Wich was the worst nation in the war?

[cheddar cheese]

this is going well stuka, dont turn your nose up at the success of it

i've seen you mad C.C., you ignored me for half the day, and apologised later that night...............

well, when someone accusses you repeatedly of something you didnt do, it can get a little annoying when they dont believe you. it destroyed my self-esteem that did.

[the lancaster kicks ass]

but you did do it..................

[cheddar cheese]

you see the thing is i didnt, and thats what gets up my nose

[the lancaster kicks ass]

you can't prove you didn't, and don't just say "you can't prove i did", as the chances are stacked in my favour............

[muskiet]

Excuse me "GERMANSAREGENIUSES"?

Sure the Netherlands was not fighting for a long time, 4 days is wimpy at best, but what is little known is that in those 4 days the Dutch used their 109 aircraft (survivors of Germans attempt to demolish the Dutch Air Force in a first surprise strike) to shoot down 328 (!) of the 1024 German aircraft!

For this the Dutch used mainly Fokker D-XXI aircraft, a handfull of (beautifull) G-1's and a lot of old, obsolete aircraft like the C-V and C-X bi-planes against the aircraft that were the Luftwaffe's finest.

No other country to date has shot down that many fighters within 4 days ever!

The fact that the Netherlands surrendered that quickly is due to the size of the country and the ignoranze of it's army's commanders. You see... they counted on the flooding of large pieces of land to stop the German tanks but they didn't even think about the bombers and transport planes flying over these pieces of land and landing troops behind them.
Also the utter destruction of The Hague (after the surrendering!) showed that the Netherlands had no other option but to surrender or the country would have been turned into a parking lot.
The Dutch were outnumbered and they knew it.

The bombing of The Hague by the way was terrible and this with the fact that Germany killed a lot of inocent (not just the Jews were mass murdered here) people just because they needed some space and low-cost factory workers makes Germany the worst country in my eyes.
Of course Japan killed more Chinese civilians than Germany killed Jews (but nobody cares about that little fact, right?) which makes them as bad as the Germans to me, but America is close behind with its mass-masacre of Tokio, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There's nothing anybody can say to make me feel good about killing 230.000 (mainly civilian) lives with first a bombing of Tokio and afterwards dropping two experiments on Hiroshima and Nagasaki just to make a point when Japan was already on brink of surrender. Of course there's Pearl Harbor, but I see that more as a tactical very clever attack (even though the Americans knew about it but forgot to mention it to the proper people so it could have been avoided) and this was after America "bullied" Japan enough to force them into a position they only saw one way out of.

Then there is Russia, a regime which was worse then Hitler's because Stalin didn't care about race or religion, he hated everybody! (both in his own and other countries). Yes it was Russia that got Germany, if Hitler didn't attack Russia Europe would still be German today but Russia accomplished this with fear, not knowledge and thinking. Kill Germany or get killed by your own commander was the thinking then. After Russia reached Berlin they occupied the countries Germany occupied before but the Allied forces were okay with that.

France is another story altogether. They had a good army and a huge country but "surrendered" (signed an armistice) in little more than a month which basically means they sold 3/5 of the country to Germany and in return the other 2/5 would be "free". The Vichy government ruling France for Germany during the occupation was composed out of most of the same people as before the war! (Petain was France's vice-premier when Germany attacked). Sounds like treason to me, but hey... the French were happy with this! Of course France was the country which in my eyes started WWII with the hard-line view on Germany after WWI.
Germany was in ruins and struggled to get back it's industries which was totally denied by the French thus forcing them to choose for the only leader that could bring them out of this missery... Adolf Hitler. Germans didn't want to kill, rape and pillage, they wanted work and prosperity like all countries desire but France took Germanies biggest industrial area (Ruhrgebied) away and didn't want to give it back untill Hitler forced them to.

By the way... France started a lot of wars during history, even the Vietnam war (unlike the Americans they actually saw they couldn't win and bugged out leaving the mess for America to clean up, which of course failed), a fact that is not talked about much.

So who is the worst country in WWII?

All I know GERMANSAREGENIUSES is that it certainly was not the Netherlands who was as bad as any of above countries.

Best Regards...
Dennis Verhaaff

ps... know your history!

[Lightning Guy]

Muskiet . . . the USN shot down more aircraft than that in one day during the Marianas Turkey Shoot.

[plan_D]

And he blames Hollands loss on the Commanders as a scape goat. Frances loss was due to its commanders. If you've ever read the invasion from a Germans point of view and then from a French point of view you'd understand that France didn't really have much chance with commanders like that, when at the other end of the scale you've got Heinz Guderian, Rommel and Manstein commanding the German Armies.
France wasn't a different story, you abuse France you abuse all the countries in Europe because the Allied Army out-numbered the Germans, you just seem to be expecting France to do everything.

[the lancaster kicks ass]

but you have to admit that as a large country with a large empire to pull their weight a bit more..........................

[muskiet]

Lightning Guy
"1944 Jun 19, The Battle of the Philippine Sea (Battle of the Marianas), called the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," began when Japanese naval forces attacked the stronger U.S. naval forces. 280 Japanese planes were shot down by U.S. carrier- based planes and anti-aircraft fire from U.S. ships. Americans shoot down 220 Japanese planes while only losing 20.
(BEP, 1994)(DT, 6/19/97)(HN, 6/19/9", so only 220 aircraft were shot down by other aircraft in this case. However... I've seen a lot of different reports on this and there has been numbers from over 200 to 420, so not very accurate but I do stand corrected about my earlier comment as I did say there were 328 aircraft shot down in 4 days and the US Navy did it in one single day. The Dutch Airforce did however do it with far less and far older aircraft and you must admit this is noteworthy as well. Thanx for the heads up on the Marianas Turkey Shoot!

plan_D
I am not a militairy thinker and when I say commanders I not only mean the Dutch Generals but also its government. My piece of writing was not a conspiracy theory trying to blame some nameless general for the occupation of the Netherlands by the Germans. Remember, it was the Germans attacking my country, so they are ultimately to blame. No "Rommel" or "Manstein" on the Dutch side could have stopped whatever Germany threw at them. If the Dutch put up a better fight my 150x300km country would have lasted maybe two more days resulting in the bombing of a couple more cities but nothing more than that. And for the French I am only saying that the French government started working against their own country in the early days of battle while its army was still stuck in WWI type of battle where they expected trenches and gas-grenades while the Germans threw a lot of bombing and newer tanks against the French. Ultimatly also the French would have been occupied if they fought better but that would also have been a matter of mere weeks of fighting.

[plan_D]

I'm sorry but your look on Fall Gelb is flawed. For a start the Allied Armies could have come out victorious if they had the like of Guderian, Rommel and Manstein. The Allied Armies out-numbered the Wehrmacht, their air forces were only just inferior in number.
The tanks that were fielded by France were also in a lot of cases superior to their German counter-parts. The Samoa S.35 was a clearly superior tank, and the best tank on the field. If there were enough Matilda Mk. II for the BEF with enough ammo they would have caused some major problems with their invunerable armour.

The Allied Army COULD have won had it allowed the bright thinkers to be in charge of the defence. No one get the idea that Britain and France were behind in tactics, there were people who knew about Modern warfare but were not allowed to take over. Guderian in Germany had a hard enough time with his country.

The tactics were the thing that lost the Allies Continental Europe in 1940. The BEF being 350,000 not having much chance to change the course of events.

A flawed military thinker is something to blame, but you blame them all.

[Maestro]

Originally Posted by muskiet

Excuse me "GERMANSAREGENIUSES"?

Sure the Netherlands was not fighting for a long time, 4 days is wimpy at best, but what is little known is that in those 4 days the Dutch used their 109 aircraft (survivors of Germans attempt to demolish the Dutch Air Force in a first surprise strike) to shoot down 328 (!) of the 1024 German aircraft!

For this the Dutch used mainly Fokker D-XXI aircraft, a handfull of (beautifull) G-1's and a lot of old, obsolete aircraft like the C-V and C-X bi-planes against the aircraft that were the Luftwaffe's finest.

No other country to date has shot down that many fighters within 4 days ever!

The fact that the Netherlands surrendered that quickly is due to the size of the country and the ignoranze of it's army's commanders. You see... they counted on the flooding of large pieces of land to stop the German tanks but they didn't even think about the bombers and transport planes flying over these pieces of land and landing troops behind them.
Also the utter destruction of The Hague (after the surrendering!) showed that the Netherlands had no other option but to surrender or the country would have been turned into a parking lot.
The Dutch were outnumbered and they knew it.

The bombing of The Hague by the way was terrible and this with the fact that Germany killed a lot of inocent (not just the Jews were mass murdered here) people just because they needed some space and low-cost factory workers makes Germany the worst country in my eyes.
Of course Japan killed more Chinese civilians than Germany killed Jews (but nobody cares about that little fact, right?) which makes them as bad as the Germans to me, but America is close behind with its mass-masacre of Tokio, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There's nothing anybody can say to make me feel good about killing 230.000 (mainly civilian) lives with first a bombing of Tokio and afterwards dropping two experiments on Hiroshima and Nagasaki just to make a point when Japan was already on brink of surrender. Of course there's Pearl Harbor, but I see that more as a tactical very clever attack (even though the Americans knew about it but forgot to mention it to the proper people so it could have been avoided) and this was after America "bullied" Japan enough to force them into a position they only saw one way out of.

Then there is Russia, a regime which was worse then Hitler's because Stalin didn't care about race or religion, he hated everybody! (both in his own and other countries). Yes it was Russia that got Germany, if Hitler didn't attack Russia Europe would still be German today but Russia accomplished this with fear, not knowledge and thinking. Kill Germany or get killed by your own commander was the thinking then. After Russia reached Berlin they occupied the countries Germany occupied before but the Allied forces were okay with that.

France is another story altogether. They had a good army and a huge country but "surrendered" (signed an armistice) in little more than a month which basically means they sold 3/5 of the country to Germany and in return the other 2/5 would be "free". The Vichy government ruling France for Germany during the occupation was composed out of most of the same people as before the war! (Petain was France's vice-premier when Germany attacked). Sounds like treason to me, but hey... the French were happy with this! Of course France was the country which in my eyes started WWII with the hard-line view on Germany after WWI.
Germany was in ruins and struggled to get back it's industries which was totally denied by the French thus forcing them to choose for the only leader that could bring them out of this missery... Adolf Hitler. Germans didn't want to kill, rape and pillage, they wanted work and prosperity like all countries desire but France took Germanies biggest industrial area (Ruhrgebied) away and didn't want to give it back untill Hitler forced them to.

By the way... France started a lot of wars during history, even the Vietnam war (unlike the Americans they actually saw they couldn't win and bugged out leaving the mess for America to clean up, which of course failed), a fact that is not talked about much.

So who is the worst country in WWII?

All I know GERMANSAREGENIUSES is that it certainly was not the Netherlands who was as bad as any of above countries.

Best Regards...
Dennis Verhaaff

ps... know your history!

Something bugged me in your post, Muskiet.

You seems to talk like if the civilans lives could have been spared during Allied attacks. Think about all major attacks. If the USAAF wouldn't had A-bombed Japan, many Allied soldiers would have died, may be much more than 230,000 loses. Because the war would have lasted may be one or two more years. The Japanese Empire was not weak when USAAF A-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sometimes, armies MUST destroy city. Think about Operation Overlord. If the RAF and RCAF never had bombed Caen in July 1944, the city would have never been taken. I mean, the Britishs and Canadians tried to take the city intact from June 6th 1944 to somewhere around July 17th 1944. They were able to take a part of Caen, but they realised they would never take it completely without air support. So they bombed the part of the city that was not under Allied control.

Before June 6th 1944, the RAF, USAAF and RCAF bombed many city like Le Havre, Cherbourg, Coutances, St-Lô, Vire... But those bombings were needed. Mainly because that street fightings are very deadly to both sides... and civilans die anyway. So bombing cities is smarter.

[Lightning Guy]

I once wrote a paper in school on the decision to drop the atomic weapons on Japan. It is my firm belief that individuals who claim Japan could have been successfully invaded with as little as 100,000 casualties must be smoking something. Early battles (like Okinawa and Iwo Jima) had required inflicting something like 95% casualties on the Japanese defenders. The Japanese military still had aproximately 4 million in its ranks in Aug. 1945. A little easy number crunching suggests that Japanese MILITARY fatalities would have run into the millions (not to mention civilian and Allied losses).

[the lancaster kicks ass]

i believe it was right to drop the A-bombs, primarily for the reasons you've mentioned, however i hope they're never needed again...................

[Maestro]

For once, we agree on one point, LG. Nobody (even the US army) could invade Japan without VERY HEAVY losses.

And like you Lanc, I hope A-bombs won't be needed again. What I said is that sometimes, destroying important cities (with or without A-bombs) is the lone way to win.

[the lancaster kicks ass]

i take it you mean one way to win?? becuase you can't win just by bombing a city, you'll have to invade it too.......................