The 1942 Bevridge report probably had a LOT to do with Churchill losing. People wanted the Labour vision for the post war period not the Conservative vision, Labour promised to make a better Britain based on social welfare.

145
Majority - 146
PM Clement Attlee

1950
Majority - 5
PM Clement Attlee

What a beating he got, no wonder his government collapsed. Nice site you found jim :up: bookmarked that one.


Back on topic.................

There's a mine of information there for those interested in British politics. :yep:

Yup
 

"Free" lunches always sell well.

RR, I have to somewhat disagree. I think Germany could have well strangled the UK on their imports. But choices were made towards Europe and later the USSR. Hitler always wanted an opening towards the UK, however small that opening for a cease fire would be. He went half-ass towards Dunkirk, did nothing to the British besides air battles and shooting V-bombs in the general direction (West) of Britain. Horrible things that cost many lives, but nothing compared to military actions towards European continent and Russia.

What Hitler didn't realize, is that GB would never give in until absolutely nescessary, because of the humiliation of the Munich-treaty and the promise to back Poland if and when attacked by Germany.

In 1942, imports to GB had fallen to 30.5 million tons, compared to 60 million tons pre-war. If there had been 300 u-boots in september 1939, as Donitz had frequently advocated, the amount of imports could have been devastatingly low. Remember that after Dunkirk, GB had men enough, but virtually all equipment had been lost. Without imports to make them, importing that equipment itself, technological advances because of imports, and ofcourse food and fuel, GB could very well be strangled, with a population crying out for peace (and food!). This, afterall, is very reminiscent to Germany in 1918, with a population rising against leadership because of the hardship they encountered because of the war their leaders claimed they were winning for 4 years.

I do not believe that more or less tanks and landvehicles could be produced, but DO think that investing in a surfacefleet was a mistake for Germany. These ships radiated might and strength, but faired generally poorly compared to the handfull of u-boots available in 1939-1940. How many u-boots could be produced using the steel of 1 battleship? 10? 100?? 1000??? Donitz' plan to have at least 300 u-boots in 1939 could well be met if NO surfacefleet was ever laid down.

In that respect, u-boats really DID cost Germany WW2, but only because there were too few to start with, and technology caught up with them when there finally were enough to fight GB. Add the USA in the equation from end 1941, and it was a lost cause. If, in hindsight, GB would be forced to sue for peace before USA would officially become involved: no more resistance in Africa, no more bombings of Germany, no more fighting-forces in the West but all to the East, no more help to Russia, no D-Day. Naturally, Japan wouldn't have lasted a year with no "Europe first" policy in the US.

But....
 

It was established earlier that building that many more U-Boats would have been politically impossible because it would have provoked an Allied reaction well before the start of the war. In other words it would have been impossible to actually produce 300 U-Boats before the start of the war because the very production would have provoked an earlier war. The poster supported his view with historical sources. Makes sense to me!

Of course Donitz, unhindered by the political concerns, wanted more U-Boats, and it was his job to ask for them. Unfortunately for him, there was no way to honor that request.

I don't understand your statement that you don't believe that more or less tanks and land vehicles could have been built. Fewer can ALWAYS happen just by working less hard. And freeing up of the materiel and labor necessary to build one U-Boat would make it very easy to build many, many more tanks, planes, yada, yada, yada. Building a U-Boat took an extraordinary number of workers and and extraordinary amount of resources over an extraordinary amount of time just to produce one submarine. Even tanks could be built much quicker by far fewer people. I'm sure someone can trot out the numbers.

Provoked an earlier war? I find that very hard to believe. Numberless times Hitler ignored treaties without any kind of real action taken by the other side. Conscription in 1935, troops moved into rheinland 1936, Austria was joined to Germany 1938, Czechoslovakia occupied in full 1939 (a treaty first gave Germany parts of it in 1938) to name a few. Germany produced 1337 uboats during the war so I don't think high numbers would need to be built as early as 1935 to have enough of them in 39-40.

Besides, the source qouted earlier in this threat wasn't talking about war, but political difficulty and the reactions by the brittish admiralty (they can't declare war as far as I know). But they were already taking the threat seriously (asdic).

Personally I think the reason for not building more uboats is quite simple. Erich Raeder, as most admirals at that time, thought that building surface raiders was the best way to threaten convoys. Submarines were looked down upon as the poor mans choice. Once it stood clear that Donitz was right and everyone else wrong it was already too late to get enough uboats built in time.

I'm not an authority worshiping kind of guy, but Clay Blair is no fool. It's quite easy to wish after the fact, but as Robert E Lee discovered after losing the Battle of Gettysburg, that doesn't make it possible. The 300 U-Boats didn't get build because the high command decided rightly or wrongly that it couldn't be done. They saw the consequences of building as worse than the consequences of not building.

Now if a cloaked Klingon Battlecruiser were to warp in and beam down those 300 boats with trained crew aboard on September 1, 1939 then ahhhhh......ummm.......sprechen sie Deutch?

I don't think he is a fool either. His reasoning makes perfect sense. But in this case it seems like he forgot about Hitlers nature and how he acted in other matters. The years 1935-1939 are filled with provocations by him, to which the allies reacted slowly or not at all. One could also argue that building more uboats and less surface raiders would have been LESS provocative (unless we give hindsight to the allies). Everyone knew that the purpose of building battleships, battlecruisers and the like was to use them as raiders against commerse shipping. On the other hand, very few knew or thought that uboats would be as effective as they were in the beginning.

My point is that to build 300 uboats just before or early in the war, Hitler and the high command would have needed the benefit of hindsight (or Donitz instead of Raeder). If we give this hindsight to the allies too, they would have seen it as very provocative which might make it impossible. I say "might" because Hitler pulled off a lot of stunts before the war without much reaction.

Agreed. But I think the consequences they were afraid of were less surface raiders built if uboats got priority.

A split in policy in the Kreigsmarine
 

Quite correct with the difference in opinion in the Kreigsmarine leadership. Raeder wanted a balance but definnetly wanted a capable modern surface navy with some U-Boats while Doentiz favoured a Uboat centric force. Hitler repeatedly assured Raeder that there was to be no conflict with England, so it seemed more logical to conform to the norm. Showing the flag is really only something CV's and BB's very well so it made political sense in the peace of pre WWII Europe. I think another argument could also be made that The AXIS as military alliance was crap. The Italians had a very capable surface navy and that joined with the Nazies would have been a credible threat to the Royal Navy. It was squnadered away by them. The Japanese also would have been a very credible threat - more so than any other nation and likely to have been able to take on the Royal Navy and win (they were after all built after them). Hitler fixated on many a stupid idea (must have Bomber production of the ME-262 vice fighter) and if he had any inclination of just how effective the UBoat Navy would enf up being in the first half of the war coupled with smarter statesmanship the war may have been different (thankfully not.) Imagine a 2 front war with Russia Germany on one side and Japan on the other.
Stupid leadership and statesmanship were significant problems in WWII Germany.

The Germans were already developing and making uboots for other countries via their frontcompany in The Hague. Almost immediately after Hitler named himself Fuhrer did he rescind the Versailles treaty, starting a building program for surfacevessels that were just under the maximum tonnage and gunsize. That's not a provocation, but it IS a very clear sign to everyone that Hitler was giving the finger to the Treaty and Prize Rules.

And since THAT was possible, giving Donitz his uboots could also have been. It's just a matter of choice from the highest authorities. Hitler liked a show of power, which could be done perfectly by a resurrection of the Imperial Fleet, not by 1000 ton boats that can't be seen because they were submerged. Cruisers and battleships radiated power and commanded respect, while uboots were generally seen as a means to fight dirty, sleazy and underhanded. It's not for nothing that the UK wanted them completely forbidden after WW1.

I do agree with you about the people-resources needed to build a uboot were far greater than for building tanks or other landvehicles. I was only focussing on the amount of steel required for building a battleship versus building a uboot, not for building a uboot versus a tank.

But the clincher is that you can put a bigger swastika on a battleship than you can on a submarine. Have you noticed that the Bismark was full of swastikas and Donitz' U-Boats were almost entirely free of them?

In the US when trying to figure out weird resource allocations we say "follow the money." For World War II German war production "follow the swastikas.":lol:

Very true. As I said: they radiate power and demand respect. Wasn't (and isn't?) it common practice in Communist Russia and North Korea to have a military parade, where the military on display do 3-4 "laps", this way showing 4 times the actual might when passing the dictator-with-ridiculously-large-cap? Basically the same thing.

Very Interesting Thread
 

For what it's worth, I thought I would pass along a few thoughts on this interesting thread:

1. Raeder's naval strategy wasn't that bad. He build large ships that were fast and powerful, that could usually outrun anything they couldn't outshoot. The Graf Spee should not have lost, and the Bismarck was caught by one lucky torpedo after sinking the Hood. His problem was that he didn't have captains with 400 years of naval heritage behind them. He also built surface raiders that kept huge portions of the RN looking for them across several oceans. They were the most effective use of resources in his fleet. His biggest mistake was not listening to Donitz, and failing to build more U-Boats before the war started. It wasn't entirely his fault because Hitler told him war would not start before 1943.

2. The U-Boats could have been built in secrecy. Even if word had leaked out, Chamberlain was such a wuss that he wouldn't have done anything. Those extra U-Boats could have won the war against Britain in 1942 before the US ever came in. As pointed out, the British fleet was preparing to move to Canada, because they could see how tight the Battle of the Atlantic was going to be.

3. Clay Blair has done an excellent job in putting together a very thorough analysis of the U-Boat war and virtually every patrol, but I can't say that I think his opinions are right. He says Britain was never in jeopardy, but that is based on 20-20 hindsight. He also thinks Admiral King was right not to form convoys off the US coast. I think the loss of 600 ships and 2.0 million tons of shipping qualifies as a major disaster. The Brits proved that convoys without escorts were safer than unescorted ships but King wouldn't listen.

4. It was the US coming into the war that tipped the scales in the Battle of the Atlantic. Diverting all those U-Boats to the US coast took pressure off the Atlantic convoys and allowed the British to train their escort crews. The extra US and Canadian escort forces also helped the situation because it allowed the British to put their best U-boat killers into the Atlantic convoys and back them up with support groups. It paid off in May 1943.

5. "What-ifs" are fun, especially when done so intelligently as this thread has demonstrated.

Good points, odjig292. I would take very minor exception to part of point #1, and that is that in my opinion Graf Spee didn't lose. That's always a touchy point in naval wargaming, in that to win the fight the British don't actually have to win. Even if they lose all their ships, they only have to damage Spee badly enough that she has to put in for repairs. Technically speaking Graf Spee beat Exeter, Ajax and Achilles very thoroughly. On the other hand, I suppose it could be argued that if she had actually sunk them, or damaged them enough that they couldn't shadow her, they might have gotten away with it, so in that respect she did lose.

I'm so confused.