Timeline of the Incompetent Leadership Contest in WW II:
1) Stalin orders the powerful German communist party not to form a coalition with the social democrats, so that the Nazis can gain considerable force in parliament. Eventually Hitler becomes a dictator and the German communists have to leave the country or are arrested or murdered.
2) Stalin allows German officers to study in Soviet military academies with German teachers and the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe to perform maneuvers in Soviet soil that are forbidden by the Versailles treaty, greatly strengthening the German forces.
3) In 1937 Japan invades China, ruining all the work that Germany had done strengthening Chiang, losing China’s 515 million people as an invaluable ally against Stalin and pinning down over a million Japanese troops in China and Burma for the duration of the war, without ever defeating Chiang nor the communists. The Japanese invasion forces Chiang to sign a non aggression pact with Stalin (his former enemy, because Stalin supplied the Chinese communists). Had Japan helped Chiang to eliminate the communists, a unified, relatively strong China attacking the USSR together with Japan and Germany would have doomed the USSR. China and Japan could have also easily liberated India from GB, weakening the latter considerably.
4) Baldwin opposes massive rearming and enforcement of the Versailles treaty, so that Germany quickly rearms and has far more planes than the UK and France together. He is followed by Chamberlain, another pacifist that allows Hitler to take Austria and Czechoslovakia and become much stronger.
5) Britain fails to take advantage of the massive, inexpensive labor force of India, so that in 1939 India, with 378 million people and plenty of ore produces less steel than Australia with 7 million people.
6) Hitler ignores the brilliant secretary of economy Hjalmar Schacht, who in 3 years boosted the German economy, so Schacht resigns and Hitler gives his post to the incompetent Göring, who is heads the 4 year program and the Luftwaffe. Production under Göring and Todt is far a small fraction of what it will be during Speer’s leadership, in spite of Göring having plenty of imported material, qualified labor, fewer allied bombings, etc,
7) Stalin massacres 3 out of 5 field marshals and 84 generals, most colonels, etc, (30,000 Soviet officers in all) in the 1937-38 purges, among them is Tukhachevsky, perhaps the best and most experienced strategist in the world at the time. Stalin also murders millions of teachers, doctors, engineers, industrialists, farmers, politicians, etc, in the purges, who would have been very useful during the war.
8) Before WW II France spends a fortune building the Maginot line, but spends very little in high performance fighters and dive bombers. Instead of the Maginot line, It would have been much more advantageous a) to invest in 5,000 inexpensive 25mmHotchkiss antitank guns and instead of 1,000 useless, underpowered MS 406 planes, for France to build 500 planes with an additional engine and prop on the tail and wingtip tanks, b) to convince president Roosevelt to authorize the sale of 500 Curtiss P-36s (more powerful than the H-75s they bought), 300 P-40s, etc, c) to develop a good dive bomber and to convince the UK of moving all its available fighters to France as soon as the war is declared (the only way to defeat the Luftwaffe by eliminating the obsolete bombers, such as the Stuka, Hs 123, etc,)
9) Hitler Annexes Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938 and neither the allies nor Stalin do anything. Had Poland, France and the UK attacked Germany during the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Czechs would have been valuable allies and Hitler would have fewer resources than he did after taking these countries.
10) Chamberlain rejects Stalin’s offer to form a coalition against Hitler in March 1939, inducing Stalin to sign the non aggression pact with Hitler.
11) Hitler signs the non-aggression pact with Stalin, deciding to share Poland and giving Stalin access to a lot of central Europe and Finland. Instead of attacking Poland together, it would have made much more sense to occupy friendly Iran and Iraq, expelling British and French forces and depriving Britain of much of its oil, and leaving a strengthened Poland as a buffer between the two powers.
12) Japan stupidly gets into a fight with the Soviets in Mongolia in 1939, but the imperial army is far from its supply centers and is trounced, so the Japanese in 1941, when the USSR is at war with Germany, are reluctant to attack the Soviets and condition their attack on Germany capturing Moscow (which doesn’t happen, because Japan fails to attack the USSR and Stalin send his Siberian troops to Moscow to stop the Germans).
13) Hitler attacks Poland in Sept. 1939, starting WW II and leaving the western front extremely vulnerable to allied attack. The Polish army is wiped out between Hitler and Stalin. France and the UK declare war on Germany, although they know they cannot attack Germany, even while most of the Airplanes, tanks and troops are in Poland. Why declare war when you cannot attack, but your ships can be sunk by submarines and your country bombed by airplanes? France & Britain should not have declared war, but simply rearm and mobilize and declare war only when they can attack.
14) Stalin attacks weak Finland in the winter of 1939, which has mostly lumber and minerals (that the USSR already has in excess) with 450,000 troops!, but after having massacred all his high ranking officers (30,000 officers in total), Soviet leadership is extremely deficient. The weather (-40° C) and terrain are most difficult and the tiny Finnish army is extremely tough and efficient and receives aid from Germany and the rest of the world (although mostly in the form of obsolete equipment). Incredibly, Stalin’s offensive, led by the incompetent Voroshilov and Budyonny, is stopped with great losses. Stalin has only managed to lose resources, prestige and respect. Timoschenko replaces Voroshilov and manages to break through the Mannerheim line, forcing Finland to cede 10% of its territory in order to achieve piece. However, 3 days after Germany invaded the USSR, Stalin orders again the invasion of Finland, which has now a stronger and better equipped army (thanks to Germany) with 400,000 troops and the Soviets are stooped in their tracks and Finland even recovers the territory it had lost in 1939 (only to lose it again in 1944).
15) France and Britain do almost nothing to attack Germany for a year into the war, while Germany is vulnerable invading Poland, they simply wait and allow it to lick its wounds, strengthen its forces and mobilize them against France. Holland has a tiny and ill equipped army and air force and orders one hundred and fifty105 mm cannon from Germany, which naturally withholds delivery, because it intends to attack Holland (the Dutch ordered cannon from the country that they expected to fight!). Belgium has a very good army for the size of the country, but the air force is very weak and relies heavily on the Eben Emael fort, that a few dozen German paratroopers will take in a few days.
16) Hitler decides to invade Norway and Denmark, spreading his forces even thinner in Norway and losing a large part of his navy and many airplanes and troops. Although the allies have an overwhelming naval superiority, they send an expeditionary force that is defeated by Germany (though at a great cost).
17) After sinking German 1 battle ship, 2 cruisers, 10 destroyers, 6 submarines, a tanker and several transports, damaging 2 more cruisers and 6 destroyers, destroying most of the Kriegsmarine’s airplanes and leaving the crippled German fleet with very little fuel, the allies withdraw from Norway, which allows Hitler to send over 600 of the Luftwaffe planes in Norway to France. The French navy, which was far more powerful than the German navy lost only 1 destroyer in Norway. The British lost 1 aircraft carrier, 2 cruisers and 6 destroyers, a very small fraction of their forces. The loss of Norway allowed the Germans to ensure Sweidish iron ore and to attack allied shipping and Russia from bases in Norway. The failure to eliminate the few, poorly supplied German ships in 1940 in Norway would force the British navy to chase some of those ships as far as Uruguay.
18) Although the Dutch had 2 airplane factories (Fokker and Koolhoven) the conservative, austere government did not deem it appropriate to build a few hundred fighter planes. Although Holland has a greater population and is wealthier and more industrialized than Belgium, the latter has 22 divisions and Holland only 7 and poorly equipped.
19) Instead of wiping out the Allied planes in France (which did not include Spitfires) before invading it, Germany invades and has to face the Allied planes and provide ground support simultaneously, which causes loses of 2,000 German planes, which coupled with the 2,000 lost over Britain will cripple the Luftwaffe for operation Barbarossa, where the dismal air support over the huge front will be disastrous.
20) Germany invades Holland, Belgium and France (instead of respecting Holland’s neutrality, as Germany had in WW I) and advances rapidly thanks to Dowding’s stupid mistake of leaving his best fighters in the UK. Germany does not coordinate with Italy to invade France, so the French are free to concentrate their forces in the north. The overwhelming German air superiority completely demoralized the allied infantry exposed to continuous bombing along the German spearheads for days. Holland falls in 4 days, when the army surrenders in order to save other Dutch cities from the same fate as Rotterdam, which was demolished by a firestorm caused by Stukas and twin engine bombers. France falls and Hitler can now bomb British airplane factories, attack air fields in the UK, etc, Even during the Battle of Britain, Dowding leaves always half the planes in reserve.
21) When Churchill has 6 of his destroyers sunk and 18 destroyers damaged evacuating troops in Dunkirk, Roosevelt sends him 50 WW I American destroyers, which would have been invaluable defending the Philippines, Wake, Midway and the American Atlantic coast in 1941 and 42. So that Churchill can continue to lose destroyers evacuating troops from Greece, etc, while the Americans don’t have enough destroyers to defend extremely important assets.
22) After defeating France, Germany wastes 2,050 planes in the battle of Britain, instead of capturing invaluable Tangiers with much fewer losses, closing the Mediterranean to the British and securing access to Iranian and Iraqi oil for Germany and perhaps persuading the Turks to join the Axis.
23) Instead of invading France, Hitler should have attacked the USSR in 1940, with an intact Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht. Stalin had killed 30,000 officers in 1937-38 and had not even replaced all of them in 1940. However, Hitler should have treated well the Soviet prisoners in order to encourage the Soviets to surrender and even to join the German forces. This way Hitler could have even used Soviet tanks and airplanes against Stalin. Moreover, Hitler should have ensured massive support for the invasion of Russia from Italy and Japan, avoiding the pointless and expensive invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia and the American and British possessions and ensuring Stalin’s defeat. France and Britain were terrified of Stalin and would not have attacked Germany while Stalin was being defeated.
24) Mussolini invades France after the German advances cause the French defenses to collapse and the British expeditionary force has left, but manages to advance extremely little, because the Italians do not coordinate the land and air forces efficiently, which will cause them to be defeated by the Greeks shortly thereafter.
25) Hitler begins the Battle of Britain in the worst possible way, by sending small waves of slow and vulnerable Stukas, twin engine bombers and Me-109’s, whose short range allows only for a few minutes of battle over GB. On the other hand, Churchill has just sacrificed pointlessly 509 fighters in the Battle of France and Belgium and can barely resist the German onslaught. Britain should have sent all its fighters to France or none of them. All of them would have downed thousands of German bombers, defended the allied bombers and primitive French fighters much better and stopped the German advance, saving France and sending no planes at all to France would have left a much stronger RAF to defend France (Dowding ignored the old adage “Divide and conquer” and Britain was extremely lucky to have won the Battle of Britain, in spite of Dowding’s mistake)..
26) Britain was Germany’s and Italy’s only enemy when France fell, his army was lousy and the air force had been decimated in France. Had Britain signed an armistice with Germany, GB could have concentrated in rearming, especially in building airplanes and in strengthening Iran, Iraq, Singapore, Indonesia, Burma, China, etc, with modern airplanes, tanks, Aircraft carriers and submarines. Most importantly, GB should have developed the military industry in India and China and trained pilots and troops in large numbers in these countries, so that Japan would not attack British territories and continue to fight China and chose to sue for peace with China and to attack the USSR instead. Germany could have attacked the USSR with many more airplanes (without the losses in the battle of Britain) so Germany could have advanced much more into the USSR. In 1943, after the USSR, Japan and Germany have lost most of their armed forces and are in a dire need for supplies, while Britain and India are much stronger, GB would declare war on Japan and Germany.
27) Mussolini had given Campioni orders not to engage the English fleet unless the odds were heavily in favor. This prevented Campioni from inflicting heavy damage on the slightly weaker British Fleet at the battle of Spartivento, in which the Italians disengaged even though they outgunned and outsped the British fleet. The Italians could have inflicted heavy damage on the British warships and then on the merchant convoy sailing for Malta that they were escorting.
28) Stupidly, Mussolini invades Greece (which didn´t have much to offer Italy, 9 million people and almost no industry and limited agriculture), but is soundly defeated (although the Greeks have almost no tanks or planes and only a few cannon that the British captured from the Italians in North Africa and gave to the Greeks!), and Italy is on the verge of losing Albania to Greece, so he asks Germany for help. Even more Stupidly, Hitler runs to Italy’s help and invades Greece and Yugoslavia, has to spread its forces even thinner and is left with fewer tanks, troops and planes for the next offensive and fewer neutral nations with which to trade. Most importantly, Germany must delay its next offensive, with disastrous consequences, because one month of good weather has been lost when Barbarossa starts.
29) The Greek high command, keeping most of their divisions in Albania after forcing the Italians to retreat, so that when the Germans attacked from Bulgaria, they could rapidly advance into Greece. By the time they tried to relocate the forces, it was too late.
30) The British send their troops from Libya, where they are about to expel the Italians, to Greece, where they are completely useless and experience heavy losses.
31) Churchill refuses to sign an alliance with the USSR, proposed by Stalin in May 1941 (the same mistake that Chamberlain had done in 1939).
32) After losing 4,000 aircraft and many of his best pilots, lots of tanks, warships, and troops in Poland, Norway, Denmark, France, Belgium, Holland, the UK, Greece, Yugoslavia, Africa, etc, Hitler decides to invade the huge USSR, with millions of troops, tens of thousands of airplanes (though obsolete), tanks, cannon, 8 million troops and the worst weather in years. The German offensive advances fast at the beginning, capturing millions of Soviet prisoners, artillery, etc, Stalin, instead of withdrawing, regrouping and preparing a coherent counteroffensive, panics and orders an immediate counteroffensive on all fronts, with disastrous consequences.
33) The British high command prevents the general in charge of defending Crete from destroying the airfields, so that the German troops can land in their gliders and their fighter and planes and bombers have a place to land and Germany takes Crete.
34) Hitler lost many paratroopers in Crete. Mostly because they did not carry their weapons, but had to find separate containers carrying them. Instead of learning from this mistake, Hitler would never use paratroopers again, depriving his forces of an invaluable resource in the USSR, etc, In contrast, the Allies were impressed by the fact thousands of British and Greek troops in Crete were defeated by paratroopers and developed excellent airborne divisions that would render invaluable service during the war.
35) Although Stalin´s brilliant spies inform him of the strength and date of the imminent German attack, Stalin does nothing and is trounced, losing 3 million men, 21,000 airplanes, 20,000 tanks, tens of thousands of pieces of artillery and the most productive part of the USSR in the first 5 months.
36) Hitler wasted the incredible capacity of the Wehrmacht to wage the Blitzkrieg when he ordered extremely costly and lengthy sieges and city warfare in Kiev, Sevastopol, Smolensk, Leningrad, Stalingrad, dooming Barbarossa and the Axis. Had he simply bypassed these fortified cities, isolating huge armies, he would have defeated the USSR, especially if Japan, Italy and Finland had attacked jointly.
37) However, instead of concentrating his forces on an offensive that first captures the oil fields, linking up with Iran and Iraq, Hitler sends a large force to lay siege to Leningrad (all these forces will be useless for more than 2 years, achieving little more than tying down some Soviet force and starving to death hundreds of thousands of civilians), another huge force to lay siege to Sevastopol (which will be useless for 8 moths), and a third huge offensive to take Moscow. The Moscow attack is stopped, because Hitler fails to take advantage of the opportunity and sends Guderian to Kiev and Hoth to Leningrad, delaying the offensive enough time for the autumn rains and then the winter to hamper the offensive and because Stalin learns from his spies that Japan will not attack the USSR, unless Moscow falls, so he mobilizes hundreds of thousands of troops from Siberia and tosses them into the German offensive, which runs out of ammunition and fuel, so it stops and the Germans then withdraw and later on Hitler weakens the Baku offensive, by sending Von Paulus to take Stalingrad. Unfortunately, Germany hasn´t enough planes to support the Panzers’ advance and the weather is very harsh. Stalingrad will eliminate a third of a million German soldiers from the war (Hitler will not allow them to withdraw and maneuver in time),.
38) At the same time that Hitler invades the USSR, Germany is fighting in North Africa, further spreading its forces thinner and without hope of success.
39) Although Japan has not defeated the Chinese, Japan stupidly occupies Indochina in 1940 (with Vichy’s consent) and in 1941Roosevelt stupidly stops selling fuel and scrap iron to the Japanese, forcing them to drag America into the war, long before the US is ready to fight. Had Roosevelt continued selling oil and scrap iron to Japan, the latter would have attacked the USSR (as per the imperial army plan), allowing the US time to build up the navy, army and air force.
40) Japan stupidly decides not to attack the Soviets, until Moscow falls, but this never happens, because Stalin learns of this decision (through the spy Richard Sorge) and sends all his troops in Siberia and Mongolia to Moscow, stopping the German offensive and preventing Japan from attacking him.
41) Just when Germany is really busy and bogging down on all fronts, Japan decides to attack not the USSR (which is agonizing)), but the US, bringing yet another powerful enemy into the war with 130 million people and a fabulous industry. However, instead of concentrating all its forces and taking Hawaii and Panama, Japan attacks simultaneously Hawaii and invades Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Most of the allied navies and air forces are destroyed in the Pacific. Even after Japan attacked, the US did not declare war on Germany. Hitler stupidly does declare war on the US, although the Japanese never declared war on the USSR!
42) Instead of gathering the formidable Japanese fleet and invading Hawaii, effectively displacing the US from the Pacific, Japan attacks simultaneously Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Malaya, etc, Japan fails to destroy any of the carriers in the surprise attack and galvanizes Americans to fight and produce without respite until Japan is defeated.
43) General Short orders all the planes to be placed on the airfields in Hawaii as close as possible so they can be guarded against sabotage by the Japanese living in Hawaii. Unfortunately, this makes them ideal targets, makes prompt scrambling impossible and maximizes the damage inflicted by the Japanese planes.
44) The US army installs a radar station in Oahu but has no command system to use the crucial information and rapidly scramble fighters to defend the invaluable fleet.
45) Although Japan forces the US into the war and the US cannot even fight Japan right away, Roosevelt assigns priority to Europe and continues giving away billions of dollars to the British and to Stalin, who together have many more men and resources than Germany, and who waste most of the aid. Churchill chooses to lose a lot of airplanes and thousands of pilots, gunners, etc, in order to murder children, women and the elderly in bombing raids on German cities, without much effect on the military. Actually, Hitler benefits when a half million unproductive Germans are murdered, leaving more food for his soldiers and factory workers. Had Roosevelt assigned priority to Asia, recovered Burma, used the immense resources of India, supplied the Chinese and kicked out the Japanese from China, Korea, Indochina, etc, and left all the submarines around Indonesia to sink all the tankers and rice transports, Japan would not have had any fuel or rice from Burma or Indonesia and would not have been able to fight. US bombers from China could wipe out the fleet and the factories, airfields, etc, Japan would have fallen by 1944. Then with the help of China and India the US should have invaded The USSR from Iran, Iraq, China, the Pacific and the arctic. It was absurd of the Americans to waste so much invaluable aid on the British and Soviet armies, which were very inefficient and in sending millions of soldiers to Britain and then France. The US should have concentrated on building massive amounts of much better tanks than the Sherman and P-47s and P-51s and trained American pilots and officers and Chinese and Indian troops.
46) While they are fighting in useless Libya, Tunisia, etc, the British lose Burma to the Japanese. Burma is the largest grain exporter in the world, a source of vital oil and the only artery to supply the Chinese nationalists from India. The British give 1,020 tanks, 540 planes airplanes, 1,400 pieces of artillery, many of them self propelled) and 196,000 troops (many from India, which is next to Burma and starving for lack of Burmese rice!) to Monty (much of the equipment came from the US) to fight Rommel with only 116,000 troops, 547 tanks, 470 planes, 580 antitank guns and 500 cannon in the useless desert in Africa. Great Churchillian strategy and logic. The Germans lose only 32,000 men and manage to escape because Monty is too afraid or too lazy to follow them and to wipe them out of Africa, so they continue fighting, until the Americans arrive in even larger numbers and with even more equipment. The Japanese get to use the valuable rice and oil from Burma for 2 years and isolate the Chinese nationalists, who can barely fight without supplies.
47) Because Auchinleck and Montgomery cannot stop Rommel from capturing the Suez Canal, unless they have far more men, tanks, artillery, antitank guns, etc, The allies have to keep Malta at all costs in order to prevent Rommel from receiving badly needed supplies. Just to supply and defend the Island from the German and Italian planes, surface boats, submarines, etc, The British will lose an alarming number of ships and airplanes. In just one convoy, only 4 ships limped to Malta out of 15. Defending and supplying Malta the British lost 2 aircraft carriers, 413 fighters, 40 submarines, 4 cruisers, 19 destroyers, etc,
48) In 1942 Yamamoto sends a small fleet to invade Port Moresby and loses a light carrier and has 2 fleet carriers put out of action for several months in the battle of the Coral Sea and has to cancel the invasion of Port Moresby. He also sends a fleet to the Aleutians to draw the Americans away of Midway (it doesn’t work). Then in Midway Yamamoto sends the 4 fleet carriers ahead and stays hundreds of miles behind with 2 light carriers, 5 battleships and 41 support ships (many cruisers, destroyers, submarines, etc,). The formidable rear fleet remains out of the battle, so he loses all 4 invaluable fleet carriers, effectively losing the war. Instead of sending fleets to Port Moresby and the Aleutians and fooling around with Midway, Yamamoto should gave gathered his formidable fleet and invaded Hawaii and destroyed the carriers. Without Pearl Harbor and carriers it would have been very difficult for the US to counter attack.
49) Anglo-American convoy PQ-17 From the US to the USSR in 1942 only 11 ships out of 35 arrived. The escort cruisers and destroyers left the convoy because they thought that German light cruisers were sailing toward the convoy (false alarm) and they sailed to intercept them.
50) The Allies launch operation Torch in the autumn of 1942, initially fighting against Vichy troops until the Americans buy out their generals and admirals, and they join the free French. Hitler has to relocate planes, which are desperately needed in Stalingrad, etc, to the African front, exacerbating conditions in Stalingrad, Where the Soviet troops now cross the Volga in large waves and Capture the German forces. Instead of simply skipping along the North African coast, building Air bases and cutting off Rommel’s and Italy’s forces, the allies venture inland and lose a lot of tanks and troops. In 1943, about a quarter million German troops and a smaller number of Italian troops die or are taken prisoner and all the German and Italian materiel is lost in Africa.
51) Churchill and Harris stupidly decide to spend a fortune and sacrifice invaluable crews, planes, fuel and bombs in a massive air campaign. They also convince the Americans to take part in the bombing. Unfortunately, there are no long range escorts, so losses are appalling during 1942 and 43. Close to a half million children, women and elderly people are killed in bombing raids, most Germany cities are ruined and the impact on the military is negligible. These bombers would have been much more useful fighting the Japanese in Burma, China, Korea, Indochina, etc, from the USSR and India and bombing the Japanese shipyards, ships, etc,
52) Stalin is pathologically afraid of German tanks and even though the Germans manufacture much fewer tanks than the USSR and have to send them to several countries and fronts, Stalin manufactures 67,000 T-34 tanks and about half as many among all the other types, 36,000 tank-busting Sturmoviks (airplanes) and 14 million 2.5 kg anti tank bombs. He also makes 6 million submachine guns and over a half million cannon, but for everything else, he relies pretty much on the American industry, which has the burden of supplying all the allies and itself on all fronts.
53) After failing on all fronts, in 1943 Hitler orders operation Citadel, which includes an attack on Kursk, where the Soviets have built thousands of antitank traps, have an incredible concentration of tanks, artillery, rockets, minefields, airplanes, troops, etc, (the most formidable fortification in history). So the German forces are practically wiped out and begin to withdraw rapidly toward Germany. Although Germany has hopelessly lost the war, Hitler refuses to concede defeat and dooms millions of people to their death, and incredibly, the German people do almost nothing besides a failed assassination attempt.
54) After defeating Rommel in Africa at a great cost, the Allies invade Sicily and then Italy. However, the mountainous terrain and the narrow peninsula make advancing very difficult and costly in allied lives, and almost to no avail, even when Germany capitulated, the Germans still held northern Italy, after over 50,000 allied casualties, so it was pointless.
55) Although after Kursk the Soviets have practically won the war, the US continued supplying them with lots of materiel until the end of the war, that they would never pay and even though Stalin refuses to declare war on Japan and attack it. Why?
56) In the Pacific, The Americans take Tarawa, a useless islet at a tremendous cost, bomb Wewak, destroying hundreds of valuable Japanese planes and then isolate its 200,000 Japanese troops. The Americans also attack Truck (the Japanese Pearl Harbor), devastating the fleet and planes. MacArthur insists on taking the Philippines, overruling Nimitz, who wants to bypass them, going straight to Japan. This single decision cost a lot of lives and time. General Lamay launches an extremely expensive series of massive raids that kill more people than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, but are ignored by the Japanese leadership, who cares little about Japanese lives.
57) General Lucas wastes the complete surprise of the Allied landings in Anzio and Nettuno on January 22, 1944. Instead of advancing rapidly and unopposed towards Rome, Lucas decides to consolidate his beachhead, allowing Kesselring time to move several divisions, occupy the hills around the beachhead and prepare formidable defensive positions. The Americans suffer 43,000 casualties before taking Rome.
58) In 1944 McArthur ignores Admirals King and Nimitz, who want to bypass the Philippines and invade Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The Japanese have over a quarter million troops and lots of airplanes, etc, in the Philippines, so the campaign is extremely costly and delays the capture of the important islands closer to Japan. While the Americans are invading Leyte, admiral Halsey took all the large and most of the small carriers on a wild goose chase trying to destroy the almost planeless Japanese carriers to the North, leaving a ridiculously weak force to protect the huge fleet of transport ships loaded with men. The Japanese attacked with a massive fleet, including the largest battleships ever built, the Musashi and the Yamato, which could have easily wiped out the transport ships and their precious cargo. However, the tiny defending force with a few submarines, torpedo boats, destroyers, and escort carriers with primitive wildcats and bombers put up such a ferocious defense and sank or damaged so many Japanese ships, that admiral Murita thought he was fighting Halsey’s main fleet and withdrew, wasting the effect of the successful decoy fleet and the last reserves of fuel the Japanese had, so that the Americans landed without losses to the Japanese navy and the Japanese navy was in effect neutralized for lack of fuel and airplanes.
59) While the Americans are invading Leyte, admiral Halsey takes all the large and most of the small carriers on a wild goose chase trying to destroy the almost planeless Japanese carriers to the North, leaving a ridiculously weak force to protect the huge fleet of transport ships loaded with men. The Japanese attacked with a massive fleet, including the largest battleships ever built, the Musashi and the Yamato, which could have easily wiped out the transport ships and their precious cargo. However, the tiny defending force with a few submarines, torpedo boats, destroyers, and escort carriers with primitive wildcats and bombers put up such a ferocious defense and sank or damaged so many Japanese ships, that admiral Murita thought he was fighting Halsey’s main fleet and withdrew, wasting the effect of the successful decoy fleet and the last reserves of fuel the Japanese had, so that the Americans landed almost without losses to the Japanese navy and the Japanese navy was in effect neutralized for lack of fuel and airplanes.
60) Chiang Kai-shek was so incompetent that in spite of having millions of men at his disposal and American armament, the Japanese offensive of 1944 with 360,000 men rapidly advanced in Nationalist China and almost occupied Kunming, Chiang’s capital, which had the airport that received all the American materiel flown over the Hump at great cost. The Americans had to transport by air two Chinese divisions from Myitkyina (Burma), which had been fed, trained and armed by the Americans in India to defend Kunming. Chiang hoarded most of the supplies, because he was afraid that if he gave them to his generals, they might overthrow him.
61) When the Americans see that Mao´s 3 million men fight much better than Chiang’s troops in 1944, they start supplying them generously, not realizing that they are delivering the most populated country to the communists. Had the atomic bomb not worked, the communists would have taken over the world in 1947.
62) In the winter of 1944 Hitler launches the Ardennes offensive, losing his best tanks and troops on the western front, while the Soviets are rapidly advancing on the eastern front, yet Hitler does not surrender.
63) The US spend 4.5 billion dollars building B-29 bases in China in order to bomb Japan, which are quickly captured in 1944 by the Japanese, who sweep aside Chiang Kai-shek’s army.
64) In late 1944 Finland and Romania become Germany’s enemies, and the Eastern front practically collapses, yet Hitler would not surrender. Japan had lost practically all its ships and boats, has no oil and is starving, but would not surrender. Both countries had lost hundreds of thousands to bombing raids, but that was irrelevant to their leaders.
65) On January 1, 1945 Hitler launches operation Bodenplatte, which involves most of the Luftwaffe’s fighters (950 planes), including those in the eastern front. Many German AA batteries had not been notified and shot down many German planes. The Germans managed to destroy several British and American planes on the ground and a few in the air, but lost close to 300 planes and over 200 pilots that they could not replace, while the allies readily replaced their planes and lost few pilots. When the allies enter Germany in operations Plunder and Varsity, the Luftwaffe can hardly oppose them.
66) In 1945 denial has become an epidemic and Japan and Germany continue to fight, losing troops, civilians and buildings more rapidly all the time. About 2.5 million Germans with very few airplanes, tanks, etc, face 6 million Soviets with impressive amounts of equipment and 1 million Germans face 4 million troops of the western allies, also with formidable equipment. Incredibly, the US continue to supply the USSR with massive amounts of free high octane fuel, materiel, food, explosives, etc, till the end of the war, although Germany is obviously defeated by 1944.
1) Stalin orders the powerful German communist party not to form a coalition with the social democrats, so that the Nazis can gain considerable force in parliament. Eventually Hitler becomes a dictator and the German communists have to leave the country or are arrested or murdered.
2) Stalin allows German officers to study in Soviet military academies with German teachers and the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe to perform maneuvers in Soviet soil that are forbidden by the Versailles treaty, greatly strengthening the German forces.
3) In 1937 Japan invades China, ruining all the work that Germany had done strengthening Chiang, losing China’s 515 million people as an invaluable ally against Stalin and pinning down over a million Japanese troops in China and Burma for the duration of the war, without ever defeating Chiang nor the communists. The Japanese invasion forces Chiang to sign a non aggression pact with Stalin (his former enemy, because Stalin supplied the Chinese communists). Had Japan helped Chiang to eliminate the communists, a unified, relatively strong China attacking the USSR together with Japan and Germany would have doomed the USSR. China and Japan could have also easily liberated India from GB, weakening the latter considerably.
4) Baldwin opposes massive rearming and enforcement of the Versailles treaty, so that Germany quickly rearms and has far more planes than the UK and France together. He is followed by Chamberlain, another pacifist that allows Hitler to take Austria and Czechoslovakia and become much stronger.
5) Britain fails to take advantage of the massive, inexpensive labor force of India, so that in 1939 India, with 378 million people and plenty of ore produces less steel than Australia with 7 million people.
6) Hitler ignores the brilliant secretary of economy Hjalmar Schacht, who in 3 years boosted the German economy, so Schacht resigns and Hitler gives his post to the incompetent Göring, who is heads the 4 year program and the Luftwaffe. Production under Göring and Todt is far a small fraction of what it will be during Speer’s leadership, in spite of Göring having plenty of imported material, qualified labor, fewer allied bombings, etc,
7) Stalin massacres 3 out of 5 field marshals and 84 generals, most colonels, etc, (30,000 Soviet officers in all) in the 1937-38 purges, among them is Tukhachevsky, perhaps the best and most experienced strategist in the world at the time. Stalin also murders millions of teachers, doctors, engineers, industrialists, farmers, politicians, etc, in the purges, who would have been very useful during the war.
8) Before WW II France spends a fortune building the Maginot line, but spends very little in high performance fighters and dive bombers. Instead of the Maginot line, It would have been much more advantageous a) to invest in 5,000 inexpensive 25mmHotchkiss antitank guns and instead of 1,000 useless, underpowered MS 406 planes, for France to build 500 planes with an additional engine and prop on the tail and wingtip tanks, b) to convince president Roosevelt to authorize the sale of 500 Curtiss P-36s (more powerful than the H-75s they bought), 300 P-40s, etc, c) to develop a good dive bomber and to convince the UK of moving all its available fighters to France as soon as the war is declared (the only way to defeat the Luftwaffe by eliminating the obsolete bombers, such as the Stuka, Hs 123, etc,)
9) Hitler Annexes Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938 and neither the allies nor Stalin do anything. Had Poland, France and the UK attacked Germany during the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Czechs would have been valuable allies and Hitler would have fewer resources than he did after taking these countries.
10) Chamberlain rejects Stalin’s offer to form a coalition against Hitler in March 1939, inducing Stalin to sign the non aggression pact with Hitler.
11) Hitler signs the non-aggression pact with Stalin, deciding to share Poland and giving Stalin access to a lot of central Europe and Finland. Instead of attacking Poland together, it would have made much more sense to occupy friendly Iran and Iraq, expelling British and French forces and depriving Britain of much of its oil, and leaving a strengthened Poland as a buffer between the two powers.
12) Japan stupidly gets into a fight with the Soviets in Mongolia in 1939, but the imperial army is far from its supply centers and is trounced, so the Japanese in 1941, when the USSR is at war with Germany, are reluctant to attack the Soviets and condition their attack on Germany capturing Moscow (which doesn’t happen, because Japan fails to attack the USSR and Stalin send his Siberian troops to Moscow to stop the Germans).
13) Hitler attacks Poland in Sept. 1939, starting WW II and leaving the western front extremely vulnerable to allied attack. The Polish army is wiped out between Hitler and Stalin. France and the UK declare war on Germany, although they know they cannot attack Germany, even while most of the Airplanes, tanks and troops are in Poland. Why declare war when you cannot attack, but your ships can be sunk by submarines and your country bombed by airplanes? France & Britain should not have declared war, but simply rearm and mobilize and declare war only when they can attack.
14) Stalin attacks weak Finland in the winter of 1939, which has mostly lumber and minerals (that the USSR already has in excess) with 450,000 troops!, but after having massacred all his high ranking officers (30,000 officers in total), Soviet leadership is extremely deficient. The weather (-40° C) and terrain are most difficult and the tiny Finnish army is extremely tough and efficient and receives aid from Germany and the rest of the world (although mostly in the form of obsolete equipment). Incredibly, Stalin’s offensive, led by the incompetent Voroshilov and Budyonny, is stopped with great losses. Stalin has only managed to lose resources, prestige and respect. Timoschenko replaces Voroshilov and manages to break through the Mannerheim line, forcing Finland to cede 10% of its territory in order to achieve piece. However, 3 days after Germany invaded the USSR, Stalin orders again the invasion of Finland, which has now a stronger and better equipped army (thanks to Germany) with 400,000 troops and the Soviets are stooped in their tracks and Finland even recovers the territory it had lost in 1939 (only to lose it again in 1944).
15) France and Britain do almost nothing to attack Germany for a year into the war, while Germany is vulnerable invading Poland, they simply wait and allow it to lick its wounds, strengthen its forces and mobilize them against France. Holland has a tiny and ill equipped army and air force and orders one hundred and fifty105 mm cannon from Germany, which naturally withholds delivery, because it intends to attack Holland (the Dutch ordered cannon from the country that they expected to fight!). Belgium has a very good army for the size of the country, but the air force is very weak and relies heavily on the Eben Emael fort, that a few dozen German paratroopers will take in a few days.
16) Hitler decides to invade Norway and Denmark, spreading his forces even thinner in Norway and losing a large part of his navy and many airplanes and troops. Although the allies have an overwhelming naval superiority, they send an expeditionary force that is defeated by Germany (though at a great cost).
17) After sinking German 1 battle ship, 2 cruisers, 10 destroyers, 6 submarines, a tanker and several transports, damaging 2 more cruisers and 6 destroyers, destroying most of the Kriegsmarine’s airplanes and leaving the crippled German fleet with very little fuel, the allies withdraw from Norway, which allows Hitler to send over 600 of the Luftwaffe planes in Norway to France. The French navy, which was far more powerful than the German navy lost only 1 destroyer in Norway. The British lost 1 aircraft carrier, 2 cruisers and 6 destroyers, a very small fraction of their forces. The loss of Norway allowed the Germans to ensure Sweidish iron ore and to attack allied shipping and Russia from bases in Norway. The failure to eliminate the few, poorly supplied German ships in 1940 in Norway would force the British navy to chase some of those ships as far as Uruguay.
18) Although the Dutch had 2 airplane factories (Fokker and Koolhoven) the conservative, austere government did not deem it appropriate to build a few hundred fighter planes. Although Holland has a greater population and is wealthier and more industrialized than Belgium, the latter has 22 divisions and Holland only 7 and poorly equipped.
19) Instead of wiping out the Allied planes in France (which did not include Spitfires) before invading it, Germany invades and has to face the Allied planes and provide ground support simultaneously, which causes loses of 2,000 German planes, which coupled with the 2,000 lost over Britain will cripple the Luftwaffe for operation Barbarossa, where the dismal air support over the huge front will be disastrous.
20) Germany invades Holland, Belgium and France (instead of respecting Holland’s neutrality, as Germany had in WW I) and advances rapidly thanks to Dowding’s stupid mistake of leaving his best fighters in the UK. Germany does not coordinate with Italy to invade France, so the French are free to concentrate their forces in the north. The overwhelming German air superiority completely demoralized the allied infantry exposed to continuous bombing along the German spearheads for days. Holland falls in 4 days, when the army surrenders in order to save other Dutch cities from the same fate as Rotterdam, which was demolished by a firestorm caused by Stukas and twin engine bombers. France falls and Hitler can now bomb British airplane factories, attack air fields in the UK, etc, Even during the Battle of Britain, Dowding leaves always half the planes in reserve.
21) When Churchill has 6 of his destroyers sunk and 18 destroyers damaged evacuating troops in Dunkirk, Roosevelt sends him 50 WW I American destroyers, which would have been invaluable defending the Philippines, Wake, Midway and the American Atlantic coast in 1941 and 42. So that Churchill can continue to lose destroyers evacuating troops from Greece, etc, while the Americans don’t have enough destroyers to defend extremely important assets.
22) After defeating France, Germany wastes 2,050 planes in the battle of Britain, instead of capturing invaluable Tangiers with much fewer losses, closing the Mediterranean to the British and securing access to Iranian and Iraqi oil for Germany and perhaps persuading the Turks to join the Axis.
23) Instead of invading France, Hitler should have attacked the USSR in 1940, with an intact Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht. Stalin had killed 30,000 officers in 1937-38 and had not even replaced all of them in 1940. However, Hitler should have treated well the Soviet prisoners in order to encourage the Soviets to surrender and even to join the German forces. This way Hitler could have even used Soviet tanks and airplanes against Stalin. Moreover, Hitler should have ensured massive support for the invasion of Russia from Italy and Japan, avoiding the pointless and expensive invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia and the American and British possessions and ensuring Stalin’s defeat. France and Britain were terrified of Stalin and would not have attacked Germany while Stalin was being defeated.
24) Mussolini invades France after the German advances cause the French defenses to collapse and the British expeditionary force has left, but manages to advance extremely little, because the Italians do not coordinate the land and air forces efficiently, which will cause them to be defeated by the Greeks shortly thereafter.
25) Hitler begins the Battle of Britain in the worst possible way, by sending small waves of slow and vulnerable Stukas, twin engine bombers and Me-109’s, whose short range allows only for a few minutes of battle over GB. On the other hand, Churchill has just sacrificed pointlessly 509 fighters in the Battle of France and Belgium and can barely resist the German onslaught. Britain should have sent all its fighters to France or none of them. All of them would have downed thousands of German bombers, defended the allied bombers and primitive French fighters much better and stopped the German advance, saving France and sending no planes at all to France would have left a much stronger RAF to defend France (Dowding ignored the old adage “Divide and conquer” and Britain was extremely lucky to have won the Battle of Britain, in spite of Dowding’s mistake)..
26) Britain was Germany’s and Italy’s only enemy when France fell, his army was lousy and the air force had been decimated in France. Had Britain signed an armistice with Germany, GB could have concentrated in rearming, especially in building airplanes and in strengthening Iran, Iraq, Singapore, Indonesia, Burma, China, etc, with modern airplanes, tanks, Aircraft carriers and submarines. Most importantly, GB should have developed the military industry in India and China and trained pilots and troops in large numbers in these countries, so that Japan would not attack British territories and continue to fight China and chose to sue for peace with China and to attack the USSR instead. Germany could have attacked the USSR with many more airplanes (without the losses in the battle of Britain) so Germany could have advanced much more into the USSR. In 1943, after the USSR, Japan and Germany have lost most of their armed forces and are in a dire need for supplies, while Britain and India are much stronger, GB would declare war on Japan and Germany.
27) Mussolini had given Campioni orders not to engage the English fleet unless the odds were heavily in favor. This prevented Campioni from inflicting heavy damage on the slightly weaker British Fleet at the battle of Spartivento, in which the Italians disengaged even though they outgunned and outsped the British fleet. The Italians could have inflicted heavy damage on the British warships and then on the merchant convoy sailing for Malta that they were escorting.
28) Stupidly, Mussolini invades Greece (which didn´t have much to offer Italy, 9 million people and almost no industry and limited agriculture), but is soundly defeated (although the Greeks have almost no tanks or planes and only a few cannon that the British captured from the Italians in North Africa and gave to the Greeks!), and Italy is on the verge of losing Albania to Greece, so he asks Germany for help. Even more Stupidly, Hitler runs to Italy’s help and invades Greece and Yugoslavia, has to spread its forces even thinner and is left with fewer tanks, troops and planes for the next offensive and fewer neutral nations with which to trade. Most importantly, Germany must delay its next offensive, with disastrous consequences, because one month of good weather has been lost when Barbarossa starts.
29) The Greek high command, keeping most of their divisions in Albania after forcing the Italians to retreat, so that when the Germans attacked from Bulgaria, they could rapidly advance into Greece. By the time they tried to relocate the forces, it was too late.
30) The British send their troops from Libya, where they are about to expel the Italians, to Greece, where they are completely useless and experience heavy losses.
31) Churchill refuses to sign an alliance with the USSR, proposed by Stalin in May 1941 (the same mistake that Chamberlain had done in 1939).
32) After losing 4,000 aircraft and many of his best pilots, lots of tanks, warships, and troops in Poland, Norway, Denmark, France, Belgium, Holland, the UK, Greece, Yugoslavia, Africa, etc, Hitler decides to invade the huge USSR, with millions of troops, tens of thousands of airplanes (though obsolete), tanks, cannon, 8 million troops and the worst weather in years. The German offensive advances fast at the beginning, capturing millions of Soviet prisoners, artillery, etc, Stalin, instead of withdrawing, regrouping and preparing a coherent counteroffensive, panics and orders an immediate counteroffensive on all fronts, with disastrous consequences.
33) The British high command prevents the general in charge of defending Crete from destroying the airfields, so that the German troops can land in their gliders and their fighter and planes and bombers have a place to land and Germany takes Crete.
34) Hitler lost many paratroopers in Crete. Mostly because they did not carry their weapons, but had to find separate containers carrying them. Instead of learning from this mistake, Hitler would never use paratroopers again, depriving his forces of an invaluable resource in the USSR, etc, In contrast, the Allies were impressed by the fact thousands of British and Greek troops in Crete were defeated by paratroopers and developed excellent airborne divisions that would render invaluable service during the war.
35) Although Stalin´s brilliant spies inform him of the strength and date of the imminent German attack, Stalin does nothing and is trounced, losing 3 million men, 21,000 airplanes, 20,000 tanks, tens of thousands of pieces of artillery and the most productive part of the USSR in the first 5 months.
36) Hitler wasted the incredible capacity of the Wehrmacht to wage the Blitzkrieg when he ordered extremely costly and lengthy sieges and city warfare in Kiev, Sevastopol, Smolensk, Leningrad, Stalingrad, dooming Barbarossa and the Axis. Had he simply bypassed these fortified cities, isolating huge armies, he would have defeated the USSR, especially if Japan, Italy and Finland had attacked jointly.
37) However, instead of concentrating his forces on an offensive that first captures the oil fields, linking up with Iran and Iraq, Hitler sends a large force to lay siege to Leningrad (all these forces will be useless for more than 2 years, achieving little more than tying down some Soviet force and starving to death hundreds of thousands of civilians), another huge force to lay siege to Sevastopol (which will be useless for 8 moths), and a third huge offensive to take Moscow. The Moscow attack is stopped, because Hitler fails to take advantage of the opportunity and sends Guderian to Kiev and Hoth to Leningrad, delaying the offensive enough time for the autumn rains and then the winter to hamper the offensive and because Stalin learns from his spies that Japan will not attack the USSR, unless Moscow falls, so he mobilizes hundreds of thousands of troops from Siberia and tosses them into the German offensive, which runs out of ammunition and fuel, so it stops and the Germans then withdraw and later on Hitler weakens the Baku offensive, by sending Von Paulus to take Stalingrad. Unfortunately, Germany hasn´t enough planes to support the Panzers’ advance and the weather is very harsh. Stalingrad will eliminate a third of a million German soldiers from the war (Hitler will not allow them to withdraw and maneuver in time),.
38) At the same time that Hitler invades the USSR, Germany is fighting in North Africa, further spreading its forces thinner and without hope of success.
39) Although Japan has not defeated the Chinese, Japan stupidly occupies Indochina in 1940 (with Vichy’s consent) and in 1941Roosevelt stupidly stops selling fuel and scrap iron to the Japanese, forcing them to drag America into the war, long before the US is ready to fight. Had Roosevelt continued selling oil and scrap iron to Japan, the latter would have attacked the USSR (as per the imperial army plan), allowing the US time to build up the navy, army and air force.
40) Japan stupidly decides not to attack the Soviets, until Moscow falls, but this never happens, because Stalin learns of this decision (through the spy Richard Sorge) and sends all his troops in Siberia and Mongolia to Moscow, stopping the German offensive and preventing Japan from attacking him.
41) Just when Germany is really busy and bogging down on all fronts, Japan decides to attack not the USSR (which is agonizing)), but the US, bringing yet another powerful enemy into the war with 130 million people and a fabulous industry. However, instead of concentrating all its forces and taking Hawaii and Panama, Japan attacks simultaneously Hawaii and invades Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Most of the allied navies and air forces are destroyed in the Pacific. Even after Japan attacked, the US did not declare war on Germany. Hitler stupidly does declare war on the US, although the Japanese never declared war on the USSR!
42) Instead of gathering the formidable Japanese fleet and invading Hawaii, effectively displacing the US from the Pacific, Japan attacks simultaneously Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Malaya, etc, Japan fails to destroy any of the carriers in the surprise attack and galvanizes Americans to fight and produce without respite until Japan is defeated.
43) General Short orders all the planes to be placed on the airfields in Hawaii as close as possible so they can be guarded against sabotage by the Japanese living in Hawaii. Unfortunately, this makes them ideal targets, makes prompt scrambling impossible and maximizes the damage inflicted by the Japanese planes.
44) The US army installs a radar station in Oahu but has no command system to use the crucial information and rapidly scramble fighters to defend the invaluable fleet.
45) Although Japan forces the US into the war and the US cannot even fight Japan right away, Roosevelt assigns priority to Europe and continues giving away billions of dollars to the British and to Stalin, who together have many more men and resources than Germany, and who waste most of the aid. Churchill chooses to lose a lot of airplanes and thousands of pilots, gunners, etc, in order to murder children, women and the elderly in bombing raids on German cities, without much effect on the military. Actually, Hitler benefits when a half million unproductive Germans are murdered, leaving more food for his soldiers and factory workers. Had Roosevelt assigned priority to Asia, recovered Burma, used the immense resources of India, supplied the Chinese and kicked out the Japanese from China, Korea, Indochina, etc, and left all the submarines around Indonesia to sink all the tankers and rice transports, Japan would not have had any fuel or rice from Burma or Indonesia and would not have been able to fight. US bombers from China could wipe out the fleet and the factories, airfields, etc, Japan would have fallen by 1944. Then with the help of China and India the US should have invaded The USSR from Iran, Iraq, China, the Pacific and the arctic. It was absurd of the Americans to waste so much invaluable aid on the British and Soviet armies, which were very inefficient and in sending millions of soldiers to Britain and then France. The US should have concentrated on building massive amounts of much better tanks than the Sherman and P-47s and P-51s and trained American pilots and officers and Chinese and Indian troops.
46) While they are fighting in useless Libya, Tunisia, etc, the British lose Burma to the Japanese. Burma is the largest grain exporter in the world, a source of vital oil and the only artery to supply the Chinese nationalists from India. The British give 1,020 tanks, 540 planes airplanes, 1,400 pieces of artillery, many of them self propelled) and 196,000 troops (many from India, which is next to Burma and starving for lack of Burmese rice!) to Monty (much of the equipment came from the US) to fight Rommel with only 116,000 troops, 547 tanks, 470 planes, 580 antitank guns and 500 cannon in the useless desert in Africa. Great Churchillian strategy and logic. The Germans lose only 32,000 men and manage to escape because Monty is too afraid or too lazy to follow them and to wipe them out of Africa, so they continue fighting, until the Americans arrive in even larger numbers and with even more equipment. The Japanese get to use the valuable rice and oil from Burma for 2 years and isolate the Chinese nationalists, who can barely fight without supplies.
47) Because Auchinleck and Montgomery cannot stop Rommel from capturing the Suez Canal, unless they have far more men, tanks, artillery, antitank guns, etc, The allies have to keep Malta at all costs in order to prevent Rommel from receiving badly needed supplies. Just to supply and defend the Island from the German and Italian planes, surface boats, submarines, etc, The British will lose an alarming number of ships and airplanes. In just one convoy, only 4 ships limped to Malta out of 15. Defending and supplying Malta the British lost 2 aircraft carriers, 413 fighters, 40 submarines, 4 cruisers, 19 destroyers, etc,
48) In 1942 Yamamoto sends a small fleet to invade Port Moresby and loses a light carrier and has 2 fleet carriers put out of action for several months in the battle of the Coral Sea and has to cancel the invasion of Port Moresby. He also sends a fleet to the Aleutians to draw the Americans away of Midway (it doesn’t work). Then in Midway Yamamoto sends the 4 fleet carriers ahead and stays hundreds of miles behind with 2 light carriers, 5 battleships and 41 support ships (many cruisers, destroyers, submarines, etc,). The formidable rear fleet remains out of the battle, so he loses all 4 invaluable fleet carriers, effectively losing the war. Instead of sending fleets to Port Moresby and the Aleutians and fooling around with Midway, Yamamoto should gave gathered his formidable fleet and invaded Hawaii and destroyed the carriers. Without Pearl Harbor and carriers it would have been very difficult for the US to counter attack.
49) Anglo-American convoy PQ-17 From the US to the USSR in 1942 only 11 ships out of 35 arrived. The escort cruisers and destroyers left the convoy because they thought that German light cruisers were sailing toward the convoy (false alarm) and they sailed to intercept them.
50) The Allies launch operation Torch in the autumn of 1942, initially fighting against Vichy troops until the Americans buy out their generals and admirals, and they join the free French. Hitler has to relocate planes, which are desperately needed in Stalingrad, etc, to the African front, exacerbating conditions in Stalingrad, Where the Soviet troops now cross the Volga in large waves and Capture the German forces. Instead of simply skipping along the North African coast, building Air bases and cutting off Rommel’s and Italy’s forces, the allies venture inland and lose a lot of tanks and troops. In 1943, about a quarter million German troops and a smaller number of Italian troops die or are taken prisoner and all the German and Italian materiel is lost in Africa.
51) Churchill and Harris stupidly decide to spend a fortune and sacrifice invaluable crews, planes, fuel and bombs in a massive air campaign. They also convince the Americans to take part in the bombing. Unfortunately, there are no long range escorts, so losses are appalling during 1942 and 43. Close to a half million children, women and elderly people are killed in bombing raids, most Germany cities are ruined and the impact on the military is negligible. These bombers would have been much more useful fighting the Japanese in Burma, China, Korea, Indochina, etc, from the USSR and India and bombing the Japanese shipyards, ships, etc,
52) Stalin is pathologically afraid of German tanks and even though the Germans manufacture much fewer tanks than the USSR and have to send them to several countries and fronts, Stalin manufactures 67,000 T-34 tanks and about half as many among all the other types, 36,000 tank-busting Sturmoviks (airplanes) and 14 million 2.5 kg anti tank bombs. He also makes 6 million submachine guns and over a half million cannon, but for everything else, he relies pretty much on the American industry, which has the burden of supplying all the allies and itself on all fronts.
53) After failing on all fronts, in 1943 Hitler orders operation Citadel, which includes an attack on Kursk, where the Soviets have built thousands of antitank traps, have an incredible concentration of tanks, artillery, rockets, minefields, airplanes, troops, etc, (the most formidable fortification in history). So the German forces are practically wiped out and begin to withdraw rapidly toward Germany. Although Germany has hopelessly lost the war, Hitler refuses to concede defeat and dooms millions of people to their death, and incredibly, the German people do almost nothing besides a failed assassination attempt.
54) After defeating Rommel in Africa at a great cost, the Allies invade Sicily and then Italy. However, the mountainous terrain and the narrow peninsula make advancing very difficult and costly in allied lives, and almost to no avail, even when Germany capitulated, the Germans still held northern Italy, after over 50,000 allied casualties, so it was pointless.
55) Although after Kursk the Soviets have practically won the war, the US continued supplying them with lots of materiel until the end of the war, that they would never pay and even though Stalin refuses to declare war on Japan and attack it. Why?
56) In the Pacific, The Americans take Tarawa, a useless islet at a tremendous cost, bomb Wewak, destroying hundreds of valuable Japanese planes and then isolate its 200,000 Japanese troops. The Americans also attack Truck (the Japanese Pearl Harbor), devastating the fleet and planes. MacArthur insists on taking the Philippines, overruling Nimitz, who wants to bypass them, going straight to Japan. This single decision cost a lot of lives and time. General Lamay launches an extremely expensive series of massive raids that kill more people than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, but are ignored by the Japanese leadership, who cares little about Japanese lives.
57) General Lucas wastes the complete surprise of the Allied landings in Anzio and Nettuno on January 22, 1944. Instead of advancing rapidly and unopposed towards Rome, Lucas decides to consolidate his beachhead, allowing Kesselring time to move several divisions, occupy the hills around the beachhead and prepare formidable defensive positions. The Americans suffer 43,000 casualties before taking Rome.
58) In 1944 McArthur ignores Admirals King and Nimitz, who want to bypass the Philippines and invade Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The Japanese have over a quarter million troops and lots of airplanes, etc, in the Philippines, so the campaign is extremely costly and delays the capture of the important islands closer to Japan. While the Americans are invading Leyte, admiral Halsey took all the large and most of the small carriers on a wild goose chase trying to destroy the almost planeless Japanese carriers to the North, leaving a ridiculously weak force to protect the huge fleet of transport ships loaded with men. The Japanese attacked with a massive fleet, including the largest battleships ever built, the Musashi and the Yamato, which could have easily wiped out the transport ships and their precious cargo. However, the tiny defending force with a few submarines, torpedo boats, destroyers, and escort carriers with primitive wildcats and bombers put up such a ferocious defense and sank or damaged so many Japanese ships, that admiral Murita thought he was fighting Halsey’s main fleet and withdrew, wasting the effect of the successful decoy fleet and the last reserves of fuel the Japanese had, so that the Americans landed without losses to the Japanese navy and the Japanese navy was in effect neutralized for lack of fuel and airplanes.
59) While the Americans are invading Leyte, admiral Halsey takes all the large and most of the small carriers on a wild goose chase trying to destroy the almost planeless Japanese carriers to the North, leaving a ridiculously weak force to protect the huge fleet of transport ships loaded with men. The Japanese attacked with a massive fleet, including the largest battleships ever built, the Musashi and the Yamato, which could have easily wiped out the transport ships and their precious cargo. However, the tiny defending force with a few submarines, torpedo boats, destroyers, and escort carriers with primitive wildcats and bombers put up such a ferocious defense and sank or damaged so many Japanese ships, that admiral Murita thought he was fighting Halsey’s main fleet and withdrew, wasting the effect of the successful decoy fleet and the last reserves of fuel the Japanese had, so that the Americans landed almost without losses to the Japanese navy and the Japanese navy was in effect neutralized for lack of fuel and airplanes.
60) Chiang Kai-shek was so incompetent that in spite of having millions of men at his disposal and American armament, the Japanese offensive of 1944 with 360,000 men rapidly advanced in Nationalist China and almost occupied Kunming, Chiang’s capital, which had the airport that received all the American materiel flown over the Hump at great cost. The Americans had to transport by air two Chinese divisions from Myitkyina (Burma), which had been fed, trained and armed by the Americans in India to defend Kunming. Chiang hoarded most of the supplies, because he was afraid that if he gave them to his generals, they might overthrow him.
61) When the Americans see that Mao´s 3 million men fight much better than Chiang’s troops in 1944, they start supplying them generously, not realizing that they are delivering the most populated country to the communists. Had the atomic bomb not worked, the communists would have taken over the world in 1947.
62) In the winter of 1944 Hitler launches the Ardennes offensive, losing his best tanks and troops on the western front, while the Soviets are rapidly advancing on the eastern front, yet Hitler does not surrender.
63) The US spend 4.5 billion dollars building B-29 bases in China in order to bomb Japan, which are quickly captured in 1944 by the Japanese, who sweep aside Chiang Kai-shek’s army.
64) In late 1944 Finland and Romania become Germany’s enemies, and the Eastern front practically collapses, yet Hitler would not surrender. Japan had lost practically all its ships and boats, has no oil and is starving, but would not surrender. Both countries had lost hundreds of thousands to bombing raids, but that was irrelevant to their leaders.
65) On January 1, 1945 Hitler launches operation Bodenplatte, which involves most of the Luftwaffe’s fighters (950 planes), including those in the eastern front. Many German AA batteries had not been notified and shot down many German planes. The Germans managed to destroy several British and American planes on the ground and a few in the air, but lost close to 300 planes and over 200 pilots that they could not replace, while the allies readily replaced their planes and lost few pilots. When the allies enter Germany in operations Plunder and Varsity, the Luftwaffe can hardly oppose them.
66) In 1945 denial has become an epidemic and Japan and Germany continue to fight, losing troops, civilians and buildings more rapidly all the time. About 2.5 million Germans with very few airplanes, tanks, etc, face 6 million Soviets with impressive amounts of equipment and 1 million Germans face 4 million troops of the western allies, also with formidable equipment. Incredibly, the US continue to supply the USSR with massive amounts of free high octane fuel, materiel, food, explosives, etc, till the end of the war, although Germany is obviously defeated by 1944.
