JordanN
Banned
The western front as we know it wouldn't exist in any comparable way without the US Army and production capacity.
So no.
So why did Hitler fail to conquer Britain? Or why did he lose badly in Africa?
The western front as we know it wouldn't exist in any comparable way without the US Army and production capacity.
So no.
It kind of could have gone either way. ]If US wasn't in theater Hitler may have actually been able to beat the soviets into submission. Either way US was a big part of why all of Europe not taken over by either Russians or Germans.
Thats an FPS game about a war that isn't that well known, of course they would try appealing to the biggest common market.Like how we just had a WW1 game where France wasn't even a playable nation (only to return as fucking DLC), but the U.S which only played a role in the war for 1 year was made front and center.
He abandoned landing plans after the battle of Britain when the RAF asserted Air Superiority, we weren't an offensive force but defensive from the West. Africa would be best answered by someone else not really my strength tbh.So why did Hitler fail to conquer Britain? Or Why did he lose badly in Africa?
That the USSR did most of the heavy lifting and then decades of cultural propaganda made everyone think the US was the one hero.
So why did Hitler fail to conquer Britain? Or why did he lose badly in Africa?
As an American I was always taught the war could be won without us being involved, but we jumped in to put it over the top. If I'm wrong, someone educate me lol.
Did not "win" WW2 like most Americans think, the Soviet Union did if anybody.
So why did Hitler fail to conquer Britain??
Or why did he lose badly in Africa
While it is true "peace feelers" were put out at multiple points, there was a vicious split between those who wanted peace and the hardcore hawks until literally the very end.
To discount that part of it, does a major disservice to the argument.
Ya...But that discounts the people. They by all reports were tired of war. But the American military was protraying them as mindless savages willing to die man woman and child. I firmly believe that wasn't true. I also believe the Hawks were in the minority and didn't include the emperor. America wanted to test it's shiny new weapon..Both types, and wanted the world to know about it. Japan was largely raised to the ground at that point. Its navy decimated. A navy blockade was all that was needed. Truman wanted to wave his new bomb around.While it is true "peace feelers" were put out at multiple points, there was a vicious split between those who wanted peace and the hardcore hawks until literally the very end.
To discount that part of it, does a major disservice to the argument.
So why did Hitler fail to conquer Britain? Or why did he lose badly in Africa?
Vital ally, one of the big three (Soviet Union, Britain, USA)
Did not "win" WW2 like most Americans think, the Soviet Union did if anybody.
Vital in supplying munitions and supplies to Allied forces to keep on fighting the Nazis, came in later in the war and helped turn the tide which eventually ended the war.
Nuclear bombs were unnecessary, Japan were near defeat.
Ya...But that discounts the people. They by all reports were tired of war. But the American military was protraying them as mindless savages willing to die man woman and child. I firmly believe that wasn't true. I also believe the Hawks were in the minority and didn't include the emperor. America wanted to test it's shiny new weapon..Both types, and wanted the world to know about it. Japan was largely raised to the ground at that point. Its navy decimated. A navy blockade was all that was needed. Truman wanted to wave his new bomb around.
Nagasaki was not the primary target of the 2nd bomb, it was a major screw up. "The story of ww2" does a great job telling its story and how royalty messed up that 2nd bombing mission was. The whole crew should have been court marshaled for not following orders and breaking several major rules set for before the flight (like no radar bombing)British. The US didn't stop us from speaking German. The US did get us out of stalemate in the middle of France though. The US would have been fighting an expensive and dangerous campaign but for the Eastern front and most likely would not have won Europe had it not been for Russia.
The A-Bombs I'm mixed about. A display of force was needed to stop the ridiculous cult of personality starving out the civilian population to extinction. For the Americans, an unseen bomb helped repel Soviet advance in the North of Japan. Hiroshima was...barely appropriate for a target, Nagasaki wasn't necessary at all.
Japan got off exceptionally easy, and the Chinese got screwed over by a nominal ally. I'd be pissed too if I was Chinese and those behind my Holocaust were spared the rope. The Japanese government has little right to play the victim and certainly shouldn't feel offended by South Korean comfort women statues; you paying them a few yen doesn't qualify their enslavement. Survivors of the a-bomb and those that were affected should be allowed to seek reparations.
Ya...But that discounts the people. They by all reports were tired of war. But the American military was protraying them as mindless savages willing to die man woman and child. I firmly believe that wasn't true. I also believe the Hawks were in the minority and didn't include the emperor. America wanted to test it's shiny new weapon..Both types, and wanted the world to know about it. Japan was largely raised to the ground at that point. Its navy decimated. A navy blockade was all that was needed. Truman wanted to wave his new bomb around.
America didn't want it. They ran the numbers. Invading Japan for Operation Downfall was conservatively estimated to kill around a million US Troops alone. Even more Japanese soldiers and civilians.
For comparison, 407,000 US Soldiers died in WWII.
Killing 225,000 people in the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings was vastly more humane.
Nagasaki was not the primary target of the 2nd bomb, it was a major screw up. "The story of ww2" does a great job telling its story and how royalty messed up that 2nd bombing mission was. The whole crew should have been court marshaled for not following orders and breaking several major rules set for before the flight (like no radar bombing)
Hitler was a weird Anglophile supposedly, don't know how much the media here overstates that though.Britain was an interesting case. Hitler actually believed that after the fall of France, Britain would join with Germany in fighting the Russians. This is mind-boggling, but Hitler was convinced of it.
Hitler was unable to build a traditional Navy during his militarization, so a traditional amphibious strike was unavailable. This meant the blitzkrieg, the bread and butter of German WW2 military victories, was unavailable. American money and supplies poured into Britain during the Battle of Britain, and the British made several key advances in air technology (radar among others) that prevented the Germans from achieving air superiority.
The African campaign was a bumbling mess for the Americans at first. They were badly disorganized, and not ready for a war at all, let alone a war in a desert. Eventually, through a combination of the right generals, a redistribution of troops and supplies to the Russian front, and Enigma intercepts, the Allies were able to succeed in Africa.
Fair summary I think.The Allies won the war, anyone who says a specific nation won seemingly has an agenda.
Russian Armies would have starved if not for the U.S. , Germany might never have needed to unconditionally surrender if not for the U.S.S.R. Europe would have been dominated by Germany if not for the British.
I believe my town was the primary target, but they altered course due to cloudy weather
For example, in the beginning of 1942, Western tanks fully replenished Soviet losses, and exceeded them by three times. About 15 percent of the aircraft used by Soviet air forces were supplied by Allies, including the Airacobra fighter and Boston bomber. The Allies supplied 15,000 state-of-the-art machines at that time; for example, famous Soviet ace Alexander Pokryshkin flew Airacobra, as did the rest of his squadron. He shot down 59 enemy aircraft, and 48 of them were thanks to American military equipment.
One of the main areas of cooperation was aviation fuel. The USSR could not produce gasoline with high octane. However, it was this fuel that was used by the equipment supplied by the Allies. In addition, the Achilles heel of the Soviet Army was communication and transport. The Soviet industry simply could not meet the demand either in number or in quality.
For example, the army lost 58 percent of its vehicles in 1941 alone. To recover these losses, the Allies supplied more than 400,000 vehicles, mainly trucks, to the USSR.
You're talking about the man who is the living embodiment of god on earth. Japanese society especially at that time was based around him. The Hawks wouldnt have gotten far with a coup. The reason the didn't want to surrender was so the emperor wouldnt lose face, but you're saying they would have deposed him?? Unlikely and the citizenry wouldn't have stood for it.Battle of Okinawa
Of the 117,000 Japanese troops defending Okinawa, 94 percent died.
U.S. Army records from the planning phase of the operation make the assumption that Okinawa was home to about 300,000 civilians. According to various estimates, between one tenth and one third of them died during the battle
The emperor had to break the tie to surrender...
Edit: And then had to survive a coup attempt
I used to think this was true. America actually pretty much did win WWII. The Soviet Union's contribution was useful, but America cutting off Germany's oil supply and the successful daylight bombing raids was the key to their defeat and collapse. The Pacific theatre was predominantly a naval thing, and almost entirely US-led.
The lend-lease program was a major factor in the Soviet Union's ability to survive the German onslaught.
The Soviet contribution to WWII is a heck of a lot less than people state, despite the massive loss of life that occurred on both sides in that arena. Germany lost because they lost the infrastructure, and that was heavily thanks to US Bombing. Without the US, the tide doesn't turn. Without the Soviet union, WWII just takes a couple years longer.
"The Soviets did the most in WWII" is one of those statements that you get from people who are just starting to learn about a topic and think they know everything.
One thing to keep in mind about the nukes is that the world in 1943 really had no way to really conceptualize atomic weapons. Nowadays everyone knows from movies and TV that nukes are really, really, really bad but in the 1940s bombs meant waves and waves of regular ordnance, very destructive yes but you are talking maybe a few hundred or thousand people dying over an entire day of bombing. The idea of killing 100,000 people in a few seconds would just be completely inconceivable.
So yeah, it was probably very much a "capability" demonstration, not just to Japan but to the rest of the world the destructive power of this new weapon.
The scary thing is the next big tech advance in weapons is probably going to require a similar demonstration to show the world what the next big power is capable of. Can you really conceptualize a bioweapon that would only kill males between the ages of 12-40 or sterilizes all the females in an area? Or a micro singularity weapon that completely annihilates every living thing in a 1000 kilometer radius? I wonder how scary the future is gonna be sometimes.
Approximately 15.8 square miles (4,090 ha) of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died
You're talking about the man who is the living embodiment of god on earth. Japanese society especially at that time was based around him. The Hawks wouldnt have gotten far with a coup. The reason the didn't want to surrender was so the emperor wouldnt lose face, but you're saying they would have deposed him?? Unlikely and the citizenry wouldn't have stood for it.
Unless something is significantly altered I see MAD reigning. Even if you go use some still to be imagine bio weapon that can inflict army aged deathblow you still gotta deal with a dead man's switch of nukes to your major cities.One thing to keep in mind about the nukes is that the world in 1943 really had no way to really conceptualize atomic weapons. Nowadays everyone knows from movies and TV that nukes are really, really, really bad but in the 1940s bombs meant waves and waves of regular ordnance, very destructive yes but you are talking maybe a few hundred or thousand people dying over an entire day of bombing. The idea of killing 100,000 people in a few seconds would just be completely inconceivable.
So yeah, it was probably very much a "capability" demonstration, not just to Japan but to the rest of the world the destructive power of this new weapon.
The scary thing is the next big tech advance in weapons is probably going to require a similar demonstration to show the world what the next big power is capable of. Can you really conceptualize a bioweapon that would only kill males between the ages of 12-40 or sterilizes all the females in an area? Or a micro singularity weapon that completely annihilates every living thing in a 1000 kilometer radius? I wonder how scary the future is gonna be sometimes.
One thing to keep in mind about the nukes is that the world in 1943 really had no way to really conceptualize atomic weapons. Nowadays everyone knows from movies and TV that nukes are really, really, really bad but in the 1940s bombs meant waves and waves of regular ordnance, very destructive yes but you are talking maybe a few hundred or thousand people dying over an entire day of bombing. The idea of killing 100,000 people in a few seconds would just be completely inconceivable.
You're talking about the man who is the living embodiment of god on earth. Japanese society especially at that time was based around him. The Hawks wouldnt have gotten far with a coup. The reason the didn't want to surrender was so the emperor wouldnt lose face, but you're saying they would have deposed him?? Unlikely and the citizenry wouldn't have stood for it.
A naval blockade was all that was needed.. but the Americans needed to show the Soviets their new weapon.
As a Canadian, I think the US should've been there day 1, and I also consider the atomic bombs to be a war crime.
1946+ borders includes Polish military figures with the Soviet ones. This is amazingly unfair, as when Germany invaded Poland, so did the USSR. They then split the country together.
Also, Soviet losses were so high because Stalin had no regard for the life of his people. Early in the war, his no surrender policy led to hundreds of thousands more casualties than necessary. Late in the war, his mad rush to beat the Americans to Berlin (despite Eisenhower deliberately allow the Soviets to get there first) also led to far more casualties than necessary.
Not saying the Soviets didn't make tremendous sacrifices. They absolutely did, and they faced the brunt of the Wehrmacht at its height, unlike the other Allies after Normandy. But casualties only tell part of the story.
So yeah, it was probably very much a "capability" demonstration, not just to Japan but to the rest of the world the destructive power of this new weapon.
Canadian..
USA - Supported the Allies with Lend-Lease. Responsible for defeating the Japanese in the Pacific and spear-headed the Allied offensive on the Western Front (Italy and Normandy).
Hadn't heard of that but it's seems it was a small faction of the military and war ministry with little support outside that, including the military leadership, the government or the Emperor. But yes this was after the bombs as well. But I think a naval blockade cutting them off completely and continued bombing would have accomplished this by the end of 1945, maybe 1946. Their country was decimated with no way to strike back at off shore targets.The Hawks actually did attempt a coup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident
Thank God it didn't succeed.
Why should we have been there day one?
USA here. I recently watched a Hiroshima documentary that suggested the atomic bomb was being built to be used on Germany, but was instead used as a show of force against the Japanese. They argue that the whole millions of lives saved was an excuse to drop it.
The USSR doesn't get enough credit for their role in WW2. They made it a hell of a lot easier for the allies in the Eastern front.
At least Germany recognizes their history while we got states still wishing they were in the Confederacy.