More conservative German tank designs in WWII (RAR!)

[Zinegata]

Perhaps. Although I must note that Sicily is an island, limited in size by its very nature. There are only so many places on the island to park soldiers, and new soldiers cannot be easily shipped in once the island is heavily invested by enemy air and naval forces. So once you know how many soldiers are physically standing in Sicily, you know all that really matters- the theater of operations can be isolated from enemy reinforcement.

Sicily was a short ferry ride to the Italian mainland, which is why most of the Italians and Germans got away easily in the first place in the real Husky. Moreover, do you know how many Panzer Divisions they shipped in 1944 from the East Front all the way to Normandy? None!

And again, Normandy '43 was not about liberating all of France. It was about securing Normandy and Cherbourg. Even if the Germans pile 60 Divisions just outside the bocage it doesn't really help them - they're charging into a narrow front that's bocage defensive terrain, and as they get near the beaches they get hit with progressively heavier air and naval attack (if they get that far). France may not be liberated that year, but the chances of the Allies being pushed out of Normandy entirely are almost nil and in the meantime those 60 Divisions are gonna be missed everywhere else.

It took the Allies two months in 1944 to clear the Bocage, and that's with the Germans having seven Panzer Divisions around Caen. The 1943 naysayers keep assuming that the Germans, who somehow conjure 7 Panzer Divisions from the East, can push back the Allies over the exact same defensive ground that gave the British and Americans so much grief in 1944? Heck, every time the Panzers even tried a counter-attack in the real 1944 invasion it turned into a fiasco. Panzer Lehr for instance lost a quarter of its tanks in a single day trying to attack the Americans in the St Lo sector!

By contrast, the Germans could just leave a Division or two to hold up entire Corps in the Italian front precisely because Italy is not wide open country like the France south of Normandy.

Again, we must separate the two claims:

1) A 1943 Normandy attack would probably have worked, and
2) It was foolish not to launch such an attack.

These are logically distinct claims. Being worried about a German counterattack was not illogical when the Allies had little or no practical experience with successful amphibious assaults.

Remember, the most recent historically relevant example for the Normandy landings in mid-1942 was the Gallipoli Offensive. Or possibly the Dieppe Raid and/or Guadalcanal.

None of which would give the Allies much confidence in being able to get large fighting forces ashore quickly and not only succeed in repelling counterattacks but rapidly 'puff up' their beachhead into a territory that would be defensible in pitched battles against army-scale German formations.

Yes, and I'm saying 1) is uncontestably true. The only reason it didn't push through was British politicking.

And yes, while Roundup was cancelled in '42 because they didn't have experience doing large-scale amphibious assaults yet other reasons ultimately came into play which were strictly political in nature and are quite retardedly dumb from a military perspective. And most of this can be laid at the feet of the Brits who wanted their silly underbelly strategy that led to the wall known as the Alps.

Had the premise in 1942 been "let's wrap up North Africa then hit Normandy once Torch succeeds" then a '43 invasion was still possible. Again, the start date for planning Husky was Feb 1943. You already had a successful Torch from a couple of months ago to show that it can be done.

You don't need a psychic to know there will be heavy fighting on the Eastern Front in the late spring and early summer of 1943. You do, however, need a psychic to predict the exact timing of a major offensive the enemy hasn't decided to launch yet. Or to know in advance whether the enemy will have to commit literally their entire reserve... or whether there will be some left over to drop a few inconveniently placed panzer divisions and several divisions of infantry into the area you plan to invade, a few months before the invasion arrives.

The Soviets launched Bagration within days of D-day, and to be blunt I don't think they particularly cared that D-day was on June 6th; all they went with was "Allies are gonna land in France sometime in June" and were ready to launch Bagration regardless if it happened or not. If you're gonna pussy-foot an offensive depending on whether or not your co-belligerent is going to be fighting at the same time as you; then you're just confirming the Soviet perspective that the Western Allies weren't serious at all about invading France (which was Dunn's ultimate position)

You can't just shift tens of thousands of troops with a wave of a wand. It takes weeks, moreso in 1943 with the Wermacht much deeper in the Soviet Union.

So your argument is that Churchill's ideas for how to employ the US army were unwise in light of the composition and doctrine of the US army. Right?

It was unwise compared to the way the US army was built from the ground up. It was a motorized tank/infantry army, that wants to fight mechanized battles against the Germans in France. Churchill wanted it to go crawl up Italy and then bang its head against the Alps.

My perception is that the decision not to launch Roundup was made because it was seen as a major gamble, which at the time was not supported by much if any experience. This was before Stalingrad, before Torch, before victory at Guadalcanal- hell, Rommel was still an active threat in North Africa at the time the decision to focus on the Med in 1943 was made...

Meanwhile, the US Army was all ready to go and fight a decisive battle despite having minimal experience in direct combat with the enemy... while the British, accustomed to fighting effectively alone, had been doing literally nothing but nibble at the periphery for the past two to three years.

For two allied combatants in a strategy session to advocate different approaches in light of such wildly different types and degrees of war experience is... hardly surprising or foolish.

In mid '42 a case can be made against Round-up, certainly. But the problem again is that mid '42 is very different from February 1943, which was the date when Normandy '43 was finally put to bed permanently. By 1943 it was clear that the Axis were on the wane - Torch had gotten off without a hitch and the Afrika Korp's days were numbered. Stalingrad had already happened. Japan had lost Midway and Guadalcanal.

And in any case if the issue was more invasion jitters then the answer wasn't to do more "rehearsal" invasions in Sicily and Italy. The US Army was ultimately a mechanized force. So were the Brits. The only real rehearsals that would have mattered were further raids and invasions in France itself, not along the useless peripheries.

But because of British politicking - wanting to secure Balkans and such and Churchill thinking he's Wellington - you instead get a mechanized army trying to trudge up a mountain and Churchill making snarky comments wondering why the going was so slow. British strategy was simply plainly wrong to begin with.

[Simon_Jester]

Sicily was a short ferry ride to the Italian mainland, which is why most of the Italians and Germans got away easily in the first place in the real Husky. Moreover, do you know how many Panzer Divisions they shipped in 1944 from the East Front all the way to Normandy? None!

Evacuating soldiers from a defeated army over a sea passage is not the same as landing them in the form of fighting units to reinforce an army engaged in heavy combat operations.

Or are you arguing that the ability to carry out the Dunkirk and Operation Ariel evacuations 'proves' the British could have, in the summer of 1940, landed three hundred thousand men in fighting condition on French soil in a ten-day operation?

Seriously, ferrying troops out of Sicily, in a defeated condition with heavy equipment abandoned in place whenever saving it would be too challenging, is nowhere near the same order of logistics burden as ferrying fighting divisions into Sicily, and shipping in the thousand-odd tons of supplies they need every day.

And again, Normandy '43 was not about liberating all of France. It was about securing Normandy and Cherbourg. Even if the Germans pile 60 Divisions just outside the bocage it doesn't really help them - they're charging into a narrow front that's bocage defensive terrain, and as they get near the beaches they get hit with progressively heavier air and naval attack (if they get that far). France may not be liberated that year, but the chances of the Allies being pushed out of Normandy entirely are almost nil and in the meantime those 60 Divisions are gonna be missed everywhere else.

Questions:
1) Did the Allies correctly grasp how difficult it would be to fight through the bocage?
2) If so, was this reflected in the historical 1944 planning, and how?
3) If not, why would they count on the bocage country to secure their defensive perimeter?
4) Did the Allies have full faith in the idea that holding a twenty mile deep beachhead in France was worth the cost of an invasion? Sure, the US Army was configured to fight a decisive land battle in France... but the US Army was also configured to fight a mobile battle. Would they have welcomed the kind of hemmed in WWII-era version of the Pusan Perimeter you describe?

Again, we must separate the two claims:

1) A 1943 Normandy attack would probably have worked, and
2) It was foolish not to launch such an attack.

These are logically distinct claims. Being worried about a German counterattack was not illogical when the Allies had little or no practical experience with successful amphibious assaults.

Remember, the most recent historically relevant example for the Normandy landings in mid-1942 was the Gallipoli Offensive. Or possibly the Dieppe Raid and/or Guadalcanal.

None of which would give the Allies much confidence in being able to get large fighting forces ashore quickly and not only succeed in repelling counterattacks but rapidly 'puff up' their beachhead into a territory that would be defensible in pitched battles against army-scale German formations.

Yes, and I'm saying 1) is uncontestably true. The only reason it didn't push through was British politicking.

Except that this is an irrelevant statement unless you can prove that the British were wrong to do so in light of what was known or foreseeable at the time.

I mean, I can say "I would have been wiser to major in electrical engineering." But if I make that statement based purely on hindsight, it's a very empty counterfactual and serves only to establish the sneering superiority of my present self over my past self. Likewise, you can sneer at the 1942 British all you like from the very high pedestal of seventy years of meticulous analysis in hindsight done by master scholars of every nation even tangentially involved in the conflict.

So what?

If you can't prove the decision was wrong in light of the facts at the time... what exactly is the point of all this?

I'm not even disputing that Roundup could have been made to work. I'm disputing that this was predictable in advance and that the Allies could reasonably express confidence in the idea that Roundup would do more harm to the Axis war effort than, say, knocking Italy entirely out of the war.

And yes, while Roundup was cancelled in '42 because they didn't have experience doing large-scale amphibious assaults yet other reasons ultimately came into play which were strictly political in nature and are quite retardedly dumb from a military perspective. And most of this can be laid at the feet of the Brits who wanted their silly underbelly strategy that led to the wall known as the Alps.

So far, I do not think you have established that the military theories and concerns motivating the British away from Roundup were "retardedly dumb from a military perspective."

Had the premise in 1942 been "let's wrap up North Africa then hit Normandy once Torch succeeds" then a '43 invasion was still possible. Again, the start date for planning Husky was Feb 1943. You already had a successful Torch from a couple of months ago to show that it can be done.

You do realize that North Africa was not "wrapped up" until the end of fighting in Tunisia in mid-May of 1943?

Launching Husky as a rapid follow-up to the Tunisia campaign was simple because the troops were already based right there within a few hundred miles of the island they wished to invade. Even so it took until mid-July, two months later.

Launching Roundup would require that all the troops be pulled out of North Africa, shipped and rebased to Britain, and then have the amphibious warfare establishment set up shop to invade.

Honestly, I doubt you could make it happen much earlier than September, in which case the weather for a cross-Channel invasion is going to be getting worse and the winter will be seriously impairing your ability to campaign effectively within a few months of the landings.

The Soviets launched Bagration within days of D-day, and to be blunt I don't think they particularly cared that D-day was on June 6th; all they went with was "Allies are gonna land in France sometime in June" and were ready to launch Bagration regardless if it happened or not. If you're gonna pussy-foot an offensive depending on whether or not your co-belligerent is going to be fighting at the same time as you; then you're just confirming the Soviet perspective that the Western Allies weren't serious at all about invading France (which was Dunn's ultimate position)

Except that it was exactly your point that the Roundup attack in 1943 would benefit enormously from being simultaneous with the Battle of Kursk.

This makes no sense if you are already conceding (which you have) that the Allies had no way of predicting when or even if the Battle of Kursk would occur prior to the time at which they'd have to commit to Roundup.

I mean, by your argument, the plans for invading Japan were stupid because a freak typhoon that historically happened after Japan surrendered would have severely disrupted the operation.

You can't plan ahead for random and unpredictable events. Therefore they are not relevant to calculations about whether a given action was wise or unwise.

If all you want to prove is that Roundup would have worked, then fine, consider it proven.

But your additional thesis that the British were incompetent, foolish, or otherwise inferior or inadequate for NOT supporting Roundup... This you have repeatedly failed to prove, and ignored the need to prove.

So your argument is that Churchill's ideas for how to employ the US army were unwise in light of the composition and doctrine of the US army. Right?

It was unwise compared to the way the US army was built from the ground up. It was a motorized tank/infantry army, that wants to fight mechanized battles against the Germans in France. Churchill wanted it to go crawl up Italy and then bang its head against the Alps.

In other words, the answer to my question is "yes." Churchill did not know how best to employ the American army.

It would strike me as a pleasant surprise if Churchill did know how best to employ an army his government had not equipped, had not trained, and had not planned out, and which trained to fight according to doctrines composed by the officers of a foreign country without consulting him.

So at most we have proved that Churchill was not some kind of strategic genius, which is a far cry from proving that he was a strategic idiot. There is a large middle ground.

My perception is that the decision not to launch Roundup was made because it was seen as a major gamble, which at the time was not supported by much if any experience. This was before Stalingrad, before Torch, before victory at Guadalcanal- hell, Rommel was still an active threat in North Africa at the time the decision to focus on the Med in 1943 was made...

Meanwhile, the US Army was all ready to go and fight a decisive battle despite having minimal experience in direct combat with the enemy... while the British, accustomed to fighting effectively alone, had been doing literally nothing but nibble at the periphery for the past two to three years.

For two allied combatants in a strategy session to advocate different approaches in light of such wildly different types and degrees of war experience is... hardly surprising or foolish.

In mid '42 a case can be made against Round-up, certainly. But the problem again is that mid '42 is very different from February 1943, which was the date when Normandy '43 was finally put to bed permanently. By 1943 it was clear that the Axis were on the wane - Torch had gotten off without a hitch and the Afrika Korp's days were numbered. Stalingrad had already happened. Japan had lost Midway and Guadalcanal.

By February 1943, the Allied army was well and truly stuck in place in North Africa and could not be withdrawn until victory in that theater was achieved. Historically it took another three months to accomplish this.

And since February 1943 just happened to be the period when Rommel was making a fool of the Americans at the Kasserine Pass, while the British were still staring awkwardly at the Mareth Line in the south. It was NOT in any real sense certain at the time that within two or three months, the North African campaign would be finished and in the bag.

So basically, the Western Allies would have to say "Okay, we will HOPE that despite several serious military obstacles and reverses in North Africa, the whole thing will be over by the end of spring. At which time we will RUSH our troops to Britain and HOPE we can put together an organized amphibious landing (plus supporting supply chain for follow-up landings in the beachhead). And we will HOPE we can do this before, oh, October, by which time it would be nearly pointless and we might as well wait for next spring anyway, in which case our whole army does literally nothing for a year."

This isn't sounding like a good plan. Not when listened to with 1943-era ears.

In general, it is a bad idea to alter the general pattern of your strategy in the middle of a campaign. This does not strike me as an exception to that principle.

[Simon_Jester]

So, to recap:

You are saying that the ability of the Allies to land about ten to fifteen divisions in Sicily means they could have landed forty or fifty divisions in France (the number contemplated for Roundup).

You are saying that the Allies could do this as easily and with as little prep time as was required to invade Sicily, despite the fact that they would have to shift troops much farther, potentially overcome heavier resistance in the air, and amass three times more shipping to land and support the forces. And in spite of the fact that whereas in Sicily the fighting was over within a month or two, in the Pas de Calais fighting would continue indefinitely, so the shipping to support said 40-50 divisions in said fighting would also have to continue indefinitely.

I mean, I'm not even sure a 1943 invasion would have been certain to work, thinking it over and talking to friends who know more of the matter than I.

I'm just prepared to grant it for the sake of argument.

But even if we grant for the sake of argument that it would have been nearly certain to work, there were very real costs and risks associated with the plan. You can dismiss those casually in hindsight, but no sane general making the plan prior to mid-1943 could have dismissed them... and by mid-1943 it was too late for anyone to change their mind.

[Zinegata]

Evacuating soldiers from a defeated army over a sea passage is not the same as landing them in the form of fighting units to reinforce an army engaged in heavy combat operations.

Simon, again, look at the short hop between Italy and Sicily. If you don't like the evacuation example, ask yourself: Why did elements of a Panzer Division show up in Sicily at a time when the Italian fleet was already crippled and the Allies supposed had sea control?

Except that it was exactly your point that the Roundup attack in 1943 would benefit enormously from being simultaneous with the Battle of Kursk.

This makes no sense if you are already conceding (which you have) that the Allies had no way of predicting when or even if the Battle of Kursk would occur prior to the time at which they'd have to commit to Roundup.

No, what I said is that German reaction was necessarily going to take weeks. You don't need Round Up to happen at the exact same day at Kursk, and with the information at hand you could in fact be reasonably sure they would happen within weeks of each others. In practice, in 1943, Husky happened within days of Kursk, just as Overlord was within days of Bagration.

In short, in reality they managed to get the timing so good that they launched their offensives within days of each other. But in practice they didn't even need timing that close. There is nothing inconsistent with what I said and I have no idea why you are engaging in this case of what seems to be cognitive dissonance to accept that it would be easy to have Round-Up roughly coincide with a major Soviet offensive even without much coordination. It was already happening all the time in the real war.

Except that this is an irrelevant statement unless you can prove that the British were wrong to do so in light of what was known or foreseeable at the time.

Simon, rather than you going polemic over petty-fogging details over what statement is irrelevant or not, let me instead again explain what was the actual Allied strategy in 1942-44.

The Allied strategy of 1942-1944 was, by default, the American Victory Plan strategy. Which again posits the US Army fighting in France fighting tank-infantry battles. This was an astoundingly correct and clear-headed strategy, and once implemented it in fact won the war in just over a year. This is why they raised an army with only three types of Divisions - Airborne, Armor, and Infantry. They had only one titular mountain Division. One.

The problem is that the American Armed forces hadn't done a successful amphibious invasion yet in 1942. Everyone wanted a rehearsal. We got that in the form of Torch. What happened afterwards however, is the real "greatest mistake" of the war.

Many elements in the Allied command obviously had their own pet projects that ran contrary to the Victory Program. The USN wanted more resources for the Pacific. The Air Forces wanted to bomb Germany to submission, without Army help. The British wanted to send the American Army to bang its head against the Alps with its one titular mountain division; over battlefields still full of Austro-Hungarian Army corpses, for post-war Balkan prestige.

It was the responsibility of Allied command to shoot down all of these other suggestions. Eisenhower completely failed at this, primarily because the British were too busy promoting their own retarded strategy.

If Eisenhower had done his job, and had the concern really been about "Germans too strong in France!", then all of 1943 should have been devoted to making the 1944 invasion much stronger than the one launched in 1943. History shows this is completely not the case. They landed fewer Divisions by sea in 1944 on the first day than in Husky in 1943!

What actually happened is that Eisenhower and the Americans caved to the British politicking, and sent their best troops to be frittered on a subsidiary front that led to nowhere. And because of this concession, everyone else trying to undermine the Victory Program strategy managed to also get their say.

The USN, who felt confident they got the "land an army" part down pat after Torch, simply said "If you're not going to invade seriously this year then we're taking the ships used in Husky to the Pacific", which they did and this is why there was a landing craft shortage in '44. The Air Force then basically went "if you're not invading France then we don't need to bomb French targets or do CAS, we can focus on strategic bombing". Hence the clear-headed and war winning strategy was in fact totally undermined and left to rot for a whole year, all because Eisenhower and the US Army allowed British politicking to get past sound military logic.

That's why 1943 was the lost year. The decision to invade Italy in fact dangerously undermined the Allied chances of invading France successfully, because it undermined the primary Allied strategy and allowed resources to be devoted in other areas - of which only the USN actually produced any decisive results (The CBO in 1943 was mostly a fiasco and the Italian adventure was a road to nowhere). And again much of the mythologizing over D-day has only served to make people unaware that the chance in fact was there in 1943 and wasn't seized upon.

[Simon_Jester]

Evacuating soldiers from a defeated army over a sea passage is not the same as landing them in the form of fighting units to reinforce an army engaged in heavy combat operations.

Simon, again, look at the short hop between Italy and Sicily. If you don't like the evacuation example, ask yourself: Why did elements of a Panzer Division show up in Sicily at a time when the Italian fleet was already crippled and the Allies supposed had sea control?

Again, "elements of a Panzer division" is not the same thing as dropping large reinforcing units into Sicily. The point here is not that reinforcing Sicily was impossible for the Axis

It's that it was much harder to reinforce Sicily on a large scale than to transfer comparable reinforcements into Calais (where the Allies contemplated a large scale invasion in 1943) or Normandy (where they didn't).

And, again, it's not just about physically landing your troops on the island, it's about resupply- a thousand tons of shipping a day per division engaged being a useful benchmark. Skimp on that and your soldiers no longer have artillery support, or some other critical thing.

This was also an issue with Roundup. If you have a small pocket of defensible land perimeter, heavily manned by numerous divisions of your troops and under heavy enemy attack, supplying that pocket via one or two ports is inherently risky and challenging. It's a precarious position by default because of the practical limitations of only being able to get the supplies in by a limited number of routes that are very open to enemy attack. If you have to commit a large fraction of total shipping to support such an operation, things are even worse.

Except that it was exactly your point that the Roundup attack in 1943 would benefit enormously from being simultaneous with the Battle of Kursk.

This makes no sense if you are already conceding (which you have) that the Allies had no way of predicting when or even if the Battle of Kursk would occur prior to the time at which they'd have to commit to Roundup.

No, what I said is that German reaction was necessarily going to take weeks. You don't need Round Up to happen at the exact same day at Kursk, and with the information at hand you could in fact be reasonably sure they would happen within weeks of each others. In practice, in 1943, Husky happened within days of Kursk, just as Overlord was within days of Bagration.

In short, in reality they managed to get the timing so good that they launched their offensives within days of each other. But in practice they didn't even need timing that close. There is nothing inconsistent with what I said and I have no idea why you are engaging in this case of what seems to be cognitive dissonance to accept that it would be easy to have Round-Up roughly coincide with a major Soviet offensive even without much coordination. It was already happening all the time in the real war.

Ah, so you have backed up to "there would predictably be heavy fighting on the Eastern Front somewhere in mid-1943 and this would interfere with German attempts to reinforce and contain an Allied landing in Calais."

Well, so far so good- except, obviously, for the point that unless you preemptively cancel the North Africa campaign back in autumn 1942, the troops won't be available for an invasion of France until late summer or early autumn 1943. Also that you really might as well argue that the Germans can't pull troops out of the east at all because there will always be heavy fighting on the Eastern Front, or failing that there will be weather so severe that troops can't move.

In which case this isn't an argument for launching the invasion at one time as opposed to another.

Except that this is an irrelevant statement unless you can prove that the British were wrong to do so in light of what was known or foreseeable at the time.

Simon, rather than you going polemic over petty-fogging details over what statement is irrelevant or not, let me instead again explain what was the actual Allied strategy in 1942-44.

The Allied strategy of 1942-1944 was, by default, the American Victory Plan strategy. Which again posits the US Army fighting in France fighting tank-infantry battles. This was an astoundingly correct and clear-headed strategy, and once implemented it in fact won the war in just over a year. This is why they raised an army with only three types of Divisions - Airborne, Armor, and Infantry. They had only one titular mountain Division. One.

The problem is that the American Armed forces hadn't done a successful amphibious invasion yet in 1942. Everyone wanted a rehearsal. We got that in the form of Torch. What happened afterwards however, is the real "greatest mistake" of the war.

Many elements in the Allied command obviously had their own pet projects that ran contrary to the Victory Program. The USN wanted more resources for the Pacific. The Air Forces wanted to bomb Germany to submission, without Army help. The British wanted to send the American Army to bang its head against the Alps with its one titular mountain division; over battlefields still full of Austro-Hungarian Army corpses, for post-war Balkan prestige.

It was the responsibility of Allied command to shoot down all of these other suggestions. Eisenhower completely failed at this, primarily because the British were too busy promoting their own retarded strategy.

If Eisenhower had done his job, and had the concern really been about "Germans too strong in France!", then all of 1943 should have been devoted to making the 1944 invasion much stronger than the one launched in 1943. History shows this is completely not the case. They landed fewer Divisions by sea in 1944 on the first day than in Husky in 1943!

What actually happened is that Eisenhower and the Americans caved to the British politicking, and sent their best troops to be frittered on a subsidiary front that led to nowhere. And because of this concession, everyone else trying to undermine the Victory Program strategy managed to also get their say.

The USN, who felt confident they got the "land an army" part down pat after Torch, simply said "If you're not going to invade seriously this year then we're taking the ships used in Husky to the Pacific", which they did and this is why there was a landing craft shortage in '44. The Air Force then basically went "if you're not invading France then we don't need to bomb French targets or do CAS, we can focus on strategic bombing". Hence the clear-headed and war winning strategy was in fact totally undermined and left to rot for a whole year, all because Eisenhower and the US Army allowed British politicking to get past sound military logic.

That's why 1943 was the lost year. The decision to invade Italy in fact dangerously undermined the Allied chances of invading France successfully, because it undermined the primary Allied strategy and allowed resources to be devoted in other areas - of which only the USN actually produced any decisive results (The CBO in 1943 was mostly a fiasco and the Italian adventure was a road to nowhere). And again much of the mythologizing over D-day has only served to make people unaware that the chance in fact was there in 1943 and wasn't seized upon.

OK. Got your lecture. Here is the reply.

1) Your core thesis appears to be that the US Army had the best war plan of the war, and everyone else was an idiot for not adopting it.

2) You're saying that the Allied strategy was 'by default' the US Army's "American Victory Plan," while then noting that not only did the British have a different strategy, but so did the US's own navy! And for that matter an Air Corps that was literally part of the US Army had a different strategy... Saying that the 'default' for the Allies was a specific plan by the US Army when there were so many other competing ideas that had NOT been invalidated at the time is ridiculous.

3) Your claim that this particular plan would have worked is not relevant. If you want to get into analysis and wargaming of Roundup, or of some ahistorical fantasy plan you cooked up for invading Normandy in 1943, fine. But your assertions about the outcome of such a plan are not relevant. Because you have some major advantages like being able to look up the German order of battle in a book. Of being able to refer back to military operations that hadn't happened yet as supporting evidence for your ideas. Of being able to take advantage of a huge mountain of detailed analysis and dissection of the 1942 and '43 campaigns that was still underway when all this was going on.

It literally does not matter how many times you repeat that Roundup or Fantasy 1943 Invasion would have worked. We could debate it but that's not the angle of attack you've chosen at the moment. You really do seem to be focusing on condemning various other parties for not supporting the Invade France in 1943 idea.

Trouble is, well. This may be heresy to you, but...

It can actually be right and smart, sometimes, to reject a plan that would have worked, in favor of a plan that turns out not to work so well. If the plan that would have worked is based on an uncertain gamble or an unpredictable event, adopting it is at best questionable, even if it would have worked. Meanwhile, adopting a plan that seems to provide benefits reliably is a good idea, even if some other plan might have worked better IF you'd known in advance that it would work.

4) On top of this, to 'prove' that a 1943 invasion of France would have worked (which in your mind 'proves' that everyone who didn't adopt that plan uncritically was an idiot)... You dwell on very random details while ignoring broad issues of the timing of the operation and the availability of shipping.

For example, you say, "the number of divisions landed on D-Day* at Husky was bigger than at Normandy, so the Allied shipping could easily have supported Roundup with the assets used to support Husky!"

And you ignore the broader issue that Roundup would involve committing about twice as many troops to a much more protracted operation involving heavier combat against a larger Axis force. Therefore it would require more supplies, and probably entail the capture of one or more major ports, something historically the Allies had no luck with in 1942 and were very doubtful of their ability to do in 1943.

Or you say "The Allies could have decided to launch Roundup as late as February 1943!"

And you ignore the broader issue that by February 1943 the Allies were fully committed to the North Africa campaign, which was in the middle of intense fighting and to which they could not predict an ending in a timely manner... and even if a psychic had told them when it would end, they'd have had to rebase the entire army then in North Africa into Britain before even preparing to attack northern France, and they'd be lucky to accomplish a landing in France prior to September or October 1943, which would partially defeat the purpose of trying.

*That is the first day of any invasion, not the first day of the Normandy landings in particular.

[Zinegata]

Again, "elements of a Panzer division" is not the same thing as dropping large reinforcing units into Sicily. The point here is not that reinforcing Sicily was impossible for the Axis

Would you be happy instead that the ferry ride from Italy to Sicily is so frakking insignificant that you can literally do multiple passages in a single night so you can finally concede your inane attempts to pretend that reinforcing Sicily was hard?

Seriously:

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

The passage is 5 km long! You can take a photograph from hilltop level that shows both the Sicilian and mainland Italian landmass in the same picture! Stop pretending it's more difficult because you're too busy processing the bloody cognitive dissonance brought about by 60 years of propaganda telling you that British strategy wasn't totally retarded.

This was also an issue with Roundup. If you have a small pocket of defensible land perimeter, heavily manned by numerous divisions of your troops and under heavy enemy attack, supplying that pocket via one or two ports is inherently risky and challenging. It's a precarious position by default because of the practical limitations of only being able to get the supplies in by a limited number of routes that are very open to enemy attack. If you have to commit a large fraction of total shipping to support such an operation, things are even worse.

Are you just being deliberately daft? Sicily again had worse port infrastructure for the Allies, and they were getting supplies from more distant ports in North Africa and America. Husky's supply situation for the Allies was worse than Overlord, which was supplying troops over a much shorter distance from England to Normandy. Plus they couldn't even maintain air cover for Husky because Sicily was at the extreme range of fighters.

So how the hell can you claim that it's risky just to rely on one or two ports in Normandy? Again, did you completely fail to notice how I already noted that Normandy had numerous minor ports aside from Cherbourg, and that the Mullberries had an effect similar only to these said minor ports? It's just British historical bullshiting that makes it seem that everything in Normandy depended on just Cherbourg and the Mulberry. In reality the USN basically thought this was entirely nonesense and delivered more supplies directly to the beaches.

That I've already said this several times and I have to keep repeating myself again shows how people need to look at Normandy from a clean slate instead of all the goddamn British-biased documentaries revovling around trivia regarding the operation. The Mullberries are the biggest trivial nonsense from Overlord that keeps getting played up as important when it was in fact almost irrelevant to the supply situation, which in turn jilts the view of the public that supplying Normandy was really hard when in reality they supplied Sicily through worse ports and greater distances.

Well, so far so good- except, obviously, for the point that unless you preemptively cancel the North Africa campaign back in autumn 1942, the troops won't be available for an invasion of France until late summer or early autumn 1943. Also that you really might as well argue that the Germans can't pull troops out of the east at all because there will always be heavy fighting on the Eastern Front, or failing that there will be weather so severe that troops can't move.

BS. The journey from North Africa to England won't take much more than a few DAYS, and even in the worse case scenario of an early August invasion there's still pretty massive battles going on in the East. So long as you get the landings done before the thaws, you're good. Again, people who think timing it at the same time as Kursk im portant simply have no conception of the real nature of the Eastern Front. It was a conflict on a scale much larger than anything fought in the West and there were constant offensives in between the thaws.

1) Your core thesis appears to be that the US Army had the best war plan of the war, and everyone else was an idiot for not adopting it.

Everyone was in fact an idiot for not adapting it. Again, explain to me how you are going to end the war once the US Army reaches the fucking Alps, or how Germany will surrender due to bombing when their war production in fact increased despite bombing in 1943?

Seriously, explain how either of these two strategies will work at all.

2) You're saying that the Allied strategy was 'by default' the US Army's "American Victory Plan," while then noting that not only did the British have a different strategy, but so did the US's own navy! And for that matter an Air Corps that was literally part of the US Army had a different strategy... Saying that the 'default' for the Allies was a specific plan by the US Army when there were so many other competing ideas that had NOT been invalidated at the time is ridiculous.

Simon, in any environment wherein leadership is run by committee, there will be differing opinions. Everyone wants to have their own little pet strategy be adopted.

What you are failing to realize is that the Victory Plan strategy was in fact the default strategy. America was not building 50,000 bombers. It didn't adopt a policy of "Japan First". It adopted "Germany First" and raised 60+ Divisions of Armor, Infantry, and Airborne. That was what the entire country was devoted to since 1941 even before the war began.

The problem with Eisenhower is that he allowed the strategy to be undermined. Again, you're arguing that France is too well defended in 1943. If that's the case why did they land fewer Divisions in 1944 than in Husky in 1943?

The reality again is that the war-winning strategy war undermined in favor of banging your head against the fucking Alps.

3) Your claim that this particular plan would have worked is not relevant. If you want to get into analysis and wargaming of Roundup, or of some ahistorical fantasy plan you cooked up for invading Normandy in 1943, fine. But your assertions about the outcome of such a plan are not relevant. Because you have some major advantages like being able to look up the German order of battle in a book. Of being able to refer back to military operations that hadn't happened yet as supporting evidence for your ideas. Of being able to take advantage of a huge mountain of detailed analysis and dissection of the 1942 and '43 campaigns that was still underway when all this was going on.

It literally does not matter how many times you repeat that Roundup or Fantasy 1943 Invasion would have worked. We could debate it but that's not the angle of attack you've chosen at the moment. You really do seem to be focusing on condemning various other parties for not supporting the Invade France in 1943 idea.

Trouble is, well. This may be heresy to you, but...

It can actually be right and smart, sometimes, to reject a plan that would have worked, in favor of a plan that turns out not to work so well. If the plan that would have worked is based on an uncertain gamble or an unpredictable event, adopting it is at best questionable, even if it would have worked. Meanwhile, adopting a plan that seems to provide benefits reliably is a good idea, even if some other plan might have worked better IF you'd known in advance that it would work.

Again, if the concern was *really* "Germans are too strong in France" then the right solution is "build up a stronger invasion of France". This did not happen. Instead strength was frittered on a dead end road to the fucking Alps.

This is why the British get no excuses. Yes, it may be valid to delay an invasion if you feel the balance of forces do not favor you. But the correct response to that is to strengthen your attacking force. In reality, the British only served to dilute the forces reserved for Overlord, in pursuit of a truly retarded strategy whose military virtues you have yet to supply any. Ike also gets some of the blame for allowing this retarded strategy to be adopted in the first place to undermine the war-winning strategy of invading France; but at least the idiocy didn't originate from him and he and the US Army fought to invade France as early as possible all throughout.

So really, if you want to maintain this fantasy that "caution is king", that's your problem and your cognitive dissonance. The reality is they did nothing to make the invasion of Normandy in 1944 have a better shot than in 1943. They in fact frittered away the resources in peripheral operations with no war-winning possibility; which actually reduced the overall forces available for Overlord. This completely contradicts your fantasy that it was the German strength in France which caused the invasion to be cancelled in '43. They cancelled France because they let the British have their way even though it was an entirely bad strategy.

[Sgt_Artyom]

Those allied troops must have been super soldiers if you expected them to knock out the Germans and Italians in North Africa and then be transported to England and then straight on to invading France in the span of six-seven months.

[Zinegata]

And yet that's exactly what they did by landing in Sicilyu a few months after Tunisia, and many of those troops in fact had embarked boats in the United States for a landing all the way across the Atlantic to North Africa. No need for supermen at all.

Again, that people keep making a big deal about transporting troops from North Africa to England when they had already landed some troops from America all the way to North Africa should really show how people don't have any realistic inkling of the logistical capabilities of the US and Royal Navies.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem isn't physically moving the soldiers. The problem is laying out the appropriate basing facilities, gathering up the needed supplies, generally reorganizing and refitting, while simultaneously setting up the physical requirements for amphibious landings (extensive reconnaissance of the beaches, for one).

Basically, redeploying an army in and of itself takes considerable time. The troops in Tunisia that had just got done defeating the Germans in Tunisia did not need to be redeployed to land in Sicily- they could move straight from their encampments in Sicily to the landing ships, and then directly to Sicily. The supply dumps located in Tunisia could be used directly to support operations in Sicily, and so on.

But to take that army and redeploy it to Britain, unpack everything, then repack for an amphibious assault, would automatically add at least a month or two to the timetable.

If you're an Allied general in mid-February 1943 who's watching the Americans get pounded at Kasserine while the British scratch their head and stare awkwardly at the Mareth line, you're thinking "Gee, this campaign will run at least another three months, plus another two months to move the troops back to Britain... we could be ready by July or August 1943."

[In my opinion it is grossly optimistic to assume that you can take troops from one theater, transfer them to another theater, and have them prepared to launch a major amphibious offensive in that new theater in six to eight weeks. But making all due allowances... MAYBE it could be done. Somehow. Let's just assume for the sake of argument that it can.]

Thing is, the other generals can correctly point out that it is far too early to predict the exact timing of the end of the Tunisia campaign. Maybe Rommel has yet another round of miracles to pull out of his hat; he's already done that about four or five times over the course of the war, and in early 1943 his reputation was riding rather high.

Maybe the Tunisia campaign won't be mopped up in three months. Maybe it'll take six.

In which case the Tunisia campaign ends in mid-August, and the cross-Channel amphibious offensive isn't ready until October or so, by which point the winter storm season and generally crappy weather in northern Europe largely defeat the purpose of launching the invasion at all, because an unexpected thunderstorm or two could turn a landing into a disaster.

So really, it is grossly unrealistic to pretend that in February 1943, it would have been reasonable to say "to heck with Husky as a follow-up to the Tunisia campaign, let's move the troops to Britain and launch Roundup!"

To get a 1943 cross-channel invasion, you basically need to never commit to the 1943 North Africa campaign at all, or at least commit to such a lightweight North Africa campaign that it would almost certainly NOT succeed in expelling the Germans from North Africa.

[Zinegata]

The problem isn't physically moving the soldiers. The problem is laying out the appropriate basing facilities, gathering up the needed supplies, generally reorganizing and refitting, while simultaneously setting up the physical requirements for amphibious landings

And you're going to all of that better in North Africa, which has basically crap for port facilities and where you literally have to ship in an entire Coca Cola bottling plant to keep the troops supplied with Cola because the place is completely barren in terms of industry.

Instead of doing it in England, which has actual port facilities, actual air fields, actual factories, and an actual civilian work force to help do all of the above?

Seriously? Again, I have reminded you repeatedly that North Africa had much worse facilities and they still managed to land in Sicily over a longer sea route in the real war. So you now try and tweak it and pretend rebasing to England will take so much effort when all the facilities the troops actually need *are already in England* as opposed to the barren North African facilities they're coming from?

[Mr. G]

Let us say that after going into Russia the higher ups in the German military decide that what the german army needs is quantity of vehicles, as such they decide to do two things...

1: Make as many Panzer-IVs as possible and modernize them on the same lines that they did OTL to better fight T-34s
2: Develop a Panzer-V, which is to be a low cost medium tank with comparable engine power and armor to the T-34 to supplement and eventually supersede the Panzer-IV.

The Tiger never gets beyond prototype, the Panther never goes beyond the drawing board.

Does this positively or negatively effect the German war machine?

Zor

Negatively. German tanks were good for their purpose and produced in sufficient numbers to equip the armored divisions fielded. They produced far less tanks than Russia did for two reasons: 1 - Number of divisions fielded was smaller, because the army was smaller, the density of tanks per capita was the same. 2 - The durability of German tanks was higher, Russian tanks broke down very easily so they had to be replaced constantly.

Also the cost of German tanks wasn't very high, a Panther cost 120,000 RM in production costs, several thousand Panthers would cost several hundred million RM, while the budget of the Wehrmacht was 112 billion RM in 1943. The per-ton cost of German tanks also wasn't much higher than Russian (expect the Tiger), in PPP terms, 1 RM = 2-2.5 rubles in 1943, a T-34 cost 180,000 rubles to produce or about 70,000 RM, more than half of the cost of a Panther, which was much heavier.

Expenditures on production of tanks were insignificant portion of total German military expenditures (around 1%), the vast majority of which consisted of pay and subsistence for the armed forces (which were 11 million men strong counting the army civilian administration).

Germany's main problem during the war was lack of manpower: while inflicting several times more casualties on Russia, they were unable to replace their casualties and the army in the East gradually decreased in size (specially after the Western Allies landed in Italy and in Normandy), while Russia's army grew a little during the course of the war (from 11 million in late 1941 to 12.5 million by 1945). Germany had less than half of Russia's manpower base (given Nazi racist ideology prevented large scale integration of foreign elements in the armed forces, the Red Army was multi-ethnic, besides Russians included all the minorities living inside the USSR) and was fighting a multi-front war (though the other fronts were far smaller) while Russia was fighting a single front war.

[Mr. G]

And again, Normandy '43 was not about liberating all of France. It was about securing Normandy and Cherbourg. Even if the Germans pile 60 Divisions just outside the bocage it doesn't really help them - they're charging into a narrow front that's bocage defensive terrain, and as they get near the beaches they get hit with progressively heavier air and naval attack (if they get that far). France may not be liberated that year, but the chances of the Allies being pushed out of Normandy entirely are almost nil and in the meantime those 60 Divisions are gonna be missed everywhere else.

It doesn't really matter. If the Allies cannot obtain numerical superiority they will lose that territory, in France 1940, the Allies had over 3 million men, an enormous force piled up in a rather small territory and they were quickly defeated and were unable to defend that territory against the entire German army. Also, German divisions had artillery pieces, mostly 105 mm and 155mm , you know, they inflicted 3/4 of all allied casualties, not infantry, not tanks, not air attacks, artillery was the basic mean of inflicting casualties: battles were usually a series of artillery barrages with tanks and infantry advancing to occupy the territory. Air power also served a similar function but with apparently less effectiveness.

Same applies for the Western Allies: vast majority of German casualties were due to artillery barrages. Air attacks were relatively ineffective in inflicting casualties (it's estimated that only around 5% of the Allied "operational lethality index" was due to air attacks (see Numbers, Prediction and War, in most battles (with some exceptions) the air force wasn't a decisive factor) but they were useful for other reasons: disrupting supplies and movements. Mathematical models in that same book concluded that air power was several times more effective in disrupting the supplies needed for army combat operation rather than in directly inflicting losses on enemy forces.

It took the Allies two months in 1944 to clear the Bocage, and that's with the Germans having seven Panzer Divisions around Caen. The 1943 naysayers keep assuming that the Germans, who somehow conjure 7 Panzer Divisions from the East, can push back the Allies over the exact same defensive ground that gave the British and Americans so much grief in 1944? Heck, every time the Panzers even tried a counter-attack in the real 1944 invasion it turned into a fiasco. Panzer Lehr for instance lost a quarter of its tanks in a single day trying to attack the Americans in the St Lo sector!

In 1944 the Western Allies build up a massive invasion force and landed a couple million men in Normandy over a 80 day period. Germany, suffering from heavy attrition at several fronts (including the front in Italy), only managed to send 640,000 troops to Normandy. As result they were overwhelmed by superior allied numbers and firepower: in terms of artillery ammunition, a German army had a daily supply of 480 tons, the opposing Allies, 1,500 tons. It was pure brute force. Germany massed the forces they could but they were just fighting impossible odds. What's impressive is that the Germans even managed to launch counterattacks in that situation, not that they were repelled.

By contrast, the Germans could just leave a Division or two to hold up entire Corps in the Italian front precisely because Italy is not wide open country like the France south of Normandy.

In Italy the degree of Allied numerical superiority was smaller than at France. Around 1.8 - 1.9 to 1. In France it was around 2.5 - 3 to one. I think this partly explains the slower rate of Allied advance. At France some battles had ludicrous numerical odds, for instance, the main engagement in Operation Cobra, which broke open the German defenses had the following force ratios: US - 126,000 men, Germany - 30,700, in terms of firepower, the US had estimated force strength index of 673% of German forces (that's the estimated firepower of all weapons deployed modified by environmental factors).

Objective in opening of Italian front was to essentially tie up more German resources and it was a success in that regard: Germany had to allocate 28 divisions there to keep the Allied advance at a slow pace. Also, Italy was a country with substantial economic and industrial resources (Italy's GDP was about 18% of the US's in 1939), Germany heavily taxed it and managed to extract billions of RM from it. Denying Germany these resources also helped. And the 28 divisions sent there could be used to reinforce Normandy, for instance. Reducing Allied numerical superiority after Overlord, this numerical superiority which was the essential ingredient in victory.

Yes, and I'm saying 1) is uncontestably true. The only reason it didn't push through was British politicking.

Or the fact that the Allies lacked the capability to deploy a force as large as they did in 1944. They also lacked air supremacy over the European continent in 1943, the strategic bombing effort, while not being very effective in lowering German industrial production (though it prevent aircraft output from rising faster than it historically did). Germany had to allocate large number of aircraft to home defense after heavy strategic bombing started in mid 1943, and attrition of the Luftwaffe combined with the destruction of the synthetic fuel plants in May 1944, lead to the collapse of German air power over France and Allied air supremacy, required for a large scale amphibious invasion.

[His Divine Shadow]

It would certainly improve their situation, but not enough to change the outcome. Germany simply lacked the industrial capacity to compete with the USSR, once the USSR recovered from the initial shock of the invasion.

How big a part did american lend lease play in creating the USSRs industrial capacity, anyone know?

[Vejut]

Lend lease did do some--Wiki notes things like an entire tire factory shipped over, as well as something like 24% of all Russian machine tools by 1945 being US made. That said, IIRC the US and Germany were more important in setting up industry in the USSR pre-war--for example, the ZiS trucks that made up a lot of the Red Army truck fleet were license built Fords, and the US sent people over or received them at US factories to show how we did things and help set industry up in return for cash in the 30s.

[Simon_Jester]

And you're going to all of that better in North Africa, which has basically crap for port facilities and where you literally have to ship in an entire Coca Cola bottling plant to keep the troops supplied with Cola because the place is completely barren in terms of industry.

Instead of doing it in England, which has actual port facilities, actual air fields, actual factories, and an actual civilian work force to help do all of the above?

Seriously? Again, I have reminded you repeatedly that North Africa had much worse facilities and they still managed to land in Sicily over a longer sea route in the real war. So you now try and tweak it and pretend rebasing to England will take so much effort when all the facilities the troops actually need *are already in England* as opposed to the barren North African facilities they're coming from?

You still do not understand.

The practical issue is simply that when you load troops onto ships and move them, they are not fit to fight as formed units for a while afterwards. This is why amphibious landings are so much harder than routine sealift of troops- troops staging an amphibious landing have to land immediately ready for battle. Even if the landing itself is unopposed and nobody is shooting at them, that still adds logistical complexity.

In a normal sealift (like moving troops from Tunisia to Britain) this is not done. As a result, it takes a period of time, generally several weeks, to get the troops ready for the next operation. This is not unusual, nor is it unique to sealift; there are ALWAYS pauses in operational tempo imposed by the need to rest, refit, and re-equip combat units between major offensives.

Life is not a video game where you can resupply troops at the click of a button, and send them charging across your territory from heavy combat in one battle into the middle of another battle and have them arrive fully ready to fight effectively.

So if you have troops based in Tunisia (which they just got done securing) and wish to use them to invade the Pas de Calais (the target for Roundup), you will have to first sealift them to Britain, then take at least several weeks getting everything prepared, then land in the Pas de Calais. This is hardly unusual or surprising. Historically, all the units involved in the Normandy landings did literally nothing but prepare for those landings, for a period of months. Including troops that had fought in Husky- they were given several months to rest and refit before being sent into combat again.

If, on the other hand, you're sealifting troops directly from Tunisia to (relatively) nearby Sicily, the intermediate step can be cut out. As soon as combat operations in Tunisia are done, the soldiers can devote everything to stockpiling and resting up for the new operation, with no need to spend several weeks moving house to a new base of operations in between.

So even assuming the same ending to the Tunisia campaign, you aren't going to be able to get the Roundup landings to occur at the same date as the Husky landings. It will take longer because your troops have to move from A to B to C, instead of just skipping straight from A to C. Your landings might occur in, say, August. Or September. Or, if the Tunisia campaign drags out longer as it well might, you may not have any soldiers available to stage your landings until October or November.

And this is a particularly serious handicap because until a few months before the actual landings, you cannot predict when you will be invading France. This means that if you draw up plans to land on a particular date, you may have to postpone those plans a full month until the next suitable tide, without warning. All the other assets you had organized for the landings and support operations have to be held constantly reading doing little or nothing else- because they must be ready to support the landings, they cannot do anything else.

All things considered, by trying to squeeze in 1943 Pas de Calais landings after a successful Tunisia campaign you are greatly complicating the logistical situation. Realistically the chances of the Allied High Command settling on such a course of action were always minimal. Once the Germans were able to postpone the Allied victory in Tunisia into spring 1943, it became vanishingly unlikely that a cross-Channel offensive in summer 1943 would happen.

And the real time at which the decision of whether to invade France in 1943 had to be made was not, as you say, February 1943. It was some time in 1942, prior to the Allied decision to commit to the Torch landings... but that decision, in turn, was made when the war situation looked very different than it did later on in 1943.

---

Negatively. German tanks were good for their purpose and produced in sufficient numbers to equip the armored divisions fielded. They produced far less tanks than Russia did for two reasons: 1 - Number of divisions fielded was smaller, because the army was smaller, the density of tanks per capita was the same. 2 - The durability of German tanks was higher, Russian tanks broke down very easily so they had to be replaced constantly.

There's a difference between having to replace the parts of the tanks and having to replace the tanks themselves.

Having a tank that needs an engine overhaul every few dozen hours is bad, but if the tank itself can survive and remain in battle, and if the supply of new engine parts is plentiful, it's manageable.

It's when maintaining the tank becomes hard, as opposed to merely 'necessary,' and your army is having to abandon tanks in the middle of a field because it lacks the means to repair them, that you have a problem.

This was the fate that befell the Germans when the complicated suspensions of their late-war tanks broke down, although obviously part of the reason for that was that they were on the defensive and would have trouble retrieving a broken down tank.

Also the cost of German tanks wasn't very high, a Panther cost 120,000 RM in production costs, several thousand Panthers would cost several hundred million RM, while the budget of the Wehrmacht was 112 billion RM in 1943. The per-ton cost of German tanks also wasn't much higher than Russian (expect the Tiger), in PPP terms, 1 RM = 2-2.5 rubles in 1943, a T-34 cost 180,000 rubles to produce or about 70,000 RM, more than half of the cost of a Panther, which was much heavier.

The cost of the tank in reichsmarks is not significant. War mobilization tends to take measures like that and throw them out the window.

The cost of the tank in steel, and in man-hours spent by a highly skilled work force laboriously fabricating the parts with machine tools, is significant. By those measures, a Panther took about half again as much steel as a late-war US Sherman or Soviet T-34, and far more man-hours of labor to create. The Tiger had the same problem, only more so.

Cash is fungible, even in wartime. But in wartime, steel and machine tools and gasoline and so on are not fungible- you can't purchase a foreign country's supply when yours runs low, because they're at war with you. Your nation's supply of these resources is not replaceable and you can only expand the supply so effectively on short notice.

Expenditures on production of tanks were insignificant portion of total German military expenditures (around 1%), the vast majority of which consisted of pay and subsistence for the armed forces (which were 11 million men strong counting the army civilian administration).

Again, cash is something governments can print during wartime; machine tools aren't. Nor is trained manpower to operate those tools, which ties into another criticism of the Panther and Tiger, that they took too much labor to produce. If the same factory could have built two of a simpler tank in the time it took them to build one of the more intricate and bulkier tank... sometimes that's a problem, when the limiting factor on how many tanks your entire country can build is how fast that factory can turn out tanks.

[Thanas]

It would certainly improve their situation, but not enough to change the outcome. Germany simply lacked the industrial capacity to compete with the USSR, once the USSR recovered from the initial shock of the invasion.

How big a part did american lend lease play in creating the USSRs industrial capacity, anyone know?

Nobody can agree. Some say that without the material like crucial metals and machine tools the USSR would have had the same happen to them like Russia in 1917, others say that lend lease was just the icing on the cake.

However, it certainly helped to alleviate a lot of logistical needs.

[Zinegata]

You still do not understand.

A recent poster in WoT reminded me of this thread, and she gave a much more succint summary of the real logistical headaches of Husky even though she's arguing against Normandy 1943:

http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php ... try8800190

Again, if you're telling me that it is more complicated to just get seven Divisions from England to a French coast 250km distant when in Husky the seven Divisions were drawn from four different locations - two of which are over a thousand kilometers distant from the target beaches - then I really don't think you should make any claims of using videogames as the basis for redployment. The real Husky invasion in fact was that complicated and intricate and yet was still pulled off with only five months of planning starting February 1943.

You're simply grossly overestimating the planning time needed, which is again reinforced by countless D-day documentaries piling on the trivia about the difficulties of the invasion.

Normandy did not need a year of planning. It was a much shorter hop, with all of the embarkation ports being very close to the target beaches. The USN in fact was very good at planning these amphibious invasions even this early in the war; and by 1944 they were getting the planning for operations like the invasion of Leyte down to just a few weeks despite the forces coming from three different anchorages involving two entire fleets.

In Italy the degree of Allied numerical superiority was smaller than at France. Around 1.8 - 1.9 to 1. In France it was around 2.5 - 3 to one. I think this partly explains the slower rate of Allied advance. At France some battles had ludicrous numerical odds, for instance, the main engagement in Operation Cobra, which broke open the German defenses had the following force ratios: US - 126,000 men, Germany - 30,700, in terms of firepower, the US had estimated force strength index of 673% of German forces (that's the estimated firepower of all weapons deployed modified by environmental factors).

In Italy you had the Allies assaulting mountain positions, capped off by the Alps wherein the Austrians of the First World War literally at times just resorted to causing avalanches to massacre the Italian troops. Sending more troops into that kind of terrain is not going to speed up the advance, it was just perpetuating a massacre.

It is also worth noting that total Allied casualties in Italy reached 300,000. Normandy resulted in 200,000 casualties. Normandy was less bloody not because more firepower was available, but more firepower could be employed to begin with because the troops weren't attacking up bloody mountains. The US and British armies were mechanized and were suited for operations in France, not in Italy wherein both armies had a grand total of one token mountain Division.