Italian Campaign - Winnable for the Germans?

[Ikeni]

The Afrika Corp lost was great blow to the german defender in Italy. Who was both leaderless and demolarized.

No they weren't. Approximately 66,000 German and Italian troops could never have held Sicily against ~300,000 Allied ones, and the fact that they were able to conduct a fighting withdrawal on the island for just over a month was quite a feat. Afterwards they were able to safely withdraw via Messina, getting everything across without having to abandon any heavy weaponry.

Italian troop was less loyal and ill prepare for the onslaught. They basely let the German do all the defending.

Not really. There were a number of Italian divisions more in-land on the island which were fairly capable, and of which i'm sure OKW fully utilised as much as they could.

[Digger Walters]

Are you sure you're not on about the Russians?

no unfortunately not the Aussies had a 25% death rate and an 80% casualty rate in WW1 and of the allies in WW2 and unfortunately the rate fer the Soviets can never be known as they don't know how many served in the first place.
Country Soldiers KIA Wounded
Australia 1,000,000 26,976 180,864
Austria 800,000 280,000 350,117
Belgium 625,000 8,460 55,513
Brazil 40,334 943 4,222
Bulgaria 339,760 6,671 21,878
Canada 1,086,343 42,042 53,145
China 17,250,521 1,324,516 1,762,006
Czechoslovakia --- 6,683 8,017
Denmark --- 4,339 ---
Finland 500,000 79,047 50,000
France --- 201,568 400,000
Germany 20,000,000 3,250,000 7,250,000
Greece --- 17,024 47,290
Hungary --- 147,435 89,313
India 2,393,891 32,121 64,354
Italy 3,100,000 149,496 66,716
Japan 9,700,000 1,270,000 140,000
Netherlands 280,000 6,500 2,860
New Zealand 194,000 11,625 17,000
Norway 75,000 2,000 ---
Poland --- 664,000 530,000
Romania 650,000 350,000 ---
South Africa 410,056 2,473 ---
U.S.S.R. --- 6,115,000 14,012,000
United Kingdom 5,896,000 357,116 369,267
United States 16,112,566 291,557 670,846
Yugoslavia 3,741,000 305,000 425,000


*edit* on the subject of Rommel and the Afrika Korps (as its properly termed) he was defeated at El Alamein and it just went downhill from there and he was still commanding then.

[armbarchris]

Holy crap. So many misconceptions, on both sides of all these issues...

I'll start with the original topic:
Unlike the Germans, of whom the majority were almost fanatically loyal to Hitler, most of the Italian people didn't like Mussolini. They didn't have the same drive that the Germans did, and many of them actually supported the Allies. Mussolini actually had to be smuggled from Rome, and his truck was later intercepted by Italian resistance fighters. You know what most Italians did when he was publicly killed and defamed? They celebrated.
Had the Italian army put the same effort into the war as the Wehrmacht, they could certainly have held us off a lot longer, if not won.

As for Rommel, he was one of the best generals ever. Of all time. Thing was, Hitler was a control freak who listened to armchair generals who told him what he wanted to hear instead of listening to the men who actually knew what the heck they were talking about. So Hitler held back his generals and kept them from fighting the way THEY wanted too, which, while beneficial for the Allies, hindered the German war effort. Not just in North Africa, but throughout the whole European theater.

As for Vietnam, we hardly 'won' against the Vietcong. The generals and politicians in D.C. tried to fight the war the same way we had WWII. They didn't understand that it was a totally different situation with totally different rules. We didn't really embrace guerrilla warfare until the war was nearly over. Mean while, we kept sending more and more conventional soldiers who just provided more and more fodder for the Vietcong. Had we just been fighting the North Vietnamese army, we would have won no problem. But the Vietcong tore us to pieces. WE had plenty of resources, we just didn't how to use them properly.
At first the public supported the war; then the Tet Offensive happened. That was the turning point in morale: we suddenly realized that we weren't winning. Plus, crap like Mai Lay happened. (All this also coincided with the rise of the hippie movement. Bloody flower children ruin everything.)

The Korean War never actually ended because a peace treaty was never signed. A ceasefire was signed that is practically, though maybe not technically, in effect. (It looks like it may kick off again any moment, but that's a totally different can of worms.)

For nukes, it's actually very easy to learn how to build a nuclear weapon if you live in a developed country. I know people who's college thesis was "How to build a Nuclear Weapon." Acquiring the materials is somewhat more difficult, but quite a bit of the stuff is floating around third world countries that would be easy pickings for ambitious terrorists.
The reasons we nuked Japan in WWII were:
1. We wanted to minimize casualties, especially American casualties. And invasion of the islands would have cost thousands, maybe millions, of lives on both sides.
2. We wanted to force the Japanese to surrender. Up until that point, Japan's forces had absolutely refused to surrender. When we got closer to the home islands, they designed a bomb specifically for children to use for suicide bombing: that's how serious they were.
As it happened, the Emperor was receiving censored reports about the war from his war council. When he found out about Hiroshima from another source, he tried to stop the war. But the council wanted to keep fighting and actually tried to launch a coup. But they failed, and the Emperor went on public radio and told all Japanese forces to stand down. Somewhere in there we dropped bomb #2 on Nagasaki, which was really unnecessary, although we didn't find out about all this until later.
3. Truman, who wasn't nearly as friendly to the USSR as Roosevelt had been, wanted to intimidate Stalin. With Berlin taken, Truman felt we didn't need them anymore and was just as wary of them as we had been before the war. As we found out later, Stalin was unimpressed because he already knew about the bomb from spies in the Manhattan project.

[KwokYuen]

No they weren't. Approximately 66,000 German and Italian troops could never have held Sicily against ~300,000 Allied ones, and the fact that they were able to conduct a fighting withdrawal on the island for just over a month was quite a feat. Afterwards they were able to safely withdraw via Messina, getting everything across without having to abandon any heavy weaponry.



Not really. There were a number of Italian divisions more in-land on the island which were fairly capable, and of which i'm sure OKW fully utilised as much as they could.

The Afrika Corp lost over 275,000 troops in Tunisia 1943. Yes I agree 66,000 German and Italian is not enough. If thing has change in North Africa with the Afrika Corps The German will probaly repel the allies in Italy.