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Originally posted by occrider Yea but asides from the few minor battles for their colonial holdings Europe didn't really care about what happened in the Pacific ... it's not their war . I'm sure much of what happened in the pacific theatre of operations was only taught to australians and americans. Course I'm speaking out of my ass but that's the feeling i get when I talk to people about WW2.

When war affects the entire world it is everyones war if japan were to control china, australia or the us islands for the matter would have great affect on the world

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Originally posted by fr0st When war affects the entire world it is everyones war if japan were to control china, australia or the us islands for the matter would have great affect on the world

Oh I know this, I'm just saying that the pacific campaign was likely not studied much outside of the US or Australia. To most of Europe, far east asia was the least of their worries. I do know that after VE day, most of the American divisions were being geared up for transfer out to the pacific. I haven't read of any plans that the other European powers were gearing up to do so as well. Russia only declared war and engaged the Japanese when victory was imminent

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Originally posted by occrider Volgograd didn't even exist in 1942/43 ... you mean Stalingrad .

actually, it was called volgograd before and after communist rule, just like st.petersburg <-> leningrad. i'm calling it by its original name.

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Stalingrad was indeed one of the major turning points in the war, possibly even a theatre turning point, however, it was by no means a turning point for the entire war alone. Here is what I consider to be the primary tactical turning points of the Western Theatre of Operations Europe: The Battle of Britain: It's loss would have enabled the Luftwaffe to provide massive tactical air support for German ground forces in Operation Sea Lion. The fall of Great Britain would have 'closed' the western front and forestalled any kind of invasion of Europe with the possible exception of a staging area out of North Africa. A corrollary to this effect is that the western front remained active and as such, precious German resources were directed to maintain the Atlantic wall. German factories also began to go underground as allied bombing campaigns intensified. When you take into account the fact that Army Group Center got within the suburbs of Moscow then that diversion of forces was pretty significant. This resulted in the committment of resources to Army Group South which as we all know led to the battle of Stalingrad. Anyway, I digress.

battle of britain would've been lost like a chipmunk in an eagle's nest if it wasn't for what i mentioned - ultra (the intelligence interception/retransmission network run by winterbotham was pretty much responsible for the win. the luftwaffe was bombing london, and would have destroyed it if it wasn't for the intercepted communications.

see, the germans were using something called knickebein beams for communications with their planes, because of the bad weather at the time. ultra intercepted the necessary communications and started pumping out conflicting communiques which confused the luftwaffe for a long time, and by the time the weather cleared, it was already too late since they were already losing the war. seems like a very small thing, but it more or less turned the tide in the war.

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The battle of the Atlantic: You cannot dispute that the longest campaign of the war was not one of the most significant. Considering that half of Britain's food supplies and 2/3 of its raw materials were imported from overseas, Britain came perilously close to capitulation should the wolfpacks have succeeded in blockading Britain. As Churchill stated, the only thing he feared was the battle of the atlantic. Britain's starvation would have likely resulted in the same consequences as the ones I've outlined above.

this is another thing that was singlehandedly overturned by ultra. by '38 german naval superiority was absolutely indesputable. by '43, i believe, the amount of cargo lost by the british due to the wolfpacks dropped from 650million tons to about 70 (those numbers could be off since i don't have any references on hand and am working from memory).

there's quite a bit more to the battle of the atlantic, but i won't get into it. what i'm saying is that although each battle was intrinsically important to the outcome, a lot of them were won or lost because of tiny, practically unknown reasons.

the whole thing about turing and ultra and the bombes is a really controversial point, since it's as if you're disregarding the merit of countless deaths. when it comes down to it, the soldiers won the battle. each man and woman that fought.

not the goddamn generals who started the war in the first place.

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Battle of Stalingrad, Kurks, and Moscow: Obvious reasons ... any study of WW2 should know this. Normandy: The opening of the second front ... of which for reasons outlined above reduced the manpower of the eastern front significantly as forces were diverted west. (Yea I'm getting lazy in going into complete detail, lemme know if you want me to)

refer to my previews points about operation bodyguard.

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El Alamein: Not so much a turning point of the entire western theatre, however, it was the first turning point in the ground campaign against Germany. Failure to capture N. Africa would have prevented the opening of the forgotten third front in Italy. Additionally, allied bombing campaigns would have been out of range of the Romanian oil fields which would have likely influenced Hitler's decision to make Army Group South's drive towards the Caucuses so critical.

can't dispute that one. the panzer brigades' falling is almost as massive a victory as the failure of the luftwaffe.

Herr Rommel! Er ist ausgefallen!! NOOOOOOO!!

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Actually, most of the tactical turning points in the war were accomplished by Russia. The Americans/Brits/Can did have some decisive military victories (and disasters ... i hate monty) but they only hastened or prolonged the outcome of the war. The majority of the American tactical turning points primarily occurred in the Asia/Pacific Theatre of Operations. But in the end all these events are inexorably linked so you cannot quite separate them and state that that one incident alone achieved victory.

definitely.

as for zhukov, a couple of months ago i was actually talking to a man that met him personally. a veteran of stalingrad. scary stories, he had to tell. it's a bit humbling meeting someone who's been living with shrapnel from a german mine explosion in his leg for the last 60 years.

your knowledge of the war is impressive.

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Originally posted by Aidonis Stalin was also highly effcient at butchering his own people. All this war talk is kinda depressing; the Middle East right now looks to me like the Yugoslavia of the 1930's.

not his own. he kept his own people nice and safe in their corner of the world.

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Originally posted by Abject Silver actually, it was called volgograd before and after communist rule, just like st.petersburg <-> leningrad. i'm calling it by its original name.

Well since you're Russian, I'll take your word for it . But I always thought that the name prior to Stalingrad was Tsaritsyn.

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battle of britain would've been lost like a chipmunk in an eagle's nest if it wasn't for what i mentioned - ultra (the intelligence interception/retransmission network run by winterbotham was pretty much responsible for the win. the luftwaffe was bombing london, and would have destroyed it if it wasn't for the intercepted communications. see, the germans were using something called knickebein beams for communications with their planes, because of the bad weather at the time. ultra intercepted the necessary communications and started pumping out conflicting communiques which confused the luftwaffe for a long time, and by the time the weather cleared, it was already too late since they were already losing the war. seems like a very small thing, but it more or less turned the tide in the war.

Hmmm actually I've never heard of ultra playing that large of a role in the battle of Britain. I knew the Luftwaffe's codes had been cracked by the 40's, but I've never heard of the scrambling of their communications. Pretty much every history book I've read focused on other factors playing a larger role in the success of the battle of britain. One factor being the technological superiority of the British spitfires against the German me-109s and bombers. Another factor being the massive development of Britain's early warning radar (I believe they constructed quite a number of stations stretching across the entire eastern coastline of Britain ... the home chain I think it's called?). And the final factor being the fact that the battle occurred over Britain (British airplanes had greater turnaround times, more fuel, and pilots shot down were easily rescued and returned into action). The use of the ultra during the battle of britain does sound interesting. Since I don't have my history books handy online, I guess I'll just use the bbc as my source (it's not very detailed but it does provide general overviews).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/ww...ritain_03.shtml

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this is another thing that was singlehandedly overturned by ultra. by '38 german naval superiority was absolutely indesputable. by '43, i believe, the amount of cargo lost by the british due to the wolfpacks dropped from 650million tons to about 70 (those numbers could be off since i don't have any references on hand and am working from memory). there's quite a bit more to the battle of the atlantic, but i won't get into it. what i'm saying is that although each battle was intrinsically important to the outcome, a lot of them were won or lost because of tiny, practically unknown reasons. the whole thing about turing and ultra and the bombes is a really controversial point, since it's as if you're disregarding the merit of countless deaths. when it comes down to it, the soldiers won the battle. each man and woman that fought. not the goddamn generals who started the war in the first place.

That's very true that ultra did have a significant role in winning the battle of the Atlantic. I think that the perfection of convoy tactics and the use of corvettes and destroyers as convoy escorts made a significant impact as well. Oh yea, and one cannot discount that the development of longer ranged allied aircraft, such as the B-24 liberator and the Catalina sea plane which were equipped with microwave radar, to cover the mid-atlantic gap played a serious role in crippling the U-boats' effectiveness. Anyway, here's a good article on the codebreaking effort in the battle of the atlantic for anyone interested (I doubt it ).

http://www.usafa.af.mil/dfh/Harmon36.doc

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as for zhukov, a couple of months ago i was actually talking to a man that met him personally. a veteran of stalingrad. scary stories, he had to tell. it's a bit humbling meeting someone who's been living with shrapnel from a german mine explosion in his leg for the last 60 years.

I wish there were more historical accounts and first person interviews of what happened on the Eastern Front. I think what happened on the western front has been very well documented by combat footage, personal accounts, history books, etc. If anyone watches the history channel, the color of war does an excellent job presented multi-faceted accounts of life in the European Theatre of Operations (western front). Much of what happeend on the eastern front however, has gone undocumented and untold.

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your knowledge of the war is impressive.

Thanks. I've always been an avid study of history (european history ... american history kind of bores me), and I studied to be a historian in university until my finances forced me to change my major to a field that actually pays money

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Originally posted by occrider Well since you're Russian, I'll take your word for it . But I always thought that the name prior to Stalingrad was Tsaritsyn. Hmmm actually I've never heard of ultra playing that large of a role in the battle of Britain. I knew the Luftwaffe's codes had been cracked by the 40's, but I've never heard of the scrambling of their communications. Pretty much every history book I've read focused on other factors playing a larger role in the success of the battle of britain. One factor being the technological superiority of the British spitfires against the German me-109s and bombers. Another factor being the massive development of Britain's early warning radar (I believe they constructed quite a number of stations stretching across the entire eastern coastline of Britain ... the home chain I think it's called?). And the final factor being the fact that the battle occurred over Britain (British airplanes had greater turnaround times, more fuel, and pilots shot down were easily rescued and returned into action). The use of the ultra during the battle of britain does sound interesting. Since I don't have my history books handy online, I guess I'll just use the bbc as my source (it's not very detailed but it does provide general overviews). http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/ww...ritain_03.shtml

I remember my history teacher telling me that most of the older history books don't mention too much of the use of Ultra by the British because alot of their use of the crack codes and scrambling signals was kept classified during the war so the germans couldn't get wind of the Brits knowing their codes. It was only a small group of people high up that knew what was going down, and they filtered out orders based on what they knew to the flight commanders who had no idea that intelligence had all this information on the activities of the luftwaffe.
so alot of the success of the missions, (altho alot of it is also due to what you mentioned above), was due to the fact that their mission objectives always seemed to circumvent any progress the luftwaffe was trying to acheive. no one in the british military really knew that the british high command was two steps ahead of the nazis.

so as an example, say the high command knew that the nazis were going to send a large squadron to attack the southern part of london at exactly 1am. The high command would be sure to send up multiple standered air patrols who happen intersect the planes in the south of england right off the channel.

anyway, not until recently have documents about the knowledge of so much knowledge by the British intelligence become unclassified. so alot of the older history books didn't know of the ultra intelligence based tactics used by the British command and how critical they were to the orchestration of the RAF.

as i said, this is something i remember my history teacher talking about. i don't have any proof of it, altho it sounds highly probable. its somethign worth researching.

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Originally posted by montie I remember my history teacher telling me that most of the older history books don't mention too much of the use of Ultra by the British because alot of their use of the crack codes and scrambling signals was kept classified during the war so the germans couldn't get wind of the Brits knowing their codes. It was only a small group of people high up that knew what was going down, and they filtered out orders based on what they knew to the flight commanders who had no idea that intelligence had all this information on the activities of the luftwaffe. so alot of the success of the missions, (altho alot of it is also due to what you mentioned above), was due to the fact that their mission objectives always seemed to circumvent any progress the luftwaffe was trying to acheive. no one in the british military really knew that the british high command was two steps ahead of the nazis. so as an example, say the high command knew that the nazis were going to send a large squadron to attack the southern part of london at exactly 1am. The high command would be sure to send up multiple standered air patrols who happen intersect the planes in the south of england right off the channel. anyway, not until recently have documents about the knowledge of so much knowledge by the British intelligence become unclassified. so alot of the older history books didn't know of the ultra intelligence based tactics used by the British command and how critical they were to the orchestration of the RAF. as i said, this is something i remember my history teacher talking about. i don't have any proof of it, altho it sounds highly probable. its somethign worth researching.

Well, I would tend to disagree. My history studies began with a broad based book such as one that John Keegan would put forth, but then for each major campaign, I would study more focused and modern works by several authors, each one being written post 90's era. Considering the fact that the Luftwaffe's codes were much simpler to break than the kriegsmarine, AND that history has gone into such greater detail with respects to ultra's impact on the battle of the atlantic, I must conclude that ultra did not have nearly as much impact on the battle of britain as some of the other factors I mentioned. If you disagree, then by all means please post sources. But I've studied WW2 in great detail and that factor has never been mentioned to a large extent with respects to the battle of britain. As a matter of fact, what I HAVE read actually is that the British specifically kept ultra intelligence secret from its own military in order to keep the Germans believing that the enigma code machine was still secure. If British forces happened to intersect German forces at EVERY vantage point of course the Germans would realise that their communications system had been compromised.

At any rate, considering how the history books recount with such level of detail how the kriegsmarine increased the number of encoding wheels in the enigma system from 3 to 4 in 1942, and the British desperation to crack the new coding techniques, one would think that any explicit advantage the British utilized in the battle of britain with ultra would be well documented and well reported in current history books. That's my understanding from the studies I have done. Perhaps a brit with more knowledge would like to comment?

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