Split Thread WWII & Appeasement

Henri McPhee said:
The trouble with you people is that you practically all think Britain should have gone to war in 1938. That's want of judgment, and it's not just me who thinks so either.
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With hindsight? Lets revisit the bullet points shall we? The evidence overwhelmingly supports a firm stance against Hitler in summer '38. For one there is a chance Hitler backs down. For another there is a chance of a military coup. Even if war does start Germany has no captured Czech tanks. They have a handful of Pz III's and Iv in '38. Maybe enough to equip one division. The rest of their armored force is Pz I's and II's which are obsolete compared to what the allies had. Their plans for invasion was still the Schleifen plan that had absolutely 0% chance of a quick result against France. So its a static WW1 style front. That means no Italian entry into the war, Mussolini was an opportunist who saw an easy land grab after Germany had basically defeated France. All in all the odds of a worse outcome for the allies are really close to nil.
 
Henri McPhee said:
The trouble with you people is that you practically all think Britain should have gone to war in 1938. That's want of judgment, and it's not just me who thinks so either.
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How is it want of judgment?

Which nation state benefited most from the time between the Munich Accords and the invasion of Poland? ie. which country got to incorporate large quantities of superior pattern armoured vehicles into their fleets, got additional industrial resources, was able to geographically improve their position for military action against an intended target? Which country had a general staff that stated that they could not win a war on two fronts against Czechoslovakia and Britain/France?
 
Henri McPhee said:
The trouble with you people is that you practically all think Britain should have gone to war in 1938. That's want of judgment, and it's not just me who thinks so either.
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That's nice but they actually should have stopped Hitler when he entered the Rhineland and remilitarized it in 1936 but they were into appeasement then too and we all know - even you - where that ultimately led to.

Belgium became a neutral country again in 1936 effectively cutting itself away from staff planning with the French and British. Those two nations would never violated Belgium neutrality but Germany certainly would and had in the past.

Belgium concluded an alliance with France in 1920 but after the remilitarization Belgium opted again for neutrality. On 14 October 1936 King Leopold III of Belgium said in a speech:

"The reoccupation of the Rhineland, by ending the Locarno arrangement, has almost brought us back to our international position before the war... We must follow a policy exclusively and entirely Belgian. The policy must aim solely at placing us outside the quarrels of our neighbors".

Belgian neutrality meant there could be no staff talks between the Belgian military and those of other nations, which meant that when German forces invaded Belgium in 1940, there were no plans whatsoever for coordinating the movement of Belgian forces with those of France and Britain, which gave the Germans a head-start in their offensive

With the Rhineland re-militarized, Germany started the construction of the Siegfried Line, which meant that if Germany attacked any of the states in the cordon sanitaire, the ability of France to start an offensive against Germany in response to a German aggression against the states of the cordon sanitaire was henceforward limited
 
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Oh and thanks to folks who responded to my question about British AAA. That was one area I had never looked at closely. I had studied it for the anti-Zeppelin, Gotha and ZS campaign in WWI and wondered how it had fared.
 
I was interested in just how many tanks Adolf would have had from his Blitzkrieg.
Here’s a few details, culled from Wikipedia:
First of all, the Panzer I. Not intended as a battle tank, just to be used to train crews. Manufactured between 1934 and 1938, some 1,659 armed versions were produced. Of these 1,190 were Ausfuehrung A, with suspension issues, and an overheating engine. By the way, about 30% of all tanks used in the Anschluss with Austria broke down in that operation. Oh, and 10 were sold to China, and around 110 sent to Spain.

Next we have the Panzer II – designed as an interim, stop-gap tank, but the Wehrmacht was forced to use it as a battle tank. Between March 1937 and April 1940 1,113 models A, B & C were built. For these 35 months, the average was 31.8 tanks per month. In the 16 months up to September 1938, production calculates as 508.8 tanks. Let’s be generous, and call it 510.

Now we come to the first ‘real’ tank, the Panzer III. IN 1937, 10 model A, and 10 model B were built. IN 1937/8, 15 model C arrived. In 1938, 25 model D’s were built. So, a grand total of 60 tanks for the Blitzkrieg.

And finally, the Panzer IV. Prior to the Polish campaign, 217 of this tank were built, 35 model A, 42 model B and 140 model C. Therefore, between 1937 and 1939. The model C was apparently introduced in late 1938, so before Munich let’s estimate 40 of this model would have been available.

To conclude, 1,100 Panzer I’s, 510 Panzer II’s, 60 Panzer III’s and 117 Panzer IV’s. So – rounding up gives Adolf 1,800 tanks, of which maybe 180 were proper battle tanks, and the majority were the unreliable and unsuitable Panzer I.

Shall we take a peek as what happened in Poland? Well, there were something like 2,700 tanks used, but only 310 Mark III and IVs. And around 350 Czech tanks. 832 tanks were lost in the campaign, so about a third of the available tanks. In fact, around half of the tank force were unavailable due to maintenance issues or enemy action.

Now, after an alternative Munich, where Chamberlain said no, the first campaign of the Wehrmacht would have been against the Czechs. It’s quite likely that the Czechs would have fought hard against the Wehrmacht, so it’s likely that there would have been few tanks to switch to attacking in the west.
 
Hans said:
Oh and thanks to folks who responded to my question about British AAA. That was one area I had never looked at closely. I had studied it for the anti-Zeppelin, Gotha and ZS campaign in WWI and wondered how it had fared.
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I used to have the figures for number of shells expended for number of aircraft shot down but I can't seem to find them at the moment.

Suffice to say with Proximity Fuses and Radar the kill rate went up but far too late for the BoB.

Proximity Fuses were a high priority and very secret when they were first developed, they transformed the effectiveness of AA.

As hinted at further up the thread the main effects in the BoB were in morale for the civilian population and in disrupting bomb aimers and breaking up formatiions and forcing them higher.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
I used to have the figures for number of shells expended for number of aircraft shot down but I can't seem to find them at the moment.

Suffice to say with Proximity Fuses and Radar the kill rate went up but far too late for the BoB.

Proximity Fuses were a high priority and very secret when they were first developed, they transformed the effectiveness of AA.

As hinted at further up the thread the main effects in the BoB were in morale for the civilian population and in disrupting bomb aimers and breaking up formatiions and forcing them higher.
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As I understand it we (US Army) wouldn't even use proximity fuses in ground artillery until rather late in the war for fears that the Germans would get their hands on one and reverse engineer it.
 
lobosrul5 said:
As I understand it we (US Army) wouldn't even use proximity fuses in ground artillery until rather late in the war for fears that the Germans would get their hands on one and reverse engineer it.
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Similarly the RAF wouldn't fly the Meteor over enemy held territory in case one was shot down and the Germans got the engines.
 
Hans said:
Henri certainly likes to pretend that no one is replying to him - doesn't he?
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Oh he's now moved on to inventing stuff other people posted so he can show ridiculous these fictitious posts are.
 
Hans said:
Since Henri is actually participating in the discussion...... I have a question on how effective and how much impact did the British anti-aircraft system have on the Battle of Britain and what sort of shape was it in 1938?
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Sorry I didn't respond sooner; I had to work late last night. Just to add to what others have said, I found this from what appears to be an official historical monograph from 1957, The Defence of the United Kingdom, digitized on Gawdzilla's website:

. . . In the autumn [of 1938] the German attitude became so threatening that the British Government ordered an emergency deployment of a great part of the home defences.

The deployment was not a full-dress rehearsal for mobilisation. Neither a state of hostilities nor the 'precautionary period' for which the various departments of State had drawn up plans was deemed to have begun. In some respects conditions were less favourable for rapid moves of units than they might have been if emergency measures had been applied more widely. Nevertheless the experience provided a convincing demonstration of unreadiness for war. In Fighter Command twenty-nine fighter squadrons were reckoned mobilisable, but only five of them had modern aircraft. Even those five were incapable of fighting at high altitudes, for their guns had not yet been modified to work above 15,000 feet. There were also five squadrons of Gladiators, old-fashioned in appearance and no match for modern fighters, but capable of engaging bombers. The rest of the fighter squadrons had obsolete or obsolescent aircraft. There were no stored reserves of fighter aircraft; immediate reserves with squadrons and in workshops amounted to about two-fifths of first-line strength. The radar chain gave partial cover only between the Wash and Dungeness, communications were incomplete, and the whole command was dependent on radio equipment much inferior to that which replaced it in 1939 and 1940. The London balloon-barrage was only about one-third ready--142 balloons were deployed towards an establishment of 450--and its deployment raised many problems, not all of which had been foreseen. The state of the anti-aircraft and searchlight formations was still worse. Nearly 50,000 Territorials joined the air defence and coast defence formations when summoned, but only about one-third of the anti-aircraft guns and lights proposed by the Reorientation Committee in 1937 were available. Some of them were not in working order or were accompanied by unsuitable ammunition or equipment. The majority of the guns were of the obsolescent 3-inch pattern, some fifty 3-7-inch and no 4-5-inch pieces being ready. Arrangements for billeting and the issue of stores left much to be desired. Measures of Civil Defence were hampered, according to the Air Raid Precautions Department of the Home Office, by undue regard for secrecy.[ETA: citations and note omitted]​


Henri will doubtless seize on the above as evidence that Britain could have been bombed into submission in a week, while conveniently ignoring the facts that a) terror bombing by itself has never led to the capitulation of any nation, and b) the Luftwaffe had a lot of very serious deficiencies of its own at this time.

Further, many of these deficiencies were, or could have been, quickly remedied, especially with the impetus of war. For example, the high-altitude gun problem was solved by the expedient of covering the gun ports with fabric patches, and dedicated landlines were being installed in order to communicate radar data.
 
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SpitfireIX said:
Sorry I didn't respond sooner; I had to work late last night. Just to add to what others have said, I found this from what appears to be an official historical monograph from 1957, The Defence of the United Kingdom, digitized on Gawdzilla's website:

. . . In the autumn [of 1938] the German attitude became so threatening that the British Government ordered an emergency deployment of a great part of the home defences.

The deployment was not a full-dress rehearsal for mobilisation. Neither a state of hostilities nor the 'precautionary period' for which the various departments of State had drawn up plans was deemed to have begun. In some respects conditions were less favourable for rapid moves of units than they might have been if emergency measures had been applied more widely. Nevertheless the experience provided a convincing demonstration of unreadiness for war. In Fighter Command twenty-nine fighter squadrons were reckoned mobilisable, but only five of them had modern aircraft. Even those five were incapable of fighting at high altitudes, for their guns had not yet been modified to work above 15,000 feet. There were also five squadrons of Gladiators, old-fashioned in appearance and no match for modern fighters, but capable of engaging bombers. The rest of the fighter squadrons had obsolete or obsolescent aircraft. There were no stored reserves of fighter aircraft; immediate reserves with squadrons and in workshops amounted to about two-fifths of first-line strength. The radar chain gave partial cover only between the Wash and Dungeness, communications were incomplete, and the whole command was dependent on radio equipment much inferior to that which replaced it in 1939 and 1940. The London balloon-barrage was only about one-third ready--142 balloons were deployed towards an establishment of 450--and its deployment raised many problems, not all of which had been foreseen. The state of the anti-aircraft and searchlight formations was still worse. Nearly 50,000 Territorials joined the air defence and coast defence formations when summoned, but only about one-third of the anti-aircraft guns and lights proposed by the Reorientation Committee in 1937 were available. Some of them were not in working order or were accompanied by unsuitable ammunition or equipment. The majority of the guns were of the obsolescent 3-inch pattern, some fifty 3-7-inch and no 4-5-inch pieces being ready. Arrangements for billeting and the issue of stores left much to be desired. Measures of Civil Defence were hampered, according to the Air Raid Precautions Department of the Home Office, by undue regard for secrecy.[ETA: citations and note omitted]​


Henri will doubtless seize on the above as evidence that Britain could have been bombed into submission in a week, while conveniently ignoring the facts that a) terror bombing by itself has never led to the capitulation of any nation, and b) the Luftwaffe had a lot of very serious deficiencies of its own at this time.

Further, many of these deficiencies were, or could have been, quickly remedied, especially with the impetus of war. For example, the high-altitude gun problem was solved by the expedient of covering the gun ports with fabric patches, and dedicated landlines were being installed in order to communicate radar data.
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And there's a nice comment in that stating that Gladiators were capable of engaging bombers!
 
Rincewind said:
I was interested in just how many tanks Adolf would have had from his Blitzkrieg.
Here’s a few details, culled from Wikipedia:
First of all, the Panzer I. Not intended as a battle tank, just to be used to train crews. Manufactured between 1934 and 1938, some 1,659 armed versions were produced. Of these 1,190 were Ausfuehrung A, with suspension issues, and an overheating engine. By the way, about 30% of all tanks used in the Anschluss with Austria broke down in that operation. Oh, and 10 were sold to China, and around 110 sent to Spain.
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Just to point out for anyone unfamiliar, the Panzer I didn't even have a cannon; it was armed with two machine guns.

Rincewind said:
Next we have the Panzer II – designed as an interim, stop-gap tank, but the Wehrmacht was forced to use it as a battle tank. Between March 1937 and April 1940 1,113 models A, B & C were built. For these 35 months, the average was 31.8 tanks per month. In the 16 months up to September 1938, production calculates as 508.8 tanks. Let’s be generous, and call it 510.
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Actually, 300 were built in 1937, and 669 in 1938 (source). This includes at least 125 developmental models a, b, and c (Panzer II mark numbers are case sensitive). So the number available in September 1938 was probably closer to 800. But not all of these, or all the Panzer Is, obviously, could have been assigned to the Panzer divisions; some would have been required for training.

Rincewind said:
Now we come to the first ‘real’ tank, the Panzer III. IN 1937, 10 model A, and 10 model B were built. IN 1937/8, 15 model C arrived. In 1938, 25 model D’s were built. So, a grand total of 60 tanks for the Blitzkrieg.
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This source says there were 30 Panzer III Ds built. Also, there were actually 15 B versions built, but five of them were converted to assault guns. I wonder if that might not have happened with the D model, also.

Additionally, we should bear in mind that most or all of these had extremely weak front armor (15mm), except the last 15 D models may have theirs strengthened (30mm), at least enough to better resist anti-tank rifles and the aforementioned 25mm anti-tank gun).

Rincewind said:
And finally, the Panzer IV. Prior to the Polish campaign, 217 of this tank were built, 35 model A, 42 model B and 140 model C. Therefore, between 1937 and 1939. The model C was apparently introduced in late 1938, so before Munich let’s estimate 40 of this model would have been available.
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The Panzer IV C didn't enter production until September 1938 (source); it's extremely doubtful that more than a handful could have been delivered to the Panzer divisions before Munich. Also, again, the model A only had 15mm front armor.

Rincewind said:
To conclude, 1,100 Panzer I’s, 510 Panzer II’s, 60 Panzer III’s and 117 Panzer IV’s. So – rounding up gives Adolf 1,800 tanks, of which maybe 180 were proper battle tanks, and the majority were the unreliable and unsuitable Panzer I.
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Although your total number is a bit low, as I mentioned above, the number of "proper battle tanks" was more like 150, and that's only if one counts the developmental models with 15mm armor, which is questionable.

Rincewind said:
Shall we take a peek as what happened in Poland? Well, there were something like 2,700 tanks used, but only 310 Mark III and IVs. And around 350 Czech tanks. 832 tanks were lost in the campaign, so about a third of the available tanks. In fact, around half of the tank force were unavailable due to maintenance issues or enemy action.
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If we only count total write-offs, it was more like 250 panzers lost in Poland. The others were eventually repaired and returned to service. But see below.

Rincewind said:
Now, after an alternative Munich, where Chamberlain said no, the first campaign of the Wehrmacht would have been against the Czechs. It’s quite likely that the Czechs would have fought hard against the Wehrmacht, so it’s likely that there would have been few tanks to switch to attacking in the west.
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In addition to about 300 tanks comparable to the up-armored Panzer III, the Czechs had about 600 superb 47mm AT guns, which were capable of penetrating the front armor of any German tank then in service at a range of over a mile. I question the extent to which the panzer forces would have actually been committed to the assault on Czechoslovakia, though, at least initially, as the border terrain was unsuitable for armored operations.
 
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Rincewind said:
And there's a nice comment in that stating that Gladiators were capable of engaging bombers!
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Yes, I considered calling attention to that. :) One thing I think is incorrect in the passage is that there were no reserve fighters on hand, except in the squadrons and repair depots shops. I don't think that applies to the Gladiators, though, because several squadrons had recently converted from Gladiators to Hurricanes (plus one Gladiator squadron was in the process of converting to Spitfires), and the RAF had taken delivery of over 400 Gladiators by that time. So I imagine that there would have been enough on hand to have converted some of the older biplane squadrons to Gladiators in an emergency.
 
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Don't forget, the PZ IV up to the E model had a short-barreled 75 mm which was a low-velocity weapon mainly designed to fire high-explosive shells.
It was essentially an 'Infantry Tank'
With the experience against British and French tanks they went to a higher velocity 50mm long barrelled gun designed with better AP capabilities.

The PZ III was designed for a 50mm but was fitted with the same 37mm as the infantry AT gun for standardisation. This was fitted to the tank up to the 'G' model.
After experience in France the 50mm was fitted.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Don't forget, the PZ IV up to the E model had a short-barreled 75 mm which was a low-velocity weapon mainly designed to fire high-explosive shells.
It was essentially an 'Infantry Tank'
With the experience against British and French tanks they went to a higher velocity 50mm long barrelled gun designed with better AP capabilities.

The PZ III was designed for a 50mm but was fitted with the same 37mm as the infantry AT gun for standardisation. This was fitted to the tank up to the 'G' model.
After experience in France the 50mm was fitted.
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Yes, but its penetration beat that of the Panzer II's 20mm gun all to hell. :)
 
Henri McPhee said:
The trouble with you people is that you practically all think Britain should have gone to war in 1938. That's want of judgment, and it's not just me who thinks so either.
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You have utterly failed to provide any real evidence that the outcome for Britain, the other Allies, and indeed the world, would have been significantly worse if Britain and France had supported Czechoslovakia, and we have provided much evidence that the outcome would have very likely been considerably better.

The fact that you've managed to find a few anonymous Internet posters and agenda-driven, non-historian journalists who agree with you does not serve to strengthen your argument, such as it is.
 
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