Worst mistakes made by the Allies

Worst mistake made by the Allies

  • The Utterly Useless Raid on Dieppe

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    168

Deleted member 1487

It would also have meant a government of militant nationalists who would be likely to start yet another war not long down the line. Not to mention yet another stabbed in the back myth to take hold since the Allies will also demand Germany give up what it still holds. Oh, and letting the war criminals get off scot free.

Total defeat of the Axis was necessary.
I didn't say they'd actually honor the agreement, just induce civil war so that they could finish it more easily. That or getting a really good conditional surrender in 1943 like Calbear's new TL (not that the Germans would have done that).
 
If they told the anti-nazi plotters there would be something they'd get if they overthrew Hitler it could have ended the war in 1943-44.

Like I wrote this is a misunderstanding of the culture of the leaders, and a large part of the general population of the era. Among other things the Allies had no coherent idea of who might be plotting and what their capabilites might be. Another point is the various anti nazi leaders idea of a deal was for the western Allies to go home & leave Germany to continue its war in the east.

Leaving a German nation with a capable army & run by generals was not any sort of improvement in the view of the Allied leaders and a large portion of their citizenry.
 

B-29_Bomber

Banned
Fall of France with Stalin's reaction to Barbarossa a close second. Everything else is merely either falls into the trap of hindsight or is much too small to matter to the overall war effort.
 
The stupidest was invading the Italian mainland.:confused::confused: This is a close tie with not pushing MacArthur off a PT boat into a shoal of sharks on his way out of Manila.:rolleyes:

The second-stupidest was burning German cities, rather than mining rivers & bombing canals & railyards to stop movement of coal, material, & finished goods.:confused: (It was also the most morally reprehensible, given the cost in Allied aircrew lives.:mad:)

The third-stupidest was not putting patrol aircraft in Gander in September or October 1939.:confused:

The fourth-stupidest was not pulling all the Pacific submarines back to Hawaii after the fall of the DEI.:confused:

There are a few others, but these are the hits.
 
Voted for the last option. The Stalin government's lackluster preparedness for Barbarossa cost the USSR not only 20+ million lives, but also the chance for even greater presence in Europe and a stronger economy (due to more of their pre-war industrial capacity remaining intact) following the war. Not exactly the worst mistake for the Western Allies and their future capitalist cold warriors, but a mistake nonetheless.

Since this poll is Eurocentric, I'll mention some other mistakes from the Asia-Pacific theater:

-The KMT's lack of preparedness for war with Japan - which I guess ties into underestimating japanese military strength. Admittedly, this is due to the piss-poor state of internal affairs both within the KMT and across China, what with all the corruption and civil war against the communists. Still, as ASB as it may seem, a longer 1920s KMT-CCP peace would have left the country in a better position to repel the Japanese Empire - a case of hindsight being 20/20.

-Douglas MacArthur.

-The decision to divide the Korean peninsula into Soviet and American occupation zones, thus setting the conditions for the Korean War. If any country in the East deserved to be divided post-war, it was Japan - not Korea, and certainly not Vietnam later on either.

-The incomplete punishment of Japanese war criminals and Japan's wartime political/economic establishment by the US occupation. Today's Japan would have better relations with Korea and China if their political climate didn't have room for people like Shintaro Ishihara, Toru Hashimoto, and Shinzo Abe (all of whom are nationalistic right-wingers who deny/downplay/do apologetics for their country's WWII crimes).
 
The Maginot Line did exactly what it was designed to do: force any future German invasion of France to the north, towards the Channel and Belgium.

The French were basically recreating the conditions that led to British intervention on their side during Big Mistake Number 1. Where they erred was in developing an inflexible command-and-control structure based on obsolete communication and in allowing the relationships with both Britain and Belgium to deteriorate postwar. Decisions that proved... less than optimal when the excrement hit the rotary air impeller.

As for errors, as far as both the British and Americans are concerned, the biggest was in how long it took for the peacetime mindset to be replaced by a wartime one.
 
Last edited:
I have to say that the Soviets should've heeded warnings such as by the British that the Germans were preparing for a massive invasion. They might've been able to repel Barbarossa.
 
Wouldn't the Maginot Line and not accounting for the Germans going through the Ardennes be basically the same thing?
Not really. The whole point of the Maginot Line was to try and channel any future German invasions through Belgium and Luxembourg, ideally so that French forces could advance to meet them, in concert with the Belgians, so that the fighting was kept off of French soil and away from their industrial centres. Considering that building and arming the fortresses only took roughly 8% of the annual military budget and that France was having to operate with an army that was made up of something like 95% reservists it seems to have done its job well enough. Mishandling the situation in the run-up and once the Germans attacked via the route that the French preferred them to was a separate matter.
 
There were not enough escort ships to organize convoys along the east coast & in the Carribean, or even just along the East coast. The Allied escorts available in the western Atlantic were committed to the US/Canadian half of the North Atlantic route. Those remaining were grossly insuffcient Convoys would have been sitting in harbors with no escorts or only a single corvette.

I've heard it said that even unescorted convoys generally took lower losses than individual sailings. Not sure whether it would apply to this specific case though.
 
Biggest Mistakes?

  • Appeasment in the late 30s
  • Arguably Britain and France not trying to build an alliance with Russia
  • Britain and France rearming too late and some of the 'Neutrals' not rearming at all!
  • France having a virtually useless command and control system that was not so much hours behind the decision cycle but in some cases days (The Maginot line seems to have gotten a battering on here but it did its job) - resulting in the French Army being out manouvered and defeated in detail on a grand scale - France falling was the biggest disaster / mistake of the war in my opinion.
  • Russia not preparing for war with Germany despite overwhelming evidence that they were about to be attacked - the Purges did not help here.
  • The Wallies initially 'going the Soft underbelly' - or 'indirect' approach rather than going straight for Germany via the shortest route via France.
 
I voted for the second one (failure to see Sickle-cut coming), because the French did attempt to attack Germany in 1939 - but they needed a few weeks to mobilize enough troops to invade, during which time Poland had started to collapse and, more importantly, Stalin had joined the invasion.
 
I'm going against the grain and saying that appeasement is the most overrated "failure" ever. Besides the fact that it's revisionist history (people use appeasement for their own modern political ends) non-appeasement could not have survived in the long term. Are you willing to commit troops to Germany to occupy it for generations? If not, why is there even a discussion about Versailles and appeasement? The treaty had to be broken eventually, there was no way that amount of money would be repaid and there would be a titanic struggle with Stalin's USSR that should have been forseen by the capitalist West if only because of the communists being fervently anti-royal and anti-democratic.

You can't even say "appeasement" is the root. If non-appeasement is your goal, you need a strong modern military to enforce your edicts. That means, a non-mobile military based on fixed fortifications and a pigheaded strategy LED to appeasement. Appeasement is just the reaction to the political and military conditions on the ground, which proved right when Germany steamrolled over France. Sure you can say that Hitler wouldn't have survived Munich, but at the same time Hitler should not have survived the Battle of France. When the whole argument depends on the fact that France made some enormous strategic blunders (not having an operational reserve around Paris, not keeping alliances with Belgium and Great Britian at their peak) then you cannot really blame appeasement but those root causes. Hindsight is 20/20 but it is far from clear that the French+British would have won then when they invited UK and French officials to view the mighty display of tanks and planes (which flew over the same spot over and over) and everyone thought Hitler and Germany was an ascendant power.

Basically the whole appeasement argument is revisionist history along with assuming 20/20 hindsight and making huge assumptions over the political will of the UK and France to sustain a war. If you want to be war mongers, then blame the lack of a modern military based on mobile armored formations and lack of a strategic reserve to blunt breakthroughs in other words the military was not clearly strong enough to support any policy other than appeasement. Don't blame a perfectly logical reaction to the reality just to advance some modern political points (which is ironic because the same people who hate appeasement probably hate calling Nagasaki and Hiroshima war crimes, etc., both are forms of revisionist history).

EDIT: Just released that appeasement is NOT in the poll, lol. At least I read the thread :)
 
Last edited:

Deleted member 1487

I'm going against the grain and saying that appeasement is the most overrated "failure" ever. Besides the fact that it's revisionist history (people use appeasement for their own modern political ends) non-appeasement could not have survived in the long term. Are you willing to commit troops to Germany to occupy it for generations? If not, why is there even a discussion about Versailles and appeasement? The treaty had to be broken eventually, there was no way that amount of money would be repaid and there would be a titanic struggle with Stalin's USSR that should have been forseen by the capitalist West if only because of the communists being fervently anti-royal and anti-democratic.

You can't even say "appeasement" is the root. If non-appeasement is your goal, you need a strong modern military to enforce your edicts. That means, a non-mobile military based on fixed fortifications and a pigheaded strategy LED to appeasement. Appeasement is just the reaction to the political and military conditions on the ground, which proved right when Germany steamrolled over France. Sure you can say that Hitler wouldn't have survived Munich, but at the same time Hitler should not have survived the Battle of France. When the whole argument depends on the fact that France made some enormous strategic blunders (not having an operational reserve around Paris, not keeping alliances with Belgium and Great Britian at their peak) then you cannot really blame appeasement but those root causes. Hindsight is 20/20 but it is far from clear that the French+British would have won then when they invited UK and French officials to view the mighty display of tanks and planes (which flew over the same spot over and over) and everyone thought Hitler and Germany was an ascendant power.

Basically the whole appeasement argument is revisionist history along with assuming 20/20 hindsight and making huge assumptions over the political will of the UK and France to sustain a war. If you want to be war mongers, then blame the lack of a modern military based on mobile armored formations and lack of a strategic reserve to blunt breakthroughs in other words the military was not clearly strong enough to support any policy other than appeasement. Don't blame a perfectly logical reaction to the reality just to advance some modern political points (which is ironic because the same people who hate appeasement probably hate calling Nagasaki and Hiroshima war crimes, etc., both are forms of revisionist history).

I agree, your foreign policy needs to be backed up by the means to enforce it otherwise you need to use diplomacy.
 
Even thirty days earlier would have made a large difference. Dropping a brigade of paras on each of the ferry sites used by the German 15th Army on Walchern & Beveland would have put the German retreat in chaos. Perhaps mass surrender incidents such as at Mons or Bourrges Ridge.

Probably would have been better dropping them on the southern side of the Scheldt to hold Breskens and prevent the ferrying operations; Walcheren and Beveland are not big targets for paras.
 

jahenders

Banned
I think FDR's demand for unconditional surrender was a serious mistake. It strengthened German and Japanese resolve, since they knew they had little alternative. This probably extended the war several months, with heavy loss, and also made it effectively impossible to end the war in Germany until the German army was destroyed, leaving nothing between the US and USSR. If Germany had options they could, conceivably, have negotiated with the WALLIES so they'd be surrendering far more to US and Brits than the Russians, which would save lives and impact the cold war greatly. It would likely increase the likelihood of a Hitler assassination since they'd know that they could realistically negotiate if they got him out of the way.
 
The failure of the Allies to invade Germany in 1939 is so closely linked to the Maginot Line that they can't really be separated. But that's mine. All of the other mistakes are just "blips" on a global war that the Allies clearly won regardless of the mistakes.

A strong and forceful Allied invasion of Germany in the fall of 1939 could very well have led to the overthrow of Hitler, preservation of Poland, and essentially cancelled "WW2" altogether. How to resolve things with the USSR - then technically an ally of Germany in 1939 - would be tricky but far better than having Europe engulfed by war for the next 6 years.
 

Deleted member 1487

The failure of the Allies to invade Germany in 1939 is so closely linked to the Maginot Line that they can't really be separated. But that's mine. All of the other mistakes are just "blips" on a global war that the Allies clearly won regardless of the mistakes.

A strong and forceful Allied invasion of Germany in the fall of 1939 could very well have led to the overthrow of Hitler, preservation of Poland, and essentially cancelled "WW2" altogether. How to resolve things with the USSR - then technically an ally of Germany in 1939 - would be tricky but far better than having Europe engulfed by war for the next 6 years.
I don't agree with your assessment. Mobilization wasn't complete until after Poland fell and already as the Saar offensive was rolling and running into a lot tough resistance than expected German reinforcements were showing up from Poland due to the collapse of resistance there. Britain was no help, as they were busy displacing their troops forward onto the continent, while France's military was not prepared yet for a major war or invasion, hence their plane to wait until 1941 for a major offensive.
 
I agree, your foreign policy needs to be backed up by the means to enforce it otherwise you need to use diplomacy.

And throughout the 1930's, France and Britain had ample military power to crush Hitler's revisionist moves... in the Rhineland, in Austria, and in Czechoslovakia, and for that matter in Poland. If you believe some historians, not only did the allies have a clear superiority over the rebuilding German military, but a strong Allied military response to any one of these moves night have led conservative opponents of the Hitler regime in the army to stage a coup.

The real problem was that the Allies did not know this...or were so swayed by pacifist sentiment...that they reacted with appeasement when they didn't need to.
 

Deleted member 1487

And throughout the 1930's, France and Britain had ample military power to crush Hitler's revisionist moves... in the Rhineland, in Austria, and in Czechoslovakia, and for that matter in Poland. If you believe some historians, not only did the allies have a clear superiority over the rebuilding German military, but a strong Allied military response to any one of these moves night have led conservative opponents of the Hitler regime in the army to stage a coup.

The real problem was that the Allies did not know this...or were so swayed by pacifist sentiment...that they reacted with appeasement when they didn't need to.
France did not, it was dealing with the Depression and was effectively unable to find the money to mobilize the entire army in 1936. Britain didn't trust them and enabled Hitler to do everything up to 1939. France by itself wasn't prepared to launch an offensive war pretty much any time after 1934 with a reasonable chance of success before structural factors sabotaged their effort. A united Allied front could have done something, but there was not a united Allied front until 1938 and even then it took them until 1939 to stand up to Hitler in a serious way. Even then they weren't particularly ready for war.
 
Top