Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "Hillsdale College"
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@CA-kn8pb
Britain was key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story. Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle.
The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war. The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese.
From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil.
By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa.
The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans.
Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa.
The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
The Germans had been stopped:
♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
♦ El Alemein;
♦ Stalingrad; The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad.
Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA.
The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese. Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA.
At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point. Then the British set the Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the US fleet.
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@LostMyMojo100
I would say read my posts on this vid.
US author & historian Harry Yeide wrote that few Germans had ever heard of him when interviewed after WW2. Do not get your history from Hollywood and bad History Channel documentaries.
I have read many books on Patton and not found anything exceptional that Patton did. I have read a lot of poor generalship though. A US media creation as they needed a hero to film and write about - they never had one, so made one up.
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well at all.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute.
The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944
by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel. February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words the broad front strategy was a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower deprioritised. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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@thomassenbart
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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@thomassenbart
Patton was an average US general, no more, after WW2 most German generals had never heard of him. The US never had a top general, not one. The US had some decent corps commanders like Collins. Eisenhower had to run to Montgomery to command two US armies in the German Bulge attack. The US needed a hero for home consumption, so made one up. Patton encouraged film crews and reporter, accommodating them and having them follow him.
The British are amazed at the hero worship of Patton - a general who did not do much at all as facts prove. He was a US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort of master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:_"I have never been in command of such irregularly_ assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German left flank, their focus being west.
The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne.
Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
* Who did the 3rd Army engage?
* Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
* Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
* Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
* In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
* He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
* In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
* When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
* He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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@thomassenbart
You never read what I posted. What Harry Yeide wrote:
The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
The opposite of what you claim.
Patton couldn't even take Metz for months. And that had nothing to do with lack of supplies, as this 1985 US Army report explains in great detail.
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well at all.
Combat Studies Institute.
The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944.
by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower de-prioritised. Montgomery approached the US leader of the First Allied Airborne Army, who refused to drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army Patton was going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
On 5 November 1944 Patton told Bradley he would be over the Westwall in three days. He failed to get over the Westwall in Saar/Lorraine.
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