I'M IN THE US NAVY!!

[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.

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

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]

Originally Posted by 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.




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...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]

Originally Posted by ColonelSandersLite

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

Originally Posted by ColonelSandersLite

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.

Originally Posted by ColonelSandersLite

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.

Originally Posted by ColonelSandersLite

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:

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

It's an interesting paper you cite. It makes many logical errors........So logical errors are ignoring the capacity and affordability of the cost.

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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. 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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.