The Great Victor Davis Hanson Takes On World War II

American Thinker.com ^ | Marech 20, 2018 | John Dale Dunn

[rlmorel]

I would love to go to the Patton Museum.

I was looking at the web page, love that statue with Willie by his side.

They have a fantastic museum here in Massachusetts in a residential area called The International Museum of World War II. It is a real jewel of a find. People don't know about it, and it has a LOT of stuff in it, and if you bring cotton gloves and they see you are careful, you can pick historic items up and hold them.

You actually have to schedule the visit in advance and sign a waiver and bring an ID.

It is in such a non-descript building with no windows, looks like a warehouse except it had an old beat up landing craft in the back and two 16" battleship shells by the door.

Some really interesting stuff. Hitler's little black address book with various phone numbers such as Berlin Gestapo Headquarters...Goering's luggage he had when he was captured. Very feminine...sky blue, with all kinds of brushes and mirrors in it.

But one of my favorite exhibits there is the bronze bust of Hitler that was taken from The Eagle's Nest (I think) and given to him, which he used as a door stop at his headquarters.

Every day when he took Willie out for a walk, he would pause there, and Willie would lift his leg and pee on the bust! When you see it in the museum, you can still see the corrosion stains...:)

[Snickering Hound]

The Panther used hydraulics to move the turret.

There was a hand crank to make fine adjustments for aiming, but you wouldn’t be using that unless the hydraulic motor had been removed.

[CGVet58]

bttt

[blueunicorn6]

I don’t claim to be an expert on WWII German Armor.

I was at the Patton Museum as part of my training for the US Army Armor Officer Advanced Course.

The speaker was a guy who had been in the fight at Baum/St Vith. This is a famous battle for American Tankers.

He was a Bank Vice-President from the local area.

As part of our training, students crawled into the Sherman and the Panther.

There was a race to get the main gun from each tank lined up on the other tank.

The student in the Sherman won.

Hydraulics make a specific sound when they are powered up and used.

The only thing you could hear from the Panther was the grunting of the student as he worked the manual controls on that Panther.

Now, you are telling me that my instructors and this old guy lied to us.

Maybe they did.

Maybe they were wrong.

I am not going to go look up the production specifications of every Nazi tank.

I’m telling you what I was taught and what I saw first hand.

The point the instructor was making was the importance of quickly bringing your main gun to bear on an enemy tank.

If you want to argue with me about what I was taught and what I saw, forget it.

[Billthedrill]

I'm on my second reading of this book now. Brilliant effort, solid analysis backed up by extensive citation. A lot of analysis. A LOT.

It certainly isn't a primer on the war, that's for sure, in the fashion of John Keegan's one-volume history. It is divided into subject-matter sections that are within themselves chronological but overall, the book isn't. VDH had a little fun with some of the titles - four of them are Earth (infantry and army matters), Air (the air war), Water (naval matters), and Fire (new weapons technology), after the classical Elements. Some of his observations are commonplace but take on a new significance under scrutiny, for example, that the Axis never really did act as if they were allied to one another, no overall strategies or shared campaign plans, and when the Germans did act to save Mussolini's African campaigns they did so at the expense of resources that would have gone into the Barbarossa campaign, whose success it cost them, and it may have cost them the war. Or that Hitler quixotically declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbor without securing any guarantee from the Japanese that they would hold the Soviet armies on the Manchurian border, which armies ended up sealing 6th Army's fate at Stalingrad. Or that even while the Germans were in death-grips with the Red Army their Japanese allies were allowing American Lend-Lease supplies to reach the Soviets through Vladivostok unmolested (50% of them if VDH's sources are correct) through the entire war, even when they themselves were being ground up by the U.S. Navy.

Great stuff, great resource book, and food for a lot of thought. Highly recommended.

[Snickering Hound]

There it is on the bottom of the turret.

The example you were looking at may very well have had it removed.

Turret moved too slow with the hydraulic motor, would have been much worse hand cranked.

[blueunicorn6]

Nice drawing.

That Panther cranked.

[BfloGuy]

What the hell WAS their end-game?

To hope we stayed out of it. For awhile, their plan worked, too.

[jeannineinsd]

I just finished reading this book. I highly recommend it.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

WW2 was three wars in one, not two. First there was the war in Europe, North Africa and the Atlantic, between the Axis and Allies. Then you have the Russian front, between the Germans and Soviets. Finally, the Pacific War was fought between the Japanese and Allies.

When Hitler attacked the USSR, it was easy to suppose that he would defeat Russia as quickly as he had thrashed France. Harry Hopkins, FDR’s right hand man, was in Britain at the time, and -tho he was death warmed over himself - he got FDR’s agreement that he should go to Moscow. Hopkins found Stalin in a fighting mood, able to convince him that, unaided, the USSR would fight for a year. And with aid, would not be defeated.

Hopkins got the US on board with saving Russia. Hopkins was a pinko, but if Hitler had gotten his hands on the USSR’s oilfields, he would have been even more powerful than he already was. So it was Hobson’s choice to leave Stalin to his own devices in any event. But the upshot was that the US sent tremendous aid to Stalin. A prime example: Studebaker trucks. They started out shipping assembled trucks, but that was inefficient use of shipping. So the US set up a truck assembly plant in Iran, and shipped the parts to it. Red Army drivers would arrive at the factory, be given keys to their trucks, and would drive the trucks to Russia loaded with other war materiel. But the trucks were a big deal because they gave mobility to the Red Army, which was crucial.

Freedom's Forge:

How American Business Produced Victory in World War II
Arthur Herman

A fascinating bit of Pacific War history is found in

Neptune's Inferno:

The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal

It turns out that the Navy suffered even more casualties in the Guadalcanal campaign than the Marines did.

And the story of code breaking was applicable to the PTO as well:

Code Girls:

The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II

America used women code breakers in a big way; for one thing because they were not considered for fighting positions, for another, they didn’t traditionally command high pay, and - very important as well - the very fact that they were not considered important meant that they could work under the radar, not attracting prying eyes of spies because it would be assumed that there was nothing to see in the work of a bunch of women.

[Dick Vomer]

My understanding is that WW2 was three wars in one, not two. First there was the war in Europe, North Africa and the Atlantic, between the Axis and Allies.

In the future, say in about 1000 years, the period between WW1 and the end of our current "conflict" between Capitalism and "Collectivism" and the Islamic Reformation will be lumped together.

Thanks to the Germans encouraging Lenin by giving him transport back to Russia and helping the communist to overthrow Russia, we are left with this communist/collectivist virus that has infected our world.

The Islamic "problem" is due to the break up of the colonial system and the mess that the Balfour Declaration created in what is now Israel. This was done in order to facilitate the Jewish exodus from Europe and to help fight the Germans in the mideast. We are fighting one long world war that has it's roots in the first world war.

[Jacquerie]

The radical Progressive FDR led the nation in single-minded way that no rat pol, and few pubbies would think of doing today.

Meanwhile, fed judges force the admission of the equivalent of German and Japanese soldiers, i.e. muslims.

Yes. Millions side with our enemies.

[AppyPappy]

Not necessarily. One thing we gain from wars is experience. We learn what works and what doesn’t work. Both North Korea and China lack recent combat experience. The Soviet Union was the same way. 40 years sitting on Go button was just too much for them. Their equipment turned out to be suspect at best.

[miss marmelstein]

All I really wrote was that folks get tired of war, not that they don’t learn anything from them.

[AppyPappy]

Both Japan and Germany believed the US was too soft to fight. We were all brains and no brawn. In some ways, it looked that way early on. Kasserine Pass and the Philippines for instance. But the brains is what ended up winning the war. The massive industrial power of the US just overwhelmed the Axis. There was no limit to our capacity. Two years after the wart began, German tanks dare not move in daylight. Axis cities were in ruins. We ruled the skies everywhere. The Axis ruled the world for 5 years and in just two years, we had them all but beaten.

[sparklite2]

    odd things like the German Army that committed to Operation Barbarossa in the East being dependent on horses and surprisingly ragtag.

A captured German officer was allowed to watch some of the massive amount of supplies being brought onshore at Omaha Beach. He asked, "Where are all the horses?"

    Germany and Japan just didn't have the industrial capacity and resources to match American power and competence in warfare – supplies, manpower, firepower.

Japan's plan was to force the US into a negotiated settlement before we could get up to speed.  Yamamoto knew anything else was a loss.

    The mighty B-29 was a difference-maker in the last stages of the Pacific war.

Six hundred twenty-one US bombs were dropped from altitude at the Battle of Midway. Not a single one hit anything but water.  On a side note, American torpedoes going into the war were so ineffective as to be scandalous, and the bigwigs in DC blamed the problem on the sub skippers.

    The Hellcat and Corsair were a match for the Zero when they came on line.

The Zero was supreme going into the war. A Zero weighed about the same as a modern SUV with a radial engine that produced 1020 horsepower, later 1130 HP.  If you can imagine driving as SUV with over a thousand horsepower, that's what it was like handling a Zero.

      As the war went on, American industry continued high-volume production

At the end of the war, the US had over a hundred aircraft carriers.

    still suffering from the immediate trauma of the First World War – chose to tear itself apart in 1939

I hope Hanson's book doesn't begin in the thirties.  The roots of WWII do back directly to the draconian punishment France insisted on dealing out to Germany at Versailles, the end of WWI.  While the US and Britain looked the other way, France drove Germany into the economic ground.  The French probably deserved to be overthrown and occupied by Germany and the French still haven't forgiven us for liberating them.

[sparklite2]

Japan obviously could not defeat and occupy the US. Their end plan was to force us into negotiated surrender before we could gear up. Had the carriers been in Pearl on Dec 7, who knows how things would have ended up?

[x]

Japan felt like they were forced into war. Roosevelt cut off supplies to them and wouldn't restore oil unless they withdrew from China. So they thought their back was to the wall and they had to lash out to get the supplies they needed to continue their war in China and keep home industries running.

I'm not sure there was an end game. the experience of their wars with China and Russia -- short wars with quick victories -- probably deluded them into thinking that it would be the same with FDR and the US.

There was a lot of misunderstanding between the US and Japan. Japan thought Roosevelt was demanding immediate withdrawal from all of China, including Manchuria, and that was unacceptable to them, but he would probably have settled for less from them.

I suspect the speed of Germany's victories in Europe created unreal expectations in the Axis powers. Considering what Japan was able to achieve at the beginning of the war, those expectations weren't entirely mistaken, but it's hard to see how Japan could have won a long war.

[JewishRighter]

I read this book and it is a tour de force offering facts and analysis across numerous major topic areas of how the war was fought and why it ended as it did. There are the well-known blunders, but there are other, less obvious factors, among them, the manufacturing power of the USA and the USSR (and to a lesser extent, England), Germany’s poor manufacturing choices, such as too many vanity and special weapons projects, dissipating manufacturing manpower, money and resources that could have been used to focus on producing massive numbers of additional superb weapons (88’s, Me109’s, trucks, Sturmgewehr 44’s) as force multipliers. Many FReepers are very knowledgeable and astute enough to know a lot of the points but the sheer force and sweep of VDH’s arguments is a pleasure for someone who wants a “big picture” feel for the whole shooting match.

Yes, I’m a VDH fanboy. The man is brilliant, a fine writer and an incredibly solid conservative. What’s not to like?

[JewishRighter]

I read this book and it is a tour de force offering facts and analysis across numerous major topic areas of how the war was fought and why it ended as it did. There are the well-known blunders, but there are other, less obvious factors, among them, the manufacturing power of the USA and the USSR (and to a lesser extent, England), Germany’s poor manufacturing choices, such as too many vanity and special weapons projects, dissipating manufacturing manpower, money and resources that could have been used to focus on producing massive numbers of additional superb weapons (88’s, Me109’s, trucks, Sturmgewehr 44’s) as force multipliers. Many FReepers are very knowledgeable and astute enough to know a lot of the points but the sheer force and sweep of VDH’s arguments is a pleasure for someone who wants a “big picture” feel for the whole shooting match.

Yes, I’m a VDH fanboy. The man is brilliant, a fine writer and an incredibly solid conservative. What’s not to like?