Recent content by Aber

That was an example where a fully prepared defence of a country at war, expecting an invasion failed to act promptly and decisively. Now imagine a country not expecting war. Unlikely, IIRC the border was crossed at 2am. The British have not told them anything and it will take time for the Thai...

👍 Poor communication infrastructure, most people being asleep (and some not in their own beds), contradictory reports (reports will not arrive in a nice sequential order), calls for clarification from the centre, and for the Japanese coding and decoding, will slow the spread of accurate...

OK, but as discussed before information flows took much longer in WW2. Who did his information go to, where were they based, and how did that flow to Japanese commanders? Secondly, how much do the Japanese trust him; he might have turned and used to feed disinfo at a critical time?

Well, the British did sort-of defeat the Germans during Crusader.

Perhaps a belief that Britain + Russia (plus undeclared USA) > Germany + Italy, and a desire to be on the winning side. Harder to justify a blockade on an ally; allies will ask China to be more "reasonable". Doesn't have to be true, just that the Japanese leadership believe it.

Oh yes, from the last century; will he still get to investigate Katyn?

Simply not enough US forces available, and the British are not risking losing another campaign in France. Allied grand strategy is probably focus on Middle East and Mediterranean - need to prevent a German drive to the Persian Gulf, limit oil supplies from Baku and Ploesti, stretch German...

👍 Of course, also former house detective at the Adlon, and renowned for catching Gormann the strangler.

So no invasion of Persia by the British, and no air campaign against Baku by the RAF?

Churchill was a politician and could see the criticism coming "we went to war for Poland, and now it's still occupied, although by a different dictator". Operation Unthinkable analysis shows "even if we went to war with the Soviet Union, we'd end up with a stalemate in Poland".

You need to be slightly careful on the balance between political and military influence on strategy. Churchill was careful not to go against military advice. Churchill's low point was post Gazala and was saved by Alam Halfa (after he had changed the British generals). A loss of Alam Halfa...

Can we break this down a little? Tanks; Agree - but needs a hole puncher Infantry; Disagree - infantry in the open are attacked better with a machine gun than single shot HE. Dug in infantry will be near invisible. Artillery pieces; Partially disagree - Single shot HE may be better in certain...

What exactly do you need to "blow up", and at what range? Direct fire HE falls out of favour because gun crew are vulnerable to medium machine gun fire. Putting it in tanks solves that problem but still gives you an issue with identifying targets. It's arguable that tanks as artillery OPs would...

British doctrine both interwar and during WW2; infantry support was the role of the artillery with a barrage of a lot of lighter shells (hence 25pdr) to suppress the defenders, "infantry" tank support was to intimidate defenders and to stop an armoured counterattack before anti-tank guns could...

Brereton and FAAA rejected airborne involvement multiple times: 6th Airborne were not available before 1 October, as they were refitting after being involved in combat up to the Seine crossing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Airborne_Division_advance_to_the_River_Seine Walcheren is a...