General WWII stuff

[MKSheppard]

So what was the 1930s Kriegsmarine smoking, anyway? What was so wrong with them? I find myself morbidly curious...

They had no real time to do the detail studies and wargames that the other navies had from 1918-1933.

Also, a lot of their in-house knowledge got carted away by the British after WWI.

So when they started up the navy big time in the 1930s, they started out with concepts dating from about 1918-1919, both in warship design and strategic direction.

[Sea Skimmer]

And then you mix Nazi politics, which were apparently a factor in the constant tug of war between super high temp steam plants and advanced new diesels, and the quest for superweapons into it; the German navy more then any other branch faced a daunting uphill struggle of numbers, and its not so suprising they ended up with some of the worst ships around. One cannot get past Admiral Hipper for plain all around bad design, its one of the largest heavy cruisers ever and yet inferior in almost every way to some American ships which met the Naval Treaty limits. The later Japanese units, once rebuilt to have the bows not fall off, make it look like a joke with nearly twice as much belt armor among other advantages (145mm angled belt on magazines vs 80mm vertical) and yet still don't break the limits by as much!

[phongn]

So what was the 1930s Kriegsmarine smoking, anyway? What was so wrong with them? I find myself morbidly curious...

The Working Environment for German Warship design in WWI and WWII.

[Simon_Jester]

Ah, yes! I went hunting for that link on the index, but somehow overlooked it.

Thanks, Phong.

[Zinegata]

So what was the 1930s Kriegsmarine smoking, anyway? What was so wrong with them? I find myself morbidly curious...

Overy (in Why the Allies Won?) sums up the German armaments procurement system as follows:

1) The military made demands on how to improve equipment (including ones bordering on the ridiculous)

2) The factories (mostly privately owned) catered to every whim and minor call for improvement without fully understanding true battlefield conditions.

3) Nazi officials did more harm than good by adding levels of red tape, at least until Speer stepped in (which didn't do the navy much good, as the navy was all but beaten by the time Speer's reforms were kicking in - including the U-boats).

In short, it's like three headless chickens running around in the dark and asking them to design and build the most complex weapon system available at the time.

Having more U-boats instead of battleships at the outset of the war may have improved Germany's chances somewhat, but overall American shipbuilding capacity and the overwhelming Allied technical superiority by 1943 was such that the Germans were still bound to lose the Battle of the Atlantic anyway.

[Simon_Jester]

If they'd been able to put Britain in an intolerable strategic situation and force them out of the war before American entry, I can at least... imagine a world in which the US declined to contest German domination of Europe past that point. But it wouldn't be the world we actually had in 1940. Come to think of it, it'd be a world without Lend-Lease and other pro-British policies enacted by the sympathetic US government, which would have made the Germans' job considerably easier.

And at that point I'm catapulting off the deep end into far-out alt-hist territory. It was Germany's best hope for winning given the limits of their industrial base; that didn't make it a good one.

[Thanas]

The only way the Kriegsmarine was in any way effective would be if the British decided to continue building BBs while Dönitz gets his U-boat program.

[Simon_Jester]

Do you mean 'effective,' or 'decisive?' The Kriegsmarine certainly had an effect- submarines caused significant delays in Allied supply buildup and posed a constant threat to British naval operations which reduced their ability to prosecute the war.* But they weren't powerful enough to have a realistic chance of deciding the outcome of the war.

*I wonder if Operation Roundup (1943 Normandy landings) might have been possible absent the U-boat campaign. Would the extra shipping- both the tonnage not sunk by U-boats, and the increased efficiency with which the tonnage could be used absent the need to defend against them- have made that much of a difference?

[end of wild speculation]

[Thanas]

No, I mean effective. The Kriegsmarine was completely inefficient post 1942 and the initial strikes were far from really damaging. The only way that would change is by having much more boats right from the start.

[Sea Skimmer]

Even if Germany had more submarines built by 1939 it would have been hard to have provided them with trained crews, and the RAF could have gotten long range ASW planes earlier and more easily in turn. Never mind the shear number of minor escorts they could have stockpiled from 1934 onward if anyone had seen an urgent need. As it was in 1939 the RN, MN, RM, whatever you call the Red Navy as I forget right now, and the IJN all had more submarines then Germany did, and a large portion of the German fleet was the small Type II which did not have the range for realistic operations in the Atlantic. I do believe the USSR had the largest submarine force on earth, followed by Italy which had nearly twice the German force.

But hey, if we want to change history enough we can give Germany 300 U-boats, and then have it not matter at all when the French occupy the Rhur with 140 ton tanks by the end of October 1939 because we paid for the submarines by not building the west wall and a few other things.

[Sea Skimmer]

French FCM F1 140 ton tank project for reference. Why don't we get any alternate history in which one of these things survives eight five thousand hits from Nazi anti tank rifles while physically crushing Panzer I's?

[CaptHawkeye]

It's pretty ironic that Panzer wankers love to shit all over French and British heavy tanks during the early war peroid. Bringing up the criticisms like poor situational awareness, slow cruise speeds, unreliable, and difficult to produce in numbers.

But then you say "Tiger" and "Panther" and suddenly they starting singing the "Best Tanks Evarrrr" song.

The Kriegsmarine was dead in the water from day 1. Their was just no move they could make that the British couldn't match 1:1 at the start of the war and eventually overmatch within a few years.

[Simon_Jester]

French FCM F1 140 ton tank project for reference. Why don't we get any alternate history in which one of these things survives eight five thousand hits from Nazi anti tank rifles while physically crushing Panzer I's?

I want to read this story so much now...

Though given some of the descriptions I've heard of the French high command (admittedly, possibly from biased sources), I'm not sure they'd go on the offensive even if they weren't staring at the West Wall.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well they did order an attack in 1939, it had limited objectives but it hit two serious problems flat out and deterred follow up attacks. One was mines, the Germans had kept the designs they had dead secret until the outbreak of war and the French were not prepared (nor frankly was anyone else very well prepared until well into 1942), and the second was that the French found a very large fraction the heavy caliber shells they had leftover from WW1 were duds. So despite the absurd amount of very heavy and super heavy weapons they had, taking out West Wall bunkers was far harder then it should have been. So moral collapsed in the attacking units and the French decided an offensive was unwise until rearmament was completed. The rapid collapse of Poland was not reassuring and masked German weaknesses.

The French certainly had lots of bad generals, but they weren’t all bad, and the French had a vast amount of firepower available once they got new fuses and poured new explosives in all the old shells. Far more then the Germans had at least, something like 11,000 pieces of artillery mobilized for example never mind the superior number of tanks. The French were in advance of anyone else 39-40 in terms of providing self propelled artillery and mechanizing and armoring supporting arms to go with the tanks.

Now the phony war sure didn’t help French moral and command, but the fact is shuffling around one or two corps of French troops easily could have won the battle of France without any other changes. As it was the German attack at Sedan was historically halted for two days by a single French machine gun battalion backed up by I think three batteries of artillery. In Belgian in one major battle two French infantry divisions with no real time to dig in were able to halt two Panzer divisions and two infantry divisions for several days (French were then ordered to retreat) with something like 300 Nazi tanks destroyed, knocked out of action or seriously damaged. No German tank had more then 30mm of armor at the time so the French 25mm anti tank gun could massacre the things from concealed positions.

One of the problems with common history of 39-40 is that the allies themselves did everything they could to downplay the strength of France in 1940 during the rest of the war. It was better propaganda to claim the Germans invaded the peaceful democracies with 30 armored divisions and 45,000 armored vehicles (see Why We Fight) then admit a bunch of incompetence French generals were the only real problem. I do believe the truth of France-Britain having more tanks then Germany only came out in 1944 after Normandy. The Germans and typical German fanwhores meanwhile of course simply see no reason to play up anyone else as being anything but inherently inferior.

[PainRack]

Simon, I am very doubtful the British could have put a much stronger fleet in the Pacific. They still needed to guard their homeland. Which means they need to leave a fleet behind powerful enough to deal with the Germans should they try something, as well as a fleet to deal with the Italians should they try something. Quick reinforcements are not possible, especially not when Gibraltar may be shut down by the Spanish with mines.

Had the British been able to have a two-power standard, that might have been viable - but they did not have that since dreadnought.

I think it should be prudent to refer to actual British plans to reinforce Singapore as of 1939 was still based on a Fleet to Singapore time schedule of 90 days including reprovisioning. The Main Fleet would presumably had been based in the Middle East at Egypt.

The last planning done that wasn't affected by the war occured during this period but at no point was a fleet ever considered to be placed at Singapore.
Sembawang naval base under the Red funding wasn't supposed to have been capable of hosting a force larger than Far Eastern Command anyway, although an additional few years would had allowed the completetion of planned jetties, wharves and etc under a Green plan.

edit: And as a correction to Neil Humphrey, I'm sorry dude. The Terror club was not named by the US navy, nor is it a US drinking pub. Theirs is the Eagle. The Terror club was actually the RN drinking hole and named after HMS Terror, a monitor which was one of the first ship that was based in Sembawang naval base.

[Sea Skimmer]

The earliest plans for the Sembawang naval base would have easily held a large portion of the Grand Fleet; stupid money and the WNT put a halt to that. I think they wanted no less then four drydocks each capable of taking a dreadnought. But basically a major naval base is a similar cost to a battle squadron.

[defanatic]

Huh. You can make this one in RUSE.

Anyone got any good documentaries to watch? I've thus far seen:
Battlefield
Apocalypse
The World At War
It's quite fun sometimes.

[PainRack]

The earliest plans for the Sembawang naval base would have easily held a large portion of the Grand Fleet; stupid money and the WNT put a halt to that. I think they wanted no less then four drydocks each capable of taking a dreadnought. But basically a major naval base is a similar cost to a battle squadron.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Naval_Base
It cost over 60 million pounds. It staggers the mind to imagine how much Green Plan would had cost.

And ultimately, it was a total white elephant due to the rapid sinking of Task Force Z.
Even if a main fleet to Singapore strategy was executed, with a reinforcement time of 90 days or 180 days, the base would had been essentially useless anyway.

Still, wasn't the Phillipines due to receive several upgrades in its army regiments and defences during this period?

[D.Turtle]

Anyone got any good documentaries to watch? I've thus far seen:
Battlefield
Apocalypse
The World At War
It's quite fun sometimes.

Not a documentary, but an hour long talk by David Glantz about some of the forgotten battles of the Eastern Front in World War 2 - involving numerous armies and even fonts (army groups). In addition, ee addresses quite a lot of myths, etc. Vrey interesting - and shows how even nowadays there is still so much that isn't known about World War 2.

The Soviet-German War, 1941-1945: Myths and Realities

[K. A. Pital]

There's a thread for documentaries. Recommend, review and comment there, it wouldn't be considered necroing.