What WW2 movie would you like to see made?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQFbgmayQ-E

I just got the HTC vive and picked up this game, and I must say it really is amazing (esp. for us WW2 geeks).  You are in a U-boat during WW2.  It can be single or multiplayer up to 4 people (some ship features like loading torps. can be put on auto if you don’t have a full crew).  I must say the realism is amazing.  The game does not assign you a role, but to be efficient the people playing need to split up resp. to complete the mission.  You are talking to these people, and running all over the ship to get the job done.  It is so realistic the other day when I was playing I had a bit of flatulence and my first thought was “can’t do that here, will stink up the ship”, just to remember a couple seconds later “uh, I am in my living room!”.

It is not just the underwater stuff.  You can go above deck and fire the 88 to take down merchant shipping, or fire the AA to knock down enemy aircraft.  When the boat is getting depth charged you have to seal the leaks and pump out the excess water.

I am not big into gaming systems.  XBOX and the playstation were not a big deal, and although I owned an xbox I almost never played it.  VR is different.  20 years from now people are going to look at the present gaming systems the same we look at 1970s ‘Pong’.

Thanks Marc. As always an informed and informative response.

@CWO:

I did in fact take note of your previous question about the “honourable peace” concept, but I was reluctant to offer any opinions on the subject because I wasn’t sure from what angle the question was being posed.  Your new post today still leaves me unsure about what’s behind the question, but I get the impression – perhaps incorrectly – that it’s related to a subject that’s been raised in this forum many times: the theory (with which I disagree) that France, Britain and the U.S. should have realized that Soviet Russia was more dangerous to the world than Nazi Germany, and therefore that the western democracies should have been sensible enough to make a deal with Hitler rather than going to war against him – a deal that, at minimum, would have given him a free hand in dominating central and eastern Europe, and which ideally would have involved their joining him in a crusade against the USSR.  As I’ve said, this subject has been debated ad nauseum in numerous threads, so I’m not going to restate any of my previous arguments on the subject.

On the general concept of Germany offering France an “honorable peace,”  however, I will venture a couple of comments.  As I’ve said in one or two other threads, one of Hitler’s most powerful motivations for conquering France was to avenge Germany for its defeat in WWI – a defeat he had taken very personally in 1918, and which he resented deeply for the rest of his life.  He didn’t just want to defeat France, he wanted to humiliate it too…which explains such theatrical touches as the surrender at Compiegne in Marshall Foch’s old railway car, or the German victory parade through Paris which followed the exact route of the French victory parade after WWI.  Given all this, and given that the French government under Petain had no desire to keep fighting, why would Hitler have made any concessions to France when he was able to get everything he wanted without having to bargain?  Going easy on France would actually have contradicted one of his strongest motivations for subjugating the country in the first place – the revenge motive – and going easy on France wasn’t required to achieve the purely military objectives of the campaign because Petain’s government caved in and signed away the mortgage without any great fuss.

The theory (with which I disagree) that France, Britain and the U.S. should have realized
that Soviet Russia was more dangerous to the world than Nazi Germany

The more I learn, the more convinced I become that that theory is true. However, it is not relevant to this thread; and I will not debate it here.

As I’ve said in one or two other threads, one of Hitler’s most powerful motivations for conquering France was to avenge Germany for its defeat in WWI

Hitler’s most obvious motive for conquering France was that France had declared war on Germany. A second motive was that in 1935, France and the U.S.S.R. had signed a defensive alliance. Most people are not taught to see things from the German perspective. But when such an effort is made, it becomes clear that France represented a very serious security threat to Germany. Especially given the pro-war sentiments of its prime minister, Daladier.

After Poland fell, Hitler sought peace with France. Daladier refused. After Hitler failed to end the war with diplomacy, an end through military means was the next logical option.

He didn’t just want to defeat France, he wanted to humiliate it too…

There are several points worth bearing in mind:

Germans often went hungry during the interwar, pre-Nazi years, due in large part to the massive reparations required under the Versailles Treaty. During the interwar years, the French government did little to prevent its soldiers from raping German women in French-occupied Rhineland. French insistence on a weak, disarmed Germany (the Weimar Republic) meant that Germany would be helpless against any sort of Soviet invasion. Neither France nor any other major Western democracy sent soldiers to Poland when the Soviet Union invaded in 1919-'20. For the past several centuries, France had pursued a consistently anti-German foreign policy. And had typically tried to keep Germany weak and divided.

Given these provocations, the French were extremely fortunate that during the early occupation years Hitler limited himself to victory parades and demolitions of monuments the French built to celebrate their victory in WWI. The early German occupation was considerably milder than the French had anticipated.

Going easy on France would actually have contradicted one of his strongest motivations for subjugating the country in the first place – the revenge motive

At least during the early stages of the German occupation, any German soldier accused of raping a French woman would be given a military trial. Conviction would result in the immediate execution of the soldier. Instead of repaying the French for the Rhineland rapes, Hitler’s initial occupation policy rejected “an eye for an eye.”

Things got uglier after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. At that point, a number of pro-Soviet French resistance units appeared. Those units operated well outside the normally established rules of war. In Hitler’s view, that justified a German decision to operate outside those laws as well.

The Italian ones are new to me, only because they were never discussed.  However there are plenty of records of the ones in action during the Phillipines and South Pacific Campaigns (JFK, etc.) which gave them plenty of heroic press.

A Jagdpanther of course. Beautiful shape. With sloping frontal armour and the L71/88.
Love the scene when one breaks over the crest in Normandy in Band of Brothers.

If you’re looking at physically discernible traits in posterity (i.e., the baby boom generation), I’d say they would require considerable epigenetic or even genetic alterations in the parents (i.e., the people living there at the time). That’s not a very likely effect from such levels of pollution. If anyone was affected in any way, it seems more probable that their overall health would suffer to some degree, but it would probably be difficult to attribute that to any specific factor. An extensive epidemiological study may be able to demonstrate some effects, but I don’t know whether anybody has done one.

Also, it’s uncertain how much of the oil even reached the beaches or the fishing grounds. It seems obvious that the marine ecosystem could handle less oil, over a much longer period of time, and at various locations, much better than the massive BP spill. So a lot of that WWII tanker oil may have evaporated, or sunk to the bottom, or gone down with the ship and slowly dissipated.

I don’t think that the war itself would have played a major role in deciding to either clean up or ignore any oil that may have landed on the beaches. If the oil would have arrived in a town like, say, Biloxi, then people would have probably cleaned it up because it posed a direct threat to the livelihood of the local fishermen. On the other hand, if it would have landed in a remote location, it would likely have been ignored, simply because environmental awareness was not exactly a major concern in the 1940’s, war or no war.

In each case, I’m only speculating - we’d need to look for contemporary reports to know the truth.

And of course, the petroleum flavor does little for the shrimps, so I don’t think too many were eaten.  :-)

aequitas et veritas wrote:

As you can clearly read, I wrote that timeover will not response to this as a member.

You are right. And that merely reinforces my theory. After eight straight years of checking this thread, awaiting my response, he finally grew disillusioned and disappointed. So much so that he canceled his membership to this forum. :(

Now, one could reasonably ask, “Why would he have been awaiting my response for eight straight years when I haven’t even been here that long?” Well you see, on some level he sensed that I should be here, and that I’d be showing up here sooner or later. He evidently felt that “sooner” was more likely than “later,” so that I could respond to his thread. Which, let the record reflect, I did. Eventually. Better late than never, right? :)

This topic will submerge like a Tanker hit by a German Submarine.

Ah, but like a Type XXI U-boat, this topic emerged after having been submerged eight straight years! :o Maybe it will submerge again, only to surface in another eight years. :D

KurtGodel7, very good post, thank you.

I’m still not convinced however, I’ll reply to a few of your points below further:

Germany desperately needed the Russian oil by 1943 (as well as Russian grain which I will discuss further below).  That they failed to take the Caucasus during this time was their last realistic chance at victory, IMO.  However, had they taken the oil wells, but with the Russians destroying them in the process as was quite likely, would the Germans be able to restore the flow of oil in sufficient time? It might take months, even years to rebuild the necessary infrastructure in the best of circumstances, let alone during a brutal war.  The German industry was already hard pressed to supply the necessary armaments and did not have a great deal of experience with oil industry in the first place.  I think they would not have been able to do this.

The same idea goes for the chromium, vanadium, etc., though this would be less difficult for the Germans to accomplish (or mitigate as you also suggest) than the oil problem.

While Germany might have been able to supply an equivalent amount of money, material and engineers to work on their atomic program, there simply were much fewer top nuclear physicists in all Europe than existed in the US.  Consequently, it would have probably cost more and taken longer than the US program for this reason alone.  I have no doubt they could have eventually done it, but I don’t see how they develop nuclear weapons before the allies developed a delivery system that could get through their defenses.

The German V-2 was a technological marvel, but other than size, no more advanced than the rockets being built by Dr. Goddard.  After the war, when Dr. Goddard was able to examine a captured V-2, he was convinced the Germans had stolen his work.  And the Germans might have because most of his designs were on file in the US patent office, available for public viewing (which the Germans did prior to the war).  I think had the Americans wanted to (and Dr. Goddard certainly did) they could have built a superior rocket in a couple months and have it mass-produced in six.  As the A-bombs designs at that time were quite heavy, it might have taken longer than that to build a nuclear capable rocket…but how much longer?

Alternatively, the Allies could have either copied the German jets to enable a delivery system, or devise other means (boats/submarines? special ops?) to deliver these weapons.

In addition, I consider the German attack on Russia to be about food as well as oil  The Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe, and helped the Germans tremendously in 1943.  But food was scarce in 1944 and onward.  Partly this was due to Russian recovery of territory.  But it was also because the Ukraine was normally not sufficient by itself to feed Germany (the year of the capture of Ukraine by the Germans was one of the best years for Ukrainian agriculture as the weather was nearly perfect).  Of course, the poor treatment of the Ukrainians by the Germans did not lend itself to helping this problem either. In order to assure itself of adequate food, I think the Caucasus (the next logical food source) was needed.