Greatest military blunder of WWII

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by Aussie1001

Ok this thing has got a few holes in it
1) The home guard in the bob were being trained to use pitch forks and shovels for weapons as there was a critical shortage of rifles and indeed almost everything due to dunkirk where all the equiptment was left behinde after being destroyed by the british themselves so the germans could not have it. The british therefore had little arms and armour in the way of armies.
sure they might have been one of the forerunners in navies at the time and maybe they did have an airforce that had so far taken everything the Germans could throw at it but i maintain that the BOB would have been lost if the germans had have kept up their air attacks...

The Home Guard has nothing to do with winning or losing the BoB. The BoB was a battle fought between the Luftwaffe adn the RAF. The RAF was close at the beginning to being destroyed but as Hunter put it, as the end of the battle was near the RAF was far from being destroyed.

Here is why...

1. The Luftwaffe did not have the range to fight for very long over England.

2. The Luftwaffe did not have the range to fight the RAF that would have moved farther north into England had it needed to do so.

3. Stupid mistakes by German upper staff (namely Hitler and Goerring) who ordered the Luftwaffe to concentrate on British Cities rather than targets of strategic importance.

If the Luftwaffe had continued to bomb the factories, airfields and radar sites she had a chance, but as soon as she started the Blitz of British cities and stopped concentrating on the above targets the battle was lost.

Even if Germany had gained air supperiority she would not have been able to launch a successful invasion of England. The Royal Navy was too powerful and I seriously doubt that Germany could logistically sustain the forces required to take and hold England.

As Hunter said go and read the BoB threads. I am sure you will find them interesting and there is some very good discussions in there.

[renrich]

Whew, so many opinions, many misinformed. The Adler sums it up nicely though. The Germans never had an air force that could win the BOB and in my opinion BOB is highly overrated as far as a turning point in the war. If it came down to it, the RAF would have, as Basket stated, withdrawn it's fighters further north and west, out of range of the 109s and waited for the invasion. This does not diminish in any way the effort put up by the RAF in BOB. It was magnificent. Actually, I don't believe that Germany ever was really serious about invading England in 1940. Their Generals and Admirals knew they would have had only a slim chance of success. About the same chance of success as the allies would have had had the tried to invade Europe in 1942 or 43. I agree that Slim is a highly underrated commander, perhaps the best field commander of WW2.

[trackend]

The only thing I would say about the BOB was that up until that point the German forces had not suffered any major defeats and seemed almost unstoppable the BOB was a defeat for the Germans and a major one this is why it is regarded by some as a turning point it turned from nothing but victory's for the Germans to the first significant defeat and showed that they could be beaten. It did much for the British moral and demonstrated to the world that the UK was not a lost cause. Although probably Mrs Miniver had more effect in gaining US sympathy towards the British even though it was released some time later.

[Aussie1001]

I know the home guard had nothing to do with the BOB
however i was just pointing out the if the Germans had managed to gain air superiorty wich they narrowly missed out on due to ****heads like Hitler and Goering they would have had the pomes by the balls.
Even the Royal navy would not be able to do much in the face of total air superiority. And as WW2 definitivly proved that if you ain't got an airforce then your navy is screwed.
True the BOB was lost because the germans decided to go bomb london and other cities which gave the airforce time to regroup.

[trackend]

sorry mucked up my post

[trackend]

I disagree Aussie the naval forces would have been hammered by the LW but with the type of junk that was planed to be used for Sea lion it would have only required a few destroyers to survive and it would have been good bye invasion fleet. Even though the LW was powerful the RN in 1939 consisted of

15 Battleships & battlecruisers
7 Aircraft carriers
66 Cruisers
184 Destroyers
45 escort and numorous MTB's & MGB's
& 60 Submarines which coincidently was more than twice the number of subs than the Germans had in 1939.
The LW would have had it's work cut out trying to sink even half that number of vessels and thats assuming that the RAF didn't exist at all.
Its only 20 miles across the channel so the Battleships/Cruisers could have engaged the task force almost while still swinging on the hook.

Sorry guys for going off track and the double post I know this has been discussed another thread.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by Aussie1001

Ihowever i was just pointing out the if the Germans had managed to gain air superiorty wich they narrowly missed out on due to

That is the thing, it was only that close in the beginning. By the end of the BoB the British were able to build eneogh aircraft to sustain there losses. It was not as close as you make it seem.

[renrich]

As I mentioned earlier am rereading a book by Peter Townsend about BOB. The point that jumps out at you is the time frames involved. The French surrendered in mid June, 1940. At that time the Germans had not firmly decided to invade Britain. Hitler vacillated and Raeder seemed to never be onboard totally because he understood the vast disparity between the RN and KM. Raeder met with Hitler on June 20 and strongly suggested blockade or "seige" with submarines. At that time Hitler was concerned about high losses in an invasion and hoped to talk Britain into an accomodation. THEY HAD NO LANDING CRAFT at this time. The BOB ended in September in failure for the Germans. It is ridiculous to speculate that landing craft would suddenly materialise between June and September when Raeder was suggesting to Hitler that they begin designing landing craft in late June. It took the Allies years to design and build enough landing craft for the Normandy invasion. They were short of landing craft for Torch and it was much smaller than Sealion would have been. Still BOB was a tremendous victory for Britain, the first defeat for Hitler but Sealion in my opinion was never going to be a reality.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Agreed

[syscom3]

We had a whole thread dedicated to analyzing a potential German invasion of England at any time.... and it was proven to be impossible to achieve success.

[glennasher]

Townsend's book is excellent, by the way.

[renrich]

Townsend's book is excellent. I have had it in my library for many years and read it when I first bought it but did not remember until this latest reading that it had as much background material on the LW and the war as it has.

[Njaco]

The point at which the Luftwaffe came CLOSE to winning BoB was on Sept. 6 when the RAF was exhausted...but not OUT. Sept 7 change of plans, attack cities, leave airfields alone and therefore by the end of BoB in OCTOBER, yes the RAF was stronger because they could take a breather and resupply. But at the beginning of Sept, about middle of BoB, the Luftwaffe had the RAF on the ropes but didn't complete it. So who knows. Would the Germans have gained air superiority over the skies of England? IMHO it wouldn'y have mattered, they didn't have the land or sea resources for an operation across the Channel.

So up until Sept. 6 you could say the Luftwaffe was beating the RAF. After that it was downhill for them.

[plan_D]

Eisenhower's constant push for a broad-front strategy led to blunder after blunder in the North-West European campaign.

Even the break-out from the beach-head was a blunder as it was long overdue because Eisenhower wanted a British breakout through Caen which wasn't in the original plan; but as Ike wanted his broadfront it led to delays and loss of life in and around Caen that could have been avoided.

As Montgomery had originally planned it; Caen would be taken and held on the first day to threaten a breakout into the open country. In response to this Montgomery hoped the Germans would divert all their strongest divisions to block the breakout; allowing the U.S forces on the Allied right flank to break through weak German lines in their sector.
As it happened the British failed to take Caen on the first day but the constant pressure applied did force the Germans to divert its strongest forces to the Caen area allowing a U.S breakthrough as originally planned. But Eisenhower being unimaginative as he was kept his broad-front idea and wanted a British breakthrough which allowed the Germans to hold the entire Allied beach-head. The time held up in the beach-head could have been used capturing port facilities long before they actually did and Caen may not have been so devastated by fruitless attempts on it.

Once again, Ike failed to grasp the idea of strategy during the Ardennes Offensive - opting to push the bulge out of the Allied lines instead of encircling and destroying it. This led to the war dragging on because the German troops managed to escape to set up new lines on the Rhine and further into Germany.

And his greatest blunder was not taking Berlin; as Ike could only see two feet in front of his face, he had no idea of the bigger picture. Even Germany saw the Cold War coming, along with Patton, Montgomery and Churchill. If Ike had pushed to Berlin, as they so easily could have done then the political triumph of raising your flag above the enemies capital would have been achieved. This would have brought Stalin and his Soviet cronies down a few pegs as a Stars and Stripes above the Reichstag would have given the U.S the political strength to say they did all the work that won the war; just as the Soviet Union did. It would have also showed military strength to the East and may have eased the Cold War - if not completely eradicating it.

Ike liked to be strong on all fronts but decisive on none - and that's probably one of the many great blunders of World War II.

[mkloby]

PD - I think you're being rather harsh. It's easy to monday-quarterback scenarios now. I'm not saying he was one of the great operational commanders, but certainly his mistakes do not rank up there in gravity with some of the war changing blunders.