Lately stuck on WW2 history.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I've heard of WWII being described as just another chapter in Europe's eternal civil war.

To say war between European powers is a chapter in europe’s Civil war implies much of Europe is somehow a cohesive polity.    It has never been, and as we are seeing now it still isn’t.

Maybe from the inside, but from the outside it look like a basket of nuts and fruits.

[Amarok]

But Antisemitism was still common place and there were racialist beliefs certainly over some populations. and hell even the Nazi's were rarely consistent in their racialism.

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Nazism was a cluster duck of contradictory idea's which is probably why historians have had bitch of a time  figuring out what they actually believed .

[Rev. Rye]

Again, watching a documentary on WW2. I just found out that radar caught the Japanese fighters planes on radar at Pearl Harbor, BUT dismissed it as scheduled American bombers coming in....... Talk about FUCK ME! Imagine what a blow it would have been to the Japanese fleet if they had taken the radar seriously and not dismissed it and defeated the raid?

Bear in mind:
A) The US had only just started using RADAR, having been given access to the technology by Britain the previous year. They probably didn't have much idea how to use it properly or much faith in its effectiveness.
B) There were actually a shocking number of warning signs that the government ignored, up to and including a war game in 1932 where Fleet Admiral Harry Yarnell managed to take Pearl Harbor in the same way that the Japanese would nine years later, going in the same direction, using the same persistent cloud bank, and even starting his attack on a Sunday the Seventh. If he used real bombs and bullets, things probably would have been worse than the actual attack. And even after Vice Admiral Ernest King managed to repeat the same tactic with the same results in 1938, things didn't change.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Again, watching a documentary on WW2. I just found out that radar caught the Japanese fighters planes on radar at Pearl Harbor, BUT dismissed it as scheduled American bombers coming in....... Talk about FUCK ME! Imagine what a blow it would have been to the Japanese fleet if they had taken the radar seriously and not dismissed it and defeated the raid?

Bear in mind:
A) The US had only just started using RADAR, having been given access to the technology by Britain the previous year. They probably didn't have much idea how to use it properly or much faith in its effectiveness.

We actually had a former Eagle Squadron leader helping the Fleet learn how to use radar. He was seconded to the Army to help them set up the Air Information Center that would, eventually, coordinate the air defense of Oahu. Things were running behind because the Public Works officer had refused to release the finished building to the Air Corps.

B) There were actually a shocking number of warning signs that the government ignored, up to and including a war game in 1932 where Fleet Admiral Harry Yarnell managed to take Pearl Harbor in the same way that the Japanese would nine years later, going in the same direction, using the same persistent cloud bank, and even starting his attack on a Sunday the Seventh. If he used real bombs and bullets, things probably would have been worse than the actual attack. And even after Vice Admiral Ernest King managed to repeat the same tactic with the same results in 1938, things didn't change.

The IJN was not known to have the capacity or skills to refuel at sea, so a round trip to Pearl wasn't considered likely. They had a lot of trouble getting the job done as it was.

Any other "shocking" things you want to discuss?

[Rev. Rye]

Good point, Gawj. That does explain why they failed to take those two war games into account.

[Anomalocaris]

Again, watching a documentary on WW2. I just found out that radar caught the Japanese fighters planes on radar at Pearl Harbor, BUT dismissed it as scheduled American bombers coming in....... Talk about FUCK ME! Imagine what a blow it would have been to the Japanese fleet if they had taken the radar seriously and not dismissed it and defeated the raid?

Bear in mind:
A) The US had only just started using RADAR, having been given access to the technology by Britain the previous year. They probably didn't have much idea how to use it properly or much faith in its effectiveness.
B) There were actually a shocking number of warning signs that the government ignored, up to and including a war game in 1932 where Fleet Admiral Harry Yarnell managed to take Pearl Harbor in the same way that the Japanese would nine years later, going in the same direction, using the same persistent cloud bank, and even starting his attack on a Sunday the Seventh. If he used real bombs and bullets, things probably would have been worse than the actual attack. And even after Vice Admiral Ernest King managed to repeat the same tactic with the same results in 1938, things didn't change.

Actually, the radar technology the US received from Britain the previous year was the cavity magnetron that allowed radar to be made much more compact and with higher resolution. That hasn’t translated to operational radar set yet at the time of Pearl Harbor.

The radar operating in Pearl Harbor is based on older, indigenous American technology that actually dates to before 1939.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Bear in mind:
A) The US had only just started using RADAR, having been given access to the technology by Britain the previous year. They probably didn't have much idea how to use it properly or much faith in its effectiveness.
B) There were actually a shocking number of warning signs that the government ignored, up to and including a war game in 1932 where Fleet Admiral Harry Yarnell managed to take Pearl Harbor in the same way that the Japanese would nine years later, going in the same direction, using the same persistent cloud bank, and even starting his attack on a Sunday the Seventh. If he used real bombs and bullets, things probably would have been worse than the actual attack. And even after Vice Admiral Ernest King managed to repeat the same tactic with the same results in 1938, things didn't change.

Actually, the radar technology the US received from Britain the previous year was the cavity magnetron that allowed radar to be made much more compact and with higher resolution.   That hasn’t translated to operational radar set yet at the time of Pearl Harbor.

The radar operating in Pearl Harbor is based on older, indigenous American technology that actually dates to before 1939.

The SCR-270B model radar used an oscilloscope "screen", like the one below. The returns were measured in amplitude, the bigger the target the higher the spike. No other information about the "blip" could be learned except for rate of approach.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

To say war between European powers is a chapter in europe’s Civil war implies much of Europe is somehow a cohesive polity.    It has never been, and as we are seeing now it still isn’t.

Maybe from the inside, but from the outside it look like a basket of nuts and fruits.  

Hey, pal...I'll have you know that Europe is made of many fiercely independent nations, each with a long and proud tradition of hating all the other ones, mostly for reasons so stupid that even Europeans themselves don't fully understand them.  So there.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Maybe from the inside, but from the outside it look like a basket of nuts and fruits.  

Hey, pal...I'll have you know that Europe is made of many fiercely independent nations, each with a long and proud tradition of hating all the other ones, mostly for reasons so stupid that even Europeans themselves don't fully understand them.  So there.

Boru

And they all live together in a shoebox. I see no problems there, of course.

[Anomalocaris]

You are describing official foreign policy and its implied world view.  I am describing an influential attitude found in the society.  We are talking about members of the society choosing suicide over living past germany’s Defeat.

Popular history tends to focus on overweening german air of racial supremacy between 1870-1945

I was just replying to this simply wrong statement with an elaborated explanation. There was no constant racial supremacy in Germany between 1870-1945. Not in official policy, and much less with the population.

I think you take a narrow view of the phenomenon of assertion of racial supremacy. There are at least two reasons for asserting racial supremacy. One begins with an actual belief, however acquired, in the meaningful superiority of most members of one’s own race over others. Another begin’s with assumption of Darwinian competition between one’s own race and others, and postulates that incocating an belief in its own superiority, regardless of whether the belief is well founded, is essential for survival.

I think the sense that Germany is in Darwinian competition with its European neighbors and it must win had been prevelent in the German society at least as early as 1870s.