Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
And the relevance of this to the topic is....?
Dave
Dave
Split Thread WWII & Appeasement
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Henri McPhee
Illuminator
That book provides background information to the military situation of the Czechs at the time which Klimax keeps mentioning. You people keep saying that Britain and the Soviet Union and France and the Czechs should have gone to war in 1938, as the Israelis keep saying nowadays, but it was more complicated than that. I think, though I may be wrong, that Moravec thought Stalin intended an alliance with Hitler, which information Chamberlain, and even Churchill, would have found interesting.
lobosrul5
Philosopher
Stalin didn't intend to ally with Germany until after the west abandoned his ally the Czechs. Also, no one is saying the west should've "gone to war" preemptively, which is what its in the news right now vis Trump & Netanyahu. An analogy would be if right now Iran was demanding a third of Turkey and Turkey's NATO allies said, OK sure whatever.
Border Reiver
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Are you denying the Shia their right to be reunited with their brethren in Iran? Isn't that inconsistent with what you put forward at Versailles and the principle of self-determination?
<<After absorbing part of Turkey>>
What would we want with Turkey? We want no Turks!
<<two months later>>
It's ours now. By the way, can you please forward the gold holdings of the former Turkish government to Tehran? That'd be really nice of you.
By the way, the Shia populations in and around Basra are being brutally oppressed. Cede us this territory now or we won't be able to answer for what happens!
Dammit! I was channelling someone, can't remember who.....
Had a small 'stache then I do....
Y
There is a whole industry of uncritical hero worship of Douglas MacArthur. Countless books and articles writhe in ecstatic extasy at the feet of the great military genius. Why? Well mainly because MacArthur was very good at self publicity / promotion, and many people want to grovel at the feet of the great "genius".
MacArthur was ussualy a competent military leader whose one stab at brilliance was the Inchon landing. Otherwise MacArthur's handling of military matters was usually competent not brilliant. And of course MacArthur had two really significant failures.
You mentioned MacArthur's basically incompetent defence of the Phillipines in 1941, I would add MacArthur's defeat in 1950 in his invasion of North Korea after the Inchon landing. MacArthur's handling of the whole thing was beyond mere incompetence and into sheer stupidity.
Also MacArthur had a huge firepower and logistic superiority over the Chinese. (The Chinese had superior numbers but not by much.) By any reasonable criteria the Chinese offensive should have been a failure. Instead the Chinese under their commander Peng completely out smarted MacArthur and drove the Americans and their allies out of North Korea.
MacArthur's pig headed ness and bottomless conceit made him utterly unable to see what was coming, (Massive Chinese intervention), the result was a defeat that could only be called humiliating.
There is a whole industry of uncritical hero worship of Douglas MacArthur. Countless books and articles writhe in ecstatic extasy at the feet of the great military genius. Why? Well mainly because MacArthur was very good at self publicity / promotion, and many people want to grovel at the feet of the great "genius".
MacArthur was ussualy a competent military leader whose one stab at brilliance was the Inchon landing. Otherwise MacArthur's handling of military matters was usually competent not brilliant. And of course MacArthur had two really significant failures.
You mentioned MacArthur's basically incompetent defence of the Phillipines in 1941, I would add MacArthur's defeat in 1950 in his invasion of North Korea after the Inchon landing. MacArthur's handling of the whole thing was beyond mere incompetence and into sheer stupidity.
Also MacArthur had a huge firepower and logistic superiority over the Chinese. (The Chinese had superior numbers but not by much.) By any reasonable criteria the Chinese offensive should have been a failure. Instead the Chinese under their commander Peng completely out smarted MacArthur and drove the Americans and their allies out of North Korea.
MacArthur's pig headed ness and bottomless conceit made him utterly unable to see what was coming, (Massive Chinese intervention), the result was a defeat that could only be called humiliating.
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This. While MacArthur deserves all the accolades for Inchon, Ridgway deserves the credit for turning back the Chinese, starting with his replacement of Walker and then with his replacement of MacArthur.
dudalb
Penultimate Amazing
Look what happened when Ike allowed Monty to attempt his "pencil thrust" with Market Garden.....
One of bad consequences of Market Garden was that Monty was so preocupied with it that he ignored the situation around Antwerp;the Allies had taken the port..and taken it intact (thanks largely to brilliant coup by the Belgian resistence) but the estuary of the Scheldt leading to Antwerp was still occupied by the Germans,and the port was useless until that was done.
But Monty was,because of Market Garden, unwilling to devote the relatively modest number of troops that was required to clear the Scheldt right after the fall of Antwerp,giving the time for the Germans to reinforce and dig in. The result was, when Monty finally got around to clearing the Scheldt (and apparently he finally did so only after prodding by Ike) a brutal Autumn campaign,taking nearly two months, fought largely by Canadian Troops,when in early September it could have been done very quickly and at little cost.
dudalb
Penultimate Amazing
MacArthur is probably the most controversial Allied leader in World War 2. With many it's either love him or hate him.
I have a higher opinion of him as a general than Pacal does,(I give hims a lot of credit for the Island Hopping campaign n the South Pacific) but not as much as high an opinion as some historians do.
I think the problem with MacArthur is he was a pretty unpleasant individual ..the term "obonoxious" often applies..that it warps a lot of people's view of him.
I think Manchester's "American Caesar" is proably the most baslanced view of Mac,both his virtues and his flaws.
But MacArthur did not handle surprise very well. What happened in Korea in 1950 with the Chinese is a lot like what happene with the Clark Field disaster in 1941. He seemed so shocked by the surprise actually happening he was paralyzed.
Though I think strategic situation in the Phillippines in 1941 was so bad they were doomed no matter who was in command.
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dudalb
Penultimate Amazing
It's called "An individual has hijacked this thread with his nutty opinions, so let's talk about something else". Happens all the time here....
We will have to agree to disagree. What MacArthur had mainly was an extremely effective advertising agency dedicated to promoting him which gulled large numbers of people into thinking MacArthur was one of the great military and otherwise geniuses of all time. Which of course matched MacArthur's megalomaniac view of himself.
Regarding the island hoping campaign implemented by him; most of that was in fact not planned by him but by staffs elsewhere. MacArthur, has typical of him, tried to take all the credit.
As for Manchester's American Caesar, to me, that book is largely a piece of star struck hero worship of the most abject kind. Manchester criticizes MacArthur only for things for which absolutely no defence is possible; otherwise the hero worship is slack jawed throughout.
Manchester's section on MacArthur's rule of postwar Japan is especially risible.
As for MacArthur being surprised by the Chinese. Since the Chinese had been warning for months that they would intervene, that MacArthur's own intelligence services were warning him about Chinese intentions etc., and that the Chinese had launched a spoiling offensive in November 1950 to get the Americans and their allies to draw back, that MacArthur was surprised is to a very large extent due entirely to MacArthur and his wrong headed notions.
MacArthur's end the war offensive in December 1950 was just amazingly incompetent and played right into the hands of the Chinese. The result was one of the most remarkable victories of the twentieth century; in which a siginifigently inferior force, (in logistics and fire power.), defeated one that was was very, very superior in those departments. Peng's victory should be taught in staff colleges has an example of making the best of what you've got.
I will agree that MacArthur was a generally competent military commander who had at least one brilliant flash (Inchon) but his true genius was his extraordinary ability to promote himself.
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I see others have already commented on this. No, Henri, just no. MacArthur was not a genius, he was an egomaniac with a loud cheering section.
I agree. I think The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam covers this quite well.
Should he get credit for Inchon since it was his earlier incompetence that made it necessary?
njslim
Graduate Poster
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At that time Stalin was busy executing the Red Army officers corps so was in
position to do much else
Soviets were providing grain (food) and much of the ol Germany was using at the time
Cutoff oil and put serious crimp in German war machine
Question is would be enough to halt German offensive in Czechoslovakia ?
Well based on everything you've posted to date, I'm going to go with, yes you are wrong. Stalin had no intention of allying with Hitler, and vice versa, until after Chamberlain sold out the Czechs. Once it was clear that Britain and France couldn't be counted on Stalin concluded a deal whose main aim was to persuade Hitler to turn his forces west after the inevitable conquest of Poland and get bogged down in a long war. His policy succeeded, right up until the point where the French disintegrated in the face of the German attack, an attack they could not have mounted in 1938 and which in no small part depended on the resources taken from the Czechs.
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As it stood in 1938 the Wehrmacht was in no position to go to war, it was short of just about everything. The acquisition of Czech resources and the influx of raw materials and food from the M-R Pact is a large part of why the generals who protested in 1938 went along with war in 1939, they believed that Germany had reached its military peak relative to its enemies and the advantage it had built up since Munich would start to erode by 1940.
Hans
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That good fellow Henri is changing the subject to avoid facing up to his failure.
He cannot of course admit he is wrong so instead he'll wander about talking about as many things as he can until everyone gets bored and leaves.
njslim
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Annexation of Austria in March 1938 gave Germans shot in arm - their economy in early 1938 was about to run off the rails
Had run out of foreign currency to buy needed imports . Economy was
overheating from all the public works and rearmament projects expenditure
Grabbing Austria with its gold and currency reserves gave Germany needed shot of energy to keep going
Well, this is sort of the same issue as the allied side over-estimating the German strength. I doubt the French would have been quite so pro-active. The Saar offensive encountered little German opposition, but it still was halted a few miles in.
But yes, the perception of the generals is probably more important here than the reality on the ground.
I doubt it would have had a major effect on any Czech campaign, as I really don't see them holding out into the winter, and likely French inactivity wouldn't so anything to relieve that pressure. It would have been the events after winter it would have put major brake on.
Klimax
NWO Cyborg 5960x (subversion VPUNPCKHQDQ)
Based on article (https://www.scribd.com/document/940...tary-factor-in-British-considerations-of-1938) Henri so helpfully linked, French seemed to be more ready in 1938 then 1939.
Henri McPhee
Illuminator
I have not been able to find out exactly what Moravec knew about Soviet intentions in 1938. He had a couple of native German spies who were on his books. One of his daughters moved to America in 1948 and died in 2016.
Frankly, I have always believed that Stalin intended that Germany Britain and France would destroy each other on their own, as in the First World War, and he could then make his own territorial demands in Europe. I think Stalin was taken aback by the ease France was invaded, and that the RAF managed to scare the Luftwaffe away. I still find it astonishing that Stalin never believed his own spies, or the British, when he was told about Hitler's march on Moscow.
There is a an interesting Daily Mail article about the Czechs by Peter Hitchens:
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/prague/
Frankly, I have always believed that Stalin intended that Germany Britain and France would destroy each other on their own, as in the First World War, and he could then make his own territorial demands in Europe. I think Stalin was taken aback by the ease France was invaded, and that the RAF managed to scare the Luftwaffe away. I still find it astonishing that Stalin never believed his own spies, or the British, when he was told about Hitler's march on Moscow.
There is a an interesting Daily Mail article about the Czechs by Peter Hitchens:
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/prague/
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