Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "TIKhistory"
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The Germans attacked the unprepared USSR and scythed right into them taking millions of men prisoner. The German army then met a Soviet brick wall at the end of 1941. But in 1942 the Germans still kept advancing and even got to the Caspian Sea.
So, is it correct the German Army was a better army but were stupid enough to engage a much larger less efficient force. The answer is yes. Look at the Soviet performance against the Finns the second time around. Harley inspiring was it? The Soviets even after they absorbed the initial German shock were still incompetent to the Germans. Yet the Luftwaffe trounced the poorly trained Soviets, who had some decent planes. Look at the Luftwaffe v the RAF. The RAF got the better of them most of the time: Dunkirk, Battle of Brittan, the desert, etc. With poor planes like the American Buffalo, which the US disliked and discontinued, the Finns got the better of the Soviets.
The Germans underestimate the size of the Soviet forces. One German general states that, they defeat a Soviet army then they had to face another, it was poorly led and trained but it was another army. The Germans were never expecting to face so many.
After 3 years the Germans were still way inside the USSR, with a much smaller force. The Germans did no such thing against the British in the desert. Facts help here, like a timeline and the number of men involved.
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@grumpyoldman-21
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US First Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. It was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944.
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This northern thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved First Army, so a lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance.
Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's broad front strategy, making that clear continuously since the Normandy breakout, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders keeping to the laid down strategy, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
Montgomery after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to what forces were available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly General Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. Brereton, who liked the concept, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead, as he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
Montgomery left all the planning to his generals to plan and execute: Brereton, Williams, Browning, Urquhart, Gavin, Taylor, Horrocks, etc. Monty gave them a free run at it with their own discretion not interfering. Montgomery had no involvement whatsoever in its execution. Montgomery was an army group commander, in charge of armies. The details were left to 'competent' subordinates.
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@ohgosh5892
A part of the exchange was that Britain would impart technology to the USA. The USA was way behind. Look at the Tizzard Mission: a-bomb, radar, proximity fuses, penicillin, jet engines, sonar, advanced supercharging, etc, etc. All given to the USA.
It was to be two-way. But little the USA developed they gave to the Brits. They would not tell the Brits about the Norden bomb site. Which was a ruse, as it was nothing special, so probably to keep up the ruse.
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There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked properly being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 attempted to improve the German axial-flow engines largely failing.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality steel unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of 10 hours to the Germans engines that used poor quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design faults. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine being much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to built a new reliable with performance axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So eight years research & developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency with some concept fails. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheat problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters. The answer is clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures. The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes.
The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war. About 10 years ago the USSR eventually paid royalties to Rolls Royce.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. the Me262 and Meteor were leagues apart in safety and reliability. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it would have been as bad as the me262.
The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology actually flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944. However the supposed kill was a Mosquito reconnaissance plane that had a fuselage cap blown off in a quick fast manoeuvre, which flew on landing in Italy. The Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position with superior vision, as we see today. The cockpit was very quiet. The high tail was not to impede the rear jet thrust. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The 262 balancing problem would be exasperated when firing the guns as the weight of the bullets exiting suddenly made the the air-frame unbalanced.
There were five turbojet engines in the UK under R&D in WW2:
▪ Centrifugal, by Whittle (Rover);
▪ Centrifugal, by Frank Halford (DeHaviland);
▪ Axial-flow, by Metro-Vick;
▪ Axial-flow by Griffiths (Rolls Royce);
▪ Axial flow compressor, with reverse flow combustion chambers. The ASX by Armstrong Siddley;
Metro-Vick sold their jet engine division to Armstrong Siddley. The Metro-Vick engine transpired into the post war Sapphire. Most American engines in the 1940s/50s were of UK design, many made under licence. The US licensed the J-42 (RR Nene) and J-48 (RR Tay), being virtually identical to the British engines. US aircraft used licensed British engines powering the: P-59, P-80, T-33, F9F Panther, F9F-6 Cougar, FJ Fury 3 and 4, Martin B-57 Canberra, F-94 Starfire, A4 Skyhawk and the A7 Corsair.
The US General Electric J-47 turbojet was developed by General Electric in conjunction with Metropolitan Vickers of the UK, who had already developed a 9-stage axial-flow compressor engine licensing the design to Allison in 1944 for the earlier J-35 engine first flying in May 1948. The centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene is one of the highest production jet engines in history with over 50,000 built.
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When Gavin was told at 6.00 p.m. than no attempt had been made to move to the Nijmegen bridge. He hit the ceiling. He should have ensured his men were moving to the bridge right after landing - he never, he assumed they were. Gavin ordered coln Lindquist to move some of the 508th to the bridge. By the time they move on the bridge, only about 40 of them, it was after 8.00 p.m. It was too late by then, as the 10th SS infantry had poured south over the bridge occupying the bridge and town.
If the 82nd secured the bridge immediately
they would have secured Nijmegen town. They would have fanned out to the north of the bridge maintaining a bridgehead, keeping the 10th SS at bay, until XXX Corps arrived. The 10th SS would have been isolated between the two bridges on the `island`, with any supplies coming via the slow, and small, ferry further east.
The bridge was not defended. No trenches, barbed wire,
cannons, nothing. Just 19 second rate guards on it. Even if 40 men had moved to the bridge immediately they would have walked on it. The German guards would be no match for the well trained 82nd men outnumbered 2 to 1.
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Prof Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction
Page 371.
The German army that invaded France in May 1940 was far from being a carefully honed weapon of modern armoured warfare. Of Germany's 93 combat ready divisions on May 10 1940, only 9 were Panzer divisions, with a total of 2.438 tanks between them. These units faced a French army that was more heavily motorised, with 3,254 tanks in total.
....Half the German tanks that invaded the west were armed only with a machinegun!! The German Army was not on equal footing with the French when in fact it was vastly inferior.
Tooze, page 371/372.
Nor should one accept unquestioningly the popular idea that the concentration of the Germans tanks in specialised tank divisions gave them a decisive advantage. Many French tanks were scattered amongst the infantry units, but with their ample stock of vehicles the French could afford to do this. The bulk of France's best tanks were concentrated in armoured units, that, on paper at least, were every bit a match for the Panzer divisions.
Page 378
if Allied bombers had penetrated the German fighter screen over the Ardennes they could have wreaked havoc amongst the slow moving traffic with highly inflammable fuel tankers were interspersed with the fighting vehicles at the very front with the armoured fighting vehicles. The plan called for the German armoured columns to drive for three days and nights without interruption.
.....The drivers were put on speed pills.
Page 380
because it involved such a concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan was a one-shot affair. If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, the Wehrmacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gamble paid off. But contrary to appearances, the Germans had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European military power in a matter of weeks, was not a repeatable outcome.
Tooze, page 373:
In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat. But whereas it suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment, Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic terms.
Tooze page 380:
In both campaigns [France and Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less spelled disaster.
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@adrianseanheidmann4559
Land values are created by the surrounding community, not the land owner. Can be reclaimed by Land Value Tax, which can eliminate income tax and eliminate harmful land speculation (which caused a world-wide economic crash in 2008/09. Income tax is a a bad tax, a penalty on production: work, effort, labour.
The air over our heads can, and is, charged to use, we also have the electromagnetic spectrum, the seas and sea beds. All resources: fish, oil, gas, ores, etc, are common as they come from nature and out of our sovereign land. The proceeds should go into common coffers - they do not.
Easy when you look around. Land Value Tax would be the prime source of revenue for the Treasury.
No tax, no paperwork. Just set up business, no hounds from the Taxman pestering you.
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I posted this on this thread. You missed it:
References: It Never Snows in September by Robert Kershaw, The Battle For The Rhine by Robin Neilands, Reflect on Things Past by Peter Carington and the best, Market Garden Then and Now by Karel Magry (a Dutchman).
The British went north to eliminate the V rocket launching sites in Holland which were aimed at London, protect the vital port of Antwerp and ensure the Soviets did not reach the North Sea coast.
The object of Market Garden was to form the northern end of a pincer with British forces at the German border, with the southern end of the pincer the US forces already in Belgium. The pincer was to close on the vital Ruhr. Good plan. Strangle the Ruhr which supplies all the German coal & steel and Germany is finished quickly. The operation was to use the British XXX Corps and the 1st Allied Airborne Army.
Market Garden was deemed a 90% success. A 60 mile salient was created into enemy territory isolating a German army in Holland, eliminating V rocket launching sites and protecting the port of Antwerp, the only port taken intact in the west. XXX Corps never relinquished any territory taken. The northern end of the salient was later used to launch forces into Germany. The 10% of failure was that Allied armies did not gain a foothold over the Rhine at Arnhem.
The operation plan was that the 1st Airborne Army would parachute drop and seize bridges from the Dutch/Belgium border up to Arnhem over the Rhine, with XXX Corps thrusting through to Arnhem over the captured bridges. The most northern large bridge was to be secured by British airborne units at Arnhem, the US 82nd would seize the large Nijmegen bridge and other small bridges and the US 101st Airborne seize smaller bridges to the south.
The reason for not achieving 100% success in the operation was completely down to the failure of the 82nd Airborne in not seizing the Nijmegen bridge on the first day they dropped into Nijmegen. Their prime objective. All bridges were seized on the first day, except the Nijmegen bridge. The man responsible was General Gavin. The 101st Airborne failed to take the bridge at Son in the south of Holland. XXX Corps built a Bailey bridge which delayed the advance for 12 hours. XXX Corps made up the time reaching Nijmegen pretty well ahead of schedule being disappointed at seeing the bridge still in German hands with the 82nd still fighting in and around the town. The 82nd had made no real attempt to seize the bridge.
The 82nd had no part in the eventual seizure of the bridge at all, as it was taken in the dark by the British XXX Corps tanks and Irish Guards infantry. The Irish Guards cleared out 180 Germans from the bridge girders. Initially Only 4 tanks crossed the bridge with two being damaged - one tank came latter. So, only 2 combat ready tanks were initially available on the north side of the bridge. Strangely, Gavin's plan was to take one of Europe's largest road bridges only from one end.
The film A Bridge Too Far has Robert Redford (playing Colonel Tucker) as one of the 82nd men taking the vital road bridge after rowing the river in canvas boats. This never happened. The 82nd played no part in seizing the bridge counter to what Moffat Burriss stated. The few tanks were to secure the north end of the bridge after seizing, not to run off to Arnhem in the dark leaving the bridge vulnerable to Germans counter-attack. The Irish Guards infantry advanced no further than the immediate vicinity of the bridge that night.
Sergeant Peter Robinson, of the of the Guards Armored Division led the charge over the Nijmegen road bridge in his Firefly tank, stated:
"The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken [by the 82nd] which was our objective.
We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans."
"Well, my orders were to collect the American colonel who was in a house a little way back, and the first thing he said to me was "I have to surrender"
"Well I said, 'I'm sorry. My orders are to hold this bridge. I've only got two tanks available but if you'd like to give me ground support for a little while until we get some more orders then we can do it. He said he couldn’t do it, so I said that he had better come back to my wireless and talk to General Horrocks because before I started the job I had freedom of the air. Everybody was off the air except myself because they wanted a running commentary about what was going on - So he came over and had a pow-wow with Horrocks. The colonel said 'Oh very well’ and I told him where I wanted the men, but of course you can't consolidate a Yank and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before they were on their way again."
Those 82nd men wanted to surrender! And never gave support which was what they were there to do.
Captain Lord Carrington's own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past':
"My recollection of this meeting is different. Certainly I met an American officer [Moffatt Burriss] but he was perfectly affable and agreeable. As I said the Airborne were all very glad to see us and get some support, no one suggested we press on to Arnhem. This whole allegation is bizarre, just to begin with I was a captain and second-in-command of my squadron so I was in no position either to take orders from another captain or depart from my own orders which were to take my tanks across the bridge, join up with the US Airborne and form a bridgehead. This story is simple lunacy and this exchange did not take place."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed"
The meeting of the 82nd men and the Guards tanks was 1 km north of the bridge in the village of Lent under a small railway bridge over a road. The 82nd men did not reach the north end of the actual target, the road bridge, the Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry got there first from the south.
Historians get confused. There are two bridges at Nijmegen, a railway bridge to the west and and road bridge to the east. They are about 1km apart. The 82nd men rowed the river west of the railway bridge made their way north following the railway embankment for cover. They reached the village of Lent where the railway embankment meets the road approach to the main road bridge. There is a small railway bridge over the road at this point. This is the bridge the 82nd men seized. The railway and road bridges over the Waal were seized by British troops.
Heinz Harmel (played by Hardy Kruger in the film A Bridge Too Far), the 10th SS Panzer Division commander who was between Arnhem and Nijmegen, says it was the British tanks that raced across seizing the bridge. Harmel did not know that three Tiger tanks that had crossed the Arnhem bridge running south, with German communications disjointed. Harmel stated that there was little German armour between Nijmegen and Arnhem. That was not correct. The three powerful Tiger tanks would have made scrap metal out of the British Shermans. As the Guards' tanks crossed Nijmegen bridge Johnny Frost's British paras at the Arnhem bridge were being overrun because of the long delay in seizing the Nijmegen bridge.
Tanks running to Arnhem would have been sitting ducks on the raised road. The Guards tanks were split up and spread out over 20 miles, supporting the 82nd all over Nijmegen.
Nor did the 82nd take the southern end of the main road bridge in Nijmegen town. Lt Col Vandervoort of the 82nd was in the southern approaches to the bridge, alongside the Grenadier Guards tanks. Vandervoort's men never ventured onto the bridge. They remained at the southern approaches to the bridge with the rest of the 82nd and the Irish Guards infantry watching the tanks speed over the bridge.
After 2 days fighting, split up, spread out and disjointed, the Guards Armoured Division had to regroup, re-arm and re-fuel. It was simply not possible for them to have moved onto Arnhem that night being spread out over 20 miles. The task the five tanks that crossed the bridge was to defend the bridge and consolidate against enemy attacks.
The prime objective, Nijmegen bridge was not captured on the 17th because there was a foul up in communication between General Gavin and Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR of the 82nd Airborne. Gavin allegedly verbally told Lindquist during the pre-drop talk to take a battalion of the 508th and make a quick strike to the bridge on the 17th and to "move without delay" but Lindquist understood it that Gavin had told him that his 508th should only move for the bridge once the 508th had secured the assigned 508th's portion of the defensive perimeter for the 82nd Division. So Lindquist didn't move his battalion towards the Nijmegen bridge until after this had been done, and by that time it was too late as the Germans had reinforced the bridge and were pouring troops over the bridge into Nijmegen.
Browning, joint head of the First Airborne Army, who parachuted into Nijmegen on day two, seeing the bridge untaken told General Gavin of the 82nd on the evening of 18th September that the Nijmegen bridge must be taken on the 19th, when XXX Corps were to arrive, or at the latest, very early on the 20th.
Gavin passed the buck, in an attempt to shift blame due to the fact that the 82nd totally failed to seize the Nijmegen road bridge. There task was to seize & defend the bridge preventing the Germans from taking it back. Gavin, and other Americans since, cast aspersions on the British tankers and XXX Corps.
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@agentmulder1019
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 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 of them 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 1944/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 never 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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