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certainly Britain was wary about giving too much ground to Stalin which may have slowed some aid. The United States was nearly bankrupt by the end of the war anyway.
That is why Churchill wanted Operation Dragoon to run north from Trieste and into the heart of Germany via Slovenia and Austria, with the allies following up behind from Italy. Roosevelt naively started to cosy up to Stalin, while old hard Churchill read Stalin properly.
Churchill was furious at the Soviets not allowing Poland their freedom and proposed Operation Unthinkable, the attack of Soviet forces by the western allies. Roosevelt would have nothing of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable
Trieste is at the bottom of the map. Allies forces would have went north through Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany and into Poland.
Montgomery wanted a 40 division thrust through Holland and swing east through the North German plains right into Poland. Eisenhower wanted the broad front from Switzerland to the North Sea, being far too thin at any point to break through successfully, which was far too slow. Montgomery was right.
That was the idea. Get as far east as possible. Operation Dragoon was launched on August the 15th, about the time Soviet troops entered Poland as Operation Bagration was running out of steam.
If Dragoon was launched at Trieste in July, instead of the South of France, the allied troops working their way up Italy would have joined them through the gap via Vienna, meaning the operation had reserves behind them. The Yugoslavs and maybe the Bulgarians would have joined the in - Bulgaria moved to the allied side in Sept 1944. British forces ended up in Austria as the map shows - the brown boxes.
The British wanted to go under Germany via Trieste and across the top via the North German plains, meeting up as far east as possible. It was the best idea at the time many thought, and also in hindsight as we all saw the result.
The United States was nearly bankrupt by the end of the war anyway.
The USA made a profit on WW2. From having soup lines pre war they had full employment during the war. Large funds coming in from Britain and France a year before and during the first year of the war got idle US industry moving. It was only 80% active in 1941. If France and Britain had rearmed earlier they would have had little need to use US industry, then would have the US industry been prepared for war? No. Churchill looked at British empire and US industry and resources as all one, as all was available to him to achieve his WW2 objective.
The post war rebuild, again kept US industry fully active and full employment. The US government printed a lot of dollars post war and near gave them to corporations to buy up near destroyed European and Japanese industries. Another reason the US prospered post war and sustained the momentum of WW2 production.
The United States was nearly bankrupt by the end of the war anyway.
The British were nearly bankrupt. They used most of their gold reserves to pay the United States for everything we sold them early in the war.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John-UK
That was the idea. Get as far east as possible. Operation Dragoon was launched on August the 15th, about the time Soviet troops entered Poland as Operation Bagration was running out of steam.
If Dragoon was launched at Trieste in July, instead of the South of France, the allied troops working their way up Italy would have joined them through the gap via Vienna, meaning the operation had reserves behind them. The Yugoslavs and maybe the Bulgarians would have joined the in - Bulgaria moved to the allied side in Sept 1944. British forces ended up in Austria as the map shows - the brown boxes.
The British wanted to go under Germany via Trieste and across the top via the North German plains, meeting up as far east as possible. It was the best idea at the time many thought, and also in hindsight as we all saw the result.
Was the decision for the allied invasion of Southern France due to de Gaulle's insistence on using French troops to liberate that part of the country?
de Gaulle naturally did want French troops on French soil. But Poles fought in all countries under the British Army to pursue the war where it had to be. de Gaulle was pain in the rear to the US high command who had the French army in the US 7th army group. He was objecting to strategy and tactics. The US high command should have gone with Churchill, and I am sure de Gaulle had some influence. It was difficult to slot out a US army in France for Trieste and slot in a French one. The Germans would have counter-attacked and pushed the remaining US armies back in the void of the change-over.
"This meant that the Rhine plain east of the river was open to attack, provided the river could be crossed and the West Wall breached — and after the Colmar pocket on the west bank was cleared. This fact was also obvious to Adolf Hitler, who ordered that the Colmar pocket must be held at all costs. On 24 November, while on his way to a conference with Devers, Eisenhower stopped at Patton’s HQ. Eisenhower’s plan was that Devers should devote both his armies to the reduction of the Colmar pocket but during this meeting Patton convinced the Supreme Commander that the French Army alone could reduce the Colmar pocket. Therefore, Patton suggested, the two corps of Patch’s Seventh Army should be sent into Lorraine and there help the Third Army clear their front to the Rhine by breaching the West Wall. When consulted on this proposal, Devers agreed that the French could indeed clear the pocket, as the Nineteenth Army had ‘ceased to exist as a tactical force’. Eisenhower therefore abandoned the first plan and let the Seventh Army turn into Lorraine.
This change of mind, so typical of General Eisenhower, had the most unfortunate effect. The Germans in the Colmar pocket now faced an attack from only one direction — the south — and were able to beat the French back with loss and retain their useful bridgehead west of the Rhine. The full effect of this decision was not apparent at the time, but would reveal itself during the Ardennes battles in mid-December and cause a major row between Eisenhower and the prickly French leader, Charles de Gaulle.
By the end of November it was becoming clear to all that the latest offensive, the one planned at the end of October, had completely stalled."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower studied the map and told Devers that, if necessary, he could pull out of the Vosges for a while and even abandon the city of Strasbourg — which the French First Army had recently taken — to the enemy. This suggestion, if implemented, meant handing back some recently liberated French civilians to the Germans, who tended to take a harsh revenge on any of their former subjects who had recently been cheering on the Allies. Eisenhower’s order to Devers therefore provoked a serious breach with de Gaulle, who ordered the French First Army to disobey any such order — to which Eisenhower replied that until the French Army obeyed his orders they would not receive a mouthful of food, a gallon of fuel or a round of ammunition — hardly a happy situation for the Allies at this time. This dispute was only resolved when de Gaulle gave way: but the French Army was directed to hang on to Strasbourg."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
In hindsight it would have been better if French troops were marching into Austria, then matters would not have been so heated. Going up via Trieste would have released the allied armies in Italy. who would have been following along with it. German troops in Northern Italy would have had allied armies to their north and south and not lasted any length of time fighting on two fronts. Then German troops from other fronts would have been released to fight these northern moving armies, enabling breakthroughs on those fronts.
The US 7th Army Group was wasted in Eisenhower's broad front strategy. They were all spread too thin facing the obstacles of the Rhine and the Siegfried line.
Folks, let's not forget the precarious fuel situation Germany was in mid 1944. The Luftwaffe needed to retire the whole bomber arm that summer for lack of fuel (leading to conversion of the ground staff to infantry "Luftwaffen-Felddivision"). Even if Germany hadn't lost much territory in the east due to Bagration, it is doubtful they would have been able to hold on to it as conquered territory requires fuel, which they didn't have. Even with most transports on coal-based railroads, you have to run trucks etc. to hold/defend the territory. This way the retreat was a blessing actually. Except they lost access to the Romanian oil, making the situation even more desperate. Cue the Battle of the Bulge where the German offensive rested on the sole premise of capturing Allied fuel.
So no matter where the invasion, Germany could not provide enough fuel for motorized forces to defend or repel. The best option was a static front not requiring much movement or transport and being able to use railroads as much as possible (good luck with them being destroyed by allied air power). There wasn't enough fuel to shift the German tank divisions from the British sector where they were concentrated west to the American sector in Normandy. Good luck running any defense with this restriction.
I'm no historian or scholar, just a big fan of WW2 history. Not to get off topic but as already stated, Germany was pretty much done when they invaded the Soviet Union. The numerical superiority and reserves overwhelmed Germany and overcompensated for complete Soviet Union military incompetence, purges, and poor leadership from Stalin. If Hitler does not invade the Soviet Union, we might be looking at a different Europe today.
But I also believe Japan was done when they invaded China. Yes they started war with america with Pearl Harbor, but they ran into the same problem that Hitler had, they bit off more than they could chew with a massive country.
But my point is besides the obvious abhorrent war crimes committed by both Nazi Germany and the Japanese empire, one can appreciate the temporary military achievement and might both countries had at their peak before barking up the wrong trees. It shows how fast two countries, albeit for the wrong reason, were able to build up a powerful military relatively quickly.
Do you have a citation for your statement about the mines? It seems pretty farfetched.
Why would the Germans think the Allies would invade Norway? The goal was to conquer Germany. Invading Norway was not a shortcut to Berlin.
The Dieppe raid objectives included seizing and holding a major port for a short period, both to prove that it was possible and to gather intelligence. The raid was a learning exercise for future amphibious operations. I think the lessons learned greatly helped ensure the success of the Normandy invasion.
It was a thin hardcover book on WWII I'd read as a teen, talking about a lucky break for the D-Day invasion. It was a generically named WWII with pictures or something like that, but there was a whole series on other wars as well.
The Germans viewed Norway as a legitimate area to be defended. It was part of the Atlantic seawall, and so long as Sweden was surrounded, her iron ore was being sold to Germany. The British conducted raids in Norway. Numbers vary, but as many as 600,000 troops were in Denmark and Norway. Party for their defense, and partly to move the remaining Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe out of the main line of fire from bombing runs. In the end, that's where they stayed, save a mountain corps or so until it became too unsafe to seriously contemplate moving them across the sea.
And I agree that Dieppe was a raid and not a holding invasion, but we'd promised Stalin another front long before it actually happened, and from 42-44 is quite a delay. We let them bleed. Had D-Day failed, I'm guessing it would have been quite some time before the allies would have tried again.
The USA made a profit on WW2. From having soup lines pre war they had full employment during the war. Large funds coming in from Britain and France a year before and during the first year of the war got idle US industry moving. It was only 80% active in 1941. If France and Britain had rearmed earlier they would have had little need to use US industry, then would have the US industry been prepared for war? No. Churchill looked at British empire and US industry and resources as all one, as all was available to him to achieve his WW2 objective.
The post war rebuild, again kept US industry fully active and full employment. The US government printed a lot of dollars post war and near gave them to corporations to buy up near destroyed European and Japanese industries. Another reason the US prospered post war and sustained the momentum of WW2 production.
They printed a lot of war bonds. Certainly they fully transformed into a creditor nation from a debtor nation as well, but I'd expect the risk of default on French bonds in the early 40's was seen as...fairly high.
But the US did lever up and expand production...still, having all of your assets in receivables and all of your inventory in war materials does tend to cause a bit of a liquidity pinch. The US printed war bonds like crazy. It basically had to get the the US workforce to expand to include women, work, and then send a good portion of their earned money back in the form of war bond purchases. To help, they didn't allow consumer goods to be built and retrofit many factories. War boards even governed what the companies would be allowed to keep. Mattress aside, all that money was coming back to the government. It was all paper that later governments made good on.
The US was basically the bank of last resort, and it nearly got swamped. I can't imagine the market for French promises to pay was all that great in the secondary market in the 40s.
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