/wwg/ WW2/Hitler General: Desert Fox Edition

It would actually be a good idea to have this daily, if only to keep all the what if hitler did x/lend lease/human waves/dresden/all other sorts of tired talking points in one thread. And maybe with some actual WW2 discussion on the side also.

This is a slow board so it might be difficult to maintain enough traffic in the thread

the topic makes up like 70% of the history part of this board

Why did you monsters have to kill her?!

Do you think that it's because it's the most popular topic, or that it's just the most posted?

That's been something I've been thinking about.
How do we increase traffic on this board, while at the same time getting posters who are interested in the material and won't just endlessly shitpost or something? Should we be looking for people on other sites or targeting specific posters?

A bit of both, but it being posted so much is a reason to keep it in one thread because everyone sees the same ww2 threads/questions daily.

post top tier reading

It would be nice to see some more variety than the same ole', same ole' WW2 threads.
Don't get me wrong, I love reading and talking about the second World War, but there's a point where it's inundating.

The best you can get here is a few good, detailed responses and links to quality material mixed in with mostly medium to low level posts. If you want actual serious discussion, a place like axishistory may be more your speed.
Here's a paper on Rommel and the desert environment if you're interested:
usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/toppe.pdf

Daily Reminder that the Battle for Castle Itter was a thing.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Castle_Itter

Hey, thanks, man! Yeah, I think it might be difficult to keep something like this up, but we'll try it for a while and see how successful it does or doesn't turn out. We have nothing to lose by trying.
I'll check out the link, and I'm excited to visit axishistory!

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>One of the great questions of the century

Nigga a smart high school student can write a good answer to this. Of course it is interesting to read but I mean come on it is not some highly complex mystery of the last century

It's actually a pretty good idea. Let's keep this rolling.

holy kek

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BULLSHIT AND WHY IS IT NOT AN ANIME YET?

Also, /WW2Gen/, why is Austrofascism not something people discuss? It seems really interesting.

Axishistory is great, some there have access to archival data.

Was this about Hitler?

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What would you recommend?

Maybe because it's overshadowed by Germany's fascist past? I don't really know. Heck, I'm not really even too familiar with Austrian Fascism myself.

Care to enlighten us?

He makes a distinction about the war's end an elaborated on it.
>Axis didn't LOSE the war, Allies WON it
>Importance of morale, intelligence, technology, and political and ethical moral superiority over Axis
>War's victory not just "lul outproduced" meme

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I really really want to but I only recently found out about it and the most authoritative source I have found so far is Wikipedia. Apparently though one of the Austrian political parties took power based on a loophole in the constitution and seized power to keep the national socialists from winning the next election. They had an ideology that stated Austria was a 'better' German nation and should resist anschluss. Apparently the nazis tried to coup them with some assassins, and the Austrians put that shit down, while FUCKING MUSSOLINI who wasn't yet in the Axis told Germany if hey invaded Austria, Italy would intervene against Germany.

I really wish I could fin a book about it desu.

I found this on the Wikipedia page:
cambridge.org/core/journals/austrian-history-yearbook/article/recent-writings-on-the-standestaat-19341938/E728F8942A7CADF5AABC4C985E401E82
You can probably get the full version on scihub

>Importance of morale, intelligence, technology

All of that ties in to OUTPRODUCED, LUL. They had bigger intelligence infrastructures and larger pools of scientists to develop technology and the means to produce it.

Morale is pretty easy to maintain when you want for relatively little. Western Allies had dream lives compared to the Germans and Soviets.

>political and ethical moral superiority over Axis

Literal bullshit. Being on the "right side of history" doesn't magically make your men better soldiers, your generals more capable or your war industry more productive.

The moral high ground was a bolster or detriment to morale depending on the side. German generals questioned Hitler's warmongering and many of their troops grew uneasy with the war's dragging on.

Allied troops were driven by revenge (Soviets) and the conviction that what they were doing was defending the world and making it safe for democracy (Western Allies).

Morale high ground also played into international diplomacy, as other powers found it difficult to support the Axis's actions and grew more sympathetic towards the Allied war effort.

Go back 2 reddit

archive.org/details/GermanyAndSecondWorldWarVolumeIVAttackOnSovietUnion

Too much Kraut and not enough everything else ITT.

So why isn't the Philippine Campaign covered as much as the Eastern/Western Front or the islands that the Marines fought on? In strategic terms, it was a major turning point in the Pacific War

>pacific theater isn't covered as much as eastern front
lel

We're talking about the Philippines Campaign, we hear about the Iwo Jima, Peleliu, Tarawa and Okinawa all the time but never too much on the Philippine Campaigndespite it beign a major strategic victory

Marines stomping on shitty Japs is boring as fuck compared to anything that happened in the eastern front.

The Philippine Campaign was an Army campaign, they never sent the Marines that way. Eastern Front will always be more interesting because there was just so much going on, still the Pacific and Eastern fronts were the two most brutal fronts of the whole war in their own right.

>Tarawa, Iwo Juma, Peliliu, Okinawa, New Guinea Campaign, Guadalcanal, Attu
>Boring

Wat.

The Eastern front's awesome, sure, but if you compare anything to the Eastern Front it's going to look bad. You're essentially taking the deadliest, most technologically advanced of the time, largest-scale fighting in the history of warfare and comparing it to *anything*.

Heck, you could compare the Napoleonic Wars or even World War I to it and it still makes the other stuff look small and unimpressive.

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I found this photo of my grandpa cleaning out a relatives house yesterday. My mother only knew him as a child and said he didn't like to talk about his wartime experiences so all i know is that he was from Latvia, was a sniper, and immigrated to the US after the war. can anyone here tell me anything from this picture?

bump to encourage containment

have a few photos i think are interesting OP, hope you don't mind. most are from the pacific though.

keep the shitposts coming, senpai

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that's a lot of boats

What was the logic of using the Coast Guard to crew landing craft rather than army/marines/navy, why bring a fourth service into it?

i think pic related is another from Tarawa. great shot imo.

fierce amphibious landing with many men on a small strip of land. the japs had poor supply and, while prepared, did not receive enough men and heavy arms from the main land. if memory serves correct, the japs only had two guns they could fire at oncoming ships.

a lot of wood work defenses, not enough bunkers, and not enough machine guns or ammo. still, they essentially fought to the last man against a force many times greater and better equipped.

this battle was a wake up call for Americans that the island hopping campaign would be brutal.

I've got a fuckload of Pacific War pics, I'm also completely and utterly fascinated about the war, it is easily one of the most brutal wars the US has ever fought in

Pacific War is best war.

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in times of war, the coast guard is basically called up as a armed service. this happened in ww1 as well. they also participate in modern conflicts as well.

as for why? probably tradition at this point. it made sense in the early 20th century America to have a branch that would protect the two coasts, separate from the Navy, so as to simplify what was already a monster branch of the military.

that's my logic anyhow. the coast guard has been around since the late 1700's. i wouldn't be surprised if the USN has tried to eat the coast guard up a few times, but the USCG says fuck you. making them man landing crafts is just something more they can do.

you may as well ask why the US Merchant Marine isn't just a part of the Navy.

I was fortunate enough to talk to a US Navy Pacific War vet, an old Okie, he said those battles they fought during the Philippine Campaign was the most intense and horrifying thing he's ever experienced. He had a hard time describing what it was like to sit behind a bofor gun waiting to for the crew to load the gun as a Japanese Zero closes in

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Didn't they lose ~3,000 men of the total 4,000 they landed with? Coral reefs and concrete defenses retarded American amphibious landings and pretty much turned the whole place to hell?

Post you Soviet marksman waifu

Dang, that's a beautiful picture.

The landing force was larger but you're right about everything else, the amtracs were the only ones able to get past the coral reefs and most of them got BTFO when they unloaded the Marines.

About 1,000 Marines died over the next couple days, I don't mean to suck the Marines dick but they really did win through sheer will and tenacity

I'm looking through my notes from my undergraduate WWII course last fall semester, and I jotted down that only 17 of the 5,000 Japanese soldiers defending the island made it out alive.

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yeah i forgot that the reef has fucked up the invasions. basically the Americans said FUCK THE TIDE and sent in the landing craft at the wrong time. boats were getting stuck of the reef and ripped apart by mortars, machine gun fire, and artillery/guns. sitting ducks in the open.

some japs swam out to the mangled wrecks on the reef and set up sniper positions to shoot Americans who would come later in the side or backs.

>Didn't they lose ~3,000 men of the total 4,000 they landed with?

quite a few more landed than that. the first wave was 5000 marines alone and nearly a quarter were casualties by the end of the first day.

a lot of hard lessons were learned on that island. a lot of young American marines paid for it.

Geez.
Those guys were like, what, average age 17-18? Can you remember what you were doing at that age? I'm just 21 years old and I still feel like a stupid, naive child. I know it's cliche, but can you imagine what those guys were thinking through that crap?

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I'd make a joke about plebian waifu taste, but then I started thinking about how a lot of those women probably died, so it's not as funny anymore...

Anyway, Night Witches are where it's at.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches

Funny you say that, I drove AAVs (the LVTs grandkids) in the Marines and whenever I did water ops and beach assault ops I couldn't help but think how shitty it must've been to do this AND have Japs shooting and shelling you. Took some balls to do what they did.

>a lot of hard lessons were learned on that island. a lot of young American marines paid for it.

You got that right but it paid off at the end, to be fair however the Marines and Army learned hard lessons throughout the entire war, the Battle for Peleliu left wondering what the fuck the Marine commanders were thinking attacking those coral hills and ridges head on.