When did the penny drop?

[Historyteach24]

This thread took a weird turn! I have very little patience with Nazi apologists. If we look strictly at military decisions (which is tough to do because you know the whole genocide thing) Hitler was complete buffoon of a military leader. As I stated earlier this week, his decision to open up a second front when he had a non-aggression pact with Russia was a bonehead move that doomed the axis powers.

 

[Otter]

^ This !

 

[GHT]

Does anyone know if the 19th and 20 century British empire was an undue economic burden to England? I believe I have heard that and I can certainly see how it could be so. Once you morally evolve past mowing down "the natives" to get what you want (and once they get a hold of reasonably modern weapons and tactics) I'm not sure there's much of an economy there.

Read Lawrence James: "Rise And Fall Of The British Empire." And if you can find a copy: "Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the British by Jeremy Paxman."

 

[MikeKardec]

Read Lawrence James: "Rise And Fall Of The British Empire." And if you can find a copy: "Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the British by Jeremy Paxman."

Excellent!

 

[Stand By]

I try to imagine how I would have felt had I been serving in the German military of the time - and of course without any benefits of hindsight and being swept up in the optimism of the early conquests, as I'm sure so many were - and when the penny would have dropped for me, bearing in mind the good points made thus far in the thread …

And so, trying to think creatively and impartially as a German (which I am not - I'm British-Canadian), when the Battle of Britain was over, I don't think the penny would have dropped for me - I would have considered the British still relatively confined and contained off the continent and could - and would - be dealt with later.
And with the loss of the Bismarck, I think I could have been excused for placing my hopes on the U-boats instead, which were still having much success …
But I think the US coming into the war - even though the Japanese entered on the Axis side and the swift and monumental gains they made against the British Empire across S.E. Asia - would have given me my first grave concerns for Europe; after all, Germany then had an enemy that could not be strategically bombed and could prosecute a war in terms of materiel unfettered by anything that Germany did. America could bring the war to German industrial homeland, but Germany could not take the war to the American industrial homeland. I think that would have been my first sense of real foreboding.
And then Rommel and the Afrika Korps being held in check and turned back combined with the disaster of Stalingrad … I think that then I would have felt the tide turn in no uncertain terms and known that this was only going to end badly - unless Hitler delivered on his repeated promises of "wonder weapons" and new German technology - whatever that would have meant to me as someone who knew nothing of atomic fission at the time, I can't imagine - but perhaps being aware of the new and revolutionary jets may have provided a glimmer of hope for me that something new had been developed and something else - just as new and revolutionary - may yet be possible??? But it would be a forlorn hope and only possible in time - and that would have been the question in the final stages: time. But I really don't think so. Conventional war becomes a numbers game and the numbers were so stacked against the Nazis in the end that I can't see anyone not being realistic about the outcome just a few weeks after D-Day, when the Allied landing could not be repulsed.
And then the penny would drop and I would realize what Churchill meant back in 1940 when he said "Hitler knows that he must defeat us in this isle or lose the war". He knew the score back then. And he was right.

 

[p51]

I lived two houses down from a nice man who'd been in the Hiterjungend and later the Whermacht in the last month of the war.
He was on the Eastern edge of Germany in anticipation of the Russian attacks westward. Said he got bombed by Russian planes and they all fled West as they had no support and their leaders all fled or were killed and they had no clue what to do.
He said living way out in the mountains as a kid, he had no idea of the Holocaust as there weren't any Jews around where he'd grown up, before the war. He also said he had no idea how massive the Russian front was, he'd been told it was a spearhead attack like the Bulge was for the Germans that previous winter. When they'll all found that the Germans had surrendered and Berlin had been flattened, he simply didn't believe it. When you're insulated like that and never got to any major cities, he said, it was easy for the chain of command to control what those kids knew.
I believed him as he wasn't apologetic for his role in the war as it was based on what he knew at the time.
He said that he didn't believe in the 10 million murdered for years until the evidence was obvious.
Funny thing, he told me, "If Hitler had stopped at killing the gypsies and hadn't invaded Russia, there'd be a statue of him in every European town today," something I've heard from other older Europeans in the past...

 

[MikeKardec]

Now that I've thought of it some more, my opinion is that while Germans who were in the know may have worried at earlier times, the real moment that made the difference was when the Russians went on the offensive. That's kind of a no brainer from this vantage point, but historically very very few countries can come back from being pushed that hard. After retreat and then then digging in and taking an awful pounding they turned it around and threw off sort of a nationwide siege and turned the tide of battle. I wonder if that achievement isn't also what created the atmosphere of the Cold War fear too ... the West may have known that the USSR was decimated after the war but they also knew they had also won the war while decimated. The Soviets may have been (In my opinion) deluded in their ideology but for a while there they were the world's biggest bad asses.

There were many amazing moments in WWII. The UK held out against the Axis for a year or so all on it's own. The US equipped and fed the Allies, pumped its oil reserves nearly dry (or so they thought), and fought a war on two very distant fronts. But Russia's return from the dead kind of takes the cake.

I think I might have said this somewhere else but when it comes to "wunder weapons" Germany had a very strange attitude. It was almost like they expected the world to be so dazzled by their second or third generation rockets and subs and jet fighters that everyone would just fall down and worship them for the supermen they thought they were. The problem is that sort of approach only works when you are not at war. If a guy starts hitting you, you defend yourself. If he then picks up a stick and keeps hitting you, you probably keep defending yourself ... and who knows, if your willing to get hit with the stick you might even win. However, if he started the altercation by picking up the stick and threatening you with it without hitting, you might give him what he wants. The best way to threaten someone is NOT in the middle of a fight, it's before the fight starts when the potential of your weapon is at it's scariest.

Those German weapons which were copied around the world throughout the 1950s and '60 were so advanced they were 10 to 20 years ahead of the curve. But they couldn't be made in the numbers and with the sort of perfection that would have made them highly effective. The Type XXI sub were incredibly designed but not manufactured very well (the Germans were having trouble with assembling the pre built sections), the ME262 engines lasted only a very short time (deadly for a country running short of everything) and at the end of the day the V2 rockets just weren't all that accurate, didn't carry enough explosive and (I'm guessing) were extremely dangerous in the moments between firing and fueling (bad when the sky is full of planes that are coming to kill you). My feelings at this moment (and as "Stand By" suggests) is that all that stuff was more practically useful as propaganda than anything else. The wonder weapons the Allies used, trucks to deliver fresh and rested troops, decent (though perhaps not brilliant) weapons made in sufficient numbers to make a difference, and plenty of fuel, were less showy but more effective. All that and those bad ass Russians.

And, oh yeah, right, the real wonder weapon, the atomic bomb ... a scary thing I wish was never invented but if you actually want wonder weapons, don't spend more than a decade killing off all your best scientists.

I love Germany and am friends with and work with some great Germans. I think their attitude about their country and its history today is mostly so adult and amazing that I feel a lot of the rest of the world has a lot to learn from them. But their history is a warning to all of us. We all need to learn the German Lesson. Any of us could fall victim to the same sort of forces unless we are very careful.

 

[plain old dave]

AS 1941 became 1942, it would become more and more difficult to see any possible scenario where the War would end well for Germany. I imagine I would be a Sailor, and at my age (mid 40s) in all probability being a Veteran of the Kaiser's Navy whether a salty CPO feldwebel or a senior Fregattenkapitän, my professional development would demand I study Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Influence Of Seapower Upon History. And given that by December 7 the surface Kriegsmarine was little more than a memory, I would be seeking Von Stauffenberg by late Spring of 1942 as all the pieces for a replay of WW1 were already in play; a neutralized Navy and America in the war. The best that could be hoped for by a 1942
German unaware of FDR's "unconditional surrender" stance would be a negotiated peace with the West, keeping Germany as a buffer against the Russians. And that required getting Hitler out of the way.

I try to imagine how I would have felt had I been serving in the German military of the time - and of course without any benefits of hindsight and being swept up in the optimism of the early conquests, as I'm sure so many were - and when the penny would have dropped for me, bearing in mind the good points made thus far in the thread …

And so, trying to think creatively and impartially as a German (which I am not - I'm British-Canadian), when the Battle of Britain was over, I don't think the penny would have dropped for me - I would have considered the British still relatively confined and contained off the continent and could - and would - be dealt with later.
And with the loss of the Bismarck, I think I could have been excused for placing my hopes on the U-boats instead, which were still having much success …
But I think the US coming into the war - even though the Japanese entered on the Axis side and the swift and monumental gains they made against the British Empire across S.E. Asia - would have given me my first grave concerns for Europe; after all, Germany then had an enemy that could not be strategically bombed and could prosecute a war in terms of materiel unfettered by anything that Germany did. America could bring the war to German industrial homeland, but Germany could not take the war to the American industrial homeland. I think that would have been my first sense of real foreboding.
And then Rommel and the Afrika Korps being held in check and turned back combined with the disaster of Stalingrad … I think that then I would have felt the tide turn in no uncertain terms and known that this was only going to end badly - unless Hitler delivered on his repeated promises of "wonder weapons" and new German technology - whatever that would have meant to me as someone who knew nothing of atomic fission at the time, I can't imagine - but perhaps being aware of the new and revolutionary jets may have provided a glimmer of hope for me that something new had been developed and something else - just as new and revolutionary - may yet be possible??? But it would be a forlorn hope and only possible in time - and that would have been the question in the final stages: time. But I really don't think so. Conventional war becomes a numbers game and the numbers were so stacked against the Nazis in the end that I can't see anyone not being realistic about the outcome just a few weeks after D-Day, when the Allied landing could not be repulsed.
And then the penny would drop and I would realize what Churchill meant back in 1940 when he said "Hitler knows that he must defeat us in this isle or lose the war". He knew the score back then. And he was right.

 

[Stanley Doble]

From what I heard the Fuehrer did not plan on a long war and would not approve work on any weapons that would take more than a year or a year and a half to develop. This is why they never developed nuclear weapons, among other things.

I grew up in Port Hope Ontario, home of Eldorado Mining and Refining, the only company outside Germany producing uranium, radium and other nuclear materials in the thirties. I was told that Eldorado bought up all the radium, uranium etc available in Germany and got it out of the country before war broke out. Was also told that the US Army Corps of Engineers sent a big dredge to dredge Port Hope harbor during WW2 and recover uranium bearing material dumped by Eldorado in the thirties.

In those days radium was worth $2500 an ounce (down from $25,000 when Germany had the monopoly) but uranium had no value other than as a laboratory curiosity.

I can't prove either of these stories, they were told to me by old timers who worked at Eldorado for years so take them for what they are worth.

I can tell you, if it wasn't for Eldorado and its Elliot Lake mines there would have been no Manhattan Project.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Re: The British Empire. There was a race to conquer foreign lands in the 16th 17th and 18th century because of the money to be made in silks, spices, jewels, tea, indigo and other goods. The point of empire building wasn't to steal the goods, it was to keep out other European competitors. Whatever Power could build forts and protect harbors in strategic areas, could monopolize trade. And the point of the British Navy was to protect trade from pirates and European enemies. The navy and the overseas empire were very expensive in money and man power but were necessary for trade.

But, by the late 19th century conditions were much different than they had been in the 16th 17th and even 18th century. It looked possible to grant the colonies their independence, save a lot of money, and keep the trade. I believe the top levels of the government began planning to divest the empire before 1900, that WW1 and WW2 delayed matters but during the forties and fifties Britain completed the plan by grantiing colonies independence whether they wanted independence or not.

The fact is colonies were a huge expense to the government and they did not pay. They may have been good for business but in the end they had to go, business could be done just as easily with independent countries, and save the expense.

 

[Trenchfriend]

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

!!

 

[Trenchfriend]

Backround:

History says, that Hitler originally don't calculate with a beginning of war before 1946.

!

 

[Big J]

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

!!

And this;

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

Err, yeah. I guess that Hitler thought the war would be over in a year, and another year, and..oh...just one more year, which is why the German's started working on the A-bomb three times over the course of the war?

'The politicization of the universities, along with the demands for manpower by the German armed forces (many scientists and technical personnel were conscripted, despite possessing useful skills), would eventually all but eliminate a generation of physicists.'

The Allies won because their ideology was better.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Hitler's goal was to conquer Poland to gain "lebensraum" (living space) for Germans by exterminating the inferior Slavs.

This was rather strange, as the common conception of the Polish people at that time, was of tall good looking blondes with plenty of brains and musical talent. In other words, typical Aryan Ubermenschen.

Meanwhile the top Nazis, who supposedly adored such "Aryan" types were themselves mostly small, dark men of unimpressive physique and appearance, many of them cripples, drug addicts, homosexuals and degenerates.

 

[Stearmen]

I just realized, this thread has no meaning what so ever. For the average soldier, to voice any thought of the dime dropping, was an immediate arrest by the Gestapo! I know, a friend of mine was an ME262 pilot, one day, they were standing on the flight line, with no fuel. Some B-24 flew over, and he said, "I wish we were up there, those are easy to shoot down." One of the young pilots said, "all those men are murderers from Sing-sing, and they get to go free after 25 missions!" My friend said, "no, there just like you and me." The next day, he landed after a mission and a guy in a black leather jacket said, "you're coming with me," Walter said, in German of course, "who the F are you?" The guy pulled out his ID, and that was it, he was put in jail, and slated for a concentration camp! fortunately fate intervened, and the jail was bombed, Walter had lost so much weight, he was able to squeeze through a crack. He headed for where he knew the American lines were, and never looked back! They were willing to put crack 262 pilots in jail, what chance did the little guy have!

 

[Big J]

I just realized, this thread has no meaning what so ever. For the average soldier, to voice any thought of the dime dropping, was an immediate arrest by the Gestapo! I know, a friend of mine was an ME262 pilot, one day, they were standing on the flight line, with no fuel. Some B-24 flew over, and he said, "I wish we were up there, those are easy to shoot down." One of the young pilots said, "all those men are murderers from Sing-sing, and they get to go free after 25 missions!" My friend said, "no, there just like you and me." The next day, he landed after a mission and a guy in a black leather jacket said, "you're coming with me," Walter said, in German of course, "who the F are you?" The guy pulled out his ID, and that was it, he was put in jail, and slated for a concentration camp! fortunately fate intervened, and the jail was bombed, Walter had lost so much weight, he was able to squeeze through a crack. He headed for where he knew the American lines were, and never looked back! They were willing to put crack 262 pilots in jail, what chance did the little guy have!

+100

 

[Stanley Doble]

More or less what I said in the first place, and got shot down as a Nazi sympathizer.

 

[Big J]

More or less what I said in the first place, and got shot down as a Nazi sympathizer.

'More or less' doesn't equal 'exactly what I said'.
But then, revisionists play fast and loose with facts.

 

[Stanley Doble]

So do assholes.

 

[Stanley Doble]

"Hitler used every trick of politics propaganda and intimidation to get and keep power. "

"But they did answer back. The opposition to the Nazis was strong, at it was put down with brutality."

"Yes, some people cheered heartily but the rest kept their mouth shut and their heads down - if they knew what was good for them. "