World War 2 General Discussion Thread

[The Empire of Pretantia]

Why wouldn't they be that stupid?

The SS were an equivalent of a special operations force.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA-

Assuming that their best battalion level commanders werent killed at the eastern front and had some dumbass replace him, id say i would expect more out of them.

-HAHAHAHAHAHA!

You do know this takes place only a month before the end of the war in Europe, right?

[Grenartia]

Maybe if it didn't get into a turning fight. Its hard to imagine the 262 out-turning the Zeke.

Early jets, as far as i know, were energy fighters.

They aint supposed to turn fight, but rather use momentum (or energy) to dive in and out of a fight.

Somehow, I doubt maneuverability is useless. Which seems to be the point you're making.

[United Kingdom of Poland]

if the zero jumps the Me on take off or landing the zero, any other time its going to be the 262 every day of the week.

Maybe if it didn't get into a turning fight. Its hard to imagine the 262 out-turning the Zeke.

I don't think he has two given the fact that his firing range is effectively twice that of the zero and said zero had armor incapable of dealing with a 30 caliber rifle round let alone a 4 30mm cannons.

[The balkens]

The SS were an equivalent of a special operations force.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA-

Assuming that their best battalion level commanders werent killed at the eastern front and had some dumbass replace him, id say i would expect more out of them.

-HAHAHAHAHAHA!

You do know this takes place only a month before the end of the war in Europe, right?

Right, somewhere in Germany, 1945. Who couldve fuckin guess it?

[Baltenstein]

The problems with the final scene of "Fury" start with the setup, and only get worse from there.

"Fury" is set in April 1945. This is the same month in which the Americans and the Russians met at Torgau, the Soviet Army pushed into Berlin and Hitler committed suicide. German resistance by that point largely consisted of dugging themselves in inside the woods/cities and ambushing the advancing Allied troops. The movie also depicted that. A full company of Waffen-SS marching towards the front in formation, singing, on an open road, might just as well have carried a huge crosshair flag with them. Allied air supremacy over Germany by that point was complete, and any Allied air patrol that spotted them - and they would have been spotted - would have quickly mowed them down.
There's also the fact that the SS company had armored vehicles with them. They were driving down the exact same road where "Fury" was immobilized by a German mine. Did the Germans forget where they laid their own mines? Maybe so.

Then the battle itself. I give them the element of surprise - the Germans are caught off-guard when a seemingly-abandoned tank opens fire on them - but everything after that is comically stupid. There are farm buildings to the tank's left, and woods to the tanks right. The tank was sitting in the open, not moving an inch. In any realistic confrontation, the Germans would simply have moved into the woods and then taken out the tank with a couple of Panzerfaust shots, end of story.
What they do instead, is running into the tank's field of fire again and again and again, trying to shoot at it with small arms and MG fire (for some reason), getting killed by the dozens. What really takes the cake is that you can clearly see, multiple times, how German troops who had already gotten behind the tank (and thereby in a comfy position to take it out), are running back in front of it. It is a good thing that the movie is cut in a way that we are only seeing the Germans who are killed at any moment during the fight - because you have to ask yourself, what on Earth are the rest of the (hundreds) of troops doing at that time!? Are they waiting for their turn to get shot? It sure looks that way.
The Germans finally do manage to neutralize the tank - after taking insane amounts of losses and it changed from midday to midnight for some reason - and then we see a young German soldier spotting the last survivor of the tank crew, but letting him be and not taking him prisoner or killing him. I know it's supposed to "humanize" the enemy, but come on, that American just killed what must have been dozens, if not hundreds, of your comrades - out of sheer sense of self-preservation, I sure know that I wouldn't just "leave him be".

There is a reason why infantry support is so vital to tank forces - due to the drastically reduced field of vision of a tank's crew, the tank is pretty helpless against enemy infantry without footsoldiers of its own. After watching that scene, you have to wonder why the Allies didn't just airdrop a couple of Shermans into all major battles to insta-win them.

It is to jarring because, right up until the final 30 minutes, the movie was very different. The brutal, dehumanizing nature of war, the war crimes commited by both sides, the use of child soldiers, civilian suffering - the movie showed us all that. It even ended with a climatic stand-off between a German Tiger and a group of Shermans, and while it does play the "invincible Tiger" angle a bit (in reality, Tigers weren't as formidable as their reputation) it is an entertaining and suspenseful fight that would have ended the movie on a perfect note.

Then, the movie just decides to go on and turn into an 80ies Schwarzenegger flick for some reason, discrediting itself for no real plot-related reasons. A clear case of "weniger ist manchmal mehr", to use a German proverb - a shorter movie would have been a better movie.

[Grenartia]

Maybe if it didn't get into a turning fight. Its hard to imagine the 262 out-turning the Zeke.

I don't think he has two given the fact that his firing range is effectively twice that of the zero and said zero had armor incapable of dealing with a 30 caliber rifle round let alone a 4 30mm cannons.

The Zeke doesn't have to have all that armor if its facing one opponent that can't turn faster than it can. By the time the 262 has its guns where the Zero was, the Zero's already on its 6.

[The balkens]

Early jets, as far as i know, were energy fighters.

They aint supposed to turn fight, but rather use momentum (or energy) to dive in and out of a fight.

Somehow, I doubt maneuverability is useless. Which seems to be the point you're making.

Maneuverability, i believe, was not the focus at all on the 262, it was speed.

But yes that was somewhat the point. I guess.

[Sjovenia]

Anybody familiar with the Battle of hurtgen? I went to visit it was freakin cool.

oh and for discussion sakes, places Ive been

Verdun
Bastogne
Fort Eben-Emael
Hurtgen
Malmedy
Schopp
Bitburg
Dudeldorf

I think there are others but I can't quite remember for right now

[The Empire of Pretantia]

AHAHAHAHAHAHA-

-HAHAHAHAHAHA!

You do know this takes place only a month before the end of the war in Europe, right?

Right, somewhere in Germany, 1945. Who couldve fuckin guess it?

April ,1945. The good commanders were mostly dead. Most of the soldiers were dead. In all likelihood, the Waffen-SS battalion was made up of the last 500 or so sexually mature males west of Belgium, not including Allied soldiers.

[The balkens]

Right, somewhere in Germany, 1945. Who couldve fuckin guess it?

April ,1945. The good commanders were mostly dead. Most of the soldiers were dead. In all likelihood, the Waffen-SS battalion was made up of the last 500 or so sexually mature males west of Belgium, not including Allied soldiers.

Couldve been one of those foreign volunteer units for all we know.

[Baltenstein]

April ,1945. The good commanders were mostly dead. Most of the soldiers were dead. In all likelihood, the Waffen-SS battalion was made up of the last 500 or so sexually mature males west of Belgium, not including Allied soldiers.

Couldve been one of those foreign volunteer units for all we know.

Nah, they are clearly ethnic Germans. Their commander rallies them by shouting "This is OUR country!" at one point.

[Grenartia]

April ,1945. The good commanders were mostly dead. Most of the soldiers were dead. In all likelihood, the Waffen-SS battalion was made up of the last 500 or so sexually mature males west of Belgium, not including Allied soldiers.

Couldve been one of those foreign volunteer units for all we know.

Or maybe, a Soviet unit that defected.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

The problems with the final scene of "Fury" start with the setup, and only get worse from there.

"Fury" is set in April 1945. This is the same month in which the Americans and the Russians met at Torgau, the Soviet Army pushed into Berlin and Hitler committed suicide. German resistance by that point largely consisted of dugging themselves in inside the woods/cities and ambushing the advancing Allied troops. The movie also depicted that. A full company of Waffen-SS marching towards the front in formation, singing, on an open road, might just as well have carried a huge crosshair flag with them. Allied air supremacy over Germany by that point was complete, and any Allied air patrol that spotted them - and they would have been spotted - would have quickly mowed them down.
There's also the fact that the SS company had armored vehicles with them. They were driving down the exact same road where "Fury" was immobilized by a German mine. Did the Germans forget where they laid their own mines? Maybe so.

Then the battle itself. I give them the element of surprise - the Germans are caught off-guard when a seemingly-abandoned tank opens fire on them - but everything after that is comically stupid. There are farm buildings to the tank's left, and woods to the tanks right. The tank was sitting in the open, not moving an inch. In any realistic confrontation, the Germans would simply have moved into the woods and then taken out the tank with a couple of Panzerfaust shots, end of story.
What they do instead, is running into the tank's field of fire again and again and again, trying to shoot at it with small arms and MG fire (for some reason), getting killed by the dozens. What really takes the cake is that you can clearly see, multiple times, how German troops who had already gotten behind the tank (and thereby in a comfy position to take it out), are running back in front of it. It is a good thing that the movie is cut in a way that we are only seeing the Germans who are killed at any moment during the fight - because you have to ask yourself, what on Earth are the rest of the (hundreds) of troops doing at that time!? Are they waiting for their turn to get shot? It sure looks that way.
The Germans finally do manage to neutralize the tank - after taking insane amounts of losses and it changed from midday to midnight for some reason - and then we see a young German soldier spotting the last survivor of the tank crew, but letting him be and not taking him prisoner or killing him. I know it's supposed to "humanize" the enemy, but come on, that American just killed what must have been dozens, if not hundreds, of your comrades - out of sheer sense of self-preservation, I sure know that I wouldn't just "leave him be".

There is a reason why infantry support is so vital to tank forces - due to the drastically reduced field of vision of a tank's crew, the tank is pretty helpless against enemy infantry without footsoldiers of its own. After watching that scene, you have to wonder why the Allies didn't just airdrop a couple of Shermans into all major battles to insta-win them.

It is to jarring because, right up until the final 30 minutes, the movie was very different. The brutal, dehumanizing nature of war, the war crimes commited by both sides, the use of child soldiers, civilian suffering - the movie showed us all that. It even ended with a climatic stand-off between a German Tiger and a group of Shermans, and while it does play the "invincible Tiger" angle a bit (in reality, Tigers weren't as formidable as their reputation) it is an entertaining and suspenseful fight that would have ended the movie on a perfect note.

Then, the movie just decides to go on and turn into an 80ies Schwarzenegger flick for some reason, discrediting itself for no real plot-related reasons. A clear case of "weniger ist manchmal mehr", to use a German proverb - a shorter movie would have been a better movie.

This is a good examination.

Couldve been one of those foreign volunteer units for all we know.

Or maybe, a Soviet unit that defected.

Or confused French commandos who were way too in-character.

[United Kingdom of Poland]

I don't think he has two given the fact that his firing range is effectively twice that of the zero and said zero had armor incapable of dealing with a 30 caliber rifle round let alone a 4 30mm cannons.

The Zeke doesn't have to have all that armor if its facing one opponent that can't turn faster than it can. By the time the 262 has its guns where the Zero was, the Zero's already on its 6.

except that:
A: the 262 will likely be the one starting the fight because it has the higher service ceiling and an insane speed advantage.
B that same advantage makes it easier for the 262 to disengage at any moment.

[The balkens]

Couldve been one of those foreign volunteer units for all we know.

Or maybe, a Soviet unit that defected.

IT WAS A RUSE FOR WW3!

Illumanti con4mnd

[The Empire of Pretantia]

Or maybe, a Soviet unit that defected.

IT WAS A RUSE FOR WW3!

Illumanti con4mnd

The Illuminati does not conform. The Illuminati makes you conform.

[The balkens]

IT WAS A RUSE FOR WW3!

Illumanti con4mnd

The Illuminati does not conform. The Illuminati makes you conform.

Confirmed, Pret.

Do you not want to be part of GNC4R or no?

[The Empire of Pretantia]

The Illuminati does not conform. The Illuminati makes you conform.

Confirmed, Pret.

Do you not want to be part of GNC4R or no?

Part of whatnow?

[United Kingdom of Poland]

The problems with the final scene of "Fury" start with the setup, and only get worse from there.

"Fury" is set in April 1945. This is the same month in which the Americans and the Russians met at Torgau, the Soviet Army pushed into Berlin and Hitler committed suicide. German resistance by that point largely consisted of dugging themselves in inside the woods/cities and ambushing the advancing Allied troops. The movie also depicted that. A full company of Waffen-SS marching towards the front in formation, singing, on an open road, might just as well have carried a huge crosshair flag with them. Allied air supremacy over Germany by that point was complete, and any Allied air patrol that spotted them - and they would have been spotted - would have quickly mowed them down.
There's also the fact that the SS company had armored vehicles with them. They were driving down the exact same road where "Fury" was immobilized by a German mine. Did the Germans forget where they laid their own mines? Maybe so.

Then the battle itself. I give them the element of surprise - the Germans are caught off-guard when a seemingly-abandoned tank opens fire on them - but everything after that is comically stupid. There are farm buildings to the tank's left, and woods to the tanks right. The tank was sitting in the open, not moving an inch. In any realistic confrontation, the Germans would simply have moved into the woods and then taken out the tank with a couple of Panzerfaust shots, end of story.
What they do instead, is running into the tank's field of fire again and again and again, trying to shoot at it with small arms and MG fire (for some reason), getting killed by the dozens. What really takes the cake is that you can clearly see, multiple times, how German troops who had already gotten behind the tank (and thereby in a comfy position to take it out), are running back in front of it. It is a good thing that the movie is cut in a way that we are only seeing the Germans who are killed at any moment during the fight - because you have to ask yourself, what on Earth are the rest of the (hundreds) of troops doing at that time!? Are they waiting for their turn to get shot? It sure looks that way.
The Germans finally do manage to neutralize the tank - after taking insane amounts of losses and it changed from midday to midnight for some reason - and then we see a young German soldier spotting the last survivor of the tank crew, but letting him be and not taking him prisoner or killing him. I know it's supposed to "humanize" the enemy, but come on, that American just killed what must have been dozens, if not hundreds, of your comrades - out of sheer sense of self-preservation, I sure know that I wouldn't just "leave him be".

There is a reason why infantry support is so vital to tank forces - due to the drastically reduced field of vision of a tank's crew, the tank is pretty helpless against enemy infantry without footsoldiers of its own. After watching that scene, you have to wonder why the Allies didn't just airdrop a couple of Shermans into all major battles to insta-win them.

It is to jarring because, right up until the final 30 minutes, the movie was very different. The brutal, dehumanizing nature of war, the war crimes commited by both sides, the use of child soldiers, civilian suffering - the movie showed us all that. It even ended with a climatic stand-off between a German Tiger and a group of Shermans, and while it does play the "invincible Tiger" angle a bit (in reality, Tigers weren't as formidable as their reputation) it is an entertaining and suspenseful fight that would have ended the movie on a perfect note.

Then, the movie just decides to go on and turn into an 80ies Schwarzenegger flick for some reason, discrediting itself for no real plot-related reasons. A clear case of "weniger ist manchmal mehr", to use a German proverb - a shorter movie would have been a better movie.

you mean the farm that had 5 HE/ WP shells thrown into it.
Also those woods are a good 500 meters away, and the panzerfaust was the RPG equivalent of a sawed off shotgun, easy to use and incredibly devastating at short range, but not the thing you use to try sniping with. their point blank use in the movie was accurate to German techniques at the time.

[The balkens]

Confirmed, Pret.

Do you not want to be part of GNC4R or no?

Part of whatnow?

Gay Ukrainian Nazis for christ and the Proliferation of the 4th Reich.

Like the Illuminati, but Poker is on sunday.

[Grenartia]

The Zeke doesn't have to have all that armor if its facing one opponent that can't turn faster than it can. By the time the 262 has its guns where the Zero was, the Zero's already on its 6.

except that:
A: the 262 will likely be the one starting the fight because it has the higher service ceiling and an insane speed advantage.
B that same advantage makes it easier for the 262 to disengage at any moment.

Short of a bunch of convoluted scenarios, I concede.

[The Two Jerseys]

The Zeke doesn't have to have all that armor if its facing one opponent that can't turn faster than it can. By the time the 262 has its guns where the Zero was, the Zero's already on its 6.

except that:
A: the 262 will likely be the one starting the fight because it has the higher service ceiling and an insane speed advantage.
B that same advantage makes it easier for the 262 to disengage at any moment.

C. The 262 isn't going to be following the Zero through a turn, it's going to be making guns passes.

[UED]

I think a better question would've been:

"What if the French leadership hadn't fucking chickened out and used their defensive advantages and superior tanks, instead of surrendering?"

What?! The germans completely outmaneuvered the French Maginot line and the French had superior tanks? HA! The French only had I believe one tank regiment ready by the time the Germans invaded....Face it the French are cowards, but that saved them from being totally slaughtered in the long run.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bir_Hakeim

Frenchies aren't cowards

[Bojikami]

I suppose to contribute, I will mention my grandfather. He fought for the Red Army from Stalingrad to Berlin, (That would be from early 1943 to 1945.) Later on in the war (Around late 1944, I think) he became a sniper tasked with taking out German machine guns during when the Red Army would advance on fortified positions.

[The Tiger Kingdom]

Couldve been one of those foreign volunteer units for all we know.

Nah, they are clearly ethnic Germans. Their commander rallies them by shouting "This is OUR country!" at one point.

Let's just say that's one of the more MINOR implausible parts of that particular film. A straight-up intact German SS unit at that stage of the war is implausible, but could theoretically have existed.
But primarily by that point, the SS had shifted from being the elite of the Army to the German Foreign Legion - filled with every right-wing psycho/Soviet-hating racial group west of the Pyrenees. The defense of the Wilhelmstrasse area was carried out in great part by French and Latvian SS volunteer units, for instance, and a group of Dutch SS diehards may have been the last forces to surrender as a group in the West (about a week after VE Day).