Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Biggest screw ups of WWII

Single biggest screw up of WWII was not finishing off the Russians with Stalin in charge when the opportunity presented itself. The West should have let Russia and Germany fight to destroy themselves on the Eastern front without assisting Russia, and then taken out that maniacal SOB Stalin at the first opportunity.

The USA becoming involved in it.

D-Day. Every time I watch it, I'm overcome with deep sadness. There should have been no D-Day. FDR was a traitor and a Stalin puppet. Stalin wanted FDR to open a western front thereby forcing the Nazis to fight a two front war, thus taking a lot of Nazi pressure off of Stalin. A patriot would have never, ever aligned with Stalin. A patriot would have placed his soldiers above all others. A patriot would have told Stalin to eff off, that Hitler was his problem. After all, Stalin & Hitler signed the Non-Aggression Pact making them allies. Hell, Stalin was such a dupe that he actually thought that Hitler and he were going to divide Poland among themselves.

WWII was a continuation of WWI, neither of which was any of our damned business. But FDR was hellbent on duping gullible Americans into the war, so he set up Pearl Harbor.

FDR was nothing but a 2-bit dirt bag murderer who should have been tried and hanged.

He'd never read the wisdom in the Bible I'd bet. 2 Samuel 11:1

"In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle"

Hrsesheit.

I hear a cuckoo-clock.



Dave

Great Britain

Britain and France declaring war on Germany to save Poland. Six years later after possibly one hundred million deaths, they gave Poland up to a worse dictator than Hitler.

I disagree with Sakoav saying we shouldn't get involved

But our involvement was indeed mostly at the machinations of FDR

No one can know for certain the whole emperor gig is kinda crazy , but FDR basically gave Japan's emperor an ultimatum & either boycotted or threatened to boycott oil to Japan

There's pretty good evidence to suggest they calculated an attack on US soil as a result

Thus changing the sentiment of the average American for the US to get involved

Lots of lives lost over oil

Some things seldom change

Not just oil, then, but rubber (the Goodyear plantations in the South Pacific controlled nearly all the supply of rubber in the Pacific region) and steel. Without those three, Japan's economy and military would have - and did - crumble.

No all were dip-chit ideas. Sure, they could have turned out better, but eventually they were all massive strategic blunders into a war they cannot win. The only thing that would result in your ideas are more Allied casualties, and a different end date to the war.

Germany attacked with 86 divisions (IIRC) and expected to encounter between 100-120 divisions of Soviet Soldiers. After 3 weeks of fighting, Von Manstein cabled back to high command that thus far his forces had identified 320 divisions of Soviet troops. That's a MASSIVE screwup. I can't even imagine how pissed Von Manstein was.

Japan didn't know those would be the numbers at the time of the attack. You have to remember that 1941 USA looked vastly different from 1945 USA. Our military was unproven and politically we were isolationist. It was a 50/50 gamble by Japan that they could destroy our Pacific fleet and the US would acquiescence instead of fight. If a few things had gone Japan's way, the war would have been extremely different. We almost lost the 1st Marine division on Guadacanal. The Navy abandoned the Marines there. We were down to the Big E being our last carrier at one point. If the Japs has sunk her, they would have owned the Pacific. The Japanese were not easy to defeat.

Good,points Sean, but it seems evident FDR wasn't looking for a diplomatic solution.


Still with what I can glean of the collective Japanese thought process during that time, it's very possible no diplomatic solution existed


One of the biggest screw ups imo is that Hirohito escaped any punishment, true he'd been raised by the military and was a bit of a pawn in their scheme, still he bore some great responsibility

He wasn't, because he couldn't afford to. He wanted in the war, badly, and a lot of that stemmed from the facts that 1) the US economy was still faltering and a war would spur industry and save his legacy and ideology; 2) Germany was going to destroy Western Europe this time; and 3) he had boxed himself out of diplomatic options and the only way to save face was to fight. There were many other reasons, but those three are often overlooked.

Ignorance and arrogance. Very few in Japan had any real understanding of how vast of a nation the US was; or the massive natural resources and man (woman) power.

Still, they did know it was David picking a fight with Goliath.

The biggest strategic blunder was in their estimation of our resolve. They knew we had a large Navy, but we lacked a real strong fighting tradition and history. They thought we were like the Italian Navy...big, impressive, but unwilling to risk anything in a real fight.

Their strategic thinking was that the US wouldn't risk it's beautiful Navy over some Pacific islands, and that after 6 months of Yamamoto "running wild" in the Pacific, and the loss of some US capital ships, that the US would sue for peace. Biggest strategic blunder of WWII.

In the early days of WWII, Japan did indeed kick our Navy's arse each and every time we clashed. A friend's grandfather was a seaman aboard the USS Chicago, and USS San Francisco, both heavy cruisers, during the early days of WWII. He swam off the decks of both Cruisers as they went down. He said they just knew if they even caught sight of the Japanese, they were going down; and he was right. THAT's how overbearing the Japanese Navy was in the Pacific in those days.

But the US Navy turned out to be even more competent than the Japanese. They thought we would be like the Italians. They were a bit shocked after Midway that we turned out to be like the British.

That's not how President Hoover described WWII. All the same to you, I'll go with facts and President Hoover's book. I'm good with your meandering in pastures looking for horse droppings. Who knows, horse dropping might be the divining rod that pulls knowledge to you.

You gotta believe what you gotta believe. For some people, these three words are impossible to say, "I was wrong."

You can go along merrily in life believing what you want to believe, or you can search out facts. My advice is to go with facts.

Pearl Harbor conspiracies are the bunk.

FDR did tell Stalin to pound sand for 3 years. We invaded at OUR time and place of choosing. You're forgetting, Germany declared war on US, not the other way around. And we were engaged in open naval warfare for 3 years with Germany before D-Day. Whether you like it or not, D-Day had to happen at some point. And D-Day was a resounding success even with the losses at Omaha beach. And when you consider the scope of D-Day, the losses at Omaha start to take perspective. To think we could just stroll onto German occupied territory unopposed is crazy. We got seriously lucky that the only Omaha and Juno faced any serious opposition. D-Day is perhaps the most important day of the 20th century.

We had deciphered the Japanese Naval Code before Pearl Harbor. We knew where Yamamoto was before he did.

Every ship destroyed in Pearl Harbor was obsolete. The only two of military value were aircraft carriers that were suspiciously moved out of Pearl Harbor a day before the surprise attack that FDR knew was going to occur.

Everything that Americans were taught about Pearl Harbor and why we got involved in WWII was a lie.

Out of all the books on WWII you choose THAT one as "fact"...You take one very controversial book, and that becomes fact to you? What about the vast preponderance of evidence to the contrary in hundreds of other books? All just some vast conspiracy I presume?