hey what happened to this site fellas?
it's all wacked, the smiles are missing....
LOL that geoffery dude is hilarious ... isn't ...lol
and..... Whats Chippy in her slippers??!
....
edit: ok NM I googled it ... not very polite is it. :o
One quite chilling thing is that in late 1943/early '44 the Germans had an aircraft capable of reaching the US Eatern coast and returning to Germany non-stop. The idea was that they could bomb New York - which had air defences of a few machine guns on the top of high buildings - with a 'dirty atom bomb'. A test run was made and the aircraft made it to New York and back in something over 36 hours but the bomb was never completed.
Even more worrying is that the V3 rocket was to be capable of intercontinental flight with either an atomic or standard warhead. Nearly all of the blueprints/plans and test results 'disappeared' at the end of the war - believed to be taken East and used as bargaining chips for a long and comfortable life in the USSR.
The main cause of the defeat of the Germans was the order in late 1940 to slow down or abandon active research into projects that would take more than 12 months to gestate. This was because it was widely believed that the UK would capitulate and make peace and bring the Commonwealth countries with her. By the time it was realised that it was a false dream, momentum had been lost and with it the cances of winning the war.
There are quite a few books on 'what if'' scenarios during WWII which do give one a lot to think of. Without doubt the best ally the UK had from 1939 - 1941 was Adolf Hitler. Had he not meddled and messed around we would have faced a much more harsh world.
Regarding Pearl Harbour, the Japanese diplomatic code 'Purple' had been broken in September 1940 by an American team lead by William F. Friedman and in the period immediately prior to 7th December 1941, the US intelligence sevices were reading the messages to the Japanese embassy faster than the Japanese. On the morning of that day, Friedman, at home, walked around, shaking his head saying, 'But they knew.....They knew!' Everything else about this is a mystery - to this day!
Regarding Lend-Lease and the repayments that we had to make, does anyone know when the Russians finished paying for all the equipment that they received, or are they still paying?
It was WW2 that showed the US armaments industry just how lucrative wars can be if you are a major supplier. I believe that President Eisenhower made some comment on this subject in his farewell speech in 1961:
Eisenhower warned us: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted."
Alan that is very interesting! Especially the long range missile and bomber capability that threatened the US. Fits with the documentary I mentioned in an earlier post about German spies landing on Long Island. Hitler definitely had thoughts of attacking the US.
I must say it is hard to pin down the main cause of the defeat of the Germans. I think there were many, although Adolf certainly was central to most of them. From the very start he underestimated the resolve of the British. Attacking Russia, wasting precious resources on the "final solution", not listening to his Generals, bombing London and other cities rather than continuing to bomb RAF airfields, and on and on. Adolf refused to face reality, especially in the later stages of the war, and the result was disaster for the Germans, and thank heaven for that!