WW2 Article: Advanced German Technology

I like the Me-262 as a interceptor to against American Flying Fortress, but I think the application of the Me-262 would’ve been as a radar equipped night fighter. You wouldn’t have to worry about those 1000+ Allied Escorts bothering you all the way to your landing spot. The only drawback I would see is the bright plume of fire coming from the Me-262’s turbojets, but who cares when you can easily outrun any Allied craft?

Yay! Reached the 400 post mark! I finally reached the limit that my role model Erich Hartmann couldn’t break. I think I celebrate my victory with a much needed vacation. :smile:

Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much

[ This Message was edited by: TG Moses VI on 2002-03-31 11:40 ]

Ha still 200 more post to go! :smile: Maybe I might even beat Yanny to 500 though I doubt it.

Well maybe I’ll set my standards higher and go for 550…

Yeah, you’re right. But as my quote says, I only have so little time in which to do so much.

Havent read down this far in the thread, but 500 is mine!

Uh what’s a Mossad? I heard of them before. But I can’t quite attach a definition to the word.

Oh, that’s right. Now I remember. I don’t care what other people say, but Israel has by far one of the great intelligence branches especially considering the size of the country.

@HortenFlyingWing:

A very nice guy once emailed me a while back, seeing my name in achtungpanzer.com’s guest book.  I used the name “HortenFlyingWing” and he asked me to proofread an article about it. (remainder snipped)

Very good post–and definitely worthy of a bump. I encourage anyone who hasn’t yet read the first post in this thread to go ahead and do so! Definitely bump-worthy. (It’s been a few days since the last time someone posted in this thread.)

(It’s been a few days since the last time someone posted in this thread.)

its been a decade

A couple of comments on the original article:

“Although It is obvious that The first operational A-bomb was dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima, the U.S. found it desirable to imply that the Germans were far from being close to having an atomic weapon at the end of the war in 1945. Recently revealed information shows that this was not true and helps to explain why the Reich ordered the fighting to continue even into the streets of Berlin when it seemed obvious to everyone there simply was no hope.  Its not a stretch to say that the top-secret project was actually only weeks away from completion, and even a casual study of Hitler shows he would not have hesitated to use it.”

The three links posted in that part of the article don’t work, so I couldn’t check the sources, but I wonder abour the statement that “its not a stretch to say that the top-secret project [to have an atomic weapon at the end of the war in 1945] was actually only weeks away from completion.”  As far as I know, Germany never even got as far as having an operational nuclear reactor, let alone manufacturing enough fissionable material for an atomic bomb.  The U.S. devoted massive resources to its Manhattan Project (whereas Germany did not), and even then it took America about two-and-a-half years to get from the first operational reactor to the first operational atomic bomb.

“For example, the battleship Bismark was sunk by a torpedo dropped by a biplane left over from WW I.”

The Bismarck had its rudder damaged by a Swordfish biplane.  The damaged rudder delivered the Bismarck to the British fleet, but it didn’t sink the Bismarck.  It took gunfire from the British battleships KGV and Rodney and some torpedoes from the British cruiser Dorsetshire to sink her…and even today, there is some dispute about whether it was battle damage or scuttling which ultimately finished her off. The Swordfish, by the way, was designed in the 1930s; it was not a WWI leftover.

@CWO:

A couple of comments on the original article:

“Although It is obvious that The first operational A-bomb was dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima, the U.S. found it desirable to imply that the Germans were far from being close to having an atomic weapon at the end of the war in 1945. Recently revealed information shows that this was not true and helps to explain why the Reich ordered the fighting to continue even into the streets of Berlin when it seemed obvious to everyone there simply was no hope.  Its not a stretch to say that the top-secret project was actually only weeks away from completion, and even a casual study of Hitler shows he would not have hesitated to use it.”

The three links posted in that part of the article don’t work, so I couldn’t check the sources, but I wonder abour the statement that “its not a stretch to say that the top-secret project [to have an atomic weapon at the end of the war in 1945] was actually only weeks away from completion.”  As far as I know, Germany never even got as far as having an operational nuclear reactor, let alone manufacturing enough fissionable material for an atomic bomb.  The U.S. devoted massive resources to its Manhattan Project (whereas Germany did not), and even then it took America about two-and-a-half years to get from the first operational reactor to the first operational atomic bomb.

“For example, the battleship Bismark was sunk by a torpedo dropped by a biplane left over from WW I.”

The Bismarck had its rudder damaged by a Swordfish biplane.  The damaged rudder delivered the Bismarck to the British fleet, but it didn’t sink the Bismarck.  It took gunfire from the British battleships KGV and Rodney and some torpedoes from the British cruiser Dorsetshire to sink her…and even today, there is some dispute about whether it was battle damage or scuttling which ultimately finished her off. The Swordfish, by the way, was designed in the 1930s; it was not a WWI leftover.

You are right about the Swordfish. As you correctly pointed out, even though it was a biplane, the British did not put it into production until 1936.

Like you, I was unable to check the links about the German nuclear program which had originally been cited. But after some digging I was able to find this. If the claims cited in the article are correct (which is far from certain), Germany was very close to developing a nuclear device. (I.e., something a lot less powerful than the nuclear bombs the U.S. used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but a lot more powerful than a conventional weapon.) A full-fledged nuclear bomb would have required a far greater amount of industrial capacity than Germany was in a position to allocate.

This being said, HortenFlyingWing wrote, in his original post, “don’t mind mis-spellings, and some errors here and there.” As IL pointed out, it’s been ten years since this thread has last been active. So that means that Horten and his friend have had plenty of time to correct those errors and come up with a better article! :) I liked the original article, but I’d like an error-free article even more.

@KurtGodel7:

I liked the original article, but I’d like an error-free article even more.

Me too.  The problem with these kinds of errors is that it only takes a few serious or blatant ones to cast doubt over the credibility of the entire article, even if the rest is accurate.  They create the impression (rightly or wrongly) that an author doesn’t have enough background to evaluate the information he’s found elsewhere, and that he’s just repeating it uncritically.

As for the supposed weapon mentioned in the BBC link you provided, I agree that the claim is far from being a solid one.  And even assuming that by 1944 or 1945 Germany had developed a radiological dispersion weapon, or even a couple of fully-fledged tactical nuclear bombs, it can be argued that these wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the war.  The Eastern Front was so large, and the Russians had so many divisions along its length, that a couple of localized tactical nuclear blasts wouldn’t have greatly altered the force ratio between Germany and Russia.  Also, by the last third of 1944, Germany wasn’t just fighting on the Eastern Front; it was also fighting the Anglo-Americans in the west.  It would have taken mass-produced tactical nukes to stop the three Allied powers from advancing into Germany…and even in America in 1945, there was nothing “mass” about the number of atomic bombs produced: the U.S. was able to manufacture a grand total of three weapons by war’s end.

@CWO:

@KurtGodel7:

I liked the original article, but I’d like an error-free article even more.

Me too.  The problem with these kinds of errors is that it only takes a few serious or blatant ones to cast doubt over the credibility of the entire article, even if the rest is accurate.  They create the impression (rightly or wrongly) that an author doesn’t have enough background to evaluate the information he’s found elsewhere, and that he’s just repeating it uncritically.

As for the supposed weapon mentioned in the BBC link you provided, I agree that the claim is far from being a solid one.  And even assuming that by 1944 or 1945 Germany had developed a radiological dispersion weapon, or even a couple of fully-fledged tactical nuclear bombs, it can be argued that these wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the war.  The Eastern Front was so large, and the Russians had so many divisions along its length, that a couple of localized tactical nuclear blasts wouldn’t have greatly altered the force ratio between Germany and Russia.  Also, by the last third of 1944, Germany wasn’t just fighting on the Eastern Front; it was also fighting the Anglo-Americans in the west.  It would have taken mass-produced tactical nukes to stop the three Allied powers from advancing into Germany…and even in America in 1945, there was nothing “mass” about the number of atomic bombs produced: the U.S. was able to manufacture a grand total of three weapons by war’s end.

I wonder if we’ve become less accepting of error today than we’d been thirty or forty years ago. Or–maybe I’m not phrasing that correctly–maybe it’s just become easier to do our own research, and therefore to detect errors, than it had been.

For example, a few years ago I’d come across some articles from The Guardian about Britain’s use of torture on political prisoners around 1945 - '47. Below is a quote:

Former prisoners [of Bad Nenndorf] told Hayward that they had been whipped as well as beaten. This, the detective said, seemed unbelievable, until “our inquiries of warders and guards produced most unexpected corroboration”. Threats to execute prisoners, or to arrest, torture and murder their wives and children were considered “perfectly proper”, on the grounds that such threats were never carried out.

Moreover, any prisoner thought to be uncooperative during interrogation was taken to a punishment cell where they would be stripped and repeatedly doused in water. This punishment could continue for weeks, even in sub-zero temperatures.

Naked prisoners were handcuffed back-to-back and forced to stand before open windows in midwinter. Frostbite became common. One victim of the cold cell punishment was Buttlar, who swallowed the spoon handle to escape. An anti-Nazi, he had spent two years as a prisoner of the Gestapo. “I never in all those two years had undergone such treatments,” he said.

Britain opened the Bad Nenndorf secret prison in the second half of 1945, and initially used it primarily on key Nazi officials. Its willingness to resort to the above-described methods to obtain confessions casts considerable doubt on any confessions thus extorted! Many people, if subjected to physical torture + threats to their families, will do or say anything they believe will keep their families safe.

Having been exposed to the article about Bad Nenndorf and a torture center in London, I found that my view of other historical sources had changed. This is particularly true of historical sources which I’d once regarded as credible, but which did not acknowledge the possibility of torture + coercion when reporting the confessions of senior Nazi officials. It is also true of sources which describe the exterminations which occurred in Nazi Germany without bothering to mention the Anglo-American food blockade or the famine/near famine conditions which resulted. (I learned about Germany’s food situation when reading Adam Tooze’s book, The Wages of Destruction.)

A number of people widely regarded as credible WWII historians have made truly remarkable errors and omissions in their description of WWII history. That does not excuse non-professionals from making errors of a similar or lesser scale. But it does mean that accuracy is perhaps harder to attain in this subject than elsewhere, in part because mainstream WWII historians have traditionally been too uncritical in accepting the claims of Allied governments. This represents something of a double standard; in that the claims made by the LBJ administration about the Vietnam War, or by the Bush administration about the second Iraq War, very often do not receive uncritical acceptance. There is no reason why we should uncritically accept the FDR or Truman administrations’ claims about WWII. But until mainstream historians start doing a better job of separating cold hard facts from Allied propaganda, it will be difficult for non-professionals (who rely on those mainstream historians for most of their information) to create error-free summations of WWII history.

I realize I have strayed (if only slightly) from the subject at hand. To return to that subject, I agree that by late ‘44, Germany’s military fortunes were bad enough that they could not have been saved by a few tactical nuclear devices. The first few strikes would do the most damage, after which the Soviets and Americans would respond by spreading out their forces. To have significantly altered Germany’s fortunes, the tactical nuclear weapons would have had to destroy the heart of the enemies’ strength arrayed against Germany. IIRC, Germany in '44 had 400,000 men on its western front, as compared to 2 million men in the Anglo-American force. While German infantry had enjoyed a qualitative advantage over their British and American counterparts in 1943, that advantage had slipped away by January of '45. (If not earlier.) This was largely because in late '44/'45, many German soldiers on the Western front were poorly trained, poorly armed old men or young boys, foreign soldiers who had little interest in dying for Germany, or else German men of military age who’d realized the war was lost. Even if half the Anglo-American force had been destroyed with tactical nuclear weapons, they would still have enjoyed a better than 2:1 advantage in manpower, near-complete air supremacy, a commanding advantage in tanks, artillery, and other weaponry, as well as all the other advantages their overwhelming industrial capacity could bring to bear. Likewise, the Soviet force on Germany’s eastern front was much larger, better-armed, and far stronger than the German force it faced.