Could France of fought on?

[Lazarus]

@Gargantua:

In our other thread, you are saying the Germans executing “millions” of POW’s   Â

No I did not.
Here is the actual post:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=16779.msg957446#msg957446

My words are:  Is that counting the millions of POW’s they starved to death or shot on the spot?

There is no dispute 3 million  Soviet POW’s died. I referer to the millions who starved to death or were shot.
Twisting  my words to mean what you think I said will not work if I can repost the originals.
I make no distinction between those Soviets murdered on capture or slowly strarved to death in the following weeks. To me they are both inhuman acts of savages.
Do you think shooting them quickly is a worse fate?

and the links I gave you are for 1 part of the Russian Front and in the early days and not the whole war.

[Mistergreen]

Sadly Gargantua your own quote goes against what you said:

In fact Lazarus, and this will shock you,  the adult death rate in Germany, AFTER the war was over, was 10 times that, as it was when they were at war.

In early October 1945 the UK government privately acknowledged in a cabinet meeting that, German civilian adult death rates had risen to four times the pre-war levels and death rates amongst the German children had risen by 10 times the pre-war levels

I for one assume that the death rate during the war was greater then before the war.

[Lazarus]

I had picked up on it but I was not quite ready for another dogfight over precise definitions of specific words-one battle at a time!
The death rate for the war was  an aberration and thus any claim it was  exceded by a factor of 10 (or 4) in peacetime was simply not credible.
The backdrop to these claims there was a post war genocide visited on the German people is a staple of far right sites and those who believe the wrong side won in WW2.

If you are of this mindset then here is another source to re-inforce your prejudice

http://hungarianhistory.com/lib/vardy/vardy.doc

[newpaintbrush]

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

Re:  OP

After the evacuations of Allied troops at Dunkirk do you think it would of been possible for the French Armed forces to fight on and hold the line or perhaps even push the Germans back?

If the RAF had tried to base out of France, they would have had the crap kicked out of them.  The reason RAF did well in the Battle of Britain is because Germany had relatively short ranged airpower, and were fighting over strictly hostile territory, plus the Battle of the Beams &c &c.  If the RAF was based out of France, all those advantages would be 100% gone.

“Fighting the Battle of Britain over France” is so contradictory, it’s . . . well, just no, really.

–

Churchhill could claim all the cr*p he wanted.  In June 1940, UK didn’t have power to project into France, and France knew it.  IF UK had that kind of power, withdrawal from Dunkirk would not have been necessary in the first place.  As it was, the Allies can’t even claim to have been able to withdraw from Dunkirk on their own power.  Germany LET them withdraw, which gives you a good idea of which side held the upper hand, regardless of whatever that dreamer Churchhill said.  At that point, the US had not entered the Allies side, even with their industrial base.  It really did not look good for UK for a good long time at all.

–

Could France THEORETICALLY have fought on?  Sure, THEORETICALLY, if in theory you mean you might strap on a dynamite bomb and set it off in the street to protest cruelty to bunnies.  It almost certainly wasn’t going to happen, and for very good reason.

–

You just woke up ten seconds ago, and now you’re standing in your underwear with a soldier aiming a gun at you and your wife and your kids.  You keep a gun in your bedroom dresser.  You have a nosy next door neighbor that you see lifting his curtain across the street.  You know your neighbor doesn’t really like trouble, and at most has a frying pan in his house for weaponry.

There aren’t any neighbors within call, and a recent storm has blown out power and phone lines.  You know your neighbor doesn’t have a cell phone.

The soldier tells you to drop on your knees and throws you a pair of handcuffs.

Do you

1.  Jump for the gun, and risk having your wife and kids get blown away?

2.  Try to scuffle with the armed intruder and hope your nosy neighbor has a fit of heroism and rushes to your aid with a frying pan (racing downstairs, running across the street, kicking in your door, smashing the intruder over the head)?  Note that the soldier looks very big and scary, and has knives and guns all over the place, while your neighbor looks rather like a dumpling left out to seed.

3.  Try to scuffle with the armed intruder and hope your nosy neighbor jumps on his bike and pedals the fifteen miles to the nearest constabulary?  Oh, and all the constables there typically respond to everything with “uh huh”.  Like “My house is burning down and my cat stepped on a land mine” “uh huh”

You have to make a decision, right now.  One possibility that has not yet been mentioned is -

4.  Pop on the handcuffs and nod attentively.

[Lazarus]

@Bunnies:

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

Could you  be more specific as I have no idea what point you are trying to make.

Show me this evidence that contradicts……

[newpaintbrush]

Show me this evidence that contradicts……

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

[Lazarus]

@Bunnies:

Show me this evidence that contradicts……

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

So you duck the issue-as expected.

Bye.

[KurtGodel7]

Good posts, Bunnies and Gargantua! :) I feel like my work is half done before I’ve input a single character. Now it’s time for the other half.

The single best book about WWII which I’ve encountered is The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. The book received the Wolfson History Prize, and has been praised by The Times (London), The Boston Globe, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. Adam Tooze is an historian who also knows economics; having received a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics. He teaches history at the University of Cambridge.

Below are quotes from The Wages of Destruction

---

Grain imports in the late 1930s had run at the rate of more than 7 million tons per annum. . . . These sources of supply were now closed off by the British blockade.

---

P. 418

---

Backe was in an impossible position. The Fuehrer had demanded more workers. Gauleiter Sauckel was dedicated to delivering them. Hitler and Sauckel now demanded that they be fed, which was clearly a necessity if they were to be productive. And yet, given the level of grain stocks, Backe was unable to meet this demand. What was called for was a reduction in consumption, not additional provisions for millions of new workers. The seriousness of the situation became apparent to the wider public in the spring of 1942 when the Food Ministry announced cuts to the food rations of the German population. Given the regime’s mortal fear of damaging morale, the ration cuts of April 1942 are incontrovertible evidence that the food crisis was real. Lowering the rations was a political step of the first order, which Backe would never have suggested if the situation had not absolutely required it. . . . When the reduction in civilian rations was announced it produced a response which justified every anxiety on the part of the Nazi leadership. [News of the cuts was] ‘devastating,’ like ‘virtually no other event during the war’. Studies by nutritional experts added to the regime’s concerns. . . .

Against this backdrop, there was no hope of pushing through any improvement in the rations for Sauckel’s newly arrived Ostarbeitter. . . . Whilst Sauckel’s office vainly issued memorandums calling for adequate treatment of the Ostarbeiter, hundreds of thousands of underfed and underclothed workers arrived from the Eastern territories, to find themselves penned in barbed wire encampments and facing a diet of slow starvation. . . .

At a meeting with DAF officials in early September, Sauckel stamped his foot. The Fuehrer himself had made it clear that it was completely unacceptable for anybody to be starving on the territory of Germany, when the Wehrmacht had full control of the Ukraine.

---

pp. 541 - 543

The result of all this was that Germany became even more aggressive about extracting food from its eastern territories; thereby increasing the number of famine deaths in the east. Doing so allowed Germany to avoid widespread malnutrition among its civilian populace. But its food supply was not sufficient to both achieve that and avoid widespread starvation among the millions of Soviet POWs.

Lazarus wrote, “I make no distinction between those Soviets murdered on capture or slowly strarved to death in the following weeks. To me they are both inhuman acts of savages.” He has presented us with a half truth. It is correct to state that millions of Soviet POWs starved to death in German captivity. It is wildly inaccurate to imply (as he has) that the reason for the starvation was because Hitler or other Nazi leaders were suddenly seized with the savage desire to exterminate their own labor force during the middle of a war! Millions of POWs starved to death because the British food blockade achieved its intended task: it created famine conditions within Germany.

If Lazarus’s comments about Soviet POWs are half truths, his remarks about postwar occupation policy are entirely untrue, and bear no connection to reality. Nothing he’s written on that point is credible.

[Lazarus]

Yes in the Kingdom of the one eyed all the actions of Hitler are excusable.
You should read up  more on the experience  Allied troops crossing from Holland into Germany when pursuing fleeing Germans. They  were amazed at the contrast between the food available once the border was crossed.
The Germans were found to have meat and preserved food in abundance whilst the rest of Europe was strictly rationed.
Simply put they had looted the whole of the continent to make sure their own population was well fed and they cared nothing that  everyone else starved.
One can picture poor Adolf weeping at the news Soviet POW’s were dying. He was probably as shocked at this news as he was to learn someone had been murdering the Jews without his authority!
An unreconstructed Nazi apologist is always going to try and find ways to shift the blame. Unfortunately outside of Stormfront he is peeing into the wind.

[newpaintbrush]

@Lazarus:

So you duck the issue-as expected.

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

[Lazarus]

@Bunnies:

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

So you duck the issue-as expected.

[Lazarus]

One only need to look at the way the Germans allowed food into Leningrad during the seige or how they fed the starving  civilians in the Warsaw Ghetto to confirm that they would never let anyone starve if they could help it……

[newpaintbrush]

@Lazarus:

@Bunnies:

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

So you duck the issue-as expected.

So you duck the issue-as expected.

[Lazarus]

See below where food was available for Soviet POW’s and it was refused and the prisoners allowed to die.

Reich Ministry for the occupied Eastern territories report on Prisoners of War dated 28 Feb 1942,

_**with a certain amount of understanding for goals aimed at by German politics, dying and deterioration could have been avoided in the extent described. For instance, according to information on hand, the native population within the Soviet Union are absolutely willing to put food at the disposal of the prisoners of war. Several understanding camp commanders have successfully chosen this course. However in the majority of the cases, the camp commanders have forbidden the civilian population to put food at the disposal of the prisoners, and they have rather let them starve to death……

Finally, the shooting of prisoners of war must be mentioned ; these were partly carried out according to viewpoints which ignore all political understanding. For instance, in various camps, all the “Asiatics” were shot, although the inhabitants of the areas, considered belonging to Asia, of Transcaucasia and Turkestan especially, are among those people in the Soviet Union who are most strongly opposed to Russian subjugation and to Bolshevism. The Reich ministry of the occupied Eastern territories has repeatedly emphasized these abuses. However, in November for instance, a detail [Kommando] appeared in a prisoner of war camp in Nikolajew, which wanted to liquidate all Asiatics……

 **_

[Lazarus]

From:
Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrußland 1941-1944
(Calculated murders The German economic and political destruction in Belarus 1941-1944)

http://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/christian-gerlach/kalkulierte-morde.html

According to the reports and eyewitness testimonials the murders on marches and transports increased in a well nigh incredible manner in the autumn and winter of 1941. This was especially obvious in the city of Minsk. After a transport in January 1942 alone 1,000 to 2,000 corpses of prisoners are said to have lain in the Minsk main street Sovietskaja. That 80 out of 8,000 men were shot between Masjukovshtchina and the Minsk freight train station was nothing unusual. For instance, German soldiers of Home Infantry Battalion 332 indicted by the Soviets stated that once on 3 October 1941 31 men and once in November 200 men, at other times between 100 and 500 men, had been murdered especially on the way to the secondary camp at the Pushkin barracks in the northeast of Minsk. And this happened on a relatively short trip – on overland marches in Belorussia things were no different, only harder to document. During a march of 3,000 Soviet prisoners of war from Bobruisk in the direction of Sluzk on 7 November 1941, according to a witness who went after the column in a horse cart and counted the bodies, 729 men were shot – then the march was cancelled, and the column had to turn back. Whether in Minsk alone a total of 5,000 or 20,000 prisoners were shot in such actions, as becomes apparent from various eyewitness testimonials, can no longer be clarified.

[KurtGodel7]

@Lazarus:

Yes in the Kingdom of the one eyed all the actions of Hitler are excusable.
You should read up  more on the experience  Allied troops crossing from Holland into Germany when pursuing fleeing Germans. They  were amazed at the contrast between the food available once the border was crossed.
The Germans were found to have meat and preserved food in abundance whilst the rest of Europe was strictly rationed.
Simply put they had looted the whole of the continent to make sure their own population was well fed and they cared nothing that  everyone else starved.
One can picture poor Adolf weeping at the news Soviet POW’s were dying. He was probably as shocked at this news as he was to learn someone had been murdering the Jews without his authority!
An unreconstructed Nazi apologist is always going to try and find ways to shift the blame. Unfortunately outside of Stormfront he is peeing into the wind.

I have already presented a serious, historical account of Germany’s food situation. You are attempting to confuse that issue, without adding anything of substance to what the historian has written. Your main “contribution” with your post seems to be the implication that Germany should be blamed for preventing starvation and malnutrition among its own people, and for maintaining the food reserves necessary to survive a Northern European winter. Once again, you are wasting everyone’s time.

[KurtGodel7]

@Lazarus:

From:
Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrußland 1941-1944
(Calculated murders The German economic and political destruction in Belarus 1941-1944)

http://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/christian-gerlach/kalkulierte-morde.html

According to the reports and eyewitness testimonials the murders on marches and transports increased in a well nigh incredible manner in the autumn and winter of 1941. This was especially obvious in the city of Minsk. After a transport in January 1942 alone 1,000 to 2,000 corpses of prisoners are said to have lain in the Minsk main street Sovietskaja. That 80 out of 8,000 men were shot between Masjukovshtchina and the Minsk freight train station was nothing unusual. For instance, German soldiers of Home Infantry Battalion 332 indicted by the Soviets stated that once on 3 October 1941 31 men and once in November 200 men, at other times between 100 and 500 men, had been murdered especially on the way to the secondary camp at the Pushkin barracks in the northeast of Minsk. And this happened on a relatively short trip – on overland marches in Belorussia things were no different, only harder to document. During a march of 3,000 Soviet prisoners of war from Bobruisk in the direction of Sluzk on 7 November 1941, according to a witness who went after the column in a horse cart and counted the bodies, 729 men were shot – then the march was cancelled, and the column had to turn back. Whether in Minsk alone a total of 5,000 or 20,000 prisoners were shot in such actions, as becomes apparent from various eyewitness testimonials, can no longer be clarified.

From the Wikipedia article about Christian Gerlach:

---

According to Gerlach, the resistance offered by officers such as Claus von Stauffenberg and Henning von Tresckow, who were responsible for the famous assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944, was insincere, and in fact- Tresckow and many other resistance fighters were heavily implicated in national socialist war crimes [7] However, Gerlach’s thesis was severely criticized by a number of scholars . . . Recently, Danny Orbach, a Harvard based historian and PhD candidate, had argued that Gerlach’s reading of the sources is highly skewed, and at times- diametrically opposed to what they really say. In one case, according to Orbach, Gerlach had falsely paraphrased the memoir of the resistance fighter Colonel Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, and in another case, quoted misleadingly from an SS document. Hence, Orbach concludes that Gerlach’s thesis on the German resistance is highly unreliable. [9].

---

Based on the above, my first impression is that Gerlach has swallowed Allied propaganda hook, line, and sinker. And has distorted evidence to make Germany look as bad as possible. (By attempting to discredit the German resistance.) And has devoted his whole career to wallowing in a sense of collective German guilt.

The German occupation of the Soviet Union was harsh. But that harshness should be discussed objectively. You very clearly have an ax to grind, and the same also appears to be true of Gerlach.

[Lazarus]

So your defence is to attack the author?
I have to smile when I see your  usual tactic of  repasting whole pages of Wiki and believing it is a credible source!

I note you  ignore the official German document that clearly says:

the native population within the Soviet Union are absolutely willing to put food at the disposal of the prisoners of war. Several understanding camp commanders have successfully chosen this course. However in the majority of the cases, the camp commanders have forbidden the civilian population to put food at the disposal of the prisoners, and they have rather let them starve to death……

Perhaps you should continue to scour Wiki in the hope it might provide you with an answer ?

[Lazarus]

@KurtGodel7:

Your main “contribution” with your post seems to be the implication that Germany should be blamed for preventing starvation and malnutrition among its own people, and for maintaining the food reserves necessary to survive a Northern European winter. Once again, you are wasting everyone’s time.

Nothing could better illustrate your complete lack of credibility than the above.
For your information any country who invades another has a legal duty to make sure the  captured citizens have adequate food supplies.
It also shows how you continue to distort the reality I posted .
In 1941  when millions of Soviet POW’s were starving and the local population offered to provoide food (because there was no shortage) the camp commanders refused the help and deliberately and criminaly allowed the prisoners to starve.
Your excuses are pathetic and don’t even make sense.

[Imperious Leader]

And yet again Kurt turned another thread into book reports dealing with German policies of killing opposition/ Holocaust/ Extermination program.

Another thread closed because it now has nothing to do with the French holding out in 1940.