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Question for Gawdzilla

Gawdzilla said:
And in almost every case they invaded countries with less wealth than they had, the have-nots taking from the don't-have-a-pots.:p
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Not really. The USSR was actually having a bigger economy than Germany or Japan. (Much as its people were individually poorer, it could produce more armament than Germany.) And Japan actually wanted to invade the USSR too, until they got a first hand demonstration that they're not ready for that.

Japan also invaded territories owned by, for example, the UK and at least tried to have a go at territories owned by the USA. E.g., Midway. You may have heard of the battle there. Both were much bigger economies than Japan, and in a far better position to throw immense resources against them.

Also, both Germany and Italy actually thought they could invade the UK colonial lands. You may have heard of the Afrika Korps. That's what that was about.

Germany also actually thought it could take on the UK mainland at one point, which, again, was a bigger economy than theirs, even if dependent on overseas convoys.

Italy also technically took part in invading France (and promptly had their ass handed to them), and the USSR.

Plus, you see examples that are actually the not-even-have-a-pots think they can duke it with the big boys. Like, Romania actually took part in invading the USSR. I mean, Romania... really? I just have to wonder, if you'll pardon my Klingon, dafuQ' were they thinking.
 
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I'd think trying to invade the UK, USA and USSR isn't as much "a few exceptions" as pretty much the main course of that war.

I mean,

- Invading Poland: 5 weeks

- Invading France and the Netherlands: 6 weeks

- Invading Denmark and Norway: 8-9 weeks

- Fighting the USSR: FOUR <bleep>ING YEARS

I don't think the last one counts as just a sidenote to the first ones.
 
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Gawdzilla said:
The economies of those countries were, individually, smaller than the German economy.
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Yes and for a while the Reich had more resources than the USSR, as it was occupying much of that country's most developed territory.

I still think the main problem was ideological, in the sense of underestimation of various states, and their people. Hitler kept invading other countries, to the point of forcing them to combine against him. That was immensely silly. If he had concentrated on the UK, he might have won that war, or at least have secured his hold on continental Western Europe. And he could beat the USSR only if, as Goebbels predicted, the whole rotten structure came crashing down; but he could not bring himself to treat the Slavs and Jews he encountered there with anything other than murderous contempt. He made little or no attempt to exploit people's resentment against their communist masters, by making concessions to national aspirations: he even kept the collective farms, to procure the harvest more easily, and thus forwent peasant support. He treated his millions of Red Army prisoners at first not even as exploitable slaves, let alone potential allies, but merely as "useless mouths", to be eliminated.

If he had behaved even half sensibly, he would have made better use of the not inconsiderable resources available to him - and maybe the USSR would indeed have tanked, as it finally did in fact, once its ideology was universally perceived to have failed.

The problem was the USA. He could not defeat the USA. So why did he declare war on that country? His treaty with Japan didn't oblige him to do that, following Pearl Harbour. The answer can indeed only be that he utterly underestimated its power, through a false assessment of the nature of its society, based on his perception of the "racial" characteristics of its heterogenous population.
 
Craig B said:
The problem was the USA. He could not defeat the USA. So why did he declare war on that country? His treaty with Japan didn't oblige him to do that, following Pearl Harbour. The answer can indeed only be that he utterly underestimated its power, through a false assessment of the nature of its society, based on his perception of the "racial" characteristics of its heterogenous population.
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Though he's somewhat of a conspiracy theorist, I think historian Richard Hill has hit on the most likely explanation for Hitler's action. Having not achieved any recent military successes of his own, Hitler was simply trying to grab a share of the credit for Pearl Harbor.
 
SpitfireIX said:
Though he's somewhat of a conspiracy theorist, I think historian Richard Hill has hit on the most likely explanation for Hitler's action. Having not achieved any recent military successes of his own, Hitler was simply trying to grab a share of the credit for Pearl Harbor.
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That may well be, but it stamps Hitler as irrational. He had just been hit by the unexpected
Soviet counter attack in front of Moscow a couple of days before, which was perhaps the real "turning point" of WWII. One might have supposed he'd want to concentrate on repelling that, rather than adding the might of the USA to the list of his enemies, and of potential allies of the USSR.

That seems a high price to pay for a propaganda headline that nobody would believe, since nobody believed that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in cooperation with Germany, or in furtherance of any German policy imperative.
 
Gawdzilla said:
We're having different conversations.
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Maybe. I'm just saying it's meaningless to say "almost all" without assigning some weight to them.

I mean, equally "almost all" Michelangelo wrote was poetry, and the occasional statue or painting some church ceiling were exceptions. So I guess he must be some obscure poet :p
 
@Craig:
While we'll never know exactly what Hitler believed, I think it's more plausible that he was just needing Japan's help badly. And especially he needed them badly to attack the USSR too. So he could have done worse than pretending to attack their enemies so hopefully they'll attack his.

Plus, honestly, at that point the prospect of getting the USA to play nice and stay out of it, was already even more irrational.

The lend-lease had been passed in March 1941, and the USA was already pouring resources and war material into the UK. They had already give the UK some 50 destroyers (albeit, not the most modern) in 1940. The using the UK bases in exchange thing was also less payment and more guarding the UK's bases so they can bring more ships in the Atlantic. Churchill was actually quite happy to even give them access to more bases for nothing, as long as they protect them.

Also, for all the pretense of neutrality, by the time of Pearl Harbour, the US destroyers were actively hunting German submarines in the Atlantic, ostensibly to protect US shipping lanes to the UK. By 1941, first the US navy was ordered to actually escort Allied convoys, and actually did drop depth charges on German subs in that role. In the fall of 1941, Roosevelt actually ordered US ships to attack German submarines on sight. Which, you know, kinda passes for an act of war, not being a neutral country.

So, you know, it's not like it was much of a doubt any more about whether the USA will stay nice and neutral or not. It was clear to everyone that the US is actively supporting the UK against Germany. The whole neutrality pretense is worth nothing if you supply and subsidize a quarter of the munitions of one warring country.

Now I'm not saying the USA was wrong to back the UK. I'm just saying that the idea that Hitler could have kept them out of the war is off the mark. Technically they already were in that war, even if by proxy.

Though again, hunting down German subs wasn't by proxy, and I think usually sinking another nation's ships isn't considered a neutral act.
 
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@ HansMustermann

I'm not sure, even given the truth of what you say. Leaving aside aid to the UK, the deployment of US troops in direct combat was something Hitler ought to have feared more than he evidently did. True, the US was engaging German subs and protecting convoys to some extent, but her arms industry was hardly developed, and her army was small. All this changed with the declaration of war, and the anti-war isolationists, who had previously represented a massive section of US public opinion, were now reduced to impotent silence.
 
HansMustermann said:
Maybe. I'm just saying it's meaningless to say "almost all" without assigning some weight to them.

I mean, equally "almost all" Michelangelo wrote was poetry, and the occasional statue or painting some church ceiling were exceptions. So I guess he must be some obscure poet :p
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Maybe it's meaningless to list the countries I excluded by saying almost all. Either way, you can have the last word on this derailment.
 
Craig B said:
@ HansMustermann

I'm not sure, even given the truth of what you say. Leaving aside aid to the UK, the deployment of US troops in direct combat was something Hitler ought to have feared more than he evidently did. True, the US was engaging German subs and protecting convoys to some extent, but her arms industry was hardly developed, and her army was small. All this changed with the declaration of war, and the anti-war isolationists, who had previously represented a massive section of US public opinion, were now reduced to impotent silence.
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Well, that already had changed when Japan attacked, innit? It's not like the American public was gonna say, 'oh noes, if it's only Japan and not Germany, we're still totally against the war' :p
 
Gawdzilla said:
Actually, they never represented even a plain majority after France fell. We had a thread on this a while back.
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Thanks for that. The impression that isolationism was very strong on the eve of Pearl Harbour is still quite widespread.
 
Craig B said:
Thanks for that. The impression that isolationism was very strong on the eve of Pearl Harbour is still quite widespread.
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Yep, Wayne Cole is a very popular reading assignment. I read his books and decided to dig further. My final paper didn't please the prof, but she had to give me an "A" on it, I'd done my homework.
 
Craig B said:
@ HansMustermann

I'm not sure, even given the truth of what you say. Leaving aside aid to the UK, the deployment of US troops in direct combat was something Hitler ought to have feared more than he evidently did. True, the US was engaging German subs and protecting convoys to some extent, but her arms industry was hardly developed, and her army was small. All this changed with the declaration of war, and the anti-war isolationists, who had previously represented a massive section of US public opinion, were now reduced to impotent silence.
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Actually, not so much. The US began to ramp up armament production and greatly enlarge the armed forces after the fall of France. For example, 11 Essex-class aircraft carriers were ordered in 1940. One reason the Japanese attacked when they did was they knew it was then or never.

Conspiracists are forever claiming that FDR was looking for any excuse to enter the war; in fact, his military advisors were urging him to delay entering the war as long as possible, in order to give them more time to prepare. They also had to dissuade him from lend-leasing so much war materiel to the Allies that there wouldn't have been enough left to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding Army and Navy.
 
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