Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

[mainiac]

The French land army was considered by everyone to be the most impressive land army in the world prior to WWII.  There's a reason it was a shock to all sides when they got caught mid redeployment and unable to respond.  If the Germans or the French had timed their descisions just a little bit slower France had a good chance of winning.  France lead in tank and artillery design and they had a wunderwaffen that actually worked pretty well.

There are also wunderwaffen that aren't considered wunderwaffen because they actually worked the way they were supposed to.  British Radar and computers, Japanese long lance torpedoes and torpedo bombers, American airliftable trucks, all that stuff was science fiction just years before.

[Baffler]

The maginot line was almost entirely useless in the end, having been simply bypassed then flanked and destroyed, and I meant that the pressures that led governments to the development of those things never existed in France because they were completely defeated and occupied weeks after they entered the war, and therefore never had an opportunity to give money to scientists who said they'd give them ray guns or other outlandish things to end the war sooner or turn it around.

[mainiac]

That it could be bypassed doesn't make it useless.  Perhaps it was a bad use of resources but it was very, very effective.

[smjjames]

It was only effective if the Germans actually tried to attack in that direction.

Didn't Belgium also have their own version of the maginot line? I heard that they had something like it.

[Mr. Strange]

From what I remember from my history lessons, maginot line was designed to make direct attack so costly it wouldn't be considered practical option for germans. And that it did, germans never tried attacking it from the west but went around it through Belgium. Belgians had similar defences but unlike maginot they were lacking good air defence, so germans used air-dropped units to capture their forts.

TL:DR; Maginot did what it was planned to do, it's the people who made the plans that fucked up.
_{IDamned French, you can always blame them...}

[smjjames]

Yeah, they also couldn't imagine that the Germans wouldn't go AROUND it through Belgium.

Plus I'm sure Belgium would have complained loudly about the French building those on their borders, so, politics probably played a role.

[Phmcw]

Strange is correct.

It was pretty big forts, but not as strong as the magino line, and the Germans got the plans somehow. Beside there are some kind of mountain(ish) in the area and peoples didn't expect the German armors to be able to cross them.

The forts make awesome airsoft fields now, and are perfect for zombie themed larp.

[mainiac]

Yeah, they also couldn't imagine that the Germans wouldn't go AROUND it through Belgium.

Plus I'm sure Belgium would have complained loudly about the French building those on their borders, so, politics probably played a role.

No, that's exactly what they planned for.  They just thought that they would beat the Germans on that narrow front when in fact they lost that battle.

The French thought that WWII would play out like the eastern front of WWII.  Both sides were strong but the Germans weren't planning to fight a long war so after 2 years the Germans would be screwed while the French would be stronger then ever.  The Germans thought WWII would play out like the western front of WWI, the Germans scrambling to grab territory quickly before the first french counter attack and things being static.  What neither side expected was the French high command would pointlessly shuffle it's mobile units around and issue conflicting and outdated orders thus immobilizing their units and making it so no counter attack ever paused the Germans in the north.

[Erkki]

Actually Allies in Europe were intending to fix exactly what went wrong the previous time: Belgium. As soon as Belgium and Netherlands were attacked, British and French armies were sent in. They had learned from past mistakes and did not plan to fight another 4 year stalemate.

Where things went horribly, horribly wrong was that nobody, in a way not even Germans themselves, knew how much new mobile units with tanks and fully mechanized or motorized infantry would change warfare together with air power. Nobody expected that armored push through Luxembourg and towards Sedan. Once Germans reached Sedan, the Allies still thought the main front would be in Belgium despite basically the entirety of Luftwaffe supporting the armored spearhead. They also thought it'd take Germans closer to a week to get their artillery to support the river crossing to get across Meuse, so they'd have plenty of time to move their reserves. Wrong: it took Germans 8 hours with air support. The Allies were in their reactions days behind.

After that it was a turn to the right and a run to the sea the French couldn't hope win. Germans were ahead in strategic OODA, had the initiative all the time, their forces were organized better(no mixed tanks and conventional foot infantry, ground-air coordination) and the Allies lacked large enough strategic and operational level reserves. The puny single tank unit(regiment size IIRC) that they had to be thrown against the Germans led by then major colonel de Gaulle himself was taken out in an afternoon by AT guns and Ju 87s.

[Sheb]

The French had wunderwaffen. Never heard of the Char 2C?

[10ebbor10]

Belgium had a pretty strong defensive line, but where as the Maginot line was a series of smaller forts, the Belgian line consisted of a limited number of large 4000 man fortresses.

And yeah, for some reason they decided to build a football field on top of one of them, allowing the Germans to land a special forces team and incapacitate the largest fortress, Eben-Emael.

[Sheb]

Man, football is sacred.

[Caz]

The BBC was like that at first but towards the end of the campaign they started taking the piss, like televising an awful lot of stuff from Gordon Brown and the Labour Party including political broadcasts that both outnumbered and outlasted any pro-Yes coverage. Political editor Nick Robertson was at it as well with his misrepresentation of Salmond at the end of the campaign causing a small scandal. I don't think there was a conspiracy - I think the BBC are just incompetent and weren't up to the task. They are still heavily influenced by the establishment of course.

BBC was hilariously partial to the No campaign. I remember almost putting a foot through my TV once they had Sturgeon talk for 5 minutes about independence while being shouted over by this newscaster the whole time, while hundreds of 'No thanks' banners were in the background. Then right after they had this 10-min segment of a paid actor walking around in a fucking university, wearing a suit and waxing lyrical about how the union is sacred and without England Scotland would have been taken over by terrorists (WTF?)

Everyone in the room was pure raging. I don't watch BBC anymore tbh.

[smjjames]

The French had wunderwaffen. Never heard of the Char 2C?

That's WWI though, we're talking about WWII.

[Vilanat]

Paris in terror.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jan/07/shooting-paris-satirical-magazine-charlie-hebdo