[Oberon]

Originally Posted by soopaman2

Market Garden was a strategic disaster.

It relied on the wrong assumption that the Normandy drops worked so well.

Well they didn't, it was mens bravery, and not on the plan itself, Normandy drops were way off.

I could understand strategically why it was important, but they commited too few resources. Lets just drop light infantry, and hope for the best....

I think Market Garden set the war back, IMHO. Complete misaalocation of resources for political reasons, not tactical.

Securing Antwerp, sure it woulda worked, if you commited more than light infantry paratroopers, and "allied" forces who arrived to late to matter.

American Paras got screwed in this, and bad choices from command stain the legacy they made as warriors.

We love the airborne, thank you all.

Ummm...I think the British and Polish paras got a tad more screwed, at least the American paras were able to link up with XXX Corps, the British and Polish were stuck at Arnhem, the 'bridge too far'.

Originally Posted by Dread Knot

In their revisionist book on the battle of Midway, Shattered Sword, the authors Parshall and Tully seem to infer that adopting Sun Tzu's tactics may have been Admiral Yamamoto's undoing at the battle of Midway. Japanese naval strategy was influenced from it's very inception by Oriental philosophies on the conduct of war, which emphasized the value of deception and indirect approaches. However, at Midway, the Japanese encountered a problem where subtlety was a dangerous luxury. If ever a situation demanded brute concentration of force, Midway was it. By spreading the Japanese fleet over half the Pacific, it just invited defeat in detail, especially when much of Yamamoto's mail was being read by Nimitz and company.

Either that or it was an incorrect interpretation of Sun Tzu on Yamamoto's part that led to his downfall.

A good point, although I'd ponder if the Japanese knew that the US were reading Yamamotos mail whether they would have used it to their advantage in a deceptive movement. Still, Yamamoto was fighting a war he did not want to fight, so it's hard to understand his mindset when figuring out a plan for the battle.

Originally Posted by Crécy

Same arrogance and bullishness was seen throughout the rest of the war. For example in December when the Allies were surprised by Germany's offensive through Ardennes forest. Bletchley Park got reports of enemy concentrations in Ardennes sector but these reports were not taken seriously. Allied high command knew that a possible attack might be underway but mostly ended up believing Germans were building a new defensive force.

That behavior probably stemmed from the confidence allied forces gained from the fast advance through France and a belief that the Germans were mostly beaten.

The break-out from France was a deceptively fast process, once the Falais pocket had been closed, so it's easy to see how overconfidence might have occurred in the Allied forces, although certainly from a strategic point of view, the Wehrmacht was on its last legs, but it still had bite, as the bloody battles of the Ardennes proved.