Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Timeline - World History Documentaries" channel.

  1.  @rubix4195  I agree. The aviation historian did seem quite well informed, but the other two seemed to be there to make up politically correct quotas. One was apparently and actor, and the other was, I am informed, an expert on African history. It certainly wouldn't have been difficult to find better candidates.
    2
  2. Actually, I doubt it was a realistic possibility, certainly where the public in the US, Canada, & UK were concerned. After all, for around four years, they had had a diet of 'Brave Uncle Joe and his people, fighting heroically against the brutal German butchers.' What would have been the response if someone like George Patton was found to be re-equipping surrendered SS troops with American equipment and sending them east? There were also certain practical difficulties. The Red Army in 1945 was rather large and very experienced.
    2
  3. Odd, then, that the various expeditions to the wreck site have yet to identify anything which was not on the ship's manifest. I wonder what 'history' you have been studying?
    2
  4.  @nickdanger3802  As he was already suffering from the brain tumour which killed him, and probably warped his judgement, he wouldn't have had time much time to wear it. I believe he preferred the Navy Distinguished Service Medal presented to him by the United States in any case.
    2
  5. Indeed, and so much quieter, after all the exterminations and the mass deportations to the fatherland of slave labourers.
    2
  6.  @ikashibimauler  In the Pacific, certainly. But they didn't ever achieve such pre-eminence in the German war. They were part of the battle fleet, not the centre of it.
    2
  7. Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about. You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
    2
  8. Equally, if the British and French had had seventy armoured divisions, all equipped with seventeen pounder armed tanks, in 1940, the German invasion of France would have failed. One was as impossible an idea as the other.
    2
  9.  @mrnobody8540  No, it wasn't. In fact, US opinion had been swinging against the Allies because of the Royal Navy's interception of US merchantmen on their way to Europe, and their impounding of cargoes deemed to be contraband. This changed when the Germans re-introduced unrestricted u-boat warfare in early 1917, and began sinking US ships without warning. The 175 or so tons of small arms ammunition has never been denied. It was on the ship's manifest before she sailed.
    2
  10.  @Damadchef  Yes, it would, but without the arrival of more heavily armed ground troops, the survival of unsupported, lightly armed, paratroopers for any length of time was doubtful. Even by May, 1941, the number of German paratroopers was still, at 9,000, well short of a single division.
    2
  11. The Battle of Britain was an attempt to secure air superiority over the Channel and the South Eastern corner of Britain, in order to make possible a, probably disastrous, invasion attempt. The British sought to prevent this, and succeeded. Victory in war involves achieving your objective. The British did, and the Germans didn't. That is the definition of 'Victory.' Ranting on about chemical warfare, especially chemical warfare which never actually happened, rather suggests that you need to remove 'Considered' from your title. As, of course, does the phrase ' the war criminal Winston Churchill.' The allies did not use chemical warfare in WW2. The Germans, of course, did, although 'only' against civilians in their Concentration Camps.
    2
  12.  @evanlavery9788  Actually, in September, 1940, to all intents, it was. In Home Waters, there were 64 destroyers attached to anti-invasion duties, 23 destroyers with the Home Fleet, and 29 on escort duties but recallable within 24 hours. There were a further 11 destroyers at Freetown and 8 at Gibraltar. You can add to these several hundred smaller warships (sloops, corvettes, minesweepers, gunboats, and auxiliaries, etc), and 8 light cruisers. I haven't listed heavier ships, such as heavy cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships, and aircraft carriers, because the Admiralty didn't anticipate that these would be needed. Mind you, they really didn't expect to need to call in the Home Fleet or convoy escort destroyers, either. The aircraft which were going to destroy these ships from the air. Would these be the same ones which had just failed to destroy many of the same ships when they were much easier targets at Dunkirk, largely because the Luftwaffe had had no training in anti-shipping operations?
    2
  13. To be fair. It would be difficult to be anything more than superficial in a 30 minute programme, especially when, from some of their comments, it was clear that the 'experts' were obviously nothing of the kind. A proper historian, such as Eric Grove or Andrew Gordon, might have made the programme more interesting, if much shorter., as the idea of a successful Sealion, even with German air supremacy, was torn to shreds.
    2
  14. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. 1). Her sister, built of the same materials, was a successful liner for almost 25 years. 2). Lookouts generally did not use glasses, except to identify objects already spotted by the Mark 1 eyeball. Acting in such a manner might actually have delayed the warning being given 3). Californian's operator in subsequent evidence said that the Morse Shorthand message he received from Titanic was merely a request to clear the frequency. It was not offensive, nor did he take it as such.
    2
  15. Indeed. It would be of great benefit to the administrators governing a defeated Germany.
    2
  16. Nonsense. Perhaps you might try to explain why an 'intact' Bismarck was scuttled in the first place, or why both Robert Ballard and David Mearns both attributed her sinking to 'The British?'
    2
  17. Every allied ship was a target at the time, because Germany had introduced unrestricted submarine warfare. Would you suggest that the allies should have abandoned operations in the Atlantic. The blockade of Germany was not, by the way, illegal.
    2
  18. Lusitania carried a small quantity of munitions, all of which were listed in the manifest.
    2
  19.  @wimziekman1104  Where does Waterloo come into this? Why would I write about a battle of 1805 when referring to events of 1940? Why not simply prove to me that Lend-Lease begain before 11 March, 1941, then? I look forward to you trying to do that. However, about Waterloo. English, Scottish, Welsh & Irish were 'British' in 1805, by the way. The army was 36% British — although the British provided half of all the cavalry and artillery, but proportionately less of the infantry. Another 10% was the King’s German Legion, which was a unit of the British Army, equipped and paid by the British, but manned by German refugees from Napoleon’s conquest of their homeland. 35% was from small German states (Hanover, Nassau, and Brunswick — note that the King of the UK was also himself the Elector of Hanover, and the brother-in-law of the Duke of Brunswick), and 19% from the Kingdom of the Netherlands (which at that point included Belgium). Broken down, there were 53,850 infantry, 13,350 cavalry, 5,000 artillerymen with 157 guns, and 1,000 miscellaneous. You might be wise to print this off and keep it. Indeed, if you ceased posting ill-informed nonsense and read a few books, you might perhaps learn enough to make yourself able to produce sensible comments. Given your efforts to date, however, this might take a little time.
    2
  20. As the US didn't declare war until two years later, the cunning plan was remarkably ineffective, I suggest.
    2
  21.  @johnhudghton2287  They couldn't. They had to hope that they were facing in the right direction, and that there were no obstacles in the way. Good luck with that!
    2
  22. The Italian navy had enough problems already with the British Mediterranean Fleet. The Kriegsmarine had very few operational boats at the time, and they were neither able to inflict anything like the level of sinkings required to impose a successful blockade, nor likely to be able to achieve much against the massed anti-invasion forces the RN had established in Home Waters. Generally, U-Boats sought to avoid contact with destroyers, sloops, or corvettes. Actively seeking them out might well have been a recipe for disaster. At the time, the operational German surface fleet consisted of a heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and about eight destroyers. In the unlikely event (given Darlan's genuine concern about the 'honneur' of the French navy) that the French was sent to support a seaborne invasion, the probable British response was likely to have been sending the full strength of the Home Fleet down from Rosyth & Scapa Flow. Four capital ships, seven cruisers, and twenty four destroyers were more than capable of dealing with the collection of heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers, without capital ship support, that the French had outside the Mediterranean at that time.
    2
  23. Why do you think that an event from 1940 had any relevance at all on political decisions made from around 1965? Just think. It Louis XIV had won the war of the League of Augsberg, you might today have been President of the Board of Trade!
    2
  24. Just possibly, the many thousands of Britons who would probably have been executed or worked to death as slave labour might have had different opinions about the idea of decades of German & Russian occupation.
    2
  25.  @DH-bc8ck  I'm not clear how you believe that a supposed settlement between various land powers in Europe had any relevance at all to the Royal Navy. There was no 'Peace Treaty' as such, because there was no war in progress in Europe at the time.
    2
  26.  @jackrosario9990  In point of fact, the Royal Navy did fight the German & Italian navies more or less unaided.
    2
  27.  @jackrosario9990  How does this make the Royal Navy 'small?'
    2
  28.  @chrism7969  Possibly a troll. Certainly very ignorant!
    2
  29.  @jackrosario9990  They were purchased to augment the Atlantic Escort Groups until new construction entered service. Incidentally, they were offered by the US, so the British were hardly likely to refuse.
    2
  30.  @jackrosario9990  Try again. In December, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy had 10 Battleships, 10 Carriers of all types, 38 Cruisers, 112 Destroyers, and 65 Submarines. Compared to the Royal Navy of December, 1941, rather small. Certainly, compared to the Allied navies combined, tiny. Oh, and the 50 destroyers were not part of Lend Lease.
    2
  31.  @chrism7969  I wonder why he is posting his nonsense on a thread about the Battle of Britain in any case.
    2
  32. Too far fetched. No one would ever try to run Europe from Brussels, using a gang of politicians who had records for ineptitude in their own countries and stumbled from failure to failure with almost invincible determination. Would they?
    2
  33. Were you to look at the casualty levels of each allied country, you would find that British military losses as a % of the total population, were higher than those of any other country except the Soviet Union.
    2
  34. Quite true. But the fantasists will, nevertheless, still ramble on about it.
    2
  35. Oh dear, another ill-educated, or indoctrinated fool. Exactly how was Churchill a genocidal maniac?
    2
  36. You should read more about the Norwegian campaign. During it, the German navy lost three of their eight operational cruisers (one of which had already been so damaged as to be unfit for anything other than training duties), ten of their twenty operational destroyers, and both battleships were so badly damaged as to be out of operation until November, 1940. In the whole of the war, the Luftwaffe sank thirty one RN destroyers. The RN in September 1940 had around seventy destroyers and cruisers within five hours steaming of Dover, with around five hundred smaller supporting warships, and a further fifty or so destroyers and light cruisers a maximum of twenty four hours away. Then you might read about the failure of the Luftwaffe at Dunkirk. Hardly surprising really, considering it had had no training in anti-shipping operations.
    2
  37. No, he didn't.
    2
  38. Really? Why?
    2
  39. Certainly much less heavily populated, after your Germans had exterminated large numbers, and sent many of the rest to the fatherland to live short, unpleasant, lives as slave labourers.
    2
  40.  Charles McCarron  Not by September, 1940. Immediately after Dunkirk, there was a brief period of disorganisation, but this had long passed well before any invasion attempt might even have been possible.
    2
  41.  Charles McCarron  Not by September, 1940. By then, the British had felt safe enough to send a troop convoy (the 'Apology' convoy) to North Africa, in mid-August. The Germans, in the unlikely event that any organised formations got ashore, were hardly fully equipped either, by the way. Their Sealion plan had the first wave of nine infantry divisions landing without most of their divisional artillery or motor transport.
    2
  42.  @chrism7969  Only the army was in any way disorganised. The RAF had taken some fighter losses, but recovered quickly, and the RN was overwhelmingly superior, especially since the Kriegsmarine had taken heavy losses in Norway.
    2
  43. Churchill didn't plan Gallipoli. He recommended it as an alternative to the Western Front carnage. The operation was planned (badly) by allied Generals and Admirals, but was sanctioned by Herbert Asquith. Where would you have brought American troops into action against the Germans in late 1942/early 1943?
    2
  44. Perhaps you need to look more closely at what actually happened in the Channel Islands, rather than the 1940 German propaganda output?
    2
  45.  Ochieng Odugu  How did they realise that? Help from a time traveller from the future? Who in September 1939 could have had the faintest idea what was going to happen in mid 1941?
    2
  46. The aviation historian was knowledgeable enough, but of the other two, one was an actor and the other an expert on African Anthropology/Archaeology. Very worthy, no doubt, but I can think of several active historians in the field today with far more relevant knowledge.
    2
  47. Wasn't the title 'Australia Duels with The Japanese Empire?' I didn't know that Indians, Gurkhas, or Stillwell's troops, were Australian.
    2
  48. Nonsense. A small number of airman from a number of different countries flew with the RAF during the Battle of Britain.
    2
  49. No, it isn't. Aside from the fact that Queen Elizabeth's reign only began in 1952, the Kaiser's Germany was finished after the failure of the 1918 Spring Offensive, and in 1940 the neutral USA was enthusiastically selling supplies and weapons to Britain.
    2
  50. Define 'lost.' The British were, by June 1940, already outproducing the Germans in aircraft, especially fighters. In this case, 'defeat'would have been nothing more than withdrawing fighter squadrons north of The Thames for a time to re-equip. Moreover, how does any of this make it possible for a Germany whose navy had been largely destroyed in Norway to get troops and equipment across to Southern England on largely unescorted barges towed by tugs and trawlers?
    2