70th Anniversary of D-Day

[Anomalocaris]

You would think that Hitler would have learned a lesson from history and better prepared his armies when Napolean broke rule number 1.

They thought it would be over by the time winter came. German success in WWI probably led to the overconfidence.

No, it was the catastrophic performance of the soviet army in the short winter war with Finland that gave hitler and Germany confidence.

In 1940 Soviet armies outnumbering the fins 10 to 1 invaded Finland to conquer it. But the fins inflicted setback after setback on the red army and ultimately Stalin had to settled for a negotiated peace.

Prior to this fiasco hitler and the german army actually had high opinion of the skill, equipment and capabilities of the red army. Hitler was as impressed by the display of goose stepping red army soldiers and their toys on the red square every May Day as the soviet public. The conventional wisdom that hitler always intended to invade Russia because of what he said in mein kempf is probably not entirely accurate. He probably did intend to form some sort of indefinite accommodation with Stalin when he first signed the Nazi soviet nonaggression pact in 1939.

But then Stalin invaded tiny Finland, got thrashed, and made hitler think soviet army was weak and Russia was easy picking.

In 1941, he had the means, the opportunity, and the perception that with contribution from german allies he actually had a numerical superiority over the whole of the red army. And didn't red army just proved itself to be a gang of incompetent buffoons? And didn't the whole of red army just move out of their prepared defense in depth positions and station itself near the frontier where his panzer could surround them like he did the French?

What could go wrong?

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No, we didn't.

Yes we did, the British were bombing Germany at night and the US was in disagreement with this policy because there were to many civilian deaths due to night time bombing. I understand that civilians were killed because we fought to win even at the cost of their lives, but we did try to limit those deaths.

GC

No, US was in disagreement with night bombing because the British were not hitting anything at night. The British considered it a hit if the bomb fell within 10 miles of the target.

The US wanted to bomb during the day because the US thought our bombers had better defences and was better able to survive german daylight fighter defences, and daylight bombing was more accurate.

Civilian casualty was just an ex post cover story to make us sound like nicer guys.