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Thread: Closed thread

  1. #1

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    Closed thread

    Zack, sorry to see a thread closed. I think Floats brought up a very good point about the alliance between Hitler and Stalin for 2 years at the start of the war. I really didnt know much about that, went back to check on it and learned more about it. Apparetly Stalin was trying to ally with Britain and France in 39 but was not accepted and made a deal with Htiler.
    Certainly a good thing that Hitler made the huge mistake of attacking Russia, maybe he was tempted when they saw how badly the Russians had fared when attacking the small country of Finland, (correction)..
    Russia was a huge asset to the Allies in the rest of the war, took a lot of losses and took a huge toll of German troops, eventually had a significant air force after serving mostly as targets for Me 109s at the start of the war.

    I am sorry that two posters tried to make this topic about a contest or critisism of one candidate, even at this late date trying to ride a very old horse named WMD.
    My post was not to single out any candidate to debate about but to note a very big change in how we view all this now.

    As for not being about warbirds, my post starts off with Lindberg re WWII and continues with Mcain who of course flew in Nam. And just as airpower and warbirds were a huge part of WWII, now even more so, with our current military actions which are often almost all air bombing with little ground troops.
    And the catylysts for all this was the 9-11 attacks which used airliners as very effective warbirds.
    Last edited by Bill Greenwood; 09-29-2016 at 06:02 PM.

  2. #2
    rwanttaja's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Greenwood View Post
    Zack, sorry to see a thread closed. I think Floats brought up a very good point about the alliance between Hitler and Stalin for 2 years at the start of the war. I really didnt know much about that, went back to check on it and learned more about it. Apparetly Stalin was trying to ally with Britain and France in 39 but was not accepted and made a deal with Htiler.
    Certainly a good thing that Hitler made the huge mistake of attacking Russia, maybe he was tempted when they saw how badly the Russians had fared when attacking the small country of Norway.
    Russia was a huge asset to the Allies in the rest of the war, took a lot of losses and took a huge toll of German troops, eventually had a significant air force after serving mostly as targets for Me 109s at the start of the war.
    [Minor correction: Bill said Norway, when he meant Finland. ]

    I doubt the Russian/Finnish conflict encouraged Hitler all that much. His prewar comments made it quite clear he felt the Soviet Union was the real threat; the pact was never more than just a convenient delay in what would later be called Operation Barbarosa. A neutral/hostile Soviet Union would have made it too easy for support to reach the Poles, while, of course, the result of the Pact was a sealing of the Soviet/Polish border and the invasion by the Russians themselves a short time later.

    Without the Pact, Hitler may, in fact, have faced a proxy war in Poland. The Russians could have supplied tanks and aircraft, and, just like 15 years later in Korea, "volunteers" could have manned the aircraft.

    As it was, the Western Allies got the wrong message. The failure to stop the Germans was attributed to the poor quality of the Polish military. In reality, the problem was the unexpectedly good quality of the German equipment, a lesson French and British policy makers didn't learn.

    Still, the planes the Russian could have lent to Poland may not have made a difference. The Soviet Air Force didn't perform that well against planes like the Brewster Buffalo* wielded by the Finns, and the BF-109Es probably would have shredded whatever the Russians could have stood against them. Again, Western observers *still* probably wouldn't have "connected the dots," assuming that the Soviet aircraft were just inferior.

    * The Buffalo flown by the Finns was not the same aircraft that went operational in the US Navy. It was much lighter, and performed far better. It garnered a kill ratio of 26:1, over twice as good as the P-51 Mustang (against a lower-quality foe, of course).

    Ron Wanttaja

  3. #3
    Mayhemxpc's Avatar
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    I understand why Zack closed it. Politics aside, we had strayed way off topic. But…with regard to the invasion of Poland. (1) It wasn't so much the quality of the German equipment as the way they used it. Panzer 1's and 2's were outclassed by just about every armored vehicle fielded by the allies. Only about 2/3 of the Luftwaffe's fighter force were the Emils. The other third were under-powered Doras, and Heinkel bi-planes. But overall the D-17, 109E's, and even the 110's were technologically better than anything the Poles could set against them. (Or, theoretically, the Russians.) What made them even more effective, again, was the way they were employed, not just the technology. As noted, these were lessons the Western allies chose not to learn. Nonetheless, the Luftwaffe suffered some pretty heavy losses. Losses not completely made up by the beginning of the French campaign. (James Holland's book, the Battle of Britain, gives some excellent descriptions of the impact of the Polish campaign on the Luftwaffe, as well as the air battles over France. (2) I have read some interesting arguments that the reason for invading Poland was to provide a launching platform for Hitler's real objective -- the invasion of Russia. This was his real goal in the war. The invasion of France, more than anything else, was intended to secure Germany's western frontier so it could focus all its energy on Russia. Just like WW1, it didn't quite work out that way. (3) One more thing about alliances. France and Britain declare war on Germany because it invaded Poland. OK. Then why didn't they also declare war on Russia?

    I still think that the change in targeting over the last 50 years is worth a discussion. It CAN be done without engaging in partisan politics. The challenge is to avoid that temptation.
    Chris Mayer
    N424AF
    www.o2cricket.com

  4. #4

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    Excellent Point about declaration of war on Russia. The whole reason for the war was GB declaring due to the invasion of Poland. Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland and agreed to it long before the first shot was fired.

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