You could go to home page, or the main WWII controversy page. Last updated 1998 January 8.
If you mail me, I would appreciate permission to quote you on this site, particularly if you disagree with me.
There are many things about World War II that have been debated, and I have firm opinions on some of these. This is my attempt to answer certain questions, of greater and lesser importance.
What reply did General MacAuliffe give to the Germans about surrendering Bastogne?
The reported answer is "Nuts!". There have been persistent rumors that he used another word, probably referring to excrement. I think this unlikely for two reasons. The first is that the General maintained that he said "Nuts!" afterwards. The second is that the reports are clear that the Germans were puzzled by the meaning. Anything relating to biological functions would be easily translatable, while American slang could cause great problems. Therefore, I believe the answer was "Nuts!".
This is the second most controversial Western Allied action of the war, and one I've only recently come to terms with . After the fall of France, it was obvious that Britain had no effective ways of hitting at Germany on land. The British were maintaining a naval blockade, but that is dull and doesn't look like activity. The only way to strike back was with bombers. The British tried bombing German industrial sites during the day, and suffered horrible losses. This left night bombing as the only option, and bombing at night was very inaccurate. Bomber Command defined entire cities as targets, and even so large number of bombers missed.
Since it was only possible to bomb cities, the bombing offensive was conducted largely against civilians. This has been considered ignoble for a long time, although in modern war it is difficult to establish a reasonable dividing line. Most soldiers in modern wars are conscripts, and therefore have no special moral obligation to be shot at exclusively (since moral obligations only exist where there is choice), and most civilians in modern wars do contribute to the war effort. Further, the bombing did not have commensurate military effects. It was largely impossible to break civilian morale by bombing (the British knew this, after the Germans tried it), and very difficult to bomb anything significant to the war effort.
The United States joined the effort, and worked hard on making daytime bombing work. After Eight AIr Force found that large numbers of heavily armed and armored bombers in tight formation were inadequate, it started using long-range fighters with drop tanks to escort bombers to their destinations and back, and that did work. American bombers were somewhat more accurate, since they bombed by daylight, but still did most of their damage to civilians.
It is, of course, not possible to judge how much effect the bombing had on the German war economy, since German production peaked late in the bombing campaign, as Speer mobilized the German economy for war (far too late). Certainly German production was affected by the bombing, but it is hard to tell how much. Allied bombing of oil-producing targets helped shut down German air and motorized forces, but again it is difficult to tell how much.
However, the Allied bombing offensives caused the Germans to take defensive measures, and certainly they were at least as valuable to the cause as these measures indicate. During the titanic Kursk battle on the Eastern front, the majority of German aircraft losses were over Germany, indicating that the Germans launched a great and important offensive with a half-hearted air force. By the end of 1943, the home defense consisted of about a million heavily-armed men and over two-thirds of the available fighters, at a time when the Germans were becoming increasingly desperate for soldiers and air cover at the front. During 1944, the German air force was defeated permanently, and the Allies dominated the air from then on. These are clearly results of the bombing campaigns, and represented considerable contributions, greater than anything else the Western Allies could do before mid-1944.
It could be argued that the campaign was wasteful of British production and manpower. Production is not all that important, since in the second half of the war the British generally had all the equipment they needed. On the other hand the British Empire was seriously short of manpower (presumably, India could have been used as a vast source, but the British feared that massive conscription of Indians would lead to Indian nationalism, and Indians were not all that well-educated anyway). On the third hand, the shortage only became vital in mid-1944, when the Normandy invasion had the British maintaining armies in France, Italy, and India, with contingents in Greece and other places. It was not politically possible to cancel the bombing campaign and train the people involved as infantry in a great hurry, and it would have to be done in a great hurry to be useful.
The moral imperative of the hour was to defeat Nazi Germany, and a good deal of collateral harm was to be expected. I find any reasonable attempt at warfare acceptable under those conditions.
How effective was the Maginot Line?
Very effective. The Germans never seriously considered attacking it, even though it was held by second-rate troops. Can you ask more of a fortress line?
It was designed to be interlocking heavy fortifications primarily covering the vulnerable spots of the line, perhaps allowing some advances that would go nowhere. It did not have the weakness of its Belgian counterparts against paratroops. The Maginot Line emplacements were designed to resist their own fire, so that any paratroopers or other infiltrating infantry could be fired at with heavy guns at any time. It was well-supplied. It was expensive, but also the defense closest to impregnability in the war. France did not lose because of the Maginot Line, but because of bad army organization and inept troop deployment.
All contents of these pages Copyright 1997 by David H. Thornley.