Reddit reviews The Rise of Germany, 1939-1941 (The War in the West)

> they could have worked out the 262s engine issues in time to make a difference.

Even if Nazi Germany made 3,000 262s, it would have not changed anything drastically. You realize the Allies had jets too right? Jets that performed on par, if not better, than the Me-262 right? The fact of the matter is they didn't put extensive amounts of money/research into them because prop planes were shooting down German jets without serious problems.

> Regardless, rocket technology, the discovery of heavy waters role in nuclear reactions, the massive leaps in propulsion and science, those aspects I would say were ahead of the Allies, and most of the allied knowledge of it came from espionage and spy work.


> but it was the things Germany had on the drawing board during the war that would shape warfare for the victor nations, such as the U-boat(copied by both the US and USSR for numerous sub designs post war) jet fighters, radio guidance etc

I'll just leave you to figure this out on your own because this is a bunch of nonsense. Paper aircraft mean absolutely fuck all. Along with anything else they "might have created". The only thing I can give you a hand on is rocket tech. Because the Nazis invested massive amounts of slave labor and money into their rocket projects. They made advancements by trial and error using slaves.

But then again, who created the first nuclear weapon? It wasn't Nazi Germany and the people who did it didn't use slave labor. Along with the fact that the Allies did not "steal Nazi tech" regarding the A-bomb. This is not a debate. This is a matter of fact.

> German Tanks were more potent but suffered from mechanical failures due to complexity and lack of maintenance supplies and trained maintenance crews by 1944. The T-34 was a great tank, but I wouldn’t say it was superior to any of the late war German tanks.

German tanks were not "more potent". I'm sure you're referring to big cats and the fact of the matter is, they were nothing spectacular. Yes they were good at killing other tanks. So what? How did that work out for them? If they were something spectacular, they would have been continued in design after the war.....which they were not. Simple as that.

> You can’t compare technology when they didn’t have the supplies to use it.

So why didn't German tech get used post war? Enlighten me.

> it’s fucking basic history.

It's well beyond that my friend. Well beyond that. I recommend some reading in your future other than the internet.

> I can’t enlighten you, your ass needs to read some books.

The irony is palpable.

Regarding the 262

This guy shot down German jets in a prop plane

Regarding "Uber Nazi Tech"

Regarding the Big Cats

I'd continue with sources but I doubt you'll even look at the ones I've listed anyways.

Good luck on your delusional endeavor.

Edited to fix a bad link.

I've just started reading it, but The Rise of Germany, 1939-1941: The War in the West by James Holland has a lot of little things like that.

For example, Germany in 1939 was actually one of the least mechanized nations in western Europe. So the myth of the invincible panzer divisions wasn't quite so, especially in 1940. But Germany far and away had the most radios per person. They came up with the neat idea of putting radios inside of their tanks, which no one else had done. Holland argues they beat the French (who had better tanks then) by coordinating tank groups together and with infantrymen holding anti-tank weapons.

Another one of his stories is about the MG 42, the famous German bullet-shooting weapon machine gun.

>“Of course, that was the best machine gun of the war,’ I commented, relaying what I’d read in many books.
“Says who? Says who?” retorted my guide and head of the unit, John Starling. In the next few minutes, he proceeded to deconstruct everything I thought I knew about this infamous weapon: that its phenomenal rate of fire caused massive problems of over-heating, that it was widely inaccurate (for which having since fired one, I can now vouch), that is was incredibly expensive to manufacture, massively over-engineered and lacked certain simple additions that would have made its handling so much easier. The men supporting this weapon not only had to carry vast amounts of ammunition to feed this thirsty beast, they also had to lumber around six spare barrels because of its readiness to over-heat. And each barrel bore multiple inspection stamps. “Which were,” John told me, “an utter waste of time in the middle of total war.”

Strictly speaking, he talks about the operational level of war, between the tactical and strategic (so a little different than our thread has been). You can listen to a 90 minute lecture/Q&A he did here.


Edit: It's the MG 42 machine gun. I don't know anything about guns.

Short and simple answer: Germany was really really good at playing up the idea that they had a technological and numerical edge over the French and BEF. They also used a number of deceptive practices to convince the Allies they had more forces on their Western Frontier than they actually did. This gave the French and the British pause on any major offensive actions in Western Europe, and they decided that maintaining a defense posture against an inevitable German offensive was the best strategy for the time being.

Longer answer: As I previously mentioned, the French and the British forces deployed in France during the Phoney War didn't do much. The plan that had been agreed upon by both parties several weeks into the war was to build up their forces and maintain defensive positions in Western Europe, utilize the Maginot Line (which brief sidenote: worked as expected contrary to popular belief) and await the eventual German offensive, which they believed the main thrust of which would most likely come through the Low Countries. Attempts were made to get the Belgian government to allow the Allies to move into their territory to give themselves even more breathing room against a German offensive, but the Belgians, fearing a German invasion if they granted this request, denied it.

Now the French did engage in the Saar Offensive four days after the start of the war, but this operation was half-hearted at best. Initially it called for up to 40 divisions of the French Army to push rapidly into Western Germany. 30 Divisions did end up coming up to the border areas, but only 11 actually crossed into Germany, and even then, they only advanced 5 miles at the furthest before the decision was made to halt the advance and to undertake defensive positions before withdrawing entirely.

French forces eventually withdrew back to their starting positions along the Maginot Line, and aside from German counter attacks against gains the French continued to hold onto, no major offensives took place on the part of the Allies until the end of the Phoney War. This was in large part due to the idea that Germany held an advantage in air and manpower on the Western front, and that any attempts to offensively engage with or neutralize it would come at a high cost. Years of Nazi propaganda as well as common deception methods (making a big show of moving around the forces you did have, radio transmissions in the open to ghost divisions, etc) helped to mask the hollow shell that was Germany's forces in Western Germany while operations in Poland took place (and while they recovered, the invasion of Poland took did take its toll on Germany's military) were mostly to thank for the Allies decision to dig in and wait.

The irony in all of this, is that Germany only had about 23 divisions at the ready to defend against any Allied offensive into Germany while operations in Poland continued to take place. The Luftwaffe also had significant shortages of aircraft in Western Germany at this time due to having the majority of its ground attack aircraft deployed for operations in Poland. Had the Allies known that they held a significant manpower and airpower advantage, it's still hard to say if they would have undertaken any major offensive operations against Germany. Though the opportunity to hamper if not defeat Germany was certainly there during the Phoney War.

If you're interested, I recently spoke at length about all of this on the AskHistorians Podcast. Check it out here!

Sources:


The Rise of Germany, 1939-1941 (The War in the West) by James Holland

Case Red: The Collapse of France by Robert Forczyk

Why the Allies Won by Richard Overy

Yeah. Another thing people don't understand is Hitler basically blundered his way into victory after victory. For example, his invasion of Poland made his commanders realize how woefully unprepared his army was. Hitler, however, decided that he was ready to invade France. THE ONLY THINGS that allowed this to work was that the French did not expect it and that they gave up too easily.

Things like that are honestly why I enjoyed reading that book I mentioned earlier.