History's epic failures

[keratosis]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

.

Pretty happy it ended up as it did to be quite frank.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

That's usually the case in most cases, sides will fight right up until the clock sweeps the dial on any cease fire because at that point you're fighting for position and gains that will become a key part of any finalized peace negotiation.


On top of that you can't turn off the taps on hate.


Stalin kept charging down even after Japan surrendered because he knew that he needed strategic real estate in the upcoming great cold hate.

Sure but the clock could have been set at 5am instead of 11am. Because there were no shots fired after 11am.

[Johnny199r]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

So I was thinking that sometimes when we talk about epic failures we do it from the standpoint of, wow this was a failure.


But sometimes I think that we have to think about it sometimes as wow that was fortunate.


So I'm going to add onto it.


Operation Barbarrosa, but it wasn't just the singular mistake of Hitler opening a massive war up on another front, He was already facing the allies in the West, and and in the South. But opening up a third front into the Soviet Union was a massive mistake that I'm sure that every member of the German Command Staff that was half way competent were muttering into their drinks every night that this was a stupid franking idea.


Lets face it, if Hitler would have fortified his forces to the West and to an extent the South and continued to keep Stalin neutralized via diplomacy in the East we would be living in a far different world today. In fact the biggest massive mistake was not offering the Russians even more aid and reassuring worlds. At some point we would have seen the American's probably key focus on the Japanese who were the bigger threat, and England would have been left hanging by itself.


But there were a lot of mini mistakes that made this an even more painful mass error on the Soviets part.


Originally the plan for Barbarossa was simple. Slice off a huge piece of the pie in Russia, drive on the Oil rich Caucasus and the rich farm lands of the Western Soviet Union. But Hitler's ego got the best of him here, and he wanted to take Moscow and Stalingrad and Leningrad especially. Hitler took a extremely powerful invasion force and split it to try to destroy cities that he didn't need to destroy. Tactically the German's should have taken the Oil and taken the agricultural wealth, and fortified. Instead they ended up falling into the trap of Stalin's strategy of destroying everything of use, and falling back. This did two things.



The German's expected that the Soviets would collapse after a few solid blows, so they didn't have a good logistical plan for a long war and a long drive. By over reaching the weather flipped to winter, and while common military logic states that you should avoid winter warfare and use those months to fortify and build up your supplies for a spring offensive, Hitler and the General Staff were too enamored with the concept of initiative and speed, and by following that doctrine they played into Stalin's hands.


The other massive mistake. People need to remember that the average peasant in Western Russia hated Stalin and the Soviet Government, they were brutal and merciless to their own people who save themselves as enslaved. So when Hitler's forces started taking territory the Russian's greeted the advancing army as liberators. Hitler and the German's due to their racial policies enslaved them, starved them, worked them to death or just plain murdered them. Hitler threw a massive opportunity out the window in terms of being able to supply his troops, and add to his manpower. What had been succesful for Hitler in the past was he was able to appeal to certain groups of people to join his cause and you got German Military formations of different nationalities. if he would have said, we're going to topple Stalin it might have been the same thing. Instead his actions galvanized the Western Russians to Stalin so when he did the scorched earth policy they were too happy to comply to hurt the hated germans. It also created groups of partisans that harrassed and slowed down any resupply effort.


The German shortsightedness and poor strategies and I'm going to call it victory fever caused the utter destruction of entire army groups that could have been used in the defense of the West.


Lets also not forget the fear of Hitler by his General Staff. Hitler had peculiar sleeping habits, he liked to stay up late watching movies and sleep in late. So on the early morning when the D-Day invasion took place the General Staff was terrified, though there were reports of ships hitting the beaches and a need to move the German reserves to re-enforce the beaches, including a powerful tank regiment, the commanders refused to do anything without Hitler's permission, and nobody wanted to wake him up, maybe because the little psychopath just was crabby in the morning.



The re-enforcements were eventually moved, but it was long after the allies had established a foothold on the beaches and they began to re-enforce the landings.

I agree with a good deal of what you say here. However, the problem for Hitler was always going to be what the Soviets were going to do once their army was modernized and re-established.

The USSR armed forces in 1940 were a farce. The war with Germany taught Stalin and his army some tough lessons.

I don't believe that the USSR was going to quietly sit there and do nothing while Hitler conquered half the world on their doorstep. While it was obvious that Stalin wasn't in a position to attack in 1940, a few years later he definitely could have.

Many people speculate that Stalin could have been placated with diplomacy in the long term. Let me ask, if the allies invaded in the west, or the south of Europe, people really believe the USSR wouldn't have declared war in the East in an attempt to take as much territory as it possibly could?

Obviously pushing into Russia cost the German army dearly. It stretched them way too thin, and they were not prepared. However, I don't think even if that had been avoided forever that Stalin would have allowed Hitler to just sit on his doorstep.

"Ivan's War: Life and death in the red army 1939-1945" - is a great book on the Soviet war effort in ww2. I highly recommend it.

[CliffFletcher]

A Nazi Germany that didn’t invade Russia wouldn’t be Nazi Germany. Lebensraum in the East was a core element of the program from the outset.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Very specific and peculiar conditions led to the remarkable expansion of European powers and ideas. I don't think the choices of any given Chinese emperor could have changed that.

I don't really disagree, but I also think people have a cognitive bias towards seeing the history that actually happened as lot more inevitable than it actually was.

I feel that living in the age of Trump people should be more open to seeing just how much the personality of the leader can affect a large country.

In the age of the emperors, a single man could have made all the difference... and did. As I said, it's about lot more than just not being interested in conquest and colonization.

Who destroys their own navy at the height of its power, and basically bans foreign trade? It was a really extreme and unusual decision that has few if any real parallels in history, and thus it's really hard to even speculate what the true repercussions of it were.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

A Nazi Germany that didn’t invade Russia wouldn’t be Nazi Germany. Lebensraum in the East was a core element of the program from the outset.

I think an interesting "what if" scenario is considering what if Ernst Röhm had won the battle for power within the Nazi party instead of Hitler.

It's really hard to speculate how likely this could have been, but it certainly wasn't impossible, considering Röhm was also one of the early members of the Nazi-party and the commander of the SA, at that point a million men strong.

You can read the wiki for yourself, but the key difference between Hitler and Röhm was that the latter was not just a power hungry militant racist, but also an actual socialist (of sorts), who longed for an anti-capitalist revolution. (Hitler of course only cared about socialist ideals if they happened to benefit his rise to power.)

What if Röhm had gotten rid of Hitler and his supporters within the Nazi party, instead of the other way around? Could he have gotten the same absolute hold over the country? (I'd argue likely yes.)

If der Führer had been Röhm instead of Hitler, WW2 likely still happens, but maybe, even more likely, Germany and USSR would have been allies instead of enemies. That's a very different war.

(Röhm also wanted to purge the German army leadership of Prussian aristocrats. The Who's Who of WW2 Germans would have a very different list.)

[FurnaceFace]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

On the other hand, that led to the Vasa being on display in what I think could be the neatest tourist attraction on earth.

I can't wait to take my kids there.

It’s an exceptional museum mostly thanks to the Scandinavian preserving mud/clay. The archeological preservation and the museum building are just as the ship.

In a similar vein, the Roskilde Viking museum in Denmark is very worth a visit.

https://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Johnny199r

I agree with a good deal of what you say here. However, the problem for Hitler was always going to be what the Soviets were going to do once their army was modernized and re-established.

The USSR armed forces in 1940 were a farce. The war with Germany taught Stalin and his army some tough lessons.

I don't believe that the USSR was going to quietly sit there and do nothing while Hitler conquered half the world on their doorstep. While it was obvious that Stalin wasn't in a position to attack in 1940, a few years later he definitely could have.

Many people speculate that Stalin could have been placated with diplomacy in the long term. Let me ask, if the allies invaded in the west, or the south of Europe, people really believe the USSR wouldn't have declared war in the East in an attempt to take as much territory as it possibly could?

Obviously pushing into Russia cost the German army dearly. It stretched them way too thin, and they were not prepared. However, I don't think even if that had been avoided forever that Stalin would have allowed Hitler to just sit on his doorstep.

"Ivan's War: Life and death in the red army 1939-1945" - is a great book on the Soviet war effort in ww2. I highly recommend it.

If Hitler had had any real sense he would have handed back France and the other invaded territories with puppet fascist governments firmly in place in '41 made peace with the UK, kept the US out of the war and turned his whole attention to Barbarossa without needing to leave forces in France or Africa, he would probably have had considerable 'allied' help at that point, the fight against communism being seen as the real threat in '39 through most of the world.

[dirk diggler]

Trudeau

[Robo]

I tried to make a home made kite today with my kids..... i feel that it should be mentioned in here

[FireGilbert]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

If Hitler had had any real sense he would have handed back France and the other invaded territories with puppet fascist governments firmly in place in '41 made peace with the UK, kept the US out of the war and turned his whole attention to Barbarossa without needing to leave forces in France or Africa, he would probably have had considerable 'allied' help at that point, the fight against communism being seen as the real threat in '39 through most of the world.

Was Churchill willing to make peace in 1941? After stopping any chance of a German invasion in the battle of Britain and then receiving American aid through lend lease there was no reason to think handing back territories while leaving puppet governments would have been enough for peace.

Maybe peace could have been negotiated in 1940 after the fall of France if Hilter withdrew troop with only minor territorial gains (Alsace and Lorraine) but that ignores western Poland which was the Casus belli and in no way was being granted independence.

[CaptainCrunch]

I doubt that Churchill would have wanted to talk terms or peace with Hitler, he saw what Hitler was.


there were also some key factors on top of that.


The British had pretty much broken the back of the Luftwaffe, during the battle of Britain the Germans had lost nearly 2000 of 2500 servicible aircraft that were put in place for the BOB. The Luftwaffe had been shattered and the German's had lost a lot of their heavy and medium bomber capacity.


The German threat by U-Boats was starting to subside in 1941, the German's had taken brutal losses in the Battle of Atlantic. Most of their best Fleet submarines were out on endless patrol.



The German Navy really didn't establish themselves in the war. The German's weren't in a position to carry out an amphibious invasion of Britan. Churchill knew that the American's would join the war and they would be able to invade Europe once they gained that strength.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by dirk diggler

Trudeau

*groan

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by FireGilbert

Was Churchill willing to make peace in 1941? After stopping any chance of a German invasion in the battle of Britain and then receiving American aid through lend lease there was no reason to think handing back territories while leaving puppet governments would have been enough for peace.

Maybe peace could have been negotiated in 1940 after the fall of France if Hilter withdrew troop with only minor territorial gains (Alsace and Lorraine) but that ignores western Poland which was the Casus belli and in no way was being granted independence.

Assuming Hitler planned on making Peace there wouldn't have been a Battle of Britain, right from the beginning Hitler would have been sending out signals he wasn't a threat to the UK, which he kind of half arsed did anyway, he could and should have used the US to broker the peace with the UK, the US was not exactly commited to the war itself.

There was support for peace with Germany in the UK after the fall of France, it wouldn't have taken much from Germany to take the UK out despite Churchil

[dirk diggler]

Originally Posted by Dion

Fox News and it's support of Donald Trump. In particular, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.

CNN and its fake news.....Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo.

[peter12]

The Germans were basically done after France. They had lost too much of their panzer force. Also they were never motorized really properly enough to engage in anything more than limited expeditionary conflicts outside of their sphere of influence.

[Wormius]

Let’s just say the editorialization of news.

[Snuffleupagus]

Originally Posted by dirk diggler

CNN and its fake news.....Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo.

[Tsawwassen]

Originally Posted by dirk diggler

Trudeau

Which one?

[undercoverbrother]

The Ross Rifle.