And as I mentioned in another thread, the Home Guard was made up of veterans of WWI and the Boer War. “Undisciplined” is not a word I would use to describe men who crossed No Man’s Land to take a German trench.
Airborne troops also lack heavy weapons and go into battle with only a minimum of ammunition. The weapons the Home Guard carried, even the joked about pitchforks and fowling pieces, are well suited for fighting in close quarters. They would not be fighting a set piece battle but a guerrilla war on land they knew intimately, surrounded by their families and other people happy to help them. This would be against a foe with a long and fragile supply chain, a situation that has led to the embarassment of armies since the Egyptians.
Would you rather have Einstein and other prominent Jewish scientists who emigrated just in time, wind up working with a more compassionate Nazi Party instead?
Would you have Hitler concentrate on doing what it takes to win and listen to his tactically superior generals and admirals rather than induilging on his ego and arrogance.
If Hitler he did both of these things, we would be the rebels fighting against a Vichy Europe today.
To answer the OP. No the Germans did not allocate significant resources to exterminating jews. You also have to look at the manpower they used to kill jews. More often than not they were chosen out of prison or mental facalities. They also used/formed paramilitary units in countries where Jew hatred was even more severe than in Germany such as Ukrania and Lithuania.
Actually the said countries offered very little help in the way finding jews. The Nazis caught no Danish jews (most were smugled to Sweden which did not turn them in).
I haven’t read all the responses, but to respond to the idea that Hitler could have done much better, I would say that, from the starting point of 1939, the allies and the rest of the west had a pretty good outcome, considering all things. If Hitler had conquered Moscow when he came so close the Allies would have never had the chance to attack continental Europe. And if Hitler hadn’t overestimated or, “Bit off more than Germany could chew” then we would still be looking at a much larger Germany and a much less discredited view of fascism than we have today. WWII pretty much alerted the world of the dangers of fascism. Although we still have the USSR, we are very luck that the USA was attacked when it was by Japan, because otherwise Russia would have owned the entire continent of Europe. Hindsight is, of course, 20/20, but I can’t really think of many realistic outcomes that would have been better.
Sorry to double post, but that’s definately true. A better example would have been France or Poland. In these countries the local population was certainly helpful to the Germans. The Danish Jews were helped tremendously by the Danes.
Thanks much for the link… I evidently overestimated German preparations. I’m going to have to locate the full book though, mmm… WW2 book I haven’t read.
(As for the attacks on the radar towers, I recall a PBS program stating that bombers were tasked to attack the towers themselves [good luck] but ignored the wooden huts built for the operators a few feet away.)
Shortie
And these 20 Luftwaffe bombers would have known about their opportunity by what, satellite recon? Never mind just what laser-guided bombs they’d have used to hit hundreds of planes and thousands of people. And never mind again the other Fighter groups, which mostly stayed out of the battle, in case of just such an invasion.
The followup raid against airfields should be easy for anyone to deduce… I sent a massed raid against london and X minutes later a minor raid against G. 11’s airfields. Which are busy refueling all of their planes. Which means they are covered in support personel, planes, pilots, ordinance, and GASOLINE. And there were no more planes available in S. England at that point. None, nada, zero, zip. Thankfully this will remain forever a what if. But it could have happened, the balance was that close.
Um, no, not really. I don’t think you appreciate what a major deal it is to bomb what, a dozen airfields? More?
You’re asking a force of light bombers to attack multiple targets that are for the most part very large, spread out targets and defended by flak guns. How easy do you think it is to bomb targets the size of airplanes and fuelling trucks with any accuracy? We’re not talking about the Japanese carriers at Midway, we’re talking about hitting a huge number of targets spread all over hell’s half acre, and unless the bombers simultaneously appear over each airfield, the first ones hit will phone the other ones and tell them to scramble. Doesn’t take long to fuel a Hurricane.
Even if they DON’T scramble, no way you’d destroy all of 11 Group. It’s just not that easy in 1940 to hit targets that accurately from your He-111.
Slight Nitpick: At the beginning of the war the camps were staffed with the best and brightest young Aryans (at least the best and brightest who were willing to staff the camps). However, early on during the war the personnel were combed through and all appropriately aged and fit men were moved into more military roles- this is how the SS Totenkopf division was formed IIRC.
In general though I agree with you Strutur - early special actions were carried out by reserve police battalions, later on friendly paramilitaries from occupied territories.
Anyway I got the impression that the Nazi occupation authorities were very unhappy with the level of cooperation they got from France and other occupied countries.
**coffeecam[/] It is possible that all of the fighters stationed in the South of England were in fact on the ground at once. The RAF never stationed all of its fighters in the south at the same time. There were always fighter groups building, training , and rebuilding. Check the links below to see the Fighter groups locations and click on some squadrons - there are always squadrons out of reach of the Germans. Second - planes weren’t the issue - the UK was building planes faster than pilots could be trained to fly them. The fourth link below shows that the number of servicible fighter aircraft in reserve was substantial.
The problem is that the wooden huts were not obvious targets, even though they were the valuable bit. Equally there were various backup systems in place (like semi-mobile radar systems and the Observer Corps), and a sustained attack on the equipent huts would just lead to them all being built underground.
Nah. The problems have been covered by RickJay and MMI, and I’d add that South-East England had just about the best air-defence system in the world to warn them of incoming attackers. I like the mythos of the Few as much as any Brit, but we do tend to talk up the Battle of Britain a bit. Again I’d compare it with the later Allied equivalent, where thousands of heavy bombers hammering Germany were rather less effective than predicted. We’re too used to modern warfare, where the USAF can make like the wrath of God on anyone it doesn’t like the look of.