r16
not deity
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2008
- Messages
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with due deference to the importance of the day . What ı was directed to is a English translation of a certain famous rant ı have always loved . Omitted a few to shorten it
The huge successes of the panzers in the early parts of WW2 has inspired expenditure of far too much ink and paper ; but the victories are apt to be explained by the quote :
"The real strenght of armour in fact lay not in battle but pre-emption of battle ."
An enormous amount of experience from the Great War was still in place ; all the staff officers breathed the same air . There has been much comment on the military ability of the French , the inventors of the Maginot mentality , on how they were so primitive in theory , so ponderous in action . The French calculated it would take Germans 9 days to reach Meuse ( from the unpassable Ardennes ) . So what , so did the ever inventing fast acting German Generalstab . Defense through armour plate + mobility allied to firepower never gave the French a chance to stop or delay the German attack which was much superior in numbers at each point of contact , it was assured whatever resistance the Allies could offer would be brushed aside . 9 days took the Germans to the sea , very nearly ; it was 2 to the river . This was tank speed . Anyone attempting laugh at the French cavalry trying to stem the Panzers should remember that the same Panzer divisions were much harried and impressed by the Russian cavalry in their drive in the Caucaus . There wasn't much in the panzers , it was their divisions that were unmatched in 1940 .
1930s had seen much debate on the uses of armour . Especially the British had seen tanks as a career move , extravagant pro and anti claims had been made for deep battle and the need for getting specially prepared for the eventuality : one is always reminded how the exasperated British High Command finally stopped upstarts and their bid to take over by copying Gandhi himself , a major exercise was won by the infantry laying down in the path of oncoming armour , guided by the wives of the defending officers .
As party line is always important and Churchill had to stress the importance the 1000 German heavies that tore the Allies apart ( despite the fact that Germans had none , Tigers on the drawing boards and Panthers , well not even dreamed of ) it was a relief to hear about the superlative performance of O'Connor in the desert , it proved there was nothing wrong in the make up . In the face of puny anti tank defences a Matilda was worth an infantry battalion and now the undisputed British mastery of arms could be put on the table . Rommel , Wadi Halfaya and his grand total of 12 pieces of 88s , that was somewhat into the future . Especially the 2km frontal penetration shots .
Then came the Balkan idea . Churchill is supposed to have suffered greatly from the Dardanelles fiasco , never minding that he was still in the Cabinet when WW1 ended . So we are told he attached great importance to the Balkans and stopped O'Connor's forces just short of total victory . Not exactly so .
Much has been said on the importance of Romanian oil to the German War effort . Greek neutrality in WW2 was an effective shield against those scary bombers that burn Ploesti down to cinders . Bombers were highly regarded in those days . RAF planned for one Blenheim squadron to destroy the oil facilities in Southern Russia to stop oil deliveries to the de facto Communist ally , the Nazi Germany . As such Germans had no troubles with the Greeks , until the reckless Italian attack and the subsequent miserable failure took away the shield . Axis honour had to be restored , as prestige carries far too much crecedence until the day of the gun comes and the history shows Germans had planned a limited operation to capture Northeastern Greece to add some buffer zone to the defence of Ploesti , the conquered territory to be given to Bulgaria to ensure their full cooperation in the Axis . Bulgarians fighting the second round of a battle that the Greeks had won 30 odd years ago taking the just occupied shores to the Aegean . A turncoat movement in Sofia would bring those Blenheims to next door . Greek goverment calculated all that and begged the Great Britain not to help . It was the Germans that counted , rest of the Axis , they could wait a couple years to defeat . The suffering of those Greeks in the to be occupied Greek territory would be alleviated by Axis compensation after the Allies had won the war .
This always falls on deaf ears but Metaxas , the Greek dictator and the adamant refuser of British aid , conveniently died at the peak of British pressure to assist the just cause of Athens . Metaxas' rise was much due to the fact that he had always opposed the invasion of Anatolia in 1919 - 22 . As he wasn't tainted in any way by that debacle , Greek politicians had to entrust the military to him . Off topic but true .
It is indeed correct that the Yugoslav goverment of the day concluded a deal with Germans for "secret" use of the Belgrade - Nis railroad . What this means to the average armchair strategist is that the limited numbers of German troops operating from Southern Yugoslavia would be at the end of their tethers contributing somewhat to the fighting every inch of the way type Greek retreat from Albania and Northern sections of their country . Millions of Serbians would watch and resent every moment of it forcing Germans to be careful to avoid a new war that would suck in far too many troops , distracting them from the ultimate job of invading Russia .
The Allied strategists didn't see it that way . The scary move in 1941 was a nice train ride across the Russia to arrive in Iran , Middle East , yes , you guessed it right , the oilfields . Now any conspiracy theory worth its name must accept Nazism was nurtured to fight Bolsheviks and their various offspring . Liddell Hart , you have and will come across his name in textbooks , the strategist , journalist and historian mentions it explicitly , if only because he was instrumental shaping the British Army of WW2 by advising the pre war defence minister and could well be accused of gross negligience . The West was counting on Hitler to finish Stalin ; it was just an accident that he got involved with the West . Never claim the Soviets were angels , ever , but remember they were never left alone . Sorry for the world , but the capitalists always think too much of their profits and they stole from the material in their crusade against the Godless Communists . Anyhow , the West was pretty upset in the summer and autumn of 1940 . Germans had won massively in France and appeared to be peaceful with the Russians . American public opinion was divided , simplistic in nature many believed in the promise of the Nazis to destroy the Bolshies and bring order to the world . If everything failed doughboys would cross the ocean once more to get it done . Those who didn't actually despise the British wanted it done before British failed . In the higher ups of America nobody doubted Washington would fight , only the aims were debated .
The result was British espionage and their American proteges did everything possible to convince the Russians that Adolf Hitler was against them , he would attack . Their efforts actually did much to blunt Russians' own intelligence efforts . It made sense for Russians to buy time before fighting the famously professional German armies , anyone who talked against the notion was branded prowestern . One thing to remember here is that the military experience of the British Empire over the centuries have always involved small expeditionary forces fighting either savages far away from their England or large Continental powers ; in either case the British strategist has developed a keen sense of buying people to fight against the enemy , limiting damage to their comparatively limited in theater forces . Russians had no doubt that London would love a fight to death between Soviet Union and the Germany , which kind of pushed them into semi friendship with Nazis . The result was that it seemed unlikely that a fight would start soon , sending the British to their libraries to find an answer and they soon had one . In Greece , Churchill and his entourage saw the Portugal of Wellington . They just needed a Spain .
Because the reputation of British capability to cooperate had reached a record high in Mers El Kebir which any pro-Brit will sell as a necessary action , the task fell to the Americans . The future head of the organization that became CIA , Donovan arrived in Belgrade and simply declared that if they didn't fight Nazis now , the Yugoslavs would be punished later . Everybody knew it was the millions of American soldiers that decided the Great War , the threat was ominious enough . Funnily , nobody tried to punish Franco , the guy who sent a volunteer division to Russia . Who could blame the Yugoslavs for failing to guess that Stalin would end the war stronger and there would be a cold war ? It even looked auspicious when the Brits landed in Greece with massive forces .
The reasoning was solid . Once the Serbs staged a coup and took over Germans would have to react , since there had been a revolution in the way wars were fought , the attack would have to be spearheaded by the panzers , since the country was full of mountains the rate of advance would be slow , Serbians had some spectacular defensive successes in WWI that had been etched to their bones ; every yard the Germans occupied would be covered by the blood of resolute Serbs and the Germans they killed . Once the Germans knocked out Yugoslavia they would have to descend on Greece as the Allied bomber bases had to be overrun and the every day they advanced the front would be shortening in Central Greece increasing the density of defenders . Now that it was proved the Matilda was a super tank , the German panzers would be destroyed in Greece , and the comparisions with the Persians and the Greeks of the past centuries would just do wonders for public affairs , democracy winning against totalitarianism in the ancient fields of glory once again . The guerilla war in Yugoslavia would be useful in eroding the remaining German forces , to ease the counter attack . And no nice train rides across Russia , too ... That alone was worth the price , of not clearing the North Africa . Rommel arriving in the desert was wellcomed , as Germans would have to support their forces through sea , open to British naval interdiction . Less panzers for Greece and spies said there were no heavies anywhere , it was just a lie .
What happened was this . Germans were given an operational opening . Instead of doing weak diversionary attacks limited in scope by the need to not to disturb Serbians and grinding through the Metaxas line , they could outflank it en masse and the Macedonian front that was to be the first line of defense for British oil had no anti tank guns , not one . And the mass of decision , the German infantry marched 500 km in three weeks to kick the British out of Greece outflanking Thermopyhlai on the way .The only thing that the entire episode proved was that the German studies of the classics were much better . So much for the wisdom of college societies .
It is in the Liddle Hart book that Hungarians took part in the invasion but were not fond of doing it . Their tank force managed to run out of fuel in the first day and they remained where they were . Remember what oil does to those who are too poor to own oil companies . Yugoslavia as a country had no gas stations at the time ...
Winston Churchill's vision of 50 Balkan divisions fighting and dying on behalf of a good cause was not the only thing that went down the drain . Rommel's situation was hopeless so he bluffed and attacked and got to the gates of Egypt . The British forces in the Middle East had to be reinforced to the extent of weakening their forces in the Far East . The Japanese were looking for an opportunity as 1940 had knocked out the French and the Dutch , maybe they could bluff and get some more advantages before Americans joined the war and kicked the hell out of Germans . As Russia was so big and surprisingly strong as they had just given a bloody nose to Imperial Japanese Army , the next target of Washington should be Moscow and Tokyo planned on Western pardons in return for cooperation in Manchuria and beyond , to win their lebensraum in the Asian Continent . They invaded French Indochina in July 1941 to be returned in goodwill talks if things went well . If they did not , Germany could still defeat the Russians and they wouldn't return Vietnam . The West's brightest minds were so offended . To punish the second rate Japanese who had attempted to play the game without the blue eyed boys' permission , to underline the Anglosaxons were so democratic by punishing the dictatorial regimes when popular opinion was beginning to feel sorry for the Communists peasants who were now suffering under the Nazis , to scare everybody they issued an ultimatom that implied Japan would either take flight or the fight . It took the Japanese 4 months to agree to fight . On August 6th , 1941 they pleaded with Washington for an easier way . Four years on they would still be pleading about the option of colloborating in return for those goodies in Siberia . You must listen Americans claiming the two are unrelated . When the West showed no understanding because the Mediterranean option had painted them to a corner politically , because all mattered was public opinion since it could bring the unwashed to power in the next election if not properly controlled , because the boys had to look tough , the Imperial Japan started what has been called the greatest land grab in a defensive war .
The war aims of Japan was to acquire the mineral wealth to resist Western attacks until they understood the prize was elsewhere , say to their North-West and much bigger . Also it was absolutely necessary to establish a defensive line that would prevent any bomber reaching the Japanese Home Islands . Bombers were highly regarded in those days . Funnily enough the German war plans in Russia also drew a line about 2000 kilometres from Berlin specifically intented to keep bombers away . That was B-29 performance , something beyond any bomber could do in 1941 . You must see the way Americans reject that the Axis powers were so impressed by the type and the unitary warhead it would drop ...
1939 was a strange year . March 11th , the British foreign minister declared a golden age was upon the world . Next day , Nazis started the process of invading Czechoslovakia . Which London accepted without any fuss and at the end of the month declared it would defend Poland . The Western Allies made such a poor attempt of talking to the Russians that Moscow got a better deal from Berlin its declared archenemy . Next year under the guise of helping the gallant Finns the Allies intented to block iron ore exports to Germany by invading Norway , parts of Sweden and Finnland , which in the end would have meant they would fight the Soviets not to mention a sizeable proportion of Scandinavians .Indeed they would succeed in getting the Soviet Union into the Axis . Finns surrendered first . Since I read Liddle Hart recently , I have to quote him that Mannerheim the Finnish dictator feared the Allied help... One other next year and we have Allies pushing the Japanese to war despite the situation that wasn't particularly good for them . Yet especially American morals seem to be really high especially because of their new B-17s based in the Philippines that could reach Japan proper , once more according to Liddell Hart who himself doesn't believe in the claim . You should watch Americans stressing that they don't condone one way trips nor they did ever design a Kamikaze type bomber interceptor that the American pilot would crash into the enemy ; hear them claim there are no factory drawings for the last mentioned . It appears , but I won't confirm , everybody was expecting some new , totally new form of warfare to appear and their country would be the one to do it so that maps would be redrawn in a day . So there was no need to be subtle , all that mattered was public relations , getting people to accept the wholesale slaughter of the enemy was to be the norm in the new war . Interestingly the Allies were still planning to bomb Russian oilfields even after the Nazi attack ; because they were so smart they had taken everything Stalin had told them as gospel truth : such gems as the Nazis had attacked with 30 000 tanks achieving a 2.5 to 1 superiority to the Russian armour in theater and so far had lost only 8 000 . Which meant they were unstoppable and would capture the said oilfields , better start bombing them now as it would take time to destroy the targets . By 1941 there were doubts about the efficiency of bombers , their accuracy was a misnomer in that they rarely appeared to hit anything they attempted to hit . In a then famous attack 57 or so German bombers devastated Rotterdam in some sort of a fire support mission for German paratroopers who had captured bridges in the city center . Some wag has suggested to achieve the effect the bombers took aim at the bridges ! With such problems with aerial bombing one must suppose the new weapons were to be more efficient or any pretension to dignified behaviour had to be abandoned or both . Bomber Harris was a man who subscribed to the second method , he was all for bombing of cities because they were cities . Always seeing a danger in the specialized crews attacking pinpoint targets he sent the first Lancaster raid of the war on an especially dangerous and half thought out mission and there were the Dambusters , both attacks achieved success at horrific cost but they served Harris well , he could burn the heart of Germany showing this was more economical in percentage of losses until his lack of manners started to erode the moral high ground for the new type of war . Americans who were closest to the golden age , on the contrary , started a campaign of city busting to justify their long awaited moment of glory , there was no difference in the final results achieved ; destruction of factories and instruments of goverment alonside the workers and civil population which was to deter armies from effective fighting . After all Belgrade must be the only city in the annals of air warfare officially targeted out of hate . Guernica had its bridge , London had its docks , Hiroshima had the largest shipyard in Japan and a naval base and an Army Headquarters .
The stinkiest secret of the war .
The only thing doesn' t make sense is the early expectation that the material would be simply ready at the command of the dignified scientists . This is known as the bathroom method , because of the answers it produced . Politicians didn't have much understanding of the scale of the effort that gave results nor they wanted to remember the joke where the Native American says umpah to everything the American negotiator tells . But that didn't stop the politicians in their drive to redraw maps in a single day and their preparations for the public affairs that entailed .
By the way if you ever have to exchange bad words with a Serbian try American puppet . It seems to work .
The huge successes of the panzers in the early parts of WW2 has inspired expenditure of far too much ink and paper ; but the victories are apt to be explained by the quote :
"The real strenght of armour in fact lay not in battle but pre-emption of battle ."
An enormous amount of experience from the Great War was still in place ; all the staff officers breathed the same air . There has been much comment on the military ability of the French , the inventors of the Maginot mentality , on how they were so primitive in theory , so ponderous in action . The French calculated it would take Germans 9 days to reach Meuse ( from the unpassable Ardennes ) . So what , so did the ever inventing fast acting German Generalstab . Defense through armour plate + mobility allied to firepower never gave the French a chance to stop or delay the German attack which was much superior in numbers at each point of contact , it was assured whatever resistance the Allies could offer would be brushed aside . 9 days took the Germans to the sea , very nearly ; it was 2 to the river . This was tank speed . Anyone attempting laugh at the French cavalry trying to stem the Panzers should remember that the same Panzer divisions were much harried and impressed by the Russian cavalry in their drive in the Caucaus . There wasn't much in the panzers , it was their divisions that were unmatched in 1940 .
1930s had seen much debate on the uses of armour . Especially the British had seen tanks as a career move , extravagant pro and anti claims had been made for deep battle and the need for getting specially prepared for the eventuality : one is always reminded how the exasperated British High Command finally stopped upstarts and their bid to take over by copying Gandhi himself , a major exercise was won by the infantry laying down in the path of oncoming armour , guided by the wives of the defending officers .
As party line is always important and Churchill had to stress the importance the 1000 German heavies that tore the Allies apart ( despite the fact that Germans had none , Tigers on the drawing boards and Panthers , well not even dreamed of ) it was a relief to hear about the superlative performance of O'Connor in the desert , it proved there was nothing wrong in the make up . In the face of puny anti tank defences a Matilda was worth an infantry battalion and now the undisputed British mastery of arms could be put on the table . Rommel , Wadi Halfaya and his grand total of 12 pieces of 88s , that was somewhat into the future . Especially the 2km frontal penetration shots .
Then came the Balkan idea . Churchill is supposed to have suffered greatly from the Dardanelles fiasco , never minding that he was still in the Cabinet when WW1 ended . So we are told he attached great importance to the Balkans and stopped O'Connor's forces just short of total victory . Not exactly so .
Much has been said on the importance of Romanian oil to the German War effort . Greek neutrality in WW2 was an effective shield against those scary bombers that burn Ploesti down to cinders . Bombers were highly regarded in those days . RAF planned for one Blenheim squadron to destroy the oil facilities in Southern Russia to stop oil deliveries to the de facto Communist ally , the Nazi Germany . As such Germans had no troubles with the Greeks , until the reckless Italian attack and the subsequent miserable failure took away the shield . Axis honour had to be restored , as prestige carries far too much crecedence until the day of the gun comes and the history shows Germans had planned a limited operation to capture Northeastern Greece to add some buffer zone to the defence of Ploesti , the conquered territory to be given to Bulgaria to ensure their full cooperation in the Axis . Bulgarians fighting the second round of a battle that the Greeks had won 30 odd years ago taking the just occupied shores to the Aegean . A turncoat movement in Sofia would bring those Blenheims to next door . Greek goverment calculated all that and begged the Great Britain not to help . It was the Germans that counted , rest of the Axis , they could wait a couple years to defeat . The suffering of those Greeks in the to be occupied Greek territory would be alleviated by Axis compensation after the Allies had won the war .
This always falls on deaf ears but Metaxas , the Greek dictator and the adamant refuser of British aid , conveniently died at the peak of British pressure to assist the just cause of Athens . Metaxas' rise was much due to the fact that he had always opposed the invasion of Anatolia in 1919 - 22 . As he wasn't tainted in any way by that debacle , Greek politicians had to entrust the military to him . Off topic but true .
It is indeed correct that the Yugoslav goverment of the day concluded a deal with Germans for "secret" use of the Belgrade - Nis railroad . What this means to the average armchair strategist is that the limited numbers of German troops operating from Southern Yugoslavia would be at the end of their tethers contributing somewhat to the fighting every inch of the way type Greek retreat from Albania and Northern sections of their country . Millions of Serbians would watch and resent every moment of it forcing Germans to be careful to avoid a new war that would suck in far too many troops , distracting them from the ultimate job of invading Russia .
The Allied strategists didn't see it that way . The scary move in 1941 was a nice train ride across the Russia to arrive in Iran , Middle East , yes , you guessed it right , the oilfields . Now any conspiracy theory worth its name must accept Nazism was nurtured to fight Bolsheviks and their various offspring . Liddell Hart , you have and will come across his name in textbooks , the strategist , journalist and historian mentions it explicitly , if only because he was instrumental shaping the British Army of WW2 by advising the pre war defence minister and could well be accused of gross negligience . The West was counting on Hitler to finish Stalin ; it was just an accident that he got involved with the West . Never claim the Soviets were angels , ever , but remember they were never left alone . Sorry for the world , but the capitalists always think too much of their profits and they stole from the material in their crusade against the Godless Communists . Anyhow , the West was pretty upset in the summer and autumn of 1940 . Germans had won massively in France and appeared to be peaceful with the Russians . American public opinion was divided , simplistic in nature many believed in the promise of the Nazis to destroy the Bolshies and bring order to the world . If everything failed doughboys would cross the ocean once more to get it done . Those who didn't actually despise the British wanted it done before British failed . In the higher ups of America nobody doubted Washington would fight , only the aims were debated .
The result was British espionage and their American proteges did everything possible to convince the Russians that Adolf Hitler was against them , he would attack . Their efforts actually did much to blunt Russians' own intelligence efforts . It made sense for Russians to buy time before fighting the famously professional German armies , anyone who talked against the notion was branded prowestern . One thing to remember here is that the military experience of the British Empire over the centuries have always involved small expeditionary forces fighting either savages far away from their England or large Continental powers ; in either case the British strategist has developed a keen sense of buying people to fight against the enemy , limiting damage to their comparatively limited in theater forces . Russians had no doubt that London would love a fight to death between Soviet Union and the Germany , which kind of pushed them into semi friendship with Nazis . The result was that it seemed unlikely that a fight would start soon , sending the British to their libraries to find an answer and they soon had one . In Greece , Churchill and his entourage saw the Portugal of Wellington . They just needed a Spain .
Because the reputation of British capability to cooperate had reached a record high in Mers El Kebir which any pro-Brit will sell as a necessary action , the task fell to the Americans . The future head of the organization that became CIA , Donovan arrived in Belgrade and simply declared that if they didn't fight Nazis now , the Yugoslavs would be punished later . Everybody knew it was the millions of American soldiers that decided the Great War , the threat was ominious enough . Funnily , nobody tried to punish Franco , the guy who sent a volunteer division to Russia . Who could blame the Yugoslavs for failing to guess that Stalin would end the war stronger and there would be a cold war ? It even looked auspicious when the Brits landed in Greece with massive forces .
The reasoning was solid . Once the Serbs staged a coup and took over Germans would have to react , since there had been a revolution in the way wars were fought , the attack would have to be spearheaded by the panzers , since the country was full of mountains the rate of advance would be slow , Serbians had some spectacular defensive successes in WWI that had been etched to their bones ; every yard the Germans occupied would be covered by the blood of resolute Serbs and the Germans they killed . Once the Germans knocked out Yugoslavia they would have to descend on Greece as the Allied bomber bases had to be overrun and the every day they advanced the front would be shortening in Central Greece increasing the density of defenders . Now that it was proved the Matilda was a super tank , the German panzers would be destroyed in Greece , and the comparisions with the Persians and the Greeks of the past centuries would just do wonders for public affairs , democracy winning against totalitarianism in the ancient fields of glory once again . The guerilla war in Yugoslavia would be useful in eroding the remaining German forces , to ease the counter attack . And no nice train rides across Russia , too ... That alone was worth the price , of not clearing the North Africa . Rommel arriving in the desert was wellcomed , as Germans would have to support their forces through sea , open to British naval interdiction . Less panzers for Greece and spies said there were no heavies anywhere , it was just a lie .
What happened was this . Germans were given an operational opening . Instead of doing weak diversionary attacks limited in scope by the need to not to disturb Serbians and grinding through the Metaxas line , they could outflank it en masse and the Macedonian front that was to be the first line of defense for British oil had no anti tank guns , not one . And the mass of decision , the German infantry marched 500 km in three weeks to kick the British out of Greece outflanking Thermopyhlai on the way .The only thing that the entire episode proved was that the German studies of the classics were much better . So much for the wisdom of college societies .
It is in the Liddle Hart book that Hungarians took part in the invasion but were not fond of doing it . Their tank force managed to run out of fuel in the first day and they remained where they were . Remember what oil does to those who are too poor to own oil companies . Yugoslavia as a country had no gas stations at the time ...
Winston Churchill's vision of 50 Balkan divisions fighting and dying on behalf of a good cause was not the only thing that went down the drain . Rommel's situation was hopeless so he bluffed and attacked and got to the gates of Egypt . The British forces in the Middle East had to be reinforced to the extent of weakening their forces in the Far East . The Japanese were looking for an opportunity as 1940 had knocked out the French and the Dutch , maybe they could bluff and get some more advantages before Americans joined the war and kicked the hell out of Germans . As Russia was so big and surprisingly strong as they had just given a bloody nose to Imperial Japanese Army , the next target of Washington should be Moscow and Tokyo planned on Western pardons in return for cooperation in Manchuria and beyond , to win their lebensraum in the Asian Continent . They invaded French Indochina in July 1941 to be returned in goodwill talks if things went well . If they did not , Germany could still defeat the Russians and they wouldn't return Vietnam . The West's brightest minds were so offended . To punish the second rate Japanese who had attempted to play the game without the blue eyed boys' permission , to underline the Anglosaxons were so democratic by punishing the dictatorial regimes when popular opinion was beginning to feel sorry for the Communists peasants who were now suffering under the Nazis , to scare everybody they issued an ultimatom that implied Japan would either take flight or the fight . It took the Japanese 4 months to agree to fight . On August 6th , 1941 they pleaded with Washington for an easier way . Four years on they would still be pleading about the option of colloborating in return for those goodies in Siberia . You must listen Americans claiming the two are unrelated . When the West showed no understanding because the Mediterranean option had painted them to a corner politically , because all mattered was public opinion since it could bring the unwashed to power in the next election if not properly controlled , because the boys had to look tough , the Imperial Japan started what has been called the greatest land grab in a defensive war .
The war aims of Japan was to acquire the mineral wealth to resist Western attacks until they understood the prize was elsewhere , say to their North-West and much bigger . Also it was absolutely necessary to establish a defensive line that would prevent any bomber reaching the Japanese Home Islands . Bombers were highly regarded in those days . Funnily enough the German war plans in Russia also drew a line about 2000 kilometres from Berlin specifically intented to keep bombers away . That was B-29 performance , something beyond any bomber could do in 1941 . You must see the way Americans reject that the Axis powers were so impressed by the type and the unitary warhead it would drop ...
1939 was a strange year . March 11th , the British foreign minister declared a golden age was upon the world . Next day , Nazis started the process of invading Czechoslovakia . Which London accepted without any fuss and at the end of the month declared it would defend Poland . The Western Allies made such a poor attempt of talking to the Russians that Moscow got a better deal from Berlin its declared archenemy . Next year under the guise of helping the gallant Finns the Allies intented to block iron ore exports to Germany by invading Norway , parts of Sweden and Finnland , which in the end would have meant they would fight the Soviets not to mention a sizeable proportion of Scandinavians .Indeed they would succeed in getting the Soviet Union into the Axis . Finns surrendered first . Since I read Liddle Hart recently , I have to quote him that Mannerheim the Finnish dictator feared the Allied help... One other next year and we have Allies pushing the Japanese to war despite the situation that wasn't particularly good for them . Yet especially American morals seem to be really high especially because of their new B-17s based in the Philippines that could reach Japan proper , once more according to Liddell Hart who himself doesn't believe in the claim . You should watch Americans stressing that they don't condone one way trips nor they did ever design a Kamikaze type bomber interceptor that the American pilot would crash into the enemy ; hear them claim there are no factory drawings for the last mentioned . It appears , but I won't confirm , everybody was expecting some new , totally new form of warfare to appear and their country would be the one to do it so that maps would be redrawn in a day . So there was no need to be subtle , all that mattered was public relations , getting people to accept the wholesale slaughter of the enemy was to be the norm in the new war . Interestingly the Allies were still planning to bomb Russian oilfields even after the Nazi attack ; because they were so smart they had taken everything Stalin had told them as gospel truth : such gems as the Nazis had attacked with 30 000 tanks achieving a 2.5 to 1 superiority to the Russian armour in theater and so far had lost only 8 000 . Which meant they were unstoppable and would capture the said oilfields , better start bombing them now as it would take time to destroy the targets . By 1941 there were doubts about the efficiency of bombers , their accuracy was a misnomer in that they rarely appeared to hit anything they attempted to hit . In a then famous attack 57 or so German bombers devastated Rotterdam in some sort of a fire support mission for German paratroopers who had captured bridges in the city center . Some wag has suggested to achieve the effect the bombers took aim at the bridges ! With such problems with aerial bombing one must suppose the new weapons were to be more efficient or any pretension to dignified behaviour had to be abandoned or both . Bomber Harris was a man who subscribed to the second method , he was all for bombing of cities because they were cities . Always seeing a danger in the specialized crews attacking pinpoint targets he sent the first Lancaster raid of the war on an especially dangerous and half thought out mission and there were the Dambusters , both attacks achieved success at horrific cost but they served Harris well , he could burn the heart of Germany showing this was more economical in percentage of losses until his lack of manners started to erode the moral high ground for the new type of war . Americans who were closest to the golden age , on the contrary , started a campaign of city busting to justify their long awaited moment of glory , there was no difference in the final results achieved ; destruction of factories and instruments of goverment alonside the workers and civil population which was to deter armies from effective fighting . After all Belgrade must be the only city in the annals of air warfare officially targeted out of hate . Guernica had its bridge , London had its docks , Hiroshima had the largest shipyard in Japan and a naval base and an Army Headquarters .
The stinkiest secret of the war .
The only thing doesn' t make sense is the early expectation that the material would be simply ready at the command of the dignified scientists . This is known as the bathroom method , because of the answers it produced . Politicians didn't have much understanding of the scale of the effort that gave results nor they wanted to remember the joke where the Native American says umpah to everything the American negotiator tells . But that didn't stop the politicians in their drive to redraw maps in a single day and their preparations for the public affairs that entailed .
By the way if you ever have to exchange bad words with a Serbian try American puppet . It seems to work .
