Spitfire plucked from peat bog reveals astonishing story of World War II

First, come up with a strategy for Germany, and then one for Japan-you control the respective powers from the start of the war, with these restrictions:

The Axis cannot not go to war with France, the Low Countries, and Britain.

The Axis cannot conclude a separate peace with China.

Other than that, you control all military forces (with no intervention from anyone), and you have the ability to declare war (or not) on the Soviet Union, the US, and all other countries. So how could the Axis have won the war? I’m looking forward to your thoughts!

@CWO:

Intereting hypothetical question.  One amusing aspect is the idea of Hitler, with his long track record of breaking treaties and of attacking other countries without warning, expressing shock over Japanese treachery – though I guess it’s not unimaginable, since the same track record basically shows that he was quite capable of changing his foreign policies in any way that he felt served his interests at any given time.  And relations between Germany and Japan were not always cordial.  For instance, Germany supposedly expressed shock over the Rape of Nanking and offered itself as a mediator between China (with whom I think it had a degree of military advisory relations) and Japan.  And Japan was highly annoyed when Germany signed the August 1939 nonaggression pact with Japan’s old enemy, Russia.

Even taking Hitler’s impulsive and erratic nature into account, however, it’s pretty hard to fathom why he’d declare war on Japan in December 1941.  The two countries were partners under the Tripartite Pact, whose bottom line was, frankly, that Germany and Japan agreed to stay out of each other’s way as each nation pursued its expansionist policies on opposite sides of the globe.  A war between the two countries, even if it had been declared, would have been virtually impossible to wage since German and Japan were separated from each other by vast stretches of land (notably the USSR, which was unfriendly to both countries) and ocean.

It’s even harder to fathom why Hitler would offer support to the US in December 1941, since the Americans were actively supporting its enemy Great Britain.  I can understand Britain’s wartime partnership with the USSR against Germany, on the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, but Hitler’s support of the US would have been a case of “the friend of my enemy is my friend”, which makes no sense.

Just for argument’s sake, however, I’d guess that if Hitler had inexplicably offered to the US a wartime alliance against Japan, the Americans wouldn’t have accepted it.  Nazi Germany was, to put it mildly, neither liked nor trusted by the Roosevelt administration, and its reaction would probably have been to treat a partnership proposal from Hitler like the offer of a bottle of poison.

it’s pretty hard to fathom why he’d declare war on Japan in December 1941.

I don’t want to speak for Gargantua. But it’s possible that the goal of this declaration of war would be for Germany to distance itself as much as possible from Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack. The underlying objective would be to make the political climate in America less favorable for going to war against Germany.

Nazi Germany was, to put it mildly, neither liked nor trusted by the Roosevelt administration, and
its reaction would probably have been to treat a partnership proposal from Hitler like the offer of a bottle of poison.

The goal of Stalin’s foreign policy was to foster war between Germany and the Western democracies. Stalin hoped to achieve this goal by promoting “anti-fascism.” The Soviet Union would stay neutral in this hoped-for war. This war would weaken both Germany and the Western democracies. Ideally it would be like WWI, and bleed both sides white. That war would set the stage for Soviet expansion westward into Europe. The first stage would be at the expense of Germany and Eastern Europe. The second state would be at the expense of France and possibly other Western democracies.

FDR was extremely eager to embrace the pro-Soviet, anti-fascist foreign policy Stalin envisioned for Western democracies. I don’t see anything Hitler could have done to change that. He didn’t begin to have the kind of penetration into the FDR administration Stalin had. Nor was there any readily available way for him to achieve that penetration. FDR hated Nazis and other Germans, but was very intrigued by communism and by Stalin. It was this mindset which allowed a number of outright communists to achieve positions of great influence in his administration, while anyone with right wing views was either excluded entirely or eased out of any real policy-setting role.

But FDR did not work in a vacuum. Had it been up to him, the United States would have declared war on Germany back in the '30s. The fact it did not do so was because due to strong isolationist forces. While FDR and his allies in the media were working diligently to weaken those forces, even by December 1941 they were still strong. Had Germany declared war on Japan in December '41, it would have been a clear, simple statement. Even FDR and his allies would have found it difficult to distort that statement into something which made war with Germany seem necessary.

By the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, the American pro-war faction had built up too much political momentum for a German declaration of war against Japan to stop them. Sooner or later, the pro-war faction would succeed at getting America into the war; much like it had succeeded in WWI. Even over the short-term, the pro-war faction would still have been able to send large quantities of weapons to Stalin and the Soviet Union, as well as to Britain.

Let’s say that declaring war against Japan would have bought Germany two years of nominal peace with America. While Germany would still have had to deal with large numbers of American made weapons during that two year period, at least it wouldn’t have had to face American soldiers. That two year grace period would have allowed Germany to concentrate more of its military force on its eastern front, instead of having to use as much strength defending against potential or actual Anglo-American invasions elsewhere. (Though they would still have had to defend against the Anglo half of that threat.)

That concentration of force against the Soviet Union would undoubtedly led to a more favorable situation on Germany’s eastern front. More victories, more Soviet soldiers captured, more conquered Soviet land. But I do not think that this alone would have been sufficient for Germany to win the war in the east. In the absence of other factors helping Germany, the German objective on the eastern front should (in this scenario) have been to grab what land it could in the western U.S.S.R., including at least some of the Caucasus oilfields, and then negotiate peace with Stalin. The more successful Germany was on its eastern front, the more presumptively likely Stalin would have been to negotiate an end to hostilities.

This peace treaty would by no means have represented the end of the war. It would merely indicate Germany had survived the first phase of the challenges ahead of it.

Would had loved to use the Prinz Eugen and eight destroyers combined with a Luftflotte ,but it would have been hard to arrange it with the Prinz timewise…

That is beyond mental. Really enjoyed reading and learning of that story, Raunchy.
You do find some seriously good stories.
Love the pic of the two planes flying together.
“Honour is everything here.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087023/World-War-II-photographs-American-soldiers-fight-survival-brutal-Battle-Saipan.html

I scored Finland, I’m trying to score Italy to see what it says  :-D

These guys had guts!

War creates a thousand heroes a day and almost no one ever hears about them. Vernon Buss  of Portland is a hero of the unsung variety, but he never cared about recognition or notice for his actions that day on Samar.

But Irving Saunders  did – and long ago, Buss realized that Saunders was “a stubborn man” and it was pointless to deter him.

At last, the stubbornness paid off. All Buss had to do was show up Tuesday morning at a state office building and accept the thanks of a grateful nation . . . and of a grateful Saunders.

It would not be far wrong to say that Saunders, 87, has thought about Buss, 84, almost daily since Jan. 24, 1945. He gets reminders when he looks in the mirror, when he celebrates a birthday, when he speaks of his wife, Pearl,  his children and grandchildren.

He should have died that day, at 22, but Buss saved his life. For decades, Saunders, then an aircraft ground crewman, never even knew the name of the fellow Marine who had pulled his burning body from the crashed F4-U Corsair  on the speck of an island in the Philippines.

“I wasn’t supposed to live,” Saunders said, “but the Marines had developed this new way to treat burns, and as soon as I could, I asked to go back to my unit, so I could find my rescuer.”

When Cpl. Vernon Buss, a 20-year-old aircraft mechanic, saw the Corsair explode, he raced to the burning aircraft searching for survivors. He scooped up the unconscious Saunders, carried him to an ambulance and returned to the crash site to rescue others.

Nearly a year later, when his tour ended, Buss returned to his hometown of Portland, worked seven years in a rendering plant then joined the Fire Bureau, where he spent 31 years, retired as battalion chief and even had a fire boat named after him. He and Madge  have been married 63 years; they had four children and are great-grandparents.

“I wondered what had happened to him,” Buss said of Saunders. “But there were other things to do.”

Saunders finished his service – never finding his rescuer – and went back home to Southern California. His back, arms and legs carry the scars from third-degree burns he suffered in the aircraft fire. The back brace he wears daily is another reminder.

Saunders went to veterans’ reunions with the No. 1 aim of finding his rescuer. In 1996, he went to an event wearing a T-shirt silkscreened with an image of an F4-U. A woman approached him and complimented the T-shirt; she said her husband would love to see it.

A moment later, the husband appeared and said his name was Vernon Buss. He and Saunders engaged in the veterans’ eternal guessing game: Where did you serve?

In the Pacific – check. Through Guadalcanal  – check. In the Philippines – check. . . On the island of Samar  . . . Jan. 24, 1945 . . .

Saunders had found him. He gave Buss the T-shirt.

They stayed in touch. Saunders carved a plaque from solid basswood with the Marine Corps’ emblem and presented it to Bass. But that wasn’t thanks enough.

So Saunders got stubborn. Three times, he petitioned the Marine Corps to give Buss a medal. But few witnesses were alive to corroborate events. Finally, he contacted a staff member in the office of U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer  because Buss lived in that House district.

After much back and forth, with Saunders pushing hard, Blumenauer’s office worked out a plan for Rep. Darrell Issa,  R-Calif., who represents Saunders, to read a commendation into the Congressional Record on July 29:

“With total disregard for his own safety, Corporal Buss rushed to the side of Staff Sergeant Irving Saunders and carried him away from the burning aircraft, the burning pools of gasoline and the random detonations of .50 caliber ammunition as it ‘cooked off’ from the Corsair’s burning ammunition supply.”

The Marine Corps in Portland and Blumenauer’s staff arranged for the ceremony in Blumenauer’s district office to present Buss with a framed copy of the Congressional Record statement.

The day before the ceremony, Saunders said he wouldn’t make it. He is 87, after all. Then, “My daughter said, ‘Dad, this is what you’ve worked for! You have to be there! I’ve already bought the plane tickets.’ So, here I am.”

Buss never wanted the attention – Madge Buss said, “Vernon is a very, very modest man” – but he didn’t deter Saunders from his quest.

"I didn’t say, ‘Go to it, pal,’ but I didn’t say, ‘Let it rest,’ " Buss said. “It was obviously very important to him.”

Saunders’s son-in-law, Derek Barton, who accompanied Saunders to Portland, said Buss “literally saved Irv twice: One, in the wreckage; two, it kept him going. He had another will to live, to continue to find this man and to recognize him.”

Shortly after 9 a.m., two Marines in dress uniforms arrived. They invited Buss and Saunders to stand before them for the reading of the Congressional Record commendation.

The veterans stood side by side. Saunders put his arm around Buss’s waist.

When it was over, Buss said, “OK, pal.” Saunders said, “OK, pal.”

After the ceremony and handshakes, Saunders plopped down on a soft couch. Buss’s daughter, Jan, sat with him.

“It was so nice of you to persevere,” she said.

“I could not give up,” Saunders replied.

“Well, now you can rest.”

“Yeah,” he said, “now I can rest.”

By Anne Saker, The Oregonian
October 20, 2009, 7:51PM