Split Thread WWII & Appeasement

[jimbob]

I just think that scholars are underestimating the German Navy. Without air superiority the British Navy was a sitting duck, as was proved when the Japanese sank a British ship in the Pacific with the loss of a thousand sailors, and the Bismarck sank another British battleship with another loss of a thousand sailors. That's why many scholars now say battleships are obsolete.

Chamberlain, and even Churchill, did inflict damage on the German Navy during the Norway campaign which might have affected the later German invasion of Britain. From a Wikipedia about the matter:

How effective do you think air power would have been against the 70-odd destroyers in a night attack on the barges moving at walking pace?

 

[jimbob]

Churchill was quoted once as saying the one thing that gave him the jitters during the war was the German Naval U boat menace. That is relevant to any invasion of Britain. From that source about the U boats quoted above:

What has the Battle of the Atlantic (where U-boats attacked convoys of merchant ships) got to do with an invasion plan where the U-boats would have had to defend convoys of barges?

You might also note that Churchill was not quoted as saying he had jitters about an invasion.

 

[Nessie]

The Nazi construction of landing craft suggests there was a serious intent to invade the UK. But any chance of a successful attempt would have required defeat of the RAF and RN first.

 

[Border Reiver]

I just think that scholars are underestimating the German Navy.

No, I think you are overestimating the German Navy - which had lost almost half of its destroyers and a sizable portion of its surface strength in the Battle of Norway. The Kriegsmarine did not believe they could support Sealion.

 

[Dave Rogers]

I just think that scholars are underestimating the German Navy.

And I think that people who think the German Navy had the strength to force a Channel crossing simply can't count.

Without air superiority the British Navy was a sitting duck, as was proved when the Japanese sank a British ship in the Pacific with the loss of a thousand sailors,

Two ships, actually, a battleship and a battlecruiser, but they didn't manage to sink any of the accompanying destroyers, which are a hell of a lot harder to hit.

and the Bismarck sank another British battleship with another loss of a thousand sailors. That's why many scholars now say battleships are obsolete.

Do you ever read the nonsense you post? (1) This has ****-all to do with air superiority as no aircraft were involved, and (2) one battleship sinking another is nothing to do with why battleships are obsolete. You may also note that destroyers are decidedly not obsolete, and it's destroyers that would have massacred the German invasion fleet.

Chamberlain, and even Churchill, did inflict damage on the German Navy during the Norway campaign[...]

Amazing. I always thought it was the Royal Navy and the Norwegian shore batteries that did all that.

Dave

 

[Dave Rogers]

The Nazi construction of landing craft suggests there was a serious intent to invade the UK.

They didn't actually construct any, though, did they? They just collected together enough Rhine barges to look like an invasion fleet.

Dave

 

[jimbob]

Exercise Tiger shows how vulnerable inadequately-escorted dedicated landing ships (not barges) were.

Sealion would have been far less favourable.

 

[Nessie]

They didn't actually construct any, though, did they? They just collected together enough Rhine barges to look like an invasion fleet.

Dave

700 of the largest type, according to Wiki, mainly used for transport, mine laying type tasks.

 

[Dave Rogers]

700 of the largest type, according to Wiki, mainly used for transport, mine laying type tasks.

Ah, right. But they were far too late for Sea Lion, as they didn't start to enter service till April 1941. There may well have been a serious intent to invade Britain, but the means were never available.

Dave

 

[jimbob]

Ah, right. But they were far too late for Sea Lion, as they didn't start to enter service till April 1941. There may well have been a serious intent to invade Britain, but the means were never available.

Dave

Also Operation Neptune used 4,000 landing craft, and 1,200 warships in a fleet of nearly 7,000 vessels

Significantly different scale

 

[Garrison]

Ah, right. But they were far too late for Sea Lion, as they didn't start to enter service till April 1941. There may well have been a serious intent to invade Britain, but the means were never available.

Dave

Reading 'Wages of Destruction' and its clear from that any notion they could have produced those landing craft sooner or built a horde of U-Boats if they had scrapped the surface fleet plans are a non-starter, the Germans were pretty much short of everything.

One thing the book that struck as rather strange was that in 1936 Britain was threatening sanctions against Germany and even Chamberlain was strongly in favour. Nothing to do with the re-militarization of the Rhineland, it was the German threat to suspend loan repayments...

 

[jimbob]

I have heard speculation that Chamberlain's terminal illness affected his negotiating ability at Munich.

 

[Tolls]

Without air superiority the British Navy was a sitting duck...

I will once again refer to Crete. The Axis had air superiority for that operation, and yet the RN still managed to prevent the naval landing portion entirely.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

I wonder what would have happened had Hitler actually pushed the invasion forward.

It would have been an unmitigated disaster losing a major part of the army and most of the remnants of his fleet, with most likely the Luftwaffe being severly damaged too.

Would that have been enough to encourage Stalin to move west? Or Vichi France to attempt a rematch? After all the French had most of their fleet intact and could have offered the British a safe place to land.

Also, the major purges of the army had not really happened yet, so a military coup would have been far more likely.

 

[Nessie]

A Soviet invasion west would run into the same problems invasions of Russia have, a massive supply line across hostile territory.

 

[Craig B]

A Soviet invasion west would run into the same problems invasions of Russia have, a massive supply line across hostile territory.

Stalin knew that through experience, not merely reasoning. He personally had experienced the Soviet collapse in Central Poland in 1920, and the precipitate retreat of the Red Army that followed, while in post as chief political commissar of the South-Western Front.

 

[ddt]

A Soviet invasion west would run into the same problems invasions of Russia have, a massive supply line across hostile territory.

... and on the wrong rail gauge.

 

[Henri McPhee]

General Alan Brooke was told in his diaries that he discovered that the Home Fleet in the event of an invasion, had little intention of coming further south than the Wash. As destroyers were also being drawn off to Western Approaches, the naval defence in the Channel and southern waters did not appear to be able to offer the required interference with German landing operations........ Also in his diaries he wrote:

The pilots of Fighter Command were putting up a performance for which they will remain famous throughout history. There were, however, grave doubts as to whether they could last the course...... I am seriously disturbed by the prospect of German airborne landings on the South Downs, to be carried out in combination with landings and destined to prevent the timely arrival of my counter-attacking forces.

It should not be thought that I considered our position a hopeless one...Far from it. We should certainly have had a desperate struggle and the future might well have hung in the balance, but I felt that, given a fair share of the fortunes of war, we should certainly succeed in finally defending these shores. It must be remembered that, if my diary occasionally gave vent to some of the doubts which the heavy responsibility generated, it was the one and only outlet for such doubts.

 

[dudalb]

But the German air force was a separate part of the armed forces when Göring led their heroic supply of the encircled 6th Army at Stalingrad.


You said "leader", that's a bit malleable. He was Hitler's deputy until his testament showed he was not his successor.

Goring had a long history of making extravagant promises that the failed to keep before the Stalingrad promise.
His "Leave it to me;the Luftwaffe alone can finish off all those Brits in Dunkirk"
is one example.
"And if one Alllied Bomb falls on Berlin, you can call me Meyer" is another.
Later, Hitler,in one of the very few times he admitted to a mistake;said he never should have believed Goring's Stalingrad promise given how ofter before Goring had made extravagant promises he failed to keep.

 

[Garrison]

A Soviet invasion west would run into the same problems invasions of Russia have, a massive supply line across hostile territory.

On the other hand assuming the Soviets massed their troops and supplies at the border in the same way the Germans did in June 41 they had a lot less ground to cover to reach Berlin than the Germans did to reach Moscow.

I suspect though Stalin would have been content to watch Germany and Britain batter away at one another for a while longer while the Soviet forces carried on their modernisation.