Split Thread WWII & Appeasement

[HansMustermann]

@Henri McPhee
Unfortunately, much as those opinions may sound disrespectful to the many people who died in those battles, those were really foregone conclusions before they even started.

E.g., Alamein was where Rommel's logistics chain reached its hard maximum limit. He couldn't get any further no matter what.

E.g., the Battle Of Britain was really lost from the start, because Germany grossly underestimated (A) how many planes the British had, and (B) how many more they're able to produce per month. The numeric superiority of the Brits in the air was actually steadily going UP throughout the BOB, and the only one who wasn't catching onto it was Göring.

And actually by the time Göring switched to bombing London, the British numbers superiority was just starting to go up faster. See, by then the Brits were starting to avoid being baited into fighting the German fighters. The RAF had recently gotten orders to avoid German fighters entirely, if they're not escorting bombers. Otherwise, just let them fly around until they run out of fuel and go home, which didn't take all that long with a BF-109's fuel capacity.

So the Brits were losing less planes, and producing more.

Of course Göring took the lack of opposition as a sign that the RAF is running out of fighters. Yay, they're defeated! Nope, he was just an idiot.

So, yes, much as it is right to honour the dead, we have to accept that Germany got into those fights without any realistic hope to win them. That's not minimizing their sacrifice, since they DID stop Germany, but BECAUSE of those brave men being there, Germany didn't have a snowflake's chance in hell in the first place.

 

[jimbob]

Want to support that in some way, specially the Royal Navy part? Germany had no really good anti-shipping airplane. The Ju-87 divebomber was not effective at all against ships that were under maneuvers, not fast warships anyways. The home fleet would've been kept up north out of range until an invasion came, then they would've blasted the **** out of the Kriegsmarine and every single transport (towed barges really) supply ship and coming over. Sure a paratrooper division or two might make it over, then what? They'd be cut off and destroyed in a few days.

And has been pointed out upthread in the 70's there was a war game between the German planners of Sealion and British staff officers at Sandhurst with some very generous assumptions made on behalf of the Germans namely that the RN was unable to significantly engage the initial invasion fleet.

The Germans still lost.

Compare Sealion with Overlord and Operation Neptune.

Sealion - contested air cover, nowhere near air superiority, let alone air supremacy

Overlord - On D-Day a grand total of two Luftwaffe aircraft managed to strafe the Allied beaches out of fewer than 139 sorties. The Allies flew 14,674 sorties with 11,590 aircraft on the same day.

Sealion
German naval inferiority

Overlord
German
4th, 5th 6th gunboat flotilla (3-12 boats each)

err that's pretty much it.


Allied
7 Battleships
5 Heavy Cruisers
20 Light cruisers (still with 6" or 5.25" guns)
139 Destroyers and other escorts
2 monitors with 15" guns
506 other warships


And it still was difficult.

Sealion didn't stand a chance

 

[Andy_Ross]

I am more inclined to agree with this opinion on the internet. The British Navy and British Army would have been sitting ducks if Germany had won the Battle of Britain in 1940. It was a close run thing even if the public and House of Commons didn't understand what was going on:

https://www.johndclare.net/wwii6.htm

No, Britain wouldn't have been invaded. W have been through this in great depth. They couldn't get across the Channel. They had no landing craft, no navy to protect them and no ships to re-enforce and supply any troops that did manage to paddle ashore.

You have been reading the thread haven't you?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Sealion relied on capturing a major port intact to bring in cargo ships carrying transport, armour and fuel.
Direct invasion forces were strings of 'dumb' barges towed behind the few that were powered or by tug boats.
they could barely make 3 knots, that was slower than the tide up the channel at full flood and ebb. It was going to take a whole day to get across.
Any direct invasion force coming across the beaches would have been unsupported infantry with a few motorbikes.
They had no landing craft, Tugs were going to ram 'dumb' barges on to the beach and use planks to disembark.
then the tug boats would return to France for another string of barges each.
All the while the RN was sat at home drinking tea of course.
Their plan called for horses to be put in to the barges and brought over to provide transport.
It was laughable.

 

[Henri McPhee]

No, Britain wouldn't have been invaded. W have been through this in great depth. They couldn't get across the Channel. They had no landing craft, no navy to protect them and no ships to re-enforce and supply any troops that did manage to paddle ashore.

You have been reading the thread haven't you?

I agree with that argument as it applies to the 1914-18 war. Technology had advanced by 1939 and by 1940 there was a full-blown air war. Manstein who was a good German general was quoted as saying an invasion of Britain was risky but necessary. They got to the Channel Islands. There is a bit about the matter at this website:

http://listverse.com/2017/07/13/top-10-ways-the-nazis-could-have-won-world-war-ii/

Following the defeat of France, Britain made a pragmatic decision to withdraw its troops from France due to intensive land and air assaults from Germany. As British forces withdrew, they had to leave a substantial percentage of their heavy armory behind. At the moment that Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the British Army was lacking in heavy weaponry and motor transport. They also lacked the operational concept and experience to resist a German invasion.

Hitler made the costly mistake of not going for the kill.[1] Instead, he opted to engage the Soviet Union, a decision that eased the pressure on Britain. This allowed the country to remobilize its military forces to continue fighting Germany throughout World War II.

 

[Dave Rogers]

I agree with that argument as it applies to the 1914-18 war. Technology had advanced by 1939

Please list all the advances in landing craft technology that Germany possessed in 1939 over what was available in 1918. For that matter, please list all the advances Germany possessed in 1940.

They got to the Channel Islands.

Whose entire defences, if you look it up, comprised a row of lorry-loads of tomatoes.

Dave

 

[Tolls]

They got to the Channel Islands.

Can I suggest you look up where the Channel Islands are, and how far they are from France? Your ignorance is showing again, dear.

http://listverse.com/2017/07/13/top-10-ways-the-nazis-could-have-won-world-war-ii/

Dear lord.

Since the Germans were in no position to invade before late August at best (a position they never in fact achieved), by which time we at least had infantry armed up, there was still no chance of the Germans succeeding in an invasion. After all, they had absolutely no way of supplying their forces.

The author is essentially deluded.
I suggest finding an author who knows what they're talking about.

 

[Garrison]

I agree with that argument as it applies to the 1914-18 war. Technology had advanced by 1939 and by 1940 there was a full-blown air war.

Which the Germans lacked the means to win and even if they had gained some sort of temporary air superiority it would not have allowed an invasion. The idea of the BoB as a close run thing made for a compelling patriotic myth but the reality was the Luftwaffe was bleeding out for the simple reasons that the British were producing more planes and if an RAF pilot bailed out over Southern England he was going to be back in the battle shortly. German crew doing the same were going to spend the rest of the war as POWs.

Manstein who was a good German general was quoted as saying an invasion of Britain was risky but necessary.

Yes it was necessary, which doesn't mean the Germans had the means to carry it out. Manstein is just trying to polish his reputation postwar. Again if you did any real research you would know the German Generals spent most of their time in the Summer of 1940 trying to find ways to pass the buck because they knew Sealion was impossible and didn't want to attract Hitler's wrath by saying so. Blaming the Luftwaffe for not gaining air superiority was a convenient excuse to cancel an operation they knew they couldn't pull off.

They got to the Channel Islands.

Which had zero defences as no one had imagined such a rapid collapse of the French. The Germans did spend quite a bit on its defence during the war and the Allies demonstrated why it was a waste of time defending the islands when they bypassed and isolated them on D-Day.

There is a bit about the matter at this website:

And your quote is utter drivel, yet again. The British did not withdraw from France because of an 'air war', they withdrew because the BEF had been cut off in the Dunkirk pocket and had no choice. It also appears to conflate events of 1940 and 1941, not to mention they are clearly ignorant of the sort of invasion force the Germans were planning, if you can dignify with that word, for Sealion.

And it should go without saying but nothing in the above has anything to do with appeasement or the situation in 1938. Sealion was doomed to fail in 1940, it was physically impossible in 1938 to have mounted even the half-assed effort of 1940.

 

[HansMustermann]

I would generally recommend against taking Manstein as a reliable source. His memoirs are full of gross untruths, and helped start or cement several outright myths.

 

[Border Reiver]

I agree with that argument as it applies to the 1914-18 war. Technology had advanced by 1939 and by 1940 there was a full-blown air war. Manstein who was a good German general was quoted as saying an invasion of Britain was risky but necessary. They got to the Channel Islands. There is a bit about the matter at this website:

http://listverse.com/2017/07/13/top-10-ways-the-nazis-could-have-won-world-war-ii/

Let's start:

1. Germany's amphibious warfare technology had not progressed since 1917 and its successful amphibious operations in the Baltic. In other words, Germany had small tugs pushing barges loaded with infantry and some horses so that the troops could capture a port to land supplies. With no respect to your opinion based on wartime propaganda, any German invasion force crossing the Channel could have been cut to pieces by Home Guard mortar crews on the approach to the beach, ignoring the coastal forts, heavily contested airspace, the Home Fleet, and First Canadian Division (which still had all its heavy equipment).

2. Yes, during 1940 there was a small skirmish going on in the air. Yes, the bombing of English cities gave the impression to the UK population that things were going really badly. Guess what - it was a false impression. the actual resilience of the civilian population, coupled with the ever increasing gap between the two air forces meant that the Germans were never going to win the air war. By giving rise to the myth of the unflappable English civilian in the face of massive force, it gave a massive propaganda win to the Allies. The German air war failed to:

a. Stop British factory production of war materiel;
b. Diminish Allied air power;
c. Cause a drop in morale; and
d. Establish air superiority.

What did it accomplish for Germany?

a. Weaken the Luftwaffe; and
b. Improved enemy morale.

3. Manstein was a good operational leader and a strategic knucklehead. ignoring the actual challenges in just landing an invasion force in Britain he had no way to keep an actual invasion force supplied. And his performance in the USSR shows that he had a tendency to ignore the logistical concerns of his forces, such as the attempts to break through to Stalingrad and at Kursk.


He also was in favour of a British invasion if the Germans could get air superiority. They couldn't and Erich got to spend time in Paris as a result.

4. The Channel Islands were defended by a few police constables. They offered no strategic advantage to either side, and with the exceptions of needing to send some troops to take the limited air defences prisoner and the deportation of the Jewish population of the Channel Islands to camps played no role in the war.

5. A German invasion force would have been very quickly cut off from resupply and would have been captured within a week. Maybe Manstein was hoping the strain of housing and feeding all those German POWs would have broken the British economy and tied up valuable troops guarding them?

6. The list you linked to is a collection of pop culture myths of WWII put up by a person who admitted in his article that he were not a historian, and didn't study WWII. His opinion is worth less than a waterlogged bag of crisps.

 

[HansMustermann]

3. Manstein was a good operational leader and a strategic knucklehead. ignoring the actual challenges in just landing an invasion force in Britain he had no way to keep an actual invasion force supplied. And his performance in the USSR shows that he had a tendency to ignore the logistical concerns of his forces, such as the attempts to break through to Stalingrad and at Kursk.

Well, to his defense, that applies to virtually all German generals in WW2. Germany had a whole lot of strategic knuckleheads, who didn't understand logistics either, going all the way to the top

 

[Andy_Ross]

I agree with that argument as it applies to the 1914-18 war. Technology had advanced by 1939 and by 1940 there was a full-blown air war. Manstein who was a good German general was quoted as saying an invasion of Britain was risky but necessary. They got to the Channel Islands. There is a bit about the matter at this website:

What technology did the Germans have other than river barges and tug boats?

Do you know where the Channel Islands are?

 

[Henri McPhee]

What technology did the Germans have other than river barges and tug boats?

Do you know where the Channel Islands are?

I disagree with this attitude that the air war in 1940 was insignificant. Coventry and London and Bristol suffered significant damage, and other places as well. My own opinion is that the RAF winning the Battle of Britain, or at least drawing, gave Hitler pause for thought. He then concentrated on Soviet Russia without telling Stalin about it. There is an interesting opinion on the internet which makes a change from the usual opinions that Sealion had no chance at all of success. General Alan Brooke was concerned for a time in September 1940 of German paratroopers landing in the London parks:

What the British could do with small civilian ships in taking over 330,000 men from Dunkirk, the Germans could do with the luxury of time and better preparations. Trawlers and small cargo ships for the troops and ammo, etc. Car and rail ferries for the tanks, (Mk II ,II, and IV panzers are not as heavy as an M-1), and we see that all one really needs is for a couple of small ports to be seized by paras and the whole thing becomes doable.

 

[Aber]

There is an interesting opinion on the internet which makes a change from the usual opinions that Sealion had no chance at all of success.

The definitive view on the internet is that the only way that Sealion could be successful is if the Nazis were helped by Alien Space Bats.

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

 

[jimbob]

I disagree with this attitude that the air war in 1940 was insignificant. Coventry and London and Bristol suffered significant damage, and other places as well. My own opinion is that the RAF winning the Battle of Britain, or at least drawing, gave Hitler pause for thought. He then concentrated on Soviet Russia without telling Stalin about it. There is an interesting opinion on the internet which makes a change from the usual opinions that Sealion had no chance at all of success. General Alan Brooke was concerned for a time in September 1940 of German paratroopers landing in the London parks:

Googling found where you got that quote from - another forum, where someone was spitballing

What the British could do with small civilian ships in taking over 330,000 men from Dunkirk, the Germans could do with the luxury of time and better preparations. Trawlers and small cargo ships for the troops and ammo, etc. Car and rail ferries for the tanks, (Mk II ,II, and IV panzers are not as heavy as an M-1), and we see that all one really needs is for a couple of small ports to be seized by paras and the whole thing becomes doable.

https://historum.com/threads/operation-sealion-was-it-all-that-far-fetched.6085/



Again, the responses gave reasons why it had no chance of success, and the author generally accepted them.


It gets better around here

https://historum.com/threads/operation-sealion-was-it-all-that-far-fetched.6085/page-8

Although this guy - after presenting loads of stats on why Sealion was a complete pipe dream did come up with a quote that I think is relevant:

Message for Edratman.

You appear to be taking an interest in this site; do you feel able to comment on the recent contributions on it?

Discussing a subject with someone who appears impervious to documented fact, and to rational argument, is a new experience for me!!

as is this

Siebel Ferries : General Halder saw a prototype tested on the Ringsdorfer See (a lake near Berlin) and wrote in his diary: ' Nothing new, and may not stand up to surf ' Halder was, by the way, OKW Chief of Staff, and was the officer who described the Sealion plan as 'Akin to putting the troops through a meat grinder.'

Subsequently, an improved design was tested in Ems but only on 31 August 1940, and although production began shortly after, by the time Sealion was abandoned only 25 had been constructed, each of which was armed with one 88mm and 2 x 20 mm guns. At best, they had a speed of eight knots, but the engines used were heavy on fuel consumption, and the noise made communication between crew members almost impossible.

They were, therefore, a vessel whch was only available, in very limited numbers, after Sealion had been abandoned. Larger versions with bigger armaments were developed, but only well after the Sealion period.

When, by the way, did I refer to the Luftwaffe as 'impotent & harmless?' The fact is, however, that during the Dunkirk evacuation 72 allied vessels only were sunk by enemy action, the rest by collision or grounding, and the bulk of the total consisted of small craft.

The circumstances relating to Sealion would have been entirely different, in that the RN forces would have had much more sea room, would not have been attempting to avoid numerous civilian craft, and would have been fighting a night action, one of the many points you continually ignore.

Perhaps you should study the details of RN destroyer losses after Dunkirk, as these tend to have been individual vessels caught by large numbers of aircraft, not vessels operating in flotillas, and certainly not at night. I have never argued and would not claim that the Luftwaffe was impotent or harmless; I will merely content myself by agreeing with von Richthoven that it could not hope to protect the Sealion convoys from the Royal Navy.

The heavy guns intended to come across with the second wave are hardly a relevant factor, as the German invasion plan required eleven days to land the first wave, assuming that the Royal Navy did not interfere! They would certainly not have been deployed in the first week, as you state.

In any case, as I have explained earlier, the troops of the first wave could not have been adequately re-supplied. In simple terms, there would have been no second wave, as the battle would have been decided at a much earlier stage. Certainly, if the Germans had established batteries on the Dover side of the Channel the straits would have been blocked, but the Germans were never in a position to capture Dover. I have already provided you with details of the actual performance of the German coastal batteries, so do not intend to repeat them.

I do not recall saying that the barges could not carry 88mm guns as cargo as it is fairly self evident that they could. The fact is, however, that they could not carry them as armament. I am surprised that you cannot grasp the difficulties involved in installing artillery in a vessel not designed to carry it. The RN during WW2 converted numerous freighters to transport aircraft, but they could hardly be described as Aircraft Carriers!

As to your present fascination with the destroyers at Dunkirk, a destroyer is a type of vessel, as is a schuit, a tug, a trawler, or a yacht. You asked me to provide the facts and I did. Had you asked how many troops were transported by warships and how many by non-warships, I would have provided this information as well, and of course have done subsequently. In any case, I thought this thread was about Sealion?

Finally, what you appear to regard as 'facts' seem to me to be items selected from various internet sites and 'documentaries' My facts were gathered direct from German, British, and American archives. I leave it to any other readers to decide which have more credibility. By the way any luck on the numbers and carrying capacities of the JU52s yet, or is there nothing suitable on wikipedia?

 

[Andy_Ross]

I disagree with this attitude that the air war in 1940 was insignificant. Coventry and London and Bristol suffered significant damage, and other places as well. My own opinion is that the RAF winning the Battle of Britain, or at least drawing, gave Hitler pause for thought. He then concentrated on Soviet Russia without telling Stalin about it. There is an interesting opinion on the internet which makes a change from the usual opinions that Sealion had no chance at all of success. General Alan Brooke was concerned for a time in September 1940 of German paratroopers landing in the London parks:

Who says the air war was 'insignificant'
What does a worry about paratroopers landing in London parks have to do with anything?
How does anything in your post address your 'technology' claim?

 

[jimbob]

Actually, that thread I found from googling one of Henri's quotes came up with *yet* another reason why Sealion was a pipe-dream, that I don't recall seeing here.

Not only did the Germans lack the vessels (the majority of troops and horses would have been in towed barges with very low seaboard) they also lacked the sailors to man sufficient vessels to cross the channel in sufficient numbers anyway.

 

[HansMustermann]

Henri, you have to understand one thing about paratroopers, though:

First of all they have no heavy equipment. No artillery, no Stugs, nada. That's not ideal in any case, but even less so if you want to do some city fighting.

Second, you lack supplies from that point on. Paratroopers are useful for a surprise drop and grab some undefended objective, but you have to move in some real army there FAST. Because paratroopers lack the "endurance" to hold anything for more than a day or two.

Third, at the time they tended to come down with just a pistol on them. Anything else, including rifles, came down in separate paradropped crates. So they'd then have to gather themselves, find the crates, and arm themselves.

And that's one reason why you don't want to paradrop in a city. You really don't want to be in the park with your pistol, your other equipment to be in a whole other park or on a house, and only God knows where your officer landed. You're very vulnerable in that time.

Fourth, you're even more vulnerable in the air while you glide down slowly, and your airplane before that is a weak transport airplane too. You REALLY don't want to paradrop over a place with massive numbers of FLAK batteries. Such as, you know, London.

So while I'm not surprised that the British generals thought of the possibility too -- it is their JOB to think up every scenario in advance -- I wouldn't take it for all that huge a threat.

 

[theprestige]

Thinking of the possibility is the first step to countering it. Behind every good battle plan is a report that says, "if the enemy does this, we're ******". And then the battle plan counters that possibility.

You dig up the original report 50 years later, out of context and without reference to the battle plan that counters it, and you can easily make it look like they were unprepared.

 

[jimbob]

Thinking of the possibility is the first step to countering it. Behind every good battle plan is a report that says, "if the enemy does this, we're ******". And then the battle plan counters that possibility.

You dig up the original report 50 years later, out of context and without reference to the battle plan that counters it, and you can easily make it look like they were unprepared.

In case of Sealion in this discussion, it's almost the cknverse.

The enemy might do this, but then they're ******.