Split Thread WWII & Appeasement

[Border Reiver]

My Grandad Spaven was in the Artillery in WW1, In WW2 he was in his early 40s when WW2 started. He joined the Home Guard and was a Special Constable.

He was also part of the crew of one of the anti aircraft guns at Skinningrove Steel Works.

Most of his fellow Guard members were also WW1 vets, still comparatively fit youngish men who knew how to fight.

Fairly common thing then - the Veterans Guard of the Canadian Army was the same deal - WWI vets who came back to the colours. Their main job was civil defence and for some of the companies, guarding POW and internment camps in Canada

 

[Andy_Ross]

Any 2 of the Heavy Cruisers (CA), would likely defeat the German "Pocket Battleships".

Well, my Uncle Martin was involved in some of that.

 

[lobosrul5]

Well, my Uncle Martin was involved in some of that.

Yeah the Battle of River Plate is what I based my statement on. 1xCA and 2xCL vs a "Battleship".

 

[Andy_Ross]

It's about being aggressive and willing to take the damage.
Graf Spee could have won the engagement if Langsdorff had been more aggressive.
Same for the Italians in the Med, they had ample opportunity to inflict defeats on the RN in surface actions.

 

[Garrison]

You could argue that the fairly recent Nato bombing of Serbia forced a surrender there

You could argue there are fairies at the bottom of your garden, but if you have no proof it won't convince anyone.

I agree that opposed landings are not easy, and that there would be problems with regard to supply.

As in it would be impossible for the Wehrmacht of 1938/39.

The point is that Britain in 1938 was about as undefended as America at the time.

Not necessarily false but utterly misleading.

The 'heroic' British navy could only do so much against the Lufwaffe without air support.

As others have pointed out the Luftwaffe of 1940 was pretty useless against shipping, even when it was anchored as at Dunkirk, it isn't going to do miraculously better in 1938/39.

Chamberlain was right to talk about "peace in our time" while he corrected deficiencies in the air force and the army.

Except he failed miserably at 'peace in our time' and his support of rearmament was lacklustre at best. Also whatever benefit Britain might have obtained from Munich, Germany gained far more. Even the German Generals you are so fond of quoting believed Germany would have been doomed to defeat in 1938 and they were right.

It avoided a devastating bombing attack. I would have done the same thing in his shoes.

And repeating another false claim. The only 'waffle' I see is yours.

 

[Hubert Cumberdale]

If Kesselring still thought that after the war, he was seriously becoming insane at that point.

Not necessarily. I have remarked in this thread that Manstein thought Sealion had a good chance of success. All it proves is that the Wehrmacht had literally zero experience of amphibious operations and so had no idea of the difficulties involved.

Looking at what the Luftwaffe alone had to achieve:

• Protect the invasion fleet from the RAF
• Protect the invasion fleet from the RN
• Provide Ju-52's for paratroop drops
• Escort Ju-52's for paratroop drops
• Run air supply to paratroop DZ's
• Provide CAS on the beach heads
• Provide CAS for the paratroop drops
• Interdict counter-attacking enemy forces
• Maintain air superiority over the whole of South East England

Which is ludicrous given they IRL lost the battle of attrition against the RAF.

For the Wehrmacht to stand any chance of a staging a successful invasion of the British mainland, it would have had to have been designed to perform that task from its inception.

Its difficult to see how even this could be achieved as Germany had no way of gaining experience in amphibious operations and therefore had no way of developing a coherent amphibious doctrine. (Let's not forget that the British had experience of amphibious ops going back to the middle ages and they still bollocksed it up quite a lot. Amphibious ops are really hard).

And if it had been the case that the Wehrmacht was designed from the 1920's as an amphibious force, it would not have been capable of performing its actual bewegungskrieg role against continental neighbours.

 

[SpitfireIX]

I agree that opposed landings are not easy, and that there would be problems with regard to supply.

The point is that Britain in 1938 was about as undefended as America at the time[/HILITE].

But you just told us that the US had the "military clout" to intervene meaningfully in a war between Czechoslovakia and Germany. Are you now conceding that you were mistaken about that? Additionally, please explain where your hypothetical 1938 German invasion force was going to embark, how it was going to reach Britain, and how it was going to land.

The 'heroic' British navy could only do so much against the Lufwaffe without air support.

I don't know why you put "heroic" in quotes. Are you questioning the RN's heroism during World War II? And exactly how do you think the Luftwaffe was going to attack British ships in 1938? No handwaving; be specific. Finally, what makes you think that the RN wouldn't have had air support in opposing a German landing in 1938?

Chamberlain was right to talk about "peace in our time" while he corrected deficiencies in the air force and the army.

Chamberlain actually made deep cuts to the Army's budget during the late 1930s. Fail.

It avoided a devastating bombing attack. I would have done the same thing in his shoes.

Your claim that Britain would have suffered a "devastating bombing attack" in 1938, or even 1939, has been repeatedly shown to be erroneous.

 

[HansMustermann]

Actually that list is more than they had in '38. Neither Scharnhorst or Gneisenau were ready for service. Blücher and Prinz Eugen had been launched but were not even commissioned yet.

The RN at this point was something like 12xBB, 3xBC, 4xCV, 3xCVL, 16xCA, 38xCL, 120ish DD's. All of their BB's were better than anything the Kriegsmarine had. Any 2 of the Heavy Cruisers (CA), would likely defeat the German "Pocket Battleships".

While that is in line with my point, to be fair, the Germans never called them "pocket battleships". The Kriegsmarine had them filed under "Panzerschiff", i.e., literally "armoured ship." The "pocket battleship" name is what the British called them, not the Kriegsmarine.

(Well, the KM also had the destroyers and everything below filed under "boat" as opposed to "ship", so there we go. Nomenclature and classification varied a lot between navies.)

Honestly, they were just battlecruisers that the British gave a fancy name to, and at that Germany never envisioned battlecruisers as a surrogate for a battleship. The British did have such ideas at various points and to various degrees (and were wrong at that at various points, e.g., Jutland), not the Germans.

I don't think the Germans ever imagined them as able to trade blows with a battleship. In fact the whole idea was to outrun any real battleship. As I was saying, they were supposed to be raiders, not something that would actually stand toe to toe with the RN and protect something from it, like we're told in Henri's alternate history scenario.

 

[Hubert Cumberdale]

While that is in line with my point, to be fair, the Germans never called them "pocket battleships". The Kriegsmarine had them filed under "Panzerschiff", i.e., literally "armoured ship." The "pocket battleship" name is what the British called them, not the Kriegsmarine.

(Well, the KM also had the destroyers and everything below filed under "boat" as opposed to "ship", so there we go. Nomenclature and classification varied a lot between navies.)

Honestly, they were just battlecruisers that the British gave a fancy name to, and at that Germany never envisioned battlecruisers as a surrogate for a battleship. The British did have such ideas at various points and to various degrees (and were wrong at that at various points, e.g., Jutland), not the Germans.

I don't think the Germans ever imagined them as able to trade blows with a battleship. In fact the whole idea was to outrun any real battleship. As I was saying, they were supposed to be raiders, not something that would actually stand toe to toe with the RN and protect something from it, like we're told in Henri's alternate history scenario.

Quite. The concept of a battle cruiser was initially a cruiser-destroyer. It could outgun anything fast enough to catch it and outrun anything that outgunned it. QED.

 

[lobosrul5]

While that is in line with my point, to be fair, the Germans never called them "pocket battleships". The Kriegsmarine had them filed under "Panzerschiff", i.e., literally "armoured ship." The "pocket battleship" name is what the British called them, not the Kriegsmarine.

(Well, the KM also had the destroyers and everything below filed under "boat" as opposed to "ship", so there we go. Nomenclature and classification varied a lot between navies.)

Honestly, they were just battlecruisers that the British gave a fancy name to, and at that Germany never envisioned battlecruisers as a surrogate for a battleship. The British did have such ideas at various points and to various degrees (and were wrong at that at various points, e.g., Jutland), not the Germans.

I don't think the Germans ever imagined them as able to trade blows with a battleship. In fact the whole idea was to outrun any real battleship. As I was saying, they were supposed to be raiders, not something that would actually stand toe to toe with the RN and protect something from it, like we're told in Henri's alternate history scenario.

Quite. The concept of a battle cruiser was initially a cruiser-destroyer. It could outgun anything fast enough to catch it and outrun anything that outgunned it. QED.

Which is why I put "pocket battleship" in quotes, and they were smaller than any other BC in service at the time. Also they couldn't out gun or outrun the HMS Hood, HMS Renown, or HMS Repulse. Also the French Dunkerque and her sister ship. TBF those last two were constructed later, but ready by '38. Also I'm not sure they could outrun a QE class in heavy seas (I believe they were notoriously "wet" ships).

 

[Hans]

Destroyers and Light Cruisers would have been used directly against the barges. They would shoot them up, swamp them with their wake and ram.
Any that got through would have been stuck on the beaches, the plan was to push them aground so the troops could deploy gangways to walk (run I would think) down on to the beaches.
How would they have got them off again? There would have been flotillas of destroyers and a squadron of cruisers shooting them up and waiting for them to try and cross back to France.

Destroyer flotillas swept the Channel every day, nosing right in shore and even in to some of the harbour mouths where they scouted for invasion barges and shot things up if they found any.
Any invasion force would have been spotted forming up and setting off at walking speed towards the South Coast.

What of the Germans that got on to the beach?
They had no artillery with them and no gunfire support from ships. They had no armour or even motorised transport other than motorbikes.
essentially they would have had machine guns and small mortars.
They would have to cut their way through beach obstacles and fight past defending troops in bunkers and pillboxes etc. Not second line units like the ones defending Normandy beaches but regulars and the Home Guard. Often mocked but they were determined and almost fanatical. They were defending their homeland and willing to die. They knew they were almost on a suicide mission, their job was to delay the Germans until the main defending forces could come up.
It wouldn't have been as one sided as some think as the Germans only had small arms the same as the HG. All they had to do was delay them for an hour or two.
As soon as an invasion alert was confirmed all ports and harbours would have been blocked with ships sunk in their mouths and installations destroyed.
German plans relied on capturing a major South Coast port to get the main wave of troops and their armour ashore.
It wasn't going to happen.

Yep the Germans might have gotten to the beaches and they might have landed but trying to supply them by sea and or air would have been an impossible task. The Germans lacked the transport aircraft and the RAF would have unpleasantly angry at them. At sea mines, submarines and DD would have put an end to that idea in just a few days. Its very difficult to run merchant ships into an active combat zone when you don't have command of the sea or air.

I believe a German infantry division needed 200-250 tons of supplies a day and I don't even want to think about feeding all their horses - about 2,500 of them. I'm unsure of how many trucks a 1938 German Infantry division had.

One question for Henri - tanks, armored cars, trucks and heavy artillery too - explain to us how you land such vehicles on a beach when you have no landing craft.......now you could use ferries but how well would harbor and river ferries do in crossing the North Sea and trying to operate against a beach exposed to ocean waves when they are built for calm water and well constructed landing site? Hmmmm

 

[Major Major]

<snip>
Not second line units like the ones defending Normandy beaches but regulars and the Home Guard. Often mocked but they were determined and almost fanatical. They were defending their homeland and willing to die. They knew they were almost on a suicide mission, their job was to delay the Germans until the main defending forces could come up.

"If we can hold out long enough, it'll give our regular troops time to regroup for the counter-attack, see? Mind you, probably be the end of us, but we're ready for that, aren't we, men?"

"Course, sir."

Dad's Army, "The Battle of Godfrey's Cottage"

 

[HansMustermann]

I believe a German infantry division needed 200-250 tons of supplies a day and I don't even want to think about feeding all their horses - about 2,500 of them. I'm unsure of how many trucks a 1938 German Infantry division had.

I think the Sealion ones were supposed to have exactly none.

 

[erwinl]

Not necessarily. I have remarked in this thread that Manstein thought Sealion had a good chance of success. All it proves is that the Wehrmacht had literally zero experience of amphibious operations and so had no idea of the difficulties involved.
Looking at what the Luftwaffe alone had to achieve:

• Protect the invasion fleet from the RAF
• Protect the invasion fleet from the RN
• Provide Ju-52's for paratroop drops
• Escort Ju-52's for paratroop drops
• Run air supply to paratroop DZ's
• Provide CAS on the beach heads
• Provide CAS for the paratroop drops
• Interdict counter-attacking enemy forces
• Maintain air superiority over the whole of South East England

Which is ludicrous given they IRL lost the battle of attrition against the RAF.

For the Wehrmacht to stand any chance of a staging a successful invasion of the British mainland, it would have had to have been designed to perform that task from its inception.

Its difficult to see how even this could be achieved as Germany had no way of gaining experience in amphibious operations and therefore had no way of developing a coherent amphibious doctrine. (Let's not forget that the British had experience of amphibious ops going back to the middle ages and they still bollocksed it up quite a lot. Amphibious ops are really hard).

And if it had been the case that the Wehrmacht was designed from the 1920's as an amphibious force, it would not have been capable of performing its actual bewegungskrieg role against continental neighbours.

highlighted.

True.
But....
By that time the Germans had been on the receiving end of some major invasion, so they should know what it took to perform such an invasion.

On the other hand. This was the army that wargamed operation Barbarossa and found that they would end up without reserves at the gates of Moscow and without an ability to resupply at that point (the Paulus Study), but went on the attack anyway!

 

[HansMustermann]

On another note, at this point I'm thinking the Germans SHOULD have snuck a division across the channel just as a practical joke. You know, just to see the British destroy half their own ports. It would have achieved more at playing silly buggers with the British economy than half the U-Boot fleet ever did. Then let those guys be taken prisoners, their job was done.

 

[erwinl]

On another note, at this point I'm thinking the Germans SHOULD have snuck a division across the channel just as a practical joke. You know, just to see the British destroy half their own ports. It would have achieved more at playing silly buggers with the British economy than half the U-Boot fleet ever did. Then let those guys be taken prisoners, their job was done.

Now. THAT is thinking out of the box!

 

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Pluto took several attempts, there were a number of failed pipelines laid beofer it was reliable.
Until it was in place all the fuel still had to come over the beaches.
The Germans just didn't have the shipping to do it even if they had captured a port intact. Look at the problems they had supplying Rommel.

Don't need no fuel if you ain't got no vehicles! Checkmate allies!

 

[Dave Rogers]

"If we can hold out long enough, it'll give our regular troops time to regroup for the counter-attack, see? Mind you, probably be the end of us, but we're ready for that, aren't we, men?"

"Course, sir."

Dad's Army, "The Battle of Godfrey's Cottage"

Off-topic, I know, but one of the things that made Dad's Army truly great was that every now and then it had moments like this, when you realised that if it came to it, these rather absurd old men and boys would stand their ground and fight to the death without a word of complaint.

Dave

 

[Henri McPhee]

The much derided Dad's Army.... Thing is, there would have been quite a lot of WWI vets in the Home Guard. These were men who knew how to handle a rifle, how to throw a grenade, and knew what it meant to hold a trench. I don't think an angry 3rd Ypres vet literally defending his home and family is a particularly welcoming proposition by any standards.

Dad's Army was not organised in 1938. There were deficiencies in the army then, as well as the air force, though the size of the regular army did become much larger by 1940. The armed forces could not defend Britain then, let alone the Czechs:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Guard_(United_Kingdom)

 

[Henri McPhee]

And exactly how do you think the Luftwaffe was going to attack British ships in 1938? No handwaving; be specific. Finally, what makes you think that the RN wouldn't have had air support in opposing a German landing in 1938?




Chamberlain actually made deep cuts to the Army's budget during the late 1930s. Fail.




Your claim that Britain would have suffered a "devastating bombing attack" in 1938, or even 1939, has been repeatedly shown to be erroneous.

There was rearmament when Chamberlain became Prime Minister, and I think when Lord Swinton became the Minister for Air. The British Navy could have been attacked by Stuka dive bombers if the RAF had been made non operational. That would have made some sort of invasion easier, even if the Germans had to be supplied by air. The British Navy were reluctant to operate in the Channel then because of the dangers involved, and they expected the army to protect their Navy bases.

The Germans had the means to launch a devastating and virtually unopposed bombing attack on Britain in 1938. That's why gas masks were introduced