Most over-rated WWII Leader

@KurtGodel7:

1941, the German Army achieved a better than 10:1 exchange ratio against the Red Army.

Is that counting the millions of POW’s they starved to death or shot on the spot?

@KurtGodel7:

This is a thread about overrated leaders, not a thread about overrated things in general. In order to stay on topic, I’ll add a name for consideration: Herman Goering.

Strange claim because I have never seen any  (considered)opinion other than Goering was an innefective commander.
I have never seen  a debate where anyone gave examples  his successes. Starting in 1940 his is an unbroken line of missed chances and fumbled balls.
Setting him up as something to be knocked down seems odd when history has already firmly put him in the failed category.
I could be wrong though and await the links that show the data that confirms his moments of glory

@KurtGodel7:

Germany deployed a few jet aircraft in 1944 and '45; but the overwhelming majority of its late war aircraft production continued to consist of piston-driven aircraft.

A wise move considering the jets needed frequent engine changes and the jets needed the cover of these same piston aircraft just to take off and land!
@KurtGodel7:

Had Goering not removed so many engineers from jet development back in 1940, it’s possible that outcome would have been different. Germany’s lack of jets allowed the Allies’ D-Day invasion to be successful, and was also pivotal to the success of their strategic bombing effort against Germany

The problem with that fantasy scenario is it depends on the Allies standing stock still with their technology whilst the game is rigged by allowing every doodle by a german engineer to appear as a fully fledged fault free weapon system that ran on water!
Every new invention is always countered by the enemy. Once you introduce super-dooper weapon X it casues you enemy to build super-dooper enemy weapon-killer Y
The Allies sat on their Jets because they had no  urgent need to use them. The existing aeroplane stock was swatting the Luftwaffe like flies so why  disrupt your quipment chain for no good reason. You can bet if  German jets were seen over England in 1942 then they would have been Allied Jets over Germany in 1943.

@Col.:

Their banzai charges more often led to them being mowed down rather than be successful. It wasn’t until they adapted the highly defensive tactics of the island hopping campaign that they started to see any form of unity in causalities.

It’s my understanding was that Banzai charges were kind of a last resort, when all other options were exhausted. However this is in contrast to their main attack tactics of the “Mass Assault”, which I know sounds like i’m splitting hairs, but there was a difference. The mass assault was conducted with artillery support (usually in the form of the Type 96,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_96_15_cm_Howitzer ) but was identical to trench assaults of WW1.

Goering is an interesting character to be sure, and as leader of the Luftwaffe he was a dud, but its funny to remember that during WW1 he was one of Germany’s fighter aces. One does have to wonder what happened in the inter-war years to take him from dashing and heroic fighter ace to massive (and I do mean massive) morphine addicted retarded piece of cartilage we know from WW2.

@Lazarus:

@KurtGodel7:

1941, the German Army achieved a better than 10:1 exchange ratio against the Red Army.

Is that counting the millions of POW’s they starved to death or shot on the spot?

Oh boy, here we go again  :roll:

I believe that if they were shot on sight then they weren’t taken as POW’s and would therefore be counted as regular casualties wouldn’t they? Regardless of how they became a casualty they would still be counted in the 10 to 1 ration.

Oh boy here we go again.

He said EXCHANGE RATE not POW’s

And thank you for confirming the 3 million who died in camps are counted.

It ties in nicely with the 3  milion German POW’s (from a end total of 4 million) taken in the west before the surrender in May 1945.

@Lazarus:

Oh boy here we go again.

He said EXCHANGE RATE not POW’s

And thank you for confirming the 3 million who died in camps are counted.

I did nothing of the sort, I was commenting on your statement that some were shot on the spot, like communist party members and commissars, and that if they were shot on the spot, as you said, then how could they be counted as POW’s if they didn’t live long enough to make it that far?

@Clyde85:

I did nothing of the sort, I was commenting on your statement that some were shot on the spot, like communist party members and commissars, and that if they were shot on the spot, as you said, then how could they be counted as POW’s if they didn’t live long enough to make it that far?

Please re-read my initial post

Is that counting the millions of POW’s they starved to death or shot on the spot?

You first capture them(where they become POW’s) and then you shoot them.

Please specify some incidents.

I can think of several, but they are in the 20 to TOPS 100 people range.

Millions of POW’s were never shot.

@Lazarus:

@Clyde85:

I did nothing of the sort, I was commenting on your statement that some were shot on the spot, like communist party members and commissars, and that if they were shot on the spot, as you said, then how could they be counted as POW’s if they didn’t live long enough to make it that far?

Please re-read my initial post

Is that counting the millions of POW’s they starved to death or shot on the spot?

You first capture them(where they become POW’s) and then you shoot them.

You are being a troll, and it’s not because I disagree with you, but because you are dragging this thread down in to stupid arguments over Semantical non-sense. Also, i’ve noticed that you’ve once again gone back an edited your posts after you someone has challenged what you’ve said as this sentence
@Lazarus:

It ties in nicely with the 3  milion German POW’s (from a end total of 4 million) taken in the west before the surrender in May 1945.

was not there before. If you can support or stand by your previous statements and need to go back and reword them, then it shows what little faith you have in what you are saying, or that you are just being argumentative for its own sake, ie, being a troll

@Clyde85:

You are being a troll, and it’s not because I disagree with you, but because you are dragging this thread down in to stupid arguments over Semantical non-sense

I asked a perfectly reasonable question. Your hysterical reaction tells me you are still smarting over earlier reverses.

.@Clyde85:

Also, i’ve noticed that you’ve once again gone back an edited your posts after you someone has challenged what you’ve said as this sentence
It ties in nicely with the 3 milion German POW’s (from a end total of 4 million) taken in the west before the surrender in May 1945.
was not there before. If you can support or stand by your previous statements and need to go back and reword them, then it shows what little faith you have in what you are saying, or that you are just being argumentative for its own sake, ie, being a troll

Reply #152 on: Today at 08:55:31 am » was my original message
I edited it straight away and finished by Last Edit: Today at 09:00:29 am by Lazarus »

Whilst I was doing this you posted Reply #153 on: Today at 08:59:09

Are you seriously claiming that I read your message and took but  30 seconds to rush into edit mode and change the original?
It does not even make any difference to the Russian POW point so what exactly are you saying was the change in meaning the edit introduced?
You are paranoid

@Lazarus:

@Clyde85:

You are being a troll, and it’s not because I disagree with you, but because you are dragging this thread down in to stupid arguments over Semantical non-sense

I asked a perfectly reasonable question. Your hysterical reaction tells me you are still smarting over earlier reverses.

.@Clyde85:

Also, i’ve noticed that you’ve once again gone back an edited your posts after you someone has challenged what you’ve said as this sentence
It ties in nicely with the 3 milion German POW’s (from a end total of 4 million) taken in the west before the surrender in May 1945.
was not there before. If you can support or stand by your previous statements and need to go back and reword them, then it shows what little faith you have in what you are saying, or that you are just being argumentative for its own sake, ie, being a troll

Reply #152 on: Today at 08:55:31 am » was my original message
I edited it straight away and finished by Last Edit: Today at 09:00:29 am by Lazarus »

Whilst I was doing this you posted Reply #153 on: Today at 08:59:09

Are you seriously claiming that I read your message and took but  30 seconds to rush into edit mode and change the original?
It does not even make any difference to the Russian POW point so what exactly are you saying was the change in meaning the edit introduced?
You are paranoid

Thank you for proving my point, another diversion in to semantical nonsense that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. It’s not paranoia to call you a troll if you are actually being a troll. You didn’t ask any question nor are you adding anything to this discussion. If anything you are they one showing you are “smarting over earlier reverses” but continuing to be objectionable to anything posted in here by someone who was on the “monty-bashing” side of previous discussion. The problem is that there seems to be no bases in reality for any of your claims, and most of what you bring up sounds like revisionist nonsense. Also, as an aside, I wouldn’t but too much faith in the times listed here, as they are subject to some strange alternate reality where passes differently, not to mention it’s not even close to the correct time zone for most of us.

All of which is delightfully off topic, good job troll.

I think this sums it up much better though

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaqC5FnvAEc

:-D

@Clyde85:

The problem is that there seems to be no bases in reality for any of your claims, and most of what you bring up sounds like revisionist nonsense.

Look hard in the mirror.  I remember an earlier post where you  introduced  British losses for Goodwood (to prove Monty always came off worst) that turned out to be an estimate of POW’s.
I see a lot of  spamming  of the thread with Wiki cut and pastes in  reply to my use of book quotes.
You are welcome to call me anything you like but in comparison to you I am  overburdened with references.

@Lazarus:

@Clyde85:

The problem is that there seems to be no bases in reality for any of your claims, and most of what you bring up sounds like revisionist nonsense.

Look hard in the mirror.  I remember an earlier post where you  introduced  British losses for Goodwood (to prove Monty always came off worst) that turned out to be an estimate of POW’s.
I see a lot of  spamming  of the thread with Wiki cut and pastes in  reply to my use of book quotes.
You are welcome to call me anything you like but in comparison to you I am  overburdened with references.

Yeah but most of your refrences make less sense than the posts.

You spent a whole day posting things you thought proved that Germans thought Monty was on Pattons level, when nobody else who read that passage came to your conclusion. It’s easy to be ‘overburdened’ when you take selective parts of passages that make you sound right, when the whole passage is proving you wrong.

You still continue to use one of your phrases or words to defend yourself from both sides. When someone tries to say Monty wasn’t any good, you say he was Supreme Commander. When someone asks you when he was Supreme Commander, you tell them June to Sept. When someone asks you who replaced Monty, you said Eisenhower. But when someone claims you said any of this you, you go back through and show all of the posts where you said it as proof that you didn’t mean it.

Your circular logic has ripped more holes in the space-time contimuium than the flux capacitor.

And I see you’re still trying to edit history so you don’t look as foolish, but you still can’t seem to get it to work can you.

@Clyde85:

@Col.:

Their banzai charges more often led to them being mowed down rather than be successful. It wasn’t until they adapted the highly defensive tactics of the island hopping campaign that they started to see any form of unity in causalities.

It’s my understanding was that Banzai charges were kind of a last resort, when all other options were exhausted. However this is in contrast to their main attack tactics of the “Mass Assault”, which I know sounds like i’m splitting hairs, but there was a difference. The mass assault was conducted with artillery support (usually in the form of the Type 96,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_96_15_cm_Howitzer ) but was identical to trench assaults of WW1.

Goering is an interesting character to be sure, and as leader of the Luftwaffe he was a dud, but its funny to remember that during WW1 he was one of Germany’s fighter aces. One does have to wonder what happened in the inter-war years to take him from dashing and heroic fighter ace to massive (and I do mean massive) morphine addicted retarded piece of cartilage we know from WW2.

I think it might have been on The World at War, but I can’t remember, but I’ve heard somewhere that it was more the riflemen themselves that would rather do the banzai charge. Many of them happened because the regular Japanese soldier had a tendency to get antsy. They wanted to charge and when the sh*t hit the fan that’s what they would end up doing, It was the one time they really lacked discipline.
I also know that small groups of soldiers would also charge almost as a form of suicide.

As for Goering, the morphine must have played a big part. As you said earlier, and as Lazarus apparently didn’t know, the man was a national hero after WWI, and it’s not like the Luftwaffe was pathetic itself. But he was awful. Some of the footage of him from Nuremberg is great. The allies got him off the morphine and he’s lost 100 pounds, but he still thinks everything is okay. That he’ll be safe. Then he kills himself.

@Col.:

You spent a whole day posting things you thought proved that Germans thought Monty was on Pattons level, when nobody else who read that passage came to your conclusion.

I posted the considered opinion of Blumentritt and  Rundstedt. They  are the ones who ranked Monty  as on par with Patton.
I am sure, if they were still alive, they would be mortified that some here consider they made a mistake. Burdened as they were with fighting against Patton and Monty that had not the time to stand back and form an opinion that would be acceptable to the community of WW2 gamers.
I am not here to convince anyone. You are entitlled to your view and it won’t change the facts.
The puzzle for me is the complete inability of many to accept  dissent from the herd mindset…

@Col.:

As you said earlier, and as Lazarus apparently didn’t know, the man was a national hero after WWI,

I assure you Lazurus did know.
However Lazarus was unable to see what bearing it had on Goering’s performance in WW2.
Perhaps you could establish the link so Lazarus can see his error?

@Lazarus:

@Col.:

You spent a whole day posting things you thought proved that Germans thought Monty was on Pattons level, when nobody else who read that passage came to your conclusion.

I posted the considered opinion of Blumentritt and  Rundstedt. They  are the ones who ranked Monty  as on par with Patton.
I am sure, if they were still alive, they would be mortified that some here consider they made a mistake. Burdened as they were with fighting against Patton and Monty that had not the time to stand back and form an opinion that would be acceptable to the community of WW2 gamers.
I am not here to convince anyone. You are entitlled to your view and it won’t change the facts.
The puzzle for me is the complete inability of many to accept  dissent from the herd mindset…

And you’re entitled to your view, but I just wish you would stop trying to change the facts.
You posted what you considered to be their opinion, then turned their words to fit your cause. It’s what you’ve been doing to your own posts for days.
What puzzles me is that you expect anyone to think like you do when you can’t support anything you say with facts.

@Gargantua:

Please specify some incidents.

I can think of several, but they are in the 20 to TOPS 100 people range.

Millions of POW’s were never shot.

See this link

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=8034