Posted: 12/9/2007 9:08:08 AM EDT
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I am a big fan of winston churchill. The more I study about him, he had a great instinct for strategy. Gallipoli was roundly criticized but the concept was sound, the execution was the failure. It was convient for Haig and others to criticize Churchill to divert attention from the real disastor on the Western Front. anyway, Torch was an unquestioned disastor. The soft underbelly of europe was a myth, a facade. We wer still fighting and dying in Italy when Berlin fell. The germans had EVERYTHING on the Eastern Front until late 1943/1944. There was no atlantic wall, no seigfried line in 1942. I believe had we invested our Torch assets into a cross channel invasion, we would have ended the war in 1943. The North Africa focus was all churchill. So the blame lies with him. HOWEVER, did he do torch to intentially delay the end of the war (britain was safe after the battle of britain and he knew it) so that the communists and nazis would continue to butcher each other and develop a post war environment with a severely weakened soviet union? Those who know of his political career know he was one of the most vocifirous (sp?) opponents of the communists and grudgingly took alliance with them to fight the larger threat of nazism. Perhaps I wish to not attribute so horrible a blunder to a man I truly respect as the greatest of the 20th century. But if North Africa was a deliberate attempt to weaken the soviets, it was brilliant in its execution and deception. Debate away. |
| I don't think North Africa was used to weaken the Soviets. Rather, it was the British concern to keep the Suez open and to constrain Italian ambitions for the area. The Suez was needed as access to Alexandria meant the Royal Navy in the Far East had some decent harbours for repair in case they lost India. That Germany intervened only drew from the German war effort elsewhere. It wasn't all that much, but in a sense of how badly stretched the German forces in Russia was, it couldn't help the Germans to have forces in the Mediterranean. |
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The German assetts in the mediteranian were negligible. Two divisions at most at any given time (IIRC). Whereas there were 100s of divisions on the eastern front. Rommel had enough to harrass the british, but not seize all of North Africa. The claim s often made they were protecting the suez, which is possible, but ending the war would have protected it better. George Marshall was one of many clamoring for the cross channel invasion in 42/43. No matter what, Torch delayed that invasion at least 15-18 months. |
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The U.S. Army needed time to get its act together. Would you rather have Kaserine Pass occur at Kaserine, or on a beach-head in France? Also, the U.S.A.A.C.(the airforce) had a vexing tendency to bomb U.S. tanks in North Africa. We sorted that out pretty well by Normandy. The fighter bombers of the 9th Airforce would hit Germans, mostly. Sadly, would should have tried out heavy bombers in the tactical role in North Africa. The heavies managed to make an opening in the German lines in Normandy(Operation Cobra) at the cost of about 100 guys(one of which was the Divisional Commander for manuever--a general-). I won't debate Sicily or Italy, mainly because I never have concidered their relevence. Maybe Churchill was stalling! |
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An interesting theory. It would certainly be in the best interests of the west to 1) tie up tremendous German resources elsewhere 2) give the west time to build the force up needed to defeat Germany 3) weaken Russia slightly to prevent them from becoming too strong in the post-war period. |
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It's been a while since I've read up on this part of the war, but I'll take a stab. In Carlo D'Este's(?) bio on Patton I believe the stated intention for Torch was to drive across North Africa and eventually end up on the Wermacht's southern flank in Russia. It makes decent enough sense on paper, it wouldn't have really amounted to much in reality. We didn't have nearly enough of anything to successfully execute a plan of that nature at that point in the war. Keeping the Suez Canal open was also a big thing. Realistically, the AEF needed some place to get their collective shit together. Dieppe proved that we had a long way to go. The Brits were quite wary of our capabilities at the outset and rightly so, we had to get our nose bloodied somewhere. When Torch was being planned the Germans were still a very formidable force. I have a hard time seeing political considerations coming into play that early in the game. The Allies had a full plate getting the tide turned in their favor. Stalin was screaming for a second front, any relief, somewhere, anywhere. The fighting in North Africa, and then Italy in '43 and early '44, taught the Allies how to fight together, which was a huge help later in '44 and then '45. If Churchill was really into the politics of keeping the Reds down, he would have found a way to get Ike to drive on Berlin even though the lines had already been drawn. One might argue that he was behind Mongomery's "narrow thrust" strategy, I really don't know enough about that area to make a coherent argument. It's speculation more than anything. Mis dos centavos, bash or agree as you see fit. |
| If Patton wanted to go across North Africa and then into Southern Russia to liberate it from the Germans, there's a small problem of knocking out Italy first. It would be like Malta in reverse where control of the Med. dictates the pace of the land campaign. So long as the Italians maintained a naval presence and air presence, convoys bringing supplies would be threatened. Even if Italy fell and the Med. was a British lake again, which would allow the Allied armies to be transported by sea instead of marching, driving across Africa, thereby saving a lot of wear, tear, gas and especially time, what country would the allies enter from? Turkey was neutral. Persia was under British control would have been the best place for Patton's intended jump point. |
The more one learns about Churchill the more this theory makes sense. "Beware the purfidious Albion....." |
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Yes, Stalin was pushing for a "Second Front Now". I used to tease a old lefty professor as to whether he spent his evening scrawling that on walls. But even Harry Hopkins, a treasonous SOB who worshipped the USSR couldn't override the Pentagon Brass and make it (the invasion of the European Continent) happen one minute sooner. I like to think the brass cared enough to only open a 'Second Front' when our guys were ready. |
Marshall was quite vocal in his desire to go into Western Europe in 1942/1943. It was Churchill who wanted North Africa. |
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First, the Siegfried Line was built in the 1930s. So yes, it was there and ready to be defensively manned in 1942 as needed. Second, while your theory about Churchill is interesting, it falls into that category of revisionist ideas that also harbors the notion that FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance and allowed it to happen in order to galvanize popular support for war. Myself, I don't it. While Churchill was certainly no fan of communism, and the alliance between the capitalist west and communist Russia was indeed an "alliance of strange bedfellows," I am certain that Churchill regarded Hitler as a far graver threat, and would not deliberately have adopted a strategy that allowed the Germans and the Russians to slaughter each other as long as possible. There is a famous Churchill quote about this in fact. After Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, and Britain rushed to sign mutual aid pacts with Russia, the British press asked Churchill why he was so quick to support the communists. His reply was this: "If Mr. Hitler invaded Hell, then I would be obliged to make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons." He was willing to make an alliance with anyone that would help him stop Hitler. As for the allied cross channel invasion not taking place sooner than 1944, you have to remember that it was a tremendous gamble, with the lives of hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers at stake. The Dieppe raid, which was a "dress rehearsal" to test the strength of German defenses, was very sobering to the Allies, and so they wanted to make sure that when they did hit the Atlantic Wall, they hit it with tremendous and overwhelming force. That took months and months of pre-invasion logistical work and planning to assemble the necessary force package in southern England. I am convinced that Eisenhower was correct in not attempting to launch the invasion any earlier than he did. Please don't take any offense that I disagree with you though, your theory is fascinating I admit. And I too think Churchill was a very great man. |
I was unaware Marshall wanted to jump in that soon. In speaking with old German Army vets. they told me it was our fighter bombers (Jabos) they feared the most. Unit movement in daylight was an invitation for a swarm of fighters and light attack bombers. So Churchill moves up a bit higher in my esteem. I suspect our casualties would have been much higher if we attacked the Continent any sooner. |
If we had been decisive and massed our resources we would have had much fewer casualties. You would have to discount all the casualties we suffered in Italy, Sicily and North Africa, as none of these Theaters would have been an issue. Within 3 weeks of the italian landing we had 12000 casualties (7K brit, 5K american) In six weeks that number would be 22K, 40K by january (plus 50K due to sickness and non-combat related injuries) All these injuries being incurred by a German Army which was outnumbered 2-1 Even after D-Day, Churchill was clamoring to continue operations in Italy when it was obvious it would do nothing to hasten the end of the war. This decision (combined with AGAIN churchill's insistance of a broad front advance instead of the operationally correct single thrust in France) almost guaranteed that the war would drag till 1945. If any single figure could be blamed for the length of operations in Europe (and hence the Pacific), the blame would lay with Churchill. While we were not geared up towards mass production, neither were the germans, whose peak production was not until mid 1943. We would not have squandered fuel and resources on the ineffectual mass bombing raids. I reread the chapter in Crusade in Europe to double check. Eisenhower (as with most things) had no opinion other than what he was told The British, led eloquently by Churchill, were adament that North Africa was the initial priority for an eventual cross channel invasion. Eisenhower says churchill was frustrated by Alexanders many failures and wanted to wipe the shame from the british futility there. What churchill says and thinks could be different. But most Americans wanted 1943 as the date for Overlord. Eisenhower stated an invasion prior to 1944 was impossible, but that is ridiculous, as we did three seperate invasions over longer LOCs by 1943 (torch, sicily, italy). In 1942, the germans had 27 divisions (only 3 mechanized) in france with 171(34) in Russia. In 1944 the germans had 56 (11) in France and 157 (34) in Russia. Overlord had 44 allied divisions (plus 20 seperate brigades). Combine numbers for Husky and Torch (plus garrison divisions training since 1942 for the cross channel (ie 101) we had close to that number in 1942 and certainly in 1943. |
Dollars and cents wise, it may have been cheaper to invade invade in 42/43, but we would have paid a larger amount in blood. The Luftwaffe held the skies over Europe, our two best (and most common) fighters, the P-39 and P-40 were hardly a match against what Jerry could put up. We were even borrowing Spitfires from the Brit's to give our guys a fair chance at surviving contact. So the question"Is control of the air that important for invasions? comes up". We see that Hans Studel sunk a cruiser with a old Stuka.... With a whole invasion fleet exposed? (Off Topic a bit: anyone recommend a good book on Kasserine Pass?) But we did build up a huge Air Corp which bled off a lot of manpower, yet the Germans still held at 80% of production.. |
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We (the U.S.) wasn't ready for prime time against the Germans in early 1942. We needed time to get our act together in every facet of the game. We didn't even know how to put together really effective command and logistics until probably late '43 - early 1944. A cross channel invasion was a total nonstarter before mid 1944. We had significant problems just bringing off the landings we launched in Italy. One reason? NO LANDING CRAFT! At least WAY insufficient numbers of them. And amphibious landings against a contested coastline are probably THE most difficult thing to pull off. We needed practice, preparation, equipment to be stockpiled out the frigging wahzoo, etc. |
Then train, don't invade other continents wasting resources and men. Focus on the objective. The idea that we needed north africa, sicily and italy for training for normandy is even worse. Train in England , remember slapton sands (sp?). If your problem is lack of resources, squandering them in secondary theaters certainly isn't the answer. Half the american forces in the initial invasion received their baptism of fire in Normandy. General Marshall and others disagree with your assessment of a cross channel invasion being a non-starter before 1944. After we pissed away so much in North Africa Sicily and Italy, we made it a non-starter. But had we focused we easily could have done it. While we were getting better, the german defenses were getting better. How much of the atlantic wall was built from 1942-1944? |
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It's not "Studel." It's Rudel. Hans Ulrich Rudel. The Stuka ace you are referring to. You are correct about the facts though - he is credited with sinking a Russian battleship with his Ju-87. And it is believed he destroyed around 500 Russian tanks as well. He became a tractor salesman in Argentina after the war, and died in 1982. Qualitatively speaking, the Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf Fw-190A was about evenly matched with the American P-47 Thunderbolt. The P-51 Mustang was superior to the Fw-190A, but about evenly matched with the Fw-190 "Dora" that began to appear late war. What doomed the Luftwaffe in the end was the attrition of experienced pilots, and the lack of sufficient lead time to train replacements to basic standards of competence. Critical shortages in fuel also contributed to the downfall of the Luftwaffe. Hitler and Goering's insistence that each and every Allied bombing raid be met with fighter opposition played a large part in this. That policy frittered away the Luftwaffe over time. A wiser strategy would have been for them to allow the Luftwaffe to husband its resources, letting some raids get by, so that others could be hit with massive fighter opposition. Shortages of skilled pilots and shortages of fuel, yes. But there was never a shortage of servicable aircraft. The Americans found German factories chock full of brand new German fighter aircraft when they overran Germany in '45. |
I'm afraid the only way we were going to learn was the hard way; real world practice against real world opponents. The top brass will always spin things to look great. The facts are that the troops on the line had real problems. As just one for instance, our tank destroyer battalions didn't even have the same radios to allow them to talk to the units they where supposed to be supporting until we got to France. Nor did they have a logistics system allowing them to be supplied through the larger units to which they were attached. There were glitches that just were never going to get sorted out until people started getting killed because of them. Should it be this way? Absolutely NOT. But that's the way it almost always is; especially during that era of warfare. |
We were in Italy in 1945 to train for an invasion of france in 1944? |
No. But it was very fortunate we spent a couple of years learning how to fight before we went up against a world class military foe like the main body of the German Army in Europe. The Brits definitely wanted us to cut our teeth in North Africa, so did Eisenhower. They knew we weren't ready. And North Africa proved it. Look, we were almost completely demobilized for the two decades prior to our entry into WWII. The Germans had been handing people's heads to them since the Fall of '39. Africa and Italy helped big time, not only to get our military ready and give our economy time to fully crank up for wartime production, but also to work out some of the problems inherent in a combined command/allied type force structure. |
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The question was asked if the Luftwaffe could have mounted a more effective defense of France in 1943 than in 1944. The answer is yes. And since the Allied requirement for air supremacy (not just air superiority) over the invasion beaches was a critical factor in determining the timetable of the invasion, this is another reason it was not attempted prior to '44. Another factor you gentleman have not touched on yet, but which was of vital importance in determining the timetable of the invasion, was the ability of Admiral Doenitz's U-Bootwaffe to interdict Allied shipping in the North Atlantic. The Allies had to be certain they were decisively winning the Battle of the Atlantic before attempting this invasion, and it was not until after May of 1943 that technological advances in anti-submarine warfare really turned the tide against the German Wolfpacks. Attempting that invasion without certainty of control of the shipping lanes in the Atlantic would have been an unacceptable risk. |