The name of the book is: Hitler's War by Heinz Magenheimer, ISBN 0-304-36208-5.
Price: (in 1998), $9.95, CAN$14.95 or UK 7.99.

Peter

Excuses, sorry.

The book mentioned above is avery good book about the geo-politcal and strategic backgrounds of the militairy decisions made by the Germans, but I actually meant:
The Hitler/Hess Deception. British Intelligence's Best-KeptSecret of the Second World War by Martin Allen.
I read it in Dutch, so I do not know international prices and ISBN-numbers.

Sorry again,

Peter

We have been discussing many battles, strategies and what -ifs, and it leads me to a couple questions.

1. Is there one battle that would have lost the war for the allies?

2. What were the populations of the countries involved? I have searched for this information and can't find it (for 1939/40). The only one I'm certain of is the US which, in 1940, had a population of 130-135 million.

One reason I asked is that, although Germany was successfully attacking almost everywhere, it was also holding down a European population that almost certasinly would have developed partisan guerilla movements. How many German troops would have been required to keep hostile populations in check?

i have to agree with you there steve lets say germany had been successful in invading england and knocked us out of the war they'd have been looking at a similar situation the roman's faced centuries before too much territory to police, not enough man power a mean let's face it they'd have still come into difficulty once they invaded russia. and like you said it would be an almost certainty that all those countries under nazi occupation would have had guerilla partisan movements, as proved by the french, the greeks and the yugoslavs.

Chas, While I think the war was way to big to have a "turning point" I do believe individual battles do, especialy small unit action. That being said, two of the larger pivot points in the war were certainly the RAF's dogged refusal to disintegrate and the fatal idea that England was defeated and the war could be expanded into Russia. I think the writing was on the wall by late '42 but how to dismount the tiger?

Peter -

Thanks for the input about Magenheimer's book. I bought it and am reading it now. I found one big surprise. Magenheimer presents evidence that the German attack on the Soviet Union was a pre-emptive attack! He presents a map, apparently from Russian archives, that shows the Red Army attacking through eastern Poland with over 200 divisions. He also states that one reason the Red Army was caught off guard and suffered such heavy losses was because they were deployed for offense. If this is true, and Magenheimer is supposed to be a reputable historian it throws new light on the war in the east. Stalin wanted as much of Europe as he could take.

What does everybody think?

Steve

Yeah i can i get where you are coming from, accept you missed out Kursk

Simon, are you answering LuckyBlunder's post?

If so, I think he was talking about the initial Blitzkrieg invasion of Russia, when according to Magenheimer, the Red Army was put on the defensive, despite being deployed for offensive strategy.

The battle of Kursk took place in July 1943, by that time the effectiveness of the Blitzkrieg tactic was limited if not obsolete.

I do not pretend to know what "everybody" thinks about this theory presented by Magenheimer and the evidence he bases it on.
Maybe it was pre-emptive but considering how well planned it was by the German side
I do not believe that the Germans attacked as a hurried response to a perceived threat.
If it was pre-emptive then only in the sense that it was launched a few days or a week
earlier than planned. The various evidence presented by various German officers after the war should be as attempts to wriggle out of the Nuremberg process: "Please mr Judge, don't put the whole blame on us, we only attacked Mr Stalin and the Soviet Union because
they were planning on attacking us so we are innocent" .
Considering that Hitler was talking loudly about the "lebensraum" that the German people
required in the east one could argue that Stalins expansion westward was only to get some
buffer space so that the expected German attack would have to start further west instead of
launching at the Soviet border.

The Germans also presented evidence that the attack on Poland was a response to
Polish attacks on German border guards. The proof was German criminals dressed up in
Polish uniforms, murdered and then planted outside a border post which had been attacked by the SS so that the border guards could testify that they had been shot at.

Considering the disorganised state of the Red Army at that time I doubt that they were
really considering an attack westward at that time. As for the maps and other evidence
dug up in archives in the Soviet Union I don't doubt their existence as this is more or
less routine work to keep staff officers trained. Develop plans for various cases, play them
out in exercises, check how it works and tune them. It could also be seen as Soviet
officers trying to explain why their defenses were crushed: "We were deployed for attack,
not for defense" .
Personally I consider this as crap, if a unit is deployed for attack then it is also alert,
all personell are at their posts, fuel and ammunition is ready et.c. et.c . They are NOT sitting in barracks with their pants down. Since I didn't serve in the Red Army at that time I do
not know exactly what they were doing but preparing for an attack and sitting with their
"boots off" doesn't make sense. They should have been alert since they had just finished
their invasion of half of Poland (as agreed in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact).
/ Robin