This Day in History

[Adm.Lee]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

But if one bothers to ask the GIs who were destined to disembark on X-Day..."When the bombs were dropped, I knew that the war would end and I would live."

Interestingly, I've seen one different opinion. George MacDonald Fraser, a British infantryman in Burma, related in his memoir Quartered safe out here. He thought that if he had posed the option to his squadmates, "Another campaign for us, or hundreds of thousands of enemy civilians dead?" they would have grumbled and complained, but made the effort. Now, that's 50 years later, and his opinion projected onto others, but there it is.

[headquarters]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

Interestingly, I've seen one different opinion. George MacDonald Fraser, a British infantryman in Burma, related in his memoir Quartered safe out here. He thought that if he had posed the option to his squadmates, "Another campaign for us, or hundreds of thousands of enemy civilians dead?" they would have grumbled and complained, but made the effort. Now, that's 50 years later, and his opinion projected onto others, but there it is.

They probably would agree with dropping the bomb.

[headquarters]

I guess the topic is an example of a grey area when it comes to morals and ethics etc etc

We could put together an argument pro and an equally compelling one con.

War crimes committed by both sides gets me down a bit. I prefer thinking of the purely military operations with purely military targets and objectives - not the horrible truth that in war the various sides will target the enemy where it hurts the most - his women and children - to subdue him.

This could of course end the war - which is good. Then again attacking the women and children is evil.

Just my two cents - and I of course see that I didnt invent gunpowder here..

Thanks Dragon for the facts and info . Very interesting to see the actual numbers.

[dragoon500ly]

The Imperial Japanese Army fielded several types of infantry divisions during World War II. The "Standard" Infantry Division had a TO&E strength of 20,000 personnel; transport was provided by some 7.500 horses; armament wise, this division was equipped with 9,000 rifles, 382 light machine guns, 340 grenade launchers, 112 heavy machine guns, 22 37mm/47mm anti-tank guns, 18 70mm battalion guns, 12 65mm regimental guns, 36 75mm field guns and 7 tankettes.

The "Strengthed" Infantry Division had a TO&E strength of 29,408 personnel; transport was provided by 9,906 horses and 502 motor vehicles. Weapons included 10,000 rifles, 405 light machine guns, 457 grenade launchers, 112 heavy machine guns, 72 20mm anti-tank rifles, 30 37mm/47mm anti-tank guns, 36 70mm battalion guns, 24 75mm regimental guns, 12 75mm field guns, 24 105mm howitzers, 12 150mm howitzers, 20 light tanks, 48 medium tanks and 13 tankettes.

The final type of Infantry Division was the "Strengthed (Modified) Division. Its TO&E strength was 24,600 men; transport was provided by 7,930 horses and 284 motor vehicles. Armament included 10,000 rifles, 411 light machine guns, 453 grenade launchers, 114 heavy machine guns, 78 20mm anti-tank rifles, 18 37mm/47mm anti-tank guns, 36 70mm battalion guns, 12 75mm regimental guns, 24 75mm field guns, 12 105mm howitzers and 6 tankettes.

[rcaf_777]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

The Commonwealth would be represented by three divisions (2nd British, 7th Australian, and 5th Indian and the 3rd Commando Brigade); these are very suspect and any specific knowledge would be gratefully included!

Canada's Force would have been the Canadian Army Pacific Force

Canadian Army Pacific Force

The Canadian Army Pacific Force was raised in 1945 as a field force intended to participate in the last phase of The War Against Japan, an anticipated Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands in the last phase of the Second World War. The CAPF was based on an infantry division structure, however, to increase operability with the Americans, certain units bore US organizational structures and names. As well, Canadian units went into training with US weapons to ease logistical concerns.

Major General Bert Hoffmeister was named to command the division, and the three Infantry Regiments (the equivalent of a Canadian brigade) had battalions bearing the name of those infantry battalions that had fought with the 1st Canadian Infantry Division in Europe. These would formed as 2nd or
3rd Battalion, the 1st being the ones that did fight in Europe.

Detialed Order of Battle can be found here

http://www.canadiansoldiers.com/orga...cificforce.htm

[dragoon500ly]

Flipping through a variety of military histories, I don't believe that there has ever been a war in which the civilians did not suffer to some degree, but the advent of the 20th Century has seen the concept of "Total War" which seeks to not only to defeat the enemy military on the field but to destroy his means to resist and to damage his will to continue to resist.

Americans like to delude themselves that we "fight fair", that we only "fight other soldiers", that "we use every means to avoid civilian losses", nothing can be further from the truth. Using B-17s (or B-52s) to target factories that manufacture war material is a great idea, but too many factories have neighborhoods nearby that house the workers and their families...and bombing from the air is not quite as accurate as we like to believe it is. And the Air Force is not the only service with this problem. Don't forget that in the Normandy fighting, the US Army reduced the town of St. Lo to rubble in an effort to blast its defenders out of their positions, just to name one example out of thousands.

In the US, the President simply issues broad guidelines to the Joint Chiefs and it is their responibility to issue the necessary orders to the theater commanders and so forth. Truman was faced with the hardest decision that any President ever had to make, not only did he have to make the decision to use atomic bombs, he also had to approve the target list. Based on the information that he had at the time, based on the ruthlessness that the Japanese military had shown, based on the willingness of Japanese civilians to kill themselves rather than endure capture at the hands of the Americans, faced with the predicted losses that the invasion of Japan would have meant, not only to the Allies, but to the Japanese as well, he made the decision to target two, untouched cities as a demonstration that the Allies were willing to reduce Japan to ashes. Faced with the prospect, finally, the Japanese made the decision to accept the offer and surrender.

Right or wrong, his decision has been blasted for the sixty odd years since he made it. It has become popular nowdays to mock Truman, to proclaim him a racist willing to end the war, now matter how many Japanese he had to kill and so on. Even serious scholars are willingly to follow the current fad and damn him as the man responsible for directly ordering the deaths of civilians in the most horrific manner possible.

For myself, I can only sit back and wonder at the courage he showed, at his willingless to make a decision to end the most terrible of wars at any cost, and above all the manner that he lived out the rest of his life, certain that he made the only decision possible.

[ArmySGT.]

Today in WW II: 23 Aug 1939 Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia sign a mutual non-aggression pact [Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement] with secret clauses giving the Soviets access to the Baltic states.

[Webstral]

I know a lot of people call into question the use of the Bomb on two Japanese cities. One has to wonder, though, whether it would be better to kill ten or a hundred times as many women and children in a more decentralized fashion. There is every reason to believe that the fighting for the Japanese home islands would have been every bit as bloody as Okinawa. The death toll among Japanese civilians would have been catastrophic—even compared to the death toll from strategic bombing to that point. A million American soldiers, a half-million British soldiers, four million or more Japanese soldiers, and 10 million or more Japanese civilians… To me, there’s no real choice. If you can save these lives by taking 100,000 in a spectacular fashion, take the 100,000 and call it bargain.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Webstral

A million American soldiers, a half-million British soldiers, four million or more Japanese soldiers, and 10 million or more Japanese civilians…

I'd like to think that the ANZACs would've been there too. Maybe not though, MacArthur basically froze us out near the end of the war. He had Aussie troops conducting operations in side theatres that were basically a waste of time. He obviously didn't think our guys rated. Try telling that to the men that fought on the Kokoda Trail, basically holding back the Japanese alone and buying time for Australia until the US committed troops.

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by Targan

I'd like to think that the ANZACs would've been there too. Maybe not though, MacArthur basically froze us out near the end of the war. He had Aussie troops conducting operations in side theatres that were basically a waste of time. He obviously didn't think our guys rated. Try telling that to the men that fought on the Kokoda Trail, basically holding back the Japanese alone and buying time for Australia until the US committed troops.

No argument from me! The ANZACs more than earned their reputation as Fighting Bastards!

[headquarters]

Opinions vary of this man - he did abandon his troops after the PI was overrun in 1942. He also advocated using nuclear weapons in Korea in 1951.

All in all - I think he had good taste in sunglasses

[HorseSoldier]

Off topic, but this seems odd --

The Canadian Army Pacific Force was raised in 1945 as a field force intended to participate in the last phase of The War Against Japan, an anticipated Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands in the last phase of the Second World War. The CAPF was based on an infantry division structure, however, to increase operability with the Americans, certain units bore US organizational structures and names. As well, Canadian units went into training with US weapons to ease logistical concerns.

The commonality of equipment makes sense. I have to wonder at the politics that might have gone into the Canadian military adopting US terminology for the division involved. I've read that during the early Cold War there was tension between Francophone elements who favored emulating the US military format and Anglophone elements who liked the British traditions. An early example of that?

[rcaf_777]

Would be that much of an issues many americans prior to 1941 and served the Canadian Military and many Canadian served with the 1st Speical Service Force durring the War

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Targan

I'd like to think that the ANZACs would've been there too. Maybe not though, MacArthur... obviously didn't think our guys rated. Try telling that to the men that fought on the Kokoda Trail, basically holding back the Japanese alone and buying time for Australia until the US committed troops.

I want to preface this post by admitting that I don't know a whole lot about Australia's military involvement in WWII. I'm not trying to stir up drama here, or insult anyone. I want the Australian perspective on this issue and that's why I'm posting this here.

In his history of the final year of the Pacific theater, Retribution, Max Hastings, a British historian, gives a scathing assessment of many Australian units in the Pacific theater, claiming that they fought neither hard nor well. He attributes this to the fact that the British sent the best Aussie units to fight in North Africa and Italy, leaving less well equipped, trained, and motivated troops behind to defend Australia. These units would later be sent to New Guinea and elsewhere in the PTO to fight the Japanese and, with a few notable exceptions, they did not perform particularly well. Hastings goes on to rip MacArthur for his costly vanity project of retaking the Philippines.

He also rips the Australian dockworkers for striking multiple times throughout the war, serious hampering Allied logistics.

How are these two issues seen by Australians? Is there anything there or is Hastings so sort of Australiophobe?

[weswood]

IMO, the whole not attacking civilians idiology came about because of WWII. During and prior to that war even civilised nations attacked civilian populations. I'm not as educated as a lot on this board but the bombing of Berlin by the Allies and the bombing of London comes imediately to mind. As far back in American history, during the French & Indian War, one of our early presidents had a reputation for destroying indian villages to deny thier fighters shelter & supplies. Even as far back as the first century of Christianity the Vikings had a reputation for sacking Churches, IMO because there were few warriors and good loot in them.

I think WWII was a turning point for civilised people, they (we) saw the horror of women & children killed not just during attacks but from diseases and starvation afterward. Note that I say civilised nations, there's still some out there that are bugfuck crazy.

[Jason Weiser]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I want to preface this post by admitting that I don't know a whole lot about Australia's military involvement in WWII. I'm not trying to stir up drama here, or insult anyone. I want the Australian perspective on this issue and that's why I'm posting this here.

In his history of the final year of the Pacific theater, Retribution, Max Hastings, a British historian, gives a scathing assessment of many Australian units in the Pacific theater, claiming that they fought neither hard nor well. He attributes this to the fact that the British sent the best Aussie units to fight in North Africa and Italy, leaving less well equipped, trained, and motivated troops behind to defend Australia. These units would later be sent to New Guinea and elsewhere in the PTO to fight the Japanese and, with a few notable exceptions, they did not perform particularly well. Hastings goes on to rip MacArthur for his costly vanity project of retaking the Philippines.

He also rips the Australian dockworkers for striking multiple times throughout the war, serious hampering Allied logistics.

How are these two issues seen by Australians? Is there anything there or is Hastings so sort of Australiophobe?

Rae,
I try not to take anything Hastings says too seriously. His book on Normandy was kinda insulting where he asserted the Germans were the finest army in the world at that point. I suppose in 1941, they were. But by 1944? Their finest was making all kinds of fatal land deals on the Eastern Front and what was left was concentrated in the Waffen-SS and select units. The rest? Pick from Soviet and Polish POWs, older reservists, the lame and the sick and occupation troops. And the way he denigrated all the Allies, well, John Keegan was so maddened by it, he wrote Six Armies in Normandy as a response. Much better book IMO.

[dragoon500ly]

When I bought Hastings book, I was hoping for a detailed look into the British Army during the battle, its a decent overview of that. but Hastings pretty much blows off the accomplisments of the US Army, indeed, one is left with the opinion that if that idiot Eisenhower had simply shown the good sense to anoint dear Monty as ground forces commander, the war would have been over in time for the August holidays.

Objective he is not.

Jason, buddy, ole pal, you owe me for a new keyboard, read your tag line just as I was taking a sip of coffee.....

[HorseSoldier]

IMO, the whole not attacking civilians idiology came about because of WWII.

There's variation both through history and from culture to culture. In Europe, the idea that you didn't target civilians (at least not white, European civilians -- mileage may vary out in the colonies . . .) got established, I think, during the 1700s, and got more mileage in the century of relative peace between Napoleon and WW1. Part of the propaganda that justified the UK entering the war was how savage the German military was being to Belgian and Dutch civilians (which was deemed outside the pale of acceptable, civilized behavior, not just an aspect of how the game was played).

Obviously, things got notably nastier in WW2 and generated intensification of that sentiment. The big innovation evolving out of WW2 in this field is probably the idea of a world community that will hold combatants individually criminally accountable for actions that fall outside accepted wartime behavior.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

When I bought Hastings book, I was hoping for a detailed look into the British Army during the battle, its a decent overview of that. but Hastings pretty much blows off the accomplisments of the US Army, indeed, one is left with the opinion that if that idiot Eisenhower had simply shown the good sense to anoint dear Monty as ground forces commander, the war would have been over in time for the August holidays.

I don't know about the Monty thing. Hastings was pretty critical of Monty in Armageddon (his history of the last year of WWII in Europe), and his portrayal of Monty's handling of the multiple offensives around Caen during the Normandy campaign in Overlord was none too flattering either.

On a side note, reading Hastings' Overlord in high school (thank goodness for that free period) is what turned me on to WII.

I just want to know what Australians think about his accusations. I've read nothing but good things about the Aussies in North Africa and Anthony Beevor (in his recent single volume history of WWII), gives them props for their near superhuman efforts on the Kokoda trail. Heaven knows that not all American units peformed admirably during the war- we kind of bungled our way through North Africa and it was touch-and-go a couple of times in Italy- so I'm not trying to stir up trouble here along national fault lines. I'd just like the Australian POV on the matter.

[Targan]

Before I start I should say that Legbreaker is probably much better equipped than me to comment about Australia's WWII history. Also bear in mind that culturally, Australians and New Zealanders tend to celebrate the underdog (indeed, that's partly why we get so excited about events such as the Olympics, because on a per-capita basis we tend to do very well in the medal counts).

It's true that the best ANZAC forces were sent to Africa early in the war. Some were brought back to counter the rising threat of the Japanese but 2 big problems affected our ability to counter Japanese advances in the South Pacific. The first was that the bloody British gave up Singapore without a fight and we lost thousands of troops to Japanese prison camps (where they were used as slave labor and most of them were starved, worked and beaten to death) as a result.

Secondly, especially during much of the Kokoda Track campaign, most of the Australian troops involved against the Japanese in New Guinea were militia (what we now call the Army Reserve). Australia's Army Reserve forces these days are pretty good, especially for part timers, but back then they were sorely under-trained and under-equipped.

I think Wikipedia does a pretty good job of describing the Kokoda Track campaign in a nutshell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokoda_Track_campaign.

We fought a series of delaying actions over the mountains of New Guinea against Japanese who were much better equipped and more experienced and we still fought them to a standstill. At the time all that stood between the Japanese completely controlling Papua and then probably beating the hell out of Australia's northern communities were afew battalions of militia. I can't begin to imagine what a bummer it must've been, slogging through tropical jungle and mud IN THE MOUNTAINS! Much of the fighting was virtually face-to-face. The engagement distances weren't much further than muzzle flash and bayonet tip.

Australian forces have a long history of doing more with less, much like our British counterparts. I'm actually kind of amazed that the Australian Army is still a highly effective force because, unlike during WWI and WWII when most Australians were tough-as-nails country boys who grew up shooting and riding and roaming the bush, most Aussies these days are soft, pudgy, weak urban dwellers.

Here's a quote from Wikipedia's entry on the First Battle of Kokoda:

"Although the defenders were poorly trained, outnumbered and under-resourced, the resistance was such that, according to captured documents, the Japanese believed they had defeated a force more than 1,200 strong when, in fact, they were facing only 77 Australian troops."

That is an example of the "underdog" status that we Aussies tend to worship. The Gallipoli campaign and the Battle of Long Tan are other good examples. We don't necessarilly have to win a battle for it to be glorified in Australian history, we just have to "punch above our weight"

[Adm.Lee]

Originally Posted by Raellus

In his history of the final year of the Pacific theater, Retribution, Max Hastings, a British historian, gives a scathing assessment of many Australian units in the Pacific theater, claiming that they fought neither hard nor well. He attributes this to the fact that the British sent the best Aussie units to fight in North Africa and Italy, leaving less well equipped, trained, and motivated troops behind to defend Australia. These units would later be sent to New Guinea and elsewhere in the PTO to fight the Japanese and, with a few notable exceptions, they did not perform particularly well. Hastings goes on to rip MacArthur for his costly vanity project of retaking the Philippines.

He also rips the Australian dockworkers for striking multiple times throughout the war, serious hampering Allied logistics.

How are these two issues seen by Australians? Is there anything there or is Hastings so sort of Australiophobe?

I'm not an Australian, but a Pacific War student. It's kinda true, but not the whole truth.

The NZ (Wellington, IIRC) dockworkers' union were definitely not feeling any urgency in July '42, when the Marines needed to combat-load their ships before the Guadalcanal landings. Marines had to take over the docks. I'm not aware of any other incidents, that may have been the most serious.

Australia raised, IIRC, roughly 3 divisions before 1942, and two of those went to the Mediterranean, another went down at Singapore, so that left scattered small militia units to get overrun by the Japanese. If there had been more (and air cover) to make a real fight of Rabaul, that could have changed the course of the war. When those troops came back to fight on New Guinea, they struggled with the harsh terrain and slim logistics, but IMO they put in a better record than the green Americans in late 1942.

After that, it seems like MacArthur did his level best to sideline the Australians. It got to the point where there were Australian staff officers and units assigned to the Sixth US Army, so he created "Alamo Force", using only American elements to do all the same things that Sixth Army was supposed to do.