Worst Participations of WWII

I think the real science of creating a professional army didn't develop until after (and for the Americans during) WWII. That means that there was a real good connection between how strong a nation you were economically and politically and how strong you were militarily, discarding force of numbers. Now a days you see lots of poor and/or small nations with very well trained and led troops, but it just didn't happen back then. I think if you made a graph of WWII participants (from the US all the way down to the Arab nations) plotting a nation's economy against some metric of how well the troops did, you would see a strong correlation with maybe Germany being the only clear outlyer.

You know, I bet Dupuy has this kind of thing figured out. And I'd bet he would charge $900 to let anyone see his numbers.

 

.... I'm not entirely sure I'm with you there, Spejic, in part I'll admit because I can't quite grasp your argument. Could you please expand this, and perhaps even state who you're thinking of, because I'm running through candidates and the only ones I can think of that are 'small but professional' are from nations that are economically strong in their region and/or have/have had foreign nations training their officers and sometimes the men, and the 'training cadre' principle goes back to the Roman Empire (maybe even the Republic, I'm not sure of the date I'm thinking of) and probably even earlier.

 

That's irrelevant. The French Navy had orders to never let their fleet fall into anyone's hand. What happened in French North Africa in 1940 was the admirals refusing to give their ships to the British. The French showed it further when they scuttled their fleet following Operation Torch.

 

You are right in that the US and the Soviet Union were the causes of small nations without modern military traditions geting them after WWII. I just don't thiink there was any sort of equvalent to that in the time before WWII, so it would be a lot easier to predict the worth of a nation's troops and commanders by simply taking a gross view of its economy and general political health.

 

I'm not going to argue that the Dutch were brave superheroes but this thing the British and Americans share about the continental Europeans being cowards in the war is not exactly fair. Unlike Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands hadn't participated in WWI. The Dutch had declared themselves neutral and considering that the Germans had respected that neutrality in WWI, it wasn't that outlandish to think they would in another war too, especially after Chamberlain's assurances. The Dutch had no professional army to speak of, not in the Netherlands in any case. Soldiers who had received only very basic training including my two grandads were drafted a couple of months before the German invasion, and were given guns, uniforms and material that were very outdated. There was a total of less than 20 fighter planes and they were all shot down on the first day of the invasion. Compare that to Germany's ultra-modern fighting machine and you'll understand that it was like Brazil v Bhutan in football terms. To me it is almost a miracle that the Dutch held out for five days, and when they did surrender it was a completely sensible thing to do considering that the Germans had bombed the 17th century centre of Rotterdam flat out and were threatening to do the same to the historical centre of Amsterdam. They could have held out a couple of more days perhaps, but what's more important, being respected for being brave or preserving the lives of your population, soldiers and historical treasures in a battle you know you're going to lose anyway.

You can of course blame the Dutch for being so naive to think that they would be able to stay neutral, but a lot of people underestimated Mr Hitler in those days.

 

I've read accounts of Ustasha stuff that'll nearly make you vomit reading it off the page. I can't imagine having witnessed any of it.

 

thats the price you pay when you have 2 pacifist parties ruling the country for more than 20 years- If denmark had rearmed in the 30ties it could only be considered as directed towards Germany- so denmark did the opposite: disarm (and saving money for some else- remember that in the 30ties there was about 30% unemployment and much poverty, military spending was not toppriority for the government- improving living conditions were- also in a strategy by the Social democrats to curb their 2 main domestic and foreign enemies: the Nazis (never a serious threat domestically- their best election result gave them 1.5% of the votes or 3 mandates in parliament) and the communists-

There were other motives for disarmament- the "wisdom" was: better not provoke your much much bigger neighbour, who might want a piece of denmark back (northern Slesvig)

Denmark did try to form alliances in the 30ties with other Nordic countries but at that time denmark was not very popular in Norway because of territorial disputes in Greenland- Finland had another concern than Denmark (the Soviet Union) and Sweden did not want to get involved in any alliances with denmark because they knew that such an alliance would be directed against germany (a very important business partner) and they feared that such an alliance would in reality mean that Sweden commited itself to defend the danish border with Germany- So Sweden had nothing to win in an alliance with Denmark

Denmark also tried to form alliances with France and Great Britain, but Britain did not want to to commit itself in any alliance on the continent until it was to late- And how credible would such an alliance be? Remember that France and Britain sold a democracy to Hitler (Czechoslovakia) and went to war on behalf of a dictatorship (Poland)- And what did France and Britain do from the time when the Polish campaign had finished until the simultanious invasion of Denmark and Norway on the 9th of April 1940? Didnt they just stay behind the Maginot line? And people seem to forget (or not know at all) the Danish experience in fighting alone against Prussia/Austria-Hungary in 1864 with a resounding defeat as a result and losing 1/3 of the country- That experience taught us that we could not fight Germany alone- Before the 9th of april 1940 it did not seem as Britain and France were willing to fight despite the declaration of war- So in reality it meant fighting Germany alone with no modern weapons (except the navy perhaps), No resources, minimum industrial production and a landscape that does not favour guerilla warfare unlike Norway with its mountain and forests

and would the war have gone any other way had denmark chosen to fight? It would probably have delayed the German invasion of Norway (for how long?)but it would most certainly have resulted in the complete annihilation of the danish jewish population (as the former chief rabbi Bent Melchior has said)

That said I do think that Denmark could have done more- Not by direct combat with the german invaders but by mining the the entrance/exit to the baltic sea- e.g; Little belt, Great belt and the Øresund strait, making the invasion of Norway that much harder for Hitler

 

apologist

 

I'm not sure we do it that much. Well ok with regards to the French, but regardless of how true it is in reference to them, there's lot of history and general animosity 'twixt the two countries.
As far as I'm aware though no-one here takes the piss out of the Dutch Belgians or Danes or whoever the 'little guys' were. The French obviously weren't 'little' so have fewer 'excuses'.
I could just be hanging around with decently minded people though.

 

Jeez, everyone is complaining about nations not being violent enough. You'd think that going a little the other direction just to be safe would be appreciated.

 

Ha! Typical mickey mouse country behaviour I guess.

 

You probably are! Actually you do have a point, it's mostly dimwitted English footy fans who like the 'if it weren't for us you'd all be German' thing. And anti-liberal luvvie Americans, of course, who love to claim the liberation of the Netherlands, forgetting that they went east following the failed market garden operation and left the Dutch job to the British and the Canadians.

 

We didn't see the urgent need of in rescuing you from an occupation that inconvenienced a few Dutch people by making them go to bed a bit earlier.

 

I seriously don't appreciate that comment Nicephoras. More civilians died from starvation in Holland in the last winter of the war than anywhere else in Europe.

 

I seriously don't appreciate your know it all attitude concerning a country its clear you know nothing about. I'll live.

That's utter tripe.
Aside from one winter of some hunger (and it wasn't nearly as bad as you're trying to make it out to be), the Dutch had a very mild occupation period. Even with the accidental bombing of Rotterdam included.
Except for the Dutch Jews of course, who were meticulously rounded up, the occupation of Holland was probably the most mild in Europe.

 

Lovely post Nicephoras. You of course know much more about how the Dutch experienced world war II than I, a Dutch woman who's spoken to many Dutch people who've actually lived through the war.

Might I remind you that the failure of the Battle at Arnhem in September 1944 caused the Northern parts of the Netherlands to get isolated. In the following winter the German occupiers systematically squeezed the Dutch dry, which lead to wide-spread starvation. The daily calorie ration dropped to less than 300 a day, that is according to the Germans themselves by the way, so it probably was even worse (check Keesings Archief).

The situation got so bad that people were dying like flies in Amsterdam, notably, and the British decided to drop food (the famous Swedish bread). You don't need to believe me, just check any British RAF historical website, they have described it extensively and the food dropping pilots still come to our war remembrance ceremony every year. As the situation was so bad particularly in the western part of the country, thousands of people held weekly food marches to the provinces. My gran for example walked forty miles twice a week to get milk and flour for her three toddlers and her elderly parents. More often than not she was stopped by a German confiscating what she had walked 40 miles for - this of course in your view is trivial but there you have it. My gran also got bombed out of her home twice by the way, once by the Germans and once by mistake by the allies. Again, you probably wonder what she's complaining about. My grandfather to this day refuses to travel to Germany, however (and he lives two miles from the border).

After the war, thousands of Dutch children were in such a dire state that they were shipped off to Britain, Denmark and Sweden to recuperate. The Red Cross had diagnosed them as suffering from severe starvation, which is hardly surprising after five months of less than 300 calories a day.

Again these are all facts that you can easily check, but if you don't want to believe me, that's your problem really. I'm not saying that the Dutch suffering comes anywhere near the suffering of the Jewish people. But it was bad enough to get deep, very deep in the collective consciousness of the Dutch people.

Finally, don't you bloody dare trivialise the occupation of ANY country and what that means to a people.

 

Don't take it personally. It's just that being Dutch you get a lot of idiotic comments from right whingers directed at you.

 

All the time! I normally laugh about it but when people start trivialising occupation, for example, I can't.

 

Yawn. That was a waste of your time. Your (habitually) incorrect assumption that I don't know the above is wrong. I do. (Well, not the part about your grandmother, I suppose.) I know far more about World War II than you do. And the above, is overexaggerated in parts and wrong in parts. People "dying like flies"? Tell me, what was the toll in Holland in the winter of 44/45? More than the toll in Russia or its formerly occupied republics? I somehow doubt that. Very, very much.
The issue isn't that the Dutch didn't suffer. Sure, they did. Less than any other occupied country I can think of (other than perhaps the Danes). That there was an occupation doesn't give you the right to go around making incredibly stupid statements and generalizations about things you know nothing about. Like anything to do with the United States.

You don't want to deal with unpleasant facts? Don't make stupid generalizations. I'd tell some stories about what my family went through during the war, to make me seem oh so authoritative, but then again, I'm not an ignorant asshole.

 

I was trying to make clear to you that it's despicable to trivialise any class of occupation, your post literally made me feel sick. Let's suppose not a single person had died from starvation or from being bombed in the netherlands during the entire war - even then it would not have been your place to tell a Dutch person that their people haven't suffered. Occupation is awful, full stop. Why I thought you might get that I don't know. You should be ashamed of yourself in any case.

 

where's my credit card, it's round here somewhere, I need a subscription now. I have to have this as my tagline.

 

You just caught me in an angry mood, sorry! Again please don't take it personally, my anger is directed at one person and it's not you.