Split Thread WWII & Appeasement

Dave Rogers said:
To be fair, ABC was one of the greatest admirals in the illustrious history of the service. But, yes, his attitude was typical of the RN in WW2, which time after time committed everything to achieving the important goals despite appalling losses. If Germany had tried to invade, I think the RN would quite literally have fought to the last ship to stop them.

Dave
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You could argue that the fairly recent Nato bombing of Serbia forced a surrender there, even if it contravened international law.

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. The 'heroic' British navy could only do so much against the Lufwaffe without air support. Chamberlain was right to talk about "peace in our time" while he corrected deficiencies in the air force and the army. It avoided a devastating bombing attack. I would have done the same thing in his shoes. There is a bit of waffle about this at this website:

http://www.strangehistory.net/2015/06/13/could-germany-have-successfully-invaded-britain-1940/

One man, however, believed to the end of his days that it would have been possible: smiling Albert Kesselring, perhaps Germany’s most capable WW2 general. Kesselring in his postwar memoirs pooh-poohed the impossibility of an invasion. His requirements for the success of a hammer-blow invasion were as follows.

Diversionary bombing

Soften up fighter command in the chosen area.

Neutralise British infrastructure (radars, shore guns etc) with paratroopers and gliders

Bring all German naval power to bear on a narrow corridor in which the Home Fleet would not easily operate.

Kesselring was certainly right about one thing. The RAF did not have the power to destroy or even seriously damage an invasion fleet from the air. Everything would have depended on how quickly the Home Fleet would have rallied out and how well it could have interdicted German supply lines. Beach can see how a German army could have got a convincing foothold and how that German army could have defeated every British force at hand. But what he can’t see, pace Kesselring, is how the German army could have continually supplied that force. If fighter command had been defeated, perhaps a continual run of air supplies could have made a difference, but fighter command had not been defeated.

Beach sometimes idly wonders whether the Nazis’ best chance was actually in late May while the British army was being rolled up in northern France. At that point the Home Fleet was thinly stretched as it began the Dunkirk operation. British morale was much lower than a fortnight later, after the ‘miracle’. German glider attacks and parachute attacks on Britain itself would have met fairly limited resistance; or at least it would have taken time to get the very few crack British and Dominion units on hand to the relevant part of the island.
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Kesselring was certainly right about one thing. The RAF did not have the power to destroy or even seriously damage an invasion fleet from the air. Everything would have depended on how quickly the Home Fleet would have rallied out and how well it could have interdicted German supply lines.
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When I read this sort of thing about "Home Fleet" I always get the impression the author thinks that Portsmouth et al were devoid of ships. Whereas in reality they weren't, and were well supplied with (eg) subs for the purpose of intercepting enemy shipping in the Channel.

So, how fast would the fleet (rather than just Home Fleet) have reacted? Really, rather fast indeed.

What did the Germans possess that could handle a bunch of subs in the midst of their invasion barges? I mean, subs were a big worry for Overlord, and the screening fleet involved there was massive.

Beach can see how a German army could have got a convincing foothold and how that German army could have defeated every British force at hand. But what he can’t see, pace Kesselring, is how the German army could have continually supplied that force. If fighter command had been defeated, perhaps a continual run of air supplies could have made a difference, but fighter command had not been defeated.
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Air supplies?
The Germans seriously struggled doing that in both Tunisia and Stalingrad. What makes the author think Sea Lion would have been any better? And remember, this is 1940 he's talking about. not 1938.

Beach sometimes idly wonders whether the Nazis’ best chance was actually in late May while the British army was being rolled up in northern France. At that point the Home Fleet was thinly stretched as it began the Dunkirk operation. British morale was much lower than a fortnight later, after the ‘miracle’. German glider attacks and parachute attacks on Britain itself would have met fairly limited resistance; or at least it would have taken time to get the very few crack British and Dominion units on hand to the relevant part of the island.
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Oh yes, of course. May 1940, when the Germans hadn't actually even got their barges together.
What was the Wehrmacht going to do? Swim?
And the French were still fighting, but somehow they were going to invade Britain.

I think I know where this can be filed...
 
Dave Rogers said:
To be fair, ABC was one of the greatest admirals in the illustrious history of the service. But, yes, his attitude was typical of the RN in WW2, which time after time committed everything to achieving the important goals despite appalling losses. If Germany had tried to invade, I think the RN would quite literally have fought to the last ship to stop them.

Dave
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In July 1940 the German naval staff observed in a memo to High Command that the UK had not committed its whole fleet up to that time
but a German invasion of England would be a matter of life and death to the British, and they would unhesitatingly commit their naval forces in an all-out fight for survival.​
 
Henri McPhee said:
You could argue that the fairly recent Nato bombing of Serbia forced a surrender there, even if it contravened international law.

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. The 'heroic' British navy could only do so much against the Lufwaffe without air support. Chamberlain was right to talk about "peace in our time" while he corrected deficiencies in the air force and the army. It avoided a devastating bombing attack. I would have done the same thing in his shoes. There is a bit of waffle about this at this website:

http://www.strangehistory.net/2015/06/13/could-germany-have-successfully-invaded-britain-1940/
Click to expand...

Bring all German naval power to bear on a narrow corridor in which the Home Fleet would not easily operate.
Click to expand...
Woohahahaha!

When would this impressive feat to have been taken place? After the Fall of france? Germany had no navy left by that point, it all lay at the botom of a Norwegian fjord or were in dry dock.

Remember. The first foray the German navy made in the North Sea in 1940. Of six destroyers sent out, two were sunk, without showing anything of value of it. And that navy would be capable of keeping th British Navy from interdicting the invasion forces?

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

It really sounds like something which I read a while ago concerning the failure of the Schlieffen plan in the Great War (yes, yes I know. I'm seriously starting to sound like Henry now).
Anyway. It went that the plan was perfect, but that the German army was not strong enough to execute it properly.
My dear sir. If your plan requires forces that you don't have and you know you don't have, the plan is worthless.

Same with the invasion possibilities Kesselring aludes to.
Yes. For an succesfull invasion you need.
  • Diversionary bombing
  • Soften up fighter command in the chosen area.
  • Neutralise British infrastructure (radars, shore guns etc) with paratroopers and gliders
  • Bring all German naval power to bear on a narrow corridor in which the Home Fleet would not easily operate.
  • And more
Neither of which Germany could provide in the numbers or amounts needed for a real succes.
That is what we sane people call an impossible plan.

Unless germany wanted to do their version of a Dieppe. Yes. They're certainly capable there.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
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.
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Pretty much my point. The logistics for Sealion just weren't possible at any point between '38 and '45.
 
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In all fairness, you don't really have to make it a reverse D-Day scenario, since really it wasn't.

Basically I don't think the Brits even needed the subs. For the purpose of sinking the barges, as I was saying, torpedo bombers operating from nearby strips on the shores would have been more than enough, given the Kriegsmarine's problem with shooting at torp bombers flying low.

To make it more fun, you don't even have to aim the torps at the military ships. You can largely ignore them, since their guns are very unlikely to hit you, and just torp away at the tugs and barges. THOSE aren't going to maneuver quickly to dodge torps. Or not without capsizing the barges.

And we're talking thin skinned river barges and coastal tugs. A torp will rip either of those to scrap metal.

Hell, they were so thin, they could be perforated by just bullets, so it's not like the bombers were their only concern.
 
HansMustermann said:
Basically I don't think the Brits even needed the subs. For the purpose of sinking the barges, as I was saying, torpedo bombers operating from nearby strips on the shores would have been more than enough, given the Kriegsmarine's problem with shooting at torp bombers flying low.
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I'd have thought barges were a bit shallow draught and a bit small to hit with an aerial torpedo. A much simpler approach would be for a flotilla of destroyers to make a high speed pass close to a string of barges, which would probably create enough of a wake to swamp or capsize them.

Or, simpler still, just let the enemy do it themselves. The Wermacht's landing plan involved using explosive charges to blow the bows off the initial assault barges, which meant that there wouldn't have been enough barges left to supply the troops once they were ashore.

Sealion could well have been a disaster even if the British forces hadn't turned up.

Dave
 
Additionally let's look at the ships the Kriegsmarine actually had in 1938:

Battleships: exactly two
- Scharnhorst
- Gneisenau

Armoured ships (a.k.a., pocket battleships, or you could call them the German version of a battlecruiser)
- Deutschland
- Admiral Scheer
- Admiral Graf Spee

Obsolete battleships:
- Hannover
- Schleswig-Holstein
- Schlesien

Heavy cruisers:
- Admiral Hipper
- Blücher
- Prinz Eugen

Light cruisers:
- Emden
- Königsberg
- Karlsruhe
- Köln
- Leipzig
- Nürnberg

Plus about a dozen or so destroyers.

The notion that those could slug it out even against the Home Fleet to protect an invasion is... surreal. Seriously. That's a decisive battle engagement, and Germany never had the fleet to go for decissive engagement. The last time they even tried was Jutland in WW1, with a lot more ships than the above, and it didn't go all that great. There's a reason why Germany tried to use them as raiders instead.
 
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Dave Rogers said:
I'd have thought barges were a bit shallow draught and a bit small to hit with an aerial torpedo.
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That they were, but it's not really a problem to make a torpedo go less deep. Hell, you could even make it go pretty much on the surface of the water. It's not usually done for the obvious reasons, but I'm pretty sure the British could figure it out in a pinch. They were quite resourceful.

And if not, you can always do the normal thing: torpedo the warships and finish the tugs off with the guns.
 
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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.
 
You don't even need to sink all the barges, most were 'dumb' and had to be towed. Just sink the tug or lead barge in each string and you can ignore the rest.
 
Henri McPhee said:
You could argue that the fairly recent Nato bombing of Serbia forced a surrender there, even if it contravened international law.

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. The 'heroic' British navy could only do so much against the Lufwaffe without air support. Chamberlain was right to talk about "peace in our time" while he corrected deficiencies in the air force and the army. It avoided a devastating bombing attack. I would have done the same thing in his shoes. There is a bit of waffle about this at this website:

http://www.strangehistory.net/2015/06/13/could-germany-have-successfully-invaded-britain-1940/
Click to expand...


I suppose technically the highlighted part is correct. Nobody would have been able to invade the US in 1938 or 1940, and nobody would have been able to invade the UK in 1938 or 1940.

The Royal Navy had the Home Fleet
 
erwinl said:
Woohahahaha!

When would this impressive feat to have been taken place? After the Fall of france? Germany had no navy left by that point, it all lay at the botom of a Norwegian fjord or were in dry dock.

Remember. The first foray the German navy made in the North Sea in 1940. Of six destroyers sent out, two were sunk, without showing anything of value of it. And that navy would be capable of keeping th British Navy from interdicting the invasion forces?

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

It really sounds like something which I read a while ago concerning the failure of the Schlieffen plan in the Great War (yes, yes I know. I'm seriously starting to sound like Henry now).
Anyway. It went that the plan was perfect, but that the German army was not strong enough to execute it properly.
My dear sir. If your plan requires forces that you don't have and you know you don't have, the plan is worthless.

Same with the invasion possibilities Kesselring aludes to.
Yes. For an succesfull invasion you need.
  • Diversionary bombing
  • Soften up fighter command in the chosen area.
  • Neutralise British infrastructure (radars, shore guns etc) with paratroopers and gliders
  • Bring all German naval power to bear on a narrow corridor in which the Home Fleet would not easily operate.
  • And more
Neither of which Germany could provide in the numbers or amounts needed for a real succes.
That is what we sane people call an impossible plan.

Unless germany wanted to do their version of a Dieppe. Yes. They're certainly capable there.
Click to expand...

I doubt they'd even have had that capability in 1938. Or in 1940.

Yes Dieppe was a predictable disaster but the troops did actually manage to get to the beach.
 
You could argue that the fairly recent Nato bombing of Serbia forced a surrender there, even if it contravened international law.
Click to expand...

Just noticed this.

Bombing didn't force any kind of surrender.

A land invasion by NATO forces stopped the fighting.
I watched it live on TV, a British Armoured Brigade was the Spearhead.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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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.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
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.
Click to expand...

That was pretty common - also you have people in reserved occupations of military age. And a lot of those reserved occupations would not have been easy choices.

IIRC the median age was 36

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Dave Rogers said:
Exept maybe Canada or Mexico. Neither of them would have got very far, and there wouldn't have been any reason for them to, but they could conceivably have invaded. I read a bit of waffle about it at this website:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram

Dave
Click to expand...

Well played sir - I have taken the liberty of adding in the highlighted phrase though
 
HansMustermann said:
Additionally let's look at the ships the Kriegsmarine actually had in 1938:

Battleships: exactly two
- Scharnhorst
- Gneisenau

Armoured ships (a.k.a., pocket battleships, or you could call them the German version of a battlecruiser)
- Deutschland
- Admiral Scheer
- Admiral Graf Spee

Obsolete battleships:
- Hannover
- Schleswig-Holstein
- Schlesien

Heavy cruisers:
- Admiral Hipper
- Blücher
- Prinz Eugen

Light cruisers:
- Emden
- Königsberg
- Karlsruhe
- Köln
- Leipzig
- Nürnberg

Plus about a dozen or so destroyers.

The notion that those could slug it out even against the Home Fleet to protect an invasion is... surreal. Seriously. That's a decisive battle engagement, and Germany never had the fleet to go for decissive engagement. The last time they even tried was Jutland in WW1, with a lot more ships than the above, and it didn't go all that great. There's a reason why Germany tried to use them as raiders instead.
Click to expand...

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".
 
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