Biggest Mistakes of WW2

[I Eat Pie]

Pearl Harbor in my opinion. They shouldn't have gotten us involved if they wanted more of a chance of winning. I wonder how the world would be now if the Axis Powers won.

 

[Servant of Jesus]

Hitler should have waited about 5 years before starting WWII, or until he had developed an atomic bomb to mount on his V2 rocket. He was just behind the Americans in developing an atomic bomb, but way ahead of them in terms of having a reliable delivery system.

If he'd been just a bit more patient, we'd all be speaking German now. Sobering thought as we confront new megalomaniacs in the world today.

 

[I Eat Pie]

What confuses me is when Muslims say heil hitler. I'm sure after the jews, he would go after them next.

 

[Douger]

I wonder how the world would be now if the Axis Powers won.

We'd probably be thanking Axis veterans for our freedoms and studying cynical histories that gloss over and excuse their atrocities while praising the world order they created.

 

[I Eat Pie]

lol

 

[keith99]

Pearl Harbor in my opinion. They shouldn't have gotten us involved if they wanted more of a chance of winning. I wonder how the world would be now if the Axis Powers won.

Actually on that they had little choice in some ways.

BUT

The failure to declare war first (but barely first) was a huge mistake. Not miscalculation, they clearly intended to, but mistakes were made in the execution.

Things might have been very different if they had declared war first, the stab in the back aspects of Pearl Harbor would have been significantly blunted. That would have had an impact on the response of the American people.

 

[Mr Clean]

Pearl Harbor in my opinion. They shouldn't have gotten us involved if they wanted more of a chance of winning. I wonder how the world would be now if the Axis Powers won.

The biggest blunder of the war, in my opinon, was that Germany let Hitler stay in power. Had Rommel or any of their other numerous military geniuses been running the show, Germany would have run hands down.

The second biggest was to back off the sub war against Britian. They almost had the UK on its knees, but Goering talked Hitler into using the Luftwaffe for the final strike instead. That let Britian back in the game...

 

[usexpat97]

All kinds of blunders in WW2, but I think Hitler switching the Luftwaffe to target London takes the cake. He could have taken out England and invaded Russia resting secure in his left flank. Not retreating from Stalingrad was a pretty devastating one, too.

On the flip side, not waking up Hitler on D-Day was a mistake.

Operation Market-Garden was a mistake, and frankly it angers me. The entire operation is a result of Montgomery being a <insert your favorite less-than-positive word here> and the commanders making a bet whether the Americans or the British would reach Germany first. Good men died over a bet.

The Sherman and the M-10 tanks were a big mistake. What idiots sat comfortably in the Pentagon designing this stuff?

One could argue that Pointe du Hoc was a big mistake, but I don't attribute that one to idiocy. That was just good counterintelligence on the Germans' part, just as the OSS misled the Germans into believing the invasion would happen at Pas de Calais.

Invading Normandy at all I say was a big mistake, and probably politically motivated. Invade Norway or south France first--they could have landed virtually unopposed. The Germans have to move troops and armor away from the north France beaches to counter the threat. And guess what happens when they move anyone, anywhere? P-47's swoop down and take a bite out.

Not exploiting the Anzio surprise landing was a big mistake, but anyone could have made it. MacArthur learned the lesson from it and didn't repeat it at Inchon.

I call all of Russia just one big mistake. Hard to cite mistakes by Stalin, since I never had high expectations of Stalin's leadership to begin with.

 

[Blackguard_]

The Sherman and the M-10 tanks were a big mistake.

Yes and no.

The problem wasn't so much the M4 and M-10 so much as US tank doctrine at the time, which saw "tanks" more as an infantry support platform(which the M4 did fine as) while the task of destroying enemy tanks fell to specialized "tank destroyers".

But yeah, they really should have churned out something like the M-26 Pershing instead of the Shermans.

The Sherman wasn't such a bad idea against Japanese forces though. Japanese tanks were even more under armored/gunned, and the Sherman-types could fulfill their role as infantry support. I mean, they even made a flame-thrower variant of the Sherman. It's not such a bad vehicle when you consider it as infantry support instead of something meant to take out enemy armored vehicles.

Of course, I can't imagine crewing a tank on a tropical island is much fun.

 

[usexpat97]

The Stuart was the ideal infantry support. Fast, hard to hit. Could never knock out a Tiger, but could take out any halftrack or Marder. The problem with the Sherman was it was so doggone big.

The open-top of the M-10 was obviously the product of some pencil-pusher in Washington. While the open top may improve visibility, its vulnerability from above to mortar, artillery, and infantry severely limited the places where it could go to the point that you were better off just going closed top and unbuttoning the top when you could.

 

[TScott]

The Sherman and the M-10 tanks were a big mistake.

The Germans had some choice names for the Shermans, like "Ronson" because it would light every time. Or "Tommie Cookers", referring to the Shermans used by the Brits. Then there was the famous remark by the German tanker who said something to the effect that their Panthers could kill our Shermans 5 to 1, but we always seemed to have 6.

 

[Blackguard_]

The Stuart was the ideal infantry support. Fast, hard to hit. Could never knock out a Tiger, but could take out any halftrack or Marder.

I'd say the Chaffee was better. Better off road than the Stuart, and it had the 75mm gun of the Sherman.

The problem with the Sherman was it was so doggone big.

The real problem was the 75mm and 76mm guns. The Sherman was too big and heavy for the light/scout role of tanks like the Stuart, but while it might not have have been the ideal infantry support tank, it also wasn't a bad one. It was however a bad medium tank, at least after the Panthers were deployed.

The British took a Sherman and put a 17-pound gun in it and called it the "Firefly", which was able to deal with Panthers and Tigers much more effectively. It had it's own problems, but it did show an up gunned Sherman could be an effective tank killer.

I agree on the M-10. That open top is the kind of thing that sounds good in theory, but not so much when the bullets and mortars and grenades start flying.