14 January 1940

Roosevelt&rsquos War Budget for Whose Defense?

From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 2, 14 January 1940, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).

Politicians ordinarily use key words not so much to describe clearly what they mean as for the sake of the feelings the words arouse. Imagine, for example, what a difference it would make in the public attitude if armament expenditures in the budget were listed under the title, &ldquoImperialist Aggression,&rdquo instead of &ldquoNational Defense.&rdquo

Now the funds for armaments which Roosevelt has proposed for the fiscal year 1940&ndash41 are worth thinking about. $1,800,000,000 are included for the &ldquoregular&rdquo expenses of the army and navy. $272,000,000 is asked as an emergency deficiency appropriation for this year and $302,000,000 for &ldquoemergency&rdquo items during the coming fiscal year. These, totalling the colossal sum of $2,374,000,000, only begin to indicate the true burden of war on the community.

Interest on the public debt will come to $1,100,000,000. War and armament expenditures during the past twenty-five years have amounted to far more than the entire federal debt and, since these expenditures serve no conceivably useful social function, it is entirely legitimate to charge the whole interest payment against war. Pensions will come to $1,200,000,000 at least three-fourths resulting from war. Out of the $1,100,000,000 listed for public works, a minimum of several hundred millions will go to war projects. Similarly with the $1,300,000,000 allotted for work relief. The $1,000,000,000 for &ldquoregular operating expenditures&rdquo includes at least a couple of hundred millions for activities of State, War, Navy, Justice departments that would have no place except for war.

Figured very conservatively, this will give us around: $5,300,000,000 which last week Roosevelt proposed for war &ndash nearly two-thirds of the budget of the federal government. We can say without exaggeration that governments in the modern imperialist world have become, first and foremost, war-making machines.

What is to be Defended?

When the phrase &ldquonational defense&rdquo is used about armaments, it is designed to suggest certain pictures to the minds of the ordinary honest people of the country. We imagine bombers swarming over the cities, troops landing in California and Florida, tanks storming down from Canada or up from Mexico. And it seems most natural to think: &ldquoShould we not have the means to defend ourselves &ndash our homes and children &ndash from the invaders.&rdquo

Even if we approached the problem from a purely military point of view, and thought carefully about what the money is being spent for, these pictures would rapidly disappear.

On the new program, for instance, are ten huge battleships either already begun or soon to be started. Two of them are at present designed to be of 45,000 tons displacement &ndash the largest in the world, costing $90,000,000 each. Still larger sizes are being debated.

But battleships are not suited to defend the shores of a country in a literal sense. They operate at a long distance from their bases. Shore defenses feature submarines, mines, coastal artillery, mosquito boats, etc. No imaginable attack against the shores of the United States would require these battleships (though, for that matter, no attack of any kind against the shores of the United States is imaginable).

The truth is that the military expert&rsquos idea of &ldquodefensive&rdquo and &ldquooffensive&rdquo is completely different from that of the layman. For the expert, the job is simply that of winning the given war and he adopts a defensive or offensive strategy, or shifts them, in line with this single objective. He cannot permit himself the sentimental luxury of preferring defense merely because it gives him a better conscience.

And, in the case of a war against another nation or nations, the fighting machine of this country is designed to carry on war thousands of miles away from the shores. It is defensive only with respect to an internal war: that is, to suppress a workers&rsquo revolution.

Those who honestly support Roosevelt&rsquos &ldquonational defense&rdquo program because they believe its object is to safeguard home and children are, whether they like it or not, upholding a policy of aggressive external war. This can be clearly seen from a military analysis alone.

And Whose Nation?

As always, the military objective is subordinate to the social and political objectives. The government is building ah aggressive military machine, designed for external combat far from the shores of this country, because the government has an aggressive social and political policy.

From this more fundamental point of view, it is correct to speak of &ldquonational defense,&rdquo just as the armies and navies of France and Germany and England are all part of their national &ldquodefenses.&rdquo The purpose of the armed forces is to defend the interests of the nation and &ldquonation&rdquo here means the imperialist &lsquo government, representative of the big bankers and industrialists, of the Sixty Families.

But defense of these interests requires offense against the interests of the peoples of South America, China, and against rival powers and, above all, offense against the interests of the people of the United States. The new budget shows this last point in the most brazen fashion: in order to achieve funds for &ldquonational defense,&rdquo the budget takes funds away from the people, from the starving and homeless unemployed. Roosevelt&rsquos first line of &ldquonational defense&rdquo is his attack on the living standards and rights of the people of the United States.

It is in every way legitimate for the people to wish to defend themselves and their homes and their freedom from any and all enemies. But the chief enemy attacking the people is neither Hitler nor Stalin nor the Mikado, but Roosevelt himself and his government: it is his G-men who are smashing labor and democratic rights, his whip that is slashing relief funds, his party that refuses to establish humanly decent wages&rsquo and hours&rsquo standards, his general staff that is completing its plans to hurl the youth of the country into death far away, for the sake of his program of imperialist expansion.

Today in World War II History—January 14, 1940 & 1945

Colonel Dregne of the US 357th Fighter Group gives a briefing to pilots Foy, Storch and Evans at Leiston Army Air Field in England, 14 Jan 1945, showing the 54 victories earned by the group that day (later revised to 56.5 victories), and the group’s 549 total victories (Imperial War Museum, Roger Freeman Collection)

80 Years Ago—January 14, 1940: FBI raid in New York City uncovers guns, ammunition, and bomb-making material, and a plot to sabotage and overthrow the government 17 members of the anti-Semitic “Christian Front” group are arrested (later acquitted).

British chemists (pharmacists) are granted an exemption to sugar rationing in order to coat pills.

75 Years Ago—Jan. 14, 1945: US 357 th Fighter Group downs 56.5 German aircraft over Derben, Germany, the highest single day total for any US Army Air Force fighter group in WWII.

In Burma, Indian 19 th Division attempts to cross the Irrawaddy River at Thabaikkyin but withdraws under fierce Japanese bayonet attack.

Contents

• 1803–1813: [data unknown/missing]
• 1813-1823: Montgomery County
• 1823-1913: [data unknown/missing]
• 1913-1945: Parts of Manhattan
• 1945-1983: Parts of Brooklyn
• 1983-1993: All of Staten Island, Parts of Brooklyn
• 1993-2003: Parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens
• 2003–2013: Parts of Manhattan, Queens
• 2013–present: Parts of Queens, The Bronx

During the 1970s, this area was the 18th district in the 1980s it was the 15th district .

The district was a Brooklyn-based seat until 1982 when it became the Staten Island district. In 1992 it became the East Side of Manhattan district, which for most of its existence had been the 17th district . In 2012, the district shifted to the former territory of the 7th district in Queens and the Bronx.

Note that in New York State electoral politics there are numerous minor parties at various points on the political spectrum. Certain parties will invariably endorse either the Republican or Democratic candidate for every office, hence the state electoral results contain both the party votes, and the final candidate votes (Listed as "Recap").

In the TV series Heroes, the character Nathan Petrelli won the 14th district's congressional seat in 2006 election in a landslide, due to electoral fraud. He did not take the seat, however. [30]

Contents

Bond was born at Hubbard Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, to parents Julia Agnes (Washington) and Horace Mann Bond. His father was an educator who later served as the president of Lincoln University, a historically black university in Pennsylvania. [4] [5] His mother, Julia, was a former librarian at Clark Atlanta University. [6]

The family resided on campus at Fort Valley State College, where Horace was president. The house of the Bonds was a frequent stop for scholars, activists, and celebrities passing through, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson.

In 1945, Bond's father accepted the position of president of Lincoln University—becoming its first African-American president—and the family moved North. [7] In 1957, Bond graduated from George School, a private Quaker preparatory boarding school near Newtown in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. [8]

On April 17, 1960, Bond helped co-found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). [9] He served as the communications director of SNCC from January 1961 to September 1966, when he traveled around Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, to help organize civil rights and voter registration drives. Bond left Morehouse College in 1961 to work on civil rights in the south. [10] From 1960 to 1963, Bond led student protests against segregation in public facilities and the other Jim Crow laws of Georgia. [11]

Bond returned to Morehouse College in 1971, then aged 31, to complete his Bachelor of Arts in English. [12] With Morris Dees, Bond helped found the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a public-interest law firm based in Montgomery, Alabama. [13] Bond served as its president from 1971 until 1979. [14] Bond was an emeritus member of the Southern Poverty Law Center board of directors at time of his death in 2015. [15] Bond also advocated for Africans in Europe. [16]

In politics Edit

In 1965, Bond was one of 11 African Americans elected to the Georgia House of Representatives after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 had opened voter registration to blacks. By ending the disfranchisement of blacks through discriminatory voter registration, African Americans regained the ability to vote and entered the political process. [17] Although he was initially undecided about his party affiliation, Bond ultimately ran and was elected as a Democrat, the party of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act into law. [18] On January 10, 1966, Georgia state representatives voted 184–12 not to seat him, because he had publicly endorsed SNCC's policy regarding opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War. [19] Five of the representatives who voted to seat Bond were white, including Republican Rodney Cook. [20] [21] They disliked his stated sympathy for persons who were "unwilling to respond to a military draft." [22] A three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled in a 2–1 decision that the Georgia House had not violated any of Bond's constitutional rights. In 1966, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 9–0 in the case of Bond v. Floyd (385 U.S. 116) that the Georgia House of Representatives had denied Bond his freedom of speech and was required to seat him. From 1967 to 1975, Bond was elected to four terms in the Georgia House, where he organized the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. [23]

In January 1967, Bond was among eleven Georgia House members who refused to vote when the legislature elected segregationist Democrat Lester Maddox of Atlanta as governor of Georgia over the Republican Bo Callaway. Callaway had led in the 1966 general election by some three thousand votes. The choice fell on state lawmakers under the Georgia Constitution of 1824, because neither major party candidate had polled a majority in the general election. Former Governor Ellis Arnall polled more than fifty thousand votes as a write-in candidate, a factor which led to the impasse. Bond would not support either Maddox or Callaway, although he was ordered to vote by lame duck Lieutenant Governor Peter Zack Geer. [24]

Throughout his House career, Bond's district was repeatedly redistricted:

Bond went on to be elected for six terms in the Georgia Senate, in which he served from 1975 to 1987. [28]

During the 1968 presidential election, Bond led an alternate delegation from Georgia to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where he became the first African American to have his name entered into nomination as a major-party candidate for Vice President of the United States. The 28-year-old Bond quickly declined, citing the constitutional requirement that one must be at least 35 years of age to serve in that office. [29] [30]

Bond ran for the United States House of Representatives from Georgia's 5th congressional district in 1986. He lost the Democratic nomination in a runoff to rival civil rights leader John Lewis in a bitter contest, [31] during which Bond was accused of using cocaine and other drugs. [32] During the campaign, Lewis challenged Bond to take a drug test (Lewis had said he took one and passed). Bond refused, saying the drug test was akin to McCarthyism and trivializes the issue of drugs. [33] While Bond had raised twice as much money as Lewis and had a larger national reputation, Lewis cast himself as the man on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement and ran up large margins over Bond among white liberals in Atlanta. [34] As the district had a huge Democratic majority, the nomination delivered the seat to Lewis, who served in Congress for 30 years until his death on July 17, 2020. Still dogged by allegations of drug use, Bond resigned from the Georgia Senate the following year. [35] [36] Bond's estranged wife, Alice, who publicly accused him of using cocaine, later retracted her statements. [30]

After leaving politics, Bond taught at several universities in major cities in the North and South, including American University, [37] Drexel, [38] and Harvard. [39] Bond taught the history of the civil rights movement at the University of Virginia from 1990 to 2012. While there he had the chance to share his experiences of the movement with thousands of students through stories, newsreels, music, and film. [40] Bond was on the Board of Selectors of Jefferson Awards for Public Service. [41]

In activism Edit

Bond became the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center [42] in 1971. He served until 1979, remaining a board member and president emeritus for the rest of his life. [43] In 1998, Bond was selected as chairman of the NAACP. Bond once referred to leading the NAACP as "the most powerful job a Black man can have in America." [44] In November 2008, he announced that he would not seek another term as chairman. [45] Bond agreed to stay on in the position through 2009, as the organization celebrated its 100th anniversary. Roslyn Brock was chosen as Bond's successor on February 20, 2010. [46]

Bond was an outspoken supporter of the rights of gays and lesbians. He publicly stated his support for same-sex marriage. Most notably, he boycotted the funeral services for Coretta Scott King on the grounds that the King children had chosen an anti-gay megachurch as the venue. This was in conflict with their mother's longstanding support for the rights of gay and lesbian people. [47] In a 2005 speech in Richmond, Virginia, Bond stated:

African Americans . were the only Americans who were enslaved for two centuries, but we were far from the only Americans suffering discrimination then and now . Sexual disposition parallels race. I was born this way. I have no choice. I wouldn't change it if I could. Sexuality is unchangeable. [48]

In a 2007 speech on the Martin Luther King Day Celebration at Clayton State University, Bond said, "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married." His positions pitted elements of the NAACP against religious groups in the Civil Rights Movement who oppose gay marriage. Most resistance came from within the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was partially blamed for the success of the gay marriage ban amendment in California. [49] On October 11, 2009, Bond appeared at the National Equality March in Washington, D.C., and spoke about the rights of the LGBT community, a speech which was aired live on C-SPAN. [50] [51]

Bond was a strong critic of policies that contribute to anthropogenic climate change and was amongst a group of protesters arrested at the White House for civil disobedience in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline in February 2013. [52]

Other political views Edit

Bond was a strong critic of the George W. Bush administration, in large part because he believed it was illegitimate. Twice in 2001, first in February when he spoke to the NAACP board and then in July when he spoke at that organization's national convention, he attacked the administration for selecting Cabinet secretaries "from the Taliban wing of American politics". Bond specifically targeted Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had opposed affirmative action, and Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who defended the Confederacy in a 1996 speech on states' rights. In the selection of these individuals, Bond said, Bush had appeased "the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing and chosen Cabinet officials whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection". The then House Majority Leader Dick Armey responded to Bond's statement with a letter in which he accused NAACP leaders of "racial McCarthyism". [53] Bond later added at the annual NAACP convention that year, that since Bush's election he had "had his picture taken with more black people than voted for him." [53]

On May 14, 2013, while appearing on MSNBC, Bond called the Tea Party the "Taliban wing of American politics". [54] Bond told MSNBC, "I think it's entirely legitimate to look at the Tea Party." But he also said, "It was wrong for the IRS to behave in this heavy-handed manner. They didn't explain it well before or now what they're doing and why they're doing it." He called Tea Party members "a group of people who are admittedly racist, who are overtly political, who've tried as best as they can to harm President Obama in every way they can". He added, "We all ought to be a little worried about them." [54]

Work and appearances in media Edit

In 2012, Bond was centrally featured in Julian Bond: Reflections from the Frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement, a documentary film by Eduardo Montes-Bradley. [55] [56] From 1980 to 1997, Bond hosted America's Black Forum. [30] He was also a commentator for radio's Byline and NBC's The Today Show. [57] He authored the nationally syndicated newspaper column Viewpoint, [37] and narrated the critically acclaimed PBS series Eyes on the Prize in 1987 and 1990. [58]

Bond hosted Saturday Night Live on April 9, 1977, becoming the first black political figure to host the television show. In the same year, he also appeared in the Richard Pryor vehicle Greased Lightning. In 1978, Bond played himself in the miniseries King. [59] He also had a small appearance playing State Representative John E. White in the movie Ray (2004), [60] in addition to another small appearance in which he played himself in the movie 5 to 7 (2014). [61]

On July 28, 1961, Bond married Alice Clopton, a student at Spelman College they divorced on November 10, 1989. They had five children: Phyllis Jane Bond-McMillan, Horace Mann Bond II, Michael Julian Bond (an Atlanta City Councilman), Jeffrey Alvin Bond and Julia Louise Bond. He married Pamela Sue Horowitz, a former SPLC staff attorney, in 1990. [62] Bond died from complications of vascular disease on August 15, 2015, in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, at the age of 75. He is survived by his wife, his five children, his brother James and sister Jane Bond Moore, and eight grandchildren. [43]

Today in World War II History—January 14, 1940 & 1945

Colonel Dregne of the US 357th Fighter Group gives a briefing to pilots Foy, Storch and Evans at Leiston Army Air Field in England, 14 Jan 1945, showing the 54 victories earned by the group that day (later revised to 56.5 victories), and the group’s 549 total victories (Imperial War Museum, Roger Freeman Collection)

80 Years Ago—January 14, 1940: FBI raid in New York City uncovers guns, ammunition, and bomb-making material, and a plot to sabotage and overthrow the government 17 members of the anti-Semitic “Christian Front” group are arrested (later acquitted).

British chemists (pharmacists) are granted an exemption to sugar rationing in order to coat pills.

75 Years Ago—Jan. 14, 1945: US 357 th Fighter Group downs 56.5 German aircraft over Derben, Germany, the highest single day total for any US Army Air Force fighter group in WWII.

In Burma, Indian 19 th Division attempts to cross the Irrawaddy River at Thabaikkyin but withdraws under fierce Japanese bayonet attack.

Auschwitz

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Auschwitz, Polish Oświęcim, also called Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nazi Germany’s largest concentration camp and extermination camp. Located near the industrial town of Oświęcim in southern Poland (in a portion of the country that was annexed by Germany at the beginning of World War II), Auschwitz was actually three camps in one: a prison camp, an extermination camp, and a slave-labour camp. As the most lethal of the Nazi extermination camps, Auschwitz has become the emblematic site of the “final solution,” a virtual synonym for the Holocaust. Between 1.1 and 1.5 million people died at Auschwitz 90 percent of them were Jews. Also among the dead were some 19,000 Roma who were held at the camp until the Nazis gassed them on July 31, 1944—the only other victim group gassed in family units alongside the Jews. The Poles constituted the second largest victim group at Auschwitz, where some 83,000 were killed or died.

Auschwitz was probably chosen to play a central role in the “final solution” because it was located at a railway junction with 44 parallel tracks—rail lines that were used to transport Jews from throughout Europe to their death. Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, the Nazi paramilitary corps, ordered the establishment of the first camp, the prison camp, on April 27, 1940, and the first transport of Polish political prisoners arrived on June 14. This small camp, Auschwitz I, was reserved throughout its history for political prisoners, mainly Poles and Germans.

In October 1941, work began on Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, located outside the nearby village of Brzezinka. There the SS later developed a huge concentration camp and extermination complex that included some 300 prison barracks four large so-called Badeanstalten (German: “bathhouses”), in which prisoners were gassed to death Leichenkeller (“corpse cellars”), in which their bodies were stored and Einäscherungsöfen (“cremating ovens”). Another camp (Buna-Monowitz), near the village of Dwory, later called Auschwitz III, became in May 1942 a slave-labour camp supplying workers for the nearby chemical and synthetic-rubber works of IG Farben. In addition, Auschwitz became the nexus of a complex of 45 smaller subcamps in the region, most of which housed slave labourers. During most of the period from 1940 to 1945, the commandant of the central Auschwitz camps was SS-Hauptsturmführer (Capt.) and ultimately SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieut. Col.) Rudolf Franz Hoess (Höss).

The death camp and slave-labour camp were interrelated. Newly arrived prisoners at the death camp were divided in a process known as Selektion. The young and the able-bodied were sent to work. Young children and their mothers and the old and infirm were sent directly to the gas chambers. Thousands of prisoners were also selected by the camp doctor, Josef Mengele, for medical experiments. Auschwitz doctors tested methods of sterilization on the prisoners, using massive doses of radiation, uterine injections, and other barbaric procedures. Experiments involving the killing of twins, upon whom autopsies were performed, were meant to provide information that would supposedly lead to the rapid expansion of the “Aryan race.”

Subject to harsh conditions—including inadequate shelter and sanitation—given minimal food, and worked to exhaustion, those who could no longer work faced transport back to Birkenau for gassing. German corporations invested heavily in the slave-labour industries adjacent to Auschwitz. In 1942 IG Farben alone invested more than 700 million Reichsmarks in its facilities at Auschwitz III.

Between May 15 and July 9, 1944, some 438,000 Hungarian Jews were shipped on 147 trains to Birkenau, stretching the camp’s resources for killing beyond all limits. Because the crematoria were overcrowded, bodies were burned in pyres fueled partly by the victims’ own fat. Just prior to the deportation of Hungarian Jewry, two prisoners escaped with plans of the camp. They met with resistance leaders in Slovakia and compiled a detailed report including maps. As this report made its way to Western intelligence services in the summer of 1944, there were requests to bomb Auschwitz. Although the industrial complex adjacent to Auschwitz was bombed, the death camp and its crematoria were left untouched, a subject of controversy more than 50 years later. (See Why Wasn’t Auschwitz Bombed?)

As Soviet armies advanced in 1944 and early 1945, Auschwitz was gradually abandoned. On January 18, 1945, some 60,000 prisoners were marched to Wodzisław Śląski, where they were put on freight trains (many in open cars) and sent westward to concentration camps away from the front. One in four died en route from starvation, cold, exhaustion, and despair. Many were shot along the way in what became known as the “death marches.” The 7,650 sick or starving prisoners who remained were found by arriving Soviet troops on January 27, 1945.

Although the Germans destroyed parts of the camps before abandoning them in 1945, much of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) remained intact and were later converted into a museum and memorial. The site has been threatened by increased industrial activity in Oświęcim. In 1996, however, the Polish government joined with other organizations in a large-scale effort to ensure its preservation. Originally named Auschwitz Concentration Camp, the memorial was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979. It was renamed “Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945)” in 2007.

TODAY IN SPORTS HISTORY - January 14, 1940

January 14, 1940 the NFL's second annual All-Star game pitted the Green Bay Packers vs a TEAM OF NFL ALL-STARS. and WON!

While the packers roster consisted of household names like: Dick Weisgerber, Milt Gantenbein and Pug Manders. The NFL All-Star team was sending out guys like: Enry Pinckert, Buford Ray and Gust Zarnas.

The 1940 National Football League All-star Game was the professional football league's second all-star game. The game pitted the Green Bay Packers, the league's champion for the 1939 season, against a team of all-stars. The game was played on Sunday, January 14, 1940, at Gilmore Stadium in Los Angeles, California in front of 18,000 fans. The Packers defeated the all-stars by a score of 16–7. The game was originally scheduled to be played on the previous Sunday, but it was delayed due to rain.

The players on the all-star squad were selected by a national poll of fans. Wilbur Crowell was the referee for the game.

Invasion of France January 17, 1940. What if?

Post by ckleisch » 07 Mar 2003, 08:48

Post by davethelight » 09 Mar 2003, 14:09

Post by Redbaron1908 » 10 Mar 2003, 01:32

Re: Invasion of France January 17, 1940. What if?

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 06 Nov 2011, 00:04

If I recall correctly the Brits had only two understrength corps in Europe, and fewer aircraft in the RAF expeditionary force.

A second point is the 'Sickle Cut' plan did not exist in January 1944. The plan in place still had the main weight or main effort north of the Ardennes on the Belgian plain. This main effort did not include as many of the mechanized corps as the later May 1940 plan used in its main effort. The mechanized corps were spread across the front a bit differently. Neither were the Mech Corps collected into massed panzer groups, like Panzer Group Kleist of May 1940. they were under the control of the army commanders who saw them as local tactical forces and not as a "stratigic" weapon proposed by Guderian.

All that works to the advantage of the French who's weakness was in dealing with the speed and power of Kleists strike force. For example the single German armored corps that struck the French 1st Army in may 1940 was repulsed. Spreading out the German armored corps among the armies enables the French to deal with them in manageable lots. Neither did some of the weaknesses of the French position along the Meuse River exist in January 1940. The armies were organized differently and several of the better quality divisions were still in place to intervene in the center where the Germans later broke through. In the air the FAF had the maximum combat trained units at ready status, unlike in May when a significant proportion had been withdrawn to south France to reequip & train with new aircraft. The French had anticipated January being a high risk period and had its forces on partial alert.

So, while the Germans still have some advantages the French are not in the same situation as in May. The odds are much higher of there being a stalemate after a couple bloody months of fighting.

Re: Invasion of France January 17, 1940. What if?

Post by phylo_roadking » 06 Nov 2011, 00:36

Anyway - some more factors.

The winter of 1939-40 was atrocious, the coldest for 25 years IIRC. and the spring thaw in Scandanavia at least was

6 weeks later than usual. This is going to cause terrible supply problems for the Germans. but not possibly as much for the Allies as they were keeping railway lines supplying the "front" along the French border clear.

WAS there no Dyle Plan? )The British and French certainly planned to "forward defend" inside Belgium. and there were covert contacts going on with the Belgians. Even if throw together at the last minute (which, IIRC, it wasn't. ) when the French would have moved forward to their positions inside Belgium. one of things they WOULD have found there would have been a complete Cointet anti-tank fence/flood ditch combination right along their front, not the mess the Belgians had made of it by May 10th The Belgians fiddled with the antitank fence at least twice, and in some places three times - so that when the French arrived in the Gembloux Gap in May they found many fence sections dismantled ready to be moved several stretches moved back, but not joined up to the rest of the line and of course, moving them back broke the essential connection between the anti-tank fence and the flood ditches/rivers it formed a two-part obstacle with!

Re: Invasion of France January 17, 1940. What if?

Post by Tim Smith » 06 Nov 2011, 01:22

Luftwaffe support in January 1940 will be less effective than in May 1940 due to the bad weather. Bomber sorties will be fewer in number and bombing will be less accurate due to cloud and fog.

Bad weather hurts the Germans worse than the Allies - the Luftwaffe was the main factor that gave the German Army the edge over the French, and Allied air support wasn't that effective even in summer weather as they had fewer bombers.

In this scenario, the Allies have a better chance of pulling off a defensive victory equivalent to the Battle of the Marne in 1914. The Allied armies in Belgium would likely not be cut off and would be able to withdraw to France. The Germans would likely overrun most of Belgium, but due to heavier losses than historically through attacking the Allies head-on would likely have shot their bolt by mid-February and need at least one month to recuperate, maybe even two months - this gives the Allies time to recover and form a strong front line.

Germany was fortunate that Hitler didn't get his way. Or maybe unfortunate, given that Nazi successes only lengthened the war.

Re: Invasion of France January 17, 1940. What if?

Post by phylo_roadking » 06 Nov 2011, 01:40

Tim, the Allies already have a strong line to fall back on if necessary, and if they're prepared to - they can in this scenario fall back from the Germans in Belgium. onto their positions on the French frontier they spent the winter building!

Gamelin would be happy tho'. the winter weather should also make the Ardennes impassable to narrowtracked early-war armour and less of a worry to him.

Treaty of Paris Ratified

The Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris on January 14, 1784, officially establishing the United States as an independent and sovereign nation. The Continental Congress approved preliminary articles of peace on April 15, 1783. The treaty, signed in Paris on September 3, 1783, required Congress to return the ratified document to England within six months.

The Horse America, Throwing His Master. Westminster: Published by William White, Aug. 1, 1779. Cartoon Prints, British. Prints & Photographs Division

Although Congress was scheduled to convene at the Maryland State House in November, as late as January 12 only seven of the thirteen states were legally represented. Operating under the weak Articles of Confederation, Congress lacked the power to enforce attendance. With the journey to England requiring approximately two months, time was running short.

Annapolis, Maryland. Maryland State Capitol I. Theodor Horydczak, photographer, ca 1920-1950. Horydczak Collection. Prints & Photographs Division

Delegates continued to trickle in. Connecticut representatives presented their credentials to Congress on January 13, leaving the convention one delegate shy of a quorum. Richard Beresford of South Carolina left his sickbed in Philadelphia for Annapolis, and, after his arrival, the vote was taken.

The Treaty of Paris granted the United States territory as far west as the Mississippi River, but reserved Canada to Great Britain. Fisheries in Newfoundland remained available to Americans and navigation of the Mississippi River was open to both parties. Congress promised to recommend states return confiscated loyalist property, but they had no power to enforce this demand. Creditors in both countries were free to pursue collection of debts.