samneanderthal
Active member
Timeline of the Incompetent Leadership Contest in WW II:
1) Stalin orders the powerful German communist party not to form a coalition with the social democrats, so that the Nazis can gain considerable force in parliament. Eventually Hitler becomes a dictator and the German communists have to leave the country or are arrested or murdered.
2) Stalin allows German officers to study in Soviet military academies with German teachers and the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe to perform maneuvers in Soviet soil that are forbidden by the Versailles treaty, greatly strengthening the German forces.
3) In 1937 Japan invades China, ruining all the work that Germany had done strengthening Chiang, losing China’s 515 million people as an invaluable ally against Stalin and pinning down over a million Japanese troops in China and Burma for the duration of the war, without ever defeating Chiang nor the communists. The Japanese invasion forces Chiang to sign a non aggression pact with Stalin (his former enemy, because Stalin supplied the Chinese communists). Had Japan helped Chiang to eliminate the communists, a unified, relatively strong China attacking the USSR together with Japan and Germany would have doomed the USSR. China and Japan could have also easily liberated India from GB, weakening the latter considerably.
4) Baldwin opposes massive rearming and enforcement of the Versailles treaty, so that Germany quickly rearms and has far more planes than the UK and France together. Baldwin is followed by Chamberlain, another pacifist that allows Hitler to take Austria and Czechoslovakia and become much stronger.
5) Britain fails to take advantage of the massive, inexpensive labor force of India, so that in 1939 India, with 378 million people and plenty of ore produces less steel than Australia with 7 million people (1 and 1.2 million tons respectively).
6) Hitler ignores the brilliant secretary of economy Hjalmar Schacht, who in 3 years boosted the German economy, so Schacht resigns and Hitler gives his post to the incompetent Göring, who is heads the 4 year program and the Luftwaffe. Production under Göring and Todt is far a small fraction of what it will be during Speer’s leadership, in spite of Göring having plenty of imported material, qualified labor, fewer allied bombings, etc,
7) Stalin massacres 3 out of 5 field marshals and 84 generals, most colonels, etc, (30,000 Soviet officers in all) in the 1937-38 purges, among them is Tukhachevsky, perhaps the best and most experienced strategist in the world at the time. Stalin also murders millions of teachers, doctors, engineers, industrialists, farmers, politicians, etc, in the purges, who would have been very useful during the war.
8) Before WW II France spends a fortune building the Maginot line, but spends very little in high performance fighters and dive bombers. Instead of the Maginot line, It would have been much more advantageous a) to invest in 5,000 inexpensive 25mmHotchkiss antitank guns and instead of 1,000 useless, underpowered MS 406 planes, for France to build 500 planes with an additional engine and prop on the tail and wingtip tanks, b) to convince president Roosevelt to authorize the sale of 500 Curtiss P-36s (more powerful than the H-75s they bought), 300 P-40s, etc, c) to develop a good dive bomber and to convince the UK of moving all its available fighters to France as soon as the war is declared (the only way to defeat the Luftwaffe by eliminating the obsolete bombers, such as the Stuka, Hs 123, etc,)
9) Hitler Annexes Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938 and neither the allies nor Stalin do anything. Had Poland, France and the UK attacked Germany during the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Czechs would have been valuable allies and Hitler would have fewer resources than he did after taking these countries.
10) Chamberlain rejects Stalin’s offer to form a coalition against Hitler in March 1939, inducing Stalin to sign the non aggression pact with Hitler.
11) Hitler signs the non-aggression pact with Stalin, deciding to share Poland and giving Stalin access to a lot of central Europe and Finland. Instead of attacking Poland together, it would have made much more sense to occupy friendly Iran and Iraq, expelling British and French forces and depriving Britain of much of its oil, and leaving a strengthened Poland as a buffer between the two powers.
12) Japan stupidly gets into a fight with the Soviets in Mongolia in 1939, but the imperial army is far from its supply centers and is trounced, so the Japanese in 1941, when the USSR is at war with Germany, are reluctant to attack the Soviets and condition their attack on Germany capturing Moscow (which doesn’t happen, because Japan fails to attack the USSR and Stalin send his Siberian troops to Moscow to stop the Germans).
13) Hitler attacks Poland in Sept. 1939, starting WW II and leaving the western front extremely vulnerable to allied attack. The Polish army is wiped out between Hitler and Stalin. France and the UK declare war on Germany, although they know they cannot attack Germany, even while most of the German airplanes, tanks and troops are in Poland. Why declare war when you cannot attack, but your ships can be sunk by submarines and your country bombed by airplanes? France & Britain should not have declared war, but simply rearmed and mobilized and declared war only when they could attack.
14) Stalin attacks weak Finland in the winter of 1939, which has mostly lumber and minerals (that the USSR already has in excess) with 450,000 troops!, but after having massacred all his high ranking officers (30,000 officers in total), Soviet leadership is extremely deficient. The weather (-40° C) and terrain are most difficult and the tiny Finnish army is extremely tough and efficient and receives aid from Germany and the rest of the world (although mostly in the form of obsolete equipment). Incredibly, Stalin’s offensive, led by the incompetent Voroshilov and Budyonny, is stopped with great losses. Stalin has only managed to lose resources, prestige and respect. Timoschenko replaces Voroshilov and manages to break through the Mannerheim line, forcing Finland to cede 10% of its territory in order to achieve peace. However, 3 days after Germany invaded the USSR, Stalin orders again the invasion of Finland, which has now a stronger and better equipped army (thanks to Germany) with 400,000 troops and the Soviets are stopped in their tracks and Finland even recovers the territory it had lost in 1939 (only to lose it again in 1944).
15) France and Britain do almost nothing to attack Germany for a year into the war, while Germany is vulnerable invading Poland, they simply wait and allow it to lick its wounds, strengthen its forces and mobilize them against France. Holland has a tiny and ill equipped army and air force and orders one hundred and fifty105 mm cannon from Germany, which naturally withholds delivery, because it intends to attack Holland (the Dutch ordered cannon from the country that they expected to fight!). Belgium has a very good army for the size of the country, but the air force is very weak and relies heavily on the Eben Emael fort, that a few dozen German paratroopers will take in a few days.
1) Stalin orders the powerful German communist party not to form a coalition with the social democrats, so that the Nazis can gain considerable force in parliament. Eventually Hitler becomes a dictator and the German communists have to leave the country or are arrested or murdered.
2) Stalin allows German officers to study in Soviet military academies with German teachers and the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe to perform maneuvers in Soviet soil that are forbidden by the Versailles treaty, greatly strengthening the German forces.
3) In 1937 Japan invades China, ruining all the work that Germany had done strengthening Chiang, losing China’s 515 million people as an invaluable ally against Stalin and pinning down over a million Japanese troops in China and Burma for the duration of the war, without ever defeating Chiang nor the communists. The Japanese invasion forces Chiang to sign a non aggression pact with Stalin (his former enemy, because Stalin supplied the Chinese communists). Had Japan helped Chiang to eliminate the communists, a unified, relatively strong China attacking the USSR together with Japan and Germany would have doomed the USSR. China and Japan could have also easily liberated India from GB, weakening the latter considerably.
4) Baldwin opposes massive rearming and enforcement of the Versailles treaty, so that Germany quickly rearms and has far more planes than the UK and France together. Baldwin is followed by Chamberlain, another pacifist that allows Hitler to take Austria and Czechoslovakia and become much stronger.
5) Britain fails to take advantage of the massive, inexpensive labor force of India, so that in 1939 India, with 378 million people and plenty of ore produces less steel than Australia with 7 million people (1 and 1.2 million tons respectively).
6) Hitler ignores the brilliant secretary of economy Hjalmar Schacht, who in 3 years boosted the German economy, so Schacht resigns and Hitler gives his post to the incompetent Göring, who is heads the 4 year program and the Luftwaffe. Production under Göring and Todt is far a small fraction of what it will be during Speer’s leadership, in spite of Göring having plenty of imported material, qualified labor, fewer allied bombings, etc,
7) Stalin massacres 3 out of 5 field marshals and 84 generals, most colonels, etc, (30,000 Soviet officers in all) in the 1937-38 purges, among them is Tukhachevsky, perhaps the best and most experienced strategist in the world at the time. Stalin also murders millions of teachers, doctors, engineers, industrialists, farmers, politicians, etc, in the purges, who would have been very useful during the war.
8) Before WW II France spends a fortune building the Maginot line, but spends very little in high performance fighters and dive bombers. Instead of the Maginot line, It would have been much more advantageous a) to invest in 5,000 inexpensive 25mmHotchkiss antitank guns and instead of 1,000 useless, underpowered MS 406 planes, for France to build 500 planes with an additional engine and prop on the tail and wingtip tanks, b) to convince president Roosevelt to authorize the sale of 500 Curtiss P-36s (more powerful than the H-75s they bought), 300 P-40s, etc, c) to develop a good dive bomber and to convince the UK of moving all its available fighters to France as soon as the war is declared (the only way to defeat the Luftwaffe by eliminating the obsolete bombers, such as the Stuka, Hs 123, etc,)
9) Hitler Annexes Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938 and neither the allies nor Stalin do anything. Had Poland, France and the UK attacked Germany during the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Czechs would have been valuable allies and Hitler would have fewer resources than he did after taking these countries.
10) Chamberlain rejects Stalin’s offer to form a coalition against Hitler in March 1939, inducing Stalin to sign the non aggression pact with Hitler.
11) Hitler signs the non-aggression pact with Stalin, deciding to share Poland and giving Stalin access to a lot of central Europe and Finland. Instead of attacking Poland together, it would have made much more sense to occupy friendly Iran and Iraq, expelling British and French forces and depriving Britain of much of its oil, and leaving a strengthened Poland as a buffer between the two powers.
12) Japan stupidly gets into a fight with the Soviets in Mongolia in 1939, but the imperial army is far from its supply centers and is trounced, so the Japanese in 1941, when the USSR is at war with Germany, are reluctant to attack the Soviets and condition their attack on Germany capturing Moscow (which doesn’t happen, because Japan fails to attack the USSR and Stalin send his Siberian troops to Moscow to stop the Germans).
13) Hitler attacks Poland in Sept. 1939, starting WW II and leaving the western front extremely vulnerable to allied attack. The Polish army is wiped out between Hitler and Stalin. France and the UK declare war on Germany, although they know they cannot attack Germany, even while most of the German airplanes, tanks and troops are in Poland. Why declare war when you cannot attack, but your ships can be sunk by submarines and your country bombed by airplanes? France & Britain should not have declared war, but simply rearmed and mobilized and declared war only when they could attack.
14) Stalin attacks weak Finland in the winter of 1939, which has mostly lumber and minerals (that the USSR already has in excess) with 450,000 troops!, but after having massacred all his high ranking officers (30,000 officers in total), Soviet leadership is extremely deficient. The weather (-40° C) and terrain are most difficult and the tiny Finnish army is extremely tough and efficient and receives aid from Germany and the rest of the world (although mostly in the form of obsolete equipment). Incredibly, Stalin’s offensive, led by the incompetent Voroshilov and Budyonny, is stopped with great losses. Stalin has only managed to lose resources, prestige and respect. Timoschenko replaces Voroshilov and manages to break through the Mannerheim line, forcing Finland to cede 10% of its territory in order to achieve peace. However, 3 days after Germany invaded the USSR, Stalin orders again the invasion of Finland, which has now a stronger and better equipped army (thanks to Germany) with 400,000 troops and the Soviets are stopped in their tracks and Finland even recovers the territory it had lost in 1939 (only to lose it again in 1944).
15) France and Britain do almost nothing to attack Germany for a year into the war, while Germany is vulnerable invading Poland, they simply wait and allow it to lick its wounds, strengthen its forces and mobilize them against France. Holland has a tiny and ill equipped army and air force and orders one hundred and fifty105 mm cannon from Germany, which naturally withholds delivery, because it intends to attack Holland (the Dutch ordered cannon from the country that they expected to fight!). Belgium has a very good army for the size of the country, but the air force is very weak and relies heavily on the Eben Emael fort, that a few dozen German paratroopers will take in a few days.
Last edited: