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Post by timothylane on Sept 13, 2019 15:54:05 GMT -8
There were several incidents in which the British captured German naval codebooks, including one on a commando raid (one of those against fish canneries in the Lofotens, I think). One was indeed a U-boat surrendering. The commander, as it happened, was Lemp -- who earlier sank the Athenia. His fellow U-boat officers in a British prison camp were most displeased with him. (I came across this in a biography of Otto Kretschmer, the top submarine ace of any World War II fleet, who was captured in the spring of 1941 but made sure the British didn't get his codebooks and Enigma machine.)
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 13, 2019 18:21:53 GMT -8
I think that’s a great observation, Mr. Kung, and explains British actions. And it’s not like it has’t worked for them in the past. They have much experience playing that game. Had Germany gained the continent (and resolved the conflict with Russia…perhaps by never starting it), it’s difficult to imagine Britain going it alone. They fought and won….obviously a Pyrrhic victory to some extent. And it's amusing that they're still struggling today (Brexit) with trying to counterbalance the power of a European country.
Had Germany put its resources into taking the Suez canal and some oil fields instead of invading Russia, how could America ever come into the war? Where would they start? Germany was so immensely stupid in how they failed to consolidate their gains from the wins in Poland and then France, the low Countries, and Norway. Megalomania has its limits in terms of military strategy.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 13, 2019 18:24:06 GMT -8
Yes, as I recall, the British did indeed capture an intact Enigma machine at one point.
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Post by timothylane on Sept 13, 2019 18:43:29 GMT -8
Supplies would have been difficult for an Italo-German conquest of Egypt. Of course, they were also a serious problem in Russia. Hanson W. Baldwin once pointed out that most of the supplies for the 1942 campaign went over a single (large) railway bridge at Dnepropetrovsk. There were a lot of people, even in Germany, who favored a concentration in the Mediterranean. The problem was getting the countries they would be working with to go along with them. Until Italy's defeats at Sidi Barrani, Bardia, Tobruk, and Beda Fomm, Mussolini didn't think he needed help and was thus reluctant to allow Germany into the theater.
In addition, Hitler always wanted to conquer Russia and let Germany find its Lebensraum there. (If his model had been India rather than America, he might have made it work.) It's interesting to imagine what would have happened if Molotov had accepted the late 1941 offer to join the Tripartite Pact. Would this have led Hitler to put off invading Russia until Britain was actually defeated?
But they had already lost a lot of time. The Nazis were very oriented toward Will, but if you measure that by how determined they were to win, and determined that by their actions, they could be said to have lacked the Will to win. Perhaps a movie about their actions during the year between the surrender of France and the invasion of Russia could be titled Failure of the Will. Too bad Leni Riefenstahl isn't around anymore to make it.
Incidentally, I just noticed that the spelling checker underlined Leni but not Riefenstahl. Interesting. It also underlined all the North African names, but not Dnepropetrovsk.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 13, 2019 20:30:42 GMT -8
I just remembered that the first Enigma machine the Brits got was actually given to them by the Poles who, I believe, got it during the German invasion of their country.
I truly wonder if the Allies would have won the war without having broken the Enigma codes and Japanese codes (Magic).
I think there can be little doubt that we would not have won the Battle of Midway as we would not have had warning of when and where the Japanese Imperial Navy was going to strike.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 13, 2019 20:37:02 GMT -8
I might have said this before, but I am convinced Hitler was clinically insane by 1941, at the very latest. Between the strychnine and methamphetamine, which Dr. Morrell had been, for years, feeding or injecting into Hitler, it could hardly have been otherwise.
An interesting book which maintains that Hitler was "created" by a psychiatrist who treated him after his being gassed in the First World War is:
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Post by timothylane on Sept 13, 2019 21:10:47 GMT -8
The Poles, who had some good mathematicians, had been reading the Enigma codes. Of course, there were different rotors, and they could be set differently. So taking the machines and the code books (which listed the daily settings) was very useful.
Code-breaking was more useful against Japan than Germany because Japan had to rely on radio throughout its empire. Germany could make use of landlines on the continent. (Those could be intercepted too, as the Forschungsamt did for Goering. They even tapped the scrambler line between Churchill and FDR.)
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Post by artraveler on Sept 13, 2019 21:40:14 GMT -8
California has decided to virtually ban school suspensions
Well, the thinking in CA for stopping suspensions is since the kids don't like school than telling them not to come is a reward, thus making them come is a punishment. Education is not in any way a consideration.
It is a shame CA used to have some of the best schools in the world. I don't think they could compete with any other third world nation now, but then CA is a third world nation so I guess it's OK.
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Post by artraveler on Sept 13, 2019 22:00:20 GMT -8
Great Britain went through two world wars and the collapse of her world empire over a period of about thirty five years. Of course, she still held on to some territories a bit longer, but the Jewel in the Crown, India, said goodbye in 1947. The late 40s were tough on the Brits. The colonies (US) took over military control of the west and then the loss of India in 47 and the Palestine Mandate. Both countries, India and Israel owe a debt of gratitude to the English civil servants who strived, to bring a degree of order to the chaos after the war. Although, I have to say that I am very glad Ghandi was not Jewish. |
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 14, 2019 7:42:18 GMT -8
In the case of the Americans (us!), I think we could have lost the Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet (and Midway Island itself) at the Battle of Midway and still won the war. The Japs needed to find a way to sink Detroit (and Willow Run, etc.). We were out-producing them (and every other country in the war combined, excluding Russia) by fairly early in the war. In 1942, the United States produced 47,836 aircraft, Great Britain 23,672, Germany 15,409, Japan 8861.
I can’t immediately find year-to-year data but total tonnage of naval ships produced in WWII was: United States 33,993,230; United Kingdom 6,378,899; Canada 3,742,100; Other Commonwealth 2,702,943; Italy 1,469,606; Japan 4,152,361. The total ships produced by Japan is almost a rounding error for the United States.
I found this quote online:
And perhaps America’s Unions were not always Communists:
That said, without the will to fight, all the production capacity in the world is useless. Japan’s greatest mistake was Pearl Harbor. It could never recover from that. What the code-breaking did was without a doubt save Midway Island and deal the Japanese Navy a significant physical and mental blow.
Many of the books I’ve read (including those terrific videos by that yute that we talked about) noted how cautious the Japanese had become. They were cautious at Coral Sea even before they got burned at Midway. And they were likely even more cautious after Midway. Whether that was a systemic problem in the Japanese hierarchy or just the need to preserve their ships, I don’t know.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 14, 2019 7:52:52 GMT -8
LOL. I’m not sure I totally understand the Gandhi crack. But I like it. I’m trying to watch this miniseries on Acorn TV called The Far Pavilions. It’s set in 1800s India. Think “A Passage to India.” It’s okay so far. I may criticize “Gentleman Jack” for being a boring period piece at times. But period pieces tend to be a little boring. This one is no different. But damn near every period piece set in India (and particularly anything modern) will show how oppressed the Indians were. They’re always grumbling about something. Oh, thank god we finally threw out those horrible British. Yes, like what the Indians most strived for was to remain a shit-hole country which they were and which they would have continued to be without the British having modernized them. Talk about ungrateful. |
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Post by timothylane on Sept 14, 2019 8:19:29 GMT -8
You can bet they'll never mention the British suppression of suttee and the thugees. (Flashman brought up the former with the Rani of Jhansi, who was a widow. Her answer was "the Rani makes the rules" -- more or less the same thing as "Rank has its privileges." We have that today in the form of leftist immunity.)
It has been noted that the violence during the partition of India exceeded the violence in the partition of Palestine. Maybe that's why artraveler is glad Gandhi wasn't a Jew.
Incidentally, Harry Turtledove gave a convincing demonstration of what would happen if Gandhi's civil disobedience was tried on someone a bit harsher than the British in "The Last Article". In this case India's new military commander is Walter Model, and he doesn't find Gandhi's actions at all amusing. He makes a comparison of their situation with Gandhi to the Romans with Jesus (like most German senior officers, he was a Christian, at least officially). He notes that they have a couple of advantages over the Romans: the Volk and the machine gun.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 14, 2019 8:22:03 GMT -8
I don’t doubt that the drugs he was taking had a tremendous effect on him. We do know that he began to go to political meetings, found the organizations and speakers to be wanting, and discovered he had a gift for making speeches and articulating latent grievances.
As for other aspects of the cult amongst the top Nazis, it’s hard to put ourselves in that place and understand it. One reviewer of that book writes:
For Hitler, hatred of the Jews was obviously a central compelling force. For other top Nazis, it was just the way the wind was blowing. For the German people (and for many of Hitler’s supporters around the world), his rants against Jews were not to be taken seriously. It was just “political rhetoric.” That anti-Semitism was not a deal-breaker for many — including the German people — is, of course, troubling.
But it’s not difficult to develop a scenario of a Hitler who is more Reaganesque — morning in Germany again, if you will — rather than darkly anti-Semitic. Few in the world would have begrudged him humiliating the French. And no one really cared if he attacked Russia. But Hitler’s war on Britain showed without a doubt that he was dangerous in the long run rather than just a continental Napoleon to be waited out.
From some of the books we’ve discussed, we know that Britain was very much teetering on the edge of making peace with Hitler. Had the top Nazis been as cunning as they were evil, I think they could have easily undermined Churchill and others. They could have traded a few bobbles (territories) to Britain, promised a non-aggression pact, etc. Certainly they should have put aside any thoughts of invasion.
Whether Britain took the bait or not, Germany would have been free to put 100% of its energy into the Operation Barbarossa and started it earlier. In that regard, they shouldn’t have waited until February 1943 to call for “total war” from their own population. They needed to be all-in on the project from the get-go. And, again, instead of terrorizing the populations as they advanced, they should have made allies of them. Many of them hated the Russians.
And enormous resources went into not only killing the Jews (who would have been much more useful as allies) but in various pie-in-the-sky projects that were a waste of Germany’s resources. The one smart play was the Blitzkrieg war against France and the low countries. From there it was all downhill.
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Post by timothylane on Sept 14, 2019 8:33:52 GMT -8
The long delay in initiating total war (which Britain did a lot faster) is one example of what I was referring to earlier as the Failure of the Will. Partly this reflects a crucial difference between fascism and communism. The former is intended to harness the nation voluntarily in the service of the party/leader, so it requires making sure the people remain supportive. Total war interferes with that, especially on behalf of a war they thought and hoped he would keep them out of. (Shirer reports the stunned silence in Berlin when Poland was actually invaded instead of Hitler coercing them into giving up the Polish Corridor. But as someone once noted, the Good Soldier Schweik is a Czech hero, not a Polish hero. There would be no more Munichs even if Chamberlain and Daladier had still been willing.)
The failure to at least pretend to something more reasonable is another example. The best way to defeat the Soviet Union was through its people. Even many Russians were reader to strike it down, and most of the non-Russians were eager to be freed. If the Germans had given them puppet governments and waited until they had won to crack down, it might have worked even with Britain in their rear.
Incidentally, during Hitler's last few years in Vienna he made a poor living by selling little water colors. Most of his customers were Jews. I wonder if any of them survived the Holocaust.
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Post by artraveler on Sept 14, 2019 9:07:46 GMT -8
LOL. I’m not sure I totally understand the Gandhi crack. But I like it. Gandhi was a true revolutionary. The English would have blamed the loss of India on the Jews. We had all the problems we needed throwing them out of Israel. If you must have a master the very best are the English, but why have a master? |
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Post by timothylane on Sept 14, 2019 9:59:16 GMT -8
I suspect the Americans are even better masters than the British. We can see this in their treatment of their main acquisitions from Spain in 1898, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Alaska and Hawaii actually became states, and Puerto Rico may yet (though I hope not). Guam, the Northern Marianas, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa have congressional delegates and elected governors. Admittedly, a lot of American Indians might disagree with me, but during World War II they provided very valuable assistance against a foreign enemy who had done nothing to discommode them.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 14, 2019 10:29:56 GMT -8
I might have mentioned this before, but the following is a true story.
Sometime in the mid-1980s, I was on a flight from Singapore to Calcutta. In the seat next to me was an Indian gentleman who turned out to be a lawyer. He had just visited Singapore to prepare for a law-suit between an Indian company and one in Singapore. One of his goals was to determine which Singaporean law firm to use in the case which was to be tried in Singapore.
Having, by that time, lived in Singapore for several years, I had some knowledge about some of the better law partnerships. More specifically, I knew the law firm we used had a lot of political pull because the principal partners were related to the head honcho of Singapore. In fact, one of the partners who had been our company lawyer and had worked for me on a case, had been appointed to the Singaporean Supreme Court, a year or two earlier. I recommended the Indian lawyer contact L & L and go from there.
The Indian lawyer was very thankful for the advice and even invited me for lunch at his home, which was outside Calcutta. The meal I had there was excellent.
In any case, we spoke to each other during the rest of the flight and one of the subjects which came up was the British Raj and relations between Great Britain and India. I remember one particular part of that conversation very clearly. After reading what the Indian said, the reader will understand why I have not forgotten it.
"Fu Zu, it is said that during their rule of India, the British took something like 38% of the Subcontinent's yearly wealth. I say, "pay them 40% and bring them back to run the place again!"
The reader can imagine my surprise at hearing this, but the man was more serious than not. He went on to explain what a screwed up place the country was and how the socialist policies beginning with Nehru were completely useless. One must recall that this was before the Congress Party was weakened and India started changing its economic policies in the 1990s.
My Indian lawyer friend would truly have been happy to have someone back in power who understood management and administration and was even somewhat honest.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 14, 2019 10:37:14 GMT -8
Not only little water colors. He painted a number of larger water colors and there were three Jewish dealers who handled these paintings. They were Morgenstern, Landsberger and Altenberg.
A certain Hanisch, another resident of the men's home where Hitler lived also would go out and hawk his paintings. They had a falling out.
I don't know if the art dealers survived the Holocaust, but the Jewish doctor who treated Hilter's mother for breast cancer was specifically protected by Hitler. I believe his name was Dr. Bloch and he left Austria unharmed. I think he later made the observation that "he was the luckiest Jew in Austria."
Strange to say, but I knew a couple or more of German Jews who did not think that Hitler actually held the rabid hate of Jews which he displayed in public. He like, Goering, seemed to take the attitude of "I determine who is a Jew." Both had Jews around them in the early days of the Nazi Party.
These old German Jews thought that Hitler was a complete cynic and used the age-old ploy of making a scape-goat of some minority in order to focus the general population's anger on something which would unify the nation or group.
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Post by timothylane on Sept 14, 2019 10:59:41 GMT -8
I think there are a lot of African countries that could say much the same. Zimbabwe was much better off under Ian Smith than under Mugabe, and I doubt the latest ruler will be much better. I wonder when South Africa was at its best as a nation (or maybe even as 2 nations and 2 colonies). Nkrumah in Ghana was a disaster, and Nigeria has had only brief intervals of success as a nation. And as for Uganda . . . Botswana may be the only success story among them.
I think I've mentioned the story about a post-colonial African official visiting a post-colonial Asian he had gotten to know. The Asian had a fine mansion and other luxuries, and explained how he could afford it. He suggested that the African look at all the roads and other infrastructure, and said, "Ten percent -- me." Later he returned the visit, and the African had a truly magnificent palace and unbelievably lush lifestyle. So the African suggested the Asian look at all their infrastructure -- which was non-existent -- and said. "One hundred percent -- me." Corruption is bad, but a certain amount can be endured.
Or as Julius Limbane points out in The Wild Geese to a South African mercenary among his rescuers, "We have to forgive you for the past, just as you have to forgive us for the present." Such is the human condition, unfortunately. But there is so much the African rulers need forgiveness for -- and none show any interest in the atonement that must precede it.
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Post by kungfuzu on Sept 14, 2019 11:00:40 GMT -8
Historians have pointed out the stark difference between the jubilation which took place at the outbreak of WWI and the stunned silence which followed the German invasion of Poland.
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