WWII:What if....

[Guest Admiral_Antilles]

Perhaps Bf 1942 contributed a little

 

I figured that much. Glad you enjoy it, I like to watch the History Channel a lot. That's about how far my knowledge goes. I am interested in battle strategies and such, not on the political factors.

[ADarkJedi44]

Ah just with the history channel, heh me too but books are so much better.

Congrats on 1400 btw.

[Guest Admiral_Antilles]

I agreem I love to read. But I never know of good books on WW2 so I just watch the History Channel. Plus I am finishing the Wheel of Time series right now, on book 10. Then going to read War and Peace and Illiad. Then whatever else that comes out. I hope they make some post-NJO books.

[Trejiuvanat]

History Channel focuses too much (emphasis on too) on the U.S. American Point of View of everything, which is why I don't like it, books are better more varied, try the Net, not all the pages consist of dorky threads filled with Padadweebs... And political factors thend to be far more interesting and far more far-reaching!

 

And again, spammers get a chat, or an IM, or that IRC stuff!

[ADarkJedi44]

You could always try your local bookstore. I'd imagine any decent bookstore would have a section for military history....

[Guest Admiral_Antilles]

And again, spammers get a chat, or an IM, or that IRC stuff!

 

I am now, Trej. Got on today for a matter of fact. And I am sincerely trying to cut back on "spamming" I swear.

[ADarkJedi44]

Yes we're trying to avoid spamming. Therefore we must try not to be on at the same time.

Anyone back to the matter at hand...WWII

[Guest Admiral_Antilles]

Well now lets talk about what if Germany actually invaded England. What would have happened? Where would they have beached? Lets talk peeps!

[ADarkJedi44]

They could not have invaded England, at least in the conditions at the end of the Battle of Britain. Hitler's blunderings insured that. They needed to gain air superiority, but he insisted on bombing London. Therefore the RAF and Royal navy would have made short work of any invasion force. Also If Hitler had not left the job of destroying the British at Dunkirk solely to the Luftwaffe, Britain's army may have been destroyed....

[Guest Admiral_Antilles]

SO if you were in command of Germany's armies how would you go about invading Britain, Darky?

[ADarkJedi44]

Destroying the British army at Dunkirk would have been nice....If I could have done that, then gained complete aerial superity and destroy the Royal Navy, it wouldn't be that Difficult, although landing craft would have been a problem.

But that would leave the Russians on the Eastern front....

[Ivo]

The problem also was that Hitler was going to invaded the USSR regardless, to do so he had to invade before the soviet army had time to recover from the purges of the officer corp in the 1930, the officers that were purge were visionaries in the art of modern warfare they were the pioneers of in the use airborne troops way before any of the armies in the west were even thinking about it.

 

As for if the germans invaded England they would have needed to have pretty much followed the British army from Dunkirk and how quickly they could establish airfields on the English mainlain.

[Jahled]

Destroying the British army at Dunkirk would have been nice....If I could have done that, then gained complete aerial superity and destroy the Royal Navy, it wouldn't be that Difficult, although landing craft would have been a problem.

But that would leave the Russians on the Eastern front....

 

Speaking nonsense this is.

 

The 'British Army' at Dunkirk was an expeditionary force sent to France in 1939, and wasn't exlusively British at the time of the evacuation. Their were soldiers from the occupied nations all over Europe present. It wasn't even a British Army.

 

The British Navy ruled the waves. With the help of the the United States supplying the UK with destroyers on a lease aggreement, the Royal Navy overcame everything the Germans through at us, including the destruction of 800 u-boats. The German Navy was largly dismantled to provide coastal defense batteries in Norway following one of Hitler's 'enlightened' desisions.

 

The German Blitzkrieg across Europe owed it's success to General Heinz Guderian, who was without doubt the finest exponent of armoured warfare the 20th century has produced; his operations terrified his own commanders! Again, Hitler screwed up by retiring him following a tactical withdrawl in 1942. It could be argued that his oversight was using 60-ton tanks. They needed a hell of a lot of petrol.

 

Hence Germany's eventual downfall.

[teukros]

Nah invading Britain was never an option (and if Hitler had ordered SeaLion to go ahead, Stalin would have jumped for joy).

 

Surrounding Britain with U-boats and mines and starving it into a premature armistice, on the other hand... *shudder*

 

- - -

 

Yesterday I saw an episode of "Sworn to Secrecy" called "Japan: The Invasion That Never Was" on the History Channel. It was quite disturbing. In 1945 the Japanese were playing for time, getting ready for Operations Olympic and Coronet.

 

Operation Olympic would have been more than twice the size of the D-Day landings and it would have been the most complex operation in the history of warfare, with troop ships coming from as far away as Hawaii.

 

In August 1945, there were 900,000 Japanese soldiers on Kyushu, waiting for us. In addition, the entire civilian population would have been mobilized against us.

 

In the Battle of the Philippines (according to the program) one in six Kamikazes hit one of our ships. In the Battle of Okinawa we did a lot better - only one in nine Kamikazes caused any damage.

 

The Japanese had 5000 Kamikaze planes stockpiled on Kyushu - and 5500 on the main island.

 

 

Their main targets in Olympic and Coronet would have been relatively soft targets such as hospital ships and troop transports.

 

Also, they were organizing civilian volunteers to strap explosives to their bodies and approach allied troops or vehicles and blow themselves up.

 

Besides the Kamikaze planes they also had piloted torpedoes, piloted rockets, Kamikaze midget submarines, Kamikaze scuba divers etc. An entire culture of suicide attacks was developing according to the program.

 

In addition, they were stockpiling vast quantities of poison gas and biotoxins which they would use against us (as they had been doing in China since 1937). We were preparing to use poison gas as well... not only tactically, but possibly even against cities.

 

And if we had invaded, there is no question at all that we would have used any atomic bombs which we had (both tactically and against cities). And we were planning to build them as fast as possible (I recall that in the book Day One we thought it would take 50 atom bombs to "defeat" Japan).

 

After we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the shock of it convinced Hirohito to order the war to end. He didn't order a surrender... he just ordered the fighting to stop. We sure weren't going to quibble about semantics. BUT some pro-war officers launched a coup against the Emperor which, thank God, was defeated.

 

If they had been successful, this is my totally unscientific guesstimate of the eventual toll:

 

1 to 2 million Americans DEAD

.5 to 1 million Russians DEAD

Equal numbers of Americans and Russians with radiation related disorders, including cancer and leukemia

10 to 40 (???) million Japanese DEAD

The complete destruction of Japan's economy and industrial infrastructure

Russian Troops in occupation of Hokkaido, North Honshu, probably Greece, and possibly Italy as well.

[ADarkJedi44]

Japan also had experimental jet fighter which might have been used against an invasion force to great sucess perhaps. How do you use an atomic bomb "tactically"? Anyways if Japan would have been invaded, who knows what would have happened? We'll have to assume nukes weren't used to destroy almost every city. Kamikazes would have killed thousands. Tens of thousands would have been killed from the bottomless Japenese pool of soldiers.

Millions of civillians of every age would have attack American soldiers, most likely with bambo spears. Hundreds of kamikaze subs and torpedoes would have sunk hospital ships, ammunition ships and troop ships. Under the wait of ten thousand kamikazes, experimental jets, kamikaze torpedoes, kamikaze rockets and kamikaze subs, who knows what would have remained of the invasion force?

Hell Japan could have used biological weapons against LA and San fransisco. They had submarine aircraft carriers, at that point they could use their biological weapons against the major cities of the west coast. In the end we probably would have won, but Japan might have never recovered. Tens of millions would have died defending their Emperor.

In the ends of millions of casulties might have been taken among the soldiers and sailors. Large amounts of civillians in LA and San Fransisco could have died...

[teukros]

How do you use an atomic bomb "tactically"?

 

MacArthur wanted to use atom bombs during the landings. Our own troops would have been moving through contaminated areas and breathing fallout.

[ADarkJedi44]

True, but for the purposes you stated that would be a major blunder. Our troops would take huge casulties....

[teukros]

Yes we know that now but they didn't know it prior to August 6 1945.