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Was there any point during WW2 where the Nazis and UK could have settled for peace if the evacuation of Dunkirk failed? Was there a point in time where Nazi Germany was closest to winning the war in the west? I know counterfactuals are lowbrow, but I heard the statement come up in one of those WW2 forum speeches where old geezers talk about a bit of the war for 2 hours.Edgar Allen Ho posted:Individually they weren't more dangerous than being anywhere else in a combat role in WW2. For both the US and USSR, most tanks got hit and killed without any crew dying. (which contributes to the nazi myth- a Sherman or T-34 that gets hit, and then the crew bails out, and then the crew get back in it a week later, is dead. One tank and one crew get counted as killed many times. Meanwhile a nazi tank isn't recorded as killed until it's a rusting hulk 100 kilometres from the front.)
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Jul 22, 2020 01:59
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:It would probably depend on the circumstances I guess the most common would be either burning alive or drowning. But you can have your choice on some other creative way you can think of if you were to choose. 
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Jul 22, 2020 02:02
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Tank that is teleported to the planet Mars with only 33 minutes of oxygen or submarine where all the nuclear bombs inside go off at once????????
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Jul 22, 2020 02:09
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Funky See Funky Do posted:You should read the autobiography of Hans-Ulrich Rudel who did both. you are my favourite poster in this thread
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Jul 22, 2020 02:16
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Like, I have no idea if you can have a quick death is a submarine. If the hull cracks and water rushes it can it crush you before you realize what's going on? Or do you always just drown first. A tank you could be trapped in it while the ammo cooked off, or you could die instantly if a shell hits you a certain way, like it just straight up hits you or spinters get your, or you get pulped by the rush of air it creates. Though I'm pretty sure the worst way to die in WW2 is to a flamethrower.
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Jul 22, 2020 02:17
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:It would probably depend on the circumstances If you sank the submarine after loving up the operation of an experimental toilet, all deaths are preferable.
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Jul 22, 2020 02:24
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buglord posted:Was there any point during WW2 where the Nazis and UK could have settled for peace if the evacuation of Dunkirk failed? Was there a point in time where Nazi Germany was closest to winning the war in the west? No, never. No. Not with that political climate, not with the war as it was. Counterfactuals are loving stupid. Alternate history is the worst. I've read every book Turtledove ever wrote, even the obscure ones.
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Jul 22, 2020 02:28
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buglord posted:Someone please correct me if im wrong, but I also read that a shot fired at a tank doesn't have to even penetrate to kill a crew inside either. Apparently the blast from outside the cabin can transfer enough force to cause the metal walls inside the cabin to spall out towards the crew. Yeah more or less. German tanks were particularly bad for this because of poor quality steel but it happened to everyone. Images all stolen from reddit but here's the Panther I quoted earlier:  It took three glancing hits from a 75mm Sherman and the armour just cracked and killed everyone in the turret with spalling.  This Panther was captured and then shot at, and as you can see, the armour just caved in after getting hit multiple times and not penetrated. It was only hit with HE shells, not with shells designed to fight enemy tanks.  This Panther was hit by a soviet 152mm HE shell. Again, something designed to fight infantry. You clearly wouldn't want to be in the turret there.
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Jul 22, 2020 02:32
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:No, never. No. Not with that political climate, not with the war as it was. Edgar Allen Ho posted:This Panther was hit by a soviet 152mm HE shell. Again, something designed to fight infantry. You clearly wouldn't want to be in the turret there. e2: the reason why I like counterfactuals is because they're a sorta fun way to learn things in the process of debunking them. like how the nazis could probably never get the nuke first because the industrial power and resources available to them were laughably small compared to the US. I remember in the WW2 D&D thread a goon made a pretty nice effortpost on how massive the Manhattan Project was and how wartime Germany couldn't replicate that project because their economy/industry was so comparatively tiny. buglord fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 02:38
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:No, never. No. Not with that political climate, not with the war as it was. Counterfactuals are loving stupid. Alternate history is the worst. I've read every book Turtledove ever wrote, even the obscure ones. His output quality is inconsistent, no argument there. But How Few Remain is pretty darn good, especially as setting it in 1881 made it harder for him to copy/paste WWII battles, and some ideas like Lincoln becoming a socialist leader were interesting. Plus I got to meet him at a signing and he was super nice towards the young goon’s questions. Nowadays his full length books aren’t worth your time but his short fiction from a few years ago on Tor.com is excellent. Vilcabamba and Shtetl Days are fantastic, and Cayos in the Stream is fun. For other alt history, there is a lot of junk but some standouts like the Yiddish Policeman’s Union or Resurrection Day are worth your time. Hyrax Attack! fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 02:43
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buglord posted:I'd like more about this. Not that I disagree with your statement or anything, but why would the political climate prevent that from happening? My impression was that Britain wanted to avoid war at all costs much like France did, and they sold out Czechoslovakia in their attempt to do so, and then when Nazi Germany declared on Poland they didn't really bother helping the Poles either. With those assumptions it seems reasonable to guess they would take an easy way out when presented. The UK wasn't actually doing that bad after Dunkirk. They had lost the best of their army in Europe and all of its equipment and in no way could they resist an invasion of the island of Britain, but that wasn't going to happen. The Navy made it impossible. They had all the people and resources of India, Canada, Australia, huge swathes of Africa, all the oil in the Middle East, a blank check from the USA, and supposedly the moral high ground. Also it wasn't a democratic society. Churchill didn't get elected PM. There was a massive blanket of propaganda and oppressive laws against dissent. Every aspect of society was systemized and militarized. A groundswell of public opinion would have had to have been giant indeed.
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Jul 22, 2020 02:54
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Remember when Finland joined the Axis (under their leader, a tsarist general, mass murderer, and pal of Hitler, also voted Greatest Finn of All Time) and we all collectively decided to forget about it because, idk, Finland is honorarily Western? Which one is related to Nurge ?
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Jul 22, 2020 03:01
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Hyrax Attack! posted:His output quality is inconsistent, no argument there. But How Few Remain is pretty darn good, especially as setting it in 1881 made it harder for him to copy/paste WWII battles, and some ideas like Lincoln becoming a socialist leader were interesting. Plus I got to meet him at a signing and he was super nice towards the young goon’s questions. Yea, I enjoy that one, and the WW1 between the USA and CSA was pretty good too, but the WW2 was literal just "yea Pittsburg is Stalingrad" and other 1:1 comparisons. I did read the first book of Hitlers War which is if the Allies went to war over Czechoslovakia so things are way more disorganized than they actually were. The character I liked the most is the Czech guy who was a sniper armed with a Boys anti tank rifle. But what kind of ended my interest in Turtledove was his book about Herydrich leading an insurgencey against the occupying Allies and it was a 1:1 Iraq comparison and the book seemed to say "protesting war is stupid, you need to keep troops there forever or the nazis will just come back!" with very clear paraelles between the Anti Iraq protests and people like Syndey Sheehan. Which is stupid because in 1945-46 people didn't think like that. Also the attitude about WW2 was completely different than Iraq. And even in reality, Churchill already had plans to keep the war going if the home islands were taken because the British Empire was global and had a huge resource base of men and materials to draw on, plus the Royal Navy had zero threats from Germany. Plus that would have almost certainly brought the US into the war earlier. Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Also it wasn't a democratic society. Churchill didn't get elected PM. I just want to point out that in Parliamentary Democracies, the public elects the PM directly, they are chosen from within the party, and whomever is in charge of the party at the time of winning the election become PM. So yes, no one elected Churchill, but people elected the party he lead. But the rest is right, there was a lot of curbing of free speech and criticism of the war and government at the time, which is often left out and its sorta made out that everyone in the UK was all stallwart and cheerie o pip pip as the bombs fell.
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Jul 22, 2020 03:21
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twistedmentat posted:I just want to point out that in Parliamentary Democracies, the public elects the PM directly, they are chosen from within the party, and whomever is in charge of the party at the time of winning the election become PM. So yes, no one elected Churchill, but people elected the party he lead. But the rest is right, there was a lot of curbing of free speech and criticism of the war and government at the time, which is often left out and its sorta made out that everyone in the UK was all stallwart and cheerie o pip pip as the bombs fell. That's all very much true and I'm not contesting it. I'm just saying that the UK has been very much lumped into the Free World and the good democracies and it's bullshit. They had a General Election in 1935 and those representatives kept power for 10 years. WWI Germany was more democratic. Even our loving CSA had an election in 1863. Teriyaki Hairpiece fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 04:19
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:That's all very much true and I'm not contesting it. I'm just saying that the UK has been very much lumped into the Free World and the good democracies and it's bullshit. They had a General Election in 1935 and those representatives kept power for 10 years. WWI Germany was more democratic. Even our loving CSA had an election in 1863. It's pretty telling that as soon as the Brits could vote again, they tossed out the Conservatives. And then brought them back in the 50s 
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Jul 22, 2020 04:26
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E: no
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Jul 22, 2020 04:29
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twistedmentat posted:It's pretty telling that as soon as the Brits could vote again, they tossed out the Conservatives. And then brought them back in the 50s
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Jul 22, 2020 04:33
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The UK wasn't actually doing that bad after Dunkirk. They had lost the best of their army in Europe and all of its equipment and in no way could they resist an invasion of the island of Britain, but that wasn't going to happen. The Navy made it impossible. They had all the people and resources of India, Canada, Australia, huge swathes of Africa, all the oil in the Middle East, a blank check from the USA, and supposedly the moral high ground. Also it wasn't a democratic society. Churchill didn't get elected PM. There was a massive blanket of propaganda and oppressive laws against dissent. Every aspect of society was systemized and militarized. A groundswell of public opinion would have had to have been giant indeed. The war in the Atlantic was pretty dire for the British Isles in 40 and 41 but yeah, there's no realistic way the Germans could've threatened Britain militarily.
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Jul 22, 2020 05:10
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Do you guys like to watch Military History Visualized on youtube. He's a fun German guy and I like the way he methodically approaches stuff.
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Jul 22, 2020 05:24
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MakaVillian posted:The war in the Atlantic was pretty dire for the British Isles in 40 and 41 but yeah, there's no realistic way the Germans could've threatened Britain militarily. There was no way the German submarines could have cut off UK food stocks down to anything threatening their war effort and, again, popular opinion in the UK didn't matter.
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Jul 22, 2020 05:29
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:There was no way the German submarines could have cut off UK food stocks down to anything threatening their war effort and, again, popular opinion in the UK didn't matter. I did my thesis on popular opinion on WW2 and yeah in Britain the resolve was strong, the bigger threat was the US having its popular opinion on supporting Britain crater. Thankfully the Nazi folks did dumb Nazi things though so that was never at risk. If you got really into gay black Hitler territory you could maybe theorize a scenario that Britain's home front and popular support collapse but that would as in most alt history scenarios require the nazis to not be nazis.
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Jul 22, 2020 05:48
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The main thing to understand is that even at the worst time immediately post Dunkirk the British Empire was not the underdog. It never was. Never. Ever. Ever. The Third Reich was not a juggernaut.
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Jul 22, 2020 05:57
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Britain could have ended the war a good 6 months earlier were it not for Churchill's crippling addiction to SPAM.
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Jul 22, 2020 06:22
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The main thing to understand is that even at the worst time immediately post Dunkirk the British Empire was not the underdog. It never was. Never. Ever. Ever. The Third Reich was not a juggernaut. It's really weird how much you hate the UK even in the context of the British fighting literal Nazis
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Jul 22, 2020 06:47
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Fojar38 posted:It's really weird how much you hate the UK even in the context of the British fighting literal Nazis This thread is definitely going to turn into a place where people re-litigate unpopular opinions from other threads.
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Jul 22, 2020 07:20
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PTSDeedly Do posted:Anybody know the casualty rate for tank crews? Dying in a tank seems like a total nightmare. Depends on the nation. Red army and German losses were extremely high. Statistically the safest tank to be in after being penetrated was an American Sherman. If I remember my stats correctly only 3% of Frontline american armored corps personnel died. In contrast if you were a Frontline rifleman in the army it was closer to 18%.
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Jul 22, 2020 07:37
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Stanley Tucheetos posted:Depends on the nation. Red army and German losses were extremely high. Statistically the safest tank to be in after being penetrated was an American Sherman. What were your odds if you were a Sherman that got penetrated from behind?
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Jul 22, 2020 07:44
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Torquemada posted:This thread is definitely going to turn into a place where people re-litigate unpopular opinions from other threads.  . Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The UK wasn't actually doing that bad after Dunkirk. They had lost the best of their army in Europe and all of its equipment and in no way could they resist an invasion of the island of Britain, but that wasn't going to happen. The Navy made it impossible. They had all the people and resources of India, Canada, Australia, huge swathes of Africa, all the oil in the Middle East, a blank check from the USA, and supposedly the moral high ground. Also it wasn't a democratic society. Churchill didn't get elected PM. There was a massive blanket of propaganda and oppressive laws against dissent. Every aspect of society was systemized and militarized. A groundswell of public opinion would have had to have been giant indeed. Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The main thing to understand is that even at the worst time immediately post Dunkirk the British Empire was not the underdog. It never was. Never. Ever. Ever. The Third Reich was not a juggernaut.
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Jul 22, 2020 07:58
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The panzer I and II had decent armor as far as prewar designs went. what they lacked in was armament. The panzer I was intended as a training tank and had only machine guns as weapons. The II had a 20mm autocannon that was pretty good against trucks and armored cars and only capable of taking out light armor at semi close range. They did have some newer designs with a functional armament but not nearly enough. They figured bolstering their ranks with a training tank was better than not having a tank.
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Jul 22, 2020 08:58
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The Australian government was going to "give up" northern Australia, and most of Queensland if the Japanese had invaded. Hardly could of happened in reality, but the thought was there
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Jul 22, 2020 09:01
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Was the biggest hero of ww2 the person who killed hitler?
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Jul 22, 2020 09:07
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1 man can truly make a difference
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Jul 22, 2020 09:15
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Stanley Tucheetos posted:The panzer I and II had decent armor as far as prewar designs went. what they lacked in was armament. The panzer I was intended as a training tank and had only machine guns as weapons. The II had a 20mm autocannon that was pretty good against trucks and armored cars and only capable of taking out light armor at semi close range. They did have some newer designs with a functional armament but not nearly enough. They figured bolstering their ranks with a training tank was better than not having a tank. If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and could only take one tank with you which would it be and why? E: I would pick the Type 95 Ha-Go because that's the tank that kept Hiroo Onoda company until his eventual surrender in 1974. He married his Type 95 Ha-Go upon his return to Japan in what was the first legally recognized union of man and machine. Funky See Funky Do fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 09:42
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Fojar38 posted:It's really weird how much you hate the UK even in the context of the British fighting literal Nazis All I said in the post you quoted was that the British Empire was not the underdog. I don't believe being the underdog conveys any kind of innate moral authority. Also my human brain has the capability to hate more than one thing at a time. It's not a zero sum situation where turning up the "hate British Empire" dial somehow decreases the "hate Nazis" indicator.
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Jul 22, 2020 10:38
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RaySmuckles posted:9 out of 10 KIAs never saw the person that killed them I'd like to know who answered that poll question...
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Jul 22, 2020 10:54
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Germany could just indefinitely keep bombing the UK with their prototype missiles until they figured out missiles that were really effective and then the UK would have been hosed That is, of course, if they hadn't stuck their dick in mother russia and gotten their poo poo pushed in
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Jul 22, 2020 10:58
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Zzulu posted:Germany could just indefinitely keep bombing the UK with their prototype missiles until they figured out missiles that were really effective and then the UK would have been hosed Just a friendly reminder that the guy who ran Germany's vengeance rocket program was none other than NASA's very own Werner Von Braun. He was an officer in the SS and had full knowledge of the Jewish slave labor being used in the production of said rockets.
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Jul 22, 2020 11:58
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All the Apollo rockets were meant to hit London but old Werner couldn't aim for poo poo
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Jul 22, 2020 12:08
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Icochet posted:All the Apollo rockets were meant to hit London but old Werner couldn't aim for poo poo When ze rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, said Werner von Braun
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Jul 22, 2020 13:09
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PTSDeedly Do posted:Anybody know the casualty rate for tank crews? Dying in a tank seems like a total nightmare. Depending on the country, for every tank knocked out, roughly 1, to something like 1.9 men died. American tankers tended to have the lowest casualty rates due to the M4's hatches being easy to use and get through. Crew casualties in the M4 also improved when after the initial fighting North Africa, when they added an improved stowage container, as well as trained the crews being to store less ammo in open spots around the tank. Germany had a pretty high casualty rate due to a mixture of poor metallurgy, no PPE for their crews (the closest thing they had to a helmet was a padded beret), tight or poorly-placed hatches, and just the general place they were put in throughout the war. The Soviets had a spike in the aftermath of Barbarossa, but mostly stayed level across the war. The conventional wisdom for a long time was that this was due to the crews being ordered to not abandon their tanks, then command realizing this was a blunder, as an experienced crew was far more valuable than a tank. Lately, though, I've seen some people posit that it's also just likely that a lot of those crewmen just didn't make it back to friendly lines after the tanks were knocked out. Soviet tanks could also tend to be really cramped and difficult to get in and out of. Surprisingly, the British were the Allied nation with the highest tank casualty rates. Most people point to the fact that they didn't wear helmets, which is half-true. British tankers did have helmets that basically looked like Brit paratrooper helmets with a bumper welded on, but they just weren't widely distributed. Other factors included that the British were typically trying to fight an offensive war with (for the most part) lightly-armored tanks in environments where there was a lot of open ground like North Africa and northern Normandy. Edgar Allen Ho posted:That is a bad take! France was a mess in general. The Allied powers knew that Germany would come through the Ardennes, there was mostly a general disbelief that they could quickly get armor through The Ardennes. There was also very little liaison between countries, so the French would start chewing out the Belgians for abandoning a sector while The Belgians insisted that they had divisions exactly like they were supposed to, or countries not having enough translators between multi-national attached units. The shiny, new beautiful tanks that France had for the battle were dead-ends in terms of design, and were delivered to troops who didn't have time to train with them. Entire armored columns were stuck out in the middle of nowhere because the crews didn't know how to use their new dual fuel tanks. The politics were the absolute biggest performance-killer. With a measure more order and preparation, the Battle of France could have been catastrophic for Germany. They took more of a shellacking in Poland than people give them credit for, and a more sustained fight in France could have potentially knocked them out of the war early.
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Jul 22, 2020 14:17
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