Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "The Armchair Historian"
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It is quite common for defeated generals to place the blame on the shoulders of someone no longer around to argue. The tanks on the Aa canal were halted by von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, in order to make them ready for the second stage of the invasion of France. There were a number of reasons, including Rundstedt's fear of a second 'Miracle of the Marne' the unsuitability of the terrain around Dunkirk for armour, the impending arrival of the (horse drawn) German infantry divisions, the fact that, in Rundstedt's mind, the allied troops in the pocket were 'trapped,' ( like most European generals, he saw the sea as a barrier, whereas the British saw it as a highway), and the fact that Goering had already persuaded Hitler that the elimination of the Dunkirk pocket was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe.'
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Peter Nonsense. Bismarck was, admittedly, hard to sink, but not difficult to cripple. Rodney destroyed most of her main armament and her bridge and internal communications within 20 minutes of engaging. After that, her sinking was not a battle, it was an execution.
Tirpitz was destroyed by heavy bombs, dropped from high altitude, because she was an inconvenient 'Fleet in Being' which never actually emerged from hiding. The bomb, by the way, had not been designed specifically to destroy Tirpitz. Hood was, by 1941, an elderly warship with the armour of a WW1 battleship. She was certainly not superior to modern British & US Battleships.
The last Japanese capital ship built in Britain was the Kongo, actually a battlecruiser constructed in 1912. After that, the Japanese built their own battleships, and Kongo herself was totally reconstructed between the wars. When did the Japanese sink the entire Russian navy, by the way? If you mean Tsushima, that was in 1905.
As to 'any battleships that the US produced could easily be destroyed with a well placed hit from a salvo.' Well, the US, like the British, built their post WW1 battleships with the vastly superior ( to incremental, anyway) all or nothing armour system. At Guadalcanal, South Dakota sustained 27 hits, yet remained in action. I can't comment on the effect your indestructible German ships would have had on British battleships, as no British battleship was hit by one in WW2. Before you quibble, Hood was a battlecruiser.
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@tomk3732 If you are referring to wars between Britain and France, the policy of England, and later Britain, in the post-medieval period was consistent throughout, in that it was an attempt, generally successful, to prevent France from securing the whole of the European Channel coast, and becoming the overwhelmingly dominant power on the European mainland.
The wars of the period, usually involving most European powers, were responses to French expansionism, not attempts to conquer France.
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@francisebbecke2727 The point of taking the BEF captive is obvious. Allowing it to escape (as, of course, he didn't) would have had a profound effect in Britain. Lord Halifax was a very influential figure, and his argument that Mussolini should be invited to act as a 'neutral' arbiter in armistice negotiations had considerable support.
Had the BEF been captured, it is doubtful that the political establishment in the UK would have rallied behind Churchill, as it did. Churchill was able to portray Dynamo as a miracle, which converted a catastrophe into a mere setback. Moreover, he could, more pragmatically, point to the success of the Royal Navy, and claim (correctly) that an invasion of Britain by a country with no navy to speak of, in the face of the largest navy on earth, was impossible, and that the British Commonwealth and Empire was able to fight on, if necessary for years, if necessary, alone.
Your argument makes no sense. If Hitler wanted the British to come to terms, then allowing their army to escape was precisely the wrong way to bring this about. Of course, at the time Hitler could not possibly have been aware of how inept the Luftwaffe was at hitting naval targets.
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