What's your favorite WW2 battle/campaign? It's Operation Barbarossa for me.
Bagration.
>>978055
Good choice.
It's kind of funny because Bagration started at the same date as Barbarossa and not only was it successful unlike Barbarossa, it pretty much destroyed Germany as a fighting power in the East. Kinda like what Barbarossa was meant to do to Soviets.
>>978397
i think it should be pronounced something like bag-rat-eon
>>978437
Reminder that Barbarossa died crossing a fucking river.
>>978437
ok
Stalin's Ten Blows :^)
"I said, ‘I will go first,’ because I had a principle that I would always go first - voluntarily. And the background was that it had been proven to me in those fights in the craters that this was a good idea, because if you are the first one to jump you’ve landed in the next crater before the Russian could actually aim at you. But the second one will be the one who gets killed. And that’s why I always volunteered. It was tactics. Instinctive tactics. It could have been a lesson to the other ones, but I didn’t tell them. I always said, ‘No, I’m the first one to jump.’ We did not talk much about close combat, we just sort of drifted into it. The only thing that we did was to get rid of all the unwieldy weapons so that we were mobile. We all had to use spades at some stage. They were folded and you could screw them together. It could be a terrible weapon. Just hit it into somebody’s head or stomach or somewhere else. If they saw that you had a spade they tried to get away, or they surrendered."
>>978046
The Pacific War. The whole naval campaign was interesting as fuck for me.
New Britain campaign and the general Rabaul theater.
all of them desu
Fall Gelb. The German audacity and their unbelievable luck make it kinda dramatic, especially considering it wasn't a surprise attack and Allies had 8 month to prepare or to strike first. Too bad Germans were unable to appreciate how luck they were and became overconfident, resulting in their eventual downfall.
>>980280
I am rather certain Germany was screwed to begin with.
The USA was pretty much a ticking bomb, and the Soviet Union was just growing stronger and stronger every year, surpassing the German economy around the time.
>>980290
what if they had not invaded the USSR though? Stalin wasn't interested in attacking Germany any time in the near future and Germany could have better consolidated its gains along with having more troops available to back up Italy in North Africa
>>980290
The US had no casus belli to start a war with Germany and politically the US was very anti-war. The Soviet Union had no plans to attack Germany. Hitler just sucked at war.
>>980304
Well, as long as the USA ends up joining the war they are pretty much done for, Manhattan project and all.
I am not any professional, but I see there's two ways for them.
1, the USA decides to just stay out of this conflict, giving no support to the Britts that has to sign a truce with the Germans. This allows the Germans to invade the Soviets without them getting any lend lease, which if not crippling the Soviet war effort will at least place them in a weaker position.
2, Churchill gets his will through on everything past Munich treaty. Aka, UK invasion of Scandinavia and black sea to help Finland and attack the USSR. This pushes Germany and the USSR closely together against their common foe, leading to an continental super alliance.
>>980317
>The USA had no plans to attack Germany
Didn't Roosevelt really want to get a chance to go and help his Anglo friends though?
>Stalin had no plans
Wasn't his original plan something like letting the overly hostile German nation tire itself against the Britts and French, then come in and beat the tired nation and become a liberator of Europe? The plan fell flat on its face after the success of fall grey.
>>980290
Yes, and if not for astonishing success of Fall Gelb Hitler would be much more cautious and open to negotiation to end the war earlier, and he would never dream about invading USSR or declaring war on US. I think he could have get peace with Allies recognizing the partition of Poland if he wasn't so greedy. The war would be much shorter if Fall Gelb was won hard way.
Winter War
>>978055
MEIN GOTT IT'S ANOTHER DRESDEN
>>980380
I am a Russophile if I claim that Finland wouldn't have came out of it half as well if the Russians hadn't applied a retard to plan the initial attack and it wasn't that much up to the quality of their troops or high command?
>>980317
When Germany declared war, the US Coast Guard was already fighting German U-boats who were threatening Lend-Lease convoys bringing supplies to the UK and USSR/
>>980398
The US also occupied Iceland during the war so it would not fall into German hands, not the most neutral thing to do.
>>980397
Yeah, russian leaders were insanely incompetent.
But guerrilla warfare turns me on
Operation Meetinghouse
>>978450
he was old and had full armor suit
>>978046
Invasion of Malaya
>>980513
That tends to happen when all the competent ones are purged by a paranoid dictator.
At least they weren't as bad as the Japanese.
>>980513
The Phillipine Theater should turn you on then.
The battles of El Alamein
Desert Fox BTFO
The Anglos always win in the end
>>980564
>All that battle and death
>For some acres of sand
>None of the men had any attachment too
>>980572
True, but if we only look at the goals the German had it was a failure as it failed to get even close to the main goal, destroying the Soviet Army.
Kuban Campaign. Interesting major battle that never gets talked about (not even a wikipedia page) because it fell between Stalingrad and Kursk.
>>980576
True. Looking at the Red army in world war 2 is like looking at a Hydra. In a lot of battles, especially earlier in the war, the red army took far higher casualties then their German counterparts. Even during the battle of Kiev the soviets lost over half a million.
>>980601
And then the Germans let most of them starve to death with many of the few survivors being sent to Gulag, though life.
>>978046
Either the Solomon Islands Campaign or Ryukyus Campaign. Solomons because it was the turning point in the PTO and ensured Australia stayed afloat. Ryukyus because it was by far the bloodiest portion of the war in the PTO.
>>980623
OVER THREE MILLION of Soviet military dead in WW2 are POWs dying in captivity.
Basically every third Soviet dead soldier in WW2 met his end in a German prison camp.
That's literally insane.
>>978046
>What's your favorite WW2 battle/campaign? It's Operation Barbarossa for me.
Hi! How's middle school going? :)
So how do you pronounce "Bagration" anyway/
>>978046
Kursk for me
The one where they needlessly kill each other.
>>982543
bag-ration
>>982543
"Бaгpaтиoн", obviously.
Midway
The greatest victory of one of WW2's best commanders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w30FkSXyTE
>>983071
Midway was the luckiest shit in modern history. It literally depended on the two carriers at Coral Sea still being stuck in dry dock and having the absolute luck of catching the Japanese fleet out of position at the right time because some pilots got lost and then the clouds parted.
>>978046
Prague offensive. I like nazis getting its final rekt.
>>983194
that just makes it funnier imo
>>978046
>What's your favorite WW2 battle/campaign?
The Battle of Maczuga or Hill 262, during the closing of the Falaise Pocket; repeated furious German attacks against the Poles, as they desperatly tried to escape the pocket collapsing around them while the Poles fought them off again and again;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_262
“Gentlemen, all is lost. I do not think that the Canadians can come to our rescue. We have only about 110 able-bodied men left. Five shells per gun and 50 bullets per man. That's very little, but fight all the same. Surrender to the S.S. is futile; you know that. I thank you. You have fought well. Good luck, gentlemen. Tonight we shall die for Poland and for civilization! . . . each tank will fight independently, and eventually each man for himself."
>>980317
>politically the US was very anti-war
Meme. Gallup polling on the issue was very anti-German after the Fall of France
Kohima
>>978046
The bomber war over Germany, but that's mainly because it was one where personal research actually changed my mind about things.
For ages, I thought it was just pure butchery on the part of England and an attempt to punish Germany for starting the war; maybe I swallowed a few too many /pol/ memes. So I went looking for stuff, at first to justify the huge casualty totals you hear tossed about dresden.
Then, the more I learned, the more sophisticated, complex, and downright dangerous the campaign was. The whole war average loss rate was 6% for strategic bombing missions over Germany. (But, to be fair, that tends to be way higher in the beginning of the war, way lower once you hit 1944). If you have a 25 mission tour of duty, you've only got about a 1 in 5 chance of surviving that. Once that hit, I understood why so few of those old bomber pilots seemed to care about the humanitarian issues, they were too scared, too busy fighting for their lives.
Now I mostly have a different kind of disgust, because the more I look into the campaign, the more I realize how badly it was run and implemented.
>>983354
>"Stalingrad of the East
>Less than 15,000 dead at the highest estimate
>Stalingrad
>1.7 million dead at the lowest estimate
>>980601
Biggest problem with Germany during WWII is that they were massively out manufactured and outmanned compared to Russia and America.
I remember reading some passage where a German manufacturing operations analyst lost his fucking shit when he learned that German factories were still operating 9-5 in 1942 while Russians and Americans where literally working 24 hours seven days a week.
Not to be a naziboo but on a military doctrine and field operations standpoint Germany held an edge over allied forces (which is often quoted in books for being the reason why Wehrmacht morale never took a big hit until the very end of the war) but simply wasn't able to recover numerically and replenish itself to the overwhelming scale of the allies. This is also the reason why they went down the "wonder weapons" path since they looked for a miracle weapon to make up for the lack of manpower.
10:1 Kill ratios for Ferdinand TDs is lols, but you know you're fucked if 230+ confirmed tank kills in a single day is not enough to stop Soviet advances.
>>983391
Yup. The disparity in production capacity between the Axis and Allies was ridiculous. Take the Soviets, for example - they were producing 4,000 aircraft a month when Barbarossa began, while German aircraft production was only ~600 a month.
Hell, during the battle of Smolensk, the Soviets managed to funnel more aircraft into a single VVS district (900 aircraft) than the Germans had produced all across their territory during that same period.
The Soviets could literally build planes faster than they could be shot down.
>>983391
Not him, but some of that is tied to other factors: The German state was very poor when it came to primary resources like metals and general raw materials; they had a pretty large excess in industrially trained manpower relative to other bottlenecks. It's why factory bombing achieved so little in regards to German production totals, bomb one factory, and you just ship the steel that was headed to a different one; it was only when the transportation networks started to get hit bad that you showed creaks in the production machine.
And be careful about analyzing K:D ratios, especially on the Eastern Front, you have a mess of different accounting levels slathered on top of generous helpings of bullshit from both sides.
Also, while I would certainly concede that the Germans maintained a tactical edge for most if not all of the war, not so sure about operation level stuff. One only has to look at Rommel's activities in North Africa for an exemplary illustration of that: Winning at long odds in pitched battles showed tactical mastery, and then wasting it pursuing British forces well outside your ability to supply your own shows operational idiocy.
>>983391
>10:1 Kill ratios for Ferdinand TDs is lol
Not when all of them are destroyed by infantry because the retard who designed them forgot about machineguns and its HE round is garbage.
>>979409
Island hopping for the win
>>983194
Could you remind me who was the American commander at the Battle of the Coral Sea?...
>>978046
>>978046
whichever one that lead to the wholesale rape of those sweet sweet Aryan girls and women
>>983624
>you will never be an American GI sweeping through war-torn western Germany in the final years
>you will never come across a beautiful, young Aryan woman cowering quietly in the blown-out ruins of a small, quaint cottage
>you will never cautiously approach her as she shakes nervously in fear that you will take her on the spot
>you will never simply wrap your arms around her and hold her close, wordlessly letting her know that she will be safe with you
>>983624
Fall Weiss then.
>>983652
>you will never show her the armband of her deceased husband
>>983682
I don't know how she'd take that
>>978046
Battle of Madagascar. If there was ever a fight that showed off the wars Global Scope, that was it.
Case Blue is of course fascinating
Guadalcanal
Midway
last battle of the Bismarck
>>978046
Kharkov
>>983430
Yeah its fun learning that most Ferdinands were lost due to crew abandonment rather than straight up enemy fire
The remnants of the French First Army holding off 7 German division from reaching Dunkirk for five days and saving an estimated 100,000 more men in the evacuation. After running out of ammunition and completely surrounded out of respect the Germans allowed them to surrender with full honours, which they had previously done to the defenders of Fort Vaux in WWI.
>>980548
Invasion of Malaya is drummed into teenagers.
Unfortunately, instead of learning actual lessons, Singapore's history lessons are not about learning history as is a propaganda forcefeeding. (And it's even worse in the armed forces, where our generals get away with "trust no one" as the main leason insead of "DON'T GAMBLE ON DEFENSES, IF YOU HAVE AMMO, KEEP FIGHTING and WE SHOULD HAVE SUPPLIED THAILAND."
Yes, the fucking Thais fought the IJA for 2 days before letting them through.
>>983418
It was so bad OKH flew in a succession of generals to reason with Rommel, but Rommel did not listen because Hitler loved the shit out of him.
Keep in mind that the German staff officers thought he was not fit for anything higher than battlion command to begin with. That's right, even Guderian thought he was an undeserving young upstart whose entire career was all because of Hitler's favor.
Personally, I think they should have given him a chance. He would have done much better with the training given to staff officers. Learning about logistics and shit would have tempered his recklessness and he'd still have his tactical edge.
Also knowing about Barbarossa would have helped a lot.
>>978046
Literally everything in the China Burma India Theater. Literally ignored, with a very interesting cast. Also, 5 Shermans take on the IJA's best tanks and they couldn't stop winning as if they had godmode on.
Second place goes to North Africa.
>>986775
>Also, 5 Shermans take on the IJA's best tanks and they couldn't stop winning as if they had godmode on.
When?
>>980290
>Great Powers
>Australia
>>983314
>the Canadians
Of all the countries why the Canadians?
>>988321
Red-white flags should stick together.
>>988298
>Australia
>>980513
Do you mean guerilla warfare in the sense of mobile ski warfare ? Cause winter war was a mix of this and conventional warfare
>>980280
PANZER ELITE
BORN TO COMPETE
NEVER RETREAT
>>988847
>GHOST DIVISION
>>988321
There were three Canadian divisions operating in the British zone as well, often alongside Free Polish troops.
In fact, Polish forces in exile operated as part of the First Canadian Army in western Europe for a fair while, alongside all five Canadian divisions in Europe.
>>980181
I wonder why his skull is picked clean but his hands are still mostly intact?
>>988875
Brain matter senpai
I tend to bounce around a fair bit in my interest in WW2 campaigns.
Might be part of being a historical wargamer.
When it comes to naval stuff, I've read up a fair bit about the battle of the Java Sea, the desperate attempt by a scraped-together Allied fleet to stop the Japanese invasion of Java.
For land battles, I've been looking into the North African campaign and building/painting a pair of small Desert Rats and DAK armies.
I fondly remember reading an old rulebook for desert warfare written by Donald Featherstone, a legendary wargames designer who also served as a tanker in that campaign.
Said book also had a whole bunch of anecdotes about the equipment used and why certain rules design choices were made to represent how things worked out there.
>>983652
>you will never take her on the spot
>>983686
Obviously she would know that her husband has died for nothing and her jewish masters are here now to make her submit to the cock.
>>988289
http://www.cbi-theater.com/1ptg/
It's a great read.
>>986720
>The remnants of the French First Army holding off 7 German division
>holding off
Isn't it pretty well known now that the French First Army didn't hold off shit and instead the Germany army allowed the British to retreat due to a number of factors well out of French control?
>>990237
Yes
>>983314
Interesting.
>>978046
My favorite is Siege of Sevastopol. As well as Battle of Westerplatte.
>>990237
There was plenty of fighting in the defense of Dunkirk. Hitler just delayed the initial attack because he needed to repair and refuel his Panzers.
The defense of Wilhelmshaven
>On 30 March, B-24 Liberators from the Eighth Air Force attacked the harbor; Köln was hit and sank on an even keel. Since her guns remained above water, the ship was used as an artillery battery to defend the city from advancing Allied forces. She served in this capacity until the end of the war in May.
Even in death she protected her people and managed to keep the American-Anglo advance from reaching the home of the Kriegsmarine
>>990633
That's crazy, and awesome. Respect. Link to any story about it?
>>990670
No particular stories I have on hand. Just her Wiki artcle and a couple books about the german surface fleet.
I really like the defense of Germany at the end of the war in general. So much insanity, improvisation (at one point, volksstrum units were plundering museums for muskets, old bolt action weapons and even crossbows) sacrifice, despair and madness. You started to see the true character of men in National Socialist German from the bad (Himmler fleeing and trying to make peace) to the good such as Walther Wenck, whose 12th Army was feeding 250,000 refugees every day and only engaging in combat to rescue as many civilians they could from the Soviets
>
>"Comrades, you've got to go in once more," Wenck said. "It's not about Berlin any more, it's not about the Reich any more." Their task was to save people from the fighting and the Russians. Wenck's leadership struck a powerful chord, even if the reactions varied between those who believed in a humanitarian operation and those keener to surrender to the Western allies instead of the Russians. -Antony Beevor
Napoleon's Six Day Campaign
He proved why he was the best
>>980407
Wasn't it UK that occupied Iceland ?
>>993010
US sent a marine division to occupy it early 1941.
>>983652
>you will never trade her a can of beans for bj
>>993010
Not him, but:
>Iceland a colony of Denmark
>Germans invade Denmark, Iceland declares itself neutral and independent.
>May of 1940, UK invades against no resistance, starts setting up naval and air bases.
>In June of 1941, to affirm Icelandic neutrality, control is transferred over to U.S. forces. After U.S. entry into the war, Iceland, while officially neutral, is essentially a co-belligerent, as the government didn't provide much of a damn either way about the American presence.
>>990237
>Isn't it pretty well known now that the French First Army didn't hold off shit and instead the Germany army allowed the British to retreat due to a number of factors well out of French control?
No, no one who has any history knowledge believes this version.
>>983343
kek
>>990714
>I really like the defense of Germany at the end of the war in general
telling all their wives, mothers and little sisters to just relax and take one for the Fatherland in their sweet sweet Aryan honeypots
Battle of Arracourt, a really neat tank battle that showcased some of the finest allied armored doctrine and tactics of the war.
Villers Bocage is a close second, and showcased the exact opposite.
>>993139
I've seen this same post with the same filename over and over
just stop you faggot pole, holy shit the asshurt
>>983652
carry on private....
>>988954
t. Ivan Kozlov
>>980317
>>980304
The fuck are you two faggots on about? The reason Hitler attacked Russia was because of increased Russian aggression and rearmament. They wanted to stop them before they became a threat. Poland got DP'd by Nazis and Commies and Russia fucking decided to send a million men to take over Finland who wasn't even involved in the war.
>>993555
You know, there's a reason Germany never supported Finland during it.
>>983375
>casualties is the same as dead
Definetely El Alamein or operation Husky.El Alamein because Rommel was the GOAT german strategist,wrecking allied forces with limited supplies.Operation husky because of how the allies fooled the Axis by planting a corpse with a briefcase carrying fake secret documents about an invasion of greece.
Saipan
>>994171
>>994203
>>988875
Gloves you cuck.
