How "should" WWII in 1940 have gone?
- Thread starter Flavius Iulius Maiorianus
- Start date
kham_coc
Banned
Sure, but would the UK have acted an Iota different if the Germans had been the nicest people ever?
Yes because they wouldn't have been at war and therefore no need to mine
But they were not the nicest people ever where they - in fact they were even 'un niceiest people' than the British then realised
Two weeks into the campaign, the Germans held all the important cities, infrastructure, mobilisation depots and what remained of the Norwegian army had been pushed into positions from which it held no strategic relevance whatsoever. It was only at Narvik things got bad for the Germans, but the advance northwards from Trondheim made sure that the airfields at Vaernas (at Trondheim, 640km from Narvik), then Hattfjelldal (350km from Narvik) and then Bodø (180k from Narvik) came under German control and could be used as forward refuelling bases for the Luftwaffe.
Even without the loss in France, the Allied fleet had to withdraw from Narvik since the Germans could keep planes in the air permanently over Narvik from the 15th of May, when they took Hattfjelldal. While the Allies might force Dietl to retreat into Sweden to be interned, they're not holding Narvik in the long run, since they were unwilling to commit the air units necessary to keep the Luftwaffe from having air supremacy over the port - and that was the case regardless of the situation in France.
kham_coc
Banned
Wouldn't they?
You say that as if Germany just decided to invade Poland and Czechoslovakia for no reason.
Indeed, they were so un-nice that they were inspired by, checks notes, The UK and the US.
In living memory mind you.
The decision to evacuate was made after things started to go wrong in France and Belgium etc
So again the decision to abandon Norway was made only after things started to go badly wrong on the Western Front - not because of the fighting in Norway itself
Bodo for example fell after it was evacuated as part of the general withdrawal from Norway
Bodø was untenable because of the German air support from Hattfjelldal. And Narvik would be untenable because of the air support from Bodø.
Unless the Allies are willing to commit enough fighters to contest German air superiority, they can't hold Norway.
So what was their good reason for invading Czechoslovakia, and Poland for that matter?
The power of Nazi propaganda still working to this day astounds me
Fundamentally, once you have the OTL set-up of forces, things are mostly set in place. Yes, the French could certainly get some lucky breaks, there were some close calls where bombing nearly took out key German figures, there are always flukes of a good hit on a German pontoon bridge or some flub on the German side, and different command decisions and allocations such as multiple French tank units which chose to entrench or disperse rather than counter-attack aggressively, or the decision of the French commander at Sedan to marshal artillery ammunition because he expected a longer battle, instead of applying maximum firepower on the German troops in front of his position, etc. However, fundamentally the Germans had amassed the largest mass of offensive capability in the world at the time on an axis that the French and allies had left woefully underdefended, and these were assisted by the most powerful aerial bombardments in history up to that point and capable and aggressive leadership. Fundamentally you can see the result - the attention tends to go to Sedan, but the Germans actually punched a hole in the French line from Dinant to Sedan, scores of kilometers, it was not an individual failure at a single front even if Sedan saw the fiercest fighting. Sedan if anything is impressive that two category B French divisions with inadequate training, inadequate equipment, incomplete fortifications, and in the middle of reorganizations managed to hold out for any length of time at all against multiple elite German armored divisions with massive air attacks. The attack could have been slowed, damage somewhat contained, and in extreme circumstances if everything went right perhaps even halted, but in most scenarios the original Fall Gelb was going to ultimately smash the French.
That being said, it is true that the adoption of the Breda variant of the Dyle plan was contrary to French doctrine and was based upon misreading of the operational situation by the French, specifically Gamelin, and was in no way inevitable. If the original variant had been adopted, with French reserves kept in the center near the German attack point, then most likely the Germans would have won a number of cutting tactical victories, but then ground to a halt in front of solidifying resistance and increasingly bloody and battered German armored units that would run out of steam. The Battle of Gembloux showed that the French were capable of halting a German armored attack with their own infantry and Hannut that their tank units could stand up against German ones. Eventually stagnation would settle in and a long war of matériel which would favor the French and allies and which they would eventually win, as shown in Blunted Sickle. Similarly, the original German campaign plans would fail to lead to a decisive victory against the French, and if the Belgians had let the French move in, the Germans would have been equally screwed.
So maybe roughly trying to put a general number on it we can say, perhaps, a 20% chance of a German victory, although again, once you use OTL battle deployments, the Germans were probably looking at something on the order of a 95% chance to win.
That being said, it is true that the adoption of the Breda variant of the Dyle plan was contrary to French doctrine and was based upon misreading of the operational situation by the French, specifically Gamelin, and was in no way inevitable. If the original variant had been adopted, with French reserves kept in the center near the German attack point, then most likely the Germans would have won a number of cutting tactical victories, but then ground to a halt in front of solidifying resistance and increasingly bloody and battered German armored units that would run out of steam. The Battle of Gembloux showed that the French were capable of halting a German armored attack with their own infantry and Hannut that their tank units could stand up against German ones. Eventually stagnation would settle in and a long war of matériel which would favor the French and allies and which they would eventually win, as shown in Blunted Sickle. Similarly, the original German campaign plans would fail to lead to a decisive victory against the French, and if the Belgians had let the French move in, the Germans would have been equally screwed.
So maybe roughly trying to put a general number on it we can say, perhaps, a 20% chance of a German victory, although again, once you use OTL battle deployments, the Germans were probably looking at something on the order of a 95% chance to win.
kham_coc
Banned
Yeah totally. Maybe learn to differentiate international liberalism and Nazism, they are very different.
Sweet Jesus!
Repeating Nazi Propaganda 80+ years after the fact, and almost as many years comprehensively disproved, isn't going to fly here.
You are just about of chances to bring this sort of BS up.
Kicked for a week.
If you see the post he is responding to, it is “ what was the German excuse”.
Now we know this was excuses fabricated for the task and obviously invalid excuses, but they were nevertheless the Nazi excuses back then.
That's basically more empty rhetoric, insults and complete factual errors, without any actual analysis. I see that you have now included the designers of the KM's warships in the long list of people you insult and sneer at. There is no logic in your implication that almost everyone involved was stupid. It is far more logical that you are ignoring the realities of the situation, using hindsight, and placing far more value on your own worth than the evidence suggests is realistic.
So please advise what the British could have done so easily in the real world.
1- what recce do you have in place to get early warning of the German forces leaving, given that the Heligoland Bight is very shallow and therefore dangerous for subs and basically a German-controlled airspace? Please advise us of the submarines and aircraft you are using.
2- at what points in time and space do you know that any German forces that are seen are heading for Norway, rather than being the expected breakout into the Atlantic (which will require the Home Fleet to head on a very different course) or one of the other alternatives?
3- Assuming that a sub or plane is lucky enough to see a force bound for Norway within two hours of it leaving the Jade AND the RN gambles on or sees that it is headed for Norway, what can be done? Please give details since you claim to know so much more than the RN did.
It's wrong to say that the RN was not "giving any serious thought to what the Germans might be up to" and that there was "little consideration of what the Germans might try or any contingency planning to foil them". That's why there were six cruisers and transports readying to take the 24th Brigade and part of 49th Division aboard and sail on 7/8 April. What more "serious thought" do you want than to prepare to invade a neutral country?
Many of the top Norwegians, like the Foreign Minister and the Inspector General of the Army, did not believe that Germany would invade. The former is described by Haarr, author of the excellent and very well sourced "The German Invasion of Norway, April 1940" as very well educated but according to you, he must also have been a complete fool. Many of the Swedes in the best position to know did not think that there was an invasion - what twits! The US Minister to Norway commented later that although with hindsight it should have been easy to foresee the invasion(s), at the time everyone was fixated on Finland. So you can add the US Minister to your lengthy list of morons. The US Minister to Denmark reported that the reports of an attack on Narvik were "fantastic" even after it had happened, so there's yet another complete idiot to add to your cavalcade of simpletons.
Haarr points out the issue of cognitive priming and the way it affected the recognition of the contradictory information available, which is a very interesting comment and underlines that there were good reasons for the Allies issues, and that not everyone on the Allied side was a fool far below the IQ of a 2024 commentator's shoelaces.
Professor Harry Hinsley, historian, later wrote that given the resources that were available (which in reality rather than rhetoric were limited; ie there was not an infinite number of people who could perform well in intelligence roles and many who could lacked training at that time), organisation (which was being upgraded to suit war) and sources, it was "hardly surprising" that the Brits were unsure that the Germans would invade.
It's extraordinary for anyone to insult just about everyone involved in the invasion on all three sides and in neutral governments as you do. Your implicit (and often explicit) claims that they were all stupid are simply untrue. Why do you make them?
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Except it wasn't presented as an excuse. He said that Germany would still be at war even if they were nice people because they had a reason to invade Czechoslovakia and Poland. He was asked what that good reason was, at which point he spouted the Liebensraum propaganda BS unironically.
Yes, the French were, and no one on the Allied side was perfect. It's just that the fact that both following the "visionaries" and sticking to the old school can be disastrous seems to show how hard it is to create a war-winning military.
Nice - I can't read the legend but I assume it shows that the vulnerable Coastal Command aircraft couldn't go close enough to the coast to spot all shipping, for fear of being shot down.
The weather when the Twins and destroyers put to sea was so bad that about ten men were lost overboard from the destroyers, and when the most vulnerable group (the one heading for Bergen) left Germany it was covered by weather so bad that its own air escort had to leave. Short of ASBs delivering late-war Liberators and radar it's hard to see how the Brits could have seen the ships in time to do much. I've only messed around on the edges of the North Sea but even that showed me how terrible the visibility often is compared to the Pacific.
It depends on the height of the Hudsons, what the visual horizon is, and distance to the enemy coast. Considering LW doesn't have radar, the chance of interception of a single aircraft is low. KM ships have to cover the trip without one the patrols spotting it.