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[Gen. Volkov]

Also, I think I am beginning to worship you. I just wish my class goes more in depth with European history around 1700s and 1800s.

LOL. You should see me talking about the World Wars, particularly WW2. Anyway, yeah, you'd have to do independent reading, like Kilk suggested, if you are in high school. Very few high schools focus on anything but US history in that period. That's what I did, though weirdly enough, I didn't know much about the Franco-Prussian war until I got to college. I knew of it's existence, but somehow never read much about it.

About the second, he didn't leave any sons, so it passed on to his nephew. I would support that.

That was actually pretty common. More than a few kings or monarchs of some type died without leaving a successor, so a close blood relative became the heir to the throne. This didn't always produce the best results though, Frederick William II was not a very good ruler, to be honest. He was much more interested in economic experimentation and religious edicts than he was in the army. There are some who blame him for the defeat of the Prussian Army by Napoleon's forces in 1806. He was dead by then, but the army institutions he had put in place were still in existence. The Prussian Army in 1806 was not the same force it had been under Frederick William 1 or Frederick the Great.

[Preußen]

I heard about Frederich William II. Once in my class, which proves your example correct. My library only has one book on Prussia.

WW2's interesting...TEACH ME O GREAT MASTER

[Gen. Volkov]

I heard about Frederich William II. Once in my class, which proves your example correct. My library only has one book on Prussia.

Heh. That's sad.

WW2's interesting...TEACH ME O GREAT MASTER

LOL. I used to have a post I called "Volkov's 5 minute run down on WW2", but I've misplaced it somewhere. Don't even remember what was in it. So here's this little piece, roughly paraphrased from an essay I wrote for one of my finals in a History class.

Ok, so I hear from a lot of folks who are fairly knowledgeable about WW2, that if the US hadn't joined the fight, the only difference would be that the Russian sphere of influence would have extended to the Atlantic, instead of Germany. Myself, I disagree with that analysis. I think if the US hadn't joined, the Nazis would have won. For a couple of reasons:

The first is that with the start of lend lease and then the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the US poured all kinds of men and materiel into Great Britain. Without US help, the Nazis would have probably eventually beaten down the British. The Nazis were just bigger, had more industrial capacity available, and more men available.  A lot of the reason Nazi production slowed down so much towards the end of the war, is that we were bombing the snot out of their infrastructure. Plus the US side of the Battle of the Atlantic wouldn't have been there, and the German U-Boats would have had free rein to starve the British Islands into submission. The UK would have still had the Royal Navy, but without the equally massive US Navy on the other side of the Atlantic, the battle against the U-boats gets a whole lot harder. So anyway, without the British to worry them, the Nazis could have concentrated all their forces against the Soviets.

Which brings me to my next point. The Soviets were an industrial powerhouse in WW2, I'm not saying they weren't. But, if you look at what they produced, it was almost entirely the stuff you send directly into battle. Tanks, artillery, etc. The US supplied them with the vast majority of the infrastructure they needed, and that infrastructure was just as vital to the war effort. Rolling stock, rails, light trucks, jeeps, heavy trucks. Stuff to transport all the men and materiel to the war front. We also supplied them with a huge amount of the fuel they used. Most of their coal and virtually all their aviation gas was shipped to them from the US. If the Soviets had to divert the amount of industrial capacity necessary to do it all on their own, they almost certainly wouldn't have been able to build up the huge advantages in men and materiel that they did at the war front. The Soviets were an industrial powerhouse, but not anywhere close to the same level as the US. If the Soviet Army doesn't outnumber the German Army heavily, the Germans would win, because in nearly every battle they fought, the Germans had a very favorable exchange ratio. The Germans kept getting pushed back mostly because they were so heavily outnumbered. Also the Germans kept running out of fuel, because of the aforementioned bombing raids from Britain. If the Soviets don't hugely outnumber the Germans, and the Germans have a secure homeland that isn't being bombed back to the Stone Age by day and night raids by the USAAF and the RAF from Great Britain, the Nazis almost certainly win the war.

[Kilkenne]

Volkov, break that up into paragraphs so I can respond to it, please.

[Rakefur]

If the Soviet Army doesn't outnumber the German Army heavily, the Germans would win, because in nearly every battle they fought, the Germans had a very favorable exchange ratio. They kept getting pushed back mostly because they were so heavily outnumbered. Also they kept running out of fuel, because of the aforementioned bombing raids from Britain. If the Soviets don't hugely outnumber the Germans, and the Germans have a secure homeland that isn't being bombed back to the Stone Age by day and night raids by the USAAF and the RAF from Great Britain, the Nazis almost certainly win the war.

Possibly. However, you must remember that the Soviets were fighting for their homeland, whereas the Nazis were just doing Hitler's orders.

[Preußen]

The Nazis had the capability of beating even the US in the war, if they had finished developing their fighter plane. If they were finished by D-Day, the allied invasion of Normandy would've been disastrous.

[Gen. Volkov]

Volkov, break that up into paragraphs so I can respond to it, please.

Bah, fine.

Possibly. However, you must remember that the Soviets were fighting for their homeland, whereas the Nazis were just doing Hitler's orders.

The Nazis were every bit as motivated as the Soviets were. They knew that if they failed, the consequences would be dire.

The Nazis had the capability of beating even the US in the war, if they had finished developing their fighter plane. If they were finished by D-Day, the allied invasion of Normandy would've been disastrous.

Eh, by that point the Nazis had already essentially lost the war. Sure it would have been painful, if the Germans had possessed the Me 262 on D-Day, it might even have caused the Allied invasion to stall or be pushed back, at first, but they just couldn't have built enough of them to offset the huge numbers of aircraft being produced by Great Britain and the United States. Maybe in 1943, the Me 262 would have been a war changing weapon, but by D-Day it was already too late. Most of Germany was rubble, their infrastructure was in ruins, they were already in retreat in Russia, and they had already lost the Battle of the Atlantic.

[Kilkenne]

The Nazis had the capability of beating even the US in the war, if they had finished developing their fighter plane. If they were finished by D-Day, the allied invasion of Normandy would've been disastrous.

Circumstantial and anecdotal, their military industrial complex would have been better used creating conventional weapons, not developing monster tanks and super-aircraft that would waste hundreds of millions of man-hours of labor in the end and accomplish what amounted to nothing at great expense.

Also, Volkov, I'ma take this to ULTRAMOD. I've got to lecture apparently (it's a surprise to me too) today and Wednsday and all I have are some disjointed notes, so I'll get to this when I get to it.

[Firetooth]

My history goes more to Mao's china, Arab-Israeli conflict and 1920's America (pretty much all modern history) but from what I know there was  a race to build the first atom bomb, with germany not far behind America? Obviously, if the US hadn't gotten involved things would've been different, and I don't actually really know any dates on the finish date of the atom bombs, but surely whoever finished building one first would win, or at least have a huge advantage?

From what I understand by the time America had finished developing theirs, only Japan was left, but this is all based off like a 5minute mention in one lesson a while back. Can someone fill in the gaps here?

[Kilkenne]

You've got the bit about them using the bomb on Japan because they were the remaining enemy right, and the rest is partially true. The British and the Americans worked largely in conjunction on the Manhattan Project and ended up developing a bomb before Germany could even really dream of making one. The main advantage that the Anglo-Americans had was the amount of uranium available to them. They had between eighty to two hundred times what the Germans had access to, just due to the fact that they had more land open to them when the project really got into full swing. The idea to split the atom was actually a German idea in concept, but enriching enough Uranium for bombs then required the foresight to know that it was a viable bomb versus conventional ordnance. People like to say that it was a race against the Nazis, but really in the nuclear sciences is where the English/Americans really pulled through much better (one of very few fields as far as advancement is concerned) than the Germans, and they were really just working feverishly so that they could complete the bomb in time to use it againse ~someone~.

Basically the Manhattan project was started in '39 because of the successful research by some British guys at the University of Birmingham whose names I forget. By '43 they'd perfected their enrichment, by '44 they had an idea of what a bomb could accomplish, and by early '45 they were being dropped in the desert in front of hundreds of important (and unimportant) people wearing protective gear miles away. (The unimportant were a bit closer)

The use of the bomb in the end was a pretty stereotypical American use for it. I'm not a huge humanitarian drum-beater, but I'm not a firm believer in the reasoning to drop atomic bombs on Japan (twice). The reasoning when it's boiled away was to keep the USSR from invading Japan and turning them into a Communist nation by instead forcing a surrender out of the Japanese because the Emperor and Government were waffling. There is a lot of conjecture about projected losses and such, but most of the end-game plan for both world war 2 theatres on the American/English/French side was to prevent the spread of Communism. I argue that the Cold War was actually being fought when the Axis began to lose the second world war.

[Gen. Volkov]

Also, Volkov, I'ma take this to ULTRAMOD. I've got to lecture apparently (it's a surprise to me too) today and Wednsday and all I have are some disjointed notes, so I'll get to this when I get to it.

Alright, that's fine. I have another point, that I completely forgot to put in that first post anyway.

Circumstantial and anecdotal, their military industrial complex would have been better used creating conventional weapons, not developing monster tanks and super-aircraft that would waste hundreds of millions of man-hours of labor in the end and accomplish what amounted to nothing at great expense.

Agreed, by the way. They would have been much better served by focusing on the long-barreled Panzer IV and the Panther, rather than diverting resources to the Tiger I and Tiger II. They were impressive weapons, but never built in great enough numbers to truly affect the war. Only about 1300 Tigers were ever built. Far more Panthers could have been built for the same price. They were almost as cheap to build as the Panzer IV, and probably the best all around compromise of performance, firepower, and armor of any tank in the war. That includes the T-34 by the way, since the T-34 had trouble dealing with the Panther even after upgrades. The 76 mm version of the T-34 was hopelessly outclassed by the Panther, and even the upgraded 85mm version was outranged by the Panther. In fact, the Panther with it's sloped armor, stood up to the 85mm gun of the upgraded T-34 better than the Tiger did.

The reasoning when it's boiled away was to keep the USSR from invading Japan and turning them into a Communist nation by instead forcing a surrender out of the Japanese because the Emperor and Government were waffling.

There was an attempted coup, after the use of the bombs, that tried to keep the Emperor from ordering the surrender. That's a bit more than waffling, in my opinion. They were pretty dedicated to fighting to the last man. I think the bombs convinced the Emperor to end the war, even though many officers wanted to continue the fight. That said, I agree that at least part of the reason for the bombs use was to keep Japan from becoming a Soviet client state.

[Preußen]

I think the bombs convinced the Emperor to end the war, even though many officers wanted to continue the fight.

Japanese mentality had to do with that.

For the rest of this thread, I'm content to sit back and learn.

[Gen. Volkov]

Japanese mentality had to do with that.

Indeed. By the end of the war, the corrupted version of the Bushido code that was used to convince Japanese soldiers to make suicide charges, and convinced Japanese pilots to make kamikaze attacks had infect even the upper echelons of the Japanese officer corps.