From the first sentence about World War II in All About World History (1999), a history book for children:
In 1939, Hitler (see below) sent armies to invade Czechoslovakia and Poland; Britain, France, and Russia decided to help the Czech and Polish people defend their lands.
jcc says:
It’s actually a little bit of a shame that you felt you had to include the links, just in case someone missed the point.
Don’t these people watch the Discovery Channel? (History Channel? The one with all the WWII shows at 3:00 AM)
November 30, 2011, 11:50 pmtim says:
The History Channel should really be renamed the WWII channel. Personally I’m more interested in WWI but apparently there isn’t enough video footage to replay over and over again with new commentary.
November 30, 2011, 11:55 pmChem_Geek says:
History Channel *did* have a nice 14 part series on WWI earlier this year.
December 1, 2011, 12:12 amLarryA says:
Well, when you consider how modern Britain “helps” its citizens defend their homes and businesses from rioting mobs…
That doesn’t seem to slow the History Channel down with respect to the Civil War.
December 1, 2011, 12:15 amjcc says:
@ tim -
“…replay over and over again with new commentary…”
Geez, that is so true. Not long ago, I went through a bout of illness and surgeries. I spent most of time time laying about the house. There were many a night when I had the boob tube on at 3:00 AM, trying to bore myself back to sleep rather than take another pill.
December 1, 2011, 12:17 amNBL says:
Shame on you all! The history channel is more than WWII. It also has ghosts and aliens and such.
On the matter of the textbook, though, I’d be interested to know if Professor Volockh had found it still being used in classrooms. If so, it’s time for a letter to the school board.
December 1, 2011, 12:31 amWayne says:
I particularly liked the Russian plan for helping defend the lands of the Polish people.
December 1, 2011, 12:32 amPerplexed and Amused says:
Even as a frequent watcher of Discovery Channel and History Channel documentaries, I was unaware that the Soviets came in the back door of Poland just as the Nazi kicked in the front. From the Wikipedia entry, it appears that the incredible speed of the collapse of Poland may have been substantially due to the Soviet invasion from the east. Of the dozens or even hundreds of histories I have viewed on television, I can’t recall a single one that mentions the Soviet invasion of Poland. Perhaps I missed them, but it makes me wonder what else these histories don’t talk much about.
December 1, 2011, 12:37 amleo marvin says:
Historical prescriptivist.
December 1, 2011, 12:46 amjcc says:
I tried googling the book and couldn’t find it with a cursory look. I’d be curious to see more if someone finds it.
December 1, 2011, 12:49 amCareless says:
it’s on Amazon. 39 pages, wow.
Also, the only thing the history channel is showing at 3 am are infomercials.
December 1, 2011, 12:53 amrilkefan says:
Here’s Auden’s comment on the latter bit.
December 1, 2011, 12:57 amBill Poser says:
It sort of works if you take the less obvious reading on which the antecedent of “their” is not “the Czech and Polish people” but “Britain, France and Russia”, so that, for example, we have Russia helping the Czech and Polish people to defend Russia. But I doubt that that is the intended reading.
December 1, 2011, 12:59 amKazinski says:
The Czechs in the 30′s had a stable democracy and one of the highest standards of living in Europe. After three centuries under the Hapsburg yoke they were finally enjoying their freedom. Then came the Nazi’s and the subsequent betrayal by the French and Brits, and then the 40 year long Soviet imposition. I really feel for the Czechs, but they are finally free and loving it.
Despite my pseudonym I’m not Slavic at all, but the Coasts of Bohemia are one of my favorite places to visit. The Anti-communism museum and the torture museum in Prague were some of my kids favorite places in Europe too.
December 1, 2011, 12:59 amCitation needed « Blunt Object says:
[...] Eugene Volokh presents an example of well-known and disconcertingly uncontroversial Wikipedia articles which disagree with the printed historical record, or at least a part of it. It’s short, so I’ll quote it in full: [...]
December 1, 2011, 1:00 amrilkefan says:
A better reading.
December 1, 2011, 1:02 amCrazyTrain says:
Wow. Sarcasm?
December 1, 2011, 1:06 am~aardvark says:
Ever heard Gingrich talk about history? This is what it sounds like…
December 1, 2011, 1:16 amJames Gibson says:
The one I normally remember regarding the Soviet invasion of Poland is the references to the execution of Polish officers by the Soviets. After Germany took control of Poland, they found the bodies and made the event public (though of course denied by Stalin).
By the way, one other nation invaded at that time was Finland: invaded by the USSR. Germany initially sent no material to Finland while the US and Britain tried to send both supplies and troops through Norway and Sweden. In the end a truce was signed ending what is known as the winter war. When the Germans invaded Russia in the summer of 1941, Finland struck back as well with German aid. To make a long story short its one of the reasons why Fins, even today, don’t like Russia.
December 1, 2011, 1:20 ammariner says:
Are you confusing History Channel with the Military Channel?
It appears to me that the History Channel has pretty much given up on History, with all the Pawn Shops and Pickers, cooks on motorcycles, and Ice Road Truckers in the desert.
December 1, 2011, 1:21 amjcc says:
“…Gingrich talk about history…”
Well, it took 17 posts until the argument begins whether the book was really written by Al Gore or Sarah Palin.
December 1, 2011, 1:23 amCareless says:
it was true 10 years ago. I don’t know how you left out aliens ans Bigfoot.
December 1, 2011, 1:44 amHockey Bum says:
[quote]By the way, one other nation invaded at that time was Finland: invaded by the USSR. Germany initially sent no material to Finland while the US and Britain tried to send both supplies and troops through Norway and Sweden. In the end a truce was signed ending what is known as the winter war. When the Germans invaded Russia in the summer of 1941, Finland struck back as well with German aid. To make a long story short its one of the reasons why Fins, even today, don’t like Russia. [/quote]
Under the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union, better known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Finland was placed in the Soviet sphere of influence. The Finns turned down a demand for territorial concessions, and the Soviets invaded resulting in the Winter War.
When Molotov denied bombing Finland, and said they were dropping food to starving Finns, the Finns referred to bombs as Molotov Bread Baskets. The poorly armed Finnish army was forced to improvise in order to stop Soviet tanks — hence the Molotov Cocktail was born.
Later, the Finns allied with Germany and went to war to regain lost territory. This is the Continuation War. When the war started going badly they sued for peace with the Soviets, and the Germans exacted their revenge.
The wars don’t involve the American Civil War, space aliens, or ghosts, so don’t expect the History Channel to cover it.
December 1, 2011, 4:54 amdearieme says:
“…one of the reasons why Finns, even today, don’t like Russia.”
In 1990, shortly after the liberation of Prague, I was one of a large, international party enjoying beers in a basement bar there. Someone stood up and toasted Prague. Cheers. Someone else Budapest – cheers. What the hell: I stood up and toasted St Petersburg. Intake of breath, followed by cheers. A Finn stood up and announced “And now I want my Grandmother’s house back.” Laughter and cheers.
December 1, 2011, 6:18 amMichael M. Keohane says:
Check out your local newspapers – they often contain snippets of history for school students based upon the national, state or local education department’s recommendations. They average at least one mistatement of fact or outright error per article.
The misinformation in the schools & media begins almost immediately after an event. I was in Berlin when the Wall went up in August 1961. By 1962, some tour groups visiting West Berlin had tour guides that claimed that the Western Powers were responsible for building the Wall.
I was, in civilian clothing, near a group of college students from Africa when one tour guide blamed the Wall on the Western Powers. Not one of the students objected – in only one year, truth was lost.
December 1, 2011, 6:53 amAnderson says:
Sure, the Russians were defending Polish land — the part they took.
December 1, 2011, 7:14 amrob bob says:
Don’t know much biology.
December 1, 2011, 8:22 amtamerlane says:
It’s often forgotten that Stalin’s Russians didn’t just slaughter Polish military officers. Katyn Forest was only part of a much larger genocide aimed at wiping out the entire Polish cultural elite. Men, women, and children were all targeted for the Gulag or other just as brutal forms of liquidation.
The ignorance of history evidenced by the past several generations of Americans with whom I’ve come into contact is widespread, profound, and disturbing. I recently led a graduate seminar where it accidentally came out that every single student was unshakably convinced that Abraham Lincoln had been a slave owner. Perhaps coincidentally, every one of them reported that Howard Zinn’s A Peoples’ History of America had been part of their HS curriculum.
December 1, 2011, 9:02 amRicardo says:
I haven’t read it yet but I have heard that “Bloodlands” by Timothy Snyder is becoming the go-to source for information on the various campaigns of mass murder carried out in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and other areas sandwiched between the Nazi and Soviet empires.
December 1, 2011, 9:25 amAssistant Village Idiot says:
@tamerlane – well, Washington and Jefferson were old famous presidents who were slave holders, so all the old famous presidents must have been. The prob’ly sat around and talked about it in Virginia, which is like, really near Kentucky where Lincoln is from. It’s sort of like King Arthur and King Alfred being such great pals, being so similar and all.
When one considers that installing an attitude or interpretation about an historical event, not facts, is considered the important part of teaching by many, the Howard Zinn frequency does not surprise me.
December 1, 2011, 9:31 amAnderson says:
Perhaps coincidentally, every one of them reported that Howard Zinn’s A Peoples’ History of America had been part of their HS curriculum.
Really? What high school assigns Zinn?
Where does Zinn write that Lincoln owned slaves?
… I have heard that “Bloodlands” by Timothy Snyder is becoming the go-to source for information on the various campaigns of mass murder carried out in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and other areas sandwiched between the Nazi and Soviet empires
Yes, it’s been very well-reviewed, but it sounds entirely too accurate and thus entirely too depressing. The older I get, it seems, the less I can tolerate reading about such atrocities.
I’ve already read my Holocaust book for 2011 (Longerich); maybe I’ll get to Snyder in 2012.
December 1, 2011, 9:57 amStephen Lathrop says:
Slighting references to Zinn seem to be standard fare on the right. Come up all the time. I don’t know his work at all. Could you please provide some citations which show what’s wrong with his history?
December 1, 2011, 10:01 amSarcastro's Little Brother says:
Yeah, cuz that’s what Tulane University requires before giving out its Ph.D.s in modern European history.
December 1, 2011, 10:05 amkarrde says:
About two years ago, (while attending an Appleseed event…not the place I’d expect to find lack of historical knowledge about major wars), someone told me that they didn’t believe Hitler and Stalin had ever been allies.
I told them about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and the fact that one of Hitler’s more-stupid decisions was his decision to attack Soviet Russia.
December 1, 2011, 10:06 amAnderson says:
Stephen, here is a good critique of Zinn’s best-selling book from a leftist perspective. (H/t.)
December 1, 2011, 10:12 amDerHahn says:
At least as depressing as the Russia-Poland ignorance is the obfustication on what Britain and France actually did – actively conspire with Hitler to dismember Czechoslovakia, and march to the border and glower fiercely at him when he invaded Poland.
Nice way to obliterate why the claim of ‘Peace in our time’ is such a bitter irony.
December 1, 2011, 10:16 amNBL says:
One more thing. A number of posters, and even some of the bloggers, have taken to denigrating the humanities, generally as part of an otherwise admirable campaign to promote enthusiasm for STEM. This debacle of a textbook is a good example of why we need to keep a strong focus on the humanities.
December 1, 2011, 10:29 amJay says:
Virginia and Kentucky border each other (and did so even more extensively pre-Civil War, and the creation of West Virginia), so I would say they are indeed near one another.
December 1, 2011, 10:44 amPerplexed and Amused says:
Ezra Klein, one of the best and brightest young leftists at the Washington Post, refers to the US Constitution as being “like, over 100 years old”, presumably as a way of implying that it could not possibly be relevant, as written, today. Historical ignorance is rampant, not because incorrect things are being taught, but because so much is left out. Bias is not necessarily the telling of flat-out untruths, it is the failure to tell the whole truth, which I believe is what disturbs Eugene Volokh so much.
December 1, 2011, 10:49 amJay says:
Of course, they still border each other, just not as much. My bad.
December 1, 2011, 10:50 amSarcastro says:
[mine did, actually. Ethical Culture Fieldson School in NY.
Actually, that was in middle school - 8th Grade (Or Form II, as we called it.)
To be fair, the teacher did have us tear it apart in class. It was as much an exercize in skepticism of secondary sources as anything else.]
December 1, 2011, 11:01 amAnderson says:
[mine did, actually. Ethical Culture Fieldson School in NY.]
I called them, and they absolutely refuse to take any responsibility for you.
… But srsly, yes, that is a good use for Zinn. In my lit-crit days, I used to tell undergrads they could get a good paper by taking any paragraph by Terry Eagleton and evaluating whether it stood up or not.
December 1, 2011, 11:10 amGiant Frog says:
I learned all about the invasion of Poland from reading The Tin Drum. IIRC, it involved some midgets in the post office. And a talking flounder…?
December 1, 2011, 11:15 amIsab says:
Educrats have long considered “History” as one of those subjects that they could suitably “dumb down” for small children. What they invariably end up with is pablum and lies.
Gross oversimplification of a complex subject does nothing for anyone. My children emerged from Junior High and High school, with some supposed “history” and both were also totally unable to locate any of the countries they had “studied” on a map.
December 1, 2011, 11:32 amgoodspkr says:
It is frightening that so little is taught about history in the schools these days. And here we have simple facts being wrong in a textbook about history for kids.
History gives perspective. It tells you what’s happened before and what has succeeded and what has failed. I think that is why the left is down on it, because if people realized how over and over again leftist principles have failed.
I think Ann Coulter said it well when she said:
“Like all totalitarians, the Democrats’ position is: We thought up something that we know will work better than anything anyone else has done for the last 30,000 years. We don’t know why no one else has thought of it. We must be smarter. This is why THE HISTORY OF LIBERALISM CONSISTS OF REPLACING THINGS THAT WORK WITH THINGS THAT SOUNDED GOOD ON PAPER.”
December 1, 2011, 11:38 amMark B. says:
Historical ignorance? Start with the popular hagiographies of Stephen Ambrose and Tom Brokaw. Even for the barely literate, as opposed to those whose only knowledge of the past comes from TV, those books go a long way of obscuring the fact that it was the Soviets who did the real heavy lifting in the war against Hitler.
And what did those brave French and British do to protect the Poles? Declared war, and then sat on their backsides for eight months, when a vigorous attack on Germany from the west might have actually made a difference for Poland.
December 1, 2011, 11:41 amkarrde says:
I am still trying to fathom a history of the United States which ignored religion.
At least, that is the jaw-dropping quote from the article you link.
Most of the other details had me wondering how Zinn came to this or that conclusion. (The Revolution was a power-grab? The Civil War a distraction from the real issues?)
But ignoring that detail is mind-numbingly dense.
December 1, 2011, 11:43 amAnderson says:
I am still trying to fathom a history of the United States which ignored religion.
Zinn’s book does not even purport to be a general history of the U.S. His angle is to present what he claims is “the history you haven’t heard about,” the secret history that the Bosses/Elites have kept out of the thick unreadable textbooks you were assigned in high school or college.
Declared war, and then sat on their backsides for eight months, when a vigorous attack on Germany from the west might have actually made a difference for Poland.
Poland collapsed before there was any plausible chance of an Allied attack in the west, and well before the Allies expected it to fold. The Russian invasion also came as a surprise to them. Whatever the merits of the Sitzkrieg — Ernst May argues plausibly that it was due to overconfidence, not pusillanimity — Poland was doomed to be a goner.
December 1, 2011, 11:58 amSarcastro says:
Yes, there are no liberal historians.
And every reasonable person agrees history proves again and again all principles but my own have failed (mine have never been truly tested).
December 1, 2011, 11:58 amCardinal Ximenes says:
Indeed- they lifted more than two million tons.
December 1, 2011, 12:05 pmscattergood says:
What book exactly did Mr. Ambrose write about the Russian Front of WWII? Band of Brothers?
For popular history, read Cornealus Ryan’s The Last Battle. It clearly demonstrates Russia’s part and pain of WWII in the context of the taking of Berlin. BTW he also wrote two other WWII classics called The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far.
Further, how does a marginally mechanized army launch an attack in winter through forests?
December 1, 2011, 12:24 pmAnderson says:
Further, how does a marginally mechanized army launch an attack in winter through forests?
??? If you mean the French army, it had more armor than the Germans did. (Or do you mean “mechanized” in the narrow sense, like a mechanized division?)
Nor is it clear to me that the Rhineland was a thicket. The Westwall mainly existed in Hitler’s febrile imagination.
December 1, 2011, 12:30 pmMM says:
I’m not sure that people overlook France and England’s role in appeasement–if anything, this is probably pretty well-known among those who have even basic knowledge of the lead-up to World War II in Europe.
Some historians are more forgiving of the French and British–or at least try to explain their reasons for choosing appeasement over war. France and England were not militarily prepared in 1938 and popular opinion was ambivalent at best. Gerhard Weinberg suggests that Hitler was disappointed with the compromise at Munich because he wanted the conflict sooner rather than later.
Anyway, this is not my area of expertise, but I thought I’d throw it out there.
(ps: my 12th grade history class at a public school in Minneapolis used Zinn. I don’t think it was meant as a tool to teach critical analysis.)
December 1, 2011, 12:45 pmgooners says:
When was it taught better? History classes have always included oversimplification and outright myths. The point of the material covered is as much to promote nationalism as it is to inform. Anyone (even the old folks from back in your day) that stops learning after 12th grade is going to have an incomplete idea of history.
December 1, 2011, 12:47 pmAlaska Jack says:
I can’t speak to the books of Ambrose or Brokaw; I haven’t read them. But I am reasonably well-read, and am familiar with the Soviet’s role in WWII.
Nonetheless, when I see statements like the above, I am never sure what to make of them. They sort of seem to imply that we should have more respect for the Soviets or something.
But these were two horrible, oppressive, duplicitous, aggressive regimes going against each other. So one of them took more lumps than the other — largely because their particular bloodthirsty dictator had executed many of his most promising military officers, and insisted on a terrible military strategy. Well, what lesson exactly are we supposed to draw from that? It’s not like the Soviets were out there crusading for freedom. It’s like saying we really should have more respect for the Russian Mafia because they lost a lot of goons in their war against the Italian Mafia. I mean, so what?
– Alaska Jack
December 1, 2011, 1:30 pmkarrde says:
It is worth noting that most of the fight ended up being over who would own Eastern Europe.
(Most, in terms of lives lost and war-materiel used/destroyed.)
Though the night-and-day bombing by USAAF and RAF didn’t help the Germans much, either.
I don’t know if either the Sov’s or the US/Britain/etc. alliance could have taken Nazi Germany down alone.
December 1, 2011, 1:41 pmAnderson says:
ps: my 12th grade history class at a public school in Minneapolis used Zinn.
Fascinating. My public high school never used anything but the assigned state textbook; then again, judging the rest of the country by Mississippi can lead one astray ….
Anyway, it’s a bad book overall, tho one can find some interesting things in it.
December 1, 2011, 1:48 pmAnderson says:
I am never sure what to make of them. They sort of seem to imply that we should have more respect for the Soviets or something.
Respect for the Soviet gov’t? Nah. Respect for the Russian people? Seems merited.
Plus and of course, every German soldier on the Eastern Front was a German not shooting at the Americans or the Brits. Considering the trouble we did have with the rump army in the west and in Italy, we had ample reason to be grateful that the majority of the German effort was turned elsewhere.
December 1, 2011, 1:53 pmragebot says:
Just my two cents, but A. J. P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper are renowned for their public debate including letters published in the London Times on WWII. Both had what I consider well thought positions which while different often seemed to explained events. While I tend to think Taylor was a little soft on Hitler his analysis about popular Minister of Economics Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht forced resignation figuring into the timing of Nazi military action seems relevant to me.
Oft times I find obscure events like this seem more important than many history books give them credit for.
December 1, 2011, 2:18 pmragebot says:
There are several lines of analysis along the lines of how WWII would have turned out if Hitler had not been such a bozo. Just by not stabbing Russia in the back and opening up another front and then letting his first rate generals run the war instead of sticking his nose where it did not belong it certainly would have been much harder for the Allies.
If you want to give credit to the Russians for diverting men and resources to the Eastern Front you may want to give a little credit to Hitler for opening up the front in the first place.
December 1, 2011, 2:22 pmAnderson says:
Ragebot, my problem with “what if Hitler hadn’t invaded Russia?” has always been that Hitler was ALL ABOUT invading Russia. That was the ultimate point of the war. Lebensraum, baby!
He hoped the western Allies would back down in 1939, and was startled they actually went to war over Poland, but stifling them was simply precautionary.
Now, you want to talk about a bad idea, declaring war on the U.S. was a bad idea, and totally gratuitous. (Ian Kershaw has tried to make sense of it in Fateful Choices, but with limited success.)
But war with Russia was always bound to happen.
December 1, 2011, 2:29 pmragebot says:
Why did Hitler agree to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact?
December 1, 2011, 2:35 pmgooners says:
Isn’t it true that the German invasion of the Soviet Union wasn’t just about Hitler being a bozo, but also about the Baku Oilfields? It wasn’t recognized at the beginning of the war how important oil would be. Germany had already been denied access to oil in North Africa and the Middle East and didn’t have many options left. They were getting oil imported from the Soviet Union, but would have put themselves in a better position if they controlled the oilfields themselves and didn’t have to trust Stalin to continue shipments. So there was some strategic importance to the invasion, it wasn’t all Hitler’s delusions.
December 1, 2011, 2:38 pmhaim says:
Well said. But it is important to understand that not through our efforts alone was Hitler defeated. Its not a respect thing, but a factual thing – when Adolf sent so much of his equipment and manpower to crush the Soviets, it presented less of those same resources against the Allies as a result.
December 1, 2011, 2:42 pmragebot says:
One of the big problems with history is trying to come up with rational explanations of irrational acts.
IMHO much of what Hitler did was irrational so it is a fool’s errand to try and explain it rationally.
December 1, 2011, 2:42 pmJeff Hall says:
Yes, but should it have been a surprise? In the previous year Germany, Hungary and the Soviet Union had divided Czechoslovakia between them, then prepared their people for war by spending a huge amount on arms and propaganda. The Germans and the Russians did precisely what they said they were going to do, working together precisely as they prepared their people for, and much as they did in the division of Czechoslovakia.
Thank goodness humanity has evolved beyond all that. For example, just because Iran is spending more money than it could rationally afford on nuclear weapons research, and preparing its people for a heroic final struggle against the Zionist scourge, there’s no reason to think that, once they’ve gotten the bomb, that they would give one to Hamas or Hezbollah, just because this is exactly the the way they’ve behaved before in Gaza and Lebanon and Buenos Aires and …
December 1, 2011, 2:43 pmathEIst says:
You’d have preferred?
In 1939 Hitler sent his armies to liberate the oppressed Germans of the Suedetenland and Danzig from the oppressive Czechs and Poles.
You’ll see it soon.
December 1, 2011, 2:45 pmSeamus says:
And Abe’s parents actually came from Virginia, so that settles it.
December 1, 2011, 2:45 pmhmi says:
The high school (private) that I taught at, prior to my arrival, used Zinn as the basic text. I replaced it, leaving one copy in the school library to serve as a bad example.
December 1, 2011, 2:47 pmgooners says:
Well, yes, and in hindsight things didn’t work out. But Germany did need oil, and they did try and fail to secure fields in N. Africa and M.E., and they were aiming for the Baku fields. If not for the need for oil, Germany wouldn’t have had to be at Kiev at all, and could have potentially focused all efforts on St. Petersburg and Moscow.
December 1, 2011, 2:58 pmgooners says:
Then, of course, there’s Pat Buchanan’s take:
December 1, 2011, 3:03 pmhttp://buchanan.org/blog/did-hitler-want-war-2068
Jeff Hall says:
If you tell me that there schools now teach Zinn and Buchanan I’m going out and getting a vasectomy right now. The world’s tough enough to raise a kid in.
December 1, 2011, 3:10 pmmjrothjr says:
This reminds me of a friend in high school who received a low grade on a paper about the Battle of Britain in a European history class. When he asked the teacher (this was her first year teaching) why his grade was low, she replied that his paper was wrong in claiming that two countries could bomb each other at the same time during World War II, and that for such a glaring error she had to knock him down two letter grades.
December 1, 2011, 3:11 pmCrunchy Frog says:
Which is why the Battle of Stalingrad was such a spectacularly stupid idea, with German troops 40 miles from Moscow in the north. A saner strategy would have been to encircle the city, keep it from being resupplied from the east, and sprinted to Baku with the remainer of his forces. Instead, because the name of the city was “Stalingrad”, Hitler let his hatred for Stalin take over, and tried to crush it flat, while failing to take out the rail lines bringing in fresh men and materiel from all of Siberia.
December 1, 2011, 3:11 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Anderson’s response is, of course, correct. Russia didn’t “divert” Germany there; rather, from the perspective of Germany, that was the first front.
In any case, though, if you want to give credit to Russia for “diverting” German attention there, you might want to give a few demerits to Russia for helping Hitler start the whole thing in the first place. Without Molotov-Ribbentrop, is there an invasion of Poland at all?
December 1, 2011, 3:22 pmAssistant Village Idiot says:
gooners makes an excellent point. (Because of my earlier sarcasm on this thread, I want to make sure people know I am not being ironic in any way when I say that. Serious hat on.) Previous history books did indeed gloss over American problems, promote nationalism, and offer oversimplified explanations. I am very much a superiority-of-Western-Civ believer, but even I can’t swallow some of the stuff that was taught to schoolchildren in earlier eras. You have to keep reading history, and you have to be ever prepared to see heroes deflated and villains rehabilitated. The difficulty tends to come in counter-histories being at least as oversimplified, but hailed as great new understandings. Much of the praise of Zinn is admiration that he offered another POV, with only secondary emphasis on whether it was a defensible, balanced POV. Mere opposition is not entirely void of value, but it’s pretty limited.
From there, of course, it becomes an easy polarisation to pretend that all criticism of Zinn comes from unthinking, jingoistic supporters of the status quo. (A dishonest debating tactic that didn’t originate with Alinsky.)
December 1, 2011, 3:29 pmMark Buehner says:
To the contrary, things in North Africa were going his way when Hitler attacked the Soviets, and the Allies didn’t really start pounding his supply lines via Malta until the second half of 1941. By June of 1941 Rommel was inside of Egypt.
Hitler could have reinforced Rommel with a tiny fraction of the forces being marshaled for the invasion of the USSR and swept through the middle east as far as he wanted. Consider- France surrendered in June of 1940, Rommel arrived in Libya in February of 1941 with 2 divisions and about 300 tanks and came within a hair of driving the Brits into the Suez. Hitler invaded the USSR in June of 1941 with an initial force of 100 divisions, 4 million men, and 3400 tanks.
It would have been childs play to divert a small portion of that force, conquer the middle east (much of it already Nazi and fascist sympathetic), close the Suez, turn the Med into a German pond, and theaten Russia from the South as well as the West.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but its pretty clear that Hitler and his high command had tunnel vision concerning the Soviets and didn’t consider the huge ramifications of taking the Suez and grabbing the Middle East and its oil pretty much by fiat.
December 1, 2011, 3:34 pmgooners says:
You can keep going back and back. In Molotov-Ribbentrop Russia was getting back what they lost in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which they only signed because of the civil war. By the 30′s they were unified and ready to re-assert themselves as the rightful rulers of all Slavs, as they had thought themselves for a long time. Neither Hitler or Stalin was doing anything the Kaisers and Tsars before them hadn’t thought of.
December 1, 2011, 3:40 pmKeith Waters says:
Perhaps a bigger mistake than invading the USSR was how the Germans treated the ethnic groups and nationalities they encountered there. It’s possible they would have received some help and at least nonresistance. Many people would have been happy to have gotten rid of Stalin and gain a bit of autonomy from Moscow.
December 1, 2011, 3:45 pmJoe says:
I can almost top that – The final project for my daughters history class in her senior year in high school was to write a report on the Kennedy assassination based on Oliver Stone’s movie JFK.
December 1, 2011, 4:07 pmJoe says:
My recollection is that Mary Todd’s family did own slaves prior to her marrying Abe.
December 1, 2011, 4:12 pmAnderson says:
Why did Hitler agree to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact?
The environment was set by Hitler’s rolling into Prague in March 1939 and the Allies’ guarantee of Poland.
Such a guarantee was absurd without Russian support, but the Allies disliked the Soviets – understandably, but impractically – and didn’t make much effort.
Hitler, aware of what was going on, and that Russia was wary of the capitalists as much as of the fascists, cut a deal to give ‘em a slice of Poland and keep them off his back. Indeed, he could’ve been forgiven for thinking that the news of the pact (announced, what, Aug. 23?) would dissuade the Allies from going to war. But Chamberlain had no choice at this point, and the French rather sadly went along.
It was purely a temporary deal in Hitler’s eyes (Stalin too knew better than to trust Hitler indefinitely), but it gave both parties something they wanted.
December 1, 2011, 4:12 pmys says:
They also protected a whole lot of Poles – by taking them far far east from the theater of operations (those that is that did not make a prolonged stop at Katyn on the way).
December 1, 2011, 4:17 pmMark Field says:
Yep, lots of them.
December 1, 2011, 4:18 pmAnderson says:
Yes, but should it have been a surprise? In the previous year Germany, Hungary and the Soviet Union had divided Czechoslovakia between them, then prepared their people for war by spending a huge amount on arms and propaganda.
First, this is not quite correct. The USSR got no slice of the pie. The Soviets didn’t even border Czechoslovakia (which was one of the hindrances to getting them on board to oppose Hitler in 1938). This map shows how C-S was carved up.
Second, the surprise was as much the quick collapse vs. the Nazis as the unexpected Soviet intervention. (Even some of the Poles were surprised – they weren’t sure if the Reds were rescuing them or fighting them, tho they found out quickly.)
December 1, 2011, 4:19 pmAnderson says:
Hitler could have reinforced Rommel with a tiny fraction of the forces being marshaled for the invasion of the USSR
I just finished van Creveld’s Supplying War, where he makes short shrift of the logistics re: Rommel. The North African ports could handle only so much, no matter how much Hitler had wanted to send. “The problem of supplying an Axis force for an advance into the Middle East was insoluble.”
(Tho it looks really cool on the Third Reich game board, I totally concur.)
December 1, 2011, 4:23 pmNoleLaw says:
The Germans were not at all prepared for a war with France and England in 1938, not to mention one including Czechoslovakia (and likely Poland) as well. The occupation of the Sudetenland and subsequent invasion of the entire country greatly augmented Hitler’s arsenal in heavy weapons.
MM says:
December 1, 2011, 4:25 pmI’m not sure that people overlook France and England’s role in appeasement–if anything, this is probably pretty well-known among those who have even basic knowledge of the lead-up to World War II in Europe.
Some historians are more forgiving of the French and British–or at least try to explain their reasons for choosing appeasement over war. France and England were not militarily prepared in 1938 and popular opinion was ambivalent at best. Gerhard Weinberg suggests that Hitler was disappointed with the compromise at Munich because he wanted the conflict sooner rather than later.
Seamus says:
And Julia Dent’s family owned ‘em before she married Ulysses S. Grant. (Of course, they disapproved of him because he was anti-slavery.)
December 1, 2011, 4:32 pmSeamus says:
Invading Russia was not necessarily a mistake. People always say, “How could Hitler not have known that was going to fail? He only had to look at Napoleon’s experience.” Yeah, but he could also look at the experience of the German army in World War I, when they knocked the crap out of Russia even while fighting a two-front war. In 1941, Hitler had either vanquished his enemies to the west or knocked them off the Continent. So that, combined with the fact that Stalin had decimated his officer corps and was foolishly trusting that German would observe its Non-Aggression Pact, meant Hitler reasonably figured he had a good chance of whipping the Russians even worse than the Kaiser has whipped them in 1918.
But yeah, that mistreating the ethnic minorities was pretty stupid. (Of course, the whole point of invading Russia was to use it for Lebensraum. Anyone already there was probably going to be treated at best they way the Americans treated the Indians.)
December 1, 2011, 4:41 pmMark Buehner says:
So how did the Italians field a 215,000 man army in 1939? Moreover, Germany DID heavily reinforce North Africa in November of 1942 to try to prevent defeat (far too late of course), 230,000 Axis soldiers were captured in Tunisia at the end of the campaign (not to mention those that escaped). Once Egypt was taken, port facilities certainly would be no problem.
The decision to use useless Italian units stiffened with 2 German divisions consumed a certain level of supplies needlessly. Had the Italians been withdrawn and replaced with even 2 more panzer divisions in early 1941, it would have been a walkover. No need for months of logistical struggles, the deep port of Alexandria would have been in Nazi hands by summer and the British navy either forced to withdraw from the Med or holes up wherever they could find shelter.
December 1, 2011, 4:42 pmNot an Economist says:
What??? This isn’t true! Next you are going to tell me the Germans didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor!
December 1, 2011, 4:44 pmSarcastro says:
Well, that took too long.
December 1, 2011, 4:49 pmjkl says:
The annals of communism include a book about Katyn. In the Venona Project volume we are told that the finns handed the USA the codebook used to discover among others the four of Cambridge .
December 1, 2011, 4:50 pmThe russian also “helped” the Baltics States
Anderson says:
Once Egypt was taken, port facilities certainly would be no problem.
Well, yes, but that is sorta assuming the conclusion: Egypt was a loooooooooooooooong way from Rommel’s base.
And without studying the issue, I don’t think Hitler had the political option to “withdraw the Italians” like so many wargame counters.
Pouring supplies into Tunisia was feasible, as you note, but see “looooooooooooooooooong,” supra. That was valid for opposing the Allies’ landing in NW Africa; it couldn’t work to get Rommel into Alexandria.
December 1, 2011, 4:58 pmAnderson says:
Here is a precis of van Creveld’s argument (“for Marines,” it says — no comment).
December 1, 2011, 5:14 pmJoe says:
too much trivial history on this thread – though my recollection was her family was from the north half of missouri which had a lot fewer families with slave holdings.
December 1, 2011, 5:17 pmMark Buehner says:
Rommel got as far as El Alamein twice, which is 75 miles from Alexandria with no further significant terrain. You swap out half the Italians Rommel was stuck with for veteran German troops and I don’t think there is much question the war takes a much darker turn. Thats LESS troops, less supplies.
Hitler didn’t have to bother with the Italians at all, just send supplies for his own forces and let Mussolini take care of his own. The point is Hitler was intent on allowing the Italians a significant role- mainly because North Africa was a side show for him and he liked Mussolini. I don’t believe there is any evidence the Nazis gave any real thought to a proper drive on Egypt- everything Rommel did he improvised, his initial orders were to hold what he could of Libya.
The allies had to make the same march in reverse. For that matter the allied supply line into Egypt was something like 12,000 miles long. They managed.
Rommel got horrifyingly close to taking Alexandria with a force that was basically a rounding error compared to what was available- and that was laden with Italians sucking up his gas and bullets. You subtract the Italians (leave them in their barracks) and add a few more German formations and its tough to believe Alexandria would’t have fallen. He almost pulled it off anyway.
December 1, 2011, 5:18 pmAnderson says:
Rommel got as far as El Alamein twice, which is 75 miles from Alexandria with no further significant terrain.
And was gasping for fuel both times.
I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree, unless you have some persuasive authority to cite.
… Murray & Millett, A War to Be Won:
[After Gazala] the Afrika Korps had taken heavy losses and was in no condition to take Egypt; only a complete collapse by the British could have allowed it to reach Alexandria.
December 1, 2011, 5:38 pmrilkefan says:
Very interesting and informative thread – wish the discussion elsewhere on this blog was even 20% as useful.
December 1, 2011, 5:40 pmArthur Kirkland says:
My experience indicates that some current history books maintain the American traditions of cartoonish nationalism, oversimplification, jingoism, self-serving blinderism, and overall fairy-tale-ism in the classroom. The books my children have been assigned during the past decade have exhibited all of those traits.
December 1, 2011, 5:42 pmMark Buehner says:
Due to lack of possible fuel or lack of being supplied properly? Again- other armies were operating in the same theater with the same problems or worse. I’m sure i could dig up countervailing arguments- hell O’Connell was running up and down that desert making fools of the Italians before 1941 with even longer supply lines than the Germans had to deal with and probably even less support from his government. Its a fairly specious argument to say that it happened the way it happened and therefore it had to have happened that way. Timing was critical in all this, by the second half of 1941 the allies went from interdicting hardly any of the German supplies to interdicting MOST of them. Take that into account and Rommel, by your theory, should have suddenly found himself utterly unable to function, but thats not how it happened- he actually got stronger in late 1941 despite the interdiction allowing him to launch another attack in 1942. Demonstrably there was some amount of potential excess supply than Rommel was seeing in early 1941. It wouldn’t have taken much. Its not so much about quantity its about timing.
Which supports my point. Gazala was in June of 1942, it was too late and he never had enough strength to finally exploit his victories… because he never had very much strength at all and most of it was underperforming Italians. Had Rommel been given a full army in 1941 (easily available- in fact simply substitute German reinforcements for the Italian formations that were shipped over) he would very likely have beaten the British in the field instead of fighting a defensive action until he could regroup and strike back out in 1942. Certainly he wouldn’t have sat on his hands for half a year if he had the kind of fighting force he ended up with in 1942 (or more).
December 1, 2011, 6:14 pmAnderson says:
Mark, I provided a link to a good summary of van Creveld’s argument; I suggest you take a look at it, since it’s not productive for me to paste it into this thread. (N.b. righthand sidebar w/ links to summaries addressing later points in the campaign.)
Van Creveld does note the “Italian ballast” solution you suggest, but that was simply not the war the Axis was fighting in Africa. Regardless, Rommel *did* have the Italians, he *did* have to deal with Maltese air attacks, and he *did* have insufficient supply.
“The Axis hopes now hung on 2,000 vehicles, 5,000 tons of supplies and, above all, 1,400 tons of fuel captured at Tobruk, but this was just not enough. After an advance of another 400 miles, the ‘difficult supply situation,’ as well as exhaustion and stiffening resistance, brought Panzerarmee to a halt on 4 July. As Rommel himself subsequently admitted, he was fortunate to be halted at this point. Had this not been the case, he might have arrived at Alexandria with two battalions and 30 tanks, and his line of communications longer still.”
He needed 100K tons a month, Tobruk could barely do 20K, and it was hundreds of miles away. No railroad. Trucks breaking down. Tanks broken down. Relatively little Italian shipping was *lost* at this point, but that’s b/c they weren’t unloading at Tobruk but even farther west. When Rommel made ‘em switch to Tobruk, losses quadrupled, and they switched back.
You’re obviously well-read on this stuff, so I suggest scoring a copy of Supplying War – cheap online for a used copy, and a book I’m sure you’ve seen cited dozens of times.
December 1, 2011, 6:33 pmiolanthe says:
DerHahn says:
At least as depressing as the Russia-Poland ignorance is the obfustication on what Britain and France actually did — actively conspire with Hitler to dismember Czechoslovakia, and march to the border and glower fiercely at him when he invaded Poland.
Nice way to obliterate why the claim of ‘Peace in our time’ is such a bitter irony.
Not going to defend the betrayal at Munich (although I think a reasonable case can be made that neither the French nor the British people would have been prepared to go to war over [what seemed to many at the time] as a once off demand of Herr Hitler) but I’m sure people would be aware why Americans have no standing to criticise it. Without Pearl Harbour and Hitler’s stupid decision to declare war on the US I think we’d still be waiting for the US to come into the war against Germany.
December 1, 2011, 6:42 pmAnderson says:
Bigger picture, I just think you’re imagining a different war in 1941 from what Hitler and the OKH had in mind. The idea was never to push to Egypt; it was to keep the Italians from being crushed.
If you’re arguing that Hitler should have de-emphasized the Russian campaign in favor of the Middle East … well, that’s just imagining a different war from the one Hitler wanted. In 1941, finishing off Britain by pushing to Iraq or whatever simply didn’t seem important. Britain was marginalized and no threat, and Hitler was turning to the real point of the war: conquering Russia.
THAT was supposed to succeed and provide ample oil from USSR sources. To say that Hitler should’ve foregone Russia and focused on Egypt is sorta like saying he should’ve lightened up on the Jews: you’re asking Hitler not to be Hitler.
And once the premise of the Russian campaign is granted, the marvel is how much Hitler *did* let Rommel have. He sent him another armored division, right? Did the Wehrmacht not need those tanks for Russia?
December 1, 2011, 6:47 pmTatil says:
Britain and France were both democracies. Can you blame the politicians for being hesitant to send millions of their voters’ sons to face not one, but two ruthless dictatorships allied together at the time? If Hitler really stopped at invading European regions with sizable Germanic populations, I am sure most voters in Britain and French would be very happy that their politicians pulled out a compromise. Neither place was strategically important for defending the home front if Hitler was crazy enough to attack, so the “compromise” was worth a try.
Where is this disdain for “appeasement” coming from? Do you also despise the many US presidents who refused to start a nuclear war with the Soviets to liberate Eastern Europe, Caucasus or Central Asia? All that dilly dallying for four decades, shame, shame…
December 1, 2011, 7:35 pmzuch says:
Really? You’re not just making sh*te up…. Say, where does Zinn’s PHOTUS say that Abe Lincoln was a slaveholder?
And what “graduate school” exactly is this that you were at? Or don’t you want to say….
Cheers,
December 1, 2011, 8:06 pmTom S says:
Actually the Germans did invade Czechoslovakia in 1939, occupying what was left of it after the 1938 Munich agreements detached the Sudetenland. Poland also grabbed a bit as well.
December 1, 2011, 8:25 pmThe River Temoc, in Winter says:
One point often gets left out of the discussion of the carveup of Poland: during the Time of Troubles, Poland invaded Russia.
This of course does not justify the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact three hundred years later, but I do think it bears remembering that when Poland was a great power and Russia was a dwarf, King Sigismund did not care about Russian sovereignty. International relations is not a passion play about good and evil, but about power.
December 1, 2011, 9:15 pmRicardo says:
I disagree. One of the main problems with WWII history for Americans is that there is a distinct American and Western European bias in what people learn. This is understandable because American troops fought alongside the British because most of the battles American troops participated in were in Western Europe and North Africa.
Still, these were almost side-shows compared to the main event in Europe which was the genocidal war being waged between the Nazi and Soviet empires. That is where the vast majority of loss of life and atrocities were committed. One side of that genocidal war won; we shouldn’t be at all blind to how they won it and how many people they made suffer.
December 1, 2011, 9:24 pmNick says:
What people don’t know about WWI: That the Germans did indeed commit atrocities against unarmed civilians in Belgium and France. That the Germans deported survivors to German work camps, as slaves for their German conquerors. That German pilots bombed civilians in Scarborough and Antwerp, as they did in London and Louvain too. That the Germans torpedoed people’s fishing boats and plainly marked hospital ships. That the Germans did indeed lose the war, in battles at Hamel, Amiens and the Hindenburg Line. That the Germans started the war, not Wilson or Grey. That the Germans did not pay the reparations bill. That the Germans could have paid, but chose not to pay, the reparations bill. That the Germans weren’t even asked to pay more than the French had paid them, after 1871, after an earlier war that the Germans had hatched.
December 1, 2011, 9:27 pmStephen Ryan says:
To Mark B. et al, the Russians could not have triumphed, or even survived, the German attack, were it not for the fact that they could assume that Japan would not attack them from the rear. They could withdraw their substantial Siberian forces to reinforce their western front, knowing that the Americans kept the Japanese fully occupied. The U.S. fought two wars simultaneously, winning both of them. Find something to equal that in history, if you can.
December 1, 2011, 9:50 pmAs to the British and the French doing nothing but declare war on Germany in Sept. 1939, you are being unfair to the British. They did not have a treaty with Poland, promising to declare war on Germany if the latter attacked Poland. France did, a solemn assurance of assistance if the Germans attacked Poland. France reneged completely; Britain actually declared war on Germany before France reluctantly went along. And here is the kicker: France never did declare war on Germany. When Germany attacked Poland the upper and lower house of the French parliament met in a plenary session, as the National Assembly. The government could not get a declaration of war out of them. Opposition to declaring war came from the political left. Finally the government managed to get a vote authorizing credits to pay for French mobilization and, by inference, military action against Germany. They never did declare war, and they were never resigned to the war. Aside from a few feeble advances in the Rhineland, quickly halted when encountering serious German resistance, the French betrayed the Poles, just as they had done to the Czechs in l938. The British had no military alliance with Poland but they did the honorable thing, shaming the French to follow their lead.
Mark Field says:
Under the circumstances of June 1941, I doubt this “assumption” was much of a factor.
I’m not sure what this means. We didn’t fight by ourselves. Yes, we had more than 1 enemy, but lots of wars have been fought under those conditions and yet been won.
December 1, 2011, 10:14 pmzuch says:
“[A]llies” may be overtstating the case a bit.
FIFH.
“We invented constitutions and have the freaking patent on democracy. Everyone should want to be like us (as long as they pay royalties). Aren’t we great?”
That is what you’ll hear at a Republican preznitential ‘debate’ amidst the booing of soldiers and cheers for deaths.
Cheers,
December 1, 2011, 10:46 pmIsab says:
My understanding is that nothing in history ever matched the deployment of men and materials across two oceans as the United States did in WWII.
December 1, 2011, 10:52 pmIf you have any historical examples of anything even approaching this feat, I would love to hear about them.
RTA says:
Yes, Britain’s second declaration of war on Germany in only 25 years. But Poland was a goner either way, unlike Belgium in 1914. It was bound to pass to either the Nazis or the Communists, and there was nothing France or Britain could do about that. That was clear by late September 1939, and should have been clear enough early in the month (did anyone think Stalin would have sat on his hands as the Allies prosecuted an invasion of Germany from the west?).
Instead, France took the worst possible course of action: starting a major war, then dishonoring its obligation, managing to be both cowardly and recklessly belligerent at the same time. If assisting Poland was useless or just wasn’t going to happen, you might as well dishonor the treaty by simply not starting a war in the first place. A lesson learned the hard way in 1914-1918 one might think.
December 1, 2011, 10:53 pmMark Field says:
This is different than the point I was responding to. That said, in terms of nominal logistics, you’re right. But I think it’s only fair to compare effort relative to the economy and technology available at the time. In that case,off the top of my head, I’d say similar efforts were made by England in the Seven Years War; by the Dutch in the revolt against Spain; by the Romans against Hannibal; and by both Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. There are probably some other examples as well.
December 1, 2011, 11:19 pmgooners says:
From the rear? Where? Russia has no rear.
December 2, 2011, 12:35 amHarryEagar says:
Maybe you should read books. I have read many, and not one fails to mention the Soviet-German nonaggression pact and the arrangement for the fourth partition of Poland.
December 2, 2011, 12:38 amgooners says:
British history from about Elizabeth I to Normandy is another example.
December 2, 2011, 12:41 amHarryEagar says:
Actually, the Russians had defeated the Germans by sometime in October or November 1941. On one of those days, the Germans suffered a casualty they couldn’t replace.
The Russians ended Nazism, though if the British had not held the line from September 1939 to late 1941, they probably wouldn’t have.
Every American can be grateful that the Russians paid the cost that was required to kill all those Germans. I doubt we would have continued with the war if we had had to pay that blood price.
Eisenhower was of a similar opinion. He declined to spend the lives it would have taken to conquer Berlin. The Red Army spent 100,000 to do it.
December 2, 2011, 12:57 amStephen Ryan says:
Mark Field: Your examples are ridiculous. None of them even approach the subject of waging of “two major wars simultaneously.” Hannibal ravaged the Italian countryside at will, while the Romans (after Cannae) waged a cautious, defensive war against him. And the Peloponnesian War? Neither Sparta nor Athens fought two wars simultaneously. The feeble Dutch opposition to the Spanish tercios in the 16th century? How does that figure in this discussion? You apparently do not know what you are talking about/
December 2, 2011, 12:59 amHarryEagar says:
That isn’t the same thing as total effort. The US had 13 million in uniform during World War II, but only about half overseas.
In the Pacific, the US never engaged the main force of the Japanese army, which was in Japan and China.
In Europe, the US was a minor contributor. In the summer of 1944, the Germans had about 45 divisions in western Europe, and they stopped the Americans, British and Canadians.
At the same time, the Germans had over 100 divisions deployed against the Red Army. The 2nd Belorussian Front concentrated on German Army Group Center, which had about the strength of the western German armies, around 45 divisions. The Reds utterly destroyed Army Group Center.
A.J.P. Taylor, mentioned above, considered that the Russians did about 90% of the fighting against Germany. That is an exaggeration. It was more like 80% (though it was 0% from 1939 to June 1941).
December 2, 2011, 1:28 amJeremy Wheeler says:
As a Brit I always enjoy seeing Americans discuss the second world war: so well-read and informed.
[EV says: And yet the book I mention in the original post was published in Britain, and written by a British writer.]
December 2, 2011, 4:00 amAlan K. Henderson says:
Yes it does. It’s called Siberia.
December 2, 2011, 5:45 amathEIst says:
You underestimate FDR. He would have gotten us into the European War somehow. I don’t know how, but don’t underestimate FDR.
December 2, 2011, 7:15 amAnderson says:
the Russians could not have triumphed, or even survived, the German attack, were it not for the fact that they could assume that Japan would not attack them from the rear
This may be exaggerated; it was useful to know that Japan was turning south, but I think Russia could have afforded to let the Japanese overrun Siberia. The mortal threat was from Germany, not Japan.
You underestimate FDR. He would have gotten us into the European War somehow.
He had certainly been trying. But it’s a pet idea of mine (rather like Buehner’s theory of Rommel in Baghdad?) that, had Hitler denounced the Pearl Harbor attack and broken the alliance with Japan, the PR would’ve been very difficult for FDR to get the US fighting Germany, when the nation was rarin’ to teach them Nips a lesson.
December 2, 2011, 7:31 amJarbidge says:
Given the success of the Manhattan Project, it’s difficult to see how Germany could avoid defeat.
December 2, 2011, 7:45 amiolanthe says:
“You underestimate FDR. He would have gotten us into the European War somehow. I don’t know how, but don’t underestimate FDR”
I certainly think he would have tried and if it was up to him it would have happened. But he couldn’t get the US into the war in Europe before Pearl Harbour so it’s not at all clear that he could have managed it afterwards. I think he clearly saw the threat that naziism presented but few others did and not many in congress.
December 2, 2011, 8:21 amnewshutz says:
Because in 1939 his general were telling him that Germany would not be ready for war with the USSR till 1945. The Panzer I and II tanks were meant as cheap stopgaps and training vehicles. The real tanks that were to fill out the Panzer divisions were the III and IV, which were just starting to be produced (in 1939). Also, there were not nearly enough tracked support vehicles to fully mechanize the Panzer divisions let alone the Panzer corps. Even after rushing production on a war footing, the Wehrmacht had half of the tanks and half-tracks planned for the invasion of Russia.
The successes in Poland and France convinced Hitler that his generals were over cautious. He was wrong. The main source of Germany’s failure in 1941 (in Russia) was the lack of mechanized support vehicles for the Pz divisions, and the lack motorized transportation for the infantry divisions. As fast and as deep as the Germans went into Russia, they were hampered by the poor roads the wheeled support vehicles had to use. The Panzer Groups had to wait a number of times for supplies or for the infantry to march up and solidify their gains. The winter would not have been such an issue if the Germans had held Leningrad and Moscow.
December 2, 2011, 8:49 amAnderson says:
Given the success of the Manhattan Project, it’s difficult to see how Germany could avoid defeat.
True, but until Alamogordo, the White House could be forgiven for not relying on some science-fiction super-bomb to actually work, or be ready in time.
… Pet peeve: the stupid characters in The English Patient who are convinced the A-bomb never would’ve been used on whites. That’s what the Bomb was made for. Using it on the Japanese was faute de mieux after the German surrender.
December 2, 2011, 9:11 amHarvey says:
It is generally agreed that Hitler’s primary war aim was the conquest of Eastern Europe. The pact Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact demonstrated that Stalin, too, was an aggressor there. Hitler failed and Stalin succeeded. What reason was there for any Western European nation to fight?
After Pearl Harbor Germany foolishly declared war on the U.S. without a quid pro quo Japanese declaration against the USSR. A Japanese attack on Siberia, not Hawaii, in 1941 might have won the war the Axis.
In the end, Stalin made an unprovoked declaration of war on Japan which event significantly motivated the Japanese surrender to the U.S. The atomic bombs did no more damage than earlier fire bombing had done to other Japanese cities.
December 2, 2011, 9:31 amAnderson says:
The atomic bombs did no more damage than earlier fire bombing had done to other Japanese cities.
That fails to consider (1) the different effect of the atomic bomb, which the Japanese realized at once inflicted peculiarly horrible injuries, and (2) the horror that a city could be leveled by a single bomb.
More died in the Tokyo firebombing, but that took a fleet of bombers.
December 2, 2011, 10:52 amTom S says:
Don’t forget the Khalkin Gol fighting in 1939, which convinced the Japanese that they could not handle the Soviets militarily. It was also Zhukov’s first experience as a combat commander. After Khalkin Gol (or Nomonhan as the Japanese called it) the southern plan for attacking the British, Dutch, French, and US colonies came to the forefront.
December 2, 2011, 10:56 amAssistant Village Idiot says:
Arthur Krkland
Had you not overstated it this much, I might have granted some of the point. I have sent five through school systems, thanks, and my wife is a school librarian. I just rechecked the major textbooks online about 18 months ago. I have no doubt my data is better than yours. Consider the possibility that some positive statements about the US might be justified, and not providing endless qualifiers at every turn might be appropriate until students are well into formal operations (which I contend initiates at 13, not 11, and even then is not complete even in many adults). Houghton Mifflin social studies texts encourage breaking the class into groups to discuss things from different sides (two, at first, expanding to more in late MS) as far down as 4th grade. My children from Romania still complain that their teachers never really got how much better America is than other places.
I have seen a private religious school curriculum I would characterise that way. But even in those generally, there is considerable mention of things we got wrong, like slavery, land grabs, and corrupt poliical machines. In public school, we get the made-up story of Chief Seattle and lots of feel-good environmentalism in all subjects up here. Jingoism is not compatible with glowing statements about how much good the UN has done for the world.
I think you’ve done a remarkable job of giving evidence for your opposition on this one.
December 2, 2011, 11:43 amAssistant Village Idiot says:
From the OP, and I think, worthy of noting:
This sounds like a writer who is semi-apologetic about going to war at all, and wants to frame it in a way so that small children will see that “okay, sometimes, it’s kinda okay.” They didn’t really want to go to war, children, but they wanted to help those other people who were attacked by bad men. The more accurate statement, that they were worried about their own countries being next and wanting to stop Hitler in his tracks, sounds so, so selfish. So they made up pretty lies instead.
December 2, 2011, 11:49 amAnderson says:
Good point, Ass’t, and so unnecessary too: small children can understand the idea of needing to stop somebody who just keeps taking and taking what isn’t his. It would’ve been very easy to explain.
December 2, 2011, 12:10 pmMark Buehner says:
Thanks for the link Anderson, I will definitely check out the book you recommended.
I guess we’re not actually disagreeing that much-this conversation started when someone stated grabbing the Russian oil fields was paramount because the North African campaign wasn’t panning out. My point was that if that was the case it was the tail wagging the dog, and that whatever pretext or post-text the Germans claimed for invading the USSR, they were going to invade the USSR. Destroying the Bolsheviks was always a core tenet of Naziism.
Certainly it would have been a far different war had Hitler not invaded the Soviet Union when he did, and there are excellent strategic reasons for him to have delayed the invasion and prioritized other objectives (shutting the Suez canal and consolidating the Mediterranean being a major one). Its certainly easy to look at each piece of a counter-factual and blast it apart, but that doesn’t tell you all that much. My point is that Egypt and the ME demonstrably weren’t priorities (which we agree on)- but that they should have been. The resources required would have been modest compared to those available. The idea that it would simply be impossible to supply an army of the required size in 1941 on the North African coast just doesn’t make sense (the Brits managed it after all)- its certainly a factor, but not the controlling factor. How then did Montgomery march from Egypt to Tunisia? Its the same distance both ways, and Monty was hardly skimpy on the forces he demanded.
December 2, 2011, 3:13 pmMark Buehner says:
And to answer the other question, I can name another nation that fought 2 major wars at the same time- Great Britain, in the same war. Its easy to forget they were fighting the Japanese as well. The Japanese lost a lot of troops and material fighting Slim in Burma.
As for Japan invading Siberia- one thing it would have done would be to cut off a major route for American logistical material to flow into the Soviet Union. Another lost piece of history is how much American steel flowed into the USSR during the war. I forget the numbers but some large majority of Red Army trucks (for instance) were American made, which was critical.
December 2, 2011, 3:29 pmTatil says:
Weapons grade uranium and plutonium was very difficult to produce at the time. As far as I know we did not have enough material for a fourth bomb. We used one for a test in Nevada(?) and the other two in Japan. I have seen a documentary that claimed that the military scientists in Japan knew about the feasibility of a nuclear weapon and after the first bomb in Hiroshima, some said the US could not possibly have enough material for another one. That is why they did not surrender right after the first bomb.
Actually, those scientists were correct, sort of. We ran out of uranium, but fortunately we had enough plutonium for the bomb used in Nagasaki.
December 2, 2011, 4:08 pmMDT says:
HarryEagar,
Eisenhower was of a similar opinion. He declined to spend the lives it would have taken to conquer Berlin. The Red Army spent 100,000 to do it.
Well, of course they did; but they didn’t have much choice, did they? We hadn’t been treacherously invaded by a country we’d recently signed a pact with. I doubt anything less than that deceit, and the unthinkable slaughter that followed (well, in the Soviet context, not unthinkable at all — the Ukrainian famine and the Great Terror, together, likely killed more Soviet citizens even than the war did) would’ve caused the Soviets to attack Berlin.
December 2, 2011, 4:10 pmMDT says:
Mark Buehner,
I guess we’re not actually disagreeing that much-this conversation started when someone stated grabbing the Russian oil fields was paramount because the North African campaign wasn’t panning out. My point was that if that was the case it was the tail wagging the dog, and that whatever pretext or post-text the Germans claimed for invading the USSR, they were going to invade the USSR. Destroying the Bolsheviks was always a core tenet of Naziism.
If you know this, why did the Soviets not? I mean, maybe I’ve read the wrong histories, but I’ve always gathered that the German invasion was an utter surprise to the Soviets. Who were certainly thugs, but not generally dolts.
December 2, 2011, 4:22 pmStephen Ryan says:
Re HarryEagar’s comments: I would take A.J.P.’s assessments with a grain of salt. He was a respectable and diligent historian, always readable and interesting, but he was reportedly a Communist fellow-traveler. That inevitably affected his judgements.
December 2, 2011, 5:11 pmJarbidge says:
That’s news to me. How did the material arrive in eastern Siberia? I would have thought that proximity to Japan would have basically shut those routes.
I’m aware of efforts to fly a few planes from Alaska, and convoys to Murmansk, but I thought the major route was via what was then Persia, now Iran.
And yes, Studebaker trucks!
December 2, 2011, 6:22 pmStephen Ryan says:
To HarryEagar: In comparing relative troop strengths of the countries involved in W.W.II, using divisions as a measurement, one should keep in mind that all divisions were not of the same strength. The German division, for example, was about as big as an American regiment, so one cannot make comparisons using divisions as an indication of troop numbers.
December 2, 2011, 6:26 pmJeremy Wheeler says:
Well! That’s embarrassing… I’ve tracked her down on the web and it seems she has written 300 books, or so: how very worrying indeed. I notice, by the way, that someone has written a review of the book on Amazon, dated 30 Nov 2011, pointing out the exact inaccuracy you mentioned. Your blog post has clearly led to some direct feedback for the author
December 2, 2011, 6:35 pmmariner says:
Taqqiya?
December 2, 2011, 7:33 pmJarbidge says:
A German division also shrank due to casualties when in combat. It might shrink to a fraction of full strength before being pulled out for a rest and reconstitution period. U.S. practice, in contrast, was to attempt to feed in individual replacements to maintain nominal strength.
December 2, 2011, 7:38 pmHarry Eagar says:
What would we have dropped it on? The cities were already in ruins.
Besides, the red army was defeating the Nazis the old-fashioned way
December 2, 2011, 10:08 pmStephen Ryan says:
To Jarbridge: This is nonsense. All divisions of any country shrank in combat. German divisions were,at full strength, approximately equal in numbers to an American regiment. That’s the way they were set up. That was their organization.
December 2, 2011, 10:17 pmAmerican divisions in W.W.II usually received replacements while in a rest area, after having been pulled out of the line. I was in the infantry in W.W.II, wounded in Italy. We never got replacements in combat. Maybe some outfits did, sometime, but not usually.
Maybe Jarbridge is thinking of W.W.I. By l917 British, French and German divisions were deliberately reduced in size to what had been regimental strength. When the Americans got to France their divisions were about three times the size of British, French and German divisions. They did stay in combat longer because they had the numbers initially to carry on even with heavy casualties. The American divisions in W.W.I were intended to be large because the Americans had a paucity of experienced and qualified senior officers, so the qualified officers had a larger command, in numbers. Also, it made logistics easier for the inexperienced American armies in France, giving the supply system less of a problem.
But in W.W.II the Germans as a matter of organization had their divisions smaller than the Americans, so that if you want to know how many troops were involved relative to the other country you have to divide American divisions by three to get a true picture.
In W.W.I the American division was as big as a British or French army corps. When the French reported that an American division and a French division had undertaken an operation they gave the impression that the participation was equal. Same in the north, with the British army. There was one American division with the British but it was as big as a British army corps.
Harry Eagar says:
No doubt that was the report, but it is false. As he wrote, he wrote off the commies for failure to perform in the General Strike.
The material traveled in russian ships, and the Japanese were careful to leave them alone.
More like 2 regiments, but since I compared German divisions to German divisions, your statement is beside the point.
Likewise with jarbridge’s comment.
The Red Army outfought the Germans and the Western allies allowed an orderly retreat.
December 2, 2011, 10:25 pmRich Rostrom says:
EV: it would be useful if you gave further details on this book, so it can be avoided, or removed where it has seeped in.
Is it this book?
All about world history
Author: Fiona Macdonald; Linda Sonntag
Publisher: Bath : Parragon, 2000, ©1999.
ISBN 9780752536002
Incidentally, there are three howlers in the quoted sentence.
Or perhaps only 2 1/2. The reference to Russia is wrong, since it was the USSR which took a part in events, and Russia was only part of the USSR. It is as wrong to say “Russia” for the USSR as it is to say “England” for the United Kingdom. But it is a common error, and not too horrific.
OTOH, it is extremely ignorant to say that Hitler “invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia”; Czechoslovakia had surrendered to German threats several months before the attack on Poland, and the Allies did not assist Czechoslovakia in fighting back. Exiled Czechoslovakians joined the Allied forces, but the Allies did not recognize a Czechoslovakian government in exile until 1941.
A lot of additional ignorance on display in the comments.
Jarbidge: about half of all Lend-Lease material shipped to the USSR went by sea via Vladivostok in Soviet-flagged ships.
MDT says: I mean, maybe I’ve read the wrong histories, but I’ve always gathered that the German invasion was an utter surprise to the Soviets. Who were certainly thugs, but not generally dolts.
Stalin (the only Soviet who mattered) expected a German attack, eventually. But he was firmly convinced that Germany and Hitler were too busy in 1941 in to attack the USSR. He also decided that Britain was trying to entangle the USSR in its ongoing war with Germany. Therefore all reports of German plans to attack in 1941 were British fabrications, and Soviet forces on the border with Germany must adopt a strictly passive attitude lest British trickery provoke fighting.
Harry Eagar says: The Red Army outfought the Germans and the Western allies allowed an orderly retreat.
In June 1944, there were 157 German divisions on the eastern front, and 84 German divisions in western Europe and Italy. At the end of the Normandy, central Italy, and Belarus campaigns ((OVERLORD, DIADEM, and BAGRATION), the Germans had lost 570,000 men in France and 700,000 in Belarus. (DIADEM was less successful, because US General Mark Clark sent troops to occupy Rome instead of cutting German lines of retreat, but German losses were still about 50,000 men.) So the “Western Allies” did just about as much damage as the “Red Army” (actually renamed the Soviet Army in 1943.
The surviving Germans escaped from Normandy through the Falaise Gap, but many were killed by airstrikes and artillery. Eisenhower wrote later that the area was choked with the dead bodies of men and animals, and that one could walk for hundreds of yards on decaying flesh. Not an “orsferly retreat.”
December 3, 2011, 2:08 amathEIst says:
December 3, 2011, 11:04 pmragebot says:
I am not sure Taqiyya fits as Hitler/Nazis do not seem to be hiding their religion.
This is the second response to my question, which was perhaps not as well worded as it should have been.
Everyone seems to agree the Nazi/Stalin non aggression pact bought time for one or both countries to engage aggression against others; even if Germany and the USSR would eventually wind up fighting each other.
It would seem to make sense to me for Hitler to wait till the fighting in Western Europe, North Africa, and SE Asia ended before taking on Stalin. Not only would Hitler have more troops and the oil from the Middle East to use against Stalin but would also have the advantage of Japan opening a second front for Stalin to deal with.
It is all to easy to say Hitler wanted to fight Stalin. The facts are Hitler was already had his hands full fighting the Allies and it really did not make sense to start another fight with someone who was at least an ally in name.
December 4, 2011, 1:09 pmJarbidge says:
Fascinating, thanks. Truly, the Japanese were not good allies for Germany.
I wasn’t born for years after WWII; thanks for your service.
On the line replacements are commonly mentioned in biographies of WWII vets. They are also discussed here and here.
December 4, 2011, 2:47 pmHarryEagar says:
Falaise was a small operation compared to what went on in the East. About 10,000 Germans were killed.
So,yes, it was an orderly retreat. Just about all the German formations evacuated intact and what was left of each was standing on the Rhine as the winter of 1944-45 began.
Of the 45 divisions of Army Group Center, 30 vanished.
December 4, 2011, 8:01 pmTom S says:
HarryEagar:
Look at where Falaise is in France, and where the German forces ended up by Winter 1944-45. Those German forces not trapped in the pocket–or in the various fortified ports–ran out of France so fast that even Patton couldn’t catch up to them. An estimated 50% of those caught in the Falaise pocket were killed or captured. Those who escaped did so without their heavy equipment. Falaise does not compare with Bagration in temrs of scale and scope, but the German retreat was not orderly, nor were their losses insignificant.
December 5, 2011, 11:12 amStephen Ryan says:
December 5, 2011, 10:37 pmStephen Ryan says:
Maybe we are talking about two different things. My view of replacements coming in was a worms eye view. Looked at from the high command point of view, replacements were made during combat. A division in the line was, to its commanding general, in combat. So two regiments were in contact with the enemy and one was in reserve. The reserve regiment had just been relieved and was being rested and getting replacements for its losses. So the guys in combat were not encumbered by new arrivals and the reserve regiment could assimilate its replacements at its relative leisure. So we are both correct, if that theory is correct. I could be wrong; there’s always a first time.
December 5, 2011, 10:47 pmJarbidge says:
FWIW, I’ve read autobiographies where replacements joined their units today and were on patrol tonight; the refrain of replacements getting killed before anyone learned their name seems rather common, in fact. But of course I’m sure practices varied with time and place (and I’ve certainly heard or replacements joining units when the unit was out of combat; my point was that, IIUC, the Germans would never add replacements w/o an extended workup period, and we would).
My father, who you might have run into so-to-speak at Anzio or Salerno was an avid reader of WWII histories; I remember reading his copies of Shirer and Churchill’s memoirs in Jr. High. I once asked why, and he replied that he knew less about the war than people who stayed home, because he wasn’t getting the paper – all he knew was what was right in front of him.
I was reading the Falaise chapter in ‘Command Decisions’ last night. It defends the decision to not close the gap (basically, the flank of the southern pincer might not have been able to stop a determined breakout, the Germans suffered huge casualties in running the extended air and artillery gauntlet that they might not have in a direct breakout, and the troops that didn’t have to reinforce that flank raced across the Seine which forced the Germans who escaped the pocket to keep hightailing).
Anyway, it completely agrees with your facts – huge losses, almost all equipment lost, and so on – and also describes the retreat as ‘orderly’. So it may depend on how you define ‘orderly’.
December 6, 2011, 1:48 pm