What was the biggest mistake made during WWII?

[Utah]

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However, both Germany and Japan suffered from an inability to threaten the United States homeland directly except for the Japanese attacks on Hawaii and the Aleutians. Thus other than killing as many American soldiers as they could, they could not take the war to the US citizens and force the US to spend much more of its resources on self-defense.

[/ QUOTE ]I think one of the most interesting thing about the war is the Japanese attempt to attack the U.S. with ballons. The Japanese attack on the U.S. mainland killed 6 civilians.

I found this interesting link:

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/wwii/jbb.htm

Japanese Balloon Bombs

One of the best kept secrets of the war involved the Japanese balloon bomb offensive, prompted by the Doolittle raid on Tokyo on April 18, 1942 as a means of direct reprisal against the U.S. mainland. Some 9,000 balloons made of paper or rubberized silk and carrying anti-personnel and incendiary bombs were launched from Japan during a five-month period, to be carried by high altitude winds more than 6,000 miles eastward across the Pacific to North America. Perhaps a thousand of these reached this continent, but there were only about 285 reported incidents. Most were reported in the northwest U.S., but some balloons traveled as far east as Michigan.

The first operational launches took place on Nov. 3, 1944 and two days later a U.S. Navy patrol boat spotted a balloon floating on the water 66 miles southwest of San Pedro, California. As more sightings occurred, the government, with the cooperation of the news media, adopted a policy of silence to reduce the chance of panic among U.S. residents and to deny the Japanese any information on the success of the launches. Discouraged by the apparent failure of their effort, the Japanese halted their balloon attacks in April 1945.

On May 5, 1945, six picnickers were killed in Oregon when a balloon bomb they dragged from the woods exploded. The U.S. Government quickly publicized the balloon bombs, warning people not to tamper with them. These were the only known fatalities occurring within the U.S. during WWII as a direct result of enemy action.

Actual damage caused by the balloon bombs was minor. However, the incendiaries which they carried did pose a serious threat to the forests of the northwestern U.S. during the dry months. These balloons also offered a vehicle for germ warfare had the Japanese decided to use this weapon.

The balloon attack began after U.S. air defense facilities had been deactivated. To counter this threat, AAF and Navy fighters flew intercept missions to shoot down balloons when sighted and AAF aircraft and Army personnel were stationed at critical points to combat any forest fires which might occur. Also, supplies of decontamination chemicals and sprays to counter any possible use of germ warfare were quietly distributed in the western states. Before detailed AAF defensive plans had been put into effect, the attacks ceased.

Japanese bomb-carrying balloons were 32 feet in diameter and when fully inflated, held about 19,000 cubic feet of hydrogen. Launch sites were located on the east coast of the main Japanese island of Honshu.

Gun camera photos showing balloons being shot down by 11th Air Force fighters near Attu in the Aleutians on April 11, 1945. Nine balloons were downed in two hours. (Note P-38 in lower right frame).

[wpr101]

The biggest mistakes include:

Axis:
- Not finishing off Britian when they could have and consolidated European power.
- Invading Russia thinking they could finish them off before the winter and ended up staying till the NEXT winter. Breaking his pact with Stalin was a terrible idea.
- Japan's Pearl Harbor attack. American public opinion was divided on joining the war before this. After this it skyrocketed and mobilized the U.S.
- Exiling the Jews... many of the designers of the atomic bomb were Jewish Americans from Europe.


Allies:
- Appeasing Hitler
- France allowing Hitler to invade as to avoid confrontation
- Not learning from the mistakes of the first World War
- The Weimar Republic not having safeguards in place for a takeover.
- Stalin believing Hitler's non-agression pact.

[Borodog]

I haven't read the other replies in depth yet (skimmed; lot of interesting stuff I'll get to), but the biggest mistake of WWII was not made during WWII. It was the Versailles Treaty. Or possibly the American entry into WWI in the first place. One or the other.

The next biggest mistake was also not made during WWII, but after, at Yalta.

After that would be Roosevelt maneuvering the United States into war, foolishly believing it would finally alleviate his Fabulous Depression.

[wpr101]

[ QUOTE ]
I haven't read the other replies in depth yet (skimmed; lot of interesting stuff I'll get to), but the biggest mistake of WWII was not made during WWII. It was the Versailles Treaty. Or possibly the American entry into WWI in the first place. One or the other.

The next biggest mistake was also not made during WWII, but after, at Yalta.

After that would be Roosevelt maneuvering the United States into war, foolishly believing it would finally alleviate his Fabulous Depression.

[/ QUOTE ]

What decisions do you think made at Yalta were mistakes? What other options were there? Someone before said we should have attacked Russia. That is just an absurd and ignorant suggestion.

[Andrew Karpinski]

Borodog : You make a great point re the treaty of versailles. While I touched on it very briefly above, no discussion of world war II is complete without an examination of this subject.

Well, that's all for today folks, I have a date :P

[Borodog]

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I haven't read the other replies in depth yet (skimmed; lot of interesting stuff I'll get to), but the biggest mistake of WWII was not made during WWII. It was the Versailles Treaty. Or possibly the American entry into WWI in the first place. One or the other.

The next biggest mistake was also not made during WWII, but after, at Yalta.

After that would be Roosevelt maneuvering the United States into war, foolishly believing it would finally alleviate his Fabulous Depression.

[/ QUOTE ]

What decisions do you think made at Yalta were mistakes?

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The ones that plunged tens of millions of Eastern Europeans into barbarous communist rule for half a century. Way to save them from the Germans!

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What other options were there?

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Not doing the above. The best option would of course have been to not get involved in a foreign war in the first place.

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Someone before said we should have attacked Russia. That is just an absurd and ignorant suggestion.

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If Roosevelt had not died, you can bet your ass that is exactly what would have happened. Except he would have arranged it so that it appeared that Stalin had attacked us.

One thing that you should keep in mind when looking at world history during and before WWII is that Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Roosevelt were essentially the same man, very similar personality types and approaches to rule. They were all megalomaniacal socialist dictators who blamed everyone else for their disasters and were pretty much willing to do whatever they thought necessary to extend their power. They only differed in degree. I consider it pretty much a historical accident that the winners and losers turned out the way they did, and I doubt the world would be qualitatively very different nowadays if a completely different set of victors would have come out of the war.

[wpr102]

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If Roosevelt had not died, you can bet your ass that is exactly what would have happened. Except he would have arranged it so that it appeared that Stalin had attacked us.


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This just simply is not true. Attacking Russia was never an option. You are suggesting to prevent the East from being communist we should have lost many more millions of lives to do this? We did not have the atomic bomb until after Germany was defeated. We certainly would have used it on them if we had. You do know that America was desperate to end the war? That's why we were negotiating with Stalin in the first place. I can't believe you would suggest that we should have lost maybe 5 million+ people to defeat communism. First of all we didn't know what the result of communism would be... i.e. from the 50-80s.

[Borodog]

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If Roosevelt had not died, you can bet your ass that is exactly what would have happened. Except he would have arranged it so that it appeared that Stalin had attacked us.


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This just simply is not true. Attacking Russia was never an option. You are suggesting to prevent the East from being communist we should have lost many more millions of lives to do this?

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I'm not suggesting this at all. Stop reading what you want to read and start reading what people actually write.

I'm suggesting that Roosevelt's horrible understanding of economics would have driven him to perpetuate the war, just as it drove him to maneuver the United States into it (in both theaters) in the first place. He couldn't very well attack Britain or the recently "liberated" Europe; Japan and (half) of Germany were already under US monetary imperial control. That left The Soviet Union as an easy target for the next holy war to make the world "safe" for democracy. All Roosevelt would have needed was a trumped up pretext to attack, much like he created with Japan and Germany.

[ QUOTE ]
We did not have the atomic bomb until after Germany was defeated. We certainly would have used it on them if we had. You do know that America was desperate to end the war? That's why we were negotiating with Stalin in the first place. I can't believe you would suggest that we should have lost maybe 5 million+ people to defeat communism. First of all we didn't know what the result of communism would be... i.e. from the 50-80s.

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Americans were desperate to end the war; Roosevelt was not. He believed he needed the war to either mitigate or camouflage his Neverending Depression.

And yes, people with an understanding of economics knew exactly what the results of communism would be. Mises explained what the result would be in the early 1920s (and it was perfectly illustrated as Lenin reduced the country to the Stone Age in less than five years during the period of "War Communism", 1917-1921; only a return to limited private property and limited economic calculation using external world market prices saved the Soviet Union from dying in infancy), along with being one of only a handful of economists who correctly predicted the Great Depression.

And not throwing hundreds of millions of people to the depredations of communism is not the same thing as invading the Soviet Union. You act like it's an either-or scenario.

[adsman]

Some interesting replies in this thread.

Here are the biggest mistakes as I see them.

Axis; Not supplying Rommel with the extra panzer division that he desperately needed to take Egypt in early 1942. If Rommel had taken Egypt the Germans would have gained complete control of the Mediteranean, (no more English naval bases, apart from Malta which would have been quickly dealt with), but more importantly they would have gotten control of the Middle East oil fields. One of the major reasons that Germany lost the war was a lack of oil. The German air force was effectively disbanded in 1944 as they had no more aviation fuel.

The second Axis mistake can be blamed on good old Mussolini. By invading Greece in early 1941 and getting in a lot of bother, he forced Hitler to come to his help. Hitler had to send divisions which were preparing for the attack on the Soviet Union. This delayed the invasion of Russia by six weeks. Which was just the amount of time they needed to get into Moscow.

One Allied mistake has already been mentioned - Yalta. The second major cock-up was Singapore. This British naval base was the key to South-East Asia. The attacking Japanese army was outnumbered and having a hard time when the British commander lost his nerve and surrendered, thus handing control of the Dutch East Indies with their rubber plantations to Japan. If Singapore had held, the Pacific War would have been greatly reduced.

[Exsubmariner]

Such a good thread. I'm sorry I was out of circulation and missed it.