Posted on 07/19/2017 11:59:40 AM PDT by rdl6989
When the war ended areas in northern Italy still Mark Clark’s 5th Army was a mish mosh compared to Kesselring’s. Clark had everyone in that Army, Moroccans, Brazilians, etc.a mix of the world’s little nations that wanted a piece of the action. I think we had something like 51 allies in that war. I would think with all those languages, there would be some problems getting one’s points across. The Germans had crack troops in Italy, they weren’t Ost Truppen. They had paratroopers who were well equipped along with veteran units from the east front. Kesselring, saved his troops, he also surrendered them knowing the war was over, before May 7th.
The World Wars were overwhelmingly wars between white nations. The more I listen to liberals the more I understand that they are trying to erase white history.
Unfortunately like every task the Luftwaffe was given; knock out the BEF, blitz England into defeat, supply the troops at Stalingrad, defend the homeland, they failed miserably.
Here’s a post that explains in detail what you said:
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Hitler-halt-the-advance-on-Dunkirk-for-48-hours
Hitler never issued a halt order of the advance on Dunkirk, period.
It is a common misunderstanding, and a popular prop to support some wild theorizing about Hitler’s strategy - like Hitler really wanted to make peace with Britain and thought that letting the BEF escape at Dunkirk would make that more likely, or Hitler wanted the Luftwaffe to destroy the BEF at Dunkirk since it was a more Nazi branch of the military than the Wehrmacht - but there is scant evidence for the theories and a whole lot of evidence to show that Hitler’s commanders were the ones asking for a halt and that Hitler was not the micromanager of his armies he was later the in war.
Here’s what happened: the British and French counterattack at Arras on May 21, 1940 put a fright into German commanders. Though the counterattack had been pretty much a fizzle (some French troops barely got off the start line before running headlong into German spearheads and the British attack had been mauled), it had caught the German panzers with their pants halfway down.
The German armored divisions had outrun the slower infantry divisions and German commanders were worried about their flanks. Erwin Rommel contributed to the general angst among German commanders by claiming he was attacked by “hundreds” of British tanks at Arras and was in favor of sitting tight until the infantry caught up.
While the counterattack had been fended off, German commanders feared another attack at Arras.
General Ewald von Kleist, commanding Panzer Group Kleist, pulled out the 10th Panzer Division from Heinz Guderian’s XIX Corps’s advance on Boulogne and Dunkirk, put it into in reserve in case Britain and France renewed their attack at Arras. Kleist complained that his XIX and XIV corps weren’t strong enough to continue their advance until Arras was dealt with.
These moves were kicked up the chain of command to 4th Army’s Gunther von Kluge and on to Army Group A commander Gerd von Rundstedt. von Kluge ordered a halt on May 23. von Rundstedt approved of the halt and kicked it up to OKH where Field Marschal Walter von Brauchitsch and Hitler okayed the halt. OKH’s orders to von Rundstedt gave him the discretion of when to resume the advance.
von Rundstedt thought 36 hours would be enough for the infantry to catch up and stabilize the flanks but it took more than 48 hours before the panzers got rolling again on May 25, and they did so on von Rundstedt’s orders, not Hitler’s.
While the relative respite between May 23 - 25 gave the BEF, French and Belgian troops a little bit of breathing room, they were still in a dire situation with little hope.
So the halt order originated with the lower level Wehrmacht commanders, not Hitler, and wasn’t part of some elaborate double-flip fakeout move by Hitler in service of some grand strategy. Of course that didn’t stop surviving Wehrmacht generals from blaming Hitler after the war for all the bad decisions and taking credit for the good decisions, of which the halt before Dunkirk, with 20-20 hindsight, was judged a bad decision.
Yes, and an equal number of 'height challenged' transgenders...
I really admire the Axis commanders who went to great lengths to bring their troops from the Eastern Front far enough to the West to surrender to Brits and Americans; while there has been some griping about their treatment, for the most part they were OK and would survive. On the other hand, of the 200K Axis troops that surrendered at Stalingrad, only 5k were ever seen again by their families.
WWII in Asia involved a lot more Japanese, Chinese, and Filipinos (and more) than white people.
You’re right. But Dunkirk was in the European theatre. It was overwhelmingly European whites fighting each other.
No doubt; you’re right about that.
Interesting to read the accounts of Western allied troops who met the Soviet troops at the end of the war; they note how many of them were Mongols and such (as the USSR basically lost a generation of “European” Russians)...
The best generals of WW II were German. Too bad they had the worst leader who thought he was smarter. Then again if Germany had Obama as their leader, we would all be speaking Russian today. Take the best military men you have, and remove them. Its like the USSR during the 30’s without the final solution as to what to do with those high ranking military types. We had a few great commanders, but nothing like the Prussian types who served in the German Army. Their biggest down fall was they couldn’t replace their lost equipment as fast as we could produce ours. They were over whelmed by the numbers. When Hitler asked Von Rundsted, “What do you suggest?” Von Rundstead replied; “Make peace you fool.” The Wehrmacht was no longer fighting for Hitler, it was fighting for Germany, even though they saw the end coming. I love Gen. Heinrici, I could just imagine him saying after given command of the defense of Berlin, “At this point in time, WTF do you really think I can do?
The German military just had a different style; while they are portrayed as rigid, they in fact gave junior officers and noncoms much more leeway to improvise - and it paid off. In terms of the generals themselves, what Erich Manstein accomplished on the Eastern Front was brilliant (in fending off numerically superior Soviet forces). He was relieved due to his many disagreements with Hitler, but during the Cold War served in an advisory capacity in West Germany specifically to deal with massed Warsaw Pact armor to the east. They had some brilliant minds, accustomed to Spartan conditions from the lean times they faced during WWI and afterwards, and as you say, were outdone by our manufacturing.
the Viking last movie I ever saw did indeed have a black dude in it, but in his defense it also has Ernest Borgnine.
You just reminded me of the song “Pearl Harbor Sucked, and I Love You”.
Yes, it’s a real song!
“I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part......he’s way better than Ben Affleck.....”
Actually, in #82 I posted a reference to the person Cuba Gooding Jr, portrayed in the movie “Pearl Harbor.”
LOL. The Great Escape, alas, was nowhere near historically accurate...
Thankfully in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, at least unlike some other Robin Hoods, the actor could speak with an English accent.
Correct. Those are wehrmacht eagles...not luftwaffe.
WWII in Asia involved a lot more Japanese, Chinese, and Filipinos (and more) than white people. .............................. and one of the better Generals we had, wasted, left to argue with the Nationalist Chinese. A general who would have given Patton a real run for his money if he had been assigned to Europe. Asia was a side show, the emphasis was Europe and helping “Uncle Joe”. Lots of iffy history had France and Germany stayed out of it over Poland, and today they’re putting the screws to Poland?
The worst part of the Polish angle was that they were invaded from both sides, yet France/Britain only declared war on Germany. Churchill understood at war’s end, when Poland was kept by Stalin, that Britain had fought for nothing - and lost its empire in the process.
Of course.
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