Was World War 2 really decided in just 5 minutes?

[Paul M. Weir]

Some recent comments I have read about Truman seem to indicate that he was a bit of a wuss generally in his prior life. There might be some truth that he felt he had to "prove his manhood" in dealing with Stalin and may have accelerated the start of the Cold War. The Soviets would have reacted by reverting to thinking the West just wanted the Nazis and Soviets to gut each other and they could then march in over the cooling bodies. Despite that, I'm still inclined to put 80% or more of the US factors to a desire to avoid a very bloody invasion.

 

[Paul M. Weir]

I think many misinterpret Clauswitz here. My inference from his work is that when one government desires a resource that another government has, and it feels that diplomatic methods of acquisition of that resource have eitther run their course or will no longer suffice to provide it, then activating the military might to take that resource from the other country(ies) occurs. (Not a subjugation of that country's government or its people- that is not the primary aim of war - according to Clauswitz.) So it is a continuation of politics, not as much as it is what occurs once political and diplomatic means of attaining the desired resource(s) fails. The epitome would be the Imperial Japanese war plan in December of 1941, taking by military force what diplomacy can no longer achieve (rubber, tin, steel, oil, etc).

My point was simply an extension of that line, that you don't want to conduct a war in a way that negates or poisons your ultimate political aims if you can avoid it. In the US's case it was to retain it's existing holdings and remove a threat to world peace. To avoid a repetition of war, which WW2 was, you have to consider greater involvement on the world stage, unlike the '20s and '30s and that also means that you have to avoid the casualties that your domestic audience would retreat from.

 

[Bob Walters]

Some recent comments I have read about Truman seem to indicate that he was a bit of a wuss generally in his prior life. There might be some truth that he felt he had to "prove his manhood" in dealing with Stalin and may have accelerated the start of the Cold War. The Soviets would have reacted by reverting to thinking the West just wanted the Nazis and Soviets to gut each other and they could then march in over the cooling bodies. Despite that, I'm still inclined to put 80% or more of the US factors to a desire to avoid a very bloody invasion.

The west (or at least Churchill) very much wanted the Soviets and the Germans to gut each other. Indeed, there were many in the US at that time that felt that way especially after Roosevelt died.

 

[Vinnie]

It is hard for us to understand the thinking of leaders in the 1930s as we know too much od what transpired in the long term. Hitler was seen as more democratic than Franco yet who could have predicted the mass slaughter he would cause? The rhetoric he expounded was fairly common in most western countries at the time. Likewise, the attraction of communism in certain countries was strong and not poisoned by the example of failure that we know about. Add to this, the real possibility of change both systems represented to populaces that were locked into systems that they felt were stifling and unfair. Look to the example of Vietnam or certain South American countries for similar examples that subsited until more recently. Often a political system maintains itself far lomnger than is useful or heal;thy.
Given this background, it is hard for us to second guess the intentions of the leaders of the time.
Fir my part, although Truman knew the war was "won" he could not sanction the loss of life that would likely have happened if an invasion was given the go ahead.
I always find it odd that there is so much respect given to those leaders who fought on despite the defeat being inevitable (Germany, Japan) and the opprobrium piled on those leaders who bowed to the inevitable (France, Italy etc.).

 

[witchbottles]

... Indeed, there were many in the US at that time that felt that way especially after Roosevelt died.

That is a broad brush stroke indeed. Can you support it with rigorous-content sources? I can state with an alacrity that Morrison and SLA Marshall, both of whom lived at that time, held high-level posts during that period and afterward, and penned their experiences during and after that period for posterity - present many examples that disagree with that statement as being a commonplace belief within the hierarchy of the War Department. I do not dispute one iota Churchill had no love for any Communist. He hated them in the 1920's, he did not change his tune in the 40's or 50's. But to paint Truman, his administration, and the high-level government official at the War and State Departments in a similar vein is not a supportable argument, IMO. After 1951, things changed and such a case could be made, but that is not the period we are discussing, the CPVA intervention in Korea had not yet occurred, and Truman had successfully held Stalin's toes to the fire at Potsdam- kindling a Cold War, (unknowingly, really, given the weight of evidence in post-meeting analysis of primary sources), to get them into the Pacific War as they had agreed.

 

[Bob Walters]

That is a broad brush stroke indeed. Can you support it with rigorous-content sources? I can state with an alacrity that Morrison and SLA Marshall, both of whom lived at that time, held high-level posts during that period and afterward, and penned their experiences during and after that period for posterity - present many examples that disagree with that statement as being a commonplace belief within the hierarchy of the War Department. I do not dispute one iota Churchill had no love for any Communist. He hated them in the 1920's, he did not change his tune in the 40's or 50's. But to paint Truman, his administration, and the high-level government official at the War and State Departments in a similar vein is not a supportable argument, IMO. After 1951, things changed and such a case could be made, but that is not the period we are discussing, the CPVA intervention in Korea had not yet occurred, and Truman had successfully held Stalin's toes to the fire at Potsdam- kindling a Cold War, (unknowingly, really, given the weight of evidence in post-meeting analysis of primary sources), to get them into the Pacific War as they had agreed.

Here is a bit more detail. I'll have to hunt stuff up to provide more but this gets it started:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1985/08/04/did-america-have-to-drop-the-bombnot-to-end-the-war-but-truman-wanted-to-intimidate-russia/46105dff-8594-4f6c-b6d7-ef1b6cb6530d/?utm_term=.c37c7f17f372

 

[Kenneth P. Katz]

The Axis lost the war in 1941, when they committed the astronomically, galactically stupid mistakes of bringing first the USSR and then the USA into the war as enemies, and doing it in such a way that the USSR and USA were committed to total war for complete victory.

I can't see how a moderate extension of Japan's success could affect the ETO. Whether it was at Midway or 6 months to a year later the Japanese were simply doomed. The only question was when and what cost. They simply could not maintain a winning naval force for too long.

First the US could utterly outproduce them both in ships and aircraft. No ifs, buts or maybes about that. Not only could they not produce the numbers, they had great difficulty in getting the next generation of aircraft into service. The A7M Reppú, the A6M Zero replacement took 4 years to develop, with only about 9 produced. Japan produced some excellent designs but the weak point of Japanese aviation was a lack of sufficiently powerful and reliable engines. As things got tighter (partly due to the US submarine campaign biting once their scandalous torpedo problem was fixed), quality and durability plummeted. For example the otherwise excellent Ki-84 Hayate had a habit of shearing off landing gear on landing.

Secondly they had an insufficient aircrew training regime. Their pre-war scheme produced excellent pilots, but their policy washed out many who, though not excellent, would likely have made pretty good pilots. They don't seemed to have rotated experienced pilots back to train the next tranches. In contrast the US produced pilots like out of a factory and once the US had some air war experience many were rotated back to training units to pass on their real life lessons. Japanese pilot quality dived and by '44 you had the Great Marinas Turkey Shoot as a result.

The Japanese were simply fucked, dead men walking, once the US got into it's stride. Taking on the US was the greatest strategic overreach and moronic stupidity of the last hundred plus years that I can think of.

As for the ETO, barring an emotional collapse of Stalin, there was little chance that the USSR would collapse and barring that the Germans were just buggering themselves with Barbarossa. Whether it was 22-Jun-41 when Barbarossa started, 31-Oct-41 when Typhoon was paused or 25-Dec-41 when the main Soviet Moscow counter offensive started, by the end of '41 the Germans had been turned back for good, the first time in the war. While it would not be until Bagration in '44 that the Barbarossa gains would be erased, the next year's offensive (Fall Blau) gains were erased by early '43. IE '42 gained the Germans absolutely nothing. So the turning point in the ETO was the end of '41 at the latest.

 

[Paul M. Weir]

The Axis lost the war in 1941, when they committed the astronomically, galactically stupid mistakes of bringing first the USSR and then the USA into the war as enemies, and doing it in such a way that the USSR and USA were committed to total war for complete victory.

As I have said in other threads and posts, I have gone over the years of my interest in history from the Germans having some slight chance and the Japanese practically none, to they must both have been utterly insane. It's nice to see another agree with me to the same degree and share the same recognition of the utter magnitude of stupidity,

It is hard for us to understand the thinking of leaders in the 1930s as we know too much od what transpired in the long term.
<snip>
Given this background, it is hard for us to second guess the intentions of the leaders of the time.
Fir my part, although Truman knew the war was "won" he could not sanction the loss of life that would likely have happened if an invasion was given the go ahead.
I always find it odd that there is so much respect given to those leaders who fought on despite the defeat being inevitable (Germany, Japan) and the opprobrium piled on those leaders who bowed to the inevitable (France, Italy etc.).

This I agree with, try as much as we can, we are not living amongst a significant (potential) threat to our homelands, undergoing rationing, daily bombing and for most of our Western countries regularly attending funerals, so we can only imagine a taste, no more than a taste, of the then mindset. Some will talk about Al-Quida or ISIS, but they are nothing compared to the Axis in WW2. In terms of Western casualties they are dwarfed by just road traffic deaths in the West alone. In the Middle East their damage is enormous, but while we know about it, we don't experience it ourselves. Combine that with what we know now about what was not known then should make us very cautious about judgement.

There are specific policies that were even then known to be dubious. An example is Harris's fetish with area bombing. That was one of the few available responses to Germany in the first half of the war but by '44 at least was seen to being ... inadequate. Trying to get him to support Overlord seemed to have been as hard as pulling teeth and whatever about '39-'43, from '44+ was not the best uses of resources, indeed might have slightly delayed victory. Something like that I feel is a legitimate target of today's criticism, but there is still a lot that only hindsight reveals to be less than optimal or simply wrong and understanding is due in those cases.

 

[witchbottles]

Here is a bit more detail. I'll have to hunt stuff up to provide more but this gets it started:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1985/08/04/did-america-have-to-drop-the-bombnot-to-end-the-war-but-truman-wanted-to-intimidate-russia/46105dff-8594-4f6c-b6d7-ef1b6cb6530d/?utm_term=.c37c7f17f372

an interesting op-ed piece in a newspaper by the author of the work being cited. I would expect him to cite and write about his work in such a manner, he is the author. It sounds like an interesting book, albeit rather dated with a 1985 revision date. There are quite a few more papers now declassified than existed in 1985. His main contention seems to be that Byrnes is documented well as being very anti-Stalin (not anti-Communist - a distinction), and that by inference, if Byrnes was in fact as close of an advisor to Truman as Hopkins was to FDR, then Truman was aware, and at least tacitly, in agreement with an anti-Stalinist view. Further, the author infers that this, not any other, was the only overreaching factor that made up Truman's mind to drop the bomb.

Again, and you made the same general inference, that is quite a leap from the given primary sources that exist in abundance of this era (1945-1947 Truman Administration's Foreign and war-making policies). Finally, it is notable that the author was published by Pluto Press, not any academic publishing firm (know one's sources) - "...An independent publisher of radical, left‐wing non‐fiction books. Established in 1969, we are one of the oldest radical publishing houses in the UK..." (From their own website). Not a shining example of non-partisan factual historical examination of primary sources available.

So it makes sense to me that the "Potomac Pravda" would run this piece. It appears at first pass (a coarse skimming of the Table of Contents and major section thesis statements), that the author here is far more interested in garnering support to a rally cry that Truman himself was a staunch anti-communist and anti-Stalinist when he was chosen as a VP candidate, far before his ever becoming President by Constitutional succession. So the author builds a case to support that thesis - and uses the spectre of the A-bomb to assist him in doing so.

I may be completely mis-reading the author's intent - but I doubt it. Modern historians agree that the A-bomb detonations greatly affected the USSR's choices from August 6th, 1945 on, in both the domestic and foreign spectrums. They do not generally agree that Truman himself was a staunch anti-Stalinist or anti-Communist as early as the Yalta conference, if not before (which is a thesis in the author's book presented here).

Here's some good sources to examine in this regard, and in the inference being made by the author of that work:

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=header&id=FRUS.FRUS1945

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=header&id=FRUS.FRUS1945Berlinv01

JOURNAL ARTICLE
Stigmatizing the Bomb: Origins of the Nuclear Taboo
Nina Tannenwald
International Security
Vol. 29, No. 4 (Spring, 2005), pp. 5-49
Published by: The MIT Press

Reiterated Commemoration: Hiroshima as National Trauma
Hiro Saito
Sociological Theory
Vol. 24, No. 4 (Dec., 2006), pp. 353-376
Published by: American Sociological Association


JOURNAL ARTICLE
GREAT BRITAIN, THE UNITED STATES, AND CONSULTATION OVER USE OF THE ATOMIC BOMB, 1950—1954
MATTHEW JONES
The Historical Journal
Vol. 54, No. 3 (SEPTEMBER 2011), pp. 797-828
Published by: Cambridge University Press

An Astonishing Sixty Years: The Legacy of Hiroshima
Thomas C. Schelling
The American Economic Review
Vol. 96, No. 4 (Sep., 2006), pp. 929-937
Published by: American Economic Association

The Atomic Secret in Red Hands? American Suspicions of Theoretical Physicists During the Early Cold War
David Kaiser
Representations
Vol. 90, No. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 28-60
Published by: University of California Press

The Winning Weapon?: Rethinking Nuclear Weapons in Light of Hiroshima
Ward Wilson
International Security
Vol. 31, No. 4 (Spring, 2007), pp. 162-179
Published by: The MIT Press

“An Effective Instrument Of Peace”: Scientific Cooperation As An Instrument Of U.S. Foreign Policy, 1938–1950
Clark A. Miller
Osiris
Vol. 21, No. 1, Global Power Knowledge:Science and Technology in International Affairs (2006), pp. 133-160
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society

Recent Cold War Studies
Ronn Pineo
The History Teacher
Vol. 37, No. 1, Special Feature Issue: Environmental History and National History Day 2003 Prize Essays (Nov., 2003), pp. 79-86
Published by: Society for History Education

The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb
SUBTITLE
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: August 1945
AUTHOR
Dennis D. Wainstock
PUBLISHER
Enigma Books
PRINT PUB DATE
2011-02-08

The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War
AUTHORS
Campbell Craig
and Sergey S Radchenko
PUBLISHER
Yale University Press
PRINT PUB DATE
2008-09-09

A Companion to Harry S. Truman
SERIES
Wiley Blackwell Companions to American History Ser.
VOLUME
67
EDITION
1
EDITOR
Daniel S. Margolies
PUBLISHER
John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
PRINT PUB DATE
2012-07-30

Nuclear Express
SUBTITLE
A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation
AUTHORS
Thomas C. Reed
and Danny B. Stillman
PUBLISHER
Zenith Press
PRINT PUB DATE
2010-11-10


This last one is well worth paying attention to- it completely contravenes with the sup[positions and inferences made in the cited work oyu provided in the link:

Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists
AUTHOR
Robert H. Ferrell
PUBLISHER
University of Missouri Press
PRINT PUB DATE
2006-05-01

and it was published some 20 years later.

You will notice these references are current (post 2001 or later), verified as peer-reviewed and accepted in publication, and remain pretty steadfast that Truman was, if anything, cowed by Stalin in the beginning of their own relations, in spite of the repeated work of the military of the West and our British allies working to illustrate to him that he must toe the line with Stalin, for the man only respects those NOT willing to make concessions.

That, IMO, makes a solid support for the argument that Truman chose to use the A-bomb, in part, to illustrate a conviction to not make concessions to the Soviets. But it still remains an undefendable position in the entirety of source materials available to stat this was either the major, or the only reason for the bomb drop. Finally, Byrnes is not the "high-ranking leaders of the US at the time". He is and remains, only a single man, and I do agree , there is sufficient evidence to illustrate Byrnes was anti-Stalinist in his views. (IMO of course). The SecState, however, (Byrnes) was bypassed time and again by Truman in dealing with communism and the Soviets - perhaps because Truman was aware of, and did not necessarily agree with, Byrnes' views of Stalin. (that would be a supposition I could see and defend, given the source materials I see available).

KRL, Jon H

 

[Bob Walters]

an interesting op-ed piece in a newspaper by the author of the work being cited. I would expect him to cite and write about his work in such a manner, he is the author. It sounds like an interesting book, albeit rather dated with a 1985 revision date. There are quite a few more papers now declassified than existed in 1985. His main contention seems to be that Byrnes is documented well as being very anti-Stalin (not anti-Communist - a distinction), and that by inference, if Byrnes was in fact as close of an advisor to Truman as Hopkins was to FDR, then Truman was aware, and at least tacitly, in agreement with an anti-Stalinist view. Further, the author infers that this, not any other, was the only overreaching factor that made up Truman's mind to drop the bomb.


You will notice these references are current (post 2001 or later), verified as peer-reviewed and accepted in publication, and remain pretty steadfast that Truman was, if anything, cowed by Stalin in the beginning of their own relations, in spite of the repeated work of the military of the West and our British allies working to illustrate to him that he must toe the line with Stalin, for the man only respects those NOT willing to make concessions.

That, IMO, makes a solid support for the argument that Truman chose to use the A-bomb, in part, to illustrate a conviction to not make concessions to the Soviets. But it still remains an undefendable position in the entirety of source materials available to stat this was either the major, or the only reason for the bomb drop. Finally, Byrnes is not the "high-ranking leaders of the US at the time". He is and remains, only a single man, and I do agree , there is sufficient evidence to illustrate Byrnes was anti-Stalinist in his views. (IMO of course). The SecState, however, (Byrnes) was bypassed time and again by Truman in dealing with communism and the Soviets - perhaps because Truman was aware of, and did not necessarily agree with, Byrnes' views of Stalin. (that would be a supposition I could see and defend, given the source materials I see available).

KRL, Jon H

That is definitely more trouble than I wanted to go through! I will check them out.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

I always find it odd that there is so much respect given to those leaders who fought on despite the defeat being inevitable (Germany, Japan) and the opprobrium piled on those leaders who bowed to the inevitable (France, Italy etc.).

Yes, I as well. People tend to focus on the perceived bravery of the troops rather than the intellect or morality of the leaders guiding them.

 

[Dr Zaius]

The Axis lost the war in 1941, when they committed the astronomically, galactically stupid mistakes of bringing first the USSR and then the USA into the war as enemies, and doing it in such a way that the USSR and USA were committed to total war for complete victory.

As I have said in other threads and posts, I have gone over the years of my interest in history from the Germans having some slight chance and the Japanese practically none, to they must both have been utterly insane. It's nice to see another agree with me to the same degree and share the same recognition of the utter magnitude of stupidity...

Yeah, but here's the thing: Did it actually appear that way from the German and Japanese perspective of the period? It's hard to see through their eyes, knowing what they knew, and colored by the respective worldview they held at the time.

Afghanistan, for example, has been at war with both the US and Soviet Union within recent memory. Were these wars a result of terrible miscalculations on the part of the Afghan government? You can certainly argue they were. But did it seem that way to the Afghans at the time these events were unfolding? Perhaps, perhaps not. And it bears mentioning that though Afghanistan is now ostensibly an "ally" of the West, it's not entirely untrue to say not much has really changed there. I'm not arguing Afghanistan actually won either of these conflicts. But fighting the US and Soviet Union might not have seemed entirely batshit crazy from their point of view.

Returning to Germany and Japan. It's unusual in modern history for nations to truly commit to fighting all-or-nothing wars which push them to the brink of oblivion. I'm just speculating, but the Germans and Japanese may not have entirely understood just what a war with the US or the Soviet Union was destined to become. They may have thought it was going to be something more akin to, say, the US involvement in Vietnam (i.e. costly and destructive, but not unwinnable or fatal).

At the risk of sounding redundant, I would argue neither the Germans or Japanese thought this was truly going to turn into a total war, thus they weren't really thinking in such absolute terms.

Now in the case of the Soviet Union, at first glance that might seem like a fatuous argument given the inhuman atrocities perpetrated against the Russian people nearly from the start of the conflict. However, I'm not sure that even the German leadership, bent as it was on a policy geared around Lebensraum and racial resettlement, truly grasped the nature of what those decisions were about to unleash. It seems to me the Germans did believe there was a realistic possibility of winning that war with a quick knockout blow, thus freeing up their forces to move on to other things. I doubt very much that Hitler, in his quiet, personal moments, intended to plunge Germany into a meat-grinder war of attrition against a far larger nation with a population which had been roused to a vicious fury.

Not even a man as deluded as Hitler could have failed to grasp the obvious repercussions. No, he badly miscalculated and thought it was going to be relatively easy. But here's the difficult part. Seen through his eyes, and based on the relative ease with which Germany had dealt with enemies supposedly far superior up to that point, and knowing the Soviet Union's performance against the Finns and Poles, was Hitler's assessment of Germany's chances against Russia really all that crazy?

Ultimately, we all know how it turned out, and in that context his decisions seem nothing short of ridiculous and incredible. But my point is sometimes, "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time..." really isn't that far from the truth.

 

[Kenneth P. Katz]

"astronomically, galactically stupid" is not the same thing as "batshit crazy". Totalitarian countries are particularly prone to "astronomically, galactically stupid" because questioning the supreme leader or the ruling ideology is not just career limiting, but often life-ending.

I do not like the Afghanistan analogy. In neither case did "Afghanistan" (a country that barely exists as a sovereign entity) decided to go to war with either the USSR or USA. In both cases, the outsiders decided to go to war in Afghanistan, allied with one faction and opposing another faction.

Yeah, but here's the thing: Did it actually appear that way from the German and Japanese perspective of the period? It's hard to see through their eyes, knowing what they knew, and colored by the respective worldview they held at the time.

Afghanistan, for example, has been at war with both the US and Soviet Union within recent memory. Were these wars a result of terrible miscalculations on the part of the Afghan government? You can certainly argue they were. But did it seem that way to the Afghans at the time these events were unfolding? Perhaps, perhaps not. And it bears mentioning that though Afghanistan is now ostensibly an "ally" of the West, it's not entirely untrue to say not much has really changed there. I'm not arguing Afghanistan actually won either of these conflicts. But fighting the US and Soviet Union might not have seemed entirely batshit crazy from their point of view.

Returning to Germany and Japan. It's unusual in modern history for nations to truly commit to fighting all-or-nothing wars which push them to the brink of oblivion. I'm just speculating, but the Germans and Japanese may not have entirely understood just what a war with the US or the Soviet Union was destined to become. They may have thought it was going to be something more akin to, say, the US involvement in Vietnam (i.e. costly and destructive, but not unwinnable or fatal).

At the risk of sounding redundant, I would argue neither the Germans or Japanese thought this was truly going to turn into a total war, thus they weren't really thinking in such absolute terms.

Now in the case of the Soviet Union, at first glance that might seem like a fatuous argument given the inhuman atrocities perpetrated against the Russian people nearly from the start of the conflict. However, I'm not sure that even the German leadership, bent as it was on a policy geared around Lebensraum and racial resettlement, truly grasped the nature of what those decisions were about to unleash. It seems to me the Germans did believe there was a realistic possibility of winning that war with a quick knockout blow, thus freeing up their forces to move on to other things. I doubt very much that Hitler, in his quiet, personal moments, intended to plunge Germany into a meat-grinder war of attrition against a far larger nation with a population which had been roused to a vicious fury.

Not even a man as deluded as Hitler could have failed to grasp the obvious repercussions. No, he badly miscalculated and thought it was going to be relatively easy. But here's the difficult part. Seen through his eyes, and based on the relative ease with which Germany had dealt with enemies supposedly far superior up to that point, and knowing the Soviet Union's performance against the Finns and Poles, was Hitler's assessment of Germany's chances against Russia really all that crazy?

Ultimately, we all know how it turned out, and in that context his decisions seem nothing short of ridiculous and incredible. But my point is sometimes, "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time..." really isn't that far from the truth.

 

[witchbottles]

"astronomically, galactically stupid" is not the same thing as "batshit crazy". Totalitarian countries are particularly prone to "astronomically, galactically stupid" because questioning the supreme leader or the ruling ideology is not just career limiting, but often life-ending.

I do not like the Afghanistan analogy. In neither case did "Afghanistan" (a country that barely exists as a sovereign entity) decided to go to war with either the USSR or USA. In both cases, the outsiders decided to go to war in Afghanistan, allied with one faction and opposing another faction.

Not that it is applicable in a WW2 sense, but Rome under Imperator Julius was most definitely a totalitarian state in every imaginable way. Was it "astronomically, galactically stupid" for Ceasar to believe that he could ultimately conquer the North Germanic tribes? It was a decision that ended the empire he ruled. In WW2 terms, By mid-1944, no one would reasonably argue that Stalinist USSR was not a totalitarian state in every imaginable way. What might have been astronomically, galactically stupid in the initiation of Bagration? In Stalin's order of the Day to the armies of the USSR as they crossed the Oder? (The only innocent German is the unborn one.) Neither represents anything less than history-changing decisions by a notable raving lunatic dictator (Stalin), but neither resulted in any measurable loss at all to either Stalin or the USSR.

Or was astronomical, galactic stupidity reserved solely for the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis?

If so, how do you then explain Montgomery and Market-Garden?
(Remember, Ike and Monty had already tried and failed at the "one road to victory" gamble - post-Salerno, a year earlier.)

 

[von Marwitz]

Was it "astronomically, galactically stupid" for Ceasar to believe that he could ultimately conquer the North Germanic tribes? It was a decision that ended the empire he ruled.

Hum? How that?

von Marwitz

 

[Kenneth P. Katz]

Astronomical, galactic levels of stupid at the operational level are an entirely different thing than at the strategic level.

Not that it is applicable in a WW2 sense, but Rome under Imperator Julius was most definitely a totalitarian state in every imaginable way. Was it "astronomically, galactically stupid" for Ceasar to believe that he could ultimately conquer the North Germanic tribes? It was a decision that ended the empire he ruled. In WW2 terms, By mid-1944, no one would reasonably argue that Stalinist USSR was not a totalitarian state in every imaginable way. What might have been astronomically, galactically stupid in the initiation of Bagration? In Stalin's order of the Day to the armies of the USSR as they crossed the Oder? (The only innocent German is the unborn one.) Neither represents anything less than history-changing decisions by a notable raving lunatic dictator (Stalin), but neither resulted in any measurable loss at all to either Stalin or the USSR.

Or was astronomical, galactic stupidity reserved solely for the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis?

If so, how do you then explain Montgomery and Market-Garden?
(Remember, Ike and Monty had already tried and failed at the "one road to victory" gamble - post-Salerno, a year earlier.)

 

[Kenneth P. Katz]

It seemed like a good idea based on (1) previous successes against weaker enemies (2) ideologically-driven assessments of the USA and USSR which proved to be incorrect.

Yeah, but here's the thing: Did it actually appear that way from the German and Japanese perspective of the period? It's hard to see through their eyes, knowing what they knew, and colored by the respective worldview they held at the time.

<snip>

Ultimately, we all know how it turned out, and in that context his decisions seem nothing short of ridiculous and incredible. But my point is sometimes, "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time..." really isn't that far from the truth.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Not even a man as deluded as Hitler could have failed to grasp the obvious repercussions. No, he badly miscalculated and thought it was going to be relatively easy.

Every history class I took in University had the words "Hitler was a gambler" uttered at some point. Because, that's what he was. He also seems to have had a weird belief in destiny, and convinced himself that all roads would eventually lead to a logical conclusion - the destruction of weaker enemies and the ascendancy of the 'natural' rulers of Europe. What the Americans called Manifest Destiny.

 

[Paul M. Weir]

I agree with Hitler as gambler but would also point out that his policies pre-war had left Germany with almost no foreign exchange. He needed Austria and Czechoslovakia just to pay until '39. Germany could not feed itself and would have faced food rationing without further conquests. Hitler had painted himself into a corner.

 

[Bob Walters]

The assessment of the capabilities of the Soviet Union by the various German intelligence agencies was fantastically erroneous. German intelligence refused to give Hitler an appropriate analysis, possibly because they knew it would be met with incredulity on the part of their furhrer. Also possibly because they themselves never considered that Slavic people could stand up to them. Never underestimate the foolishness of a racist.