80th Anniversary of the Battle of the Phillipine Sea

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What if, in 1939, before the war, Germany decides to withdraw all surface forces (like the destroyers, cruisers, and pocket battleships), to the Baltic Sea, where they will do nothing until the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are combat ready. Hitler then orders the German surface fleet (this battle happens before the Norwegian campaign, or doesn’t happen at all) to engage the British near the Jutland peninsula, hoping to win an even bigger surface victory than at the Battle Of Jutland in World War 1 (many far right Germans celebrated the Battle Of Jutland and the Battle Of Tannenberg as a victory to forget World War 1). Let’s say the German and Allied fleets fought to the death, and the German sailors were willing to sail into such a battle.

How detrimental would this have been for the German war effort? How would the war have changed?

@ABWorsham4
Hi AB nice to see you :)

Yea read a good one on stalingrad years ago. Posted on the old site. Can’t remember the name. I’ll try and look it up.

The Battle of Wake Island began simultaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor and ended on 23 December 1941, with the surrender of the American forces to the Empire of Japan. It was fought on and around the atoll formed by Wake Island and its islets of Peale and Wilkes Islands by the air, land, and naval forces of the Empire of Japan against those of the U.S., with Marines playing a prominent role on both sides.

The island was held by the Japanese for the duration of the Pacific War; the remaining Japanese garrison on the island surrendered to a detachment of United States Marines on 4 September 1945.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wake_Island

The Marines at Wake Island held out against the Japanese early in December 1941 before being overwhelmed.  Do you guys agree that it was truly an episode of heroism?

To be a traitor he would need to have betrayed his country. Nothing in the summary posted suggests this to be true.

Instead prior to US involvement in the war he espoused views that are open to quite a negative perception. His thoughts on race and Semitism do him no credit - to quote from his diary: “We must limit to a reasonable amount the Jewish influence … Whenever the Jewish percentage of total population becomes too high, a reaction seems to invariably occur. It is too bad because a few Jews of the right type are, I believe, an asset to any country.” He was also very slow to condemn the Nazis for acts such as the invasion of Czechoslovakia. More debateable is whether he was a fascist sympathiser, as Roosevelt thought.

He was certainly an isolationist - but in itself that is not a “crime”. Once the US was involved in the war he tried to “do his bit”.

So I think he was both a patriot and misled. Only being able to vote for one option, I chose the latter.

This kind of reminds me of how no one remembers that Americans revolution wasn’t -exactly- fought against the British, but infact, many German Mercenary units…

IE The Headless Horsemen was a Hessian Mercenary!

@Gargantua:

Whats a plan orange battle?

Plan Orange was a U.S plan to defeat the Japanese in a large Jutland type battle in between the war years.

I learned that lesson the hard way.  :-P