I would suggest that Eisenhower was not an inept tactician who would have never made it past Lt.Col. in a modern US Army. He was just never given an opportunity to be a major or colonel with a combat organization in time of war. Ike was a very smart guy who never had a chance to learn at the colonel level. In WWI he was a trainer who never saw combat. In the 1930's when the Patton's of the world were honing their craft, he was writing speeches for MacArthur. Ike didn't choose that, the army did. In spite of what Douglas MacArthur later said about Eisenhower when Ike had completely eclipsed Mac, MacArthur highly regarded eisenhower and wanted to keep him. Ike also impressed two other very important generals, Fox Connor, and Marshall, the later of which raised him from obscurity. The North African campaign was not run well until Eisenhower replaced Lloyd Fredendall. Were mistakes made by Ike. Yup. He should have fired Fredendall much earlier, and he probably interfered at the beginning too much. But you also have to bring the enemy into this as well. The US Army in North Africa was completely untested at the beginning of Torch, facing Rommel. In spite of Ike learned though, eventually won, and Sicily went a lot better right from the start.
It has to be mentioned that Nikita Chrustshew himself openly acknowleledged that the Soviet Union would have lost the war without the suplies of material from the US and Great Britain. And he must have known what he said because he was part of the innermost cercle around Stalin in this crucial time. Therefore Barbarossa was a blunder of Germany that still could have resulted in victory.
The most important person of WW2 was a German. In the employ, however, of the Soviet Union. That was Richard Sorge, a spy posing as a journalist in Tokyo. He confirmed to Stalin that the Japanese would strike South, into the Pacific and Europe's colonial empires, and not North-West out of Manchuria. This allowed the Stavka to pull the Siberian units across the Urals and reinforce its Western front at Moscow.
@@danielbackley9301 Declaring war on the United States was even stupider. Declaring war on a country you can’t access is unbelievably stupid and something I’ve never understood and I’ve never heard a satisfactory explanation.
31:41 my uncle John Sanford would be one of those American pilots flying "the Hump" in Burma, but not from Assam. He would lose his life flying supplies for Christian missionaries in the mid 1960's. The China - Burma - India theater is one of the most overlooked of WWII history discussed in America, these days
To fully understand the German military self-inflicted gaping wound called "The Eastern Front", one should read Martin van Creveld's superb book - "Supplying War".
One fact in there: The germans entered USSR with an average one spare tire per vehicle. The overall spares and logistics realities of Barbarossa described in this book made me wonder what the hell were they thinking. .... Perhaps the answer is the same answer to "why did they loose the war?" -> Because they were Nazis. Blind Ideological arrogance trumped reality, judgement, and common sense from beginning to end.
There is story about an American colonel sent back home right before D Day. He complains to Ike that he just called his counterpart a “bastard.” Ike responded that the guy is a bastard but “you called him a ‘British bastard’ and I can’t have that.”
The Me262 was delayed by the engines. It was put into production with 3500 test flight hours not conducted. All German fighters were supposed to be able to serve as fighter bombers. That was Luftwaffe strategy. Whether bomb racks was fitted to the Me 262 depended on supplies. Italy was a point of attrition which was supplied by German troops from the Soviet Union. In the end there was one million Germans there and 600 000 German casualties.
@tarjei99 It was not so much Luftwaffe strategy as Hitler's demands. He wanted to strike back at the Allies not merely to shoot down the Allied bombers. Thus he dlasyed the Me-262 project that it had bombing capability. This was insane. The Me262 was rarely used as a fighter bomber supporting ground troops. Almost always it was used to shoot down Allied bombers and the fighters escorting them.
@@dennisweidner288 Dennis, Unfortunately, Conrad Crane has repeated an often repeated myth about Hitler and the Me-262. In actual fact, the Me-262 was delayed by the poor jet engine performance of the Junkers engine. Not by the supposed interference of Hitler insisting that it be converted to a bomber. There is no evidence of Hitler's interference other than the dubious statements of Germans after the war. Converting the Me-262 to a fighter bomber would be no more complicated or time consuming a task than that already done in the conversions of the Me-109 & Fw-190 to fighter bombers during the war. Often these conversions were simple enough that they could be done by air units in the field. Running bomb release cables through the fuselage and wings was not difficult, nor was adding bomb shackles. Of course heavy payloads required engines of sufficient power & reliability. The Junkers engines had development & engineering problems, thus it was not a Hitler induced restriction.
The gentleman claims that the U.S. Army didn't mistakes twice, however individual commanders did. General Omar Bradley refused to take advice from an officer that had saved in the Pacific and observed the ineffectiveness of direct fire by battleships on coastal fortifications. Bradley refuse to have the battleships supporting the Omaha landings assume positions father offshore so that their gunfire would be in a arc with the shells hitting the coastal fortifications in an downward arc. Bradley showed his stubbornness later in the Battle of the Huegen Forrest where he ordered American units to continue to attack entrenched Germans troops instead of bypassing the forrest. The units involved suffered over 100% casualties and contributed to the the American Army having to put green divisions in the line before the German counter offensive in December 1944.
If Bradley was a college football quarterback in 2023, he would be described as a "game manager." Ike was no great tactician either (I am channeling Rick Atkinson from his WW2 ETO trilogy.) Patton was a tactician, but not a logistician , the weakest part of his staff work (G-4).
The problem is that our universities, especially history and economics departments, are dominated by Marxist professors teaching nonsense like CRT and promoting a warped form of history like the 1619 Project. Few college graduates, for example, leave our universities understanding how the American Revolution was a fundamental turning point in world history laying the foundation for the end of forced labor and democratic government.
I do think it's funny that one of the panelists thinks the book about Omaha beach and the author's criticism is too much about hindsight when the three of them have just spent almost an hour doing the same thing. 😕 That being said, I loved the video and enjoyed hearing the thoughts of all three men.
That's completely different they are looking backwards trying to understand the perspective of the people having to makes those difficult descions with imperfect knowledge, what they're cricising is looking back and judging the historical figures as if they knew what we know.
Many of these blunders were only considered that after the war had ended, when it became clear what their wider implications were. There had been reasonable justification to make the decision at the time.
I don't know how historians can have a discussion about WW2 blunders & leave out admiral Nagumo at Midway. His leadership in that battle was some of the worse tactical decisions, combined with arrogance & a total disregard for even the most minimal amount of caution.
@@keitht24 Don’t leave out Hornet’s captain Marc Mitscher and his “flight to nowhere” at Midway! Some think his decision to send his squadrons due west anticipating a second carrier group trailing the first - there was no second carrier group - potentially resulted in the sinking of the Yorktown itself. If Mitscher sent his dive bombers to the Japanese carriers known location the thought being the 4th carrier, the Hiryu, would have been bombed along with the other three carriers & sunk in the morning as well.
@@jrsands That's different because he's making split second decisions in the moment. That turned out to be a bad decision, but in the moment it was a calculated risk. Nagumo received word of 10 American ships northeast of Midway. He did nothing with this information, because a carrier hadn't been spotted with this fleet. Additionally, his carelessness in utilizing his airial recon, was outright criminal. Think about it like this. Midway is supposed to be a surprise attack. So there's no reason an entire fleet would be in that vicinity. If it had said 1-2 surface ships, I can give Nagumo a pass. But 10 ships is a fleet & the fact that he didn't assume that carriers had to be with them is unbelievable.
When they were discussing the German's problem of capturing Baku, Russia for its oil, what can they do with it then, as they had no way to transport that oil back to Germany where it was needed. This reminded me of the line said by The Joker to hospital patient, Harvey Dent in the movie, The Dark Knight, "I'm like that dog that chases cars. I don't know what I would do if I ever caught one." The German's had no way to transport the captured oil if they did win, just as the Japanese had no way to ship their captured oil and rubber from their island capturing in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia.
The Japanese were so low on shipping even before the war, 1/3 of goods to and from Japan were flagged to countries that Japan declared war on making a tight situation critical.
7:52 The Prussians didn't crossed at Sedan in 1870, they crossed at the border between Germany and France, Sedan borders Belgium. The Germans didn't specifically crossed at Sedan in 1914 either.
@@PalleRasmussen Yes but that's not where the Germans broke through. The french army was already well weakened by this point, that's precisely why the Germans were able to surround the french at Sedan.
@@nikolaasp2968 I think that he got confused by the name of the two battles. I find it somewhat worse that he claims that the defence there was thin. It was not. It was largely by the actions and initiative of a single Feldwebel Ruhbart (I think) that they got across. But that is the thing; an attacker can almost always break through a single defence line, and if you are not quick enough in your counterattack and/or do not have defence in depth, he will exploit the breach.
Recently, I was watching a local MLB talk show. It's about the Astros. The three "presenters," or whatever they're called, are two young guys and one middle aged guy. The middle aged guy made a reference to Pravda. The young guys looked blank. In a Facebook group the other day, I submitted a hilariously stupid ad for a WWII. movie on my movie list. In the Cast and Crew section, there was, so help me, a photo of Joachim von Ribbentrop, with his name captioned under the photo. It was turned down. The administration didn't get why it was hilarious. They'd never heard of von Ribbentrop. They thought I had submitted a dud post.
What would’ve changed if we would have up armored and up gun the vast majority of Sherman tanks? Iview the Sherman tank as almost perfect in terms of what the allies needed to do worldwide. I’m curious if putting the effort into better Sherman tanks would have cost us too much in terms of production and mobility. Did we strike the right balance could we have done a better job could we have provided better tanks without weakening our advantages?
I had hoped some mention of 1) Allies failure in Sicily to immediately target Messina and thus trap the German forces holding the island. 2) Allies failure to simply bypass Pelileiu and mop up there later.
@@ppumpkin3282In a strategic sense absolutely. Think of what America's position in Asia would be since WW2 if we hadn't gone back to liberate the Philippines .
I wonder if we had bypassed Pelileiu if we could have captured Iwo Jima in the time frame of the battle for Pelileiu, when it wasn't as heavily fortified and gotten fighters based their sooner?
The Germans lost the war at dunkirk. Adolf galland states in his book that the delay in employing me 262s was poor engine performance. Even when they were improved to the point of utility they were only getting 10 hours from them. Now the german 4 engine bomber apparently had design issues because of unrealistic requirements. Supposedly it had to also function as a dive bomber. I dont know if they ever figured that out or dropped it. But from what I've read it resulted in a poorly designed plane with many maintenance issues.
The lesson that Guderian tried to teach Hitler: A nation which could not provide adequate number of basics, like steel track pins, to it's forward units, had no business conducting an all out offensive.
If Halsey was at Marianas what would Willis Lee's fears have been realized and they ran into the Japanese surface fleet and been massively mauled delaying other invasions?
Rear Admiral Carleton Wright at the Battle of Tassafaronga. No justification for his blunder at all. And those commanders he led continued on with the blunders. Utter debacle.
As much as I admire James Holland, I would take issue with something he said. He said "if you can't produce" speaking of German tank production compared to the number of tanks produced by the Soviets and Americans. In fact, the Germans could have produced far more tanks than they did. The Germans had a massive steel industry, far larger than the Soviet steel industry. And steel is the primary material in building tanks. The Germans could have produced more. They were not forced into the 'quality' mode. It is a choice they made. It is just that German industrial processes were so incredibly inefficient. They made tanks in basically craft shops while the Soviets thanks to American-designed factories, mass-produced them. The Germans also went for craftsmanship, while the Soviets and Americans understood that tanks had limited life spans on the battlefront and produced tanks that were not finely crafted machines. Another factor here is the War in the West. Cast amounts of steel and other metals were diverted to fight the air war and the Battle of the Atlantic. The Russians today think the War in the West was a sideshow. In fact, more than half of German industrial production went to support the war in the West. If more had gone to support the Ostheer the outcome of the Ostkrieg might have been very different.
Unfortunately, Conrad Crane has repeated an often repeated myth about Hitler and the Me-262. In actual fact, the Me-262 was delayed by the poor jet engine performance of the Junkers engine. Not by the supposed interference of Hitler insisting that it be converted to a bomber. There is no evidence of Hitler's interference other than the dubious statements of Germans after the war. Converting the Me-262 to a fighter bomber would be no more complicated or time consuming a task than that already done in the conversions of the Me-109 & Fw-190 to fighter bombers during the war. Often these conversions were simple enough that they could be done by air units in the field. Running bomb release cables through the fuselage and wings was not difficult, nor was adding bomb shackles. Of course heavy payloads required engines of sufficient power & reliability. The Junkers engines had development & engineering problems, thus it was not a Hitler induced restriction.
Love James Holland, but they’re completely wrong about Rommel. It would have done no good to wage a static defensive campaign in North Africa where your flank can always be turned. Rommel was correct to go on the offensive.
no mention of how the allies breaking the german enigma code was the main contribution of Rommel's defeat and the German defeat in general. Bletchy Park made a greater contribution to ending WWII then Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery, Eaker combined.
The IJN destroyers were running on fumes due to the circuitous route taken. The larger vessels had carried additional fuel oil in barrels on board. The destroyers just couldn't fit enough aboard. IJN mid-ocean refueling was extremely primitive compared to US and Royal Navy expertise. Running the fleet carriers with the destroyer screen still present to launch another strike at take off speed and then wait for the strike recovery was going to push them into a negative fuel situation.
A little too glib and triumphant for my taste. Blunders the authors didn't touch on were.: The Japanese decision to take on the U. S by attacking Pearl Harbor; The Japanese decision not to develop their. Indian Ocean raid of 19FORTY-TWO. It will full blown landing. in southern India. This whatever effect we take in India out of the war and put a complete dent. in the British Empire's war effort. Hitler's decision to declare war on the US. A comprehensive panel would have dealt with These
The Ukes use precision artillary & missiles to wipe out Rus units firing 10x ammo w/ 3x artillary pcs... guess that kills Stalin's quantity vs quality maxim
Another speaker who uses "you know" as a replacenent for a comma in written text. A momentary pause is all right but some of these excellent historians could use and benefit from some public speaking coaching. A moment of silence can lend drama and timing to their lectures.
Democracies learn faster in war because we are independent minded and can admit mistakes. Totalitarian regimes think they are superior and are too arrogant and top down to learn..quickly. The Germans said that Americans learn fast.
Hyper-discussion pitched as one-liners that was extremely difficult to listen to. Slow down a bit, so the rest of us can absorb the points you are making.
Murray Spearber hated Bobby Knight because Bobby Knight is a bully. However, Murray never won anything. ever. Right now we have a military set up for the worst debacle known to man due to stupid thinking. When it happens tell them that you heard it here first on roller derby
The gentleman's comments about Douglas MacArthur's decision to meet the Japanese own the beaches are completely wrong. The Philippine Army didn't have the training, equipment and the leadership necessary to successfully defeat the Japanese landings. If MacArthur really believed in this policy, he would have committed the U.S. 31st Infantry and 4th Marines to the beach defense and given the American officer advisors to Philippine Army units command responsibility.
Did not much discus strategic blunders (except Hitler's decision to invade Poland). For the allies: what about the very costly sideshows of the Italian campaign (Churchill's "soft underbelly") and the campaign to retake the Philippines for McArthur's PR.
Wait a minute! Everybody stop! What did that guy say? "The Army does a lot more amphibious assaults than the Marines". Oh really? These dudes apparently don't really know anything about the Pacific Island battles of WWII. Tarawa. Iowa Jima. Okinawa. Guadalcanal. Peleliu. Just to name a few.
This has been documented over and over . In terms of volume of amphibious landings, the US Army made far more more than the US Marines. The Marines were tasked with many of the truly nasty landings, however. There were many Army amphibious landings on the north coast of New Guinea and in the islands of the Philippines. The Army recaptured the Aleutian Islands and landed alongside the Marines at Okinawa. On a related note , the Marines were barred making large amphibious landings in Europe because General Marshall did not want a repeat of Belleau in WW1. The Army forces that served in France in WW1 hugely outnumbered the Marines, but the press made the American public think the Marines were the key to victory in WW1.
@@viking956 "In the Pacific theater during World War II, the American land war was fought primarily by the Army, though popular memory has focused almost exclusively on the comparatively smaller Marine Corps effort. The Corps made fifteen amphibious combat landings over the course of the entire war. In the spring of 1945, Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger’s Eighth Army alone carried out thirty-five amphibious landings over a five-week period in the Philippines." from Island Infernos - The U. S. Army's Pacific War Odyssey by Dr. John C. McManus
The Army did and that's just in the Pacific without counting all of the landings in N. Africa Italy and France. Also almost all of the Marine landings involve either Army reinforcements or concurrent Army landings as part of the operations.
Ah, come on, most of us here are here because we want to hear about the past, next time if you could please not bring your buddy Trump along, most of us would appreciate no doubt about that! : )
No, it does not apply exactly to Trump. It does not apply at all to Trump. The generals mentioned were at the very least competent. Trump is not. And please don't faux-apologize for "triggering" me. I'm not triggered. I'm correcting your erroneous comment.
The real blunder of the U.S. strategic bombing campaign was the use of the Norden bombsight which was an overhyped piece of garbage. Sperry had designed a high altitude bombsight, which was far and away a more accurate bombsight than the Norman. But with the Norden corporation's false advertising campaign and the connivence of the U.S. Army Air Corps. Norden received the contract instead of Sperry.
@@PalleRasmussen who rates Fredendall highly? as for Clark, the rap on him is that he turned toward Rome and let the Germans escape north. Holland says this is not true. I don't know enough to comment. Stilwell was in a difficult position. American commanders succeeded because of the overwhelming industrial power of the United States. Stillwell did not have that in the CBI. The CBI was at the bottom of everyone's list of priorities. And of course, he was dealing with Chiang I'm not sure anyone could have done a whole lot better. He did a good job of training the Chinese units he commanded. MacArthur is a mixed bag. he performed poorly in the Philippines(1941-42), treated the Australians terribly, was competent in the southwestern pacific, and performed brilliantly during the occupation of Japan.
@@dennisweidner288 my mistake. I meant "worst US general" of WW2. The most overrated is either Patton or Dugout Doug. And it is not as if the US did not have competent generals. Collins and Ridgeway comes to mind. And let us not talk about the misconception of the elderly gentleman at 1:04 that US troops and officers were trained to show initiative while the Germans were not "because of rigid Prussian discipline". He is of the generation who belied that propaganda though it is of the same sort as "The MG42's bark is worse than its bite". Citino and Muth have written volumes on that subject of German warfighting Vs American.
Chiang Kai shek is who initiated the Battle of Shanghai and there's plenty of evidence for that, his son's book notwithstanding. His top military leaders have made it clear that the Nationalists confronted the Japanese Garrison of 5000 there in response to Japan's occupation of parts of north China south of the Manchurian border. They hoped for a quick victory before reinforcements arrived by virtue of what they thought were overwhelming numbers of the Army's best German trained troops. Several theories of why the Industrial Coastal city was chosen includes drawing Japanese troops away from their Russian logistical supply line and Chiang Kai shek wanted the war in sight of the western foreign settlements in hopes of support from the west. So it was the first of Chaing Kai shek's battlefield blunders. . The second was breaching the dams along the yellow river to slow the Japanese advance to Wuhan in 1938. The resulting flood all the way to the coast, was the worst ecological disaster of WW2 and killed Chinese in 5 figures or more either directly or by rendering China's most fertile agricultural region to be useless for years.. It was also a huge source of recruitment for Mao Zedong. The Japanese entered Wuhan a month later from a different direction. . His third was not getting rid of Stillwell when Marshall gave him the chance. His usually astute wife counseled against forcing any turnover in the American military hierarchy. They both came to regret missing that opportunity. Guadalcanal was Admiral King's risky idea not MacArthur's. Good thing Admiral Mikawa didn't know our carriers were out of range during the Battle of Savo Island or he would've ruined our first offensive of the Asian Pacific War. I'd agree that Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was a pretty big blunder. And Kudos to the guy who nominated the 8th AAF bombing campaign in '43 with no fighter escort into Germany.
The lack of stronger logistical support ships in the Navy before the entry of the US into the war is a huge blunder, along with no night fighting doctrine. Imagine if the destroyers and cruisers had given Mikowa nearly as good as they got?
Classic “if it works it’s genius, if it doesn’t work he’s an idiot”. The biggest blunder was the French and British not hammering Germany after the earliest annexations of Chechloslovakia (spelling) and Sudetenland. Would’ve been a whole different thing if they’d not appeased and fought before Fermany was really ready
Yes imagine if the Czechs had fought even without France and Britain. They would have blunted German tank numbers and lost a lot of their own that would not have been available for use against anyone else and there was the possibility that their factories might have been destroyed and wouldn't have been available to the nazi war machine.
The strategic impacts of in theater decisions would become a ... theme for nearly all German operations in WWII. Then those German officers would blame "crazy Hitler" for lack of strategic foresight in the overall planing and field execution, in their ( heavily edited by Model for U S Army history division ) after war memoirs.
James Holland is great. I love listening to him. He constantly cuts to the quick. I would take issue with one point he made--how important was the loss of German aircraft in the Mediterranean. More important was the loss of the air crews.
@@Strawberry-12. The Germans were able to replace the aircraft. But by 1943 it was becoming increasingly difficult to replace the aircrews with well-trained personnel. In 1944, it was impossible.
@@dennisweidner288 yeah I understand that, but I think he was saying the same thing as you originally but in a different way. The Germans lost air crews when the aircraft where shot down, I don’t think he was talking about the physical planes
@@Strawberry-12. I was not trying to be critical of Hillnd. He is one of my favorite historians. I was just going on what he said. But I think it is a distinction that has to be clearly stated. At the end of the War, the Germans still had aircraft. What they no longer had after early 1944 was trained pilots to fly them. Meaning that German cities were now vulnerable to Allied air attack with only flak protection.
@@dennisweidner288 fair enough. On an aside I wasn’t trying to be critical of you either I was just trying to give an explanation. I guess comments and texting aren’t really great at expressing tone of speech, sorry if there was any misunderstanding
1:06:00 Correction - Canadians at Normandy were a volunteer force. While Canada had conscription, conscripts weren't sent overseas, until authorization in November 1944.
14:55 we often come back with all these criticisms of the french, of putting their tanks into "penny packets" etc... But actually it's a bit of a cruel criticism because the french were doing what most armies were doing at that time and what every country did even for the rest of the war. 44% of the french tank force was in specialized units in 1940, yet later on the soviets also had 44% of their armor only in specialized units, and the americans even had 56% of their tanks put in support to the infantry and not in specified armor division.
The biggest problem with French tanks was their lack of radio transmitters & receivers for all tanks. Most French tanks could only receive radio traffic, but not transmit. This is real buffoonery. Holland is correct about the French lack of command & control. Total incompetence at the top in the French army. The average French unit fought bravely, but their Generals were idiots.
You've got to admire the approach of James Holland, kicking off a US event, and makes all his opening examples from the first half of WW2, during which the US hasn't yet entered the war. Even the notion that the term "Allies" predates US involvement might trigger some of the audience members.
@dave38434783 The United States was impacting the War well before Pearl Harbor. Why do you think the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor? It was because America was aiding China and cut off oil exports. This is part of the reason the Japanese did not join the NAZI assault on the Soviet Union. Or why do you think Britain was still in the War. It was because America wrote Britain a blank check--Lend Lease. Or just look at where the RAF was getting its high-octane aviation fuel during the Battle of Britain. For that matter after Italy entered the War and closed the Mediterranean (1940). ALL of Britain's oil came from the United States or American-controlled sources. Try fighting a war without oil. Hitler eventually attacked the Soviet Union because he knew that with American backing, he could not defeat Britain.
I noticed that James Holland failed to include Winston Churchill's blunders in his list. Churchill's ill conceived operation to land troops in Norway was a disaster, and his sending of a portion of the British Fleet to support the Free French at Dakar, while the German invasion scare was very real.I'm just including Churchill's blunders up to the summer of 1940. There were many more later in the war. Don't get me wrong, I have the greatest respect for Winston Churchill as a politician and orator, but on the whole he was a very bad strategist.
Churchill's pause on capital ship production, even though smaller yards were starting to ramp up production of escort vessels. If the British had had another carrier or two earlier, would Repulse and Prince of Wales have sailed with carriers, how would that have affected the battle for Singapore?
@@simonargall5508Check out HMS Unicorn, Not A Carrier, A forward Aviation Support Vessel. Yes aircraft could cycle through her flight deck, not as fast as a fleet or even light fleet carrier. But she had two hangers and plenty of machinery for maintenance.
The biggest blunder Hitler made was his own impatience. The initial idea before Poland was to continue building Germany's military might until 1946 which was the initial projected date for the beginning of the war. If he would have waited who knows what would have happened?
That is an interesting idea. The Royal Navy was rebuilding and would have been much larger and more powerful with a 4-5 year build up. They would have had stronger escort navy for convoys, they would have had more aircraft carriers, the Unicorn might have been more than a class of one (maybe 4 by then), They might have had light carriers besides the Unicorn (technically a forward aviation support vessel.) They might have had better naval fighters because by then the RAF would have been up to strength and modernized. The US might have been slightly stronger as well than it was. The question is what would Germany do when Japan declared war on the US and Britain? How would they have reacted to the French and Dutch not being colonial powers in exile? Would Germany have declared war on Britain, US, France (?) and the Netherlands? What would the Soviet Union have done? With out a war with Germany do they decide to attach Japanese holdings? They did well against Japanese army attacks in 1938 or 1939. If they did that and with out war against Germany wearing down British forces how quickly is the Pacific war over? The British would have brought 3-4 armor decked carriers plus HMS Unicorn to repair aircraft (as well as conduct some flight ops) and several battleships, battlecruisers, and many cruisers and destroyers to the theater. This might have prevented the Japanese from either taking the Dutch East Indies or holding them. This would have caused the Japanese war machine to run out of fuel by the end of 1942. Also British submarines would have been very active in the Pacific and they had working torpedoes and without the Netherlands falling, their submarines would have been resupplied with torpedoes, crippling shipping. If Vietnam isn't invaded until December 1941-January 1942, do the French show up with several battleships and their lone carrier to augment the British fleet?
My biggest 'what if' is if Hitler had the strategic sense to have made a complete, overly generous treaty with France, including removing all troops from France? If they would have waited until the British attacked the French fleet, then made the treaty, guaranteeing that Franch wouldn't allow British troops on its soil during this conflict. The implications of that would have been wide ranging, including the Japanese invading French possessions.
Hitler's blunder was not invading Poland, but surrounding himself with incompetent yes men like Von Ribbentrop. It was von Ribbentrop as foreign minister that advised Hitler that Great Britain would not declare war on Germany over England's grantee to Poland.
Hitler himself was incompetent, both as diplomat and as military leader and as industrial organizer. Mostly his "triumphs"were the ideas of better organizers like Speer, better military leaders like Guderian, but all were bad diplomats and radical intolerant racists.
On the Psychology of Military Incompetence by Dr Norman Dixon, MBE, RE, (1976).
Most valid analysis of the military mind over a century.
I would suggest that Eisenhower was not an inept tactician who would have never made it past Lt.Col. in a modern US Army. He was just never given an opportunity to be a major or colonel with a combat organization in time of war. Ike was a very smart guy who never had a chance to learn at the colonel level. In WWI he was a trainer who never saw combat. In the 1930's when the Patton's of the world were honing their craft, he was writing speeches for MacArthur. Ike didn't choose that, the army did. In spite of what Douglas MacArthur later said about Eisenhower when Ike had completely eclipsed Mac, MacArthur highly regarded eisenhower and wanted to keep him. Ike also impressed two other very important generals, Fox Connor, and Marshall, the later of which raised him from obscurity. The North African campaign was not run well until Eisenhower replaced Lloyd Fredendall. Were mistakes made by Ike. Yup. He should have fired Fredendall much earlier, and he probably interfered at the beginning too much. But you also have to bring the enemy into this as well. The US Army in North Africa was completely untested at the beginning of Torch, facing Rommel. In spite of Ike learned though, eventually won, and Sicily went a lot better right from the start.
It would have been interesting if the Korean war had been delayed for a couple of years with Ike firing MacArthur instead of Truman.
It has to be mentioned that Nikita Chrustshew himself openly acknowleledged that the Soviet Union would have lost the war without the suplies of material from the US and Great Britain. And he must have known what he said because he was part of the innermost cercle around Stalin in this crucial time. Therefore Barbarossa was a blunder of Germany that still could have resulted in victory.
The most important person of WW2 was a German. In the employ, however, of the Soviet Union. That was Richard Sorge, a spy posing as a journalist in Tokyo. He confirmed to Stalin that the Japanese would strike South, into the Pacific and Europe's colonial empires, and not North-West out of Manchuria. This allowed the Stavka to pull the Siberian units across the Urals and reinforce its Western front at Moscow.
Never heard this before. I don't think anyone in Russia would admit to this today. Most historians seem to down play US aid.
@@ppumpkin3282
Zhukov was riding around in a US jeep!
@@danielbackley9301
Declaring war on the United States was even stupider. Declaring war on a country you can’t access is unbelievably stupid and something I’ve never understood and I’ve never heard a satisfactory explanation.
@@kurtvonfricken6829 very true but then again no one should ever under estimate Hitler and the OKW when it comes to stupid
Really fascinating information gentlemen. Keep throwing out those good book recommendations. Highly appreciated.
31:41 my uncle John Sanford would be one of those American pilots flying "the Hump" in Burma, but not from Assam. He would lose his life flying supplies for Christian missionaries in the mid 1960's. The China - Burma - India theater is one of the most overlooked of WWII history discussed in America, these days
To fully understand the German military self-inflicted gaping wound called "The Eastern Front", one should read Martin van Creveld's superb book - "Supplying War".
One fact in there: The germans entered USSR with an average one spare tire per vehicle. The overall spares and logistics realities of Barbarossa described in this book made me wonder what the hell were they thinking. .... Perhaps the answer is the same answer to "why did they loose the war?" -> Because they were Nazis. Blind Ideological arrogance trumped reality, judgement, and common sense from beginning to end.
There is story about an American colonel sent back home right before D Day. He complains to Ike that he just called his counterpart a “bastard.” Ike responded that the guy is a bastard but “you called him a ‘British bastard’ and I can’t have that.”
The Me262 was delayed by the engines. It was put into production with 3500 test flight hours not conducted. All German fighters were supposed to be able to serve as fighter bombers. That was Luftwaffe strategy. Whether bomb racks was fitted to the Me 262 depended on supplies.
Italy was a point of attrition which was supplied by German troops from the Soviet Union. In the end there was one million Germans there and 600 000 German casualties.
@tarjei99 It was not so much Luftwaffe strategy as Hitler's demands. He wanted to strike back at the Allies not merely to shoot down the Allied bombers. Thus he dlasyed the Me-262 project that it had bombing capability. This was insane. The Me262 was rarely used as a fighter bomber supporting ground troops. Almost always it was used to shoot down Allied bombers and the fighters escorting them.
@@dennisweidner288 read the Wikipedia article on the Me262.
When the Me-262 went into service, it was missing 3500 hours of flight testing.
@@tarjei99 I was not disagreeing with that.
@@dennisweidner288 Dennis, Unfortunately, Conrad Crane has repeated an often repeated myth about Hitler and the Me-262. In actual fact, the Me-262 was delayed by the poor jet engine performance of the Junkers engine. Not by the supposed interference of Hitler insisting that it be converted to a bomber. There is no evidence of Hitler's interference other than the dubious statements of Germans after the war. Converting the Me-262 to a fighter bomber would be no more complicated or time consuming a task than that already done in the conversions of the Me-109 & Fw-190 to fighter bombers during the war. Often these conversions were simple enough that they could be done by air units in the field. Running bomb release cables through the fuselage and wings was not difficult, nor was adding bomb shackles. Of course heavy payloads required engines of sufficient power & reliability. The Junkers engines had development & engineering problems, thus it was not a Hitler induced restriction.
The gentleman claims that the U.S. Army didn't mistakes twice, however individual commanders did. General Omar Bradley refused to take advice from an officer that had saved in the Pacific and observed the ineffectiveness of direct fire by battleships on coastal fortifications. Bradley refuse to have the battleships supporting the Omaha landings assume positions father offshore so that their gunfire would be in a arc with the shells hitting the coastal fortifications in an downward arc. Bradley showed his stubbornness later in the Battle of the Huegen Forrest where he ordered American units to continue to attack entrenched Germans troops instead of bypassing the forrest. The units involved suffered over 100% casualties and contributed to the the American Army having to put green divisions in the line before the German counter offensive in December 1944.
If Bradley was a college football quarterback in 2023, he would be described as a "game manager." Ike was no great tactician either (I am channeling Rick Atkinson from his WW2 ETO trilogy.) Patton was a tactician, but not a logistician , the weakest part of his staff work (G-4).
this is simply just a case of flag waving
“In the end, historians are always going to win.” So I changed my mind, and am now glad my son studies history.
The problem is that our universities, especially history and economics departments, are dominated by Marxist professors teaching nonsense like CRT and promoting a warped form of history like the 1619 Project. Few college graduates, for example, leave our universities understanding how the American Revolution was a fundamental turning point in world history laying the foundation for the end of forced labor and democratic government.
I do think it's funny that one of the panelists thinks the book about Omaha beach and the author's criticism is too much about hindsight when the three of them have just spent almost an hour doing the same thing. 😕
That being said, I loved the video and enjoyed hearing the thoughts of all three men.
That's completely different they are looking backwards trying to understand the perspective of the people having to makes those difficult descions with imperfect knowledge, what they're cricising is looking back and judging the historical figures as if they knew what we know.
Many of these blunders were only considered that after the war had ended, when it became clear what their wider implications were. There had been reasonable justification to make the decision at the time.
some were known to be blunders at the time... Halsey's typhoon comes to mind
@@jean-francoislemieux5509 Have you read the book?
I don't know how historians can have a discussion about WW2 blunders & leave out admiral Nagumo at Midway. His leadership in that battle was some of the worse tactical decisions, combined with arrogance & a total disregard for even the most minimal amount of caution.
@@keitht24 Don’t leave out Hornet’s captain Marc Mitscher and his “flight to nowhere” at Midway! Some think his decision to send his squadrons due west anticipating a second carrier group trailing the first - there was no second carrier group - potentially resulted in the sinking of the Yorktown itself. If Mitscher sent his dive bombers to the Japanese carriers known location the thought being the 4th carrier, the Hiryu, would have been bombed along with the other three carriers & sunk in the morning as well.
@@jrsands That's different because he's making split second decisions in the moment. That turned out to be a bad decision, but in the moment it was a calculated risk. Nagumo received word of 10 American ships northeast of Midway. He did nothing with this information, because a carrier hadn't been spotted with this fleet. Additionally, his carelessness in utilizing his airial recon, was outright criminal. Think about it like this. Midway is supposed to be a surprise attack. So there's no reason an entire fleet would be in that vicinity. If it had said 1-2 surface ships, I can give Nagumo a pass. But 10 ships is a fleet & the fact that he didn't assume that carriers had to be with them is unbelievable.
I loved the discussion on “blunders “. BUT MOST OF THE BLUNDERS SEEM APPARENT AFTER THE FACT 😗
If they were apparent at the time, they wouldn’t have been made.
ONE LEARNS FROM OTHERS MISTAKES NOT FROM THEIR SUCCESSES.
My favourite quote about any ‘blunder’ is Talleyrands opinion on the Haitian genocide of white French “it is worse than a crime, it is a mistake”
When they were discussing the German's problem of capturing Baku, Russia for its oil, what can they do with it then, as they had no way to transport that oil back to Germany where it was needed. This reminded me of the line said by The Joker to hospital patient, Harvey Dent in the movie, The Dark Knight, "I'm like that dog that chases cars. I don't know what I would do if I ever caught one."
The German's had no way to transport the captured oil if they did win, just as the Japanese had no way to ship their captured oil and rubber from their island capturing in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia.
The Japanese were so low on shipping even before the war, 1/3 of goods to and from Japan were flagged to countries that Japan declared war on making a tight situation critical.
Good stuff guys. Very interesting.
7:52 The Prussians didn't crossed at Sedan in 1870, they crossed at the border between Germany and France, Sedan borders Belgium. The Germans didn't specifically crossed at Sedan in 1914 either.
The Prussians did surround and defeat the French army at Sedan though. Opening France for their advance.
@@PalleRasmussen Yes but that's not where the Germans broke through. The french army was already well weakened by this point, that's precisely why the Germans were able to surround the french at Sedan.
@@nikolaasp2968 I think that he got confused by the name of the two battles. I find it somewhat worse that he claims that the defence there was thin. It was not. It was largely by the actions and initiative of a single Feldwebel Ruhbart (I think) that they got across. But that is the thing; an attacker can almost always break through a single defence line, and if you are not quick enough in your counterattack and/or do not have defence in depth, he will exploit the breach.
Enjoyed the talk 🇦🇺
“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!”
Brilliant job and fascinating!
5:40..Animal House / Belushi reference obviously lost on this crowd
Recently, I was watching a local MLB talk show. It's about the Astros. The three "presenters," or whatever they're called, are two young guys and one middle aged guy. The middle aged guy made a reference to Pravda. The young guys looked blank.
In a Facebook group the other day, I submitted a hilariously stupid ad for a WWII. movie on my movie list. In the Cast and Crew section, there was, so help me, a photo of Joachim von Ribbentrop, with his name captioned under the photo.
It was turned down. The administration didn't get why it was hilarious. They'd never heard of von Ribbentrop. They thought I had submitted a dud post.
Monty claiming that he would be in Falsaise by D plus 2 was not mentioned.
It sort of threw off the whole invasion timetable and lost the initiative.
Nice channel jacket Mr. Holland.
What would’ve changed if we would have up armored and up gun the vast majority of Sherman tanks? Iview the Sherman tank as almost perfect in terms of what the allies needed to do worldwide. I’m curious if putting the effort into better Sherman tanks would have cost us too much in terms of production and mobility. Did we strike the right balance could we have done a better job could we have provided better tanks without weakening our advantages?
Brilliant!!!!!!
Very interesting talk 👍🏽
But.... the Rapido crossing wasn't left up to the divisional commander. Walker was micromanaged from above about the whole attack.
Wonderful.
MacArthur was a fool in the Philippines.
No Crete discussion? No strategic importance.
Crete was a Comedy of Errors.
"What happened if the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor" is hilarious.
When is it in the video?
@@greenturret6772 5:24
Bluto in the movie Animal House.
Come on, allow it, Dr. Holland it is!
I had hoped some mention of
1) Allies failure in Sicily to immediately target Messina and thus trap the German forces holding the island.
2) Allies failure to simply bypass Pelileiu and mop up there later.
Was there any real benefit of going into the Philiipines other than to assuage MacArthur's ego?
@@ppumpkin3282In a strategic sense absolutely. Think of what America's position in Asia would be since WW2 if we hadn't gone back to liberate the Philippines .
@@ppumpkin3282 Taking Luzon made it easier to take Okinawa, whether or not we should have taken Leyte is another question.
I wonder if we had bypassed Pelileiu if we could have captured Iwo Jima in the time frame of the battle for Pelileiu, when it wasn't as heavily fortified and gotten fighters based their sooner?
6:53 my guy on the right felt that 😂
The Germans lost the war at dunkirk. Adolf galland states in his book that the delay in employing me 262s was poor engine performance. Even when they were improved to the point of utility they were only getting 10 hours from them. Now the german 4 engine bomber apparently had design issues because of unrealistic requirements. Supposedly it had to also function as a dive bomber. I dont know if they ever figured that out or dropped it. But from what I've read it resulted in a poorly designed plane with many maintenance issues.
The lesson that Guderian tried to teach Hitler:
A nation which could not provide adequate number of basics, like steel track pins, to it's forward units, had no business conducting an all out offensive.
Hello
Can anyone copy the captions of this video for me?
There were no conscripts in the Canadian armed forces until very late in the war because of political reasons. They were often undermanned.
Yes take a look at the multi nation force that was the Canadian army in North weast europe
Wow! I had to listen very fast!
If Halsey was at Marianas what would Willis Lee's fears have been realized and they ran into the Japanese surface fleet and been massively mauled delaying other invasions?
How about a bigger table? Other than that, a pretty good discussion.
😂 you would think the location would be able to come up with a bigger one.
Rear Admiral Carleton Wright at the Battle of Tassafaronga. No justification for his blunder at all. And those commanders he led continued on with the blunders. Utter debacle.
What about the failures of the US Corps commanders' blunders at the Hurtgen Forest?
As much as I admire James Holland, I would take issue with something he said. He said "if you can't produce" speaking of German tank production compared to the number of tanks produced by the Soviets and Americans. In fact, the Germans could have produced far more tanks than they did. The Germans had a massive steel industry, far larger than the Soviet steel industry. And steel is the primary material in building tanks. The Germans could have produced more. They were not forced into the 'quality' mode. It is a choice they made. It is just that German industrial processes were so incredibly inefficient. They made tanks in basically craft shops while the Soviets thanks to American-designed factories, mass-produced them. The Germans also went for craftsmanship, while the Soviets and Americans understood that tanks had limited life spans on the battlefront and produced tanks that were not finely crafted machines.
Another factor here is the War in the West. Cast amounts of steel and other metals were diverted to fight the air war and the Battle of the Atlantic. The Russians today think the War in the West was a sideshow. In fact, more than half of German industrial production went to support the war in the West. If more had gone to support the Ostheer the outcome of the Ostkrieg might have been very different.
Unfortunately, Conrad Crane has repeated an often repeated myth about Hitler and the Me-262. In actual fact, the Me-262 was delayed by the poor jet engine performance of the Junkers engine. Not by the supposed interference of Hitler insisting that it be converted to a bomber. There is no evidence of Hitler's interference other than the dubious statements of Germans after the war. Converting the Me-262 to a fighter bomber would be no more complicated or time consuming a task than that already done in the conversions of the Me-109 & Fw-190 to fighter bombers during the war. Often these conversions were simple enough that they could be done by air units in the field. Running bomb release cables through the fuselage and wings was not difficult, nor was adding bomb shackles. Of course heavy payloads required engines of sufficient power & reliability. The Junkers engines had development & engineering problems, thus it was not a Hitler induced restriction.
Love James Holland, but they’re completely wrong about Rommel. It would have done no good to wage a static defensive campaign in North Africa where your flank can always be turned. Rommel was correct to go on the offensive.
Did they forget about Lt. Gen. Lloyd Ralston Fredendall?
Or was the Kasserine Pass just too obvious a blunder for this audience?
no mention of how the allies breaking the german enigma code was the main contribution of Rommel's defeat and the German defeat in general. Bletchy Park made a greater contribution to ending WWII then Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery, Eaker combined.
Because it wasn't. Allied intelligence was critical but it's not the world-beating advantage pop-history makes it out to be.
At Pearl Harbor, the attrition of the Japanese aircraft were increasing, so the Japanese were quitting while they were ahead.
The IJN destroyers were running on fumes due to the circuitous route taken. The larger vessels had carried additional fuel oil in barrels on board. The destroyers just couldn't fit enough aboard. IJN mid-ocean refueling was extremely primitive compared to US and Royal Navy expertise. Running the fleet carriers with the destroyer screen still present to launch another strike at take off speed and then wait for the strike recovery was going to push them into a negative fuel situation.
@@asterixdogmatix1073 Ironically, the IJN destroyers were mostly unneeded since the American torpedoes of December 1941 were virtually useless.
@@amerigo88 Yes, the many 'layers' of the Mark14 design flaws!
@@asterixdogmatix1073 Another Drachinifel fan, I see. "Failure is like Onions" video . I may have had the most liked comment on that video.
A little too glib and triumphant for my taste. Blunders the authors didn't touch on were.: The Japanese decision to take on the U. S by attacking Pearl Harbor; The Japanese decision not to develop their. Indian Ocean raid of 19FORTY-TWO. It will full blown landing. in southern India. This whatever effect we take in India out of the war and put a complete dent. in the British Empire's war effort. Hitler's decision to declare war on the US. A comprehensive panel would have dealt with These
James holland is the best
Martinez Christopher Garcia Mark Garcia Carol
The Ukes use precision artillary & missiles to wipe out Rus units firing 10x ammo w/ 3x artillary pcs... guess that kills Stalin's quantity vs quality maxim
I must have missed the news. I didn't realize the war was over.
Another speaker who uses "you know" as a replacenent for a comma in written text. A momentary pause is all right but some of these excellent historians could use and benefit from some public speaking coaching. A moment of silence can lend drama and timing to their lectures.
17:15
19:57 "A little more GUMPTION!"
24:45 "Fill her up"
Democracies learn faster in war because we are independent minded and can admit mistakes. Totalitarian regimes think they are superior and are too arrogant and top down to learn..quickly. The Germans said that Americans learn fast.
Diep?
Hyper-discussion pitched as one-liners that was extremely difficult to listen to. Slow down a bit, so the rest of us can absorb the points you are making.
Murray Spearber hated Bobby Knight because Bobby Knight is a bully. However, Murray never won anything. ever. Right now we have a military set up for the worst debacle known to man due to stupid thinking. When it happens tell them that you heard it here first on roller derby
The gentleman's comments about Douglas MacArthur's decision to meet the Japanese own the beaches are completely wrong. The Philippine Army didn't have the training, equipment and the leadership necessary to successfully defeat the Japanese landings. If MacArthur really believed in this policy, he would have committed the U.S. 31st Infantry and 4th Marines to the beach defense and given the American officer advisors to Philippine Army units command responsibility.
Did not much discus strategic blunders (except Hitler's decision to invade Poland). For the allies: what about the very costly sideshows of the Italian campaign (Churchill's "soft underbelly") and the campaign to retake the Philippines for McArthur's PR.
Wait a minute! Everybody stop! What did that guy say? "The Army does a lot more amphibious assaults than the Marines". Oh really? These dudes apparently don't really know anything about the Pacific Island battles of WWII. Tarawa. Iowa Jima. Okinawa. Guadalcanal. Peleliu. Just to name a few.
This has been documented over and over . In terms of volume of amphibious landings, the US Army made far more more than the US Marines. The Marines were tasked with many of the truly nasty landings, however. There were many Army amphibious landings on the north coast of New Guinea and in the islands of the Philippines. The Army recaptured the Aleutian Islands and landed alongside the Marines at Okinawa.
On a related note , the Marines were barred making large amphibious landings in Europe because General Marshall did not want a repeat of Belleau in WW1. The Army forces that served in France in WW1 hugely outnumbered the Marines, but the press made the American public think the Marines were the key to victory in WW1.
@@amerigo88 Give it up dude. You're simply flat wrong on the numbers. Look it up.
@@viking956 "In the Pacific theater during World War II, the American land war was fought primarily by the Army, though popular memory has focused almost exclusively on the comparatively smaller Marine Corps effort. The Corps made fifteen amphibious combat landings over the course of the entire war. In the spring of 1945, Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger’s Eighth Army alone carried out thirty-five amphibious landings over a five-week period in the Philippines." from Island Infernos - The U. S. Army's Pacific War Odyssey by Dr. John C. McManus
The Army did and that's just in the Pacific without counting all of the landings in N. Africa Italy and France. Also almost all of the Marine landings involve either Army reinforcements or concurrent Army landings as part of the operations.
Coming from a Marine, the statement is correct. There were 20 plus Army Divisions compared to the 6 Marine Divisions in the Pacific Theater.
James argument about irritating personal characteristics versus results regarding Generals applies exactly to Donald Trump! 😁
Ah, come on, most of us here are here because we want to hear about the past, next time if you could please not bring your buddy Trump along, most of us would appreciate no doubt about that! : )
@@rosesprog1722 OK. Sorry I triggered you.
@@johngetty3839 You only half triggered me, cause I was only half serious. Cheers.
@@rosesprog1722 OK. Thanks for the clarification. 🙂
No, it does not apply exactly to Trump. It does not apply at all to Trump. The generals mentioned were at the very least competent. Trump is not. And please don't faux-apologize for "triggering" me. I'm not triggered. I'm correcting your erroneous comment.
This is a very ironic subject as America has NEVER actually won a war !
WW2 the last war america won and russia won it for them😅
Probably the best and most insightful comprehensive overviews of WW2 ever!
Ty very much! 💛💛💪🏻💪🏻
The real blunder of the U.S. strategic bombing campaign was the use of the Norden bombsight which was an overhyped piece of garbage. Sperry had designed a high altitude bombsight, which was far and away a more accurate bombsight than the Norman. But with the Norden corporation's false advertising campaign and the connivence of the U.S. Army Air Corps. Norden received the contract instead of Sperry.
The most interesting thing I found was James Holland’s revisionist view of Mark Clark Something for me to read up on
Gen Mark Clark had been known as a "glory hound" and is probably responsible for the unnecessary push to capture Rome.
I agree. I ave so much respect for Holland, I will look into that as well.
I have not watched yet. But in my eyes, Clark competes with Stilwell and Fredendall and Dogout Doug as the most overrated US general of WW2.
@@PalleRasmussen who rates Fredendall highly? as for Clark, the rap on him is that he turned toward Rome and let the Germans escape north. Holland says this is not true. I don't know enough to comment. Stilwell was in a difficult position. American commanders succeeded because of the overwhelming industrial power of the United States. Stillwell did not have that in the CBI. The CBI was at the bottom of everyone's list of priorities. And of course, he was dealing with Chiang I'm not sure anyone could have done a whole lot better. He did a good job of training the Chinese units he commanded. MacArthur is a mixed bag. he performed poorly in the Philippines(1941-42), treated the Australians terribly, was competent in the southwestern pacific, and performed brilliantly during the occupation of Japan.
@@dennisweidner288 my mistake. I meant "worst US general" of WW2. The most overrated is either Patton or Dugout Doug.
And it is not as if the US did not have competent generals. Collins and Ridgeway comes to mind.
And let us not talk about the misconception of the elderly gentleman at 1:04 that US troops and officers were trained to show initiative while the Germans were not "because of rigid Prussian discipline". He is of the generation who belied that propaganda though it is of the same sort as "The MG42's bark is worse than its bite".
Citino and Muth have written volumes on that subject of German warfighting Vs American.
Loved this panel, the passion of James Holland for the subject matter has always came through in everything he has done.
Chiang Kai shek is who initiated the Battle of Shanghai and there's plenty of evidence for that, his son's book notwithstanding. His top military leaders have made it clear that the Nationalists confronted the Japanese Garrison of 5000 there in response to Japan's occupation of parts of north China south of the Manchurian border. They hoped for a quick victory before reinforcements arrived by virtue of what they thought were overwhelming numbers of the Army's best German trained troops. Several theories of why the Industrial Coastal city was chosen includes drawing Japanese troops away from their Russian logistical supply line and Chiang Kai shek wanted the war in sight of the western foreign settlements in hopes of support from the west. So it was the first of Chaing Kai shek's battlefield blunders.
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The second was breaching the dams along the yellow river to slow the Japanese advance to Wuhan in 1938. The resulting flood all the way to the coast, was the worst ecological disaster of WW2 and killed Chinese in 5 figures or more either directly or by rendering China's most fertile agricultural region to be useless for years.. It was also a huge source of recruitment for Mao Zedong. The Japanese entered Wuhan a month later from a different direction.
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His third was not getting rid of Stillwell when Marshall gave him the chance. His usually astute wife counseled against forcing any turnover in the American military hierarchy. They both came to regret missing that opportunity.
Guadalcanal was Admiral King's risky idea not MacArthur's. Good thing Admiral Mikawa didn't know our carriers were out of range during the Battle of Savo Island or he would've ruined our first offensive of the Asian Pacific War.
I'd agree that Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was a pretty big blunder. And Kudos to the guy who nominated the 8th AAF bombing campaign in '43 with no fighter escort into Germany.
The lack of stronger logistical support ships in the Navy before the entry of the US into the war is a huge blunder, along with no night fighting doctrine. Imagine if the destroyers and cruisers had given Mikowa nearly as good as they got?
Classic “if it works it’s genius, if it doesn’t work he’s an idiot”. The biggest blunder was the French and British not hammering Germany after the earliest annexations of Chechloslovakia (spelling) and Sudetenland. Would’ve been a whole different thing if they’d not appeased and fought before Fermany was really ready
Yes imagine if the Czechs had fought even without France and Britain. They would have blunted German tank numbers and lost a lot of their own that would not have been available for use against anyone else and there was the possibility that their factories might have been destroyed and wouldn't have been available to the nazi war machine.
I'll have to seriously reconsider my opinion of Mark Clark now.
The strategic impacts of in theater decisions would become a ... theme for nearly all German operations in WWII. Then those German officers would blame "crazy Hitler" for lack of strategic foresight in the overall planing and field execution, in their ( heavily edited by Model for U S Army history division ) after war memoirs.
from 11:55 talking about Rommel in North Afrika, etc.
James Holland is great. I love listening to him. He constantly cuts to the quick. I would take issue with one point he made--how important was the loss of German aircraft in the Mediterranean. More important was the loss of the air crews.
A lot of times it’s one in the same but I get your point
@@Strawberry-12. The Germans were able to replace the aircraft. But by 1943 it was becoming increasingly difficult to replace the aircrews with well-trained personnel. In 1944, it was impossible.
@@dennisweidner288 yeah I understand that, but I think he was saying the same thing as you originally but in a different way. The Germans lost air crews when the aircraft where shot down, I don’t think he was talking about the physical planes
@@Strawberry-12. I was not trying to be critical of Hillnd. He is one of my favorite historians. I was just going on what he said. But I think it is a distinction that has to be clearly stated. At the end of the War, the Germans still had aircraft. What they no longer had after early 1944 was trained pilots to fly them. Meaning that German cities were now vulnerable to Allied air attack with only flak protection.
@@dennisweidner288 fair enough. On an aside I wasn’t trying to be critical of you either I was just trying to give an explanation. I guess comments and texting aren’t really great at expressing tone of speech, sorry if there was any misunderstanding
1:06:00 Correction - Canadians at Normandy were a volunteer force. While Canada had conscription, conscripts weren't sent overseas, until authorization in November 1944.
14:55 we often come back with all these criticisms of the french, of putting their tanks into "penny packets" etc... But actually it's a bit of a cruel criticism because the french were doing what most armies were doing at that time and what every country did even for the rest of the war. 44% of the french tank force was in specialized units in 1940, yet later on the soviets also had 44% of their armor only in specialized units, and the americans even had 56% of their tanks put in support to the infantry and not in specified armor division.
The biggest problem with French tanks was their lack of radio transmitters & receivers for all tanks. Most French tanks could only receive radio traffic, but not transmit. This is real buffoonery. Holland is correct about the French lack of command & control. Total incompetence at the top in the French army. The average French unit fought bravely, but their Generals were idiots.
You've got to admire the approach of James Holland, kicking off a US event, and makes all his opening examples from the first half of WW2, during which the US hasn't yet entered the war. Even the notion that the term "Allies" predates US involvement might trigger some of the audience members.
Anyone "triggered" by the US involvement can go .... themselves.
@dave38434783 The United States was impacting the War well before Pearl Harbor. Why do you think the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor? It was because America was aiding China and cut off oil exports. This is part of the reason the Japanese did not join the NAZI assault on the Soviet Union. Or why do you think Britain was still in the War. It was because America wrote Britain a blank check--Lend Lease. Or just look at where the RAF was getting its high-octane aviation fuel during the Battle of Britain. For that matter after Italy entered the War and closed the Mediterranean (1940). ALL of Britain's oil came from the United States or American-controlled sources. Try fighting a war without oil. Hitler eventually attacked the Soviet Union because he knew that with American backing, he could not defeat Britain.
Great stuff, but the constant sound buzzer is horrible
Yeah but we all fantasise about driving a tiger or panther
Is Keselring as good a tactician as they say ? Anyone
@55:00 Such an excellent question, with a regrettably anemic answer.... 😕
*I think this is the single greatest title of a lecture in modern history.*
3 clowns
Losing, not loosing.
that was fantastic!!!
I noticed that James Holland failed to include Winston Churchill's blunders in his list. Churchill's ill conceived operation to land troops in Norway was a disaster, and his sending of a portion of the British Fleet to support the Free French at Dakar, while the German invasion scare was very real.I'm just including Churchill's blunders up to the summer of 1940. There were many more later in the war. Don't get me wrong, I have the greatest respect for Winston Churchill as a politician and orator, but on the whole he was a very bad strategist.
Churchill's pause on capital ship production, even though smaller yards were starting to ramp up production of escort vessels. If the British had had another carrier or two earlier, would Repulse and Prince of Wales have sailed with carriers, how would that have affected the battle for Singapore?
I'm sure a carrier or 2 would have been very vulnerable in the Pacific even if the British were able to maintain them in that region in 1941.
@@simonargall5508Check out HMS Unicorn, Not A Carrier, A forward Aviation Support Vessel. Yes aircraft could cycle through her flight deck, not as fast as a fleet or even light fleet carrier. But she had two hangers and plenty of machinery for maintenance.
The biggest blunder Hitler made was his own impatience. The initial idea before Poland was to continue building Germany's military might until 1946 which was the initial projected date for the beginning of the war. If he would have waited who knows what would have happened?
That is an interesting idea. The Royal Navy was rebuilding and would have been much larger and more powerful with a 4-5 year build up. They would have had stronger escort navy for convoys, they would have had more aircraft carriers, the Unicorn might have been more than a class of one (maybe 4 by then), They might have had light carriers besides the Unicorn (technically a forward aviation support vessel.) They might have had better naval fighters because by then the RAF would have been up to strength and modernized. The US might have been slightly stronger as well than it was. The question is what would Germany do when Japan declared war on the US and Britain? How would they have reacted to the French and Dutch not being colonial powers in exile? Would Germany have declared war on Britain, US, France (?) and the Netherlands? What would the Soviet Union have done? With out a war with Germany do they decide to attach Japanese holdings? They did well against Japanese army attacks in 1938 or 1939. If they did that and with out war against Germany wearing down British forces how quickly is the Pacific war over? The British would have brought 3-4 armor decked carriers plus HMS Unicorn to repair aircraft (as well as conduct some flight ops) and several battleships, battlecruisers, and many cruisers and destroyers to the theater. This might have prevented the Japanese from either taking the Dutch East Indies or holding them. This would have caused the Japanese war machine to run out of fuel by the end of 1942. Also British submarines would have been very active in the Pacific and they had working torpedoes and without the Netherlands falling, their submarines would have been resupplied with torpedoes, crippling shipping. If Vietnam isn't invaded until December 1941-January 1942, do the French show up with several battleships and their lone carrier to augment the British fleet?
According to Hjalmar Schacht what would have happened was that the German economy would have melted down catastrophically.
My biggest 'what if' is if Hitler had the strategic sense to have made a complete, overly generous treaty with France, including removing all troops from France? If they would have waited until the British attacked the French fleet, then made the treaty, guaranteeing that Franch wouldn't allow British troops on its soil during this conflict.
The implications of that would have been wide ranging, including the Japanese invading French possessions.
"if my aunt had cojones".....
The M10 tank destroyer, ~6400 produced, and the whole U.S. tank destroyer doctrine qualifies as a blunder.
Ended up mostly used as mobile artillery, so hardly a total waste.
Biggest blunder US army not trained to fight tank on tank battles
Hopefully general Mary Miley doesn't plan and fight a battle
Hitler's blunder was not invading Poland, but surrounding himself with incompetent yes men like Von Ribbentrop. It was von Ribbentrop as foreign minister that advised Hitler that Great Britain would not declare war on Germany over England's grantee to Poland.
Hitler's blunder was starting a genocidal war in 1939, plus organizing his leaders as adversaries and "yes men" to suit his own personal dictatorship.
Hitler himself was incompetent, both as diplomat and as military leader and as industrial organizer. Mostly his "triumphs"were the ideas of better organizers like Speer, better military leaders like Guderian, but all were bad diplomats and radical intolerant racists.
Read Mein Kamph
is this a comedy show where one comedian tries to out do one another. i was hoping for some serious discussion.
Hard to shut James up.