Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "TIKhistory"
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ODDBALL SOK
You are getting it. The British won the Battle of Dunkirk retreating as the large ally capitulated and left the BEF in the face of an enemy vastly superior in numbers. The small BEF was only 9% of all allied forces in France. The British were to primarily control the Channel, impose a naval blockade on Germany and assist with the air forces. The British were retreating after the French collapsed - a programme already in motion. All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk if they attacked as it was too well defended.
The RAF formed a CAP over the Dunkirk pocket. The first showing in force of the Spitfire was over Dunkirk. The first defeat of the Luftwaffe was over Dunkirk. More German panes were lost than British. The British won the air battle.
Six British destroyers sunk and 19 damaged (most repaired), out of the RN's fleet is an insignificant amount of ships out of the over 3,000 vessels in the RN. The Luftwaffe was generally kept away from Dunkirk, so much a third of a million men got away. The retreat operation was being carried out as planned. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies. Germany was consolidating their remaining armour and the important resupply from Germany for an expected attack by the British and French from the south. The Germans had no option but to halt in front of Dunkirk.
The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. The Germans countered with superior numbers then pushed back the British. In desperation the Germans turned a 88mm AA gun horizontal and it worked against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The German panzers also needed resupply and maintenance having overstretched their supply lines.
The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 tank made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the long, heavy, towed 88mm gun would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the Matilda 2 with its short 2pdr gun would be in its element. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time. No German tank could knock it out. Half of German tanks were equipped with only machine guns. The Matilda 2's slam-dunk introduction was similar to the Soviet introduction of the T-34. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over from England in numbers. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in.
German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the French and British forces in the south not from Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable dug-in opponent. The German column had Allied troops to each side with soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had moved onto Dunkirk, first they had to get into the town through the outer dug in defences, and then engage in a street battle. They would also be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short, any German forces attacking Dunkirk would have a good chance of being wiped out.
Von Runstedt assessed that the British and French forces moving back to England would move down the English coast and sail over to southern France, re-equipped, forming another front - his main concern. He thought he had a better chance of defeating them, with less German casualties, in an open battle rather than attack now a fortress at Dunkirk which had a CAP.
There was an abandoned British plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British and French forces. All military school studies since have show it would have been a success. The British did not have confidence in the French, so retreated.
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RED S7VN
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From El Alemein it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, and vital help from Montgomery and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US 1st and 9th armies. The 9th stayed under his control until the end of the war just about. Parts of the USAAF had to be put under RAF control.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped to fight tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to Urquhart got it wrong.
"Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden."
"As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY written by the Royal Air Force
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@sumivescent
A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp, as they had to implement the broad-front strategy. And keeping it from German counter-attack. They had a logistical problem to supply all the thinly spread out allied armies for this broad-front. They had to:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp to Nijmegen, or;
2) Take the Scheldt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy, a push to the north on his stretched broad-front lines. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower. Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential It was taken with limited forces, with forces also sent to the Schedlt.
Market Garden had to go ahead regardless Being actually a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant was vital, and was successfully seized.
Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all. SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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Browning did not prioritize the Heights over the bridge. He gave them equal priority. Gavin de-prioritized the bridge after he failed to seize it, ordering all his men out of Nijmegen town. When XXX Corps turned up they had a job to remove the Germans out of the town. These German troops came in mainly via the ferry to the island.
"I personally gave an order to Jim Gavin that, although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges as soon as possible, it was essential that he should capture the Groesbeek Ridge and hold it—for … painfully obvious reasons …. If this ground had been lost to the enemy the operations of the 2nd Army would have been dangerously prejudiced as its advance across the Waal and Neder Rhein would have been immediately outflanked. Even the initial advance of the Guards Armoured Division would have been prejudiced and on them the final outcome of the battle had to depend."
- Lt Gen Browning to Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission, Washington, D.C., 25 Jan 55, excerpt in OCMH.
The American post war version of events is one that attempts to whitewash their failure at Nijmegen and Zon - failures to capture the bridges on the first day. The film A bridge Too Far, made when Browning had already died, only cemented the false narrative in the minds of the public. Since then many researchers have uncovered the real facts.
The 508th did launch some patrols into Nijmegen. A patrol from the 3rd Battalion almost reached the bridge. Three straggler from the patrol of 40 men took prisoner the guards on the south end of the bridge - seven of the 18 guards, including their cannon. If the 82nd had bothered to turn up at the bridge two hours earlier rather than hanging around DePloeg they would have hopped and skipped onto the bridge whistling Dixie.
When Gavin found out the 508th were not moving to the bridge, he was livid, expecting them to be moving to the bridge, if there was no opposition. The 508th did send a recon patrol. According to Phil Nordyke’s Put Us Down In Hell (2012) three lead scouts of the troop of 40, were separated making it to the vicinity of south end of the road bridge approaches, not the main steel span. They captured seven Germans and also their small artillery gun. They waited about an hour for reinforcements that never arrived, having to withdraw then observed the 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion arriving from Arnhem.
These few scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge just before the 9th SS recon, reached the bridge about an hour before the 9th SS. Joe Atkins in The 508th said, "at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." That was the 9th SS.
US Official History, page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol
After around 4.5 hours after landing a patrol of 40 men were sent.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at 1900 and move with the Dutch guide to the bridge. Company C, a platoon of which already had gone into the city as a patrol, was withheld in regimental reserve. Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began.
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight.
As Company A formed to attack, the men heard the noise of an approaching motor convoy emanating from a side street on the other side of the traffic circle. Enemy soldiers noisily dismounted (the 9th SS now in the town)
No one could have said so with any finality at the time, but the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
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Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge.
General Gavin of the US 82nd was tasked to seize the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
-Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
-Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's original position, and placed him in the middle of the town. It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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One problem that has bedevilled any objective study of Anglo-US military history in the post-war decades is the tendency of some US commanders and many US historians to play the ‘British’ or ‘Montgomery’ card in order to conceal some glaring American blunder. Omar Bradley’s disastrous failure to provide adequate armoured support for the US divisions landing on Omaha on D-Day, with the terrible losses thus caused to the infantry companies of the 1st and 29th Divisions, have been largely expunged from the public mind — at least in the United States — by constant harping about the British or ‘Montgomery’s failure to take Caen on D-Day — a failure that turned out to have no strategic significance whatsoever.
Nor is Omaha the only example. As we have seen in earlier chapters, harping on about the ‘slowness’ of XXX Corps or the ‘flawed’ plan of General Urquhart at Arnhem, has successfully diverted critical minds from the cock-up in command that prevented the 82nd Division from either taking the Nijmegen bridge on the first day of the attack or avoiding a frontal attack across the Waal in borrowed boats three days later.
It appears that all that was necessary to avoid critical press comment in the USA and any unwelcome Congressional interest in the competence of any American commander, was to murmur ‘the British’ or — better still — ‘Montgomery’, and critical comment in the USA either subsided or went unvoiced.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The fact is, that XXX Corps were not slow, reaching Nijmegen ahead of schedule. Urquart's paras took one end of the Arnhem bridge preventing its use by the Germans. If the US 82nd had taken the Nijmegen bridge immediately XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on time relieving the paras and fully securing the bridge.
Caen was a nice to have objective, but Monty saw no need to tie up vital resources on a strategically unimportant target. As Neillands stated it was of "no strategic significance whatsoever."
Neillands highlights the glaring unthruths of the US press and historians.
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@robert goodman
Chip on the shoulder I see.
The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. They never entered the war because they attacked another country or were attacked. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
After France 1940 Germany never had a significant campaign victory over the British Commonwealth ever again in WW2. The Germans FAILED:
♦ To win the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ To win the Battle of the Atlantic in 1940/41;
♦ To control the eastern Atlantic ;
♦ To control the Mediterranean in 1940/41;
♦ To control North Africa and the Middle East in 1940/41
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army in 1944/45 was retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 34,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, with Montgomery having to be put in command of the US First and Ninth armies, adding the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. The Ninth stayed under his control until the end of the war just about. Parts of the USAAF had to be under the control of the RAF.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all armies, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and 22% less casualties than predicted. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped to fight tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Then the ignored British naval blockade on the Axis economy, which was so successful the substantial Italian navy could not put to sea in full strength, or even at all on some occasions, because of a lack of oil. Then the British bomber offensive on the German economy, taking the war right into German cities, wiping out Hamburg in one night. First 1,000 bomber raid was just after the USA were in the war.
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@novelistgrandiose8281
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. They never did not enter because they attacked another country or were attacked. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British or US, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, with Montgomery in command and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line, with nearly 100,000 casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Then the ignored British naval blockade on the Axis economy, which was so successful the substantial Italian navy could not put to sea in full strength, or even at all on some occasions, because of a lack of oil. Then the British bomber offensive on the German economy, taking the war right into German cities, wiping out Hamburg in one night.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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