The Myths of WWII

The thing is that each of these 'myths' possess an element of truth to them, that is why the persist as myths. The flaw in the arguement is that each alone, if followed to thier logical conclusion, would yield victory.

Myth 1, It would be hard to argue that Hitler's decision making from 1941 on was not deeply flawed. Many generals including Goring had doubts about Barbarossa, When it was clear Leninigrad/Moscow would not fall in 1941 he would not allow the Heer to fall back to reasonable lines. Insistance on 'not one step back' defence, forbidding a 6th Army breakout attempt. Sending the 15th army to die in North Africa, and insisting on the objective of Antwerp instead of settling for the destruction of a US corps in the Ardennes are just the highlights. The 'brilliant' generals could not win the war alone, but playing closer to the vest could have prolonged the war by as much as a year.

Myth 2, Hitler's decision making up to the summer of 1940 was often better than his generals. In reguard to the Saar, Rhineland, Austria and Czechoslovakia Hitler correctly assessed that the Allies lacked the will to oppose him while his senior generals wavered and plotted his downfall at the first sign of a nonexistent resistance. He also saw the first plan for attacking in the west as nothing more than the same plan as 1914 with new window treatments. He embraced Manstein's plan when he saw it even when some of his senior generals thought it to risky. From that moment on he no longer trusted his top generals and began to think himself infallable.

Myth 3, There is little to contradict the arguement that the Western Allies and the USSR made much better use of the civilian workforce, especialy women. Hitler's belief that all his wars would be short delayed the full mobilization of the German workforce until far too late. Hitler's belief that the best use of German women was in producing good Aryan soldiers did not help matters.

Myth 4, Speer was a definite plus and his rationalization of production and industry likely added as much as a year to the life of the '1,000 year' Reich. Had he lived, Todt might have made the changes Speer did to meet the Reich's needs, but there is limited evidence that he had planned to.

Myth 5, Hitler's fetish for wonder weapons sent hundreds of millions of reichmarks down the drain as well as the man hours used to design and produce these weapons. Forgoing most of these as Speer suggested and plowing the money/resources into proven if mundane weapons might have given Germany another 6 months of life.

Myth 6, The Final Solution of the Jewish Question did nothing to bring Germany closer to victory, but only served to waste resources, manpower and money. Worse it only served to incite a virulent, uncompromising resistance to the Reich that only served to siphon off ever more men and resources to contain it.

Myth 7, The Reich was inefficiant period. The Final Solution, the expansion of the SS to 30+ divisional formations, the Luftwaffe expansion to 30+ divisional formations (including 2 Panzer), The failure to adopt production line methods over craftsman/piecework, the reliance on forced/slave labor from people who had no desire to see the Reich win, the inability to see past a season in planning and on and on.

Myth 8 & 9, The USSR would not lose the war without lend lease, but could they win it? Without the tanks, planes, trucks, radios, food and natural resources sent to Russia most of the great Red Army offensive's would have run out of steam much sooner than they did and cost much more in lives lost. Stalin made a deal with Hitler once when he thought the west lacked the will to fight. If the war in the east ground to a stalemate is it completely unthinkable that he might cut a deal again?

Myth 10, One of the selling points for Lend-Lease was that the US was producing the weapons to provide to those fighting Hitler in the hope that it would be enough and American boys would not have to fight themselves. Churchill abd Rooseveldt both understood that at some point US troops would have to fight, but the little white lie sounded good to a divided American public.

 

I am surprised you are falling for myth 3 :The Wages of Destruction P 358 n the use of women:
in 1939,more than a third of the German workforce was made up by women,for Britain,a quarter
in 1940 :Germany:41 %,Britain less than 30 %
Myth 4 :Speer and the armaments miracle :culprit of the myth =John Galbraith,who claimed that Germany never should have lost the war,it was the fault of the naziregime that failed to mobilize the German economy sufficiently to supply the German army with the equipment it needed for victory .
Conclusions of Galbraith:the German defeat was the testimony to the inherent inefficiencies of dictatorship and the inherent efficiencies of freedom (as was to be expected from someone as Galbraith ).
And,from where did these ideas come ? From the interrogations of Speer(of course)who was soft-sawder Galbraith (a matter of scratching each other's back).
These myths have been debunked :in the Todt periode,Germant was investing massively to expand its economic infrastructure,and Speer was building on the work from Todt,but,of course,Speer was claiming the Todt successes for him .
(Source :The Wages of Destruction P 429)


in 1944:Germany 51 %,Britain :41 %
The theory that Britain was using the women,and Germany not,is a myth ,with as origin ? Maybe Speer ?

 

I have not read the book you cite, and sadly until I am off a partial lay off I can not rectify that condition. I did do a limited search on the book and Mr. Galbraith. I could find nothing relevent on Galbraith, but I see the book has won awards which is in its favor. It is my general policy to treat single source material with a measure of reserve, especialy as it is second hand to me. Further I can recall a book Oprah pushed hard a few years ago that was aclaimed as a classic which tuned out to be largely a fake. I do not make that claim about your source, only that it has been proven before that you can fool some of the people at least some of the time. I look forward to an oppertunity to read it myself and decide on my own.

With reguard to Speer. I do not accept any memior from any participant on any side uncriticly. I work from the assumption that there are things they don't know, and things they would rather not have us to know. Your comment that he built upon Todt's work is no doubt true in some measure. But consider that Speer simply did not increase numbers of units produced, but did so with weapons much improved from the era of Todt. He did so with much less give in experienced, motovated workers as more and more able-bodied males were called up and replaced by slave labor. Also serious inderdiction by Strategic Bombing did not occur until after he took over as Armaments Minister. By 1943 the Reich's empire began to contract with Germany now forced to fight on the Eastern Front, the Atlantic, Italy and in the air over Germany. Despite this Speer produced ever larger numbers of weapons, including highly advanced (for the time) aircraft, guided weapons, rockets and missles. The era of Todt by comparison is rather less hectic.

 

The Wages of Destruction is one of the few books I can recommend,although it's not perfect .(The use of Overmans's disputable loss figures of the East Front is a minus point).Some figures proving (IMHO) that Speer was building upon Todt's work:
industrial investment by the German Army (in million of RM)(years ending on 31 march )
1939-1940:5O2
1940-1941:1,047.7
1941-1942:1,093.1
1942-1943:593.4

 

A (short) work of Tooze is :Arming the Reich (available on the net)
For some critical evaluations of the role of Speer (available on the net) ,see :the German armaments miracle .

 

How is that a myth? The U.S. had warnings but chose to ignore them.

 

I suggest you do this at the earliest possible opportunity.....and let us also then include the myth of Hitler's so-called advanced weapons, which in reality achieved nothing that couldn't have been achieved by expending similar resources on 'conventional' weapons....eg numbers of Me 262 that saw actual combat less than 150 (IIRC) for 800 odd constructed etc etc..

 

Well the guided bombs were pretty effective until counter measures were found. German radar was also pretty good although they didn't set up a system to make full use of it. Some of the others had a lot of potentail but were too late. Others weren't going to make any difference any way.

 

The movie Tuskagee Airmen says that these men never lost a bomber, which I had believed until today.

 

Excellent!! Thanks for the update, bro! Never feels good to find out you've been wrong, but hey, I'd rather be corrected than sound like an idiot, or inadvertently perpetuate an incorrect fact.

 

A Myth: Allies were betrayed by Soviets who have signed a Hitler–Stalin Pact with the 3rd Reich.

In reality a document entitled »Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union« has been renamed in public to a »Nazi–Soviet Pact«, »Hitler–Stalin Pact«, »German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact« and sometimes the »Nazi–Soviet Alliance« just to put it in negative context.

However, the »Anglo-German Declaration of nonaggression« was signed Sept. 30, 1938, in Munich, immediately after the conclusion of the Munich agreement of 1938. That was a year before Soviets! Even French and Polish governments had their versions of a »pact« with Nazi Germany. However, the German-Soviet declaration had to become so notorious and different from all other pacts of its time.

There is nothing bad in these treaties. Governments were just buying some time to prepare for a war before the attack actually begins.

 

Well the Soviet German pact went a bit beyond these didn't it? Allowing for the cooperative destruction of Poland for example.

 

The Marines made the most amphibious assaults in the Pacific.

Fact: The Army conducted more and bigger Amphibious Assaults than the USMC.

Since General MacArthur was such a press hog, press releases about any operation were actually a press release about how great and brilliant MacArthur was. Whereas the Marine Corp focused more on how great the Marine’s fought (and rightly so) instead of how brilliant their commanders were.

 

Indeed, Poles have chosen a beautiful country but they were less lucky in selection of neighborhood.

The »Anglo-German Declaration of nonaggression«, however, similarly gave the 3rd Reich full freedom of action against the USSR.

 

Not to be a naysayer, but I would like to see some sources for this, as it is often reported using several different wordings.

"During World War II, the US Army conducted more amphibious operations than the US Marines." Note the use of the word "operations" and not "assaults", nor does it limit itself to the Pacific.

"During World War II, the US Army conducted more large amphibious operations than the US Marines." Same as the previous, with the addition of the very subjective term "large".

Finally, Okinawa is considered to be the largest amphibious operation of the Pacific, and this was a joint operation.

 

Neighbors can be like family that way. You don't really get to choose them. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't.

Did it? It may not have addressed it but then Germany didn't share a common border with the USSR at the time either. I would say that's different from cooperativly partitioning a third party.

 

That is indeed a paradox: neither of these countries had common borders and yet they signed nonaggression treaties!?!? But both USSR and the 3rd Reich wanted to restore their common borders, just Germans forgot to confess their secret wishes to shift them a little bit more eastwards.

 

Thankyou! Ive been a voice in the dark over this! Laughed at by the likes of bloody Rabid! The "myth" was that it was for the folding wings, room in other words. Remember an aircraft (WW2) pitches forward when its caught by the arrestor hook...this effectively puts in onto a horizontal plane, even slightly below the line - as opposed to 20-30 angle backwards when sitting.

 

You bring up a good point as my am only parroting what I have read and heard from my Dad. This will require some research over at the ole Library. It think it would be most interesting to have actual numbers of what, who, where, and when. Also definitions of what is considered an amphibious assault as opposed to amphibious reinforcements operations. Give me some time to get through some projects already on the burner and I will actually see if I can get some good hard facts and numbers. This of course is not intended to take away anything from the Marines or Soldiers involved in the Pacific but only for historical facts.