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A Ultimately the US contribution was in drastically shortening the war, but Germany's defeat was pretty much guaranteed by the time we started to have an impact.
It is interesting in retrospect how cavalier the Allies were following the Normandy breakout. The optimism behind Montgomery's plan for Market Garden was based on the belief that a quick strike to the German center would end the war, or the optimism that lured the Allies to fail to comprehend the Ardennes Offensive can only be attributed to the Western Allies realization that the Soviets had already broken the back of the Germans before the Normandy invasion.
I'm just trying to understand how extensive Italian use of colonial forces is somehow different from Britain using colonial and Commonwealth forces.
*see response to Statute of Westminster.
Overwhelming? I said it in the other thread. 25% of the British tank force at Second El Alamein was composed of Shermans. Even without the Shermans the British still outnumbered the Germans and Italians.
This is false. The British had already pushed into Libya and General O'Connor was gunning for Benghazi when Wavell ordered the 4th Indian Division to be redployed to the Sudan to support operations in East Africa. The replacement for the 4th Indian was the 6th Australian. That unit showed up having just completed training, lacked their armored regiment and only had one artillery regiment equipped with the new 25pdr's. The Australians were a worse force than the Indians who had been deployed to another theater halfway through Compass. The renewed offensive ripped through the Italian 10th Army at Bardia, Tobruk, Derna, Beda Fromm and the "oasis'. The only reason the British stopped was that their units were ordered to Greece...
The statute automatically applied to Canada, the Irish Free State and South Africa. Australia, New Zealand and Newfoundland needed to vote on whether or not to adopt it.
Australia didn't vote on the act until 1942 and then backdated it to 1939 to legally clarify things done during the war to that point. When Britain declared war, Australia automatically went to war as they were still a Dominion of the British Empire, not a sovereign state. This is the statement from the Australian Pm Menzies when war was declared...
It was the same case for New Zealand who didn't adopt the Statute of Westminster until 1947. Newfoundland never adopted it and eventually became part of Canada.
Even then there was some debate over the status of Canada and South Africa. Both nations voted almost immediately to join the war, but part of the debate was over whether or not they were already automatically at war. The Commonwealth and Dominion laws/treaties at the time required each nation or dominion to support the others in case of war. Further, war had been declared in the name of the king who was the king of all the Commonwealth nations. In the case of South Africa, their consitution explicitly called for them to support Britain in case of war.
No one at the time would have thought taking on Britain wouldn't also mean taking on the Commonwealth and Dominions. Trust me, Mussolini and Hitler weren't exactly surprised when Australia, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, etc. entered the war. Anyway, since it was the Australian and New Zealand forces that bothered you so much, they weren't really "indpendent nations" then and were still controlled by Britain at least in matters of going to war.
I've said everything necessary to say on that subject (in this thread and others). You have absolutaly no idea what you are talking about when it comes to tanks and armored warfare.
Feel free to put up a poll and ask people which one of us knows what the hell they are talking about.
Most of the tanks at El Alimein were Shermans, that's how they won.
This is just ridiculous, how could the Indian forces be better then the Australian, besides experience to that degree I suppose.
A Dominion, at least in this scenario, is pretty much half-colony half-ally, & do you know what the Commonwealth of Nations is? "Association of sovereign states consisting of the United Kingdom and a number of its former dependencies; formerly constituted, with several other British-controlled territories, the British Empire" Commonwealth of nations - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary An alliance of multiple nations that used to be under British control. Of course it was obvious that members of an alliance that close would join together to everyone.
Most of the tanks at El Alimein were Shermans, that's how they won.
Most of the tanks? There were 252 Shermans at the Second Battle of El Alamein out of an estimated 1,000 Allied tanks engaged.
Quote:
This is just ridiculous, how could the Indian forces be better then the Australian, besides experience to that degree I suppose.
Well you got the ridiculous part right. The British Indian Army had a long an distinguished battle record from Afghanistan through to the first WWI. The fought alongside the ANZAC forces at Gallipoli and distinguished themselves in every campaign. Whether they were better than the Australians others can argue, either way they were superior to the Germans and Italians they were sent to fight.
In no way were the Indian troops better then the German or Italian ones.
You seem to make no allowance for the fact that how "good" the troops of a given nation were did not remain constant over time. Instead you have a rigid ideology about Italian troops which is similar to religious belief. That means that rational arguments just don't mean anything to you.
Let me give an example of how the fighting effectiveness of troops can vary over time, thus making a mockery of generalized comments about American, or Italian, or British, or Japanese, or German, or any other nationality's troops.
In North Africa, American forces were green and initially gave a rather poor account of themselves. The German superiority at the Kasserine Pass is well known. But with a combination of combat experience and weeding out ineffective commanders, the American forces gradually improved in effectiveness.
Another example: During the opening phases of World War II in Europe, the Germans are generally credited with having the best-trained and best-led (and hence most effective) ground forces in the world at that time. Yet fast-forward a few years and they had some units (the Volksturm) made up of mostly old men and young boys. So which "German troops" do we want to talk about?
Nationalistic jingoism is not an adequate substitute for objective and rational scrutiny and analysis. You ought to be embarrassed by your jingoism. I am embarrassed by the common conception (held by so many Americans both in and out of uniform in the beginnings of the Pacific War) that the Japanese were not good pilots because they were all near-sighted. It was BS of course. Initially, their superbly trained pilots were better than ours (on average). This changed of course, as time went by. By mid-1944, most of the good Japanese pilots had been killed and they were unable to train adequate replacements of the same quality. At the same time Americans, with their adaptability, were training excellent pilots based in large part on lessons learned.
So, were Japanese pilots or American pilots "better"? It all depends, so we have to qualify our answer. You are not showing much ability for either nuanced interpretation of history or for sophistication in the understanding of complex and ever-changing situations. For you, Italians are superior, period. Then it becomes a matter of finding some extenuating circumstances to use as excuses: Mussolini didn't train the army properly, the Italians didn't have the right kind of tanks, and on and on through your many sad and tiring posts. Isn't it time to grow up?
Your treating of me like I'm something less or that I'm acting like it is not going to get anything anywhere. I am putting valid points to contradict what the opposing historian is saying & your acting like I have a one-track mind, religiously believe in racial superiority, that I don't take anything into consideration & that I'm acting childish. Just because my side of the argument is different from most people's norms doesn't mean it's wrong & I'm being a pathetic little moron. Meanwhile, most people on this site know less then a Mod Civ class, & have a blatant disregard for even the most obvious historical facts, most of which have nothing to do with my revisionism. I'm not stupid, I know Italy didn't do very well in WWII, but people(mostly the British) treat the situation like they were the worst army ever, of all time. It's the twenty -first century, times have changed, new things are being discovered & lame stereotypes are being stomped on. It's time people stop believing the BS they're comfortable with, their own little comfort zone, the web of lies, & start seeing history how it really is. Mussolini was the reason why they lost, everything went into a chain-reaction & he's where it all started. The US was an economic superpower that had no way of losing, regardless of it's barely capable soldiers. What made them capable was Abe Lincoln letting in thousands of Italian immigrants, the reason being is that he practically became Nostradamus & knew they'd get into war with Italy. Beat them with the power of their own people, I'm pretty sure that was o morale booster for the American soldier, whose main quarrel was the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. The British paid them back with their own coin by getting through Tunisia & meeting up with them. A minor turn around with the bail-out situation, along with the fact that the US never could have done it alone. The Soviet Union won on shear overwhelming numbers, but I'm pretty sure that's become the norm nowadays. Germany's military was beaten by Britain barely, & Italy. The Japanese made crippling blows against the Chinese, got over cocky & attacked multiple enemies at once, & so did Hitler. The British were being bailed out every chance they got against the Italians & occasionally got lucky. The Axis possessed a lot of skill & lost to a force of multiple countries, economic supremacy & an army ten times the size of the opposer. This is just how it is, people need to continue spreading this knowledge & other things like it. It's time to give history it's freedom back.
It's the twenty -first century, times have changed, new things are being discovered & lame stereotypes are being stomped on. It's time people stop believing the BS they're comfortable with, their own little comfort zone, the web of lies, & start seeing history how it really is. Mussolini was the reason why they lost, everything went into a chain-reaction & he's where it all started. The US was an economic superpower that had no way of losing, regardless of it's barely capable soldiers. What made them capable was Abe Lincoln letting in thousands of Italian immigrants, the reason being is that he practically became Nostradamus & knew they'd get into war with Italy. Beat them with the power of their own people, I'm pretty sure that was o morale booster for the American soldier, whose main quarrel was the people who bombed Pearl Harbor.
In the same post in which you express your wish to be taken seriously, you state that the U.S. soldiers in World War II could fight only because Abe Lincoln let thousands of Italian immigrants into the country. Your reasoning is that Italians (and their descendants) make good soldiers but nobody else does.
You really have no clue how that sounds, how preposterous and ridiculous it is?
In the same post in which you express your wish to be taken seriously, you state that the U.S. soldiers in World War II could fight only because Abe Lincoln let thousands of Italian immigrants into the country. Your reasoning is that Italians (and their descendants) make good soldiers but nobody else does.
You really have no clue how that sounds, how preposterous and ridiculous it is?
Not to mention that significant Italian immigration did begin until the end of the 19th Century.
Italian Commnado, if you continue this sad path of ignoring facts in favor of blind nationalism, I will be forced to assume you're here to troll us. I will not let you drag this forum down to your level where you ignore uncomfortable facts and blow things out of proportions to prove your nationalistic or other way biased point. I warned you in a direct message, you ignored it and continue to post what I can only describe as ravings of a mad man.
Please stop. Calm down, read a book. Don't base your knowledge on popculture "science" of discovery channel and history channel, it will only get you mocked among those that have some real knowledge on the topic.
Yac.
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This is just ridiculous, how could the Indian forces be better then the Australian, besides experience to that degree I suppose. 
Complexity versus simplicity
