Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "TIKhistory"
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Brian Urquhart, the officer wrongly portrayed in the movie as showing photos. of Tiger IIs to Browning and being told 'not to worry about them' actually never spoke to him. The most senior officer he spoke to was a Brigadier. Furthermore, Urquhart was Ultra cleared, but could not disclose the source of his intelligence because others were not. In fact, the only armour with the SS units in the area were elderly training vehicles. The first one destroyed by 1st Airborne was a French Char B1, by the way. Urquhart was more concerned about the number of experienced German officers in the area, who were likely to (and did) react quickly to a crisis. There is a long interview on another site which makes all this clear.
He apparently explained all this to Attenborough when 'A Bridge Too Far' was in production, and it was Attenborough who had the (false) photos. of the Tiger IIs added, even telling Urquhart that they would play better with the American audience at which the movie was aimed. The 'Tea Drinking' scene featuring the heroic Robert Redford was, similarly, false, but added for effect.
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@johnburns4017 Well, here is the article recently written by Urquhart's great nephew:-
My great-uncle, Major Brian Urquhart, died at the age of 101 on 3rd January 2021, in America where he retired after a long post-war career with the United Nations.
Immediately after the battle he was promoted and given command of one of the Nazi-scientist hunting teams. He then became one of the first under-secretaries establishing the UN as we know it today.
He never liked his association with Arnhem, it was but one battle in a long career. I asked him once about a soldier’s life, which I was then contemplating. The story he told concerned his orders to arrange the repatriation of Cossacks to Russia on special trains.
He had his men seal the windows shut with barbed wire and watched as the first were hung from trees by the NKVD before the last were disembarked. Women and children among them, who tried to cut their throats on the barbed wire he had insisted on. He became very bitter after that. He asked if I could handle orders like those.
The majority of his career was as a diplomat who firmly believed the UN should be the only holder of nuclear weapons, controlled by an internationalist military force whose mission was to preserve humanity. A life in peace and war : Brian Urquhart For the man who unlocked the gates at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp it’s not hard to connect with his idealism. Or decipher his contempt for Generals.
It’s also worth pointing out the inaccuracies in his portrayal in many of the books and films. He didn’t get into an argument with Lt General Browning about tanks at Arnhem - Majors don't argue with Lt Generals he told me - he informed the chief of staff- a brigadier - and a few of the brigade majors, that he believed German panzer units had been positioned nearby.
Brian got this information from Enigma code breaking, he was the only ULTRA* cleared officer on the Airborne staff - the main reason he didn’t fly in with Corps headquarters. That information probably included how few tanks there were - but also how many veteran troops and battle-hardened commanders were stationed nearby.
In 1944 he couldn't tell the brigadier, his colleagues or Browning even, where he got his information or its provenance. It’s possible he exaggerated resistance reports and tertiary aerial photos to make his case. Photos like we see in the films have never been found. So it wasn’t quite as clear cut.
When he was interviewed by historians after the war, he had to continue the cover story for ULTRA. When Cornelius Ryan interviewed him for a Bridge too Far in the late 50s, ULTRA was still top secret. Ryan printed Brian’s cover story of aerial photos and Attenborough conflated them with the Tiger II’s - that turned up days later from the Czech border.
The final assessment, that these panzer divisions weren’t fully operational, and the tanks, if any, were junk, was actually the correct one. 1st Airborne would only meet one SP Gun on Day 1, a few partially armed training tanks, armoured cars and half tracks before day 3. They destroyed most of them.
This is a French Char B1 used by a German training unit near Arnhem. The first tank encountered by 1st Airborne and was destroyed by a 17pdr before it did any damage. It was a French Char B1 used by a German training unit near Arnhem.
It was the proximity of command staff and their brilliance in improvisation and counter attack that ruined the mission. Foot infantry with MG42 and 81mm mortar stopped 1st Airborne getting to the bridges not panzers.
The real threat of panzers at Arnhem was more obvious and a bit further away.
Another great uncle, Colonel William Conran RE, was an engineer on XXX Corps staff. He had been sent there to maintain the roads leading to Arnhem. He and Brian separately pointed out the biggest issue with Arnhem.
It was sold as a strategic location from where a quick right turn took you into the Ruhr valley with all its factories. Both pointed out it was therefore only a quick left turn from the Ruhr to Arnhem, and being the centre of German war production, there had to be tanks and materiel hanging about there.
This was the reason for the three day time limit on reaching Arnhem, any longer and they would be facing extermination by Panzer, mortar and artillery bought in from the Ruhr. Which is exactly what happened, the main armoured threat came days later and was mainly STuG assault guns, the perimeter was assaulted more by mortar fire than anything.
If a Major Royal Engineers could work out the threat to Arnhem from a Michelin guide it wasn’t Brian’s failure to convince the Airborne staff that led to disaster.
Dirk Bogarde, who played Browning in the film, was also on staff at 2nd Army at the time and always said he thought Browning received undue criticism. I think Ryan agreed but needed US heroes to sell his book to Hollywood, while Eisenhower was in the White House and Ridgeway was Chief of Staff.
It could be why he gave Browning the famous, possibly apocryphal, line ‘we may have gone a bridge too far!’
One last titbit of truth came from both Uncle Bill and Brian. The mission had to go ahead regardless of the threat, and was a success.
The number one problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp. The logistics issue.
To use Antwerp and control the approaches you needed to control everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen. I remember Uncle Bill showing me on a map. He drove his bladed hand up the single road to Nijmegen, with the back of his hand against the German border and Siegfried line. He then spread his fingers along the various rivers into the the estuaries of Scheldt, Zeeland and South Holland, as if to grab the land between.
Those low-lying lands and boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen make a perfect geographical feature to stop behind and prepare a defence of Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant, German forces would have been in artillery and strike range of the Allies primary logistics hub.
Monty and Eisenhower had had a blazing row about how to achieve that, only the week before Market Garden, about his failure to take the Scheldt estuary, which turned into a row about the narrow front vs wide front approach into Germany. It nearly cost Monty his job. No allied forces were going forward that autumn without opening up Antwerp. Air Marshall Tedder and Admiral Ramsay both told Eisenhower to sack Monty after his outburst.
Market Garden was the very next offensive to be launched and had to solve the Antwerp problem. Monty’s decision to push on to Arnhem may have been one last attempt at his single front argument.
You only needed Arnhem if you wanted to springboard into Germany, but you needed everything up to Nijmegen if you wanted to do anything at all. That’s why Monty got all those resources for Market Garden, it contained a vital mission for everyone.
Two majors on staff admitted as much to me. The sacrifice of two light infantry brigades at Arnhem was probably not necessary - but a small price to pay for Noord Brabant, which was vital and accomplished. Without the Arnhem operation all those tanks and mortars and infantry would have gone to Nijmegen, which was I believe the most important bridge - up or down.
I would bet, If Arnhem had been captured and held that Eisenhower would have cut off Monty’s supplies right then and established himself strongly in Noord Brabant. But it never got that far because Ridgeway’s US Airborne forces failed to grab their bridges in time and isolated the 1st Airborne for too long.
I wasn’t clear. Cornelius Ryan’s first book was ‘The Longest Day’ published in 1959, with Eisenhower’s close support. They had known each other a bit during the war and Ike and Ridgeway (then US Army Chief of Staff) introduced him to the major players for interview.
Longest Day almost immediately went into Hollywood on publication, and both books are clearly written with a screenplay in mind.
Many of the interviews on which he based Bridge Too Far were done with Ike’s patronage in the late 50s early 60s. Ryan was dying of cancer for most of the early 70s when he struggled to finish Bridge Too Far.
The book had a very long gestation and a screenplay was knocking around Hollywood when John Wayne was slated to reprise his 1962 role from The Longest Day.
Interestingly the book was only published after Browning had died. I do not know of any major attempts at litigation between Browning and Ryan but I do know many felt there should have been.
( The original article, by the way, includes a photo. of the Char B1.)
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@andrejuha164 Oh, please! Do some reading. 'Hitler could place his mega artillery and mega fortresses on this 20 km corridor very simple.' He did. By the end of August, 1940, there were over 150 medium, heavy, and super heavy, German guns on the French Channel coast. From 12 August, they began firing at British coastal convoys as they passed through. Between August & December, 1880 rounds were fired at these convoys, with often as many as 200 rounds fired at each. Total number of hits? NIL. Between then and the end of the war, these guns managed to damage seven merchant ships in total, although none were sunk.
Don't you consider it odd, then, that the Luftwaffe failed so badly to prevent the Dunkirk evacuation? Do you think that the fact that it hadn't had any training at all in anti-shipping operations might have been relevant?
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carmine paola Operation Hats; Oh, you mean when the British reinforced the Mediterranean Fleet with a new carrier, two AA cruisers, & a modernised battleship, ran a supply convoy to Malta, attacked Italian airfields at Maritiza and Callato, and shelled Rhodes? As one of the naval history books in my collection says :- 'Operation Hats was one of a number of occasions during 1940 when the presence of a British aircraft carrier convinced a potentially strong Italian fleet not to risk combat, and played a part in reducing the effectiveness of the otherwise powerful Italian fleet.'
If you think that, by avoiding action the Italian Fleet achieved some sort of success, then you presumably would consider Beda Fomm to have been a triumph of Italian arms?
Didn't you know that the British had 300 Shermans at 2nd Alamein? They also had 90 American 'Priest' SPGs. So what? At least they were willing to use them, unlike the Italian failure to risk their fleet, even when the Italian Homeland was under attack.
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carmine paola Odd, then, that in February, 1941, 28 Italian Divisions faced 14 Greek ones. And lost.
Weren't the US Navy outnumbered at Midway, or the Royal Navy in the Barents Sea or in the Biscay Action, or in the First Battle of Narvik? Being numerically inferior is not really a reason for not trying, except perhaps in your mind. Ask the Germans & Japanese, or the British & Indians at Kohima, or the Americans at Bastogne.
2nd Alamein. Actually, the respective orders of battle show, in simple numerical terms, 195,000 8th Army troops, and 116,000 German/Italian troops. The Germans and Italians, of course, were on the defensive, and behind a strongly mined position which could not be outflanked, and was strongly supported by emplaced anti-tank artillery.
The numerical inferiority hardly applied during Pedestal, did it? Yet even here the Italian fleet was conspicuous by being absent.
Do you derive some comfort from claiming false figures, or are you simply ignorant?
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carmine paola Oh dear! In a previous post, you bleated on pitifully about poor little Italy, facing:- 'a global world war when one is facing an enemy empire of '550' million strong--plus a continent of over 147 million souls--against your own population of a meagre' 57' million strong?!..' Now you drone on about Italy being justified, in order to become an imperialist power!
Perhaps Mexico should try something similar against the United States. It would end just as successfully. The fact is, the declaration of war was a cynical act by Il Duce, intended to grab French & British possessions in Africa after the armistice he expected would be imposed by Hitler, and it backfired spectacularly. Even declaring war with a fair proportion of the Italian merchant marine out of the Mediterranean, leaving it to be interned or to surrender to the Allies, was a strategic masterstroke on Italy's part.
As to the coal shipments, weren't you aware that the British government had offered to replace German coal from British stocks? The action the British took was cynically political, intended to make poor daft Benito realise that alliance with Germany was really not in Italy's best interests, and the British certainly got that one right.
As to sources, why don't you try to find some more detailed ones? Although it does rather explain a lot about the kind of nonsense you post.
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@MrLewkon I appreciate that facts mean little or nothing to you, but actually there were 2353 British pilots who took part in the Battle of Britain. There were a further 574 pilots from outside the U.K., of which 328 were from outside the Commonwealth. 145 of these were Polish, and 88 Czech. There were two Polish Squadrons. Certainly, they made a significant contribution, but you are over-stating it to the point of silliness.
Just to educate you further, Britain withdraw her forces from France as a result of the French & Belgian armies collapsing. The BEF consisted of 13 divisions only.
The Germans had 4500 paratroops in May, 1940, and lost around a third of them during the campaign in the Low Countries. By the end of August, 1940, the Luftwaffe had only just over 220 operational transport aircraft available. Moreover, how long do you expect lightly armed paratroops to survive without reinforcements from ground troops, and where were these to come from, as the Channel was dominated by the Royal Navy?
So, no. Your post does not make sense.
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@MrLewkon I will attempt to keep this simple. Firstly, Britain had a comparatively small population, but maintained the largest navy on earth. Britain was not a major land power, and the policy in 1939-40 was the same as in 1914, in that the French army provided most of the troops on the Western Front, whilst the British & Commonwealth contingent was slowly expanded by conscription in Britain and the arrival of troops from overseas, particularly Canada, Australia, New Zealand, & India.
Secondly, overseas pilots, particularly from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, & France, had arrived in Britain with the intention of continuing to fight against the people who had conquered their own nations. Many were already experienced pilots, and, therefore, why shouldn't they have been given the opportunity? You seem to think that Fighter Command was a private, Britons only, Gentleman's Club. It wasn't.
Thirdly, of course pilots of Transport, Fighter, & Bomber aircraft, are different. What relevance has this comment to anything.
Fourthly, By the time the US became active participants in the war, the danger of invasion, even had it truly ever existed, had long passed.
Why don't you simply buy a decent book on the subject of Operation Sealion? I have more interesting things to do than to educate you.
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@MrLewkon 'Dude?' Are you American? That might explain a lot, although most Americans of my acquaintance do actually seem to learn something about the period before they post. Oh well!
Hermann Goering and his Luftwaffe, in the whole of WW2, managed to sink 31 British destroyers, and no British warship larger than a light cruiser. The British began WW2 with 193 destroyers, and ended it with over 400. In September, 1940, they had over 100 in Home Waters.
This would, by the way, be the Luftwaffe which had had no training in anti-shipping techniques at the time, had just failed badly to prevent Operation Dynamo or Operation Aerial, and didn't even have a high performance torpedo bomber until mid 1942? That Luftwaffe?
303 Squadron is an entertaining movie, based on historical events, but scripted to support a particular argument. It is not a professionally made documentary. Perhaps that is where you are getting confused?
Incidentally, you may note that I have never belittled the role of non-British pilots; I have simply put it into the appropriate wider context, something which seems beyond you.
Oddly enough, although it isn't relevant here, I am a full-time historian, with a number of published writings in the field of Naval History. However, I would prefer to deal with the argument, rather than attempt to question the credibility of the individual making it. I will happily leave that to others. I can, however, list a whole host of active historians whose views align with mine.
The facts are that Fighter Command was never short of pilots. Indeed, a study of RAF wartime records reveals that many qualified fighter pilots actually never saw combat in 1940, but worked in administrative positions. Moreover, Fighter Command had a policy of rotating their squadrons, which involved relieving squadrons which had seen heavy combat in 11 & 12 Group from the line and sending them to 13 Group (in the North & Scotland) for a period of recuperation, replacing them with fresh or rested squadrons from 13 Group.
Moreover, more experienced pilots were removed from front line units and sent to supervise training units, in order to teach recently trained pilots the tricks of the trade. Many of these 'new' pilots came from the Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which ensured that there was never a shortage of trained pilots coming through. By comparison, the Luftwaffe practised no such programme of rotation, and experienced pilots stayed with their units until they were killed or disabled.
As I tried to explain earlier, but you clearly missed, Fighter Command regarded the Poles & Czechs as experienced pilots, and as potentially valuable assets. They were initially kept out of front line operations because of doubts about their language skills and their ability to operate within the constraints of Fighter Command's control systems. Once this doubt had been resolved, they became operational. But only, in the case of 303 Squadron, from 30 August, 1940.
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I think you will that very few people believe that Hitler declared war on Britain, France, or Poland. They simply assume, correctly, that he invaded Poland without any formal declaration, as he had previously done in Czechoslovakia. Britain and France, through appeasement, had made serious efforts to avoid a major European war, but a line had to be drawn somewhere, and it was over Poland. If France had seriously sought war with Germany, why build the defensive Maginot Line, and the size of the Royal Navy was irrelevant in terms of the land campaign.
Unconditional Surrender, by the way, was demanded by FDR, and actually came as a surprise to Churchill. As to why the British and French failed to declare war on the Soviet Union, have you really not heard of Realpolitik?
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@albertdevries7769 Because Britain's treaty with Poland agreed support in the event of invasion by Germany, but not in the event of invasion by any other power.
I don't care whether you think my comment correct or not, as I know that it is.
You might perhaps explain why Hitler managed to attack Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, The United States, and the Soviet Union, whilst only declaring war on one of them, and when none of them had declared war on Germany?
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@aldaron1021 It was published in 1940. The authors were, allegedly, Hitler, Goering, & Stieve. Such credible sources. In point of fact, your Germans had bombed civilians in Spain, Warsaw, & Rotterdam before anyone else had bombed anyone, and the first British raid on Berlin was on the night of 25/26 August, 1940. The first German bombs to fall on London fell on 16 August, with a second attack on 22 August, and a third in the early hours of 25 August.
Additional fun fact. There need have been no WW2 had it not been for the annoying German habit of invading neutral countries.
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@koczisek Perhaps, before being so generous about Georgie boy, you should read about the shambles that was his campaign in Lorraine?
I also like your idea of the BEF attacking. Very imaginative, in that, firstly, strategy of the Western Front was dictated by the French General Staff, and secondly in May 1940, the BEF consisted of three corps, totalling 10 divisions, three territorial divisions, which were only partially trained, and a single tank brigade of 50 tanks.
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@raykeane9345 Churchill was not 'shunned' by the population at large, although his warnings about Germany rapidly re-arming after 1933 were viewed with some alarm by people still recovering from the horrors of WW1. Was he wrong about that, by the way? Politically, he was an outcast, as his party continued to follow a policy of appeasement, and what he was saying was not what his leaders wanted to hear.
Churchill did not 'send the Black & Tans to Ireland.' The Prime Minister at the time, was David Lloyd George, and the force was actually sent by him. Certainly, Churchill played a role in the recruitment process, as the Royal Irish Constabulary was becoming increasingly incapable of controlling the unrest. However, as the Canadian historian David Leeson wrote, "The typical Black and Tan was in his early twenties and relatively short in stature. He was an unmarried Protestant from London or the Home Counties who had fought in the British Army. He was a working-class man with few skills".] The popular Irish claim made at the time that most Black and Tans had criminal records and had been recruited straight from British prisons is incorrect, as a criminal record would disqualify one from working as a policeman. Moreover, the popular claims made about their atrocities confuses them with another force, the 'Auxilaries' who were attached to the RIC as a counter-terrorist unit, and bore some responsibility for such actions.
As to India, 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.
In terms of racism, certainly his views would have been unacceptable today, but were the generally held ones at the time of his birth in 1874. Indeed, they were not quite so extreme as another prominent figure from the time, a lawyer who held that Africans were a lower form of human being, and should never be given the right to vote. His name, by the way, was Mohandas K. Gandhi.
In short, you aren't missing much, if you prefer myth to accurate historical facts.
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'Made peace with Germany?' After Germany had, without declaration of war, invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Belgium? Exactly what sorts of terms might Britain have expected? The sort Halifax recommended, negotiated by Mussolini?
Oh, and Churchill did not choose the Soviet Union over Germany. He simply worked on the principle that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend.'
Montgomery, by the way, simply waited until he had superiority in men, equipment, supplies, and intelligence, before embarking on a campaign. Only a fool, such as the Desert Fox, willingly commits his forces to something far beyond their capabilities. Montgomery did what any sensible commander would do.
Not very well informed, are you?
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Perhaps you don't know that Churchill had no involvement in the planning of the Gallipoli campaign? He proposed it as an alternative to the impending carnage on the Western Front, to relieve Turkish pressure on Russia's southern flank, and to influence neutral Eastern European states to join the war on the allied side. Potentially, it might even have driven the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Certainly, Kitchener thought in similar terms, and after the war Kemal Ataturk said that Turkey was on the verge of surrender when the allied warships were withdrawn from the Dardanelles.
Be that as it may, Asquith authorised the operation, not Churchill, and the planning was in the hands of the army and navy. When it failed, Asquith needed a suitable scapegoat, and Churchill fitted the bill. Not for nothing was one of Lloyd Georges
first acts when he replaced Asquith returning Churchill to the government.
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@tmefly2907 'Narrow Passage?' Even at the narrowest point, the Channel is 21 miles wide, and the RN was hardly 'stuck' although the German barges, around 850 of them being towed at not much above walking pace by tugs, small coasters, and trawlers, might well have been.
As for 'very effective against naval targets' what happened at Dunkirk? RN & merchant navy ships stopped off an open beach, or moored against the Mole, yet of 41 destroyers present, the Luftwaffe managed to sink four.
The RN anti-invasion force ( around 70 light cruisers and destroyers, supported by some five hundred smaller warships) had freedom to move at speed and to take evasive manoeuvres. If the Luftwaffe, untrained in anti-shipping operations, couldn't hit such ships when they were stopped, are they really likely to have been more successful when they had freedom of action?
Have you, by the way, the slightest idea how huge the Royal Navy in Home Waters was in 1940?
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