What was the biggest mistake made during WWII?

[Peter666]

The first major German mistake was not finishing off the allies at Dunkirk. They allowed 300,000 men to get away. They followed this up with the Battle of Britain failure which put the war on two fronts. If they would have routed the allies at Dunkirk, they could have settled with Britain and focused on the rest of mainland Europe and Russia.

Their invasion of Russia was not a bad tactical move if they had first avoided a two/three front war and secondly had not committed atrocities against civilians. Many Russians and Eastern Europeans were gladly willing to fight the Soviets, but after experiencing the German atrocities (such as burning of villages in Belarus and murdering their inhabitants) they joined the Soviets. Very stupid "Arian superiorty" and they got what they deserved.

On a side note, most people don't know that many of the "Germans" defending the beaches on D-Day were actually Russians who had joined the German Army!

[shaundeeb]

Biggest longterm mistake was the usage of atomic bomb. Someday down the line they will be used again and do a lot more damage than the ones during WWII it just set a precedent that will be carried out in the next century or two.

[KanMan]

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Biggest longterm mistake was the usage of atomic bomb. Someday down the line they will be used again and do a lot more damage than the ones during WWII it just set a precedent that will be carried out in the next century or two.

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I don't agree with this. Thankfully the United States were the first country to use the atomic bomb, and not Germany (they needed about 5 or 6 more years before they would have caught up to the United States in this department) or the Soviet Union. The Germans would have been much closer to completing their atomic bomb if they had been more resourceful with their collective knowledge. Instead of pooling up their scientists together, there were about 13 different groups of scientists who were racing against each other in an attempt to appease the Fuhrer first.

[LittleOldLady]

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Also, we were brutal butchers as well. The thing I find the most disturbing about the war was the firebombing of Toyko. After watching 9/11, I cant imagine the U.S. intentionally burning 100,000 civilians in a night.

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It becomes a lot easier when you understand the nature of Japanese industry at that time. Unlike in America and Europe where manufacturing was concentrated in large factories and industrial areas Japanese industry was highly dispersed throughout all the various neighborhoods of a city. Many Japanese had small machine shops and manufacturing in their homes or next to their homes. Thus it was impossible to distinguish between industrial and residential areas and the concept of a military target became blurred. Also if you kill the civilians they can't be manufacturing weapons - a sad but obvious conclusion that was drawn early in the Second World War by both sides.

Does that make us brutal butchers? I don't think so, despite Halsey's urging to "kill Japs, kill Japs, kill Japs". Remember this was a regime that not only started a war with us in 1941 but lauched a bloody and brutal invasion of China in 1931. This included the horrors of "The Rape of Nanking". They were the butchers and regardless of how horrible it was the savagery of our retribution was warranted and necessary.

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Well, I permanently lost a Dutch friend on the "brutal butchers" issue. He thought I was a horrendous barbarian because I said that I didn't really see any enormous difference between the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Tokyo (and the bombing by conventional means of other civilian population centers such as London and Dresden). While the atomic bomb did leave radioactive residue which did cause long-term illness and birth defects, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki have successfully been repopulated. Frankly I thought that he never really grasped the scale of the bombing of Tokyo. And there were reasons for all of these things, whether or not the decisions taken then look justifiable now in hindsight. Had the Japanese never taken it upon themselves to attack Pearl Harbor, none of the Japanese cioties would ever have been touched.

There were just a whole host of mistakes, perhaps starting with the humiliation of Germany (at least from the German point of view) by the victors of WWI. And then the huge and ghastly mistake the German populace made, giving the slightest credence to that psychotic little twerp. I look at the films of Hitler orating, and I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would take that obviously demented jerk seriously. (I guess you had to be there....) And then there was appeasing Hitler when he stuck his hand out for the Sudetenland. Mistakes large and small--on a lesser scale Operation MArket Garden and the bombing of Montecassino and the internment of the American Japanese.

It might be better to make a list of the things that weren't mistakes. Radar, for example.

[OrigamiSensei]

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Well, I permanently lost a Dutch friend on the "brutal butchers" issue. He thought I was a horrendous barbarian because I said that I didn't really see any enormous difference between the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Tokyo (and the bombing by conventional means of other civilian population centers such as London and Dresden). While the atomic bomb did leave radioactive residue which did cause long-term illness and birth defects, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki have successfully been repopulated. Frankly I thought that he never really grasped the scale of the bombing of Tokyo.

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It depends on hows the comparisons are drawn. As you correctly state there are a large number of people who do not recognize how destructive the Tokyo bombing was and that in fact it killed more people and did significantly more damage than either atomic bomb. Truly a vision of hell, as was Dresden. So in that sense you are absolutely correct.

However, seen in another sense there are significant differences between the use of conventional incendiary weaponry and atomic bombs. The firebombing of Tokyo, as horrible as it was, had its counterpart in Dresden and to a lesser extent London and Coventry and simply reflected the ultimate usage of already known and accepted tactics and technologies. Even today with fuel-air bombs and napalm and such an attack couldn't be much more effective or get much worse than the attack on Tokyo because cities are no longer built as tinderboxes. Conversely, the initial use of atomic weaponry ushered in a new age where not only cities but entire countries and civilizations could be destroyed, perhaps even ending human life on all Earth as we know it. There was certainly a political element in its use, not only to scare the Japanese into surrendering but also to frighten the Soviets since we recognized they were going to be the next enemy despite the wartime alliance. By being the first to use it, maintaining the technological lead and actively seeking to limit the proliferation of atomic powers through the Cold War their use was prevented - admittedly at very great cost, but successfully.

Regardless of how horrible it all was I think it's a good thing the bombs were used when they were. I believe the natural human revulsion from seeing the suffering of the victims and the shock of how powerful this new weapon could be actually knocked some sense into people. If the bomb hadn't been dropped then I have absolutely no doubt that at some point later in history atomic bombs would have been used and for much less justifiable purposes.

[11t]

The allies not invading and whiping Russia off the face of the map after the fall of Berlin like Patton wanted to.

[Andrew Karpinski]

OS : You make a very interesting point in your last paragraph. It is contentious, to say the least, but I sense there may be a great deal of validity to it. To add on to it, the early nuclear bombs were as most people know, to later nuclear bombs as silly putty is to napalm. The massive killing power in a single h-bomb we have today dwarfs the (already impressive) damage one of the older bombs can acheive. All the nuclear tests in the world will never give a true sense of horror that these bombs can unleash.

[LittleOldLady]

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OS : You make a very interesting point in your last paragraph. It is contentious, to say the least, but I sense there may be a great deal of validity to it. To add on to it, the early nuclear bombs were as most people know, to later nuclear bombs as silly putty is to napalm. The massive killing power in a single h-bomb we have today dwarfs the (already impressive) damage one of the older bombs can acheive. All the nuclear tests in the world will never give a true sense of horror that these bombs can unleash.

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To add to what OS and Ak said, I think that people today equate the atom bombs that ended WWII so to speak with the hydrogen bombs of today. As devastating as the two atom bombs dropped on Japan were, both cities are up and functioning and have been for quite some time. That would not be the case if hydrogen bombs were unleashed in some future nuclear war (may it never happen).

"the early nuclear bombs were as most people know, to later nuclear bombs as silly putty is to napalm. The massive killing power in a single h-bomb we have today dwarfs the (already impressive) damage one of the older bombs can acheive." This is true, of course, except possibly for the "as most people know" part. I suspect (on no evidence save anecdotal) most people don't know and conflate the two types of bombs.

The question, of course, that lingers to the present--would the Japanese government have surrendered expeditiously on the basis of the bombing of Tokyo--or did the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forestall the need for an invasion of Japan? If the latter would Hiroshima have been enough, or was Nagasaki necessary? I have the impression that everyone thinks that an invasion of Japan with possible house-to-house fighting throughout the archipelago would have been its own breed of horror. And there is no doubt that part of Truman's agenda was giving Stalin something to think about.

The bottom line is think long and hard about attacking other countries lest previously unimaginable catastrophes ensue. Attacking Pearl Harbor was simply a huge mistake for Imperial Japan, and one the Japanese have been disinclined to repeat these last 60 years.

[sightless]

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The allies not invading and whiping Russia off the face of the map after the fall of Berlin like Patton wanted to.

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that would have been a very hard task to acomplish [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[miajag]

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The allies not invading and whiping Russia off the face of the map after the fall of Berlin like Patton wanted to.

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that would have been a very hard task to acomplish [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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not this again! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]