June 6th, 1944

https://www.facebook.com/USPacificFleet/videos/10159185622247970

Good post. However, I would like to make a correction. During WWII, Winston Churchill (later joined by FDR) imposed a food blockade on Germany. The Hunger Plan was the Nazi government’s effort to deal with the resulting food crisis. The Hunger Plan involved the starvation of captured Soviet cities; so that the food which would otherwise have fed those cities could instead be used to prevent starvation elsewhere in the Reich.

The plan had never been to starve Soviet POWs. Those POWs were conscripted to work in German weapons factories. Everyone, from Hitler on down, recognized those POWs were an essential component of Germany’s war machine. That is why Hitler ordered the POWs to be fed.

However, the Reich lacked the manpower necessary to cordon off captured Soviet cities from the Soviet countryside. Due to the lack of that manpower, the Nazis were unable to prevent food from flowing from the captured Soviet countryside to captured Soviet cities. The Hunger Plan mostly failed: the planned starvation in captured Soviet cities mostly did not occur. That failure didn’t result in fewer deaths. Just different deaths than those the Nazi government had envisioned with their Hunger Plan. Due to the failure of the Hunger Plan, the man tasked with feeding the Soviet POWs didn’t have the food he needed to carry out the order Hitler had given to him: the order to feed the Soviet POWs. Because it was physically impossible for that man to carry out his orders, millions of Soviet POWs starved to death while in German captivity.

The Nazi leadership had deep-seated fears about Germany’s food situation. One of the reasons Hitler wanted lebensraum was so that Germany could physically feed itself, even if Britain imposed a food blockade. (As it did in WWI, and as Churchill again did in WWII.) The two most vital resources Hitler required from the western Soviet Union were food and petroleum. For Barbarossa to have been successful from the Nazi perspective, Germany needed to capture a considerable portion of Soviet oilfields, and a considerable portion of Soviet farmland.

To address your question of what Hitler should have done differently: he should have placed von Manstein in charge of Barbarossa in its entirety. Doing so would have resulted in a far greater level of success. Moscow and Leningrad almost certainly would have fallen in 1941, paving the way for additional German successes in 1942.

One way to think about this subject is in terms of bargaining power. An unconditional German surrender eliminates all German bargaining power. That would leave the Soviet Union and the Western democracies with all the bargaining power, and also in a position to collectively determine what to do with postwar Germany.

It’s also worth considering the level of negotiating determination, and negotiating objectives in the first place. Churchill was interested in a democratic postwar Europe. FDR’s interest in spreading democracy or resisting communism was much weaker than Churchill’s. On the other hand, a Soviet-American postwar alliance was very important to FDR. There is little reason to suppose that FDR would raise strong objections to the Soviets getting about half of Germany’s prewar land territory. (Which was about what they received under Yalta.)

If things went badly for Stalin at the negotiating table, he could always point out that the Red Army had the ability to take what it wanted by force. Between the power of that threat and FDR’s intrinsic lack of interest in stopping the spread of communism, I think it would be very unlikely that the Soviet Union would come away from an unconditional surrender with anything less than half of prewar Germany under its control.

Mussolini (and many others) thought the war all but won by Germany - hence the quote you post. From that starting point, with his political views and territorial aspirations, declaring war was an easy decision.

When you say “at this day and age” I think you mean with the largely pro-facist Italian mindset of 1940? So ignoring hindsight and my own morality?

Please clarify RJL.

Thanks
PP

We often forget that the conclusion of the war was not a known element.

As stated, Peleliu mattered little in the end, but if something had gone wrong somewhere else, it may have been the cornerstone of allied victory.

It most certainly caused Japan some level of strategic/logisitical grief, and it’s one more piece on the board the americans could seize to strengthen their offensive.

As for publicity stunts… PHI was a must. The U.S. said they would return, and everyone believed it.  If the U.S. had not returned… that would have been a costly political enterprise.

@CWO:

@Hobbes:

@RedArmySoldier:

So it’s either ‘join together vs Russkieland’, or ‘fall together’.

Isn’t this what happened in real life?

Not really. In the last days of the war in Europe, the Nazis entertained all kinds of fantasies that the Anglo-Americans would come to their senses and would team up with them to fight the barbarous Soviet hordes, but it never happened.  The Soviet/Anglo-American alliance held together until the surrender of Germany, and indeed until the surrender of Japan: Stalin fulfilled his prior commitment to go to war against Japan three months after Germany surrendered (the time which had been allocated for him to shift some of his forces from Europe to the Far East).  Germany surrendered on May 7, and the USSR invaded Manchuria almost exactly on schedule on August 9.  In Europe, the Soviet, American and British armies all settled into the occupation zones which had been defined ahead of time for each power.  The predefined occupation zones were even respected where the fighting had taken the Americans into areas assigned to the Russians (such as Leipzig) and the Russians into areas assigned to the Anglo-Americans (such as parts of Austria, and of course the western half of Berlin).

Yeah, but afterwards the West set up the ‘denazification’ because they needed the former Nazis to run West Germany, while taking a blind eye to both the fascist regimes of Portugal and Spain since they were anti-communist as well, and had no problems in supporting dictatorships everywhere to prevent the communists from taking power.

George Tweed is buried at Eagle Point National Cemetery about 15 miles from my house and this time of the year the local press helps remind of his story. 2 links to his story.

http://www.guampedia.com/category/124-world-war-ii/entry/371-george-tweed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Ray_Tweed

@ABWorsham:

My grandfather landed in France on D+4 with the U.S 2nd Inf.

I had the best memories listening to him discuss the War.

Man, tell me those stories! I would have loved to be there with you hearing them. Those poor guys in the first wave. Man. That’s what I’d call a sacrafice to our country.