Thread: Who contributed most to the defeat of Fascist Germany ??

Originally posted by shtarker

Oh and as far as the war against Japan goes, thanks for your help "mother England".

oh thats a bit unfair !!!!! i don't think aus was in any real threat of invasion was it ?????

Originally posted by Sentaku senshi
Well Britain was able to hold the Germans off, chances are they might not have been able to continue to do so, no less advance into Europe.

there wasn't a serious possibility of the german's invading Britain most historians agree on that now. (panic at the time though obviously !!)
D-Day took 2 years planning, and needed special landing craft and tanks and other equipment, together with virtually TOTAL sea and air superiority, combined with decieving them that the invasion would be at Calais.
total destruction of the RAF and the Royal Navy would have been needed to invade Britain and they couldn't beat the RAF.

As to advancing into Europe on our own.........not a snowballs chance in hell.....

>>oh thats a bit unfair !!!!! i don't think aus was in any real threat of invasion was it ?????

Yes there most certintly was.
Apart from fossil fules, Australia (partly through size alone) holds most of the natural resources in the reigion.
Fortunatly we just managed to hold them off just long enough, but this (as much as I hate to admit it) is where Amreica (and again the Soviet Union) starts seroiusly saving some buttts.

Originally posted by shtarker
>>oh thats a bit unfair !!!!! i don't think aus was in any real threat of invasion was it ?????

Yes there most certintly was.
Apart from fossil fules, Australia (partly through size alone) holds most of the natural resources in the reigion.
Fortunatly we just managed to hold them off just long enough, but this (as much as I hate to admit it) is where Amreica (and again the Soviet Union) starts seroiusly saving some buttts.

i don't mean it wasn't worth invading !! i meant the japs didn't have serious plans of invading (not that anyone would know it at the time, or that they wouldn't have tried if an oportunity arose obviously)

do you think the British didn't help enough ??? i think the fall of Singapore etc and the rapid initial progress of the Japs took everyone by surprise....i don't think theres any shame on the British for abandoning Australia, i don't think thats true at all.

what happened was a realisation the the British couldn't help !!! thats more the point. it is to the USA Australia needs to look.
i personally think that Pearl Harbour meant the japs had lost the war(certainly when they missed the US carriers)...crazy gamble...

and Hitler invading Russia took the pressure off Britain....

then Midway and Stalingrad meant the war was won.........just years of hard fighting left......

>>I don't mean it wasn't worth invading !! i meant the japs didn't have serious plans of invading (not that anyone would know it at the time, or that they wouldn't have tried if an oportunity arose obviously)

I disagree a fair bit here.
Japan simply does not have many natural resources. That is why the needed to gain control of Australia or they would be hard pressed to win the war.
For that reason they pushed very hard on Papua New-Guinea trying to reach Australia. At one point they even got close enough to perform one air raid on the city of Darwin and even sent a few submarines down into Sydney harbour.

>>do you think the British didn't help enough ??? i think the fall of Singapore etc and the rapid initial progress of the Japs took everyone by surprise....i don't think theres any shame on the British for abandoning Australia, i don't think thats true at all.

Thats a good point, Britian could not have possible done anything to stop the Japanese. And we don't hold it against you, we still have your queen as our head of state and with out England the ashes series would just be plain boring.

Hitler was our best General

Dwight D. Eisenhower I believe...or was it Churchill.

Nothing more need be said.

I put down Russia, although I'm a little uncertain that's enough explanation...

WW2 was a war of narrow margins, and it there is no lacking of victories or events that changed the fate of the war, but, IMO, the biggest turning point was when Germany and Russia broke the alliance. The war on the eastern front dwarfed all other warfare. Fighting a two-front war isn't neccisarily defeat (if you think about it, the US was fighting a three-front war...), but Russia was basically a vacuum for Germany's military while the western front stood.

The western forces were responsible for exploiting Germany's biggest weakness, it's airforce (later in the war), after which it's sea force naturally fell, but that really isn't enough to win the war, it just forced Germany into having to win its land wars.

I'm pretty sure that the best general of the war would go to Erwin Rommel or even more likely, PATTON!

Originally posted by shtarker
>>I don't mean it wasn't worth invading !! i meant the japs didn't have serious plans of invading (not that anyone would know it at the time, or that they wouldn't have tried if an oportunity arose obviously)

I disagree a fair bit here.
Japan simply does not have many natural resources. That is why the needed to gain control of Australia or they would be hard pressed to win the war.
For that reason they pushed very hard on Papua New-Guinea trying to reach Australia. At one point they even got close enough to perform one air raid on the city of Darwin and even sent a few submarines down into Sydney harbour.

>>do you think the British didn't help enough ??? i think the fall of Singapore etc and the rapid initial progress of the Japs took everyone by surprise....i don't think theres any shame on the British for abandoning Australia, i don't think thats true at all.

Thats a good point, Britian could not have possible done anything to stop the Japanese. And we don't hold it against you, we still have your queen as our head of state and with out England the ashes series would just be plain boring.

i could be wrong, but i didn't think the japs planned to land on australia mainland. (not that a bit of bombing and ship-sinking and general slaughter wasn't planned!!). i'm only actually going on "the times atlas of WWII" which shows the Japs planned limit of the japanese empire in 1942, which includes dutch east indies and new guinea, but not australia mainland (because they probably didn't think they'd hold on to it, i think the yanks could have landed in Australia and fought them off, probably overextending a bit to try to take Aus)

The Jap War Plan was..... destroy the US carriers at Pearl Harbour, invade various countries and islands and form a barrier which the Americans couldn't penetrate - defense in depth - and thought the US would get tired battering against it, the casulties etc and let the japs keep what they'd got, which included all the resourses an empire needed to be self sufficient. they were planning to hold on fanatically to every island etc and judged the western democracies weak and the USA public couldn't tolerate the casulties and would give up...but they were wrong.

but i suppose it depends on how well the USA and Australia fought back, the weaker the allies were, the more they'd have took


in hindsight it also seems that hitler never really seriously intended to invade Britain by land but expected some sort of settlement after destroying the RAF. he wasn't actually intending to take over Britain or the Empire.

but hindsight is a powerful tool !!!!!!

Originally posted by fyodor
I'm pretty sure that the best general of the war would go to Erwin Rommel or even more likely, PATTON!

Patton ??????? nooooooooo !!!!

i think honestly that the best generals were mainly German,
Rommel, Von Manstein, Rundstedt, Kesslering.....and the worst Hitler(although he had his moments earlier on !!).

but i think the allies had far and away the best strategic thinkers and leaders.......roosevelt, churchill, eisenhower.... all great men....and stalin (almost as Evil as Hitler...but much clearer thinking than him!!)

and the fact that (basically put) it took the combined forces of the USSR, United States, British and all the Commonwealth countries and other allies to defeat the Germans is a testament to their fighting men............




another crap General...Mark Clark(glory seeking dickhead).

I'm disgusted to see that Canada was excluded from the poll, and the USA was not. Canada was in the war from the start.

Why? Do you honestly think that Canada is a viable answer to the question? If you do, then you are an idiot. No offense meant, of course.

and the fact that (basically put) it took the combined forces of the USSR, United States, British and all the Commonwealth countries and other allies to defeat the Germans is a testament to their fighting men............

or perhaps a testament to the fact that by the time the USSR and the USA got involved, Germany already was in control of so many resources (including manpower) that there was almost no place to gain a strategic foothold.

And as to Patton, I admit he wasn't exactly an admirable man in many ways, but he was a brilliant leader. He (and Montgomery) was instrumental in defeating the Afrika Korps, and the Third Army's drive through France against a powerful enemy was simply amazing. If not for several incidents and Eisenhower's fear of confrontation with the Soviets, he probably would have beaten the Red Army to Berlin, thus preventing, or at least alleviating, four decades of trouble in Germany, not to mention general low living standards in East Germany.