Is this the greatest military miracle in the history of warfare, or is there a greater one?

>Except its the same place the germans attacked from in WW1

That's a pretty low bar to call it "similar". Hell, you wouldn't even need prior experience from a WW1 to think that the Germans would attack through Belgium. Given the short border and the high fortification concentration, attacking across the upper Rhine is pretty stupid anyway.

>Which was my point,how could the French have not expected the same thing?(considering all the factors you listed)

They DID. That's why the bulk of the French army was concentrated northwards, and they actually moved into Belgium; when they got cut off in Sedan (the opposite end of where they expected the blow to fall, because they were thinking Shclieffen plan 2.0) it was fatal.

well the ardennes offensive caught the americans completely off guard but they managed to adapt and smash it so i guess third time's the charm?

>Its kinda sad actually cause the stunning success of this campaign led Hitler to greatly overestime his abilities in Barbarossa
Why is it sad?

>Has anyone else ever pulled off such a huge unexpeced military miracle in history before?

Yep
A lone country in a state of civil war that was invaded from all sides by all its neighbours (most of them solid great powers) ended up winning and conquering Europe

I think this one is still unmatched in term of impressiveness

>Its kinda sad actually cause the stunning success of this campaign led Hitler to greatly overestime his abilities in Barbarossa, expecting a similar swift war. At the time, France was thought to be the pre-eminent land force in Europe, so Hitler figured if he had defeated them so easily, Russia would be a cakewalk. That's why he tried the same tactics of super fast war and overexting supply lines trying to reach the objective as fast as possible.

>Problem was, Russia isn't France. Russia had ridiculously huge strategic depth to withdraw into, not to mention they'd spent pretty much 20 years gearing up for the war producing tens of thouasands of tanks and equipment.

This stuff is only half right. The operational mode the Germans used in the initial attacks of Barbarossa was wildly successful. The Soviets lost a bit over 4 million troops in the first 6 months of the war, which would be a crippling blow in almost any other circumstance. They had not been preparing for war for 20 years, try 2-3; and the overwhelming majority of the Soviet pre-war tank fleet was lost in the first weeks of the war.

The reason the Germans failed in Russia where they succeeded in France has not only to do with strategic depth, but also due to political will to resist being much higher in the USSR than it was in France; you didn't have a government collapse and instead just calling up more and more manpower to fight.

Because it ensured the survival of a certain annoying people

From The Collapse of the Third Republic, p 686:

>Churchill simply refused to believe that the thrust of the German armor represented "a serious menace." "Unless the tanks are supported by infantry," he contended, "they represent a limited force... They will have to be refueled, resupplied, I refuse to see in this spectacular raid of the German tanks a real invasion..."

>That's why the bulk of the French army was concentrated northwards, and they actually moved into Belgium; when they got cut off in Sedan (the opposite end of where they expected the blow to fall, because they were thinking Shclieffen plan 2.0) it was fatal.

funny thing:

cont.

>Daladier: "We must withdraw the troops in the north."
"On the contrary," said Churchill, "they should dig in where they are."

Inchon

Why?

It was only a shitty seawall with some minor norks occupying it

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Not that unexpected. France had always been the military and cultural powerhouse of Europe, and led by a brilliant tactical mind like Napoleon it was not really all that surprising that it managed to prevail.

Napoleon really was a genius when it came to the field of battle, who redefined the art of war. It's telling that Wellington studied him to defeat him.

There was no luck involved in Austerlitz. Napoleon brilliantly predicted what the Austrians and Russians would do, and crushed them for their mistakes.

Cannae

Heraclius YOLO invasion of Persia is up there

Germans were pretty confident throughout the campaign about their success.
If they weren't, they wouldn't have succeeded

>an invasion the US had made plans for since the end of WW2
Hardly. You want a miracle, try the US breaking out at Chosin, despite MacArthur's best efforts. There's a reason the fighting against China went a lot better with Ridgway in charge.

>Heraclius YOLO invasion of Persia is up there

Absolutely. There is no reason that it should have worked, but god damn, it did:

>Empire on the verge of collapse
>Persians burning their way through Anatolia
>Heraclius melts down the church silver to fund an army, personally marches them around Anatolia, training them as he goes, building up their confidence, then says "fuck it, let's just take Persia"
>THEN HE FUCKING DOES
>Smashes the Persians time and time again, risks his life fighting an enemy general in single combat (and wins, of course)
>Manipulates Christian ideology and the religious beliefs of his people to temporarily heal the Chalcedonian/Monophysite split and rally the empire around him
>Burns down every Persian "fire temple" he can find
>Does a little political scheming on the side to get the Persian king overthrown
>Not only does he get all of his old territory back, but he takes a little extra from the Persians

Fucking amazing. It's a shame that he went insane later on in his life and the Arabs destroyed most of his conquests though...

>Napoleon really was a genius when it came to the field of battle, who redefined the art of war. It's telling that Wellington studied him to defeat him.

No disrespect to Wellington, but the deck was very much stacked in his favor by the end, when he finally defeated Napoleon. You could have put a very average commander in charge during the Hundred Days and they still would have beaten France because they outnumbered Napoleon like 5 to 1 and France had been gutted by 25 years of war.

Nappy outnumbered Wellingtons army at Waterloo

Barbarossa was stunningly lucky, all things considered. The Germans had no business getting as far as they did. And Russia hadn't exactly spent 20 years gearing up. They were in extreme disarray, thanks to Stalin's purges and unbelievably poor organization and infrastructure. The fortifications they built in Eastern Poland were pitiful, the transportation links between their troops out there and back in Western Russia were pathetic, and Stalin and his advisors realized in the winter of 1940 that they were unbelievably unprepared to face the Nazis, thanks to some military exercises (I think the term is "war game" or "simulation" or something but I'm too drunk to remember it)

Hitler recognized this, which is why I think he wanted to hit the Russians before they could reorganize and turn into the juggernaut the Red Army later became. Hitler, for all his stupidity and insanity, seized the opportunity with Barbarossa and was 100% right to do it. He was stuck with the same dilemma as the Kaiser and his advisors in 1914, and imo, almost the same one facing the Germans today: if you leave Russia to its own devices, it will dwarf you in less than a decade and can crush you at its leisure.

I was thinking about the campaign as a whole....but didn't the arrival of the Prussians give Wellington a decisive advantage? Or am I just remembering all this incorrectly?

Based poster.

The Schlieffen plan was a right hook, the 1940 plan was huge dick, with the soldiers spilling out like semen after the initial thrust of the heavy armament. The blitz itself was the phallus and the manned divisions were the semen.

Also, while we're mucking about in East Asia at the time period, fall of Singapore. How the hell did that happen?

The British were stretched very thin by that point and fighting for their lives against Germany, the Japanese were very well-prepared and well-equipped, and to a certain extent the British were simply arrogant and caught off guard. It's not entirely a case of "lol stupid white men underestimated clever asians", the way it is somehow presented, but at the same time that did play a role.

The UK was a great power trying to be a superpower. WWII brought it down to earth.

>The British were stretched very thin by that point
But that's not true at all. The Japanese were at the end of their logistics chain, and "at that point" the British outnumbered the Japanese 3 to one, had heavier artillery, and way, way better armored forces, yet the Japanese losses were negligible.

Let's not give the Germans too much credit here. A huge factor in why German initial successes in Russia were so great is Stalin.

He was convinced that, after the pact, Hitler would not invade. Lo and behold, he did. He had a mental breakdown and fled to his dacha. This caused the entire government to lock up - nobody would do anything in his absence. They wouldn't dare, lest they be purged. Generals weren't given proper command. It's no surprise that Russians dropped like flies initially - there was absolutely no coordination and orgasation. Higher-ups had to drive to his dacha and beg him to come back.

Also, Stalin forced Russia to industrialise at a breakneck pace. Quality was sacrificed to meet quotas. Furthermore, had Stalin not purged Tukhahevsky, defences would have been far greater, losses fewer and the war shorter. Kursk would have been more overwhealming if it would have happened at all.

None of this is to take away from the rightful credit of Barbarossa, but let's remember how close the USSR came to falling apart at the seams over the stun of invasion.

well then..

>LITERALLY NOBODY thought it would work, except maybe Guderian and Hitler.

It was Manstein's idea.

>way better armored forces
such as????

The armoured thrust was Guderian's idea. Manstein tried to take credit for it.

200 Armored Fighting Vehicles stationed at Singapore, compared to fuck all for the attacking forces.

Barbarossa was only "successful" in the sense that they blew up a lot of shit and destroyed many low-tier divisions. From an operational point of view it was a disaster from before it even began, the Germans were expecting to find mostly desolate countryside and that the Russians would break after a few large thrusts. They never expected to meet the resistance they did and were well behind date in their operational goals. They expected to reach Moscow before winter, which of course did not happen, due to intense soviet resistance, regardless of how huge the soviet losses were. All of Russia's best divisions were in the east at the time, and losing armies was much more expendable to Russia than to a country like France or Germany.

Furthermore Hitler thought if he took the Ukraine, Russia was economically finished. He didn't realised that most of Russia's industrial production was in the urals and Siberia, not to mention they were getting spoonfed by Roosevelt so an economic defeat was out of the question.

The difference between French and Russians is that France would always rather lose than see Paris burn, whereas Russia would rather see Moscow burn than lose

Germany ultimately failed in eastern europe because it was at war with the three strongest empires on earth at that time. If that had been the situation in 1940, the invasion of France would have failed too.

The Japanese had over 200 tanks in the Malayan Campaign. Meanwhile the British AFVs were mostly armored cars, universal carriers, and only 23 obsolete light tanks.

Barbarossa was so behind schedule because Germany had to bail out Italy in the Balkans. All this time spent fighting the Yugoslavs and Greeks not only diminished their fighting force, but brought winter ever closer.

Bear in mind that one prong of Barbarossa was to the Caucasian oil fields. German intelligence knew where at least some of the industry was.

>Barbarossa was so behind schedule because Germany had to bail out Italy in the Balkans.
I heard this was a myth

>I heard
Nice source.

>just calling up more and more manpower to fight

Barbarossa was not just behind schedule cause of that, but in the actual operation itself, milestones were reached well behind schedule in operation planning.

The reason for this was the Germans had greatly underestimated soviet strength and resistance. They thought it was gonna be like Poland again, and after a few major armoured thrusts they'd just be finished.

Fact of the matter is, despite losing all the way up till the battle of moscow, the russians did put up pretty fierce resistance enough to slow the germans down to the point they were behind schedule, and despite being a huge victory for the Germans, the battle of smolensk wore down the tank fleet of Army group centre to the point they had to delay the next operation for weeks. Germany won huge battles and impacted huge losses on Russia during the early months of the campaign, this is true, but Russia's losses were easily replaceable whereas Germany's weren't, so overall one could even say Operation Barbarossa hurt Germany more negatively than it did Russia.

The whole operation should never have happened. Colonisation of the east was a prussian wet dream that people like Hindenburg used to fap over, all German economists at the time told hitler that even if it was successful, the amount of resources Germany would spend in occupying and ruling the conquered territories was heavier than any economic benefit they might stand to gain.

Not him, but try Martin Van Creveld's "Supplying War".

>the battle of smolensk wore down the tank fleet of Army group centre to the point they had to delay the next operation for weeks.

Source on that, Guderian said they were good to go

Nah, you're right
Waterloo was 73,000 French vs 118,000 Allies (mostly Germans and Dutch)

>In addition to his books on military history, van Creveld has written one book on social issues – The Privileged Sex – which argues that the idea women are the oppressed gender is largely a myth, and that women, and not men, are the privileged gender.
I don't take beta manlets seriously.

>disregarding a source just because another reading material who is different from the subject is out there

david stahel, but he does use a buttload of soviet propaganda as his sources.

Honestly you can't 100% assume records from either side are truthful. Soviets tried to paint smolensk as a victory in the post war years, which is retarded. It was a big German victory, but costly. Not as costly as for the Russians of course, but they could replace theirs way easier.

Germany could never ever have fought a war of attrition.