Turning point of WW2

VDKMS......Where would the Americans have landed in North Africa. Gibraltar would have been under Axis Control and with the heavy guns there would have closed it up. Much of the north eastern coasts of North East Africa making it very difficult for them to do any thing in the Med
 
1) The British never captured Tripoli, the Italians did invade Egypt, but without enough tanks, cannon and airplanes simply dug in over 100 km from Mersa Matruh, where the British were waiting for them. Had they had the equipment and leadership required, they would have beaten the weak British forces. Therefore, it was not impossible to supply a motorized army from Tripoli, Benghazi and Tobruk, Much less from Alexandira once it falls.

2) Again there was plenty of oil from the USSR (sold on credit to Germany) in 1940 and we are counting on some oil from Persia by the time of Barbarossa in May 15, 1941.

The poduction figures are irrelevant, The US was the largest producer but in 1940 it supplied little of the British demand. The important fact is that the American and Venezuelan oil had to be paid in cash, which a bankrupt Britain could not afford, while the Persian oil was in part delivered as payment for the refinery in Abadan drilling equipment, etc, So if Britain lost Persia it could not recover its investment and if it lost access to the Mediterranean it could not defend its colonies not get food, soldiers, etc from them. Like I said without Lend-Lease Britain was lost and there would definitley not have been any lend-lease after a string of debacles and with the US losing access to the Mediterranean and Red Sea if it backed Britain.

It is false that GB stopped importing oil from Persia in June 1940. Persian oil for GB was not all for use in GB it was also for Palestine, Egypt, Malta, the East fleat, Asia, South & East Africa, etc, its loss in 1940 would be devastating. The oil was so important that Britain and the USSR in 1941 wantonly invaded Iraq and Iran to ensure that that oil remained in allied hands, instead of falling to the axis and that the USSR could be supplied through Persia (over 5 million tons of mostly American goods flowed to the USSR through Persia). The loss of Persia in 1940 would have precluded all this.
 
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samneanderthal said:
1)
The oil was so important that Britain and the USSR in 1941 wantonly invaded Iraq and Iran to ensure that that oil remained in allied hands...
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I don’t believe the USSR had anything to do with this “invasion of Iraq”. Forces in Iraq rebelled (with some Axis support) against the Brits, laid siege to a Brit Air Base, and they (the Brits) relieved the siege. How can you “invade” a country you are already occupying?
 
The British had a Flying school in Iraq, not an occupying force. Iraq decided to expel them and they couldn´t. The British invaded Iraq with Indian troops, which also invaded Abadan, etc, to secure the oil. The Soviets invaded the rest of Iran. They deposed the Shah, who was strongly pro German, as was the Iraqi leader. The Brits and Soviets invading Iran and Iraq doesn´t mean that both aggressor countries have to invade both victim countries separately.
 
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stalingarad and the battle of kursk naji warmachines were devasteted by those two wars and the remaining ones are only the skeliton of what it had.
 
samneanderthal said:
The British had a Flying school in Iraq, not an occupying force. Iraq decided to expel them and they couldn´t. The British invaded Iraq with Indian troops, which also invaded Abadan, etc, to secure the oil. The Soviets invaded the rest of Iran. They deposed the Shah, who was strongly pro German, as was the Iraqi leader. The Brits and Soviets invading Iran and Iraq doesn´t mean that both aggressor countries have to invade both victim countries separately.
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As Britain and the SU were winning the war,they could not be agressors,only the loosers can be agressors .
 
As the Iraqi leader had overthrown the legal government by a coup d'état,one can argue that he was not the legal leader of Iraq,and that Britain was nor agressing Iraq,by fighting against this dictator .
 
samneanderthal said:
1) The British never captured Tripoli, the Italians did invade Egypt, but without enough tanks, cannon and airplanes simply dug in over 100 km from Mersa Matruh, where the British were waiting for them. Had they had the equipment and leadership required, they would have beaten the weak British forces. Therefore, it was not impossible to supply a motorized army from Tripoli, Benghazi and Tobruk, Much less from Alexandira once it falls.

2) Again there was plenty of oil from the USSR (sold on credit to Germany) in 1940 and we are counting on some oil from Persia by the time of Barbarossa in May 15, 1941.

The poduction figures are irrelevant, The US was the largest producer but in 1940 it supplied little of the British demand. The important fact is that the American and Venezuelan oil had to be paid in cash, which a bankrupt Britain could not afford, while the Persian oil was in part delivered as payment for the refinery in Abadan drilling equipment, etc, So if Britain lost Persia it could not recover its investment and if it lost access to the Mediterranean it could not defend its colonies not get food, soldiers, etc from them. Like I said without Lend-Lease Britain was lost and there would definitley not have been any lend-lease after a string of debacles and with the US losing access to the Mediterranean and Red Sea if it backed Britain.

It is false that GB stopped importing oil from Persia in June 1940. Persian oil for GB was not all for use in GB it was also for Palestine, Egypt, Malta, the East fleat, Asia, South & East Africa, etc, its loss in 1940 would be devastating. The oil was so important that Britain and the USSR in 1941 wantonly invaded Iraq and Iran to ensure that that oil remained in allied hands, instead of falling to the axis and that the USSR could be supplied through Persia (over 5 million tons of mostly American goods flowed to the USSR through Persia). The loss of Persia in 1940 would have precluded all this.
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1)Saying that the British never captured Tripoli is nonsens :the 8 army entered Tripoli on 23 january 1943
2)Saying that Britain was bankrupt is wrong :it was not bankrupt,but was short on $dollars .
3)There was no way that the Germans could enter Persia in 1940
4)It was almost impossible to supply a motorized army from Tripoli,because the infrasrtucture in Libya was almost NON EXISTENT :roads,railway ,harbours were primitive,while the British had in Egypt a developped system of railways,roads and harbours .
 
Hi lljadw,
Britain and the USSR were definitely losing the war in 1941. Besides, aggressor is anybody invading a country. Deposing a dictator does not justify invading a country. In the end Obama, the senate and congress are corrupt dictators put in power by the 5% of Americans who own 90% of the wealth, but if the Chinese invaded the US to depose them, they would still be aggressors.

Nobody said they never invaded Tripoli, I said that in 1941 Churchill sent the troops to Greece and Sudan instead of invading Tripoli and that he didn´t need to invade Tripoli if he had captured Sicily and Sardinia.
Britain was so bankrut that America had to conceive the Lend Lease program in 1941 lending it money at low interest to pay in 60 years and paying ridiculous prices for invaluable supplies. Had Roosevelt not acted like Santa Claus for the Brits and Soviets and sent the Brits 31 billion dollars and the Soviets over 11 billion dollars they would definitely have lost the war. Moreover, in spite of having 170 million people in the USSR and nearly 450 million people in the British empire, they could not defeat 88 million Germans with much fewer natural resources, even with the massive American help, so the US had to destroy by far most of the 1,000 German planes lost per month in 1944 in the western front and send troops and more than 100 million dollars of its own equipment to fight the Germans, while it dealt almost singlehandedly with the Japs in 1942, 43 and 44.
 
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1)It was Germany that was losing the war in 1941
2)Saying that Obama was put in power by the 5%of the Americans possessing 90 % of the wealth,is
a) nonsens:I don't think ypu know anything about the tax plan of Obama
b)totally of topic
 
In 1941 Germany defeated the British in Greece (including Crete which Churchill had ordered to hold at all costs), sank so many British ships in the Atlantic that had the British not received American ships and help from the US navy, Britain would have lost the war (in spite of counting with many merchant ships from Norway, Holland, France, Greece, Poland, etc,), had Romania, Hungary, Finland, Lithuania, Bulgaria, etc, as allies (because Stalin stupidly invaded Finland, Bessarabia, etc,), began recovering Libya, closed the Mediterranean to convoys from Gibraltar, destroyed 20,000 Soviet tanks and planes, captured or incapacidated millions of troops and had conquered millions of km2 in the USSR, Greece, Yugoslavia, etc, in record time. So Germany was doing pretty well that year. Had the Japs attacked only the British (whom they rapidly defeated) and not forced the Americans to enter the war (the biggest turning point in the war), the axis would have definitely won.
 
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Some have said that the turning point of WW2 in Europe was the Battle of Britain. If the RAF had lost the battle and invaded Britain, Hitler wouldn't have called it a day
 
BritinAfrica said:
Some have said that the turning point of WW2 in Europe was the Battle of Britain. If the RAF had lost the battle and invaded Britain, Hitler wouldn't have called it a day
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I don't believe the BoB was the decisive moment although possibly the Luftwaffe losses during the battle may have turned the tide on the Eastern Front.

WW2 in the European theatre was won and lost on the Eastern Front, I think the only real question is at which point was it lost.
 
The "turning point" on the Eastern Front was the summer of 1941 : on 1 september 1941,the chances for the Germans to eliminate the SU were,except for a miracle,nihil.
 
samneanderthal said:
In 1941 Germany defeated the British in Greece (including Crete which Churchill had ordered to hold at all costs), sank so many British ships in the Atlantic that had the British not received American ships and help from the US navy, Britain would have lost the war (in spite of counting with many merchant ships from Norway, Holland, France, Greece, Poland, etc,), had Romania, Hungary, Finland, Lithuania, Bulgaria, etc, as allies (because Stalin stupidly invaded Finland, Bessarabia, etc,), began recovering Libya, closed the Mediterranean to convoys from Gibraltar, destroyed 20,000 Soviet tanks and planes, captured or incapacidated millions of troops and had conquered millions of km2 in the USSR, Greece, Yugoslavia, etc, in record time. So Germany was doing pretty well that year. Had the Japs attacked only the British (whom they rapidly defeated) and not forced the Americans to enter the war (the biggest turning point in the war), the axis would have definitely won.
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Proof that the Germans had Lithuania and etc as allies ?
Proof that Stalin invaded etc ?
 
I am starting to wonder that why samneanderthal is so critical of the British is that he is extremely envious of British History as a maritime nation and builder of the biggest empire in world history, even though that empire no longer exists.

I would suggest that he is green with envy:mrgreen:
 
For most of 1942 the British Empire and Commonwealth held the line, kept back the combined efforts of Germany and Italy and Japan (with fairly minimal imput from the United States compared to her potential power), and kept the Atlantic and Indian oceans open and suppliers flowing to the vital armies in the Middle East and Asia, and to the Soviets. No other empire in the history of the world has been capable of such a sustained multi-continent and multi-ocean operation.

BTW.
The Canadians' contributions in WWII are often overlooked, yet they had the 4th largest air force and the 3rd largest navy, who helped protect Allied convoys in the Atlantic. They gave an added industrial output as well as 6 army divisions, of whom 45,000 gave their lives for the Allies.
 
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Most agree that the attack on the Soviet Union was in one way or another the turning point of WW II when it comes to the tide changing in allied favour.
But one could also say that the turning point for Germany was the invasion of Poland.

I'd say Hitler was overly confident and threw Germany into a war it wasn't really prepared for.
And perhaps we should be happy that Hitler jumped the trigger and didn't wait untill the industrial capacities and the plans for complete rearming of the armed forces was finished.
 
Had the RAF lost the Battle of Britain then there would have been no D Day, Germany would have had a lot of extra troops and aircraft to attack the Soviet Union. There would not have been any bombing raids on Germany. North Africa could have soon folded along with the Suez Canal. America would not have been given Radar, the Jet engine, and even Penicillin as these were things that were all handed over by the British Government to help the Allied war effort
 
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