Was the Blitz a mistake?

[phantomrider]

Duh, they should have done a Custom game and deleted the Barbarossa army and use IC days on a modern fleet and transports.

Lets face it, Germany was not going to touch British soil in the near future regardless of what they did post fall of France.

One might argue that maybe capturing the whole BEF might have caused a coup/collapse like in France,but I doubt it. The British Navy would have suicided to prevent a German landing if necessary.

You actually do not have to do a "custom game" to switch as Germany to a Med strategy in summer 1940. Keep a significant portion of your army in France to threaten an invasion along with a portion of the Luftwaffe. This ties down most of the regenerating British Army (who was badly treated in the spring 1940 in the low countries, France and the cross channel retreat) and the RAF. Use another portion of your army to over run Jugoslavia and Greece (6 months earlier than what happened in reality) with the Italians who are in the war. Send the deutsche afrika corps (plus a couple of divisions more) 6 months to early to north africa to pre-empt the Brits there and help the Italians go to Egypt and points east. Also use the Luftwaffe (part of it) plus the airborne troops to take Malta. In 1940, the Brits fighting alone did not have the air or the land units to effectively counter these efforts and the number of divisions of army plus the Luftwaffe requirements were small compared to the size of the forces needed because the Brits were still weak. While the Luftwaffe wasn't designed for controlling the sea and hadn't invested in the right weapons (air launched torpedoes and armor piercing bombs) and tactics it did well enough around Crete to drive off the RN in defeat and the Luftwaffe would/could have had numeric and technical superiority over the RAF in the Med for quite awhile. So these are the resources that would not go to Barbarossa (which wouldn't happen in 1941) with an indirect approach to destroying the British Empire. Whether giving Stalin another year to prepare would have made Barbarossa even a worse decision for the Germans is another question for another forum topic.

 

[Mabs]

thing about the blitz, BoBritain, etc is you cannot win the attrition war on an offensive

100% of german planes shot down were 100% write offs, crews died or were captured
?% of RAF pilots were given a cup of tea and a new plane

 

[mursolini]

I disagree with this comment. In 1940 they were winning the war and they had not even attempted to control the Med (or invade Jugoslavia/Greece). My guess is that deploying forces in the Med in 1940 after the fall of France would have allowed Italy to take (Egypt) Suez, Palastine, Syria, Iraq, Malta and if necessary Algeria and Tunesia as well as Greece, Crete etc. and basically exclude the UK from the Med and middle east by the end of 1941. By summer of 1940 Great Britain was fighting alone and no one was really interested in joining them against the Germans. Obviously, that is not the path the Germans took and switching to the East (Soviets) overcame the Soviets reluctance to fight (since they had no choice) and suddenly Britain was not alone (or alone with a little bit of US aid and encouragement).

The switch of the Luftwaffe's efforts from the airfields and channel facitites which were designed to get air superiority over the channel to London was either poor strategy or an admission that Sea Lion would not happen. With air superiority over the channel an invasion of England might be possible and successful. It also was a fight that the Luftwaffe might have been able to win (ranges and time on target times for their planes were much more favorable given the ranges of their aircraft and location of their bases in France than was London). "Strategic bombing of cities either to destroy the moral of the population or to destroy their industrial production turned out to be a lot more difficult to do in practice than it appeared in the textbooks and manuals" And again the Luftwaffe really didn't have the weapons (bombers, bombs, guidance etc) that the allies had later in the war and it still was quite difficult to destroy production and as mentioned above with the probable exception of the atomic weapons (which in some ways were less destructive of production capacity and other measures than some of the more conventional raids) which may have significantly contributed to Japan's decision to surrender rather than fighting to the end (see Okinawa) ineffective in convincing the recipients of the raids to quit.

I agree with you.
Germany was not losing the war at that time. On the contrary, everything was in their favour.

They should have not declared war on the USSR before having defeated Britain at all costs. I mean, as far as I know, German military doctrine since the dawn of time said that the country should avoid a two front war. And that's what they did, twice in twenty years.

If all the resources used in Barbarossa had been used against Britain, the Blitz would have made maybe more sense, even if it were a failure.
A defeated but not humiliated Britain, a US that cannot be too unhappy about Communism being fought, a France, Baltic countries, Ukraine whose population is not exploited but used against Russia, a middle-east secure... those should have been the main goals before attacking the USSR and the London Blitz has to be considered with those goals in mind. On its own, or the way it happened in real life, seems a bit... pointless.

Germans did move much of their air force to med, and it didn`t decide anything. As long as GB was ahead on plane production and oil, it would have air superiority.

How were they supposed to defeat GB, if they lost air superiority, couldn`t maintain replacements in any case, due to lack of oil, and couldn`t invade midde east, and even if they could manage to get their troops it, they didn`t have tankers to bring oil back anyway!

The reason to invade USSR, ultimately was lack of resouces to deal with GB. Also, USA wasn`t just going to sit there and observe GB being destroyed. It did enter WW1, and it was already in process of building navy and air force in 1938! in 1940 they already supplied GB, and in 1941, they already engaged German subs, several month before pearl harbor.

Depending on Germany's terms, and who is in power in Britain, losing the entire BEF might have brought Britain to the table. (Keep in mind Churchill is in power on 10 May, and the BEF evacuates on 24 May. Even small changes in the political landscape might move these dates or change who is offered the post of PM.)

But the terms Germany has to offer need to fall within these parameters:

Germany cannot add any significant ports or put troops/fortifications on the Channel. If Germany grabs more ports of fortifies the Channel, it challenges British naval supremacy. This would be completely unacceptable for any major party in Britain in 1940. (See this part of the wiki regarding AGNA and how the Admiralty viewed Germany's plans.)

France has to be left independent and relatively intact. (They'd accept A-L going to Germany, I suppose.) A puppet France would not be acceptable to Britain or its government.

Belgium and the Netherlands need to be independent and intact.

Switzerland's neutrality needs to be maintained.

Denmark and Norway need to be independent and intact.

If Germany won't agree to these terms, there is no offer of peace the British should accept as long as the RN is in the fight. Each of these terms ensure that Britain can maintain a superior naval position to any European power or combination of powers (short of France + Spain + Italy + Germany + Soviets). If she accepts a peace offer that does not have these terms, she may be eclipsed in naval power in the future. In such a case, she will be open to invasion later.

Alsass-Loraine, Danzig coridor, and 1-2 former colonies, + tiny consession to Italy, could probably be the only reasonable term Germany could offer.

 

[Secret Master]

Alsass-Loraine, Danzig coridor, and 1-2 former colonies, + tiny consession to Italy, could probably be the only reasonable term Germany could offer.

Would Hitler even ask for former overseas colonies in 1940? I can't recall if that was something he would even consider.

 

[mursolini]

Would Hitler even ask for former overseas colonies in 1940? I can't recall if that was something he would even consider.

1-2 obscure islands or ports could be great propaganda victory

 

[Secret Master]

1-2 obscure islands or ports could be great propaganda victory

Fair enough. It's a symbolic reversal of Versailles, isn't it?

I suppose all that reading I've done about lebensraum and Nazi foreign policy sort of obscures things like this.

 

[Amur_Tiger]

Use them elsewhere, mostly in North Africa (meaning a better navy to protect the convoys there) and take Malta and Gibraltar (well, or Suez if you can) for a start.

and then you've fallen for the trap. Engaging the UK in the Med in what ultimately has to be a partially naval campaign means counting on the Italians fighting the best arm of the British Forces, it plays right into the hands of the UK's strengths. This doesn't mean that victory is impossible but it's pretty clearly challenging. Malta in particular is a bit of a red herring as people see it as an alternative to invading Crete. Trying the same on Malta would have been a disaster, the forces there were much more organized ( not simply dropped off after having been active in other areas and given very little time to sort things out before the Germans come as they were in Crete ) there was much more ability to fight against aircraft there ( both fighters and AA guns ) and the smaller size of Malta would have made the initial landing of paratroopers all the more hazardous.

One might argue that maybe capturing the whole BEF might have caused a coup/collapse like in France,but I doubt it. The British Navy would have suicided to prevent a German landing if necessary.

Really it's not even going to be a sacrifice of huge chunks of the Royal Navy, just sending in the R class battleships would demolish any invasion fleet and from a strategic standpoint those ships aren't that much of a loss, sending in newer or better equipped ships may just fend off the Luftwaffe just as they did in the Mediterranean. The loss of RN ships around Crete was almost entirely after these ships had run out of AA ammo and had to go several trips to pick up soldiers without re-stocking.

However you cut it both the Blitz and the focus of military power on the UK during this period was a waste, it cost pilots and resources the Germans couldn't afford without ever really opening a window to success. All the armed services could have used the time to bring forces up to strength, train further and introduce new types of equipment better suited for the next task, rushing into engaging the UK just wasn't a good idea. If you want to go after the UK as Germany then pushing for effective torpedo bombers and aerial torpedoes to give the air force a better chance of harming the navy, this was a basic requirement for either Sea Lion or a thorough engagement in the Med something which seems to have only arrived in serious numbers in 1941.

 

[adam_grif]

The decision to attack London was not a "bad decision" from the perspective of the Germans because it had a logical motive - convincing the British to surrender. It did not work, so it was a mistake in retrospect, but the Germans could not have known that at the time. In their experience bombing cities up to that point had been reasonably effective as a terror tactic.

The second question is would the LW have done any better had they kept pounding the RAF? The answer to that is not really. A bit better than historic, but not enough to win. In a worst case scenario, the RAF's plan was to withdraw a bit further inland out of the range of German escort fighters then continue to interdict the LW. If the LW bombers follow them inland to keep trying to knock their airstrips out, they will do so without fighter escort and get butchered. If they don't try to hit the RAF bases, then it's business as usual, and the RAF continues to suffer a lower rate of attrition than the LW does, both in machines and pilots, and they go on to win the BoB when the Germans inevitably call off the attack as futile at some point near the end of the year or start of the following one.

 

[mursolini]

thing about the blitz, BoBritain, etc is you cannot win the attrition war on an offensive

100% of german planes shot down were 100% write offs, crews died or were captured
?% of RAF pilots were given a cup of tea and a new plane

You can only win war of attrition on offence, since if both sides are defending, no attrition happens. Yes, you take more loses, so you need to have notably higher reinforcements. GB could hold indefinitely against German air force, as Germany simply couldn`t out-build and out-crew GB to the needed margin. With USA`s massive resources, however, war of attrition was totally winable in skies over Germany, which they eventually managed to do by combination of bombings of industry, bombing air-fields and escorting bombers, to force German fighters into rather unfavourable dogfights.

 

[BBBD316]

Well personally I would have sought control of the French skies and close to the coast, make sure that the UK can not affect the continent, but any build up is well a build up and not replacing fighters lost over Britain.

Continue the diplomatic methods used to bring in the Balkan states, continue to hold talks and trade with USSR, threaten Turkey into the Axis. New Army Group through Turkey into the Middle East and crush the best the Commonwealth has at the Canal. This would mean North Africa and most of the Med is safe and allow you to threaten India.

This was the only way to force the UK to surrender, make it lose its colonies and dominions on at a time.

Even this is a stretch, but I think it works better than just throwing planes away.

 

[misterbean]

Would Hitler even ask for former overseas colonies in 1940? I can't recall if that was something he would even consider.

Interesting discussion. Throughout the war, Hitler has always maintained that he was not interested in colonies as we understand them. In "Mein Kampf", he said that same thing. As long as Germany could get access to the resources they need, they don't need colonies. Since he did exactly what he set out to do in the book, I believe that colonies were not on his agenda.

As for the BoB, if Germany had better understood the importance of the radar net, and had focused their efforts better, things might have gone differently. There were a couple of cases where the masts were so severely damaged that they were out of action for a couple of days. During those days, in the area covered by these radars, they had better success. Now let's say that they manage to knock out most of the radar net in the south-east (let's say the in-game province of Dover). All of a sudden, Group 11, Britain's main fighting force in the battle, is fighting half blind. There is no telling how much damage Germany could have done to the Group's infrastructure during those couple of days.
Second problem was that both sides overestimated the enemy's losses. If the Luftwaffe had maintained their military focus on airbases and such for a week more, they would have forced a major reorganisation on Fighter Command.
Would that have been enough to force Britain to the table? No. It would have meant the even earlier end of Dowding. It would have meant that Leigh-Mallory's Big Wings might have been tried from the Midlands. But Britain would not have given up without German boots on British soil.
I still believe that switching to city bombing was a mistake, because it allowed Fighter Command to regroup, reorganise and rearm.

 

[CV10]

In my opinion, they had to at least try, in spite of the fact that I don't think the British would have surrendered. A significant problem with this is that the Luftwaffe was better at ground attack support (air artillery) than strategic bombing. The Ju 88, He 111 and Do 17 were good planes, but not quite suited to strategic bombing. The 1st heavy German Bomber (He 177) didn't enter full service until 1942.

 

[Earl Uhtred]

There was a programme on the BBC not long ago regarding the Blitz, as far as we know the Luftwaffe and Nazi intelligence had been planning the bombardment of Britain since 1937-38. I wish I could find the source material but there are Nazi top-secret reconnaissance photos of London that are dated (they'll be in the National Archives). On the programme it was noted that during the bombardment of London, most of the marked targets (e.g. factories and drydocks) were utterly missed and most of the damage was done to residential areas.

So yes, a waste of time for the Luftwaffe and a waste of human life. However on second thought, since Operation Sea Lion failed, the Battle of Britain in 1940 seems to be like a show of force to achieve peace and not necessarily an invasion strategy (as was intended in 1938).

For target selection the Luftwaffe had beautifully marked-up Ordnance Survey maps. I've seen Tyneside's in the Newcastle archive and the level of detail is impressive. Load limits for bridges and all sorts.

 

[Praetori]

Hindsight is always 20/20 so yes.
Had they stuck to smashing the RAF and blocking RN access to the channel then the invasion could've been successful.
Then again a war with Britain was not part of the German plan to begin with and they were ill equipped to handle it.

The germans could've been better off doing nothing after the fall of France and just kept hammering peace-suggestions, hell even offered up Normandy/Brittany to the empire would have created more sympathy from the populace than dropping bombs on them. Once the bombs started falling it gave Churchill the complete backing he needed.

There's far too little credit given to the fact that the Battle of Britain caused the Luftwaffe irreplaceable losses of some 2000 aircraft and some 3500 dead or captured aircrews. That's not even counting all the damaged aircraft and wounded crewmen. All in all almost 6/10 of the Luftwaffe's operational strength was lost in a few months time for virtually nothing gained.

Said aircraft and crews would have made a huge difference elsewhere and later on. Then again, that's with the advantage of having historical hindsight glasses.

 

[Liquid Sky]

Ahhh...The Battle of Britian. Where the Germans at roughly 1:1 odds tried to defeat an enemy that built fighters faster then they were losing them, while building much less themselves.

It didn't matter what the Germans wanted to bomb. You can't out attrition an enemy that builds way more then you. Trains way more pilots then you. Knows when you are attacking and where.

The most notable thing about the battle is how the British would overestimate the strength of the Germans, while the Germans would underestimate the strength of the British.

 

[Will Steel]

Ah, another "What if this happened" "Should this not have happened" type topic. Don't we have enough of them occupying the front page already?

 

[Mabs]

Ah, another "What if this happened" "Should this not have happened" type topic. Don't we have enough of them occupying the front page already?

yea lets delete them and fill the front page with "OGM WHEN IS TEH RELEAZ DAYT !?"!£?"!?"?! " threads

 

[cacra]

Alsass-Loraine, Danzig coridor, and 1-2 former colonies, + tiny consession to Italy, could probably be the only reasonable term Germany could offer.

The moment Chamberlain leaves office and Churchill becomes PM, there is literally 0 chance of Britain conceding anything to Germany. If you read the War Cabinet papers, this will become clear. You have to remember that in 1940, Britain was still considered by many in Churchill's cabinet as the premier world power.

I have also not seen anything that would indicate Hitler would abandon his lebensraum in France - expanding the German straight was, after all, a major objective of his.

 

[Praetori]

The moment Chamberlain leaves office and Churchill becomes PM, there is literally 0 chance of Britain conceding anything to Germany. If you read the War Cabinet papers, this will become clear. You have to remember that in 1940, Britain was still considered by many in Churchill's cabinet as the premier world power.

Though Churchill wasn't all-powerful, evident by the War Cabinet Crisis. The entire thing was really hanging in the air for most of May and June 1940. Had the Germans acted differently then maybe Halifax line would've become predominant instead of Churchill's.

 

[cacra]

Though Churchill wasn't all-powerful, evident by the War Cabinet Crisis. The entire thing was really hanging in the air for most of May and June 1940. Had the Germans acted differently then maybe Halifax line would've become predominant instead of Churchill's.

"If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground"
I think the War Cabinet Crisis perfectly outlines Britain's willingness to fight to the last drop of blood. People like Halifax and DLlG were open to the possibility of a negotiated surrender, true, but few others were.