Brokaw's Piece on Britain Fending off Hitler

[greg775]

Did you see Brokaw's special piece from London on Churchill and London staving off Hitler and holding on until the US finally joined the war effort?

Also touched heavily on Churchill staying after FDR begging him basically for weapon. There were emotional interviews with some British survivors of Germany's attack on Britain in 1940 and 41. The conclusion was USA should be thankful to our pals in Britain for hanging on, that the world would be a much worse place today had Hitler taken over England.

I enjoyed it. Was it all accurate?

Edited August 12, 2012 by greg775

[GoodAsGould]

Did you see Brokaw's special piece from London on Churchill and London staving off Hitler and holding on until the US finally joined the war effort?

Also touched heavily on Churchill staying after FDR begging him basically for weapon. There were emotional interviews with some British survivors of Germany's attack on Britain in 1940 and 41. The conclusion was USA should be thankful to our pals in Britain for hanging on, that the world would be a much worse place today had Hitler taken over England.

I enjoyed it. Was it all accurate?

 

So, we should thank Britain rather than them thank the USA?

[Balta1701]

So, we should thank Britain rather than them thank the USA?

How about we just do a big "Group hug"?

[Soxbadger]

Did you see Brokaw's special piece from London on Churchill and London staving off Hitler and holding on until the US finally joined the war effort?

Also touched heavily on Churchill staying after FDR begging him basically for weapon. There were emotional interviews with some British survivors of Germany's attack on Britain in 1940 and 41. The conclusion was USA should be thankful to our pals in Britain for hanging on, that the world would be a much worse place today had Hitler taken over England.

I enjoyed it. Was it all accurate?

 

I didnt see it so I am not sure if you came to an accurate conclusion.

 

England did hold out, but Hitler made a drastic mistake attacking USSR and splitting his army in a 2 front war. The combined effort of USSR/USA would have been very difficult for the Germans regardless, the war just likely would have taken longer on the European front or involved an atomic weapon.

 

It really would have made no sense for Great Britain to surrender to Hitler when Germany did not really threaten a land invasion. If anything the world should be thankful for Russia who lost 10x-20x more than any other ally, and actually staved off a German frontal assault. If not for Russia, Britain would have surely fallen.

 

 

 

[Balta1701]

I didnt see it so I am not sure if you came to an accurate conclusion.

 

England did hold out, but Hitler made a drastic mistake attacking USSR and splitting his army in a 2 front war. The combined effort of USSR/USA would have been very difficult for the Germans regardless, the war just likely would have taken longer on the European front or involved an atomic weapon.

 

It really would have made no sense for Great Britain to surrender to Hitler when Germany did not really threaten a land invasion. If anything the world should be thankful for Russia who lost 10x-20x more than any other ally, and actually staved off a German frontal assault. If not for Russia, Britain would have surely fallen.

Germany actually did threaten a land invasion, but through a series of blunders, they lost most of their Navy during the attacks on Norway, and then they failed to maintain air superiority after they decided to divert to terror bombing of London. The German Air Force really had the RAF on the ropes in August 1940 while attacking the air bases and factories directly, but they then diverted to attacking civilian targets and that gave the RAF a chance to recover.

 

And no matter what the public face of Churchill was, they were also negotiating behind the scenes throughout the winter of 1940 to try to take Britain out of the war. They never came to an agreement, but Britain was doing a lot of other moves at the same time.

[Soxbadger]

Germany actually did threaten a land invasion, but through a series of blunders, they lost most of their Navy during the attacks on Norway, and then they failed to maintain air superiority after they decided to divert to terror bombing of London. The German Air Force really had the RAF on the ropes in August 1940 while attacking the air bases and factories directly, but they then diverted to attacking civilian targets and that gave the RAF a chance to recover.

 

And no matter what the public face of Churchill was, they were also negotiating behind the scenes throughout the winter of 1940 to try to take Britain out of the war. They never came to an agreement, but Britain was doing a lot of other moves at the same time.

 

Germany never came close to an actual invasion of England. Submarines and battleships arent transports. The German war machine was built for land combat and it would have taken a substantial effort to build enough transport ships to carry hundreds of thousands of troops across the channel.

 

For example the D-Day invasion required the following:

 

The invasion fleet was drawn from eight different navies, comprising 6,939 vessels: 1,213 warships, 4,126 transport vessels (landing ships and landing craft), and 736 ancillary craft and 864 merchant vessels. Out of the 2,468 major landing vessels in the two task forces deployed on 6 June 1944 only 346 were American. Of the 23 cruisers covering the landings 17 were Royal Navy. In fact of the 16 warships covering the American Western beaches (Utah and Omaha) 50% were British and Allied ships. There were 195,700 naval personnel involved; 112,824 (58%) were British (Royal Navy), 52,889 (30%) US and 4,988 Allied countries

 

This was to attack France, while the German army was already defending 2 other fronts (Italy, Russia).

 

The German army would have needed at least that force to actually try and invade England.

 

Now lets look at the actual force of the German Navy during World War II:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsmarine (More on Kreigsmarine)

 

The planned naval program was not very far advanced by the time World War II began. In 1939 two M class cruisers and three H class battleships were laid down and the strength of the German fleet at the beginning of the war was not even 20% of Plan Z. On 1 September 1939, the navy still had a total personnel strength of only 78,000, and it was not at all ready for a major role in the war. Because of the long time it would take to get the Plan Z fleet ready for action and shortage in workers and material in wartime, Plan Z was essentially shelved in September 1939 and the resources allocated for its realization were largely redirected to the construction of U-boats, which would be ready for combat against Great Britain quicker.

 

 

Youll notice that the German Navy did not even have hundreds of ships, let alone thousands of ships, and furthermore it almost had no transport ships.

 

 

For comparison here is the US Navy during WWII:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States...in_World_War_II

 

Now is it possible that England would have given up even though no actual land threat existed?

 

Of course, the English like to make a huge deal about how much they sacrificed during World War II and how hard it was to live while the Germans were bombing them every night. I just wonder how much harder it was when millions of Russians died on the front line to stop the actual German war machine.

 

 

Now I obviously have the luxury of historical hindsight, but there is no way Germany could have invaded GB without putting significant resources into the Navy and it would have likely taken years as even in the pre-war buildup Germany couldnt put out hundreds of ships a year, let alone thousands.

 

[Balta1701]

Just because D-Day required a major operation doesn't mean that any cross channel landing would have required that same scale for success. After Dunkirk, the British literally had nothing left in terms of heavy equipment with which to equip their army. They would have struggled to have rifles for everyone, let alone tanks. And the Germans had a much more heavily fortified coastline facing D-Day than anything the British had.

 

The key parts were...the Germans lost several dozen destroyers and transport ships against the Royal Navy in Norway, ships that would have been really useful in ferrying troops and equipment...

 

And most importantly, the Germans couldn't establish air supremacy over England, because of their poor tactical decision making. If they had air supremacy, then the Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to threaten any landing because the Royal Navy couldn't get past the air screen without heavy losses.

[Soxbadger]

The key parts are the German Navy was not built for a full scale naval invasion (see Plan Z's failure and Germany's admittance that they had to focus on submarines, not a traditional navy). Ships get sunk, its like saying that if only the Spanish Armada wouldnt have run into a storm England would have been defeated, well Germany's ships were sunk and because they had such a poor Navy and no resources, they couldnt replace them properly.

 

Here is Operation Sea Lion:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion

 

Navy

The Channel (Der Kanal), D.66 Kriegsmarine nautical chart, 1943, http://www.kartengruppe.it private collection

 

The most daunting problem for Germany in protecting an invasion fleet was the small size of its navy. The Kriegsmarine, already numerically far inferior to Britain's Royal Navy, had lost a sizable portion of its large modern surface units in April 1940 during the Norwegian Campaign, either as complete losses or due to battle damage. In particular, the loss of two light cruisers and ten destroyers was crippling, as these were the very warships most suited to operating in the Channel narrows where the invasion would likely take place.[22] Most U-boats, the most powerful arm of the Kriegsmarine, were meant for destroying ships, not supporting an invasion.

 

Although the Royal Navy could not bring to bear the whole of its naval superiority (most of the fleet was engaged in the Atlantic and Mediterranean), the British Home Fleet still had a very large advantage in numbers. It was debatable whether British ships were as vulnerable to enemy air attack as the Germans hoped. During the Dunkirk evacuation few warships were actually sunk, despite being stationary targets. The overall disparity between the opposing naval forces made the amphibious invasion plan risky, regardless of the outcome in the air. In addition, the Kriegsmarine had allocated its few remaining larger and modern ships to diversionary operations in the North Sea.

 

The French fleet, one of the most powerful and modern in the world, might have tipped the balance against Britain. However, the preemptive destruction of the French fleet by the British by an attack on Mers-el-Kébir and the scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon two years later ensured that this could not happen.

 

Even if the Royal Navy had been neutralised, the chances of a successful amphibious invasion across the Channel were remote. The Germans had no specialised landing craft, and had to rely primarily on river barges to lift troops and supplies for the landing. This would have limited the quantity of artillery and tanks that could be transported and restricted operations to times of good weather. The barges were not designed for use in open sea and even in almost perfect conditions, they would have been slow and vulnerable to attack. There were also not enough barges to transport the first invasion wave nor the following waves with their equipment. The Germans would have needed to immediately capture a port, an unlikely circumstance considering the strength of the British coastal defences around the south-eastern harbours at that time. The British also had several contingency plans, including the use of poison gas.

 

Its only in British fantasy that Germany could have come across the channel. The actual German's who understood the operation (Goring and Reader) thought the plan was asinine.

 

The English had a superior Navy at all points during the war, there was just simply no way the German's could actually get across that channel. The entire premise of the plan was to scare Britain into surrender, which is why they used scare tactics against the British population, instead of actually deriving a plan to successfully conquer England.

Edited August 12, 2012 by Soxbadger

[greg775]

So, we should thank Britain rather than them thank the USA?

 

The point of the piece was all about the British since the Games are in London, so yeah, that actually is how they concluded the piece. The praised England for hanging in there til we got involved.

When it came time to talk about our involvement, they did show our factories churning out ammo for Britain once FDR decided we better support them. And the piece hurried up and ended indicating we got involved after Pearl Harbor. It pretty much made it clear the USA involvement was the key, though. They made a big deal out of Churchill staying after FDR and finally getting to him through religion. Churchill played some religious songs for FDR and it really touched FDR according to the show.

 

They had some older guy from England on who lost his mother in the nightly German bombings who was 7 at the time and they asked him if he came to peace with Germany. And he said yes because he visited there and met some people who also lost close relatives. It was pretty emotinal. The guy is about 80 or 90 and still carries his mother's picture and he started crying. Obviously his life wasn't the same without his mother.

The show concluded with Churchill's quote about "never have so few done so much for so many" or whatever that famous quote is.

 

To the history buffs: They talked a lot about the overnight bombings and Germany blowing up a famous church. How come the world wasn't more outraged and how come England didn't send some bombers over to Germany? Did they have no bombers? Were they sitting ducks for Germany's planes?

Edited August 12, 2012 by greg775

[Balta1701]

The point of the piece was all about the British since the Games are in London, so yeah, that actually is how they concluded the piece. The praised England for hanging in there til we got involved.

When it came time to talk about our involvement, they did show our factories churning out ammo for Britain once FDR decided we better support them. And the piece hurried up and ended indicating we got involved after Pearl Harbor. It pretty much made it clear the USA involvement was the key, though. They made a big deal out of Churchill staying after FDR and finally getting to him through religion. Churchill played some religious songs for FDR and it really touched FDR according to the show.

 

They had some older guy from England on who lost his mother in the nightly German bombings who was 7 at the time and they asked him if he came to peace with Germany. And he said yes because he visited there and met some people who also lost close relatives. It was pretty emotinal. The guy is about 80 or 90 and still carries his mother's picture and he started crying. Obviously his life wasn't the same without his mother.

The show concluded with Churchill's quote about "never have so few done so much for so many" or whatever that famous quote is.

 

To the history buffs: They talked a lot about the overnight bombings and Germany blowing up a famous church. How come the world wasn't more outraged and how come England didn't send some bombers over to Germany? Did they have no bombers? Were they sitting ducks for Germany's planes?

England (and later the U.S.) bombed the crap out of Germany. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died. These days we'd probably consider it a war crime. Deservedly so. Probably thousands of churches were hit, just because there were few buildings in Germany that weren't hit before the end.

 

The guy who planned England's strategic bombing campaign was named Arthur Harris. He became known first as "Bomber" Harris for his advocation of strategic bombing, and later, "Butcher" Harris for the things that it did.

[Soxbadger]

To the history buffs: They talked a lot about the overnight bombings and Germany blowing up a famous church. How come the world wasn't more outraged and how come England didn't send some bombers over to Germany? Did they have no bombers? Were they sitting ducks for Germany's planes?

 

Because in the grand scale of things a church is basically nothing. Germany killed millions of people, Soviets lost almost 20million people, the US nuked Japan 2x at who knows what cost.

 

The US turned Germany into rubble over time.

 

 

[Balta1701]

Because in the grand scale of things a church is basically nothing. Germany killed millions of people, Soviets lost almost 20million people, the US nuked Japan 2x at who knows what cost.

 

The US turned Germany into rubble over time.

The nuclear weapons over Japan likely killed at least 250,000 people directly, then tens of thousands more over the years from radiation poisoning. The official estimate is 150k for Hiroshima directly and 75k for Nagasaki.

 

Edit: oh, and the firebombings of Tokyo earlier that year probably killed more in 1 night than those 2 bombs combined. And about 20+ Japanese cities got that treatment.

[Jake]

I remember my public schools teaching that what we did to Germany would likely now be considered a war crime. Yay for realistic public school history education.

[greg775]

England (and later the U.S.) bombed the crap out of Germany. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died. These days we'd probably consider it a war crime. Deservedly so. Probably thousands of churches were hit, just because there were few buildings in Germany that weren't hit before the end.

 

The guy who planned England's strategic bombing campaign was named Arthur Harris. He became known first as "Bomber" Harris for his advocation of strategic bombing, and later, "Butcher" Harris for the things that it did.

 

The reason I asked is they never addressed that situation at all in the piece by Brokaw. They kept talking about Germany bombing England and England wanting us to get involved, but there was literally no mention of England bombing them. They did mention England had radar. It made me wonder if the Brits were just taking the bombs and doing nothing on their own to fight back.

 

[Chisoxfn]

I enjoyed the piece Brokaw did last night.

[farmteam]

England did hold out, but Hitler made a drastic mistake attacking USSR and splitting his army in a 2 front war. The combined effort of USSR/USA would have been very difficult for the Germans regardless, the war just likely would have taken longer on the European front or involved an atomic weapon.

While that's the conventional wisdom, I'm not so sure Stalin wouldn't have broken the treaty anyway, and then Germany would still be in a 2-front war, but starting from a worse position in the East.

[Milkman delivers]

War crimes, schwar crimes. If any people in the history of the world earned what they got, it was the Germans and Japanese during WWII.

[Balta1701]

While that's the conventional wisdom, I'm not so sure Stalin wouldn't have broken the treaty anyway, and then Germany would still be in a 2-front war, but starting from a worse position in the East.

On his death bed, Stalin said something along the lines of "alongside the Germans we would have been invincible".

 

Stalin believed he had taken the first steps towards and alliance that would dominate the globe. You can actually see that with how they reacted to the German troop movements in early 1941...it was literally "sticking their fingers in their ears". They didn't want to hear from the British that the Germans were moving troops East, they didn't want to hear it from their own commanders, they didn't want to hear it from their own reconnaissance. They maintained the weakest border position possible in order to make sure they didn't give Germany any ideas that they might act aggressively.

 

If the Russians had even begun deploying forces for offense against the Germans, they wouldn't have collapsed so completely in 1941.

[StrangeSox]

I remember my public schools teaching that what we did to Germany would likely now be considered a war crime. Yay for realistic public school history education.

 

The Dresden fire bombings were pretty awful.

[Balta1701]

I remember my public schools teaching that what we did to Germany would likely now be considered a war crime. Yay for realistic public school history education.

 

 

War crimes, schwar crimes. If any people in the history of the world earned what they got, it was the Germans and Japanese during WWII.

 

 

The Dresden fire bombings were pretty awful.

One of the remarkable things about all 3 of these posts is...they're basically all correct.

[DukeNukeEm]

When it became clear that it was a matter of when instead of if the USA and USSR were going to join that war Hitler made a gambit to knock the USSR out before the USA could join in. That's the only real explanation for opening up the Eastern Front, Germany simply didn't have the time to arduously break Britain's back by tying up all their resources in the Battle of the Atlantic and battling the RAF (which ended up being ridiculously underestimated by just about everyone). This is especially true when you consider the UK had no real means to launch any offensive campaigns after Dunkirk.

 

Either way, the gambit failed, the UK proved to be extraordinarily resilient in the face of terror-bombings and the combination of rapid transition in wartime industry and the Japanese not waiting at least 6 more months to drag the USA into the war were just too much for Germany to bear. I honestly believe the German war machine could have withstood any one of those things, but all of them was just a bit overkill.

[Balta1701]

When it became clear that it was a matter of when instead of if the USA and USSR were going to join that war Hitler made a gambit to knock the USSR out before the USA could join in. That's the only real explanation for opening up the Eastern Front, Germany simply didn't have the time to arduously break Britain's back by tying up all their resources in the Battle of the Atlantic and battling the RAF (which ended up being ridiculously underestimated by just about everyone). This is especially true when you consider the UK had no real means to launch any offensive campaigns after Dunkirk.

 

Either way, the gambit failed, the UK proved to be extraordinarily resilient in the face of terror-bombings and the combination of rapid transition in wartime industry and the Japanese not waiting at least 6 more months to drag the USA into the war were just too much for Germany to bear. I honestly believe the German war machine could have withstood any one of those things, but all of them was just a bit overkill.

The other explanation for the war against Russia is that conquering Russia for Germany was such a long term goal that Hitler wrote about it in the 20's and it was an ideological move.

[greg775]

Hitler sounds like he would have prevailed had he listened to some experts and not blown it.

[Soxbadger]

Hitler sounds like he would have prevailed had he listened to some experts and not blown it.

 

No Hitler would never have been successful because he was an ideologue who would cut off his own nose to spite his face. He would never have been successful because ultimately Hitler was a fool. He drove out many of the brightest scientists who would help in his demise, simply because of their religion. He killed millions instead of enlisting them in the German army.

 

Hitler would have never worked with Stalin, he hated Communism. Stalin likely would have left Germany alone as they would have had plenty of room to expand into Asia and against other enemies (Russia had an axe to grind against Japan.)

 

 

[greg775]

No Hitler would never have been successful because he was an ideologue who would cut off his own nose to spite his face. He would never have been successful because ultimately Hitler was a fool. He drove out many of the brightest scientists who would help in his demise, simply because of their religion. He killed millions instead of enlisting them in the German army.

 

Hitler would have never worked with Stalin, he hated Communism. Stalin likely would have left Germany alone as they would have had plenty of room to expand into Asia and against other enemies (Russia had an axe to grind against Japan.)

 

Hitler is the most evil man of all time. Pretty incredible but he certainly tops the list.