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In regards initiating the Manhattan Project, Einstein and Szilard were clearly critical. Without them the entire project would, at a minimum, undoubtedly have started significantly later in the war. Szilard was the first in the U.S. to recognize the potential of an atomic bomb, and Einstein's celebrity, both in signing the letter and subsequently leveraging ...
15
I have in my backpack my shiny new xmas present, Shattered Sword, by Parshall and Tully. It mostly covers the Japanese side of things, and I'm barely into it, but the forward by John Lundstrom (who was the recipient of the first and most profuse of the authors' acknowledgements) credits the aggressive deployment decisions at both Coral Sea and Midway fully ...
13
The Trap set by the US Navy at Midway(June 4-7 1942) was Admiral Nimitz call. Although Commander in Chief, United States Fleet (COMINCH) Admiral Ernest King in Washington was in constant contact with Nimitz as he made this call. We know this because it was the Pacific Fleet's intelligence officer in charge of station HYPO, Joseph Rochefort under Nimitz, ...
12
In a 1960 article Pigeons in a Pelican, B. F. Skinner gave an account of his experiments, the problems he encountered and how they were overcome. The details are too lengthy to cite in full here, but his final demonstration (1944) before the project was rejected shows that - on an experimental level in a laboratory - the system showed promise. A later ...
10
The difference almost certainly lies in Civil Defence, aka "Air Raid Precautions". Germany and the UK were well-prepared for air raids, with warning systems, large numbers of air-raid shelters, organised fire and rescue services, and so on.
For your example raids:
Singapore (1941) had 61 dead, and more than 700 wounded according to the English-language ...
9
Wikipedia has the answer, but it requires some assembly
Wikipedia: Leopold III contains the phrase,
Leopold's controversial actions during the Second World War resulted in a political crisis known as the Royal Question.
Royal Question is hyperlinked to another Wikipedia page, which explains,
The "Question" at stake surrounded whether King Leopold ...
9
Skinner's work was pretty good, but in his analysis on why it was discarded he might be ignoring several factors outside of his area of expertise.
First of all - while in his " Pigeons in Pelican" article Skinner states that no other guidance system existed for the bomb, in fact, Pelican already had two of them - televised and semi-active radar homing; ...
8
Air defense is not a trivial matter
Everything in war (and in life) costs resources like raw materials, industrial capacity, workforce and crews for the weapons, and perhaps most importantly the time. Japan never had abundance of these, especially in the late war period 1944-45. Let's look at some of the requirements for successful air defense.
Anti-...
7
The best defense is a good offense
If we only defend, we lose the war ~ Kembai Shimata.
This answer will not duplicate the resource analysis a couple of the others did, but approaches the question based on the strategic concept of the Japanese war effort from 1939 through about 1943/44 - after which point the noose had began to tighten, US unrestricted ...
6
The video description seems indeed misleading.
The description for the Youtube video "Mussolini arrives in Germany after being liberated and being greeted by Hitler and other Nazi leaders." says:
Former Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini arrives in Germany after his liberation on October 10, 1943 during World War II. A Nazi aircraft arrives and ...
6
By combining the three tables, of known Me262 losses; claims by USAAF; and claims by RAF, in Foreman, Me 262 Combat Diary (1990), assuming that the German numbers are correct, and also that all the dates are as stated, I have obtained the following statistics. In some cases both USAAF & RAF claim the same Me262, and in one case it is not clear which type ...
5
Political pragmatism and some "creative history"
Germans were not strongly interested in Balkans. Main German concern was to end Greco-Italian War and kick the British out of Southeastern Europe before German invasion of Soviet Union (soft underbelly of Europe) . To this end, they first tried to lure Yugoslavia (which they considered as Serb dominated) into ...
5
Armed merchantmen could clearly deal with a submarine attacking by day, on surface.
During the night, U-Boats surface attacks would include many submarines, and the capacity of numerous merchantmen to defend a convoy would clearly be about the tactical plot:
Who would detect first?
Detect before the launch of torpedoes?
Meteorological conditions
And in ...
4
Question:
Were armed merchantmen effective against submarines?
They were Called Q-Ships armed Merchantmen who convoyed with the merchant fleets for protection. No they weren't very effective. They accounted for only about 7% of German uboats lost to enemy action during WWII. Compare that to 17% u-boat sinkings from depth charges and 20% from mines. ...
4
I suspect that, less than an absolute "solution" or match, the usefulness was in limiting U-boats' tactical options:
deck guns. Early ww2 U-boats had guns and liked to use them - saved on torpedoes among other things.
surface, rather than submerged stalking and attacking. U-boats, until the Schnorkels came along (too late to do much), ran on batteries ...
4
A good reference is The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Note that America (the government) initiated the Manhattan Project to develop the bomb and, as one aspect, recruited the necessary scientists and engineers from across the country as well as from England and refugees from Germany. In turn, these scientists received all the support they ...
4
The Nazis collaborated with the Soviets when it suited them to do it. So this isn't particularly surprising.
Faced a serious menace in Tito's partisans, they needed to keep their subjects divided. Although political Catholicism was discouraged in Nazi Germany, it usually took the form of fascism in majority-Catholic countries. Collaborating with the Ustasha ...
4
Ignoring Irving, there are other sources to the effect that Hitler realised somebody would have to carry out the end of the war on the German side. He seems to have wanted to avoid capture by the Soviets, and to avoid seeing the defeat of his ideas, hence his suicide and orders to burn his body. But that does not mean he didn't want to control events.
His ...
4
Question:
After his (Hitler's) nervous breakdown during the battle of Berlin, Hitler realized that defeat was imminent and decided that surrendering in the West to save what was left of Germany from the Soviets was the right way to go about things.
Hitler also seem to hint at him wanting someone else to negotiate a surrender with ...
3
Because Nagumo's execution of the attack while a tactical victory, was a strategic missed opportunity. It did minimal damage to the primary strategic targets.
Pearl Harbor resurrection: the warships that rose to fight again
The target ship USS Utah, and the battleships USS Arizona and Oklahoma, were the only ships the Japanese left beyond repair. ...
2
Question:
Were the Japanese aware of Desmond Doss's actions?
I'm don't think we will ever know because the Japanese who took part in the Battle of Okinawa are all dead. Of the 96,000 Japanese defenders ( 76,000 Japanese soldiers, and 20,000 Okinawan conscripts ) Only 7,000 prisoners were taken. What we do know is Doss's actions which awarded him the ...
2
One must assume that by April 19th, with:
the German military reduced to conscripting 14 and 15 year old boys as soldiers;
Soviet troops occupying all of Pomerania, most of Silesia, Slovakia and Hungary preparing an assault across the Oder-Neisse on Berlin; and
Allied troops on the Elbe reducing isolated pockets of German troops in:
the Dutch provinces of ...
2
Question:
Why didn't the Japanese develop air defenses after the bombing of Tokyo?
Japan was a feudalistic agrarian state throughout WWII. They were massively outmatched technologically and economically. They had trouble feeding their population and taking care of the prisoners of war they captured(*), much less fight a war of attrition on ...
2
With what? By the time Tokyo became a regular bombing target, Japan was fast running out of resources. Japan didn't prioritize air defense in their policy. Japanese battleships and carriers had less air defense and much less accurate air defense on board, compared to US vessels. The same goes for the army and Japanese air defense in general.
The Doolittle ...
2
3 megatons. The Source I've seen quoted in several places is the one calculated by the Center for Arms Control and Non Proliferation given below.
quotes:
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The total blast power of World War II has been calculated as three megatons by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.
. ...
1
Welcome to the Histor.SE
There is an element to be taken into account when one interests in the resistance in Yugoslavia: The interaction of three forces.
Despite -or because- of the putsch against Nazis in Yugoslavia, quickly followed by an invasion by the Axis, the Resistance got a very important base, but it was a fragmented base. It has as a ...
1
Question:
Why did the Nazis collaborate with the Ustaše?
The Croats are linguistically, ethnically and culturally a Slavic people. While the Ustaše did not see themselves as such, why did the Nazis choose to collaborate with what was essentially a nationalist organisation for a Slavic ethnic group.
This is an example of how illogical Hitler's brand ...
1
Yamamoto and Nagumo are 2 very different officers. Yamamoto is someone who is flexible and see things 2-3 steps ahead whereas Nagumo is someone who follows the doctrine and mission objective to the letter. He isn't someone who can be left alone to take the initiative or to further an advantage gained.
1
From the Wikipedia on the Supermarine Spitfire:
"On 3 June 1936, the Air Ministry placed an order for 310 aircraft, at
a cost of £1,395,000.... In mid-1938, the first production Spitfire
rolled off the assembly line and was flown by Jeffrey Quill on 15 May
1938, almost 24 months after the initial order. The final cost of the
first 310 aircraft, ...
1
An interesting perspective on this question can be had from the book 'The First Summit: Roosevelt & Churchill at Placentia Bay, 1941' by Theodore A. Wilson (1991), which describes the lead-up and activities of the two national leaders and their key advisors as they formulated the Atlantic Charter in 1941. Much of the final work was conducted on board ...
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