaky Chinese troops where many commanders got their initial experience.
He must have been reliving not only his 1940 adventure, but also the countless times the democracies blinked in the lead up to the war.
I wonder how rational he was at that stage of the war.
The Japanese had a reasonable program for evaluating radio intercepts. For example, they were aware of the routes flown by planes on patrols around Pearl Harbor from intercepts and they learned of the bombing unit which was tasked with the atomic bombs because of the uncoded portions of the transmissions.
Well past edit time. I should note that Japanese intelligence was aware of the unit and was tracking its training flights, but was not able to determine the purpose.
The Americans would transmit in code but they started the transmission with the group(?) identification number which they were tracking.
Maybe also worth noting that one of its key objectives, indeed the only way they would get anywhere near their goal of the reaching the Meuse, let alone Antwerp, was capturing American fuel depots. The Americans were aware of this and evacuated millions of gallons of fuel from the threatened areas. Some was captured, though not enough to make any difference. When the weather did clear, Allied ground attack aircraft paralysed any German resupply efforts.
Due to the strategic bombing campaign German fuel reserves were so scarce that the Luftwaffe could no longer afford to send trainee pilots into the air, significantly reducing its effectiveness as you can imagine. In the end, having failed to capture enough fuel armor had to be abandoned. Panzer Lehr abandoned 53 of its precious tanks in January 1945 as they had no fuel to run or recover them.
Indeed. Eisenhower’s contribution to the war was more valuable than any single military genius - it was his unprecedented ability to get the Alliance to work, despite the inevitable clashes of national priorities, egos, etc.
Having to deal with a prima donna like Monty was the price he paid (though having to deal with Patton on the rampage was also no picnic).
One of Churchill’s main contributions was to realize that the alliance required someone like Eisenhower.
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