Peak Warming Man said:
Bubblecar said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
Why-couldnt-we-attack-the-Soviet-Union-in-1945-just-as-Patton-wantedBecause it was a monumentally stupid idea.
They did investigate, because the military makes plans for everything.
It’s just that they came to the conclusion that 1) the Western allies would lose, and 2) any Western Government that even suggested such a thing would be strung up by the neck from the nearest lamp post, because every single voter on the planet was fantastically sick of war.
You can look up “Operation Unthinkable”. Basically, the Soviets 1) were battle hardened and had done something like 80% of the fighting in Europe, 2) would have massively better logistics, 3) would have been betrayed again and would have a totally devastating motivation advantage. At the same time, the Western Allies 1) would have very complex logistics, having to bring most stuff from overseas, and 2) would have their own populations side with the Soviets to the extent that there would be Communist revolutions breaking out all over Europe – the Americans had had a hard time already in France, since the Communist Resistance was very well-organised and would rather have been liberated by the Soviets. (The rivalry between various Resistance groups in ’Allo ‘Allo! was played for laughs, but it was 100% based on fact.)
Patton was good on the battle field, but you would not let him make that sort of over-arching strategic decisions. He was crap at them.
Yes, occasionally meet people who think that would have been a good idea. I remember having to talk macx out of it :)
Wonder what became of macx in the end. He was very poorly last we heard of him.
He would have been a good age I think.
The received wisdom from wiki etc is as follows.
“The ARA General Belgrano was sunk on May 2, 1982, by three World War II-era Mk 8 mod 4 torpedoes fired from the Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror (S48).”
He had something of a boffin role at some stage and said that was not so, it was just a press release.