I'M IN THE US NAVY!!

[jorgegonzalito]

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[fitzcarraldo]

Welcome to the Pacific!

Bienvenido!

Fitzcarraldo :salute:

[Rockin Robbins]

The problem with playing as a German U-boat is that the U-boat was an entirely inappropriate weapon for Germany to use, which had no capacity to win the war or even its part in the war. Every pfennig spent on a U-Boat, every man wasted in one was a nail in the coffin of the Third Reich. I'm not even going to visit the subject of the evil of the Nazi party and of the state of Germany as a result. I'm only going to talk about whether U-Boats contributed to Germany's potential victory or contributed to their defeat.

The U-Boat was a weapon directed at only one nation on earth: The UK. The plan was that they could starve Britain into surrender and consolidate their gains on the continent. But they made a fatal mistake in planning. You see US submarines were appropriate for use against Japan because all Japanese supplies came in and out of Japan on Japanese bottoms. When we sank a ship it was a Japanese ship and we were directly contributing to their defeat. Maybe you can see where I'm going here.

Because the UK was VERY different. Supplies coming there came on the bottoms of all the nations of the world, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Canada, and in order to stop those supplies it was necessary to sink vessels of all those other nations. What was the unavoidable and foreseeable result of unconditional submarine warfare? That's right, Germany against the world. That included the staunchly isolationist United States. US entry into the war absolutely guaranteed the defeat of Germany. U-Boats made US entry equally guaranteed.

Now some have said (while calling me stupid in very picturesque and entertaining ways that discredited them greatly) the US didn't declare war on Germany, Germany declared war on the US. That is true. The day after the Pearl Harbor attack Hitler decided he'd make a show of unity with his buddy the Emporer and declare war.

But he was already at war with the US. What was the lend-lease program of US destroyers to the British with American crews aboard sinking U-Boats but war against Germany? What was allowing Churchill and cabinet to set up government offices in New York City as a precaution against possible British defeat but taking the British side in the war? By sinking American ships the Germans had already begun to reap their just reward. Hitler's declaration was just showmanship without substance.

And what could a U-Boat do against the US? Sink a cornfield in Kansas? A stockyard in Chicago? A Boeing plant in Washington? What could a U-Boat or even two dozen U-Boats do against a thousand ship convoy and there were dozens of those? The U-Boat was too slow, didn't carry enough armament to make any impact at all. The surface was entirely controlled by the Allies with no help anywhere for a U-Boat. As soon as it left port it was on its own.

Admiral Daniel Gallery, who led an American Jeep carrier force on the Atlantic turned U-Boat hunting into a science. Sight a U-boat. Force it down. Now you can draw a circle representing its maximum range before it has to surface for air. Cover that circle with aircraft. Dead U-Boat.

What would the vaunted Type XXI have done? Why, they would have made Admiral Gallery draw a larger circle. The result would be the same because the surface of the Atlantic was an Allied fishing pond. Snorkels were as visible on radar as a battleship. The Type XXI was just a different style coffin.

U-boats never had any capacity to win. They guaranteed the entry of the United States and a dozen other nations into the war against Germany. And for what?

They were supposed to defeat Britain, the one country on earth most disposed to be Germany's friend. In fact Britain came a hair's breadth from allying with Germany. We all think the abdication of King Edward VIII was all about Wallace Simpson, the "woman I love." That is false, it was about his sympathy for Nazi Germany and his desire to ally with Germany. Churchill stood almost alone as he garnered the coalition he needed to ouster this renegade king and avoid the alliance. He did it knowing the result would be war.

However, Britain was tired of war. They had lost an entire generation just 20 years before and had no stomach for a repeat. What if the Germans had bought a vowel? What if they had used craftiness instead of skullduggery? They steamrollered France, consolidating their hold on the continent. The British army had been shoved into Dunkirk to be evacuated by every boat those on the island of Britain could muster. The Luftwaffe didn't attack. Why?

Doesn't matter. What if Hitler would have waited for the British to have their army safely home? "To our British friends. You have done your job well. You had to be on the continent to honor your treaty obligations and you have done your duty. You can be justly proud of your efforts, but now your obligation is satisfied.

Germany and Britain have always been close. Our royal families are brothers, mothers, sons, daughters. Of all the nations on earth, we have the most in common. We are natural friends.

Your army is safe because I directed that no land or air attacks be made on your withdrawing troops. There is no reason for further bloodletting between us. Let us declare peace, holding our present borders, safely separated by the English Channel and forge a new future as partners in a new world we will mold in our image."

But those DAMNED submarines! Every one of them would put the lie to such a crafty and probably effective appeal to a war weary Britain. Without them the appeal would be very persuasive and probably successful. Let's quit and divide the booty. War over!

The U-boats were unnecessary. They were ineffective. They never had the capacity to deliver victory but carried the guarantee of German defeat. Every pfennig spent, every man enlisted in their service was entirely wasted--an actual contribution to the war finances of the enemy. The use of submarines in the war amounted to treason against the German state.

[jorgegonzalito]

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[Torplexed]

I installed Silent Hunter IV 1.4 update for now. I like! It is similar to SH3 but better! I like American submarines! Now I see that I should install mods for version 1.4.

Congratulations on the change of ocean! Give 'em Hell Jorge. :cool:

http://pyxis.homestead.com/Navy-Cheerleader.gif

[Crannogman]

I installed Silent Hunter IV 1.4 update for now. I like! It is similar to SH3 but better! I like American submarines! Now I see that I should install mods for version 1.4.

Woot! But you should consider upgrading to 1.5 before modding up

[Rockin Robbins]

Congratulations on the change of ocean! Give 'em Hell Jorge. :cool:

http://pyxis.homestead.com/Navy-Cheerleader.gif

That is GENIUS! I love it!

Jorge, I was just saying that when you play an American submarine you have the sense that you're using an appropriate weapon that makes a major contribution to victory.

When I play the U-boat I get that feeling of futility that I don't carry enough firepower into battle to make a difference. It's a fatalism that there is no path to victory or even survival itself. And that lead to my analysis of why U-boats were a total waste of money, men, ability, courage and dedication for Germany.

I thought it was a fairly well thought out and interesting analysis that I've never heard from anyone else.

[jorgegonzalito]

NNN

[Rockin Robbins]

ROCKIN ROBBINS:
Everything you say is true, and well you know the "Kaleun" SH3 and SH5, but as smokers knowing that the cigarettes kill, continue to smoke; they are putting on the uniform of the Kriegsmarine every day. We all know what is the truth, but "that does not speak".
It was a fascinating time. The atmosphere of SH3 is so different from SH4--part of the genius of SH3 is that the resignation and sense of doom flows through the game, giving the game an authentic atmosphere. The art, the colors, the lighting, everything combines to create something more than the individual parts.

Everything is centered around the crew, skilled, reliable, reluctantly serving a state which is in the grip of evil, they will do their duty as well as they possibly can. SH3 is a tribute to courage for a patently awful cause. And you leave the game understanding that these men were admirable.

I just brought the big picture that no historian to date that I know of has put to words: that the use of U-Boats was but one of a collection of fatal mistakes of the Third Reich, any one of which was sufficient to ensure defeat. And that the use of U-Boats alone would spell the doom of Germany in that war. From that perspective their abilities and courage resulted in a better world, for the Allies AND for Germany. They didn't die in vain.

[u crank]

It was a fascinating time. The atmosphere of SH3 is so different from SH4--part of the genius of SH3 is that the resignation and sense of doom flows through the game, giving the game an authentic atmosphere. The art, the colors, the lighting, everything combines to create something more than the individual parts.

Everything is centered around the crew, skilled, reliable, reluctantly serving a state which is in the grip of evil, they will do their duty as well as they possibly can. SH3 is a tribute to courage for a patently awful cause. And you leave the game understanding that these men were admirable.


Very well said. From my many years of playing SH3/GWX, in order to get the complete immersion experience one has to have a certain mind set. Part of that mind set is a knowledge of just who these men were and how they got to be in a U boat in WW2. That is easy to find out. Books, movies and the internet. Part of the reason I have been attracted to the game was not because these men were German or that their country was controlled by a Nazi dictator. It was because of the position these men found themselves in. Fate deals some bad hands.

The other and equally important part is that you have to 'imagine' that you have no knowledge of what is about to transpire. Playing the game and thinking the whole time that "I'm on the wrong side, that we are going to lose and that I am probably going to die" would for me make the game unplayable. In a simulation, immersion is a very large part of the experience. At least it is for me.

[Crannogman]

TORPLEXED:
Although the only thing that is in my way to be a Sampan, blot the water! Revenge for Pearl Harbour!

CRANOGMAN:
I tried installing the V.1.5 did not work for some kind of version incompatibility problem. Perhaps you've downloaded free. However, the mod "Clayp's Optics for TMO" it is for version 1.4 does not work, the game is closed. Many patches and patches ......

ROCKIN ROBBINS:
Everything you say is true, and well you know the "Kaleun" SH3 and SH5, but as smokers knowing that the cigarettes kill, continue to smoke; they are putting on the uniform of the Kriegsmarine every day. We all know what is the truth, but "that does not speak".

1.5 is a pay-for upgrade also-known-as U-Boat Missions. It has a lot of useful game improvements for the US campaign, and most of the better meds are built for 1.5. You can usually find it for $5-10 US. If it won't work, uninstall and try again

[Torplexed]

That is GENIUS! I love it!


Thanks. I used to use it as a tower emblem to taunt the Japanese when I commanded the USS Whale. :D

http://pyxis.homestead.com/Whale-Conning-Tower.jpg

[TorpX]

I just brought the big picture that no historian to date that I know of has put to words: that the use of U-Boats was but one of a collection of fatal mistakes of the Third Reich, any one of which was sufficient to ensure defeat. And that the use of U-Boats alone would spell the doom of Germany in that war.

That sounds pretty close to Blair's version of the Battle of the Atlantic: That is, that while the U-boats sank a lot of ships, the flow of supplies was never close to being cut off.





The other and equally important part is that you have to 'imagine' that you have no knowledge of what is about to transpire. ... In a simulation, immersion is a very large part of the experience. At least it is for me.

I agree. When I start a SH4 career, I don't think Oh, this will be easy; victory is inevitable... I think about how Manila, Singapore and Surabaya are falling like dominoes, and the Pacific Fleet is a pile of smoking wreckage.

[Raptor_Pilot]

When I play Silent Hunter 3, my only overriding concern is the will to survive. That's really what the game is all about, the ability to survive ever increasing odds.

When I play Silent Hunter 4, my overall concern is to sink as much tonnage as possible.

I play SH3 for the fatalistic sense of nervous tension and overriding doom. I play SH4 because it's fun.

[jorgegonzalito]

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[Sniper297]

Gotta disagree with some parts of Rockin Robbins' theory - Doenitz wanted 300 U-Boats to start the war, so he could have had 100 on station at any time when hostilities began. That number would have closed the Atlantic completely and forced Britain to surrender in 1940. He had the same trouble the US Navy had with all the old geezers insisting on battleships, so when the war started he had only 26 U-Boats ready to go. That meant about 8 to 10 U-Boats at sea at any given time, not nearly enough for a decent blockade. By the time he actually had 100 boats (Aug 1942) the Americans were in the war, the Brits had time to develop ASW tactics and weapons, and it was too little too late. If the Germans had those 300 U-Boats in 1939 it would have been decisive in my opinion.

[Torplexed]

Gotta disagree with some parts of Rockin Robbins' theory - Doenitz wanted 300 U-Boats to start the war, so he could have had 100 on station at any time when hostilities began. That number would have closed the Atlantic completely and forced Britain to surrender in 1940. He had the same trouble the US Navy had with all the old geezers insisting on battleships, so when the war started he had only 26 U-Boats ready to go. That meant about 8 to 10 U-Boats at sea at any given time, not nearly enough for a decent blockade. By the time he actually had 100 boats (Aug 1942) the Americans were in the war, the Brits had time to develop ASW tactics and weapons, and it was too little too late. If the Germans had those 300 U-Boats in 1939 it would have been decisive in my opinion.

I think the point RR is making in his thesis is that whether Germany starts the war with 300 U-Boats or 26, at some point they need to start start sinking the ships of neutrals in a big way to starve Britain out. It's simply unavoidable to achieve a full blockade. If you play the tricky game of picking and choosing targets, then something valuable is always getting into British ports. However, in so doing you start to lose diplomatically and attract the ire of the world, including the US. In addition a 300 U-boat arm probably won't be as elite as the 26 boat arm. It's difficult to produce both quantity and quality. For me one of the most fascinating statistics of the U-Boat war is that the 32 most successful 'ace' commanders (about 2 % of the whole) accounted for nearly 30 % of the Allied shipping sunk in the Atlantic on average. These officers were aged about 28 at the outbreak of the war and had already served in the Kriegsmarine for nearly ten years. Individual command talent coupled with a seasoned crew was paramount and that sort of thing was difficult to mass-produce. Plus, nothing happens in a vacuum. If Britain notices prior to the war that Germany is putting all of her eggs in the U-Boat building basket, then possibly Britain puts in more orders for escorts.

And frankly every major navy prior to WW2 seems to have been afflicted with the battleship building bug. I've always thought that if the Japanese had poured the same resources into carriers and their air wings that they did the Yamatos they undoubtedly would have made the war in the Pacific a much more difficult proposition over the long term for the USN.

But we'll never know. Alternative history is always speculative and we can never know for certain all the variables involved. But that's the attraction of wargaming, I guess.

[Rockin Robbins]

Gotta disagree with some parts of Rockin Robbins' theory - Doenitz wanted 300 U-Boats to start the war, so he could have had 100 on station at any time when hostilities began. That number would have closed the Atlantic completely and forced Britain to surrender in 1940. He had the same trouble the US Navy had with all the old geezers insisting on battleships, so when the war started he had only 26 U-Boats ready to go. That meant about 8 to 10 U-Boats at sea at any given time, not nearly enough for a decent blockade. By the time he actually had 100 boats (Aug 1942) the Americans were in the war, the Brits had time to develop ASW tactics and weapons, and it was too little too late. If the Germans had those 300 U-Boats in 1939 it would have been decisive in my opinion.
Sorry, in order to have any impact at all, first of all Donitz needed boats more modern than WWI coastal defense boats like the type VII. They didn't carry enough torpedoes, some of them were stored externally (yikes! That was stupid), they didn't have any surface speed, they didn't have any submerged speed, they had no range, they were uncomfortable for their crews, had no provisions for feeding the crews properly, I don't need to add from there.

In fact the Type VII had only one point in its favor, which was just another damning point of ineptitude, its ability to dive deep. A hiding submarine has just left the war. It is impotent. All a convoy had to do was drive the subs deep and run away.

Then, 300 U-boats was a laughable target. Okay, you have a 1,300 ship convoy with 100 destroyers. Somehow (it's impossible) you get all 300 U-boats against the one convoy. If they all sink a target, and they wouldn't--the vast majority would be killed without firing a single torpedo--1000 ships reach their destination. Big Victory! And it would be at the cost of letting every single ship that wasn't in that one convoy get to its destination unmolested.

And suppose that "doomed convoy" were attacked with such success, The US loses 40 ships in one day to U-Boats. Count the US in against Germany. Argentina loses 10--count them in too. Canada--they're in. Peru--in. Brazil--in. Instantly Germany snatches defeat from the jaws of victory because they are so boneheaded that they think sinking other nations' shipping is a way to punish Britain. Sure Britain did without but it was the cost of victory they were well willing to pay. Germany was playing checkers. Britain was playing chess.

Even with an anemic 300 WWI technology U-Boats, building that many would have been so provocative that the Allies would have been the ones to start the war and the first thing gone would have been the U-Boat production facilities. Yes, as now, the Allies were reluctant to provoke Germany but there were limits to what they would have tolerated.

And there's part two of my basic theory. Every ounce of steel put into U-boats, every hour spent producing and maintaining them, every man necessary to build, maintain and run the U-Boats was taken from the parts of the war effort that would have actually helped Germany. All of that was aid to the Allied war effort. Without the waste of manpower, materials, time and expertise spent on U-boats they would have more tanks, more guns, more railroad infastructure, more vehicles, much more blitzkrieg. How many tanks does one measly antique U-boat represent? Many, many!

Were Hitler sane, and he was not, were he a good military planner, and he was not, he would have realized that Germany was well able to confine its conquest to continental Europe and succeed. They could have done that with Britain's help, had they not had U-Boats and had they made that conciliatory speech that I outlined above after sewing up the continent.

Only a third of Britain was within German bomber range anyway. A German plane shot down over Britain was dead or a prisoner of war. A British plane was gone but many many pilots jumped into another plane and were back in the war. You don't attack someone unless you have a foolproof plan to win. There was no plan. No German calculated the fact that unconditional submarine warfare guaranteed the defeat. No German wasted time realizing that 1/3 bomber coverage wasn't going to bring Britain to her knees. There was only one weapon that would work against Britain and the US: keep them out of the war. Buy time while accomplishing all other goals. It's called management. Marshalling your strengths and rendering your weaknesses harmless.

Now, if Germany followed my course and THEN decided to build a fleet of MODERN U-Boats, who would stop them? They could have built them in a time of peace, as a power greater than the United States and with their world supremacy unchallenged. Chances are they could have built them without anybody knowing it. Connect the dots. It's much better things turned out the way they did, because a sane German leadership would have had the keys to the castle Europe.

But no, a thousand WWI U-Boats could not win the war. Donitz asked for 300 because he wasn't bold enough to ask for what he needed. He was also subservient to Admiral Raeder, who wanted a crushing surface fleet. Building submarines worked against Raeder's plan, so Donitz asked for what he thought he might get. He didn't get that. Too bad. It would have been an even greater gift to the Allied cause.

Yes Britain screamed that it hurts. Yes, Churchill said that the only thing he was afraid of was the U-Boats. But remember, they were playing chess. What hurts, you keep silent about. What is ineffectual you scream in pain so that more enemy effort can be spent in that direction. Churchill wanted more U-Boat action because that was central to his plan of bringing the US into the war on the side of the Allies. The U-Boats dutifully helped him reach his goal. Then after the US entered the war half-heartedly they solidified American resolve by sinking a bunch of shipping off the American coast--a silly exercise of making more trouble for yourself, again snatching an even more humiliating defeat from the jaws of victory.\

Yamamoto understood in Japan. No one in Germany would buy a vowel and realize that they were outmaneuvered and manipulated into utter defeat. Raeder and Donitz were both responsible for tragic mistakes--more concerned with their own personal fortunes after the war than what was good for their country. Their only aim was to secure more money for their personal functions in the war, regardless of other needs for the nation.

[Crannogman]

I have heard it posited that the German expenditures on their U-boat fleet led to a vastly disproportionate response in Allied investment in ASW - that the net effect was to actually dilute the Allied war effort more than the Axis's. In that respect, it was a reasonably-effective form of asymmetrical warfare. I don't have hard numbers, but I recall the ratio of resources committed by each side to be greater than 3:1 for the Allies.

That said, you are likely right that Germany could have pursued more beneficial routes to success

[ColonelSandersLite]

I had to come out of lurking for this one. Honestly, RR doesn't know what he's talking about.

Here's part of the reason why:
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/history/wwii-campaigns.html

The Battle of the Atlantic resulted in western allied forces being scaled down pretty damn significantly.

The idea that British people would have accepted peace without a fight after Dunkirk is laughable. It's just as laughable as saying the Texans would have accepted peace after the Alamo, or that the US would have accepted peace after pearl harbor.

The logic that Uboats guaranteed US entry into the war in the form of us lending destroyers to the British is also laughable, since we where also quite happy to provide every other form of arms and equipment to both the British and the soviets before we entered the war anyways. If it wasn't destroyers, it would have been even more tanks, rifles, and aircraft.

His assertion that there was no plan to knock Brittan out of the war is blatantly false. The plan was:
1: Attrit the RAF's fighters to the point that they could not put up an effective defense. Until they tried and failed, German command believed that this would take four days.
2: The bombers would then have free reign to operate unescorted, thus being able to strike deeper targets more effectively. (Despite his assertion to the contrary, if bomber operations weren't limited by the range of their escort fighters, the he-111 and ju-88 have a range that covers the whole of the British isles.) They would then spend the next four weeks dismantling the British military production. Notably, *every* British naval base was within bomber range. This would force the British navy to leave the home islands or be sunk. This may possibly force a military surrender.
3: The German navy could then blockade at will quite effectively. Also possibly resulting in a surrender.
4: Terror bombing may force a surrender.
5: If not, an invasion of a starving terrorized England at some later date TBD (never really seriously considered).

Obviously, they failed at point 1, but that doesn't mean they didn't have a plan.

I think that's enough. I could go on, but I won't. The one thing I do agree with him on though is that opening the war with 300 u-boats was probably an unrealistic desire. If the Germans had listened to Donitz better from the outset, maybe they could have had a hundred though and that would have *really* helped.

[ColonelSandersLite]

I have heard it posited that the German expenditures on their U-boat fleet led to a vastly disproportionate response in Allied investment in ASW - that the net effect was to actually dilute the Allied war effort more than the Axis's. In that respect, it was a reasonably-effective form of asymmetrical warfare. I don't have hard numbers, but I recall the ratio of resources committed by each side to be greater than 3:1 for the Allies.

Yeah, for clarity, check the link in my post immediately above. The expenditure was about 10 to 1 and he says that probably a pretty conservative number. It also doesn't weigh into account the decreased sea lift capability that accompanied our war effort as a result, as that's harder to quantify.

[Rockin Robbins]

I had to come out of lurking for this one. Honestly, RR doesn't know what he's talking about.

Here's part of the reason why:
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/history/wwii-campaigns.html

The Battle of the Atlantic resulted in western allied forces being scaled down pretty damn significantly.

The idea that British people would have accepted peace without a fight after Dunkirk is laughable. It's just as laughable as saying the Texans would have accepted peace after the Alamo, or that the US would have accepted peace after pearl harbor.

The logic that Uboats guaranteed US entry into the war in the form of us lending destroyers to the British is also laughable, since we where also quite happy to provide every other form of arms and equipment to both the British and the soviets before we entered the war anyways. If it wasn't destroyers, it would have been even more tanks, rifles, and aircraft.

His assertion that there was no plan to knock Brittan out of the war is blatantly false. The plan was:
1: Attrit the RAF's fighters to the point that they could not put up an effective defense. Until they tried and failed, German command believed that this would take four days.
2: The bombers would then have free reign to operate unescorted, thus being able to strike deeper targets more effectively. (Despite his assertion to the contrary, if bomber operations weren't limited by the range of their escort fighters, the he-111 and ju-88 have a range that covers the whole of the British isles.) They would then spend the next four weeks dismantling the British military production. Notably, *every* British naval base was within bomber range. This would force the British navy to leave the home islands or be sunk. This may possibly force a military surrender.
3: The German navy could then blockade at will quite effectively. Also possibly resulting in a surrender.
4: Terror bombing may force a surrender.
5: If not, an invasion of a starving terrorized England at some later date TBD (never really seriously considered).

Obviously, they failed at point 1, but that doesn't mean they didn't have a plan.

I think that's enough. I could go on, but I won't. The one thing I do agree with him on though is that opening the war with 300 u-boats was probably an unrealistic desire. If the Germans had listened to Donitz better from the outset, maybe they could have had a hundred though and that would have *really* helped.

Finally, a reasoned rejoinder, although characterizing my opinions as "laughable" and "blatantly false" does nothing to build credibility. If you are correct you don't need to call someone "ridiculous" you just trot out the facts.

It's an interesting paper you cite. It makes many logical errors. First of all, in comparing the proportional costs of the U-Boat war, it fails to consider the fact that ALL portions of the war expenditures were disproportional. That is how victory was accomplished, by the disproportionate application of power on a country foolish enough to think it could fight alone against the world. Yes, I know about the Italians, the anchor around the neck of Germany. So they were at a handicap.

On land, disproportionate use of power was policy. No attack was made unless we had a 3 to 1 advantage in manpower and materiel. At that ratio planners considered that we were evenly matched, so they sought to exceed that. So establishing a 10-1 expenditure ratio for the Battle of the Atlantic is only showing that the Allies treated that theater like all others. They sought to win by total application of all economic, production and manpower resources.

Certainly the cost in dead submarine crews representing the most committed, experienced and trained personnel in the German military machine was a cost far higher than any the Allies paid. It is not the raw amount of expenditure that is important at all. It is whether that expenditure can be afforded. The Allies could afford to lose the men, shipping and materiel they did. The Germans could not afford to lose the lesser amount that they lost. Therefore adding up dollars and reichmarks is meaningless unless you're out to write a college thesis and need an idea that will pass muster.

Let's dissect your allegation that "The Battle of the Atlantic resulted in western allied forces being scaled down pretty damn significantly." That's true. War is always a balancing and rebalancing of strength, weakness, opportunity and threat. You always have a finite ability to produce and where you produce is always going to be modulated even without any opposition. "To do this they had to cut back on that" is just a fact of life that you and I do every day and we're not fighting a submarine war outside of our computers. It certainly is no way to analyze whether the U-boat war was sensible or not.

Because, guess what! Without the U-Boat there would have been no Battle of the Atlantic. There would have been no lend-lease of destroyers. The US, with a huge number of German immigrants and active Nazi organizations including an island in New York advertised as a Nazi retreat--"Live with people who think as YOU do!" would have been very neutral. Roosevelt knew well that if he were caught doing his chummy act with Churchill, which included setting up a potential government in exile in New York City directly contrary to the US constitution, Roosevelt would have been immediately impeached and removed from office. But the U-boats sinking American ships turned the tide of public opinion away from deeply entrenched isolationism to enmity against Germany.

Without considering the historical context: whether the U-boats were necessary at all, adding up the dollars, resources and cost is (note that I don't say you are "laughable") irrelevant. The fact is, without the U-Boats directly attacking Britain and the US, the Battle of the Atlantic would not have happened at all and none of those compared expenses would have taken place at all. To further emphasize the streigth of my point of view, money saved In the US would have been spent on cars, movies, eating and drinking. British money saved would have been spent non-militarily if they could have been kept out of the war, but German money saved would reichmark for riechmark have gone into locking down Fortress Europe.

So logical errors are ignoring the capacity and affordability of the cost. Just comparing cost numbers is a fatal error of diagnosis. If I sue Donald Trump and it costs me my house, bank account, retirement savings and Trump spends 100x more than that to defend himself that's not a victory on my part. I lose everything I have and Trump doesn't notice the difference. The analysis that you quote would say that my suit was worth it because I forced him to spend 100x my cost. But my cost was 100% of my assets and I lost the case. He lost a tiny fraction of 1% of his assets. Comparing costs in the way that paper did is entirely meaningless.

Now let's scrutinize your comparison of the Alamo with Dunkirk. At the Alamo, that was a fort on Texan ground. They were defending their own turf, their own homeland. British presence on the continent was in treaty obligation to other nations. There's just no equivalency there. And the British were not seeking conflict at all.

They ELECTED Neville Chamberlain, you know, and he was in Munich doing exactly what the British people wanted him to do: buy peace at any terms. (seems somehow depressingly familiar) When they entered the war defending Poland, they did it reluctantly, not with the do or die enthusiasm of the defenders of the Alamo. Without threat of U-boats, with the easy escape from the continent, the Germans could well have said "You have done your duty and that duty is discharged. We have no animosity with your people, etc" And a society gutted twenty years previously by a war whose tragedy we Americans cannot even imagine would have grasped onto that straw for all they were worth. Churchill was setting his government in exile in New York City in 1939 you know. He did it because there was a real danger that his government would throw in with the Nazis. He and a small cadre of like-thinking individuals weren't going to participate in that. It's telling that FDR was willing to risk his presidency to help Churchill set up foreign government on US soil. an action directly prohibited by the Constitution.

Comparing costs without comparing ability to pay, ignoring that those costs need not have happened at all and letting others do the thinking are fatal errors which do nothing to support your claim that my positions are "laughable."

[CCIP]

I raised a point on the other (SHIII forum) but one thing that is good to keep in mind between SH3 and SH4 is how much room the US fleet boats had to grow and improve compared to the U-boats. The fleet boats were not really designed for the role they were performing, and it took them a while to figure out the enemy and find their own strong points. But when they got it ironed out, the fleet boats proved very much up to the tasks. This contrasts nicely with SH3's U-boats, which basically had just above the minimum capability to perform the specific task they were designed for, and not much more - and as the war went on, they found themselves pressed up against their limits, and beyond.

If you go and visit some of the fleet boat museums and contrast them with, say, what you find aboard the U-505, with a discerning eye you'll see the differences right away - American submarines were a whole generation ahead of the U-boats; they had power and room to spare, and the equipment - from radar to the diving control systems - was a whole new ball game compared to the U-boats which still operated largely by manual turning of a lot of valves, Mk.I eyeball and direct drive propulsion. The U-boats are an elderly diesel-powered Vokswagen Golf from the 1980s to the fleet boats' shiny new 2015 Tesla Model S. It takes a while to sort out the kinks on the new tech, sure, and you still get a lot of mileage efficiently out of an old diesel, but there's a huge difference technologically that you'll feel right away.

There's a lot of naysaying about fleet boats being slow and unweildy, most of it totally unjustified. Besides diving depth and speed of dive, U-boats really don't have much on them - the fleet boat is by and far the more capable, it's just that you have to learn to use it right.

[Rockin Robbins]

I agree, that's the flipside of whether U-Boats were appropriate weapons for Germany to use. If we pretend they were a wise use of power then the fact that the U-Boats weren't adequate for the job rears its ugly head.

It's a fact that Germany could have done better with fleet boats. But America would have lost the Pacific with a fleet of Type VIIs. You can't take a knife to a gunfight and end up winning. Germany did that.

[Crannogman]

Comparing costs without comparing ability to pay, ignoring that those costs need not have happened at all and letting others do the thinking are fatal errors which do nothing to support your claim that my positions are "laughable."

The paper does indeed compare the ability of the combatants to pay the cost of the Battle of the Atlantic. While the Allies outspent the Germans in the Battle of the Atlantic 10:1, their overall production was only 4:1. Thus as a fraction of their productive capacity, the Allies spent 2.5 times more than Germany on the Battle of the Atlantic.

Yet the German war machine was totally outmatched in a Total War. Their chief advantage was in quick, overwhelming victory, and a campaign of attrition played to their weakness. Thus a U-boat fleet hampered their war aims by distracting them from more winnable theaters

[ColonelSandersLite]

You continue to assert that the US involvement in WW2 was directly due to the battle for the Atlantic, apparently primarily stemming from our supplying of destroyers to the British. You are blatantly wrong and the historical record shows this pretty clearly. Consider these facts:

The destroyers for bases agreement came on September 2, 1940.

However the following preceding events telegraph quite clearly our intention to provide arms against Germany, regardless of the u boat threat:

Cash and carry was ratified on November 5, 1939. England and France can buy whatever arms, munitions, and equipment they want.

On May 31, 1940, FDR introduces a billion-dollar defense program to build up American military strength. Hey, the allies can buy anything they want, and now there's going to be even more of it!

On June 1, 1940, due to the imminent fall of France, FDR agrees to send the British, at no charge, a very sizable shipment of arms. The shipment included 93 bombers, 500,000 Enfield rifles, 184 tanks, 76,000 machine guns, 25,000 BARs, 895 french 75mm artillery pieces, 100 million rounds of ammunition, 500 stokes mortars.

If, you continue to stand by the logic that providing arms to Germany enemies made us defacto enemies of Germany, these events make the battle of the Atlantic a moot point. To wit, we did not get even slightly involved in the battle of the Atlantic until after we had already started supplying other arms and munitions.

Further, on the other side of the globe where the battle of the Atlantic did not even come into play, we had been giving aid to china since 1937 in the form of both materiel and economic sanctions against japan. (Fun fact, even Germany provided aid to china prior to the Tripartite Pact. Not many people know this) This culminated in severe economic sanctions in 1941 and (hopefully) we all know what happened as a result. The point is, while we liked china and wanted to help them, we quite frankly did not consider ourselves to be even remotely as close to china as we where with the UK. Not to mention the fact that we where also quite happy to supply arms and materiel to the soviet union before we entered the war as well.

During late August - mid September of 1940, congress caves to public pressure over fears that Brittan will fall and enacts our first peacetime draft.

It was shown quite clearly from our actions that we had no intention of just spending our money "on cars, movies, eating and drinking", not because of the battle of the Atlantic, but in spite of it. None of this was a secret. The republicans tried to use all of the above as ammunition against the democrats during the 1940 elections, yet FDR remained president and the democrats remained firmly in control of both the house and the senate. FDR took this to be an affirmation of his policies and proposed lend-lease the following month. In February, polls said that only 20-25% of Americans disapproved and it was ratified in march of 1941.

Take a look at this data: http://web.mit.edu/berinsky/www/files/3040.pdf You can see that the tipping point for intervention came as early as September of 1940 and continued to climb, reaching 70% a full quarter before pearl harbor. The first sinking of an American vessel was not until may of 41. The first sinking with casualties wasn't until October 31 (Reuben James) and the first merchant sinking where there was casualties was not until December 2 (Astral). Popular support for intervention had already hit a 2/3rds majority before the Germans even sank any of our ships.



In regards to Brittan accepting a peace, you are flat wrong in saying that Chamberlain was elected. He was appointed by George 6 when his predecessor stepped down immediately following the coronation of the new king. Appeasement was never very popular in the UK. While there was support for the Munich agreement, it only lasted a matter of days. Public opinion soured almost immediately. The British people routinely booed at Hitler when he appeared in the newsreels, well before the outbreak of hostilities. In fact, the British public was spoiling for a fight to such a degree that Chamberlain was practically forced to introduce a conscription program more than 4 months before Germany invaded Poland. Check out "Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement, and the British Road to War" and "Public Opinion and the End of Appeasement in Britain and France" for more info.

It doesn't matter *where* Dunkirk happened, what matters is its effects on British morale. Just Google "Dunkirk spirit". The effects of which can be seen quite clearly in the civil response to the threat of German invasion. The public reaction and mobilization in defense of the home islands tells the story pretty fully. The parallels between the after effects of Dunkirk and pearl harbor are quite obvious if you've done any reading on the matter at all. The British people where not looking for peace, they where looking for a fight.

I know that there's more I could correct you on here, but frankly I have better things to do. Your posts contain so many egregious factual errors that I honestly have to wonder where you even got most of that information? I mean seriously man, your pet theory is riddled with so many factual errors that you should be the last person to ever criticism somebody else's work (a paper written by the current commander of NS Newport BTW, it's not some "college thesis") for containing logical errors. I would suggest that first you look into getting your facts straight, and only then, start looking at logic.

[Rockin Robbins]

Just as a beginning http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/higher/history/roadwar/appease/revision/2/

It would seem that your point of view that the British were hungry for war with Germany has some considerable opposition and my view is in the majority, which is funny because my views tend to be pretty original and pretty challenging. But the BBC certainly thinks that Hitler enjoyed a favorable view on the whole in Britain, that most thought his territorial demands were just and some even voted not to fight if the occasion should arise. Quite interesting and contrary to your statements.

Even if both of us are only half right, without being surrounded by U-boats and with decent statesmanship by Germany I think there was a good chance Germany could have kept Britain and the US out of the war. This would have made Fortress Europe pretty strong.

Of course Hitler still could have bought the big one by invading the USSR..... He was always one with the ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

[ColonelSandersLite]

Everything mentioned in that article took place in 1936 or earlier. You do realize that the climate of Europe changed a *lot* over the next few years right?

Besides which, you're going to have to do better than posting a BBC article to better the two fairly heavyweight academic sources I gave you. I can seriously recommend "Public Opinion and the End of Appeasement in Britain and France", though honestly "Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement, and the British Road to War" isn't so great (it has its good points though). Just as one (of many) examples of how quickly support for the Munich agreement and Chamberlain crumbled: "I have had trouble enough with my present Cabinet and I feel that what I want is more support for my policy and not more strengthening of those who don't believe in it or at any rate are harassed by constant doubts." - Neville Chamberlain, just one month after the Munich agreement was signed.


If you want to keep arguing this, you're going to have to come up with a lot of internally consistent counter arguments based in actual facts to even attain the lofty status of "half right". To be clear, when the other party has posted fact after fact, often with sources, that directly contradict a great number of blatant errors, you must come up with something more compelling than a single, largely irrelevant journalistic source to save any remaining credibility for your theory.

The fact is that the only way Hitler could have avoided war with Brittan, France, and the US was to not invade Poland. There was a very clear line in the sand, and he just had to go and cross it.

[jorgegonzalito]

It's nice to see that sometimes a simple question generated a long debate but leaves the naval subject itself to enter the field of geopolitics, it would still be interesting.

[Rockin Robbins]

Furthermore, it is only technically correct to say that the Prime Minister is selected by the monarch. First of all he is an elected official and a member of the House of Commons. Then he is elected a second time by his party to become party leader. So he is elected twice. The monarch traditionally selects the leader of the majority party, which was the Conservative party of Neville Chamberlain, elected twice to his position, once to the governing body and again by his peers to party leadership. His selection by the monarch is cut and dried, a selection in form only without substance. It is not a choice. It does nothing to divorce him from the public opinion he represents.

I read ColSanders thing and actually questioned myself. Has 50 years of historical interest and investigation, a lifetime of conversations with people who know, hundreds of books all led me wrong? After all I'm not looking stuff up on the Internet and then spouting the results of my browsing, I'm talking off the cuff from my own knowledge and don't make any claim to 100% infallibility.

But performing some checks leaves me on solid ground and ColSanders misrepresenting the nature of my cited material, perhaps banking that the chance that a simple reading of the title "
An evaluation of the reasons for the British policy of appeasement, 1936-1938" which would totally prove him wrong wouldn't be read by people who would be inclined to believe him just because he made the allegation that it was entirely about the period before 1936. Balderdash! I say.....

And then the bald statement that Chamberlain was not elected but merely selected, representing nobody's opinion. The fact is he reflected the conflicted opinions of the British populace, totally devastated by losing an entire generation 20 years previously, buffeted by a poor economy after the crash of 1929, watching Germany's success in making a comparatively vibrant economy because of the "brilliant" leadership of one man.

Chamberlain was a Conservative, by the way, who against the wishes of many, rebuilt the military at great expense in the late 1930s. He was severely criticized for that. But when the chips were down he believed in peace at just about any cost. But I believe that appeasement was not foolishness. It was the appropriate political move, the proof that the representative governments had gone the final mile in preventing war, leaving no stone unturned, no chance untaken. After all, again, an entire generation would be asked to fight and die. They needed to do that knowing that they weren't fighting for a warmongering elite, but because there was no way out. Even sure knowledge of the result should not have deterred Chamberlain from his course. He did the right thing. The French went along and perhaps even led to appeasement efforts. As my citation above shows clearly the British public had a strong majority opinion that Germany had been treated much too harshly after WWI (and that is the opinion of history today also) and that a strong leader like Adolf Hitler was just what they needed.

Chamberlain has been treated as a patsy by history. But he was an honorable man who rearmed Britain. He took the last mile of the road to preserve peace. He repudiated appeasement immediately when Germany took the second half of the Sudetenland. He led the war effort for most of a year and was the one to announce the war to the British public, not as a grand theater of glory but of a duty imposed on men disposed to do peaceful things, but who would rise to the occasion and gain victory. Chamberlain's image today is in stark contrast to the deeds of the man.

This sympathy toward Germany could well have been used to keep Britain out of the war. But Hitler never did play well with others....:D:D

As for submarines pulling America into the war, does anyone seriously believe that U-boats could ever have sunk thousands of American merchant sailors without a declaration of war against Germany?

Check your scorecards. If Britain enters the war we have a stalemate. If America enters the war there is no path to victory for Germany. Keeping both out of the war, there is no path to defeat except for the USSR. I give Hitler 7-3 odds he still would have screwed the pooch.

[ColonelSandersLite]

I don't care what the title of that article is, actually look at the dates of the events in said article:
The King and Country Debate 1933
The East Fulham By Election 1933
The Peace Ballot 1934
Rhineland crisis 1935

Perhaps the fault here is that you didn't bother to go past a "simple reading of the title" and actually read the thing. It is right that nobody really cared about the Anschluss though (except maybe Austrians). Basically everybody viewed Austria as rightfully German anyways.



Saying that Chamberlain was "Elected Twice" is straight up ridiculous. Firstly, it's exactly like saying that since we elected John Boehner to the senate, we also elected him president (and therefore has our popular support) if Obama and Biden both die just because Ohio voted for the guy. Sure, he would have been elected to something, just not the oval office. Secondly, he wasn't elected by his party for the job, his predecessor recommended him to the king and that's as far as the decision went. At the time of his appointment, nobody viewed Chamberlain as anything but a temporary caretaker.


After all I'm not looking stuff up on the Internet and then spouting the results of my browsing, I'm talking off the cuff from my own knowledge and don't make any claim to 100% infallibility.

Maybe you should start "looking stuff up". The fact that you're talking "off the cuff" really, really shows.


I do agree with you that Chamberlains actions where probably generally right though. Brittan did need time to rearm.


Still no facts though. Numerous egregious factual errors are required for your pet theory to work, and so far you've hardly made any attempt to back up a single one. Good job.

[Ludwig van Hursh]

I know everybody is now on some sort of debate about the possibility of U-boats winning etc etc, but I wanted to say I kind of like SH-4 a bit more than SH-3, though that may be because I have played SH-3 to death and only really recently started playing my SH-4 career seriously, especially after a documentary I watched on the U.S. submarines in the Pacifics which really got me wanting to play. Also SH-4 has a few features I like a bit more than SH-3, such as the ability to have multiple mission objectives in a single patrol of varying types as opposed to "go to grid so and so and patrol for 24 hours" then you get to do what want. I also liked the crew watches which takes the annoying micromanaging out of captaining.

There's other stuff but it's late.

[Kapt Z]

In my view the U-boats were deployed to harass and tie down allied units on their way to England. Germany knew she could not contend with the Royal Navy with her surface fleet. U-boats were the only way they could attack England at sea with any hope of success. However, u-boats alone were never going to defeat England. Just as US fleet boats ALONE were never going to defeat Japan.

In SH4 you play your part as but one unit in the vast Allied arsenal. You hold the line in the first years, but by '43 the shear numbers and power of the US Navy and it's ability to drive thru the IJN made invasion and defeat of Japan inevitable. Your side is winning and you do your best to help.

In SH3 you are on your own, there was never any real chance of invading England and the Allies grow ever stronger. Your job may seem futile, but to abandon the battle and cede the Atlantic completely to the Allies is unthinkable. That's why you keep going out on patrol.

[Rockin Robbins]

I don't care what the title of that article is, actually look at the dates of the events in said article:
The King and Country Debate 1933
The East Fulham By Election 1933
The Peace Ballot 1934
Rhineland crisis 1935

Perhaps the fault here is that you didn't bother to go past a "simple reading of the title" and actually read the thing. It is right that nobody really cared about the Anschluss though (except maybe Austrians). Basically everybody viewed Austria as rightfully German anyways.



Saying that Chamberlain was "Elected Twice" is straight up ridiculous. Firstly, it's exactly like saying that since we elected John Boehner to the senate, we also elected him president (and therefore has our popular support) if Obama and Biden both die just because Ohio voted for the guy. Sure, he would have been elected to something, just not the oval office. Secondly, he wasn't elected by his party for the job, his predecessor recommended him to the king and that's as far as the decision went. At the time of his appointment, nobody viewed Chamberlain as anything but a temporary caretaker.




Maybe you should start "looking stuff up". The fact that you're talking "off the cuff" really, really shows.


I do agree with you that Chamberlains actions where probably generally right though. Brittan did need time to rearm.


Still no facts though. Numerous egregious factual errors are required for your pet theory to work, and so far you've hardly made any attempt to back up a single one. Good job.

The amount of animosity is just amazing. I'd hate to have a discussion on what to eat for dinner. We'd starve to death.

And as you and everyone else can see, looking up the facts backs me up. Of course, when speculating about alternate courses of events which did not happen there is always room for doubt. Would Britain really have fallen for a buddy-buddy approach by Germany extending back to the middle 1930s where Germany went out of her way to befriend Britain? That's difficult to say, but I think that we can agree that Britain was never seeking war, they are not a bloodthirsty people and all their responses to Germany were responses to perceived threat. Without the threat there would not have been war with Britain, especially if Germany made it crystal clear that its ambitions were continental Europe only.

And we see that just that strategy worked for the Rhineland and the Sudetenland, France and Britain signing off on both. My alternate theories are nothing but extensions of what really happened.

The only way that you are right is if Britain hated the Germans and sought to engage in some war of conquest there. If anything is off-base and ridiculous it is that kind of thinking.

You're distorting my position on the Prime Minister. I'm saying that he was not selected by the monarch because there were no alternatives. It was an automatic thing. The aspects of his position of Prime Minister which were not automatic was his election to the body and his election as party leader by his peers. Without those elections he could not have been selected as Prime Minister. Therefore his political positions reflected the will of the people and the will of the Conservative Party. I can't see how that is "ridiculous" to you. It's straight facts, apparent to anyone over the age of six.

Let's deal with and make fun of your entire paragraph because it is really strange:
Saying that Chamberlain was "Elected Twice" is straight up ridiculous. Firstly, it's exactly like saying that since we elected John Boehner to the senate, we also elected him president (and therefore has our popular support) if Obama and Biden both die just because Ohio voted for the guy. Sure, he would have been elected to something, just not the oval office. Secondly, he wasn't elected by his party for the job, his predecessor recommended him to the king and that's as far as the decision went. At the time of his appointment, nobody viewed Chamberlain as anything but a temporary caretaker.
First sentence we'll dispose of as hyperbole. You have a right to hyperbole. It's what makes conversations fun.

Then making a statement about John Boener that goes off the deep end is really entertaining. First of all, John Boener is not president and never will be. Secondly, president is an elected office and making an analogy between the US office of president and the UK office of Prime Minister is makesanosensa. Yes, it's remotely possible that the Speaker of the House could become president--It happened it the case of Gerald Ford. But Boener was not elected Speaker in order to make him president. Chamberlain WAS elected party leader with the intention of making him Prime Minister. That is what party leaders do in the natural and intended course of events.

Then you slide into nonsequitors. Doesn't matter that his predecessor recommended him, he was party leader and was automatically selected anyway. Doesn't matter what people's speculations regarding his possible tenure in office was, it matters what he did.

Logically your paragraph is fallacy built on fallacy. Correct facts do not make a coherent thought. They must be teamed with appropriate logic. That factor is entirely missing.

It is the disjointed logic, coupled with the apparent hostility that makes your posts fascinating. I don't represent my opinions as fact here, but as interesting possibilities not worthy of anger or hostility.

After all, it is a GOOD thing that Hitler used U-boats and brought the US and Britain against Germany. It's GOOD that, not satisfied with guaranteed defeat, Hitler doubled down on foolhardiness by invading the Soviet Union. It's a good thing that Chamberlain used appeasement as a means of demonstrating that there was no possible way to deal with Germany but the application of brute force and that the terrible price that would be paid to accomplish that was worth it because the alternatives were much more terrible. It's a good thing that events transpired the way they did, leaving the world a much better place, not only for the victors but for the defeated as well.

And it's a good thing that Hitler did not from the beginning have a plan, carefully worked, of how to keep the US and Britain out of the war. It might just have worked.

[ColonelSandersLite]

Don't confuse the correction of factual errors with animosity.

If you had actually bothered to look it up, you would have found that Chamberlain was not elected party leader until 3 days after he was appointed PM by the king. Making him party leader after he became PM was a formality. The former party leader was also the former PM. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leader_of_the_Conservative_Party_%28UK%29) Further, chamberlain wasn't the "natural choice" by custom. In the British system, when the PM steps down for some reason, custom dictates that the leader of the opposition is made PM. In other words, chamberlain was appointed PM by the king at the suggestion of the previous PM in direct opposition to custom. That *really* sounds like he was elected to me... Sure.... Again, maybe you should actually start looking things up instead of talking off the cuff.

"First of all, John Boener is not president and never will be."
Are ya psychic now RR? Though, unlike the king appointing a new PM on the advice of the current PM as in chamberlains case, the speaker on the house is actually voted on by the house.

"Secondly, president is an elected office and making an analogy between the US office of president and the UK office of Prime Minister is makesanosensa."
In what way? Neither is directly elected by the people but are generally indirectly elected by the people. Their system really isn't that different in this regard. Chamberlain was neither.


Claims for which you have provided no evidence for so far (not exhaustive, but these are the biggest holes in your logic):
1: That Germany had any reason to believe that it should make peace with Brittan before the battle of Brittani.
2: That the British people had any desire to do anything but fight it out after Dunkirk.
3: That FDR had any intention of staying out of the conflict at all.
4: That American popular support for going to war did not exist until the Germans started torpedoing our ships.
5: That once the US entered the war, the U-boat war was counter productive.

You have provided no facts to back yourself up. None. I, on the other hand, have provided numerous facts, often with documentation, on all 5 of the points above directly to the contrary. In some cases, this documentation has been of the very heavyweight variety. So where exactly is the Logic is saying that the battle for the Atlantic caused our war with Germany? Not based in fact surely. Try backing up your opinion with some evidence.

[Sailor Steve]

I had to come out of lurking for this one. Honestly, RR doesn't know what he's talking about.

Besides which, you're going to have to do better than posting a BBC article to better the two fairly heavyweight academic sources I gave you.

If you want to keep arguing this, you're going to have to come up with a lot of internally consistent counter arguments based in actual facts to even attain the lofty status of "half right".

To be clear, when the other party has posted fact after fact, often with sources, that directly contradict a great number of blatant errors, you must come up with something more compelling than a single, largely irrelevant journalistic source to save any remaining credibility for your theory.

Perhaps the fault here is that you didn't bother to go past a "simple reading of the title" and actually read the thing.

Maybe you should start "looking stuff up". The fact that you're talking "off the cuff" really, really shows.

Still no facts though. Numerous egregious factual errors are required for your pet theory to work, and so far you've hardly made any attempt to back up a single one. Good job.

Don't confuse the correction of factual errors with animosity.

If you had actually bothered to look it up...

Are ya psychic now RR?

You have provided no facts to back yourself up. None. I, on the other hand, have provided numerous facts, often with documentation, on all 5 of the points above directly to the contrary.

Try backing up your opinion with some evidence.
Possibly not animosity, but certainly arrogant dismissal. Continually insulting the other party and loudly proclaiming yourself the victor is not the way to debate a subject. I'm not disagreeing with your arguments. In fact I'm enjoying this discussion.

That said, please stick with your arguments and leave the superior attitude and the insults at home.

[ColonelSandersLite]

Ok, perhaps my tone is a bit condescending and I apologize for that. I was certainly getting frustrated on the last post, mainly because of sentences like:
It's an interesting paper you cite. It makes many logical errors........So logical errors are ignoring the capacity and affordability of the cost.
Logically your paragraph is fallacy built on fallacy. Correct facts do not make a coherent thought. They must be teamed with appropriate logic. That factor is entirely missing.

It is the disjointed logic...

That being said, providing evidence in support of a viewpoint is the cornerstone of debate. So unless he does actually provide some evidence to look at, I consider the matter to be settled for my end.

[goodpoints]

The problem with playing as a German U-boat is that the U-boat was an entirely inappropriate weapon for Germany to use, which had no capacity to win the war or even its part in the war. Every pfennig spent on a U-Boat, every man wasted in one was a nail in the coffin of the Third Reich. I'm not even going to visit the subject of the evil of the Nazi party and of the state of Germany as a result. I'm only going to talk about whether U-Boats contributed to Germany's potential victory or contributed to their defeat.

The U-Boat was a weapon directed at only one nation on earth: The UK. The plan was that they could starve Britain into surrender and consolidate their gains on the continent. But they made a fatal mistake in planning. You see US submarines were appropriate for use against Japan because all Japanese supplies came in and out of Japan on Japanese bottoms. When we sank a ship it was a Japanese ship and we were directly contributing to their defeat. Maybe you can see where I'm going here.

Because the UK was VERY different. Supplies coming there came on the bottoms of all the nations of the world, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Canada, and in order to stop those supplies it was necessary to sink vessels of all those other nations. What was the unavoidable and foreseeable result of unconditional submarine warfare? That's right, Germany against the world. That included the staunchly isolationist United States. US entry into the war absolutely guaranteed the defeat of Germany. U-Boats made US entry equally guaranteed.

Now some have said (while calling me stupid in very picturesque and entertaining ways that discredited them greatly) the US didn't declare war on Germany, Germany declared war on the US. That is true. The day after the Pearl Harbor attack Hitler decided he'd make a show of unity with his buddy the Emporer and declare war.

But he was already at war with the US. What was the lend-lease program of US destroyers to the British with American crews aboard sinking U-Boats but war against Germany? What was allowing Churchill and cabinet to set up government offices in New York City as a precaution against possible British defeat but taking the British side in the war? By sinking American ships the Germans had already begun to reap their just reward. Hitler's declaration was just showmanship without substance.

And what could a U-Boat do against the US? Sink a cornfield in Kansas? A stockyard in Chicago? A Boeing plant in Washington? What could a U-Boat or even two dozen U-Boats do against a thousand ship convoy and there were dozens of those? The U-Boat was too slow, didn't carry enough armament to make any impact at all. The surface was entirely controlled by the Allies with no help anywhere for a U-Boat. As soon as it left port it was on its own.

Admiral Daniel Gallery, who led an American Jeep carrier force on the Atlantic turned U-Boat hunting into a science. Sight a U-boat. Force it down. Now you can draw a circle representing its maximum range before it has to surface for air. Cover that circle with aircraft. Dead U-Boat.

What would the vaunted Type XXI have done? Why, they would have made Admiral Gallery draw a larger circle. The result would be the same because the surface of the Atlantic was an Allied fishing pond. Snorkels were as visible on radar as a battleship. The Type XXI was just a different style coffin.

U-boats never had any capacity to win. They guaranteed the entry of the United States and a dozen other nations into the war against Germany. And for what?

They were supposed to defeat Britain, the one country on earth most disposed to be Germany's friend. In fact Britain came a hair's breadth from allying with Germany. We all think the abdication of King Edward VIII was all about Wallace Simpson, the "woman I love." That is false, it was about his sympathy for Nazi Germany and his desire to ally with Germany. Churchill stood almost alone as he garnered the coalition he needed to ouster this renegade king and avoid the alliance. He did it knowing the result would be war.

However, Britain was tired of war. They had lost an entire generation just 20 years before and had no stomach for a repeat. What if the Germans had bought a vowel? What if they had used craftiness instead of skullduggery? They steamrollered France, consolidating their hold on the continent. The British army had been shoved into Dunkirk to be evacuated by every boat those on the island of Britain could muster. The Luftwaffe didn't attack. Why?

Doesn't matter. What if Hitler would have waited for the British to have their army safely home? "To our British friends. You have done your job well. You had to be on the continent to honor your treaty obligations and you have done your duty. You can be justly proud of your efforts, but now your obligation is satisfied.

Germany and Britain have always been close. Our royal families are brothers, mothers, sons, daughters. Of all the nations on earth, we have the most in common. We are natural friends.

Your army is safe because I directed that no land or air attacks be made on your withdrawing troops. There is no reason for further bloodletting between us. Let us declare peace, holding our present borders, safely separated by the English Channel and forge a new future as partners in a new world we will mold in our image."

But those DAMNED submarines! Every one of them would put the lie to such a crafty and probably effective appeal to a war weary Britain. Without them the appeal would be very persuasive and probably successful. Let's quit and divide the booty. War over!

The U-boats were unnecessary. They were ineffective. They never had the capacity to deliver victory but carried the guarantee of German defeat. Every pfennig spent, every man enlisted in their service was entirely wasted--an actual contribution to the war finances of the enemy. The use of submarines in the war amounted to treason against the German state.


An interesting analysis, not sure I agree with your conclusion, but something I hadn't really thought about in depth before. Though you could certainly tie it to the pervasive faith placed in costly experimental "wonder weapons" (accompanied by a dogged resistance to innovation in military thinking) by the Nazis and proto-Nazi right wing military cliques that especially intensified after WWI.

While it is funny to remember that the House of Windsor is really the Haus Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha (who subsumed through marriage the Haus Hannover), I think you give you attribute far too much political and diplomatic acumen to the Nazis than was ever really demonstrated to be within the realm of plausibility.

From a material and political perspective the invasion and occupation of France was probably the most unnecessary, pointless, and least potentially profitable military campaign waged by the Third Reich. For the gain of an unreliable labor force that could not suffice to supply even the reconstruction and defense of occupied French territory; one of the most fortified and naturally defensible borders in Europe (the Rhine) was exchanged for an unfortified sea border more than twice as long that would encourage one of the most costly and inept military engineering projects in history (the Atlantic Wall). The more pertinent question I think would be why the Germans didn't pull another Sedan (the first one) and go home with a shattered enemy in anarchy (and then invest in military AND non-military industry) rather than exploring the possibility of keeping a country they had absolutely no capacity to occupy as a bargaining chip.

And in regards to Dunkirk, and it is certainly one of the foremost examples of the almost comical level of faith in new military technology divorced from any operational study, the Luftwaffe did not halt. Kleist halted. Who ordered him to doesn't really matter because it was almost certainly for the same reason: the belief that new weapons could prevail without reevaluating prior doctrine that pervaded the German command in equal degree as the Anglo-French. And all that reevaluation would have really taken on the German part was to actually know something about the Alte Fritz Prussians they worshiped, and look to von Seydlitz and von Zieten. Only the Belgians and Dutch conducted the campaign with any conceivable degree of efficiency. The Luftwaffe on the other hand, gave it the old college try... and lost a third of the only effective CAS planes they would ever make by assigning them ASUW missions, with little to no escort, totally at odds with their design. Yet somehow they couldn't manage to break by attrition a besieged enemy trapped against friendly sea all of 100km from home and some of largest ports in the world. :hmmm: You sure that wasn't Schlitzkrieg?

Though I would say none of the above would have really mattered unless the Germans had the ability to either swallow their Lebensraum and be content with continuing to negotiate trade agreements with the USSR or else to hold on to the Caucasus oil fields and pipe it out. Which of those was the more likely possibility, I certainly couldn't wager a guess either way. But all this assumes the thinking of somewhat intelligent, rational people. Who often are unfortunately compared to Napoleon with the insinuation that they ALMOST had it, if not for Général Janvier / Marshall Winter. Except, Napoleon shattered the Russian army after they broke an alliance, made them destroy their own industrial capacity, then lost his army on the way back. Hitler broke an alliance, gave the USSR Germany's spot as the world's second largest economy, and lost his army on the way there.

[Rockin Robbins]

And you've hit at the core of why things turned out the way they did. Germany totally dispensed with any deal making, cooperation or diplomacy and sought to attain all goals by thuggery. They were the big bully on the schoolyard whose life becomes very painful when all the little guys team up against him.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Very interesting discussion here. (above... referring to posts by goodpoints and RR) All the 'what ifs' and possible futures.

What if... you turn left instead of right... often the difference between wild success and spectacular failure.

[goodpoints]

And you've hit at the core of why things turned out the way they did. Germany totally dispensed with any deal making, cooperation or diplomacy and sought to attain all goals by thuggery. They were the big bully on the schoolyard whose life becomes very painful when all the little guys team up against him.

Even that is too consistent of a description of the Third Reich; as they did have an affinity for the Finns, demonstrated the germs of some effective counterinsurgency strategy by exploiting ethno-cultural conflict in the USSR through the Ostlegionnen, and had an uncharacteristic degree of patience with the Italians (whose revanchism was at least pretty predictable). Foremost though, the alliance with Japan, though poorly arranged and never coming close to exploiting its full potential, was a rare case of pragmatism as it was both contrary to the racialist ideology as well as a reversal in their Asian foreign policy, as they had hitherto been providing training and material aid to the Kuomintang. (perhaps their most significant example of some foresight, considering the Western Allies and Stalin both continued to fail to see the long obvious collapse of the KMT)

The UK and France were by no means, little guys, that is something I was trying to emphasize. Victory in France for Germany was absolutely not a foregone conclusion, was insanely foolish and ill-conceived, and is really a miracle surpassed in inexplicably only by the level of Anglo-French incompetence displayed. The history of WWII in Western Europe, the Balkans, and Africa until 1943 is an absurd farce of incomprehensible cruel idiocy displayed by all its participants to such similar degrees that it's a wonder anyone managed to make it that far.

[Rockin Robbins]

A brilliant application of Darwinian selection to human beings, for sure! Unfortunately along with the utterly inept that were eliminated from the gene pool about a hundred million others were indiscriminately slaughtered. It was a truly nasty time which we shouldn't want to repeat. It sure isn't lookng good right now though. Lots of dangerous things happening with not enough news covererage to show the degree of danger.

That the UK and France were not exactly little guys fueled my speculation of how Germany might have used diplomacy and deal-making mixed with a pinch of deception to separate the two. It would have required a calculated and nuanced approach and the Germans were constitutionally averse to that. Restraint was not their strong point.

[Kapt Z]

Another factor I think we have to account for is that even in the early days of the war Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were considered 'evil' empires by the Allies. Destroying them and what they stood for was a 'moral imperative' and making deals with them that would allow their regimes to stay in power pretty much went out the window at the first shot.

[20000 Leagues]

I raised a point on the other (SHIII forum) but one thing that is good to keep in mind between SH3 and SH4 is how much room the US fleet boats had to grow and improve compared to the U-boats. The fleet boats were not really designed for the role they were performing, and it took them a while to figure out the enemy and find their own strong points. But when they got it ironed out, the fleet boats proved very much up to the tasks. This contrasts nicely with SH3's U-boats, which basically had just above the minimum capability to perform the specific task they were designed for, and not much more - and as the war went on, they found themselves pressed up against their limits, and beyond.

If you go and visit some of the fleet boat museums and contrast them with, say, what you find aboard the U-505, with a discerning eye you'll see the differences right away - American submarines were a whole generation ahead of the U-boats; they had power and room to spare, and the equipment - from radar to the diving control systems - was a whole new ball game compared to the U-boats which still operated largely by manual turning of a lot of valves, Mk.I eyeball and direct drive propulsion. The U-boats are an elderly diesel-powered Vokswagen Golf from the 1980s to the fleet boats' shiny new 2015 Tesla Model S. It takes a while to sort out the kinks on the new tech, sure, and you still get a lot of mileage efficiently out of an old diesel, but there's a huge difference technologically that you'll feel right away.

There's a lot of naysaying about fleet boats being slow and unweildy, most of it totally unjustified. Besides diving depth and speed of dive, U-boats really don't have much on them - the fleet boat is by and far the more capable, it's just that you have to learn to use it right.

You may have a point. I've played SH3 for some time now. Played stock, GWX and LSH3. I love the game and can do amazing things in my favourite IXB. I recently tried SH4 and just couldn't get myself to like it. There were many things I didn't like about the subs and how the crew performed. Perhaps I need to give it a chance.

As for pushing the limits of the U-boats.....I think you'll find that's one of the things us Kaleuns like about the job.