Only three countries had a big army: France, Germany and the Soviet Union.
Only three countries had a large number of tanks: France, Germany and the Soviet Union.
Only two countries had great quality aircarft: Germany and the UK.
Only two countries had a strategy based on large tank formations and aircraft concentrated on the same area: Germany and the Soviet Union. In fact, others mostly thought armies handle the ground warfare best and the air force should not meddle.
Most armies had chronic shortage of anti-tank guns.
The last point might well be most important. Anyway, the two countries that divided continental Europe pre-1941 stand out. It is worth noting that areas that are not great for tank warfare, Serbia, Finland and Norway, became costly.
The meme that Poles fought mounted is the most enduring achievement of Joseph Goebbels. Pretty much everybody had cavalry, but not much and it was not supposed to fight mounted.
And strangely, the speed of Hitler’s advance through France went against him ultimately.
The unexpected advances (with the generals admittedly brilliantly making it up as they went along) combined with indecision, infighting and face-saving (all of which encouraged by Hitler) amongst the armed force hierarchy meant that the furthest forward army units we left kicking their heels in Western France and Belgium. They could’ve crushed the British army there and then.
But no, even with the French forces mostly capitulating this gave valuable time for UK forces to effect an escape.
Had we lost all those men in France there was a possibility of striking a deal (which is what Hitler wanted). Such a deal was certainly explored in the event of the Dunkerque evacuation failing badly.
However, we got the men back and used the brilliance of our air defence system to fend off a technically brilliant but disorganised and unfocussed Luftwaffe.
Germany never really came close to cracking us from that point on.
An invasion was impossible, a war on two fronts was assured and Hitler’s downfall was pretty much sealed in Oct 1940. He couldn’t win.
Of course there was still the messy business of taking Europe back and that took another 5 years and millions of lives but with hindsight we can see that the indecision and delay in western France and Belgium as a defining moment.
I should have said Yugoslavia, Norway, Finland. The ethnic Serbs became the biggest problem for Germans. However, the modern area of Serbia is suitable for tank warfare.
In addition to the comments above, as far as I am aware Denmark intended to remain neutral, and had signed a non-aggression treaty with Germany. Then they woke up one morning to find the country full of German troops - occupied pretty much before they could do anything, including declare war. And even if they could have done, it would not have achieved much. The standing army was tiny and poorly equipped, and the coastline of Denmark is huge and essentially unprotectable against invasion without huge numbers of well equipped soldiers.
The speed of guerrillas, but at full-army sizes and strengths; now add that they never signed a deal they didn’t intend to renegue on, thus turning war not into “the continuation of diplomacy by other means” but rather diplomacy into “the means you use to gain time while you prepare for war”.
Actually that isn’t true. However you aren’t talking about a standing army of 10 million Jews. You are talking about a people who were distributed throught a country where they had a history of being marginalized and descriminated against. But the fact is there were several instances of Jews attempting to resist the Nazis.
Didn’t you see the movie Defiance?
Keep in mind while Germany was inventing what would become the template for modern combined arms mechanized warfare, France was still preparing to fight another World War I. They had built a series of defenses called the Maginot Line on the border with Germany to both delay a German assault and encourage them to go through Belgium, buying France time to mobilize. Unfortunately they underestimated the speed of the German Blitzkrieg. While the French high command were responding days and weeks, the Germans were operating in terms of hours and days. The Germans simply blasted through Belgium and the French were simply unable to effectively respond.
Seconding the notion that Poland fell due to being surrounded on [del]three[/del] four sides, being outnumbered (and usually outclassed) more than 2 to 1 in every category, and Germany’s better integration of all of their forces rather than having horse cavalry against tanks. And they still lasted longer than France did.
While this is partially true, it is not as if the French never foresaw the possibility of another outflanking through the low countries. The Maginot line was never completed due to lack of time, funds (and possibly ability in certain places, I don’t recall,) rather than lack of foresight of the swiftness of blitzkrieg. If the Maginot Line had been completed to the same extent it had been in Alsace-Lorraine, things may have been different. But it still would not have been as effective as a preemptive attack against West Germany during the Polish campaign. (By this I mean the final result would probably have been the same, but both scenarios would have stretched out the timetable.)
Germany never made a full-scale attack on Finland. Quite contrary, Finland and Nazi Germany were more or less allied during most of WW2.
Since Finland lost to the Soviet Union in the Winter War and was not able to obtain defense agreements with Sweden and/or Britain, they sought assistance from Nazi Germany and allowed German troops in Finnish territory. They even had a sort of alliance with Nazi Germany. The Finnish Continuation War with the Soviet Union started just a few days after the startup of Germany’s Operation Barbarossa. The only warfare between Finnish and German forces during WW2 was during the Lapland War which, according to Wikipedia, started because Finland was obliged to drive formerly friendly German troops out of Lapland in 1944.
IMO, Finnish WW2 history illustrates the danger of sleeping with the devil. Since Finland had been attacked by the Soviet Union in 1939 and couldn’t get support neither from the allied powers nor neutral countries like Sweden, they naturally shacked up with Nazi Germany when Hitler turned against the Soviet Union. A stupid, but understandable move.
And, BTW: The first Allied infantry victory in WW2 was in Norway
Interesting. I’ve heard that story all my life, including from my WW2-era Dad. Shows the enduring power of propeganda.
One learns a lesson a day.
Found a fairly concise article on the subject here: The Mythical Polish Cavalry Charge
Eh. France signed the armistice on 22 June, although it “went into effect” on 25 June. But the government had fallen on 16 June and, more to the point, the collapse was very swift – the German attack started on 10 May and by 16 May the French were in a full-scale military crisis; by the 20th their northern forces were cut off at the Channel.
Wikipedia summarizes that the Battle of France was only about a week longer than that of Poland.
Considering that France had more troops and tanks than the Germans, a history of victory, and British assistance, the resistance that France offered wasn’t as great as that of Poland. Oh, and France wasn’t being back-doored by the Soviet Union at the same time.
In context of the OP, it’s worth noting that many individual French units fought very well – and that one subset of them in particular, colonial Indochinese troops, fought the Germans with great tenacity, giving the Nazis a terrible time. This was ominous for Western armies…Indochina would later be known as Vietnam.
The Maginot Line was never built to cover the Low Countries…not because it wasn’t completed, but for political reasons. Building a fence with your neighbor on the outside sends him a message; they didn’t want to leave the Low Countries with no alternative but to ally with Germany. The plan was to advance and meet the Germans head-on there. That’s why the German attack through the Ardennes was able to cut off so much French strength that had wheeled north into the Low Countries.
The Germans spoke with respect of the fighting ability of the Belgian troops. But they hugely outnumbered them and their individual prowess couldn’t make a difference.
Originally Posted by Susanann
Also, don’t forget about 10 million+ Jews who gave up without any resistance.
Can you imagine how many millions of German police/military would have been shot dead attempting to arrest jews if the tens of millions of German/Polish/Danish/Belgium Jews took up arms for their own self defense as modern day Isreali citizens do today?
The Swiss rely on Swiss citizens shooting any foreign invader, citizens with small arms is a major part of the Swiss defense.
If each Jew that was rounded up and sent to the gas chamber, instead, grabbed a rifle and shot at least “1” German policeman who came to take him away, then it starts to add up when 5 million Jews shoot back.
IF Swiss had been attacked by Germany, I, for one, certainly would not want to be in the Nazi military or German police back in WW2 assigned to arrest armed Swiss citizens .
I also would not want to be a member of a foreign army occupying and going house -to-house in Isreal or Alabama where behind every door is a citizen with a loaded rifle trying to shoot me.
The point is, that if the Jews resisted as much as the Swiss planned , then it literally would have cost Hitler millions of casualties in his forces just trying to round up the Jews.
10 milllion Jews shooting at you, along with a French army not surrendering, along with other countries not surrendering would have stopped Hitler, and certainly would have caused the German invasion of the Soviet Union to never get off the ground.
If everyone in Europe determinedly fought back against Germany, then we would not have needed the Americans to come to the rescue on D-Day.
I am currently reading *Stilwell and the American Experience in China *by Barbara Tuchman. The same type of appeasement was going on at the same time regarding China and Japan. So it wasn’t just a European thing. The world was tired of war and was willing to put up with almost anything to keep the peace. A number of world leaders figured that was a good time to take what they wanted.
Of course, if every government in Europe had known about Hitler’s plans and Germany’s buildup of a modern army (remember, the German revolutionary Blitzkrieg tactics was what proved the obsolescence of the Maginot line) and had acted accordingly, you might have had a point. But the German forces and tactics were something most other countries didn’t (and probably couldn’t) anticipate. Considering the state of the Allied forces’ condition in 1939, I’m prone to believe that if Hitler hadn’t attacked the Soviet Union, we’d probably be speaking German across most of Europe today.
Even more so. Guerrilla warfare is much more effective when the guerrillas are widely scattered and spread out among millions of other people. Guerrillas everywhere, anywhere, would be the nightmare. 10 million scattered armed Jewish guerrillas would be tremendously harder to conquer than a 10 million man army lumped together all in 1 place.
There is a BIG!!! difference between a couple rare small and contained incidents of resistance here and there, involving a few thousand people, and on the other hand, a major widespread opposition of 10 million armed Jews all shooting back at you.
I don’t see what was so stupid about it as it was the only real way for Finland to keep it’s independence. It was just a matter of time before the Soviet Union was going take another crack at Finland, and it’s not like the western allies would have given support against their own devil.
I believe it is six million, including women, children, and men who had probably never touched a weapon. They didn’t all have rifles at home.
I recall from reading Auschwitz and incidence where Nazis were shooting Jews and dumping the bodies into mass graves. One Jewish guy attacked a German with a knife. He died in the attempt, and then the Germans switched to killing the Jews with axes.
That’s not entirely true. The German buildup of its forces was plain for everyone to see. There was a lot of willful ignorance back then - leaders choosing not to look at what was right in front of them because they didn’t want to confront Germany. Churchill was trying to sound the alarm in Britain for years before the invasion of Poland. Analysts who had looked at Germany’s ‘peaceful’ manufacturing and aviation industries were well aware that they were tooling up big time for a major fighting force.
You can’t hide the construction of a military force of the size Germany constructed before WWII. Every intelligence service of every major power saw what was going on. The problem was that the civilian leadership was not willing to listen, and large isolationist or even pro-fascist movements around the world were putting political pressure on politicians to do nothing.
When it became clear that Germany had built an aggressive force, the willful suspension of belief became the willingness to believe that Germany would be satisfied taking back the Sudetenland, or that suitable negotiations and appeasements could halt the progress of Germany’s military.
In addition, the allied countries had greatly downsized their armed forces and had not modernized sufficiently, and were in no position to fight Germany by the time it became apparent that Germany’s intentions were hostile. So there may have been an element of ‘buying time’ in the appeasements and negotiations. Unfortunately, Hitler read that as weakness and an unwillingness to fight, and therefore thought he could have his way in Europe and then negotiate a peace with the British.