Your choice of a WW2 combat theater


  • If you were forced to go into an active combat theater in WW2, which would it be? And which theater would you avoid?


  • The Home Front, avoid the rest  :-P

  • '22 '20 '19 '18 '17 '16

    If I took my heritage into account the Eastern Front would be most appropriate.

    But that would be too brutal, I’d take my chances in North or East Africa.

  • 2024 2023 '22 '21 '20 '19 '18 '17

    The 2nd French Armored Division. We’d liberate Paris and all the grateful mademoiselles would see me as a hero. And I’d be led by a general who could rightfully say: “It is I, Leclerc!” - though the comic effect would elude me at the time.


  • Italy for the food and climate.
    Would have said Normandy as the countryside so resembles southern England and I love cider, calva, galettes and pancakes. Then remembered the French live there!


  • @wittmann:

    Italy for the food and climate.

    Unfortunately, during the Second World War neither of those things were as delightful as they are in Italy today.  As the Allies fought their way through Italy in 1943 and 1944, the local population was suffering from serious food shortages; rather than being in a position to greet the Allies with generous plates of fine Italian cuisine, they were sometimes prepared to go to considerable lengths to get their hands on the famously unappetizing army rations on which the Allied troops were sustaining themselves.  If you watch the Robert Mitchum movie The Story of G.I. Joe, you’ll see what I mean; as I recall, it illustrates – to the extent that 1945 movie proprieties allowed – that GIs sometimes provided food and soap and other essential to hungry Italians, especially if the Italians in question were female, young and reasonably good-looking.  As for the weather, the same movie deliberately features long, long, long sequences in which the troops sit dejectedly for weeks on the outskirts of Monte Cassino, ankle-deep in mud and soaked in incessant rain.  Not fun at all.


  • @ABWorsham:

    If you were forced to go into an active combat theater in WW2, which would it be? And which theater would you avoid?

    Very interesting question.  The “which theater would you avoid?” part is a bit easier to answer than the first part because, while all theatres were bad, some were worse.  I would very much want to avoid fighting in the jungle, so that would rule out the China-Burma-India theatre and the land-based component of the Southwest Pacific theatre (the naval component would be more acceptable, since I’d be fighting aboard a ship).  I’d also want to avoid the Russian front: extremely brutal winters, and extraordinarily savage and merciless fighting by both sides.  I guess my preference would be for a theatre and a terrain and a climate similar to what I’m used to, so I’d pick Continental Western Europe from D-Day onward.  But my overall preference would be to serve at sea rather than on land; if that were the case, I’d pick the Central Pacific (a theatre with a very heavy naval component, and with generally better weather than the North Atlantic).

  • Moderator

    Poland, it didn’t last very long


  • I would try to avoid the Gona-Buna area of New Guinea, that battle was fought in the worst hell hole of infective disease. The casualties from malaria, jungle rot, and typhus outnumbered battle casualties 8 to 1. U.S and Australian forces had to knockout coconut pillboxs and gravel filled barrel reinforced trenches with air power and heavy artillery.

    I would pick the Western Front 1944.

  • Liaison TripleA '11 '10

    European Theatre obviously.

    Probably Battle of Berlin on the Reich side.

  • Customizer

    Best: USN Shore Patrol in So Cal or Florida. Staff Desk Jockey stateside.

    Worst: Any U-boat patrol even in the “Happy Time”.

    Thee Worst: USMC PTO. Tied with either side in the ETO eastern front.

    Honorable Mention for Worst: North Africa.

    Exciting but Terrifying: B-17 crew member in ETO or B-29 crew member in PTO.


  • More fun: An ME163, RjPeters.
    You go up and you come down 20 mins later! Would not get eye strain trying to spot German interceptors and bored escorting bombers at 300mph for hours.

    Being in a Sub would have driven me mad too.


  • @rjpeters70:

    B-29s were pretty safe, due to their altitude and the destruction of Japanese air power by the time they flew.  My understanding, at least, may be wrong.

    The relative lack of Japanese air opposition certainly helped.  The high altitude probably also helped to some degree at the time when the Americans were bombing Japan by day, but they eventually switched to low-altitude fire-bombing at night.  I don’t have detailed information on B-29 casualty rates over Japan, but my impression is that although those missions were probably safer than the B-17 missions over Germany, B-29s still managed to suffer significant battle damage.  As I recall, one of the American motivations for capturing Iwo Jima was to provide an emergency landing facility for damaged B-29s returning from Japan, and my understanding is that the Iwo Jima runways saved a considerable number of these very expensive airplanes which would not have been able to make it back to their base in the Marianas.  So evidently the Japanese did have the ability to hit at least some B-29s, either by fighter attack or with flak from anti-aircraft guns.


  • The Japanese used phosphorus bombs against heavy bombers with mixed results. The Japanese also used fighters to ram heavy bombers.


  • I´ll go with Normandy '44, Africa E-'42 ,Caucasus '42 and France '40.

    To Avoid Battle of Sevastopol '44, Stalingrad '42,'43, Kurland '44,'45.

    Normandy - Panzer Lehr
    Africa - DAK 21. PD
    Caucasus (Kuban-Brückenkopf) - 1st Panzerarmee
    France - 7th PD

    As Ally:
    Normandy - 82nd or 101 U.S. Airborne
    Ardennes - 101

    To Avoid:

    Pacific, Stalingrad and anything with Snow!(Except Ardennes 8-))


  • USN in the Pacific. I’d serve aboard a ship (preferably one that doesn’t get hit by a kamikaze).


  • @DarthShizNit:

    The Home Front, avoid the rest�  :-P

    If you are a Russian with that view Uncle Joe may send you to the Siberia for “reeducation”.  :cry:


  • @ABWorsham:

    @DarthShizNit:

    The Home Front, avoid the rest� � :-P

    If you are a Russian with that view Uncle Joe may send you to the Siberia for “reeducation”. � :cry:

    Good thing I’m a god fearing American  :lol:


  • @ABWorsham:

    @DarthShizNit:

    The Home Front, avoid the rest

    If you are a Russian with that view Uncle Joe may send you to the Siberia for “reeducation”.

    Stalin might not have had to do so.  For the Russians, being on the home front wasn’t much better than being on the front lines.  There’s a chapter in Richard Overy’s book Why The Allies Won which discusses the harsh regimentation to which Soviet factory workers were subjected during WWII, including one scene that describes a shift change in which lines of (female, if I recall correctly) workers are being marched into their workplace – an unheated factory in the middle of winter – under the watchful eyes of an escort of armed guards.  Home front workers were for most practical purposes regarded as being soldiers at war, and they could be shot for desertion if they failed to show up for work (or even, I think, if they failed to meet their production quotas).


  • @DarthShizNit:

    @ABWorsham:

    @DarthShizNit:

    The Home Front, avoid the rest� �� :-P

    If you are a Russian with that view Uncle Joe may send you to the Siberia for “reeducation”. �� :cry:

    Good thing I’m a god fearing American  :lol:

    You’re awesome brother.

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