60 years ago tonight (Sept 7th 1940) London got a bit of a surprise as 350 German bombers arrived to begin a fairly comprehensive campaign of urban landscaping. The Blitz lasted for 57 consecutive days and nights, killed 20,00 civilians** and destroyed huge swathes of the city. My view on this is probably biased so I wondered what others thought.
It seems to me that in ordering the Luftwaffe away from Royal Air Force airfields in the South, Herman Goring made perhaps the greatest tactical blunder of WW2. By switching away from military targets (which were causing Germany to lose unacceptable levels of aircraft), the RAF had the opportunity to regroup and recover (the RAF itself was dangerously close to running out of airstrips, the pilots exhausted, etc.). This breathing space (and tactical blunder) has been seen in retrospect as the point at which of the Battle of Britain became winnable, although, in effect London was partially sacrificed.
Had the Germans continued with bombing military targets, most experts believe they could and should have won that battle for air supremacy and, of course, after that invasion was inevitable. It would necessarily follow that all effective opposition from Africa to Asia would have ceased (Germany and Russia having, at that time, signed and agreed a non-aggression Pact). The war would have effectively ended in Europe and Hitler would have won.
I understand the significance of Pearl Harbour, Midway, Stalingrad, and D-Day (amongst others) but these all happened later, on a second front or in another theatre of the war. They all helped to change the tide but, had the invasion taken place, by then the world would have been a different place so events would have panned out differently.
While I think its probably true to say the Battle of Britain marked “the end of the beginning” what do you think, did Goring make the biggest tactical mistake of the war ?
** a further 20,00 civilians were also later that summer killed in other cities around Britain so I don’t want to create the impression that London was the only target. Many cities suffered greatly.
It is not necessarily the invasion of Russia that was the mistake, but the thinking that it would be all done in hurry. He had figured that he could be done with Russia quickly nad then go back to the rest of Europe, which he had put on hold, more or less. When it was prolonged, Hitler found himself in a war on two fronts which proved to be very difficult.
Another “mistake”, would be how many resources and personnel were used toward the extermination of the Jews. Even as the war was ending and Germany was struggling to stay in the war, trains and people and other resources were still being used heavily for the purpose of the Final Solution.
I use mistake in quotes, because the Final Solution was an end, not a means, like the invasion of Russia nad the Bombing of Britain. So it wasn’t a strategic mistake.
I don’t think that the germans took into account England’s secret weapon - Angela Landsbury’s tallents in Witchcraft. You may view documented proof of this in Disney’s feature film “Bedknobs and Broomsticks”. Did you see the way those empty armoured suits kicked Nazi butt?! Sent the entire Nazi U-boat crew swimming back to their sub! How cool was that!
All the posts have merit, of course. It must be pointed out, as I’m sure you know, that the British invented the radar just in time for the Battle of Britian air raids and knew where the German planes were. This also was important in staving off complete defeat. The two fronts was a major mistake, as was the war against USSR.
However, a major mistake was Pearl Harbor. We were not about to be involved with foreign affairs. Our gvt knew about the Jewish plight and the atrocities, but did nothing and could not do much short of declaring war. Japan completely changed the thinking of the American people. We entered the war apparently in the nick of time.
It took the Allies (not including Russia) 4 years to defeat 1/4 of Germany’s army. The other 3/4 were involved in attacking Russia. If the Allies had to tackle the full brunt of Germany’s armies it’s anybodies guess what would have happened but I’d wager the BEST the Allies could have hoped for in those circumstances would have been a negotiated truce leaving Hitler in power (and free to perfect their Atom bomb shudder).
I’ve heard it said that we can thank British Intelligence for prodding Adolf’s natural paranoia into thinking Russia would become a threat and preemptively attacking them would be a good idea (I don’t know if that is true however…any other opinions on why Adolf turned towards Russia?). In fact Stalin had enough troubles and after the purging of senior military officials he knew his army was woefully unprepared for a war. Basically Stalin wanted no part of WWII before he was forced into it (hence his non-aggression pact with Germany).
Perhaps the second greatest mistake was Germany’s treatment of Russian troops they captured (for the most part they were executed). Russia’s army blew chunks so bad that the Russian generals told their troops they would be shot if they didn’t fight to the end. If Germany had offered the Russian troops decent prisoner of war conditions to live under the Russian troops would have likely ditched their positions ASAP (ala Iraqi troops surrendering en masse during the Iraqi war). Instead the troops, faced with being shot if they ran away and being shot if they surrendered, had little choice but to fight to the last man. This, of course, became terribly wearing on the German army. Germany gave Russia a helluva bloody nose but the country is too damn big and even the devastation the Germans inflicted wasn’t enough (all told I think Russia lost 18 million people but I’m not sure if all of that can be laid at Germany’s feet…Stalin whacked an awful lot of people as well).
In a few words, Hitler lost because he overestimated Britain, and underestimated Russia. Actually, the Luftwaffe would have had a tough time attacking the British airfields and industrial targets-they (the Germans) had no heavy bombers (comparable to the Lancaster or B-17s). This blunder (the failure to produce a heavy bomber) was due to Hitler’s stupidity, and hurt the Germans later, as they had no means to bomb Russian factories beyond the Urals. Instead, the Germans had to rely on light bombers, which could only carry a few hunderd pounds of bombs at a time. Plus, their fighter escorts only had about 15-20 minutes endurance over England-which meant they often had to break off dogfigting to return to france to refuel. Oddly enough, the Germans had pretty elaborate plans for the invasion of England (Operation Sealion). Could they have carried it off? Probably-the British Army after Dunkirk, had lost most of its tanks and heavy guns. Had the Germans atacked in force, with the full support of the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine, I have no doubt that such an invasion could e carried out. Of course, Hitler thought the English would surrender anyway, and so set off to conquer Russia.
The US was blockading oil from getting to Japan in response to Japan’s invasion of China. Japan, being an island nation with little resources of its own, couldn’t tolerate this for long. They HAD to do something to get the US to back off.
Their mistake wasn’t so much attacking Pearl Harbor. Their BIG mistake was in not bombing the crap out of the dry docks where we repaired our ships. They woefully underestimated the US ability to put its fleet back together again. Frankly, even the US seemed a bit surprised at how good and fast those dock workers did their stuff.
Had Japan hit those repair bays the US probably would have been kept out of the Pacific for 6 months and a lot can happen in 6 months.
The greatest mistake was the attack on the Soviet Union, by definition:
“You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia.’”
I’m a little curious about why a German invation of England seems to be such a foregone conclusion. I don’t doubt they would have tried, had they been able to control the skies. But does everyone think it would have been successful? The D-Day landings required a massive effort and suffered severe casualties, wouldn’t a German invasion coming the other way have been a similar undertaking?
Nonsense. That was a single, isolated incident. Angela Landsbury’s contribution to the war was insignifican’t when compared with Superman’s. Did you see how many Japanese battleships he single-handedly sank in one Max Fleischer cartoon alone? The radio dramas and comic books clearly detail victory after victory against the Nazis and Imperial Japanese, all thanks to good ol’ Kal-El of Krypton. And more than half the time, he had to battle those Nazi spies while rescuing Lois Lane, who was always sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong.
Can you imagine how different the outcome of WW2 would have been if baby Superman’s space ship had crash-landed in Germany instead of the United States? The mind reels.
I am not an expert, but I once read somewhere that the three greatest blunders that the Germans made were the invasion of Russia, the non-invasion of Britian immediately after Dunkirk (both of these have been brought up by earlier posters), and the declaration of war on the US. This is not necessarily part of the attack on Pearl Harbor, as the Germans could conceivably let the Japanese fight it out on their own.
Just to add to the post of Jeff_42 (if a bit off topic), I once read a historian putting forth the Japanese perspective on the war. He wrote that they actually wanted no part of a war with the US. They were really worried about Russian Communist expansionism in Asia. However, as the US pressured them, they came to believe that a war was inevitable anyway, and decided to get in the first blow.
I don’t know how accurate this is in the opinion of other scholars. But I found it enlightening at the time I read it. Sometimes you take things so for granted that you don’t appreciate that others can have a drastically different take on it.
I think I disagree with those who say Hitler’s invasion of Russia was a mistake. Well, it certainly didn’t turn out well, but Hitler considered the invasion of Russia the whole point of the war. A major war aim was to subdue and pacify eastern europe and create an expanded German homeland. Hitler viewed France and England as sideshows. He thought he could knock England out of the war as easily as he did France. He was waiting for England to fall so he could attack Russia. When England didn’t fall, he went ahead anyway. Now, this may have been a mistake, but this was before the US was allied to Britain. At that time there was very little the British could do against Germany, D-Day was years away.
The blunder was not in attacking Russia, it was the way it was done. As others have noted, many eastern europeans welcomed the Nazis as liberators from the Communists. If they had been treated as liberated allies rather than slaves, the invasion might have succeeded. Of course, the whole idea was to enslave them in the first place, so it might be a moot point. But still, a better strategy would have been helpful. Germany had a string of tactical successes, defeating Russian armies right and left. But that turned out to be meaningless.
I agree that Japan was being strangled by the US embargo, they had to strike or come to some sort of agreement. Pearl Harbor wasn’t a mistake, it was brilliant. What turned the naval war around was the battle of Midway, where we crippled the Japanese fleet. But by all rights, the Japanese should have won at Midway, it could easily have turned into a disaster for the US. Then the Japanese could have gone on to take Hawaii. With our pacific fleet destroyed, we’d have had to shift more resources against Japan, giving the Germans an advantage. Of course, the probable result would be a prolonged war. And the result of that would have been the atomic bombing of Germany.
The Germans did not come close enough to neutralising the RAF even after Dunkirk.
There were reserves in the north of England that were held back to repel attacks to Northern cities.
Hitler, or more likely Goering, left those alone in the daytime as there would have been no German fighter capable of carrying out effective escort duties for a lengthy and critical part of the mission.
Attacking northern airbases during the night would have been ineffective, indeed they tried and missed several times as navigation was not good enough at that time.(a system did become available much later on but it was still only effective for large targets)
When the D-day landings were carried out we had no effective maritime resistance.It is hard to imagine a channel crossing opposed by what was unquestionably the most powerful Navy in the world at that time.Sure there would have been huge casualities.The British did have subs as well.Also remember that landing techniques were nowhere near as well developed at that time as they came to be for D-Day.
British bombers wreaked havoc on the barges that had been intended for use in operation Sealion and even the Luftwaffe was unable to provide enough effective cover.
Had the Germans started the troop and equipment build-up ,which would surely have taken a while and would have been noticeable to the British, I think that British capital ships would have made attacks at night shelling up to 20 miles inland and then would have withdrawn to safer,protected locations during the day.
You only have to look at the battle of Narvik to see what would have happened to the largely coastal German navy in the areas concerned.
I’d agree that Germany’s two-front war was the crucial error. Next would be the Peral Harbour attack and Hitler’s declaration of war on the US, overcoming American isolationism at one stroke.
Robot Arm, if you can come across the book Invasion: The German Invasion of England, July 1940 by British miltary historian Kenneth Macksey, he makes a case for a successful Nazi invasion of Britian. The crucial factor in his scenario, he writes, is that the Germans needed to invade ASAP after Dunkirk, while Britian was still relatively unprepared. The delay allowed the Army to prepare, and the RAF to rebuild, reorganize and set up radar stations. Also, in the book, Goering continues his Luftwaffe attack on RAF bases instead of blitzing the cities. It’s presumed that the Germans would have been able to attack on a narrow front, in and around Dover, which would not have been the case in the fall of 1940.
Operation Sea Lion (the code name for the Nazi invasion plan) by Peter Fleming is a good book on the non-invasion of Britian as it really happened.
Although…a History Channel show on Operation Sea Lion theorizes that the Germans never meant to invade Britian, and the threat was just a bargaining chip.
One conspiracy theory I heard was that, prior to declaring war on the U.S., the U.S. intentionally fed Hitler false intelligence information to make it look like the U.S. was about to launch a sneak attack on Nazi Germany. This was done to trick Hitler into declaring war on the U.S., so that the U.S. would have an excude to enter the European theater.