Dirty Little Secrets

I was reading this document (https://history.army.mil/html/books/104/104-20/CMH_Pub_104-20.pdf) which counted the Panzer 1 as a tankette. Do any of you think this is a better description for the vehicle than a light tank? It’s not much heavier than some Japanese tankettes and its armament and crew size is certainly similar.

This is the first time I’ve heard of classifying the vehicle as a tankette, which is why I find it noteworthy.

@Coldwarrior1984

Reading this, I feel strongly you’re confused about the nature of the German defenses in Normandy. In combination, I feel you are overestimating the Allies ability to place smoke as precisely and in the quantity that would have been required to have a chance to accomplish the goal you lay out. I also feel you’re overestimating the effectiveness of smoke even if I grant that none of the above was an issue.

I’ve been to Normandy three times with tour guides. I’ve read everything from Ambrose and Osprey on Overlord. I’m tempted to repeat my initial post about why you don’t hear or see this tactic being performed en masse in the many assaults in the Pacific or Mediterranean.

I’ll just sum this up and say that the German fighting positions were not composed primarily of Saving Private Ryan style bunkers but widerstandsnest with Tobruks across so much acreage that a simultaneous precision smoke affect against all of them for the required time to get everyone ashore is less realistic that just a mass smoke bombardment of the beach area.

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@ABWorsham4

Curious. Would’ve been a complicated air operation, given that escorting aircraft may have had to come from carriers. Then again, the Western Allies ruled the skies.

The success would’ve depended on whether the Italian government collapsed (Mussolini and the facists overthrown) and the army would’ve defected as quickly and massive as they did following the invasion of Sicily. If a substantial number were at least disarmed, it’s quite possible enough Allied troops could’ve been ferried into Italian ports to hold against an expected German counterattack.

While I don’t think the Allies would’ve reached the Italian-Yugoslavian or Italian-German borders, they may have reached what would become the Gothic Line by early 1944. Just making probable estimates, I did not look this in detail.

@ShadowHAwk:

Yes indeed, first of all would Hitler have won Stalin would have been dead and communism there would have been destroyed.

Question: If Stalin’s death were the only thing required for communism to be destroyed in the USSR, how did the Soviet regime manage to survive until 1991 despite the fact that Stalin died thirty-eight years earlier in 1953?

Interesting story, thanks for sharing it. It’s remarkable that this apparently happened after the war was over, but the overall idea would be pretty much in line with Japanese politics in countries they occupied. Japan tried to portray itself as a liberator, driving the Western colonial powers out of Asia, and promoting nationalism as far as it suited their needs. However, the indigenous population of those countries soon discovered that they were definitely not better off being ruled by Japan.

There’s a parallel with what happened in Indonesia, where Japan supported nationalistic movements to some degree, although that happened during the occupation years. Indonesian nationalism had been firmly established by the time Japan was defeated, and the four years that followed saw a very bloody decolonization war when the Dutch tried to re-establish their authority by sending a large army.

Sounds a bit like the plot of the Len Deighton novel “XPD”.