Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "The Armchair Historian" channel.

By the time of Torch, Rommel had already been defeated at 2nd Alamein.
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Strategical victory? What strategic use was made of it?
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@jebgue3 As the British lifted 123,095 'Allied' troops from Dunkirk, how did that happen? Had they run out of bullets or something? As to no BEF involvement in counter attacks, presumably you haven't heard of Arras, or of the Division which made a night march from one side of the Allied line to the other after the Belgian army capitulated without warning? Since when, by the way, has 'c'est la guerre' applied to the murder of surrendered soldiers?
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But didn't seem to have much of a problem sending French Jews to gas chambers, or other French citizens to the fatherland as slave labour.
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On four of the five beaches, they worked successfully.
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The Dunkirk evacuation lifted over 100,000 French troops out of the Dunkirk pocket.
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Peter Well, try this. The Scharnhorsts & Bismarcks had incremental armour, which hadn't been used in American capital ships since the Nevadas, and in British ones since the Nelsons, but had been superceded by the superior All-or-Nothing pattern. The Scharnhorst and Bismarcks had outdated low angle secondary armament, which had been discarded by the US navy since the Washingtons, and in the British navy since the King George Vs, in favour of a dual purpose system. The Scharnhorsts were desperately undergunned, with a weight of broadside of 6552 lbs. By comparision, the US Washingtons had a broadside weight of 24300 lbs, the British Nelsons 18432 lbs, and the British King George Vs 15900 lbs. Bismarck had a weight of broadside of 14112 lbs, but achieved it by the outdated use of four twin turrets, when the British & Americans were using the three multiple gunned turret design, saving both weight & space. The Scharnhorsts had 13.8 inch armoured belts, and 4.1 inch decks. The Bismarcks 12.6 inch belts and 4.7 inch decks. The Washingtons, by comparison 12 inch belts & 3.6 inch decks, the Nelsons 14 inch belts and 6.25 inch decks, and the King George Vs 14 inch belts and 6 inch decks. All the Scharnhorsts (32 knots) and the Bismarcks (29 knots) had was speed. The Washingtons (28 knots) and the KGVs (27.5 knots) were slightly slower, and the Nelsons (23 knots) much slower. Thus, the German ships could avoid action, but once forced into it were utterly outclassed. I don't supposed you even know that internal communications in both the Scharnhorsts & the Bismarcks ran between the incremental layers of armour, when resulted in Bismarck losing these, and most of her main armament, within about 20 minutes when engaged on 27 May? I don't need a 'sense of bullshit entitlement,' just knowledge of the facts. A pity you don't have the same level of understanding.
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Indeed it is. Unfortunately, it is only a movie, and is full of inaccuracies.
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You would be wrong. The Channel was a death trap. The Germans sent three U-boats into it in late 1939. They, and their crews, are still there. Moreover, WW2 submersibles generally spent most of their time avoiding escort vessels. Actively seeking to attack a destroyer flotilla was an excellent quick method of getting the boat sunk and the crew killed.
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'Unsung?' Oh, please! The Royal Navy was the true Wall of England (actually, Britain). The Royal Navy made invasion impossible.
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Actually, Hitler took the advice of von Rundstedt, who issued the Halt Order.
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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. One wonders why, with 2.5 million Indian soldiers fighting for the Allies, those same allies would have sought to generate a famine? However, where revisionist prejudice is concerned, archive documents or common sense are best ignored.
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'he was jealous of Patton's obvious superior generalship' You mean like Patton's triumph during the Lorraine campaign, where there were 50,000 American casualties, approximately one third of the total American casualties in the European war? The supposed rivalry between Montgomery & Patton is fictional, at least on Montgomery's part, and the myth has only grown as a result of the 1970 movie comedy 'Patton - Lust For Glory' based on Ladislas Farago's hagiography of Patton. Without the movie, Patton would today be seen for what he was. As Cornelius Ryan pointed out, Montgomery believed in the single trust as opposed to the broad front strategy on principle. How many people actually know that he offered to play a secondary role to Bradley if it meant that the single thrust took place? Montgomery had a number of faults, but envy of a junior was not one of them.
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Perhaps it would be churlish to point out that, of 338000 men lifted from Dunkirk, over 100000 were actually French.
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@rosesprog1722 What was?
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@rosesprog1722 Except that Hitler didn't issue the Halt order, the commander of Army Group A did. Von Rundstedt was eager to start the second phase of the invasion of France, and wanted to give his armour time to rest and repair, in order to avoid the risk of a second miracle of the Marne. Hitler simply agreed, not because he had decided to let the British escape, but because he knew from his time there in WW1 that the land around Dunkirk was unsuited to mechanised warfare, but mainly because the previous day Goering had told him that the destruction of the Dunkirk pocket and any evacuation fleet was, as he put it 'a special job for the Luftwaffe.'
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Hitler didn't issue the Halt Order. Von Rundstedt did. Goering had already told Hitler that the Luftwaffe could destroy the Dunkirk pocket, and Hitler believed him. What Kriegsmarine, by the way?
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@phlm9038 There was a small involvement, of a handful of S boats & U-boats, but after Norway the Kriegsmarine was so reduced in size and capability as to be irrelevant.
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von Rundstedt wanted to rest his tanks and service them for the second part of the drive into France. What we now take for granted wasn't so clear-cut at the time, and many German senior officers feared a repeat of the 'Miracle of the Marne.'
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The British never promised to support Poland with ground troops. How could they, with a peacetime army of around ten divisions? 'Operation Market Garden one of the most ill conceived and poorly planned planned operations of the war.' Look up the Hurtgen Forest, or Patton's Lorraine Campaign, before you say that.
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@inovakovsky I have seen some of those videos. I will continue to base my opinions on facts rather than extremist opinions.
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@inovakovsky I refer you to my earlier answer. I tend to base my opinions on archives, books and articles by academic historians, and known facts, rather than on videos.
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In point of fact, the allied forces on Crete didn't have any heavy equipment either, and were still disorganised from evacuation from Greece. What actual profit did throwing away a well-trained and motivated paratroop force, and losing large numbers of transport aircraft, bring to the Axis cause in the Mediterranean?
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You mean apart from winning the Battle of the Atlantic in conjunction with the Canadians, then planning & largely executing D-Day?
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@Glynnwilliamson You mean like in early 1942, when the British and Canadians had to send 34 escorts to the American East Coast, because Ernie King chose to ignore British Admiralty warnings and allow American merchant shipping to be slaughtered within sight of the (brightly illuminated) US coast. Or mid 1942, when there were 12 Escort Groups protecting SC, HX, & ON convoys? Of these, seven (B1 B7) were British, four (C1 C4) Canadian, and one (A3) theoretically American. I say 'theoretically' because it consisted of British & Canadian destroyers, and two US Coastguard cutters. The cutters were soon withdrawn to other duties, and the Group redesignated C5. There were, once the cutters left, no American warships on North Atlantic escort duty. The British & Canadians managed to win the battle all by themselves. The US Navy never really 'arrived' in the North Atlantic. As to D-Day, the naval plan was drawn up by a team led by Vice-Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who was also Naval Forces Commander on 6 June. Of 4127 landing craft, 3261 were British & Canadian crewed. There were 1213 warships at D-Day; 892 were British or Canadian. There were 11600 Allied aircraft; two thirds were RAF, and the combined force was commanded by Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. Two of every three men who landed on 6 June were British or Canadian, and I leave you to guess who the Ground Forces Commander was. The pre-invasion minesweeping was carried out entirely by British & Canadian sweepers, and the Mulberry artificial harbours, without which the whole thing would have been impossible anyway, were a British invention.
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The 51st was not abandoned. Admiral James sent a force of 67 merchantmen & 140 smaller vessels on 11 June, but thick fog prevented evacuation. A second attempt was to have been made on 12 June, but at 0730 General Fortune was informed that the local French commander had negotiated a surrender. This, by the way, was irrelevant to the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk, which had been completed almost a week earlier, and nor did it have any relevance to the subsequent Operation Aerial
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The Poles did not fight to defend Britain. They fought alongside the British because their own country had been conquered and the British were the only European country still in arms against Germany.
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@tomk3732 But not to defend Britain. Operation Peking was intended to prevent three of the most modern Polish destroyers from being trapped in the Baltic, in order that they could co-operate with the British & French navies. There was no suggestion that they were there to defend Britain. Perhaps you could clarify what you mean by :- 'They only fought when it was their turn to face them across the channel,' as it doesn't seem to make any sense.
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How exactly did Montgomery 'jinx' the Battle of the Bulge?
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It didn't seem to notice that there were two bridges at Nijmegen, and it chose to include a fictional episode where the heroic Robert Redford rebuked the British for 'stopping for tea.'
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One third of the men lifted from Dunkirk were French, and the British were trying to reestablish a presence in the Cherbourg area until told by General Weygand, on 14 June, that the French army was no longer capable of organised resistance.
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