Not quite true ??? The Royal Navy captured German U-boat U-110 on May 9, 1941 in the North Atlantic, recovering an Enigma machine, its cipher keys, and code books that allowed codebreakers to read German signal traffic during World War II. The Enigma machine was an electro-mechanical rotor cipher machine used by the German navy to encrypt and decrypt messages
I don't believe France had the armor to have beat the Germans, the Germans steam rolled France and destroyed every armored vehicle the French fielded. That armor was akin to a kiddie ride at an amusement park, looked like left over tin cans from WWI.
Yes, that U-boat was captured complete with an Enigma machine, it's cipher key and code books. But, those code books were only good for a brief time. It was Allen Turing who invented the worlds first computer which ultimately was able to break the German codes, not only for the German Navy , but for all German wireless traffic.
True, the U.S. was poorly equipped in 1939-1940, but that was not the reason why many in the U.S. didn't want to help. They didn't want to help because they felt the U.S. should remain neutral. That was when Pres. Roosevelt came up with the famous "Lend-Lease" idea.
Keep in mind that Hitler had given orders that IF the German re-occupation was fired upon, they were to withdraw immediately. At the time (1936), France still had the largest army in Europe and could have stopped Hitler. My point is that France didn't have strong leaders . France never even tried to stop Hitler.
The Brits broke the code largely because the Polish who fled the Nazis had already done most of the work. Without Polish help, Bletchley Park would have had a much harder time, and may not have been successful. It would have changed the outlook for the Allies for the entire war and dragged it on for many more years.
IF my memory is correct, the Poles actually got their hands on an Enigma cipher machine and then turned it over to the Brits. However, without the codes, the machine didn't help much. It was Allen Turning who came up with the notion that only a machine could "break the code" of another machine. That was when he designed and built the world's first computer which broke the Enigma codes.
France was part communist and a whole list of other parties at the start of WWII. If you had to come up with a reason that would be a good start. They were too busy fighting one another, same today. This is also practiced in Canada with the same infighting today. It is interesting to know that even Ho Chi Minh had a hand in building the communist party in France around the 1920s., Of course his interest was to get the French out of Vietnam at any cost and with any friend that would help. I guess you could say there was no one leader when it all started. Today we have dropped to the same level in our own government, one side is liberal socialist who openly attempt coup de tat because they have a deep entrenched DOJ that is willing to destroy our legal system for their own personal use to target their political enemies or rivals. If people can't see the truth it will continue to get worse until we ourselves will be fighting again. I believe the worm is beginning to turn and eventually all the corrupt ones will be targeted and arrested before any real lasting damage can occur. All our government offices need to be investigated and any special party favors having to do with targeting people should be imprisoned. I have never seen so much corruption by a group of people in my entire life. It was at the end of the civil war that it was necessary to have vigilantes because we had no law enforcement other than Union soldiers and they were spread too thin. If we don't get a firm grip on the corruption soon we will once again have to form vigilantes just to stay safe. It is like looking into the wayback machine today and it is about to get really interesting here in the US. All the same players that were around at the start of WW II are once again gathering and planting seeds. We are no longer the world leader in anything and would have to fight 2/3rds of the world to win a future war.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said that his greatest fear during WW2 were the German U-boats. Britain depended upon nearly all of her resources from overseas. This was especially true of food supplies. Before the war, Britain was importing 20,000 tons of food stuffsper year. That was aprox 70 % of her needs. In war, Germany could feed herself. Britain could not. At the start of WW2, Admiral Karl Donitz had only 56 fully operational U-boats. Admiral Donitz wanted not merely a few dozen U-boats , but he wanted 300 BEFORE starting the war. If Hitler had listened to Donitz the Battle of the Atlantic might well have completely isolated Great Britain and starved her into submission. This was one of many strategic mistakes that Hitler failed to comprehend.
In June 1940, the Germans had beaten France and controlled much of Europe. They were now engaged in the Battle of Britain. And preparing to launch Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of Britain. At this point they were fighting only on ONE FRONT. And they had the entire might of their military at their disposal. BUT, they had to destroy the RAF BEFORE Sea Lion could begin. It was during the Battle of Britain that the Germans made a HUGE error. Instead of continuing to attack RAF bases, and possibly take the RAF out of the fight, they began attacking cities. This gave the RAF much needed time to get their air bases up to speed, and get more pilots trained. If Germany had continued to go after the RAF, exclusively, they MIGHT have been able to win the air war.
Germany had concentrated on military targets until the Brits, allegedly accidentally, targeted German cities. Hitler was enraged, as he had promised no British bombs would fall on German cities. He then began the "blitz" that so angered the British population. The British bombed civilian targets first, not the Germans. You are correct, however, that if he had concentrated on the airfields and radar installations, it would have been to his advantage.
Well, not quite. If memory serves, it was the other way around. Allegedly, it was a single German plane which, against orders, accidentally bombed London. Hitler had initially avoided bombing British cities in the hope that Britain would sue for peace. The British responded by bombing Berlin on the night of Aug 25th. Herman Goering had promised that not a single bomb would ever strike Berlin. You are correct that Hitler became enraged and he launched the mass bombing of London starting on Sept 7th, and continued for 57 consecutive nights. followed soon after by the bombing of other British cities. However it actually started, there can be no doubt what-so-ever that Britain did indeed bomb German cities into rubble. The most notorious was the mass bombing of Dresden where some 25,000 German civilians were killed in a single night. Joseph Goebbels, the German minister of propaganda, added a zero to that number and falsely claimed that 250,000 German civilians were killed that night.
Yep, you are correct. I had things twisted a bit, but the Brits were the first to deliberately bomb a city, and I think the Americans were largely responsible for Dresden.