Gee...this is a shock in France?

No, fighters didn't offer protection from flak. But then again, night time didn't offer blanket protection from flak, either, as the British found out. Nor did it offer blanket protection from night fighters. Most estimates say that two to three times as many bombers were lost to fighters as were flak. But, with the advent of long-range fighter escorts, the losses to fighters declined significantly.

Flak was also somewhat easier to counter than fighters -- you simply increased your altitude, hence the American emphasis on high level precision bombing.

As the war progressed, flak did become a greater problem for both the British AND the Americans, for several reasons:

As Germany's empire began to shrink, the number of flak guns that were drawn back and placed in Germany increased significantly.

German gunners became increasingly efficient and practiced at estimating altitudes and the shell settings needed.

New guns, such as the 128-mm, offered greater altitude and greater punch.

Germans began to employ radar direction.

Once again, though, the British started out bombing by day in the early days of the war, and quickly moved to night missions for the same reason that the Germans did after the Eagle day failure during the Battle of Britain -- neither side's bombers had a hope of protecting themselves from the opposition's fighters.

"Note that even at the end of the war, the British flew at night. Example: The infamous incineration of Dresden."

Yes, and at the same time the British were also conducting daylight bombing operations, just as the Americans were also conducting night-time bombing operations.

Did I say that the British quit flying night missions?

No. I did say that once effective fighter escorts became available, the British RESUMED day missions.

No, the Americans didn't fly as many night missions as the British. And the British didn't fly as many day missions as the Americans. But both sides conducted extensive bombing operations outside of their 'traditional' time frames.

For example, British heavy bombers attacked the U-Boat pens at Le Havre and E-boat facilites at Boulougne during the day on June 14 and 15, respectively.

And, in the hours leading up to D-Day, hundreds of American bombers carried out tactical night-time bombing raids inland from the Normandy beaches.

"much of France WAS occupied and therefore conquered."

No. Conquor means to defeat. France wasn't defeated. Part of its territory was occupied by the Germans, certainly less than 1/5th its total land area.
 
"Hence the term Vichy English."

Ah yes, let's roll up 7 years of history in one easy to sneer at catch phrase.

The fact that Free French divisions fought well, and bravely, after D-Day alongside American and British units?

Well F the Vichy Scum anyway, right?

After all, they were the only ones from an "allied" nation to collaborate with the Germans, right?

Right?

Oops. Nope...

Where's all the animosity for the Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch? How about the Poles and Belgians?

Or even the British collaborators?

Not nearly as fun to make fun of as the French, I guess.
 
Mike - Take a look at the map. Who should have spearheaded resistance to the Germans, mighty Holland? The French wanted all the trappings and privileges of a Great Power, but none of the responsibility. The truth is, they weren't all that much out of step with the Germans' values and their anti-Semitism. Remember that "Nazi propaganda" film, "Triumph of the Will?" Oh, yeah, the one the French honored and gave an award to, the Gold Medal (Palm D'Or?) at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris. They weren't so out of step with German sensibilities, they just wanted to keep bilking Germany for war reparations, a major source of understandable German resentment that Hitler exploited on his way to power.
 
History Channel aside, this is a great tragedy for the 45 children involved, and it could have happened anywhere, including here.

The French have a fairly proactive judicial system (professional jurors, for instance) that is more likely to get the correct ajudication out of this case then it might here.
 
That roaring sound you heard was the point rushing past you, Unique.

The point is that to pillory France in such a manner while ignoring similar situations in other nations in Western Europe (Vidkun Quisling, for example) is disingenuous at the very least.

France wanted the trappings of a great power without the responsibilities, yes, that can be argued that at that time that was true.

It can be argued just as effectively and convincingly that the same could be said of BOTH the United States and Great Britain, as well. Both were complicit in ignoring the coming storm, and both had leaders who would have "turned Vichy" in a moment had the situation presented itself. The two best examples in the United States? Joseph Kennedy and Charles Lindberg.

"The truth is, they weren't all that much out of step with the Germans' values and their anti-Semitism."

Are you talking about France, or the United States, or both?

If the answer is both, then you're correct. There were strong Germanic/Anti-Semitic sentiments in large segments of the population in the 1939s and right up until the beginning of the war. Henry Ford and Joseph Kennedy were virulent anti-Semites.

Here's the point I was making earlier...


History has a very very nasty way of being a lot deeper, and a lot more complex, than what can be encapsulated in a single, sneering catchprhase or short pejorative.
 
Not so fast

"'Stalingrad'

And Larvatus wins a gold star."

I'll go for silver, but that's it.

The only reason the Russians could stay in the fight, still less advance to the Rhine, was US material, courtesy of the "Murmansk Run." We fed and, to a slightly lesser extent, armed (remember the P-39 AirCobra?) the Russians.

We also bombed the Romanian oil fields at Ploesti, leaving the Nazis short of fuel and lubricants. Montgomery and Patton kept the DAK busy in North Afrika, preventing its deployment to the Russian front.

If you're intent on praising our staunch Stalinist ally, don't forget the amazing stand at Leningrad (convoys across Lake Ladoga) and the crushing of the Panzers at Kursk - the largest armor battle ever fought.
 
I your zeal to trumpet all the assistance that we were giving the Russians, don't forget that they had pulled much of their manufacturing to the east of the Urals and were turning out T-34's, YAKs, MIGs, Sturmovick's, Mosins, Takarovs etc. quicker than Nabisco shoots out crackers. They were also able to bring hundreds of thousands of troops west via the Trans Siberian Rail Road, which they managed to build all by their lonesome.

Back to the point of the thread...I'm no Francophile but the sexual abuse and exploitation of children is by no means singular to them. It is a secretly heinous crime perpetrated by predators in all societies. Just as a recent example, before the tsunami waters even receeded in Indonesia, there were multiple reports of folks selling orphaned children as sex slaves.

Go ahead and bash the French, but no gratuitous piling on. :)
 
No 6,

The gold star stands.

Why?

Because American K-rations, GMC trucks, and P-39s don't shed blood.

What the Soviets pulled off at Stalingrad (remember, the battle began in August 1942, or before American supplies were much more than a trickle into Russia, and not long before Murmansk was iced in for the winter) was quite spectacular given where their army had been only months before.

American supplies didn't completely turn around Soviet military performance or fortunes.

The competent commanders that the Soviets desperately needed after Salin's purges weren't requisitioned from the GM Guide Lamp division. American intervention didn't make Hitler order von Paulus to hold the city no matter what the cost.


"We also bombed the Romanian oil fields at Ploesti, leaving the Nazis short of fuel and lubricants."

Not sure if you're tying this in with Stalingrad, but the Ploesti raid was in August 1, 1943. Field Marshal von Paulus surrendered his army at Stalingrad 6 months before that.

Production at Ploesti after the disasterous raid (yep, disasterous, for the Americans, with over 30% losses) dropped, IIRC, about 30 percent for about 3 months. After that, production was back to almost full capacity.

Why did production resume so quickly? Because the Amercians couldn't afford to mount subsequent raids.

The raid on Ploesti was an abject failure.

"Montgomery and Patton kept the DAK busy in North Afrika, preventing its deployment to the Russian front."

Beg pardon?

The intent was never to sent the Afrika Korps to the Eastern Front. Even if it were, why weren't they sent AFTER they were ejected from North Africa?

Here's a interesting fact...

At any point in time during the war, between 60 and 70 percent of Germany's active military resources were being directed to... the Eastern Front.
 
The Soviet economy stood up against Germany on its own.

I thank Mike Irwin for preempting many of my responses with his excellent analysis. To address one remaining point by a fellow fan of The Prisoner:
The only reason the Russians could stay in the fight, still less advance to the Rhine, was US material, courtesy of the "Murmansk Run."
Click to expand...
This attitude was once upon a time fashionable among WWII historians. In the past decade, it has been overturned by the conclusions of economic analysis. In this connection, I cannot recommend too highly the writings of Mark Harrison, especially his paper "Why the Rich Won: Economic Mobilization and Economic Development in Two World Wars":
Although a disaster from the point of view of peacetime economic development, collectivized agriculture gave Stalin enough control over food supplies to keep the economy together when war came back to Russia. In World War I the Russian peasants fed themselves first, then their livestock, and buried the rest in the ground while the soldiers and war workers fought over the scraps. In World War II the Red Army and the war workers were fed first and the peasants became the residual claimant on available food supplies. As a result, the Soviet economy was able to mobilize itself to a degree that matched the richest of the rival powers, not the poorest. Its ability to control allocation and repress consumption also allowed the Soviet Union to achieve disproportionate military power during the remainder of the twentieth century.
Click to expand...
In an unrelated matter, I recommend Harrison's insightful paper "An Economist Looks at Suicide Terrorism".
 
One of the best reasons to bash the French is their collective paralysis in dealing with the increasing unrest in their growing Muslim population. The French government is terrified of the Muslim population and its power.
 
One of the best reasons to bash the French is their collective paralysis in dealing with the increasing unrest in their growing Muslim population. The French government is terrified of the Muslim population and its power.
Click to expand...
This is not an entirely fair assessment. Since 1789, the French have been, in many crucial ways, at the forefront of subordinating fractious religious identity to secularized public culture. The French government employs its clerics, instead of sucking up to them in the manner of U.S. politicians. The demographic trends playing out in similar ways across the borders, the Moslem influence on the European Union policies forebodes the political trends to come stateside. Time will tell, which model of forging a national identity will prove more resistant to Islamist threats, both foreign and domestic.
 
Getting personal and condescending right off the bat, Mike? Yes, I see that you led off with a single, sneering catchphrase or short perjorative to me. One wonders why. If the facts are against you, go ad hominem, eh? I'll accept any sincere apology you wish to proffer with graciousness and be civil with you. Good luck.

The Germans let the Brits and French escape, there was no plan to slay them on the beaches. Hitler still had naive and unfounded hopes peace could be made with Britain and felt that such an action would doom any hope of that. We had nothing near the level of anti-Semitism that existed in France, Poland, and Germany in the 1930's. I had a French doubles partner in tennis tournaments for a few years, even he admits to this and to the anti-Semitism in present day France, including widespread desecration of Jewish graves in the last few years. No Crystal Night here, a brilliant move to make the whole German population either acquiesent or complicit in disenfranchising the Jews from rights of citizenship. It also was the "point of no return" for Germany and the destruction of the Third Reich, imo. Anti-Semitism wasn't institutionalized here, you name 2 individuals, how many votes for public offices did they garner? Zero?
 
"The Germans let the Brits and French escape, there was no plan to slay them on the beaches."

Wrong. Hitler saw a perfect opportunity to pretty much end effective British resistance and make invasion easier by eliminating a large segment of the British Army. Hitler wanted peace with the British, but he wanted it on his terms, with as little parity as possible, and eliminating as much of the British army as possible would give him that parity. By this point in time Hitler also had few illusions that the British would actually forge a separate peace, which is why plans for the invasion of Britain were largely in place by the time of Dunkirk.

If Germany wanted the British to escape, why did they throw pretty much the entire Luftwaffe presence in France against the beachhead?

There's a number of reasons why Hitler held his armies around the perimeter of Dunkirk. As British and French forces concentrated, the resistance they put up increased expodentially, and German losses in men and material began to rise significantly.

Second, after the dash across France, many of the German units were in desperate need of resupply. The advance had been so rapid that many Panzer units had outrun their supply lines AND their supporting infantry units by dozens, or even hundreds, of miles. That dash deconcentrated German forces, making them vulnerable to counterattack.

Third, Herman Goering boasted to Hitler that his Luftwaffe could destroy the trapped British and French armies on the ground -- Hitler accepted Goering's claim at face value.

As noted, the Luftwaffe threw most of its operational strength against the Dunkirk pocket, but failed to do several things, the most important of which was to establish theater air dominance. Luftwaffe losses to British fighters flying in from airfields in Britain were extremely heavy, and while on paper the Luftwaffe had the aircraft they needed to take control, their command structure and operational limitations ensured that they didn't.

Dunkirk was Goering's first major failure as head of the Luftwaffe, and Hitler was not pleased.

"We had nothing near the level of anti-Semitism that existed in France, Poland, and Germany in the 1930's."

It's more appropriate to say that we had nothing near the level of VIOLENT anti-Semitism that existed in Europe.

Here's an interesting article on how pervasive anti-semitism has been in the United States over the years: http://www.terroristnextdoor.com/index2.php?option=content&do_pdf=1&id=40

It should also be noted that politically, anti-semitism was well established in the United States -- Congress had in the 1920s tightened up on immigration by a number of groups, including Jews specifically.

That Charles Lindberg and Joseph Kennedy never ran for public office is immaterial -- both men wielded tremendous political and public influence, as did men like radio priest Father Coughlin. It's been shown time and time again that a charismatic voice can have significant political impact without ever running for office.
 
I will admit to an imperfect memory and most of what I am saying is from recollections from reading up on this in the 60's and 70's. However, I googled in Dunkirk Hitler and British and looked at the very first site (historylearningsite.com) and the account there supports my recollection. I don't deny he sent the Luftwaffe, if I recall correctly he thought it would be cheap to cause some damage, but Von Rundstedt was awaiting marching orders that never came. Hitler was under the delusion as late as the genesis of the "Battle of the Bulge" that England would sue for a separate peace, this time with the U.S. as its ally. He thought that this surprise attack would cause so much discontent between us and the Brits, there would be a split in the alliance. He never did learn, did he?

I'd say the varying levels of violence that you admit to justifies my comparative statement about anti-Semitism, violence is an excellent demarcation point for how serious something is. That is an interesting article, thank you. Several WWII vets have admitted to me there was a lot of "Hitler has it right about the Jews" talk in the ranks. A former supervisor of mine told me he was a big time racist against blacks until after his unit went into one of the death camps about a week after its initial liberation. A lot of shock and modified attitudes by others, too. As far as Coughlin, Kennedy, and Lindbergh go, there are dozens of individual demagogues in Western nations that could be counted on to deliver anti-Semitic public rants with some "rah-rahs from a substantial minority of the populace. Heck, I overhear some rants from far right wing kooks at my gun club. It's amusing, some of them can't decide whether they are more anti-Jewish or anti-Islamic. I feel like telling them to cheer up, they still qualify as anti-Semitic either way! Anyway, interesting discussion with you.
 
Wait I am confused. Did Hitler rape the French with Michael Jacksons help, while the Russians supplied themselves and the Americans came late to the war and the more people who died the more commited they were to the cause so someone should shoot someone, cause the British can't fly and night and the flak is in the air or am I missing something? Should I still buy French fries or not? Either way the Glock is still a good gun even though they blow up the instant you even put a reload next to one, and you need to put $500 dollars into tweaking any 1911 or it will jam AND.....wait I am confused agin. :) :D :cool:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top