Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Why didn't Hitler go through Turkey to get the Caucasus Oil?" video.

  1. The Suez Canal was not important in WW2, as the British shipped troops & supplies round the Cape.
    1
  2. Except the Allied plan was to hold a defensive line at the outbreak of the war, allowing the build-up of French forces from their Colonial possessions, and British & Commonwealth forces from their Dominions, Empire, and from conscription. At the same time, the Royal Navy would re-impose the blockade which had systematically starved Germany into revolution in WW1. Effectively, a repeat of the way WW1 developed, and almost certainly a neutral Italy.
    1
  3. Actually, the British military attache in Moscow sent a secret message to Auchinleck in mid-July, 1942, that the whole of the Caucasus was expected to fall to Germany within a month.
    1
  4. How so? The British maintained naval superiority in the Mediterranean, despite axis air superiority for much of the war?
    1
  5.  @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?
    1