Ask me anything about WWII

[Felix_Nietzsche]

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Is the Maginot line the funniest aspect of WWII? Is anything else even close?

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In defense of the Maginot line, it worked as designed.
It did not allow a single German to penetrate its defenses. Also remember France suffered per capita HUGE losses in WW2 (those stupid bayonet charges against fixed positions don't work too well). France had a manpower shortage and their draft quotas fell short of men. So to compensate, France made the decison to build fortications to compensate for their shortage of military age men.

If there was no maginot line, the money would not necessarily been spent on the French military and if war broke out, the French would have had to divert more men south.... The maginot line allowed the French to divert more men North to stem the German attack.... I think too many people make the Maginot line a scapegoat for the French defeat. You need to give the Germans their due with inovative tactics, strategies, and machines...

[chesspain]

Once the Allies established France as an entry point for allowing troops to enter the war in Europe, what would you have placed as the odds for Germany being able to:

1) Win the war?
2) Escape with a reasonable truce?

[WhoIam]

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WW2 people like to talk about Tiger Tanks vs Shermans vs T34 but I'm curious of you opinion of the effect of rifles had on the outcome of battles. The USA had the M1 Garand which could fire semi-automatically. The German Mauser and the Jap rip-off of the Mauser were bolt action. From my reading the Germans did not want a semi-auto rifle for fear of keeping the troops supplied with ammo. Do you think the lowly rifle made much of a difference?

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I don't know much about this so I'll quote wikipedia:
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The rifle's ability to rapidly fire powerful .30-06 rifle ammunition also proved to be of considerable advantage in combat. In China, Japanese banzai charges had previously met with frequent success against poorly-trained Chinese soldiers armed with bolt-action rifles. But armed with the Garand, one or two U.S. soldiers could kill an entire assaulting enemy squad before it reached its objective. In the short-range jungle fighting, where opposing forces sometimes met each other in column formation on a narrow path, the penetration of the powerful .30-06 M2 cartridge enabled a single U.S. infantryman to kill up to three Japanese soldiers with a single round.[4]

Ejection of an empty clip created a distinctive and unnatural metallic "pinging" sound. In World War II, reports arose that German and Japanese infantry were making use of this noise in combat to alert them to an empty M1 rifle in order to 'get the drop' on their American counterparts. The information was taken seriously enough that U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground began experiments with clips made of various plastics in order to quieten the sound, though no improved clips were ever adopted.[5] During the Korean War, American soldiers supposedly used the sound to their advantage, noting that the enemy would reveal themselves when they heard the clip eject, and would carry and throw empty clips as a decoying tactic. However, all of these reports are largely unsubstantiated, and, in reality, clip ejection noise in the larger cacophony of infantry small arms combat likely had little effect one way or another in most engagements.

The Garand was one of the first self-loading rifles to use stainless steel for its gas cylinder, in an effort to prevent corrosion. As the stainless metal could not be parkerized, these gas cylinders were given a stove-blackening that frequently wore off in use. Unless the cylinder could be quickly repainted, the resultant gleaming muzzle often made the Garand and its user more visible to the enemy in combat.

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Also the M-1 held 8 rounds internally vs. 5 for the Mauser.

As for the MP-44 assault rifle, it was used in semi-auto mode most of the time, but switching it to auto-mode allowed a platoon to lay down huge amounts of firepower when necessary. For a good discussion of exactly how it was used and German vs Allied matchups, see the book "Dirty Little Secrets of WWII." The MP-44 was a much more revolutionary and effective weapon than the M-1 and was one of the key reasons the Germans were able to hold out as long as they did.

[WhoIam]

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Once the Allies established France as an entry point for allowing troops to enter the war in Europe, what would you have placed as the odds for Germany being able to:

1) Win the war?
2) Escape with a reasonable truce?

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I assume you you mean after the Allies established a foothold in France. I would put the odds for both at 0%. Germany was already beaten by D-Day, it was just a matter of how long they would hold out. Germany was in full retreat in the east and was being pounded daily by ever-increasing numbers of bombers. It was running short of raw materials and everyone of remotely draftable age was already in the military. The allies were adamant about Germany accepting nothing less than unconditional surrender and at this point in the war weren't about to change that. The Soviets weren't going to let anything get in the way of their revenge. The only way Germany could have escaped would have been by developing nuclear weapons (which they tried to do) or by convincing the west to join in the fight against Russia (which they also tried to do).

[troymclur]

Why did Japan attack the US?

Was the usage of the A-Bomb necessary?

[WhoIam]

Two excellent movies I forgot to mention are "The Cranes are Flying" and "Ballad of a Soldier," both Soviet.

The book I mentioned above should be "The Meaning of Hitler" not "The Mind of Hitler."

Can anyone recommend a good book about the French Resistance? I find the subject fascinating but don't know much about it.

[WhoIam]

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Why did Japan attack the US?

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Short answer: the US didn't agree with the war Japan was fighting in Asia and cut off most of their oil supplies. Long answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_WWII

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Was the usage of the A-Bomb necessary?

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No, but at the time, the bombings were mostly seen as an extension of the strategic bombing campaign. There's not much difference between knowingly destroying a city and killing 100,000 civilians by dropping an atomic bomb and doing the same thing with incendiary bombs.

I just came across this unfortunate factoid: "An unknown number of survivors from the Hiroshima bombing made their way to Nagasaki and were bombed again." It's reassuring to know I'll never have a week that bad.