The Most Ironic Situations in World War II:
1) The Germans nearly running out of ammunition in Poland. Had Stalin not invaded Poland in time or France attacked Germany, The German army would not have had ammunition to continue fighting. All thanks to Göring´s incompetent planning and management of German production (he was more busy filling his pockets than increasing production). The Germans also lost too many vehicles in Poland (half of the 200,000 with which they invaded, it is incredible that they would lose only 16,000 men, but 100,000 vehicles), so the transportation system would have also collapsed had Stalin not invaded Poland in time or France attacked Germany. Lucky Hitler.
2) Rommel running out of fuel close to the massive oil fields of North Africa and the Italians and Germans losing a lot of ships, airplanes, men, etc, and wasting a lot of scarce fuel trying to supply Rommel and to take Malta.
3) France falling to Germany in 1940, because France & Britain did not occupy a large part of vulnerable Germany, while the latter was busy invading Poland.
4) France, Belgium and Holland being conquered, Italy declaring war on France and GB and the latter being bombed, all because Dowding sent very few fighters (less than half his fighter force), and the most obsolete part (almost no Spitfires, only Hurricanes, many of which had inferior 2 blade propellers) to face over 1,300 German fighters in France. Had he sent another 650 fighters (including at least 200 Spitfires), the obsolete German bombers would have been wiped out, the blitzkrieg stopped, Italy would not have declared war on the allies, France and Belgium survived and GB would never have been bombed massively.
5) France spending billions of dollars on the Maginot line and building an impressive navy and not having 5,000 of the inexpensive 25 mm Hotchkiss antitank guns (which destroyed plenty of German tanks ), 2,000 modern AA guns, 100,000 antitank mines, 1,000 modern fighter planes and radios in the excellent French tanks.
6) France having some of the best fighters in WW I and only the worst in WW II and in very small numbers.
7) Holland losing quickly, because it did not want to spend money making fighter planes in the 2 good airplane factories it had (Fokker and Koolhoven) and because it had only received a handful of the hundred and fifty 105 cannon it ordered from Germany (which obviously withheld delivery).
8) Mega traffic jam in the Blitzkrieg: When Germany invaded France, the Wehrmacht was extremely vulnerable when the largest traffic jam in Europe’s history took place, leaving a 250 km long column of vehicles. Luckily for Hitler, German air superiority prevented the Allied planes from wiping out this column, creating a highway of death like the one that the Americans produced in Desert storm, but much longer.
9) The allied armies considering themselves surrounded by the German troops in Belgium, France and Holland and isolated from the rest of France, when in reality the 500,000 plus Allied troops could have been reinforced, supplied by the powerful allied navy and protected by its formidable artillery.
10) A small town called Le Paradis becoming hell when Knöchlein of the SS kills 160 British prisoners.
11) After capturing France, Germany lost 2,050 planes over Britain, instead of using its powerful air force to take the invaluable and poorly defended Spanish Morocco, thus closing the Mediterranean to the British. The 9 mile (15 km) Strait of Gibraltar, was the key for Germany to defeat GB and instead of taking it, Hitler ignored it.
12) The Nazis and fascists forcing the best physicists in the world and many great engineers, etc, to leave Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Holland, etc, because they were Jewish or married to Jewish people (Einstein, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi (his wife was Jewish), Eugene Wigner, Hans Bethe, John Von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulman, von Kármán, etc,).
13) Mussolini pressing Balbo to attack Egypt and when he refused having him killed by friendly AA fire. When the Italian forces (over 100,000 men) finally attacked, the much smaller British forces (30,000 men) promptly defeated them. Mussolini did not lose all his forces and territory in North Africa only because the British forces were sent to the Sudan (where they beat the Italians) and to Greece (where they were promptly trounced and had to be evacuated in another exemplary operation).
14) Italy not being able to defeat Greece and almost losing Albania in the process (it would have probably lost it, had not Germany intervened). Mussolini could have easily defeated Greece, had he persuaded Bulgaria to attack simultaneously and listened to Badoglio, who estimated the need for at least 20 divisions.
15) The Greeks defeating the Italians in part thanks to hundreds of Italian cannon and large stocks of ammunition captured by the British in Libya and given to the Greeks.
16) A large part of the modern Italian fleet being sunk in Taranto by a few obsolete biplane torpedo planes (Swordfish). And the Japanese learning from this technique, in order to destroy the American fleet in Pearl Harbor.
17) Proud Mussolini’s failure to conquer weak Greece, which forced the Germans to become involved and thus to delay Barbarossa by a month, that caused the early winter to stop the Germans on their tracks before arriving in Moscow. The Italian forces never learnt to use airplanes effectively in battle. The German forces that were diverted to Greece and Yugoslavia would have been very helpful in the Eastern front, and Germany did not gain anything from these two countries.
18) Hitler deciding to attack the USSR, because he couldn´t defeat GB. Hitler had fewer planes when he attacked the USSR along a 3,000 km front, than when he attacked France: Fewer Stukas, Hs-123, Ju-88, Bf-109, Me-110, Do-17, etc, so the initial German offensives were stopped by counterattacks and the war lost.
19) The supposedly high tech German army invading the USSR in June, 1941 over a 3,000 km front still using Mauser bolt action rifles holding 5 rounds (the British Enfield held 10 rounds in WW I, the American semiautomatic M-1 Garand fired 7 rounds), 625,000 horses, only 600,000 vehicles (many of them Volkswagens), only 3, 640 rather primitive tanks (inferior to the Soviet T-34), 1,830 airplanes (about 1/3 as many as were available during the invasion of tiny France). The excellent German tanks (Panther, Tiger, etc,) were developed and deployed only after the initial offensive had been stopped and the Germans had studied and used the T-34 (when the Americans had joined the war and the war had been lost).
20) The Germans stopping production of the Hs 123 in 1938, an excellent dive bomber that was used until 1944 successfully in the USSR, while spending fortunes in the jet planes, rocket planes, the V-1 and V-2, television guided bombs, etc, that were totally useless to the Germans. Had the Luftwaffe had 1,000 more Hs 123 in Dunkirk and at the outset of Barbarossa, they would have been invaluable. They were inexpensive, sturdy, pilots could be trained easily and the radial engines could survive hits that the water cooled engines couldn´t survive. It was far more reliable and safer to land and take off in the muddy air fields of Russia and more fuel efficient and less expensive than the bomber version of the Me Bf-109.
21) The high tech Germans using 2.75 million horses and bolt action rifles on the one hand and jet planes, V-2 rockets, TV guided bombs, etc, on the other in the same war.
22) The Germans spending a fortune developing and building the He 117, the largest biplane of the war and the only heavy bomber produced in series by Germany, which had two welded, 2,900 hp engines that caught fire very easily and whose 4 blade propellers could not convert the shaft power into thrust efficiently. Instead of simply using 4 standard 1,450 hp and 3 blade props, that produce more thrust and less noise with the same fuel and are much more reliable (if one engine fails, the plane is left with ¾ of the power).
23) Hitler slowing down the development of the Me-262 jet fighter by trying to turn it into a light bomber.
24) Hitler stopping production of the first modern, automatic assault rifle (Speer had to disobey him and continued producing it).
25) Stalin killing many of the best Soviet spies in the world, who had warned him of the German invasion, because he thought they were lying. Then keeping so many millions of troops close to the border, instead of destroying the railroads and pulling all the troops back, so as to stretch the German lines and to concentrate his forces for an effective, concerted and well planned counterattack. Finally, after the Germans attacked and advanced fast, Stalin panicked and launched a counterattack with his troops completely disorganized and he withdrew to his dacha, leaving his army leaderless for more than a week.
26) During Barbarossa millions of Soviet soldiers surrendered to the Germans. Stupidly, Stalin started shooting thousands of Soviet soldiers and branded every Soviet prisoner as a traitor. Luckily for Stalin, Hitler stupidly starved or shot 2 million Soviet prisoners just between June 22, 1941 and February 1942). Accordingly, Soviet soldiers stopped surrendering and fought to the end, causing enormous losses in the German army. Only when Speer took over production and pointed out that the prisoners could become invaluable slave workers in the Reich, did Germany stop shooting and starving them and transported them to underground factories, where they were barely fed and housed in inhuman conditions. Had Hitler fed, cared and treated fairly Soviet prisoners, many more would have surrendered (weakening the red army) and joined the fight against Stalin (boosting the Wehrmacht considerably).
27) The Germans being defeated in Moscow, because a Soviet spy in Japan told Stalin on September 14, 1941 that the Japanese were not going to attack the USSR, unless Moscow fell, which allowed the mobilization of Soviet troops in the east to the western front, defeating the German offensive on Moscow.
28) Stalin sacrificing his experienced pilots in their old planes (including biplane fighters) in 1941, while his new MIG 3s had to wait idly for new pilots from the academy, with very few flight hours.
29) Although most people consider the Mitsubishi Zero a formidable, almost mythical fighter and 11,900 Zeroes built, only 5,900 Nakajima Ki-43s shot down more allied fighters. Moreover, even the Wildcat achieved very favorable kill ratios against the Zero.
30) The Americans spending a fortune making, transporting to India and then flying supplies to China from India over the Himalayas and Chiang hoarding the supplies in warehouses, because he was afraid his generals might use them to overthrow him. So Chang’s barefoot troops often fought with obsolete weapons or even without weapons, while millions of dollars of modern equipment, boots, ammunition, etc, were stored away. It’s no wonder that the Japanese almost captured Chiang´s part of China in 1944 in a major offensive, in which many of the stored supplies had to be blown up by the Americans in order to prevent the Japanese from capturing them.
31) The fact that Stalin was saved, because the Bulgarian ambassador, whom he had asked to negotiate a peace agreement with Hitler refused to do so. At this time Bulgaria was allied to Germany and the diplomat thought that Hitler was going to win. If Stalin had been able to negotiate a separate peace, the war would have been quite different.
32) Werner Mölders, the brilliant ace and tactician was withdrawn from combat for propaganda reasons when he achieved his 100th victory. He was ordered to attend Ernst Udet’s funeral in Berlin and he was killed when the He-111 that transported him crashed because of engine failure.
33) The fact that the Japanese lost Asia and Oceania and caused Germany and Italy to lose the war, simply because they attacked the US in order to take the Philippines. The Japanese were afraid of attacking the Soviets, yet they thought nothing of attacking the Americans. Churchill couldn’t believe his luck when the Japanese attacked Hawaii, instead of attacking India or the USSR. Actually, the Japanese army thought that attacking the USSR was more important than attacking the US, but Roosevelt’s oil and steel scrap embargo forced the Japanese to cancel the attack on the USSR and to Attack Pearl Harbor.
34) Hitler would have conquered the world, without any war, had Germany produced 10 million beetles (designed long before the war), and large amounts of commercial aircraft (condors, etc,), steel, ships, railroad engines, machine tools, etc, for Germany had a very advanced industry, a centralized economy and financing and a competent work force.
35) Stalin supplying Germany with petroleum, while the latter invaded France, whose resources would be used to invade the USSR a year later. Had Stalin stopped the flow of Oil and taken Romania, Slovakia, Bohemia, armed Poland against Germany, assisted the allies in Norway and forced Sweden to stop supplying iron ore, AA guns, etc, to Germany, France would not have fallen, Italy would not have declared war on the Allies and Hitler would have been overthrown and Germany would have had to capitulate.
36) Hitler insisting on treating like sub humans and even killing the Slav civilians in Poland, the USSR, etc, although Rosenberg, his racial expert kept insisting that they were Aryan.
37) German submarine U-120 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet.
38) The Japanese never being able to destroy the Flying Tigers, a very small force with obsolete planes, or to defeat Chiang Kai-shek or the communists and yet starting a fight with the US (forcing America into the war).
39) The high tech Bismarck being sunk, because a Swordfish biplane flying at 100 mph damaged her rudder with a torpedo. The plane was not shot down, because the antiaircraft guns were programmed for much faster planes (the shells exploded far ahead of the airplane, not causing any damage). After the Bismarck sank the Hood, a shell from the Prince of Wales hit the Bismarck and when through it, leaving a 2 m exit hole. When the large group of British ships then caught up with the Bismarck (whose rudder had collided with a propeller because of a torpedo, causing the ship to sail in circles), they fired over 2,800 shells at the Bismarck. Over 700 shells were 14” to 16”. However, only 4 of these hit the Bismarck, one of them blowing up the command tower. Just one 8” shells killed about 200 men who were crowding a staircase while trying to abandon the ship.
40) Yamamoto losing the battle of Midway, because his original plan for attacking with all the Japanese fleet was modified by the army staff, who decided to invade Port Moresby and to send a diversionary force to the Aleutians, weakening Yamamoto’s force and dooming it. If Yamamoto had had the whole fleet, he would have had enough airplanes to destroy the attacking American planes and their carriers at the same time, inflicting a major victory on America.
41) Yamamoto lost the battle of midway because he sent the 4 fleet carriers ahead with 15 support ships and stayed behind with 5 battleships, 2 light carriers and 41 support ships. Had he kept all the ships together, the shear number of AA and targets and the few planes from the light carriers would have been disastrous for the American planes. Most of the ships did not participate in the battle.
42) The only American aerial torpedo that exploded against a Japanese ship during the battle of Midway was launched by a Catalina flying boat. Although the American carrier torpedo planes did not score any hits and most were shot down, they were invaluable luring away the Zeroes defending the carriers and distracting the AA, so the American dive bombers could knock out all 4 fleet carriers.
43) It was a common practice on American fighter planes to load every 5th round with a tracer round to aid in aiming. This was a mistake. Tracers had different ballistics, so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target, 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet, tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction. Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo. This was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy. American units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down.
44) Among the first ‘Germans’ captured at Normandy were several Koreans. They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Soviets and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans and forced to fight for the German Army until they were captured by the US Army.
45) The US Government striking a deal with Lucky Luciano, in which the mafia agreed to keep saboteurs away from the dock’s of New York and the US agreed to put the mafia in charge in Sicily, after the fascists were ousted.
46) The brilliant British inventor of the jet engine, Frank Whipple was ignored by the British government for years. Unfortunately, the Nazis realized the enormous potential of the engine and invested a lot of resources in its development, so that the German jet fighters (Me 262, Volksjäger, etc), were far more advanced than the British planes (Gloster Meteor).
47) Germany wasting a lot of equipment and men occupying Holland, Greece, Yugoslavia, etc, that were sorely needed in the USSR.
48) The chief of German intelligence, Canaris, working repeatedly against Hitler, as when he told Franco that if he refused Hitler free passage to Gibraltar, Hitler would not attack Spain. Canaris was executed in a concentration camp shortly before the end of the war.
49) Hitler not being able to defeat a small and weak England and starting a fight with the USSR, without even asking the Japanese to invade the USSR simultaneously. Furthermore, even after the Reich was not able to defeat England and the USSR, it declared war on the US, but Japan never declared war on the USSR, until the USSR attacked the Japanese troops in China, after the atomic bomb.
50) Germany (whose army had achieved so many victories thanks to surprise, high mobility and coordination with a massive air force), wasting a large portion of its army and air force in the battle of Kursk, in which there was no surprise, little mobility and inadequate air support and the Soviets had built the most formidable defensive position in history, much more so than the Maginot, Gustaf, Stalin or Siegfried lines or the Atlantic Wall, because the line in Kursk was much shorter and more concentrated and reinforced with enormous amounts of artillery, tanks, airplanes, antitank ditches and mines and infantry
51) The British sinking part of the French fleet, without Hitler ever using it.
52) The Japanese asking the Soviets to convey their intent of capitulation to the Americans after the atomic bomb, instead of communicating directly with the Americans or British. Stalin did not relay the message and decided to continue attacking the Japanese troops in China, Mongolia and Northern Japan instead.
53) The Japanese forcing the Americans into the conflict and then allowing them to supply the Soviets enormous quantities, by refusing to attack ships with Soviet flags.
54) The Soviets killing thousands of their badly needed troops in order to instill discipline.
55) Although the USSR had much more people than Germany, women swelled the ranks of the red army and air force (two famous aces were women). In contrast, the German armed forces, which were desperate for new recruits, refused to enlist women, for anything other than Flak, nursing and office work.
56) MacArthur and Wainwright receiving the medal of honor for losing the Philippines.
57) The Soviet general Vlasov, the most brilliant Soviet general being captured after a remarkable advance, because the Soviets couldn´t reinforce, supply and support him and then being hanged in 1946 as a traitor, for having joined the Germans in the fight against Stalin.
58) Had Stalin sold a million km2 each to Germany and Japan in 1939, all the countries would have benefitted considerably, for the Soviets had too much land and no money and the Germans and Japanese had too much money and no land.
59) Keitel being promoted to Feldmarschal, without fighting in the front in WW II and Guderian being dismissed without ever receiving this title, in spite of brilliant service in Poland, Belgium, France and the USSR. Simply because the first was Hitler’s yes-man and the latter dared contest and even disobey Hitler’s absurd orders in order to save thousands of his troops to fight another day.
60) De Gaulle and his French troops not being the first to land in or parachute into Normandy on D-day, but being the first in Paris.
61) The Americans asking small, poorly supplied garrisons in Guam and Wake to defend themselves against Japan, when even the massive resources of Pearl Harbor and the Philippines had not been able to stop the Japanese navy. These tiny, remote outposts should have been evacuated at the outset of the war.
62) The USSR and Spain being the most primitive, utterly different and only surviving dictatorships in Europe after WW II.
63) The Germans developing extremely advanced aircraft, yet fighting the war using inferior 3 blade propellers, so that their excellent planes were far from realizing their full potential. Then they focused on jet fighters, which used a lot of fuel (which was not available), flew at suboptimal speeds for jet engines and had very unreliable and short lived engines.
64) The Japanese destroying practically all the airplanes and most of the ships in Pearl Harbor, but failing to occupy it, although Pearl Harbor was much more vulnerable and important than the Philippines or Singapore, which the Japanese easily occupied, even without the element of surprise.
65) Germany not occupying the most strategic locations of WW II: Gibraltar-Morocco (the gate to the Mediterranean), Iceland, Faeroe Islands, Stalin´s oil fields, etc, and Japan not occupying the invaluable Madagascar, Ceylon, South Africa, Iran and Iraq (with lots of invaluable oil and a paramount invasion route to the USSR), Aden (Yemen, controlling access to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean from the east), Hawaii (which they should not have attacked at all, but if they were to attack it they should have definitely invaded on Dec. 7, 1941), etc, Instead of taking these locations, Germany squandered enormous amounts of resources taking or trying to take, maintaining or supplying many strategically irrelevant locations: Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, North Africa, Yugoslavia, Greece, defending Sicily and Italy from the allied invasion (instead of simply withdrawing to the Alps), etc, Similarly, Japan wasted invaluable resources in useless locations such as: Guadalcanal, the Aleutians, Midway, the Philippines, Rabaul, Hollandia, Truck, Wewak, Peleliu, Mongolia and several areas in China
66) Hitler ruining the 3 offensives in the USSR when he radically changed plans, wasting invaluable resources besieging Sevastopol for 8 months, capturing Odessa, Kiev and Stalingrad, instead of going straight for Moscow, Baku and Leningrad, as originally planned.
67) Churchill being defeated in elections immediately after winning the war. Roosevelt passing away shortly after reelection and before the end of the war. Hitler, Mussolini, the Polish President in exile, etc, dying (or being murdered) before the end of the war. Tojo ending up in jail and eventually executed and only Stalin, the most demented, murderous and incompetent leader finishing the war as a hero and supposed strategic genius with a much larger empire and much stronger armed forces than those he had in 1939 when he was Hitler’s accomplice in starting the war.
68) At the time of Pearl Harbor the top US Navy command was called CINCUS (pronounced ‘sink us’
, the shoulder patch of the US Army’s 45th Infantry Division was the Swastika, and Hitler’s private train was named ‘Amerika’. All three were soon changed for PR purposes.
69) The youngest US serviceman was 12-year-old Calvin Graham, USN. He was wounded and given a dishonorable discharge for lying about his age. His benefits were later restored by an act of Congress.
70) The Americans giving the Soviets billions of dollars worth of steel, explosives, trucks, airplanes, gasoline, food, railroad engines, boots, medications, etc, and the ships to transport them and then spending billions of dollars and thousands of lives during the cold war, countering the Soviet threat and having to fight communist regimes in Korea, Cuba, Viet Nam, etc, The Americans did not even get permission to bomb Japan from the USSR and to have submarine bases in the USSR, so they had to fly extremely long distances with expensive and unreliable B-29s to bomb Japan and supply their submarines from Hawaii.
71) The Italian Commando Supremo changing Rommel’s brilliant plans to defend Tunisia and capture badly needed American supplies, causing him to divide his forces and be defeated rapidly.
72) Stalin with millions of troops and lots of American aid refused to attack Japan in 1944, when the Germans were in quick retreat and instead pressed the Anglos to invade France. Had Stalin attacked Japan, he would have received even more equipment and he could have taken China, Indochina, Thailand, Burma and Japan and had the Americans not invaded France, Stalin could have taken all of Europe, if only he hadn’t been so paranoid and insecure and wasted so many troops pointlessly taking Berlin in a hurry, but going around it. Stalin ensured that the Germans would fight to the death, instead of surrendering by massively raping and killing Germans. Had he treated the people fairly, many war-exhausted Germans would have surrendered.
73) Jochen Peiper’s Panzers were delayed during the first crucial hours of the battle of the bulge (the Ardennes) not by American antitank mines, but by German mines that were placed while the Germans previously withdrew toward the Siegfried line. The Defense of Lanzerath by 28 Americans, against hundreds of German paratroopers also delayed the offensive during a few crucial hours. The delay prevented the Germans from taking full advantage of the bad weather and the surprise and allowed the allies to strengthen the front and to stop the Panzers and then, when the weather cleared, to eliminate the Panzers, leaving Germany almost defenseless.
74) Although Peiper was responsible for the Malmedy massacre and many other atrocities and was sentenced to be hanged, he was released in 1955. Ironically he was murdered and his house burnt down by communists in a small French town.
75) Stauffenberg used only one of the 2 kg of plastic explosive that he had available, tossed the other one away and Hitler survived. Had Stauffenberg put all the explosive in his briefcase, Hitler would have certainly died and the war changed drastically, saving millions of lives. Apparently, Stauffenberg thought he had to install and activate the chemical ignition mechanism on both pieces of explosive and he only had time to do it in one of them. Had he known that the detonation of one of the pieces of explosive would have set off the other piece, he would have succeeded. Lucky Hitler.
76) More Germans died in the time between Stauffenberg’s failed assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944 and the end of the war than in the previous 5 years of war.
77) In 1944 and 45 the Germans produced about 150 Jagdtiger, which had 10” front armor but were vulnerable elsewhere. The tank had an amazing 128 mm gun, but the whole tank had to be rotated for traverse (it had no turret) and the missile and powder were loaded separately, so the rate of fire was very low and it had a crew of 8 and weighed 70 tons. There were a few of them in the Ruhr pocket. Ironically one was destroyed by friendly fire with a Panzerfaust from a young soldier who had never seen one and was sure it was an allied tank. That’s the problem when you have two good weapons and inexperienced soldiers. A few of them surrendered when the Ruhr area fell.
78) Marshal Mannerheim of Finland being decorated by both sides on both world wars. He was so bright that he managed to win allies and aid from all over world and fend off the Soviets for decades. However, the bright Mannerheim could have ensured the Axis victory, had the Fins assisted the Germans in capturing Leningrad and Murmansk in 1941, when they were poorly defended, thus liberating a huge German army to assist in the attack on Moscow. The 400,000 invaluable Finnish troops sat in their trenches during this crucial time and would later experience severe losses when the much strengthened Soviets counter attacked in 1943-44.
79) The French volunteer soldiers of the Charlemagne division in the German army fought very well in the eastern front. Most of them died fighting and the few of them at the end defended Hitler’s bunker, so it wouldn´t be captured on May 1st. The Soviets killed most of them. Some spent 20 years in forced labor camps in the USSR and 11 were delivered to the free French. General Leclerc asked them why they wore German uniforms and one of them asked Leclerc why he wore an American uniform. Leclerc had them all executed without trial.
80) The USSR being able to defeat and occupy Germany, but not Finland.
81) Stalin, arguably the worst military leader during the 1920 Polish-Soviet war, eventually becoming the military leader of the USSR and Krushchev, arguably the worst soviet military leader in WW II, becoming the leader of the USSR shortly after Stalin’s death.
82) Generalissimo Franco of Spain, who is not famous for his altruism, saving 200,000 Jews from Vichy, Greece, etc, using the meager resources of his impoverished country during WW II, while altruistic, mighty America refused asylum even to a few boatloads of German-Jewish immigrants.
83) China & India were the most populated countries (515 & 378 million) and were in a most strategic location. Yet the Axis attacked them, instead of helping Chiang to defeat the Communists and gaining an invaluable ally against the USSR and liberating India from the inefficient yoke of GB. Similarly, the US did not use the unlimited potential of China & India to destroy Japan with American leadership and materiel, rapidly recovering Burma and then China, Mongolia, etc, then bombing Japan from China and then getting rid of Tojo, Stalin & Hitler with these powerful allies and the RAF, which was far more useful than the British army.
84) Germany and GB ruining their economies destroying each other, while Stalin became stronger all the time with American help, so that the most incompetent and cruel tyrant had a huge empire at the end of the war, while West Germany was a small portion of the former country and it and GB had utterly broken economies at the end of the war.
85) Germany and Japan bouncing back so fast after being destroyed completely during the war, while GB never recovered completely and gradually lost its empire and industrial might.
86) Although 5 million Indians volunteered during the war and at the end of the war there were 2.5 million Indian volunteers in the British army, I can find extremely few pilots and no generals, etc, among them, which seems absurd and unfair. Did the British consider them sub humans?
87) Perhaps the most ironic thing of the war is that after wasting over 62 million lives, a larger number of wounded and crippled, destroying hundreds of thousands of buildings, wasting billions of dollars, billions of unproductive man-hours, huge amounts of oil, fuel, steel, etc, the war ended the depression and the world entered an unprecedented era of prosperity and tense peace.
1) The Germans nearly running out of ammunition in Poland. Had Stalin not invaded Poland in time or France attacked Germany, The German army would not have had ammunition to continue fighting. All thanks to Göring´s incompetent planning and management of German production (he was more busy filling his pockets than increasing production). The Germans also lost too many vehicles in Poland (half of the 200,000 with which they invaded, it is incredible that they would lose only 16,000 men, but 100,000 vehicles), so the transportation system would have also collapsed had Stalin not invaded Poland in time or France attacked Germany. Lucky Hitler.
2) Rommel running out of fuel close to the massive oil fields of North Africa and the Italians and Germans losing a lot of ships, airplanes, men, etc, and wasting a lot of scarce fuel trying to supply Rommel and to take Malta.
3) France falling to Germany in 1940, because France & Britain did not occupy a large part of vulnerable Germany, while the latter was busy invading Poland.
4) France, Belgium and Holland being conquered, Italy declaring war on France and GB and the latter being bombed, all because Dowding sent very few fighters (less than half his fighter force), and the most obsolete part (almost no Spitfires, only Hurricanes, many of which had inferior 2 blade propellers) to face over 1,300 German fighters in France. Had he sent another 650 fighters (including at least 200 Spitfires), the obsolete German bombers would have been wiped out, the blitzkrieg stopped, Italy would not have declared war on the allies, France and Belgium survived and GB would never have been bombed massively.
5) France spending billions of dollars on the Maginot line and building an impressive navy and not having 5,000 of the inexpensive 25 mm Hotchkiss antitank guns (which destroyed plenty of German tanks ), 2,000 modern AA guns, 100,000 antitank mines, 1,000 modern fighter planes and radios in the excellent French tanks.
6) France having some of the best fighters in WW I and only the worst in WW II and in very small numbers.
7) Holland losing quickly, because it did not want to spend money making fighter planes in the 2 good airplane factories it had (Fokker and Koolhoven) and because it had only received a handful of the hundred and fifty 105 cannon it ordered from Germany (which obviously withheld delivery).
8) Mega traffic jam in the Blitzkrieg: When Germany invaded France, the Wehrmacht was extremely vulnerable when the largest traffic jam in Europe’s history took place, leaving a 250 km long column of vehicles. Luckily for Hitler, German air superiority prevented the Allied planes from wiping out this column, creating a highway of death like the one that the Americans produced in Desert storm, but much longer.
9) The allied armies considering themselves surrounded by the German troops in Belgium, France and Holland and isolated from the rest of France, when in reality the 500,000 plus Allied troops could have been reinforced, supplied by the powerful allied navy and protected by its formidable artillery.
10) A small town called Le Paradis becoming hell when Knöchlein of the SS kills 160 British prisoners.
11) After capturing France, Germany lost 2,050 planes over Britain, instead of using its powerful air force to take the invaluable and poorly defended Spanish Morocco, thus closing the Mediterranean to the British. The 9 mile (15 km) Strait of Gibraltar, was the key for Germany to defeat GB and instead of taking it, Hitler ignored it.
12) The Nazis and fascists forcing the best physicists in the world and many great engineers, etc, to leave Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Holland, etc, because they were Jewish or married to Jewish people (Einstein, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi (his wife was Jewish), Eugene Wigner, Hans Bethe, John Von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulman, von Kármán, etc,).
13) Mussolini pressing Balbo to attack Egypt and when he refused having him killed by friendly AA fire. When the Italian forces (over 100,000 men) finally attacked, the much smaller British forces (30,000 men) promptly defeated them. Mussolini did not lose all his forces and territory in North Africa only because the British forces were sent to the Sudan (where they beat the Italians) and to Greece (where they were promptly trounced and had to be evacuated in another exemplary operation).
14) Italy not being able to defeat Greece and almost losing Albania in the process (it would have probably lost it, had not Germany intervened). Mussolini could have easily defeated Greece, had he persuaded Bulgaria to attack simultaneously and listened to Badoglio, who estimated the need for at least 20 divisions.
15) The Greeks defeating the Italians in part thanks to hundreds of Italian cannon and large stocks of ammunition captured by the British in Libya and given to the Greeks.
16) A large part of the modern Italian fleet being sunk in Taranto by a few obsolete biplane torpedo planes (Swordfish). And the Japanese learning from this technique, in order to destroy the American fleet in Pearl Harbor.
17) Proud Mussolini’s failure to conquer weak Greece, which forced the Germans to become involved and thus to delay Barbarossa by a month, that caused the early winter to stop the Germans on their tracks before arriving in Moscow. The Italian forces never learnt to use airplanes effectively in battle. The German forces that were diverted to Greece and Yugoslavia would have been very helpful in the Eastern front, and Germany did not gain anything from these two countries.
18) Hitler deciding to attack the USSR, because he couldn´t defeat GB. Hitler had fewer planes when he attacked the USSR along a 3,000 km front, than when he attacked France: Fewer Stukas, Hs-123, Ju-88, Bf-109, Me-110, Do-17, etc, so the initial German offensives were stopped by counterattacks and the war lost.
19) The supposedly high tech German army invading the USSR in June, 1941 over a 3,000 km front still using Mauser bolt action rifles holding 5 rounds (the British Enfield held 10 rounds in WW I, the American semiautomatic M-1 Garand fired 7 rounds), 625,000 horses, only 600,000 vehicles (many of them Volkswagens), only 3, 640 rather primitive tanks (inferior to the Soviet T-34), 1,830 airplanes (about 1/3 as many as were available during the invasion of tiny France). The excellent German tanks (Panther, Tiger, etc,) were developed and deployed only after the initial offensive had been stopped and the Germans had studied and used the T-34 (when the Americans had joined the war and the war had been lost).
20) The Germans stopping production of the Hs 123 in 1938, an excellent dive bomber that was used until 1944 successfully in the USSR, while spending fortunes in the jet planes, rocket planes, the V-1 and V-2, television guided bombs, etc, that were totally useless to the Germans. Had the Luftwaffe had 1,000 more Hs 123 in Dunkirk and at the outset of Barbarossa, they would have been invaluable. They were inexpensive, sturdy, pilots could be trained easily and the radial engines could survive hits that the water cooled engines couldn´t survive. It was far more reliable and safer to land and take off in the muddy air fields of Russia and more fuel efficient and less expensive than the bomber version of the Me Bf-109.
21) The high tech Germans using 2.75 million horses and bolt action rifles on the one hand and jet planes, V-2 rockets, TV guided bombs, etc, on the other in the same war.
22) The Germans spending a fortune developing and building the He 117, the largest biplane of the war and the only heavy bomber produced in series by Germany, which had two welded, 2,900 hp engines that caught fire very easily and whose 4 blade propellers could not convert the shaft power into thrust efficiently. Instead of simply using 4 standard 1,450 hp and 3 blade props, that produce more thrust and less noise with the same fuel and are much more reliable (if one engine fails, the plane is left with ¾ of the power).
23) Hitler slowing down the development of the Me-262 jet fighter by trying to turn it into a light bomber.
24) Hitler stopping production of the first modern, automatic assault rifle (Speer had to disobey him and continued producing it).
25) Stalin killing many of the best Soviet spies in the world, who had warned him of the German invasion, because he thought they were lying. Then keeping so many millions of troops close to the border, instead of destroying the railroads and pulling all the troops back, so as to stretch the German lines and to concentrate his forces for an effective, concerted and well planned counterattack. Finally, after the Germans attacked and advanced fast, Stalin panicked and launched a counterattack with his troops completely disorganized and he withdrew to his dacha, leaving his army leaderless for more than a week.
26) During Barbarossa millions of Soviet soldiers surrendered to the Germans. Stupidly, Stalin started shooting thousands of Soviet soldiers and branded every Soviet prisoner as a traitor. Luckily for Stalin, Hitler stupidly starved or shot 2 million Soviet prisoners just between June 22, 1941 and February 1942). Accordingly, Soviet soldiers stopped surrendering and fought to the end, causing enormous losses in the German army. Only when Speer took over production and pointed out that the prisoners could become invaluable slave workers in the Reich, did Germany stop shooting and starving them and transported them to underground factories, where they were barely fed and housed in inhuman conditions. Had Hitler fed, cared and treated fairly Soviet prisoners, many more would have surrendered (weakening the red army) and joined the fight against Stalin (boosting the Wehrmacht considerably).
27) The Germans being defeated in Moscow, because a Soviet spy in Japan told Stalin on September 14, 1941 that the Japanese were not going to attack the USSR, unless Moscow fell, which allowed the mobilization of Soviet troops in the east to the western front, defeating the German offensive on Moscow.
28) Stalin sacrificing his experienced pilots in their old planes (including biplane fighters) in 1941, while his new MIG 3s had to wait idly for new pilots from the academy, with very few flight hours.
29) Although most people consider the Mitsubishi Zero a formidable, almost mythical fighter and 11,900 Zeroes built, only 5,900 Nakajima Ki-43s shot down more allied fighters. Moreover, even the Wildcat achieved very favorable kill ratios against the Zero.
30) The Americans spending a fortune making, transporting to India and then flying supplies to China from India over the Himalayas and Chiang hoarding the supplies in warehouses, because he was afraid his generals might use them to overthrow him. So Chang’s barefoot troops often fought with obsolete weapons or even without weapons, while millions of dollars of modern equipment, boots, ammunition, etc, were stored away. It’s no wonder that the Japanese almost captured Chiang´s part of China in 1944 in a major offensive, in which many of the stored supplies had to be blown up by the Americans in order to prevent the Japanese from capturing them.
31) The fact that Stalin was saved, because the Bulgarian ambassador, whom he had asked to negotiate a peace agreement with Hitler refused to do so. At this time Bulgaria was allied to Germany and the diplomat thought that Hitler was going to win. If Stalin had been able to negotiate a separate peace, the war would have been quite different.
32) Werner Mölders, the brilliant ace and tactician was withdrawn from combat for propaganda reasons when he achieved his 100th victory. He was ordered to attend Ernst Udet’s funeral in Berlin and he was killed when the He-111 that transported him crashed because of engine failure.
33) The fact that the Japanese lost Asia and Oceania and caused Germany and Italy to lose the war, simply because they attacked the US in order to take the Philippines. The Japanese were afraid of attacking the Soviets, yet they thought nothing of attacking the Americans. Churchill couldn’t believe his luck when the Japanese attacked Hawaii, instead of attacking India or the USSR. Actually, the Japanese army thought that attacking the USSR was more important than attacking the US, but Roosevelt’s oil and steel scrap embargo forced the Japanese to cancel the attack on the USSR and to Attack Pearl Harbor.
34) Hitler would have conquered the world, without any war, had Germany produced 10 million beetles (designed long before the war), and large amounts of commercial aircraft (condors, etc,), steel, ships, railroad engines, machine tools, etc, for Germany had a very advanced industry, a centralized economy and financing and a competent work force.
35) Stalin supplying Germany with petroleum, while the latter invaded France, whose resources would be used to invade the USSR a year later. Had Stalin stopped the flow of Oil and taken Romania, Slovakia, Bohemia, armed Poland against Germany, assisted the allies in Norway and forced Sweden to stop supplying iron ore, AA guns, etc, to Germany, France would not have fallen, Italy would not have declared war on the Allies and Hitler would have been overthrown and Germany would have had to capitulate.
36) Hitler insisting on treating like sub humans and even killing the Slav civilians in Poland, the USSR, etc, although Rosenberg, his racial expert kept insisting that they were Aryan.
37) German submarine U-120 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet.
38) The Japanese never being able to destroy the Flying Tigers, a very small force with obsolete planes, or to defeat Chiang Kai-shek or the communists and yet starting a fight with the US (forcing America into the war).
39) The high tech Bismarck being sunk, because a Swordfish biplane flying at 100 mph damaged her rudder with a torpedo. The plane was not shot down, because the antiaircraft guns were programmed for much faster planes (the shells exploded far ahead of the airplane, not causing any damage). After the Bismarck sank the Hood, a shell from the Prince of Wales hit the Bismarck and when through it, leaving a 2 m exit hole. When the large group of British ships then caught up with the Bismarck (whose rudder had collided with a propeller because of a torpedo, causing the ship to sail in circles), they fired over 2,800 shells at the Bismarck. Over 700 shells were 14” to 16”. However, only 4 of these hit the Bismarck, one of them blowing up the command tower. Just one 8” shells killed about 200 men who were crowding a staircase while trying to abandon the ship.
40) Yamamoto losing the battle of Midway, because his original plan for attacking with all the Japanese fleet was modified by the army staff, who decided to invade Port Moresby and to send a diversionary force to the Aleutians, weakening Yamamoto’s force and dooming it. If Yamamoto had had the whole fleet, he would have had enough airplanes to destroy the attacking American planes and their carriers at the same time, inflicting a major victory on America.
41) Yamamoto lost the battle of midway because he sent the 4 fleet carriers ahead with 15 support ships and stayed behind with 5 battleships, 2 light carriers and 41 support ships. Had he kept all the ships together, the shear number of AA and targets and the few planes from the light carriers would have been disastrous for the American planes. Most of the ships did not participate in the battle.
42) The only American aerial torpedo that exploded against a Japanese ship during the battle of Midway was launched by a Catalina flying boat. Although the American carrier torpedo planes did not score any hits and most were shot down, they were invaluable luring away the Zeroes defending the carriers and distracting the AA, so the American dive bombers could knock out all 4 fleet carriers.
43) It was a common practice on American fighter planes to load every 5th round with a tracer round to aid in aiming. This was a mistake. Tracers had different ballistics, so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target, 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet, tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction. Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo. This was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy. American units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down.
44) Among the first ‘Germans’ captured at Normandy were several Koreans. They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Soviets and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans and forced to fight for the German Army until they were captured by the US Army.
45) The US Government striking a deal with Lucky Luciano, in which the mafia agreed to keep saboteurs away from the dock’s of New York and the US agreed to put the mafia in charge in Sicily, after the fascists were ousted.
46) The brilliant British inventor of the jet engine, Frank Whipple was ignored by the British government for years. Unfortunately, the Nazis realized the enormous potential of the engine and invested a lot of resources in its development, so that the German jet fighters (Me 262, Volksjäger, etc), were far more advanced than the British planes (Gloster Meteor).
47) Germany wasting a lot of equipment and men occupying Holland, Greece, Yugoslavia, etc, that were sorely needed in the USSR.
48) The chief of German intelligence, Canaris, working repeatedly against Hitler, as when he told Franco that if he refused Hitler free passage to Gibraltar, Hitler would not attack Spain. Canaris was executed in a concentration camp shortly before the end of the war.
49) Hitler not being able to defeat a small and weak England and starting a fight with the USSR, without even asking the Japanese to invade the USSR simultaneously. Furthermore, even after the Reich was not able to defeat England and the USSR, it declared war on the US, but Japan never declared war on the USSR, until the USSR attacked the Japanese troops in China, after the atomic bomb.
50) Germany (whose army had achieved so many victories thanks to surprise, high mobility and coordination with a massive air force), wasting a large portion of its army and air force in the battle of Kursk, in which there was no surprise, little mobility and inadequate air support and the Soviets had built the most formidable defensive position in history, much more so than the Maginot, Gustaf, Stalin or Siegfried lines or the Atlantic Wall, because the line in Kursk was much shorter and more concentrated and reinforced with enormous amounts of artillery, tanks, airplanes, antitank ditches and mines and infantry
51) The British sinking part of the French fleet, without Hitler ever using it.
52) The Japanese asking the Soviets to convey their intent of capitulation to the Americans after the atomic bomb, instead of communicating directly with the Americans or British. Stalin did not relay the message and decided to continue attacking the Japanese troops in China, Mongolia and Northern Japan instead.
53) The Japanese forcing the Americans into the conflict and then allowing them to supply the Soviets enormous quantities, by refusing to attack ships with Soviet flags.
54) The Soviets killing thousands of their badly needed troops in order to instill discipline.
55) Although the USSR had much more people than Germany, women swelled the ranks of the red army and air force (two famous aces were women). In contrast, the German armed forces, which were desperate for new recruits, refused to enlist women, for anything other than Flak, nursing and office work.
56) MacArthur and Wainwright receiving the medal of honor for losing the Philippines.
57) The Soviet general Vlasov, the most brilliant Soviet general being captured after a remarkable advance, because the Soviets couldn´t reinforce, supply and support him and then being hanged in 1946 as a traitor, for having joined the Germans in the fight against Stalin.
58) Had Stalin sold a million km2 each to Germany and Japan in 1939, all the countries would have benefitted considerably, for the Soviets had too much land and no money and the Germans and Japanese had too much money and no land.
59) Keitel being promoted to Feldmarschal, without fighting in the front in WW II and Guderian being dismissed without ever receiving this title, in spite of brilliant service in Poland, Belgium, France and the USSR. Simply because the first was Hitler’s yes-man and the latter dared contest and even disobey Hitler’s absurd orders in order to save thousands of his troops to fight another day.
60) De Gaulle and his French troops not being the first to land in or parachute into Normandy on D-day, but being the first in Paris.
61) The Americans asking small, poorly supplied garrisons in Guam and Wake to defend themselves against Japan, when even the massive resources of Pearl Harbor and the Philippines had not been able to stop the Japanese navy. These tiny, remote outposts should have been evacuated at the outset of the war.
62) The USSR and Spain being the most primitive, utterly different and only surviving dictatorships in Europe after WW II.
63) The Germans developing extremely advanced aircraft, yet fighting the war using inferior 3 blade propellers, so that their excellent planes were far from realizing their full potential. Then they focused on jet fighters, which used a lot of fuel (which was not available), flew at suboptimal speeds for jet engines and had very unreliable and short lived engines.
64) The Japanese destroying practically all the airplanes and most of the ships in Pearl Harbor, but failing to occupy it, although Pearl Harbor was much more vulnerable and important than the Philippines or Singapore, which the Japanese easily occupied, even without the element of surprise.
65) Germany not occupying the most strategic locations of WW II: Gibraltar-Morocco (the gate to the Mediterranean), Iceland, Faeroe Islands, Stalin´s oil fields, etc, and Japan not occupying the invaluable Madagascar, Ceylon, South Africa, Iran and Iraq (with lots of invaluable oil and a paramount invasion route to the USSR), Aden (Yemen, controlling access to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean from the east), Hawaii (which they should not have attacked at all, but if they were to attack it they should have definitely invaded on Dec. 7, 1941), etc, Instead of taking these locations, Germany squandered enormous amounts of resources taking or trying to take, maintaining or supplying many strategically irrelevant locations: Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, North Africa, Yugoslavia, Greece, defending Sicily and Italy from the allied invasion (instead of simply withdrawing to the Alps), etc, Similarly, Japan wasted invaluable resources in useless locations such as: Guadalcanal, the Aleutians, Midway, the Philippines, Rabaul, Hollandia, Truck, Wewak, Peleliu, Mongolia and several areas in China
66) Hitler ruining the 3 offensives in the USSR when he radically changed plans, wasting invaluable resources besieging Sevastopol for 8 months, capturing Odessa, Kiev and Stalingrad, instead of going straight for Moscow, Baku and Leningrad, as originally planned.
67) Churchill being defeated in elections immediately after winning the war. Roosevelt passing away shortly after reelection and before the end of the war. Hitler, Mussolini, the Polish President in exile, etc, dying (or being murdered) before the end of the war. Tojo ending up in jail and eventually executed and only Stalin, the most demented, murderous and incompetent leader finishing the war as a hero and supposed strategic genius with a much larger empire and much stronger armed forces than those he had in 1939 when he was Hitler’s accomplice in starting the war.
68) At the time of Pearl Harbor the top US Navy command was called CINCUS (pronounced ‘sink us’
, the shoulder patch of the US Army’s 45th Infantry Division was the Swastika, and Hitler’s private train was named ‘Amerika’. All three were soon changed for PR purposes.69) The youngest US serviceman was 12-year-old Calvin Graham, USN. He was wounded and given a dishonorable discharge for lying about his age. His benefits were later restored by an act of Congress.
70) The Americans giving the Soviets billions of dollars worth of steel, explosives, trucks, airplanes, gasoline, food, railroad engines, boots, medications, etc, and the ships to transport them and then spending billions of dollars and thousands of lives during the cold war, countering the Soviet threat and having to fight communist regimes in Korea, Cuba, Viet Nam, etc, The Americans did not even get permission to bomb Japan from the USSR and to have submarine bases in the USSR, so they had to fly extremely long distances with expensive and unreliable B-29s to bomb Japan and supply their submarines from Hawaii.
71) The Italian Commando Supremo changing Rommel’s brilliant plans to defend Tunisia and capture badly needed American supplies, causing him to divide his forces and be defeated rapidly.
72) Stalin with millions of troops and lots of American aid refused to attack Japan in 1944, when the Germans were in quick retreat and instead pressed the Anglos to invade France. Had Stalin attacked Japan, he would have received even more equipment and he could have taken China, Indochina, Thailand, Burma and Japan and had the Americans not invaded France, Stalin could have taken all of Europe, if only he hadn’t been so paranoid and insecure and wasted so many troops pointlessly taking Berlin in a hurry, but going around it. Stalin ensured that the Germans would fight to the death, instead of surrendering by massively raping and killing Germans. Had he treated the people fairly, many war-exhausted Germans would have surrendered.
73) Jochen Peiper’s Panzers were delayed during the first crucial hours of the battle of the bulge (the Ardennes) not by American antitank mines, but by German mines that were placed while the Germans previously withdrew toward the Siegfried line. The Defense of Lanzerath by 28 Americans, against hundreds of German paratroopers also delayed the offensive during a few crucial hours. The delay prevented the Germans from taking full advantage of the bad weather and the surprise and allowed the allies to strengthen the front and to stop the Panzers and then, when the weather cleared, to eliminate the Panzers, leaving Germany almost defenseless.
74) Although Peiper was responsible for the Malmedy massacre and many other atrocities and was sentenced to be hanged, he was released in 1955. Ironically he was murdered and his house burnt down by communists in a small French town.
75) Stauffenberg used only one of the 2 kg of plastic explosive that he had available, tossed the other one away and Hitler survived. Had Stauffenberg put all the explosive in his briefcase, Hitler would have certainly died and the war changed drastically, saving millions of lives. Apparently, Stauffenberg thought he had to install and activate the chemical ignition mechanism on both pieces of explosive and he only had time to do it in one of them. Had he known that the detonation of one of the pieces of explosive would have set off the other piece, he would have succeeded. Lucky Hitler.
76) More Germans died in the time between Stauffenberg’s failed assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944 and the end of the war than in the previous 5 years of war.
77) In 1944 and 45 the Germans produced about 150 Jagdtiger, which had 10” front armor but were vulnerable elsewhere. The tank had an amazing 128 mm gun, but the whole tank had to be rotated for traverse (it had no turret) and the missile and powder were loaded separately, so the rate of fire was very low and it had a crew of 8 and weighed 70 tons. There were a few of them in the Ruhr pocket. Ironically one was destroyed by friendly fire with a Panzerfaust from a young soldier who had never seen one and was sure it was an allied tank. That’s the problem when you have two good weapons and inexperienced soldiers. A few of them surrendered when the Ruhr area fell.
78) Marshal Mannerheim of Finland being decorated by both sides on both world wars. He was so bright that he managed to win allies and aid from all over world and fend off the Soviets for decades. However, the bright Mannerheim could have ensured the Axis victory, had the Fins assisted the Germans in capturing Leningrad and Murmansk in 1941, when they were poorly defended, thus liberating a huge German army to assist in the attack on Moscow. The 400,000 invaluable Finnish troops sat in their trenches during this crucial time and would later experience severe losses when the much strengthened Soviets counter attacked in 1943-44.
79) The French volunteer soldiers of the Charlemagne division in the German army fought very well in the eastern front. Most of them died fighting and the few of them at the end defended Hitler’s bunker, so it wouldn´t be captured on May 1st. The Soviets killed most of them. Some spent 20 years in forced labor camps in the USSR and 11 were delivered to the free French. General Leclerc asked them why they wore German uniforms and one of them asked Leclerc why he wore an American uniform. Leclerc had them all executed without trial.
80) The USSR being able to defeat and occupy Germany, but not Finland.
81) Stalin, arguably the worst military leader during the 1920 Polish-Soviet war, eventually becoming the military leader of the USSR and Krushchev, arguably the worst soviet military leader in WW II, becoming the leader of the USSR shortly after Stalin’s death.
82) Generalissimo Franco of Spain, who is not famous for his altruism, saving 200,000 Jews from Vichy, Greece, etc, using the meager resources of his impoverished country during WW II, while altruistic, mighty America refused asylum even to a few boatloads of German-Jewish immigrants.
83) China & India were the most populated countries (515 & 378 million) and were in a most strategic location. Yet the Axis attacked them, instead of helping Chiang to defeat the Communists and gaining an invaluable ally against the USSR and liberating India from the inefficient yoke of GB. Similarly, the US did not use the unlimited potential of China & India to destroy Japan with American leadership and materiel, rapidly recovering Burma and then China, Mongolia, etc, then bombing Japan from China and then getting rid of Tojo, Stalin & Hitler with these powerful allies and the RAF, which was far more useful than the British army.
84) Germany and GB ruining their economies destroying each other, while Stalin became stronger all the time with American help, so that the most incompetent and cruel tyrant had a huge empire at the end of the war, while West Germany was a small portion of the former country and it and GB had utterly broken economies at the end of the war.
85) Germany and Japan bouncing back so fast after being destroyed completely during the war, while GB never recovered completely and gradually lost its empire and industrial might.
86) Although 5 million Indians volunteered during the war and at the end of the war there were 2.5 million Indian volunteers in the British army, I can find extremely few pilots and no generals, etc, among them, which seems absurd and unfair. Did the British consider them sub humans?
87) Perhaps the most ironic thing of the war is that after wasting over 62 million lives, a larger number of wounded and crippled, destroying hundreds of thousands of buildings, wasting billions of dollars, billions of unproductive man-hours, huge amounts of oil, fuel, steel, etc, the war ended the depression and the world entered an unprecedented era of prosperity and tense peace.
