If the July 20th Plot Had Succeeded...

[BlairWitch749]

Originally Posted by RousseauX

IIRC it -really- wasn't that bad. POW　ｄｅａｔｈ　ｒａｔｅ　ｉｎ　Ａｍｅｒｉｃａｎ　ＰＯＷ　ｃａｍｐｓ　ｗａｓ．．．ｗｈａｔ　０. ２％？

I was particularly speaking to the large camps maintained in france, by the french... my grandfather was a "guest" at one of them after being taken prisoner in the ruhr pocket in 1945; he left after 2 and a half years of hard labor although he had committed no crimes and only weighed 107 pounds; having entered the camp weighing 165

He wasn't keen to talk about it, but Rudel and Lainer's memoirs tell a common enough story

[Garrison]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

All this matters because the same applies to Rommel: good at battles, lousy at wars, incapable of beating an opponent that wanted to actually fight.

And blessed with the good fortune to remove such a man in the shape of General Richard O'Connor at the very beginning of the Afrikacorps campaign.

[BlairWitch749]

Originally Posted by VictorLaszlo

Well, I meant the peoples the red army claimed to have liberated in this statement. I can't remember, that the western allies would have done anything like that in the countries they liberated. Of course, there were quite a lot of casualties in western POW camps among captured germans when you are just looking at the total numbers, but it weren't by far the 80 - 90% like in soviet POW camps, not even 8 - 9%, and it by and large happened due to logistical problems the western allies were facing due to the enormous numbers of surrendering germans, to a point they simply couldn't support them. So yes, numerous german POWs died due to malnutrition and diseases contracted in no small part after being exposed to the elements. And I at least hope, you meant the guards were shouting at the german POWs, not shooting them, when they were nice.

BTW, it is a little known fact, that quite a number of american POWs, who had the misfortune to be in a german POW camp located in an area occupied by the red army simply disappeared. When american convoys tried to transport "liberated" american POWs from the soviet to the american occupation zone, they were repeatedly returned at the point of a gun, of course claiming, that the american POWs would be repatriated later on through proper channels, and several times there were even shots fired when american officers in charge of the convoy ignored the soviet orders and proceeded with the repatriation of the american POWs, Stalin simply wanted to keep them as hostages as long as possible.

funny how they could support 50,000 tactical aircraft 30,000 tanks, 90 combat division, plus 25 british divisions and mobilize and feed the red army with the excess and yet the pows still went hungry

the number of germans captured by the allies between dday and april 1945 only just touched 1 million; considering they where moving millions of pounds of material across the atlantic on a weekly basis, feeding their prisoners seems like it shouldn't have been so difficult

quoting from toland's last 100 days without any historical backdrop on repatriation is a big mistake

there where 100's of thousands of russians liberated in the western zones whom the allies didn't rapidly return either; there are proper channels fir such things and stalin was MORE than justified to hold the americans in military custody until shipping could be provided to send them home via proper channels as his own men were returned to him


the americans in that case who refused to comply with lawful orders to remain in custody for lawful and agreed to repatriation practice where in fact directly violating agreements accepted by their own governments and given that they where directly in a military operation zone where right to be arrested... you can't just have loose troops rolling around your operational areas, the american didn't allow that crap either.... try reading up on the american capture of iserlohn in the ruhr pocket and their subsequent RE-detention of the 30,000 russians there... in fact they actually parolled most of the german soldiers almost immediately and kept the russians in custody for months

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by VictorLaszlo

Well, I meant the peoples the red army claimed to have liberated in this statement. I can't remember, that the western allies would have done anything like that in the countries they liberated. Of course, there were quite a lot of casualties in western POW camps among captured germans when you are just looking at the total numbers, but it weren't by far the 80 - 90% like in soviet POW camps, not even 8 - 9%, and it by and large happened due to logistical problems the western allies were facing due to the enormous numbers of surrendering germans, to a point they simply couldn't support them. So yes, numerous german POWs died due to malnutrition and diseases contracted in no small part after being exposed to the elements. And I at least hope, you meant the guards were shouting at the german POWs, not shooting them, when they were nice.

BTW, it is a little known fact, that quite a number of american POWs, who had the misfortune to be in a german POW camp located in an area occupied by the red army simply disappeared. When american convoys tried to transport "liberated" american POWs from the soviet to the american occupation zone, they were repeatedly returned at the point of a gun, of course claiming, that the american POWs would be repatriated later on through proper channels, and several times there were even shots fired when american officers in charge of the convoy ignored the soviet orders and proceeded with the repatriation of the american POWs, Stalin simply wanted to keep them as hostages as long as possible.

You mean kleptocratic dictatorships run by former terrorists who lead secretive cabals with global ambitions lied? What a shocking idea.

If the USA didn't realize what Stalin's regime was, that's a verdict of the USA of that time, not on Stalin. He never pretended to be anything but a thuggish, murderous dick. If people blinded themselves to that, he had no responsibility for them deluding themselves.

Originally Posted by jmc247

The center of gravity of both conflicts you are discussing wasn't on battlefields it was among the public in the North in the Civil War and in WW2 it was among the public in UK. Rommel did know the UK was growing in strenth faster then his forces were and had to somehow translate quick military victories in Africa into a political victory that would oust Churchill in favor of a PM willing to make peace before the US arrived in Africa. He was playing some very long odds, with a very limited window of time, and obviously failed.

As for Lee I don't think he needed a big military victory in 1844 to see Lincoln ousted in the election. He just needed Northerners by election time in 1864 to see the battle as a defensive one by the South and the situation stalemated. Hell if I was him I would have sent part of my forces to Atlanta to help them hold out for another two months until after the election. Of course if I was him I would have taken Lincoln's offer to lead the armies of the North at the start of the war.

And then he pulls something like Malvern Hill or Cheat Mountain and gets sent off to fight Indians and replaced with someone else.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by Garrison

And blessed with the good fortune to remove such a man in the shape of General Richard O'Connor at the very beginning of the Afrikacorps campaign.

^That, too. Rommel wasn't bad at a tactical level, he couldn't have gotten to El Alamein if he was. What he was not was a war-winner. In any front. In 1940 this didn't matter because tactics ruled the day then. If he had to do something where tactics weren't enough.......

[jmc247]

Originally Posted by Garrison

And blessed with the good fortune to remove such a man in the shape of General Richard O'Connor at the very beginning of the Afrikacorps campaign.

We don't know now do we. But, a quick defeat for the Afrikacorps might not exactly be the best fortune for the Western Allies.

No Operation Torch, the British Army and U.S. Army is left much less battle tested without the lessons learned from Africa. Washington and London will be alot less cautious and much more willing to listen to generals saying they should invade France in 1942 or 1943.

Italy would also be much less likely to flip if the war in Africa was shorter and consumed less men and resources for them. Germany has more troops, planes, tanks, trucks, oil and other resources to fight the Soviet Union, defend mainland Europe, and keep Italy in the war.

[BlairWitch749]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

^That, too. Rommel wasn't bad at a tactical level, he couldn't have gotten to El Alamein if he was. What he was not was a war-winner. In any front. In 1940 this didn't matter because tactics ruled the day then. If he had to do something where tactics weren't enough.......

When Rommel delved into the world of higher strategy, I've never found him to be grossly wrong or uneducated

he came out against the malta 42 attack because ~british bombers are now longer ranged and can reach our convoys from egypt anyway, so the island has lost it's former importance~.... I don't see anything logically wrong with that argument, and he put the forces to good use comprehensively winning the battle of gazalla

his thoughts on italy and france where not poorly thought out either

[Julian]

Rommel was the average German officer, competent, tactically skilled, and well trained, but not a strategic genius.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by BlairWitch749

When Rommel delved into the world of higher strategy, I've never found him to be grossly wrong or uneducated

he came out against the malta 42 attack because ~british bombers are now longer ranged and can reach our convoys from egypt anyway, so the island has lost it's former importance~.... I don't see anything logically wrong with that argument, and he put the forces to good use comprehensively winning the battle of gazalla

his thoughts on italy and france where not poorly thought out either

The problem is the gap between strategic thinking and strategic execution of that thinking.

[jmc247]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

The problem is the gap between strategic thinking and strategic execution of that thinking.

After taking Tobruk he is of course most attacked for not playing a defensive war from there on in. But, either way he still would have lost and from Terry Brighton's recient book on Monty, Patton and Rommel he did know El Alamein was a battle very likely to go badly.

Rommel knew that his chances of mounting a successful assault at El Alamein were slim. But, he understood more than most field commanders the “grand design” of which is operations were part. On the morning of the attack General Bayerlein noted that Rommel left his truck with “a troubled face” and said to Dr. Horster: “Professor, the decision to attack today is the hardest that I have ever taken. Either the army in Russia succeeds in getting through to Grozny and we in Africa manage to reach the Suez Canal, or …” At that, according to Bayerlein, Rommel made a gesture of defeat.

He basically saw the attack as the high chance for a defeat with a small chance of a victory vs. the total chance for a defeat sitting still. After that it became about saving troops and resources to achieve any kind of peace. He very much opposed the attack on Kursk.

At Normandy his hope was it would be the last battle against the Anglo-Americans where regardless of his big pronouncements his goal was to cause enough havok with their beachheads and bloodly their nose just enough to both potentally open up some negotiating leverage and in give the German forces in France a last taste of victory and in doing so gain the loyalty of the troops and the divisional commaders in France which would come in handy when the eventual countermanding Hitler's orders came as he did in Africa.

He knew pretty quickly that had failed and without a taste of victory or divisional control he had to go around begging divisional commanders in France like Sepp Dietrich to accept his orders 'even if it is countermanded by the leader'. He was not in a position of strength to order a surrender that would be countermanded by Berlin, but he was trying to organize it when his car was straffed. As for the Battle of the Bulge he just let out a bunch of expletives at Hitler when he heard he was moving troops from the East to the West for one more major battle against the Western Allies.

If Hitler wanted a defensive war fought in Africa after say the fall of Benghazi he should have put a person who could give a damn about his orders like Paulus in charge there. Now that I think about it Rommel placed in Paulus position in Russia gives me some interesting timeline ideas.

[BlairWitch749]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

The problem is the gap between strategic thinking and strategic execution of that thinking.

that problem doesn't fall on rommels shoulders as he was not in charge of the german war effort

his ideas about italy, kursk, malta and france where strategically sound... or at least they where logical

the problem was even though rommel was a field marshal, he didn't have the final say on strategic planning, that was reserved for hitler who on these matters listened to rommel a grand total of one time (when it dovetailed with his own thoughts anyway) which was on aborting hercules in 1942; and in that case rommel's decision was strategically and tactically correct

for the rest hitler took the advice of others; which embittered rommel greatly... this was rommel's big beef with hitler after 1st alemein gause described it as rommel becomming extremely angry and depressed because he thought hitler expressly trusted his judgement; guderian had much the same experience when he ordered the retreat from the russian 41 winter counter offensive

nobody had total success influecing hitler no matter how many times they were right, and how poltically with the program they were; model is the chief example of this; hitler valued his judgement the most in the army... "model is my best field marshal" and model was a hardcore nazi who won many battles against impossible odds; and yet on kursk and watch on rhine he was explicitly overuled even though he never gave hitler a drop of bad advice in his entire career and fixed the mistakes of other generals and hitler himself many times

within the frame of how the nazi system worked it's hard to criticize any general on a strategic level as they had little if any real impract on hitler's strategic thinking

[Gullash]

Originally Posted by BlairWitch749

I was particularly speaking to the large camps maintained in france, by the french... my grandfather was a "guest" at one of them after being taken prisoner in the ruhr pocket in 1945; he left after 2 and a half years of hard labor although he had committed no crimes and only weighed 107 pounds; having entered the camp weighing 165

He wasn't keen to talk about it, but Rudel and Lainer's memoirs tell a common enough story

The Americans sent hundreds of thousands of German POWs to slave labor in the Soviet Union. Technically their death-toll in Russia should be credited to the U.S. death account:
Edward N. Peterson: "The American Occupation of Germany", pp 116, "Some hundreds of thousands who had fled to the Americans to avoid being taken prisoner by the Russians were turned over in May to the Red Army in a gesture of friendship."

How many of the total dead and missing should be credited to whom gets confusing when your realize that there were the above type of deeds being perpetrated.

According to the Germans: "Die Schätzungen über die Zahl der in Haft gestorbenen Männer schwanken zwischen 600 000 und einer Million. Nach Angaben des Suchdienstes des Deutschen Roten Kreuzes ist bis heute das Schicksal von 1,3 Millionen Kriegsgefangenen ungeklärt - sie gelten offiziell als vermisst."
Translated it means that estimates of prisoners who died in captivity vary between 600,000 and 1,000,000. In addition, according to the Red Cross 1,300,000 German POWs are unnacounted for, officially they are listed as "missing".
http://www.stern.de/politik/geschich...tml?eid=537265

The Americans also sent many prisoners to slave labor in other countries besides Communist Russia. Here you find a picture of some of the prisoners in a camp in France.http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/do...isc/57jnwx.htm
Note the number of month that the Americans refused to let the Red Cross provide food to their prisoners.

Going back to the quote at the top we have an example of the French using their German prisoners for slave labor as minesweepers, despite no training, e.g. they use airplane electricians with almost no tools. The death rate sounds ridiculously low giving the rest of the emotive content in the news-article, and they forget to mention that the number of maimed for life should greatly exceed the number of killed outright.http://www.spiegel.de/international/...574180,00.html

When the U.S. started thinking that perhaps they would - in the future - need the Germans on their side against their Communist Ally, and therefore started getting cold feet about the prisoners they had donated to France, they learned that of the 740,000 Germans (electricians, soldiers, cooks, train conductors, whatever they had scooped up wearing a uniform) handed over only 450,000 remained; 290,000 had been "stricken off the rolls".
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi...+page&page=627

[Top hats daily]

Originally Posted by Wolfpaw

Göring was Hitler's legal successor, but he'd already been irreparably humiliated by the BoB and his general assclownery.

Well this is useful for my signature. Heh. Assclownery.

[Gullash]

Originally Posted by Cook

The Morgenthau plan was only ever a proposal, it was never accepted as policy and never went anywhere near implementation. It was only ever accepted at the proposal level as part of the negotiations with the US treasury concerning Phase Two of Lend-Lease. It never got past Yalta.

The Morgenthau plan was adopted, and even signed, by booth Roosevelt and Churchill at the Quebec conference in 1944 late. You only need to look up the records.

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi...+page&page=466

JCS 1067 was a direct descendant of the Morgenthau plan. Lets quote some other documents:

"The draft version of what later would be called JCS 1067, called for implementing the Morgenthau Plan's harsh approach to postwar policy." ... "According to General Lucius Clay, "there was no doubt that JCS 1067 contemplated the Carthaginian peace which dominated our operations in Germany during the early months of occupation."'1 Eisenhower, according to biographer Stephen Ambrose, supported this approach: "His hatred of the Germans was wide-ranging and ran very deep. He definitely wanted them punished, humiliated, made to pay. He blamed the Germans for starting the war and for prolonging it."52 JCS 1067, according to Clay, represented "the document which was to be our policy guide in administering the American Zone of Occupation and in negotiating with the other members of quadripartite government/53 Most important, it "gave the military government staffs their long-awaited basic statement of policy for the posthostilities period."" http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc...f&AD=ADA300988

In 1947 Herbert Hoover (President of the United States 1929 - 1933) led a team of economic and agricultural experts to Germany. In their final official report they noted (I repeat, in 1947): "there is the illusion that the new Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a "Pastoral State." It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it. This would approximately reduce Germany to the density of the population in France."http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi...47n087&isize=M

Allan Lightner, a high ranking member of the U.S. occupation administration made the following observations:
...those [Morgenthau plan] ideas permeated much of American thinking, especially in the War Department, right up to the time of Secretary [James F.] Byrnes' important Stuttgart speech in [September] 1946. They were reflected in the basic directive for the occupation of Germany, which was a kind of Bible for all that was done during the early days of the occupation, the paper known as JSC-1067.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/lightner.htm#46

Well, to us those months between V-E Day and mid-'46 seemed a long time. That's when much of the dismantling was taking place.
....it gradually became clear to our people who had favored the Morgenthau plan that in our own interest, in terms of our ability to accomplish our political goals in Germany, you had to give them hope for the future. How could we make them a democratic country by treating them as the Romans treated the Carthaginians.
I guess the turning point was Secretary Byrnes' speech in Stuttgart in September 1946. By that time after the experience of running occupied Germany for a year, the more Draconian policies of JCS-1067 were being interpreted differently.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/lightner.htm#83

There are two very revealing sentences in the secret minutes from 1946 of the UK government, declassified in 2006. Ernest Bevin, the UK foreign-secretary (equivalent role to the United States Secretary of State) is recorded as stating that:

"b) U.S. policy was pastoralising (Morgenthan) until Stuttgart speech. They supported R. & Fr. case - to point of reducing steel prodn to 5.8 m." ... "Before this was completed I had seen Byrnes (before Stuttgart speech) & asked wtr. this meant he wd. overthrow Morgenthau policy. He said yes - with Truman's authy."
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/r...cy_germany.htm

The so called "Stuttgart speech" made by James F. Byrnes, the United States Secretary of State, took place in September 1946.

Cook, If you plan to continue to claim that the end of the Morgenthau plan was at Yalta (February 1945), then please provide some verifiable evidence, just as I have done. Just stating your opinion as fact doesn't cut it.

[Julian]

Though intentions doesnt really matter since the US and Britain clearly didn't implement the Plan. Once the war ended they recognized the reality of the situation, particularly in that dismantling Germany would only help the Soviets. Even the Soviets never went so far as to end Germany as an industrial state.

[Garrison]

Originally Posted by jmc247

We don't know now do we. But, a quick defeat for the Afrikacorps might not exactly be the best fortune for the Western Allies.

No Operation Torch, the British Army and U.S. Army is left much less battle tested without the lessons learned from Africa. Washington and London will be alot less cautious and much more willing to listen to generals saying they should invade France in 1942 or 1943.

Italy would also be much less likely to flip if the war in Africa was shorter and consumed less men and resources for them. Germany has more troops, planes, tanks, trucks, oil and other resources to fight the Soviet Union, defend mainland Europe, and keep Italy in the war.

By the same token those Allied forces that were tied down in North Africa can turn up else where, it helps secure supply lines, and the extra resources released for the Eastern Front aren't enough to have a decisive effect given the scale of the forces the Germans and Soviets already had. More German troops in the USSR in the winter of 41' is just more of them to supply as the logistics system breaks down.
Some of the British resources no longer tied down in North Africa might be sent to to shore up defences in place like Malaya, perhaps tipping the balance against Japanese assaults that were operating on very thin margins. If Italy isn't destabilized then there will likely be attacks on Sicily and perhaps the Dodecanese to learn the ropes of amphibious assaults and prod the Italians.
Not all my own thoughts of course, this ground has been gone over a lot in 'The Whale Has Wings' thread.

[Gullash]

Originally Posted by Julian

Though intentions doesnt really matter since the US and Britain clearly didn't implement the Plan. Once the war ended they recognized the reality of the situation, particularly in that dismantling Germany would only help the Soviets. Even the Soviets never went so far as to end Germany as an industrial state.

"clearly didn't implement"? Didn't you read the sources above? Starting something and then stopping it one or two years later is definitively not the same as never starting it at all.

Since the Holocaust was started (in 1941?) but then halted in 1945 (before it could be fully completed), does it mean that the Holocaust was not "implemented"? I'm certainly not making a moral analogy, but I think it gives a good and contemporary way to show my point.

Besides, the "halting" of the Morgenthau plan was not as abrupt and complete as the 1945 halting of the Holocaust. You had destruction of German factories going on still as late as 1950.

German workers demonstrating in the Ruhr area against the ongoing destruction of their factories, June 1949.
http://www.cvce.eu/obj/european_navi...5-e0a225722046

Some nice pictures from 1950 of explosive destruction of some German factories, and demonstrations against it.
http://geschichte.salzgitter-ag.de/e...wisse_Zukunft/

Apparently (according to wikipedia so take it as you please) the only way the new West German government was able to stop the US and UK from destrorying more factories was by agreeing to let them control the Ruhr as an international zone, called the International Authority for the Ruhr
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna...y_for_the_Ruhr

Konrad Adenauer in Parliament in 1949 or 1950: "The Allies have told me that dismantling would be stopped only if I satisfy the Allied desire for security," "Does the Socialist Party want dismantling to go on to the bitter end?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersberg_agreement


A letter from 1949, between Allied secretaries of state, regarding the collapsing industrial dismantling policy in Germany. Well worth reading.
http://www.cvce.eu/viewer/-/content/...c23d3e015a2/en

[jmc247]

Originally Posted by Gullash

"clearly didn't implement"? Didn't you read the sources above? Starting something and then stopping it one or two years later is definitively not the same as never starting it at all.

Since the Holocaust was started (in 1941?) but then halted in 1945 (before it could be fully completed), does it mean that the Holocaust was not "implemented"? I'm certainly not making a moral analogy, but I think it gives a good and contemporary way to show my point.

The Final Solution was agreed upon January 1942.

The Holocaust is a word developed many years later to discribe the Nazi brutality toward and killing of Jews, gays, gypsies, and others one can argue all day when it started.

The decision to kill them all after using the ones they needed to for slave labor was made January 20th 1942 at the Wannsee Conference.

[Julian]

Originally Posted by Gullash

Snip

I'll concede the point. Good research, by the way.

[Stolengood]

Very good research; not sure what any of this has to do with the July 20th plot, but I'm impressed, anyway.