Biggest Disaster in WW1 & WW2

[joespaniel]

Originally posted by Stefan Haertel
Auschwitz.

The British knew of it, as recently published photgraphs prove.
If they had only bombed the railroad leading to it and other camps like Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen etc.

Railroads can be rebuilt. Camps can be moved.

Liberating the continent was the only way to stop it. The British lost tens of thousands of men doing just that.

 

[Hitro]

Originally posted by joespaniel
Railroads can be rebuilt. Camps can be moved.

But it would have let to a delay. And it demands resources. Resources that were needed elsewhere, which may have delayed it even further.
And considering the numbers of people that were killed on a single day...

Furthermore it's not as if the British (and their allies) wouldn't have had the capacities. They could just have slaughtered a few hundred civilians less in some city to divert the necessary firepower, without any delay in the liberation of Europe.

Concerning the thread's question, it all depends on how you define "disaster". The biggest amount of losses in a battle? The most decisive lost battle? The biggest waste of life without any strategical gain? The most killing with one action?

 

[Stapel]

From a strategic military point of view: the invasion of Poland in september 1939.

 

[rilnator]

What about the battle of France in '40? France out of the war, Britain off the continent, chance of a one front war for germany.

 

[nonconformist]

Well I could say the Treaty Of Versailles. Without it, there would have been no second world war as we know it, probably no Nazi party and almost certainly no Chancellor Hitler. It made the Germans angry that such an injust Diktat had been thrust upon them after fighting hard in the trenches, air and sea. They wanted their land back, they wanted their army back, they wanted justice, and more importantly they wannted to restore their pride in their country.

 

[Sarevok]

indeed.

 

[hbdragon88]

I just studied WW1 and WW2, but I have no idea what these disasters are:

Moltke ordering the entrenchment of the En
The Atlantic wall
Salerno Beach
Operation Market Garden
Hitler's Ardennes offensive
Germany failing to blow Remagen Bridge
Berlin

What are they?

I think Verdun was a big disaster, it was not even a real battle to gain land or anything, just a war of attrition (wearing down the other side's will to fight). It cost a million lives for nothing.

Pascandale was not on there...that was a disaster too. The Allies waited six weeks after blowing up charges and scattering the German lines to charge? They could have broken the line up and instead it became a rain and mud battle.

 

[Patroklos]

If you don't know

The Atlanic Wall
Salerno Beach
Operation Market Garden
Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge)
Battle of Berlin

Then you didn't study for more than an hour. There are actually individual threads in this forum for most of these. Three of them I know for sure. Just look back through the threads for some edumacation

 

[hbdragon88]

High school circumlum does not and will not cover every aspect of World War 2, nor any specific vocabulary, technology, and commander in the war. Even though I learned about the Battle of the Bulge, I did not learn that it was called the Ardennes Offensive. And I have no idea what the other ones are.

 

[Achinz]

Stalingrad for the reasons discussed in the Stalingrad thread.

 

[Patroklos]

It was called the Ardennes offensive because it was through the Ardennes forest. Just a diffence in terminology, like how the North and South named the same battles different things in the Civil War

Atlantic Wall - Hitler's sea defences from the Spanish border to the Northern tip of Norway. We usually think of it as the Normandy and other French channel defenses depicted in the movies.

Salerno Beach - Nearly disasterous invasion of Italy by the Allies. Germans didn't know how close to overrunning the beach heads they were and fell back, Allies very lucky.

Operation Market Garden - Field Marshal Montgomery's airborne (Market) and ground (Garden) assault on Holland to try and end the war by Christmas. Ignored intel as well as overestimated the effectivness of airbore troops. Failed, heavy casualties.

Battle of Berlin - The last stand of the Riech against Zukov's offenisve. Not sure if the thread author meant to wrap the Vistula and Oder offensives into this one.

 

[Sarevok]

i have made some of those threads...

 

[joespaniel]

Originally posted by Hitro

But it would have let to a delay. And it demands resources. Resources that were needed elsewhere, which may have delayed it even further.
And considering the numbers of people that were killed on a single day...

Furthermore it's not as if the British (and their allies) wouldn't have had the capacities. They could just have slaughtered a few hundred civilians less in some city to divert the necessary firepower, without any delay in the liberation of Europe.

Wrong Hitro. It wasn't possible.

You seem to be forgetting that the Allies were busy fighting GERMAN ARMIES that happened to be where they shouldn't have been. Maybe if they didn't have that minor annoyance to deal with, the Allies could have righted all the injustices in the world and dropped payloads of cotton candy on Berlin instead of bombs.

Why are people laying blame on the Allies for something the Germans did anyway? This whole idea of blaming the British for Nazi industrialized murder deserves about a dozen rolleyes smilies.

Why not blame the Germans for their actions? Were they somehow less civilized than other European peoples? Less Christian? Less human?

I find it amazing that people whine about German cities being bombed after all the terror visited upon non-germanic peoples, especialy in Poland and Russia. The germans bombed dozens upon dozens of cities, killed over 10 million people (in cold blood) in gas chambers and execution pits, but let's ***** about the British instead.

Wake up people.

 

[nonconformist]

Yes, but the Germans accept teir brutal past and have been condemned at Nuremberg and in history. However, most Germans were not criminals, but heavily indoctrinated people who had become disillusioned through the injustices of the 30 years before WWII. Also, exempting the Eastern forces, the Allies have rarely been condemned for any of their actions.

 

[Patroklos]

Exactly. No one is downplaying the Germans at all. I do find it odd, however, that we condem the Germans for things that we did ourselves ie bombing civilians (and we did it more often, with more effect). Just because those actions fall under the the direction of the Allies doesn't make it right.

I would contend the biggest gas chamber/oven of the war was not a Nazi concentration camp, but rather the downtown areas of Dresden/Tokyo. And Dresden was cold blood, there was no legitimate target there, the sole purpose of that raid to kill/terrorize civilians.

Ther Germans at the time excused their crimes by saying they were doing the world a favor. We excuse our crime up to today by saying we were doing the world a favor. Rationalization can be tragic.

 

[Darth_Pugwash]

noncon...

Everyone with half a brain and a half decent knowledge of ww2 does condemn the crimes committed by ALL sides. Open your eyes and get off your moral high horse, your not proving anything new.

However, most Germans were not criminals, but heavily indoctrinated people

Ok...so all the crimes committed by those indocrtrinated soldiers were ok, becuase they were indoctrinated? I can imagine it now...

"Well yeah sure, I killed innocent civilians, but thats ok, becuase I was indoctrinated."



Read what you've just typed before hitting the "submit" button...

Apart form that I agree with what your saying.

Anyhoo, on topic, I'd have to say Stalingrad, for reasons I'm sure I dont need to elaborate on. Treaty of Versailles a close second though.

 

[nonconformist]

Among crimes that Allies have commited that have not been condemned as much as the German War Crimes are:

Remagen prison camp-terrible conditions.
Dresden-Became an inferno killing hundreds of thousands of people
Hamburg-Similar to Dresden
Attacking surrenderd U-boats including that of Werner Hartenstein-the incident is now known as the Laconia incident, Hartenstein's ship sunk an Allied vessel full of civilians, so he collected most of them up, allowed some inside of the boat, most stood on the deck, and he towed some lifeboats. The U-boat was displaying the Red Cross and the Geneva Convention states it is an offense to attack an unarmed unit displaying a red cross (the submarine was armed, yes but with hundreds of passengers lining the decks, there was no way that the boat was a threat). Upon making contact with an Allied plane (American I think) the aircraft was ordered to attack despite the knowlege of the Allied survivors. The aircraft attacked their own survivors to try to sink the U-boat. The boat cut the ropes to the lifeboats and dived, leaving hundreds of survivors from the decks in the water, while some were in the U-boat itself. Later Allied ships did manage to pick up most of these survivors. Werner Hartenstein was later killed in action when his U-Boot was sunk.
I would not be surprised if the Allies deliberately sunk hospital ships.
The sinking of merchant vessels in the pacific by Americans.
The dropping of the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There is no way that all of these are legitimate targets under the 1929 Geneva convention. Though there is nothing that says anything about how civlilians must be treated (I think) it is only common sense and humanity not to attack them

Also I think that a much forgotten fact is that the English invented the Concentration Camp.

As to the indoctrination, it is much easier to disobey a direct order form an officer when you are an American or British soldier who has no huge awe for his leaders and knows that the maximum he is likely to incur is a court martial, while if you are a young HJ boy and the enemy are closing fast onto the "Fatherland" and Hitler is your icon you have been taught to obey him always, he has been in power since you were about 5 and you have known no other life, then it is a lot easier to commit atrocities when commanded.
For example Henry Metelmann commited atrocities in winter, or the unit he was part of did and he still regrets it. He, and many others were just boys caught up in a tide of violence and racial ideology that they knew nothing about other than what the constant propaganda and indoctrination wanted them to know.

 

[Stefan Haertel]

Why not blame the Germans for their actions? Were they somehow less civilized than other European peoples? Less Christian? Less human?

Less civilized: Yes. But that is a subjective statement and a discussion about this doesn't belong here (in fact, it is only a joke).

It's not that I don't blame the Germans for their actions, I am one of the last people in Germany to do so (a sad truth). But this is no excuse for the Allies, who fought for the right cause and used otherwise mostly correct methods, not to have prevented the slaughter when they could and should have.

Also, exempting the Eastern forces, the Allies have rarely been condemned for any of their actions.

Why should they be condemned for their actions? They did fight for justice and freedom, and that statement is coming from a war-hating pacifist. Why should someone condemn that? I'm glad they did what they did, or I would be sitting in an evil abscess that is even more smelly and brown than it is anyway.

 

[Patroklos]

I am glad for the cause that they fought for, but I am not proud of some of their methods.

And I don't think alot of what people accuse the Allies for were crimes. BUT, if you are going to make it a war crime for the Germans and execute people for it, you have to do so universally, not just for the Germans.

This is the case with Raeder.

 

[Darth_Pugwash]

Noncon, point me to someone who would tell me that one of the incidents on that list was not a crime. The Nazis are bound to steal the limelight when it comes to crimes, just accept that.

Also I think that a much forgotten fact is that the English invented the Concentration Camp.

What? You mean that the English actually did something bad? Stop the press! The world must know this groundbreaking news!