Echoing the thread on Hitler's mistakes I ask which were some big mistakes made by the Allies?

The Maginot line of fortifications comes to mind.

Certain sites mention the defense of the Philippines as a failure by General MacArthur.

Anzio is mentioned as a lost opportunity to push the Germans out of Italy.

Another mistake I read about was the way the United states introduced rookie soldiers into units that were still on the line. The UK apparently introduced their rookies while away from the line which created better cohesion.

Certainly there was a failure of imagination in not anticipating Japan was capable of a huge air attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. knew war was imminent, but not there.

Soviets attempting to stand fast and even counterattack during the first days of Barbarossa is a big one. Not to mention failure to make significant preparations when there were clear signs the Germans were about to attack.

Halsey at Leyte Gulf probably also deserves a mention, though the consequences were not nearly as bad as they could have been against a more competent enemy.

The deployment of the French tanks was a needless disaster. Their lack of communication and concentration caused was a big part of the fall of France.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieppe_Raid

Churchill ordered a mostly Canadian invasion of France in 1942.

My take,
To me, the purpose is still not clearly understood, something about measuring German response. What is clear is Churchill did not commit much British support and sent the Canadians on a suicide mission to invade mainland Europe on their own. Why the Canadian Military commanders agreed is beyond me.

Not only when the Germans were about to attack, but even once they had begun the attack. Stalin was so keen to avoid war with Germany that he wouldn't believe the reports which came in about the German invasion for a number of hours (iirc) after the war had begun.

I think this was to show the Allies that an invasion of France would be unsuccessful, and to get them to opt for his plan instead of the main force going through the bottom of Europe.

Capture an enigma machine? Remind me of final battle of Myth: The fallen lords. Send 3000 men to their deaths so 100 can sneak in and try to kill the dark lord.

If this was the case the reasons should be well known by now. They would be heros for creating a great diversion. Instead it is a quiet, little known footnote in the war.

Dieppe was planned as a raid, not as an invasion. I'm not sure I'd call it a mistake, as opposed to a loss.

How about allowing GB to stick Germany with WWI's bill even though it was Serbia that started the whole thing? Without that, Germany's recession would have never been as bad as it was and Hitler would have probably kept to making his crappy paintings.

The biggest obvious mistake I can think of as an "allied" mistake was operation Market Garden. Intelligence information was mishandled. Objectives were too optimistic. Command structure was flawed, communications sucked. The undertaking was too large, and drew too much precious resources from other fronts.

Its more than just reparations, the whole Treaty Of Versailles was a shambles that needed revising.

It would only have been a matter of time before someone else came along on the Nationalist side, or Communist in my opinion. They went through Chancellors in the Weimar Republic like a pair of old socks that need changing. Something had to give.

In the very late 20's people need to remember that the Nazis actually started to lose support and their share of the vote in Germany went down. It re-emerged following the Wall Street crash. Who knows what would have happened if Capitalism didn't go into meltdown in the USA? Hitler was determined to achieve power through peaceful, democratic means. They could have continued to have lost support if the crash didn't happen and sat on the periphery of the Reichstag for a few years before eventually disappearing like some of the other parties.

This is a good answer

Nah. He made some tactical errors? Sure. It was still a major victory. The errors were caused by "fog of war" situations where communications and intelligence were shoddy. He was also under pressure to "destroy the fleet" after the rumblings of Spruance not destroying said fleet at the major victory in the Marianas. So he went after the carriers which were still highest priority targets. Spruance was too conservative and Halsey too aggressive when both won major victories with the full support of Nimitz and King.

A bigger naval mistake imho was Mitscher on the Hornet launching his first wave too early and on the wrong vector during Midway rendering them all useless. Except for the torpedo squadron which defied orders and found the Japanese carriers. They all got shot down immediately but added to the circumstances that played out that day. Of course this was another major US Naval victory.

Seemingly all the biggest errors of the Navy in the Pacific still resulted in major victories.

Dieppe was a raid designed by a committee. There were all sorts of reasons for the raid, rather than a clear guiding reason. The objective of capturing an enigma machine was recently documented in a television program that marked the 70th anniversary of the event. Ian Fleming (of James Bond fame) was conspicuously involved in this aspect of the raid. But it would be a mistake to say this was the only reason for the operation. Also there is no reason why any of this stuff would be well-known by now. Many of the key documents have only become declassified recently, and the sheer volume of stuff declassified will take some time to process.

Other reasons include intelligence gathering about German radar capabilities, and about German land formation capabilities. Then there were the geopolitical objectives: reassure the Russians that the West was actually fighting the Germans, while simultaneously showing that an invasion was not practical at the time. And finally there was the reason that was common to all the raids the British were carying out on the French cast: tie down a disproportionate number of German forces.

In terms of casualties it was a signficant mistake, but in terms of tactical or strategic impact it was a minor mistake.

Why the Canadian military commanders agreed (not all of them did) is easy enough to understand. The Canadian army had been in Europe for nearly three years. On average they were the best-trained army in the West. Yet apart from a few officers serving on exchange programs in North Africa, and from a landing and immediate evacuation in western France after the Germans invaded, they had seen no action. Meanwhile green Americans had been earmarked to be shipped direct from stateside to North Africa.

In a way, Dieppe was Canada's Kasserine Pass: first significant action in the West, and a horrible loss. What was different is that while Kasserine showed up problems with Amercian leadership, command and control, training and equipment, Dieppe mostly showed up problems with the planning at a higher level than that for which the Canadians were responsible. Kasserine was a reasonable operation badly bungled in its execution, Dieppe was an unreasonable operation that met an inevitable fate.

Not killing Hitler early on

I'm only going to address mistakes by the Western allies in the Atlantic/European/African theatres of operation. I don't know enough about the other theatres.


Probably the most far-reaching mistakes made by the Allies wrt WWII were made before the war. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were already mentioned. Consider also

• The US's failure to join the League of Nations and the subsequent failure of that organization.
• France and England's failure to intervene in the remilitarization of the Rhineland, and their subsequent policy of appeasement, gave Hitler a free rein to make major strategic gains at negligable cost.
• The failure of Western armies to keep up with the German and even Soviet armies in development of equipment and doctrine put the West's soldiers at a disavantage on the battlefield.

France '40

• The Maginot Line itself was not a mistake. The mistake was to think that the main flanking thrust would repeat the pattern of 1914, rather than coming through the Ardennes.

North Atlantic

• Admiral King's refusal to locally implement British anti-submarine doctrine, most notably the convoy system, when the US finally entered the war.

North Africa

• The British failure to follow-up from Beda Fomm, and the defensive deployments they made instead
• Kasserine Pass
• Under-gunned British tanks and anti-tank guns

Italy

• US High Command's decision to weaken the Italian campaign by giving Operation Anvil/Dragoon twice the Corps it needed from US 5th Army.
• Gen. Mark Clark and/or Gen. John Lucas's failure to immediately exploit from the Anzio beachhead in the face of lighter-than-expected opposition.
• Gen. Mark Clark's unauthorized divergence from plan to capture Rome rather than cut off the German Army in Operation Diadem
• Gen. Oliver Leese' descision, on Polish advice, to make the main thrust of Operation Olive through the hills rather than on the coastal plain.
• Failure to rapidly reinforce 1st British Airborne Div.'s essentially unopposed landing on the heel and advance up the Adriatic coast

NW Europe

• Gen. Montgomery's failure to assign sufficient forces for a quick clearance of Antwerp
• Gen. Bradley's failure to meet up with II Cdn Corps to close the Falaise gap, (or, as tentatively indicated by recently declassified communications logs, a decision to pull out Gen. LeClerc's 1st FF Armd. Div. from a position that actually did temporarily close the gap adjacent to 1st Polish and 4th Cdn Armd Divs., and redirect it to the liberation of Paris)
• Gen. Gerow's decision to refuse the offer of assistance of specialized British armour (Petard, Crocodle, Crab and Fascine, collectively the 'Funnies') on Omaha Beach.
• Operation Spring
• The failure to estimate the much higher need for replacement of infanty than other trades
• The disastrous inaccuracy of American heavy bombers used in direct support of operations Totalize and Cobra.
• Commitment of inadequately trained US Infantry divisions to major offensive roles., e.g. 83rd and 90th Divs.

I think you sum up the Dieppe Raid perfectly here.

Cheers

Just watching an interesting documentary about the reasons for the British fighting in Africa and the 'soft underbelly' during WW2. It actually touches on the Dieppe raid briefly and claims that part of the reason for the raid was for Churchill to relieve the pressure from the US and Russians to invade France in late '42 or early '43 as he believed this would be disastrous.

Probably already been mentioned in this thread, in terms I'm not familiar with, but there was a disastrous naval operation off the coast of Norway.

Mistakes may have been much costlier elsewhere, but I have seen documentaries that basically say that this ranks amongst the most inept operations of the war.

I've read that Germany got ~80%+ of it's iron ore from Norway/Sweden.

Are you referring to Convoy PQ 17 or to the naval operations associated with the invasion and counter-invasion of Norway?

I don't know if either was a mistake.

Convoy PQ 17 certainly was a disaster. PQ 17 was the first joint US-British naval operation, escorting a convoy to Russia. While the convoy was off the German-occupied Norwegian Coast, the convoy was spotted and shadowed by a large group of u-boats, and attacked by German aircraft. The German battleship Tirpitz and the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper left their Norwegian port, leading the Admiraty to conclude that they were going to join the attack on the convoy. While the US-British covering force contained two battleships and a small aircraft carrier, these were believed to be inadequate to face the Tirpitz, given her sister-ship Bismark's victory over HMS Hood and Prince of Wales. Signal intelligence also determined that u-boats were assembling on the intended course of the covering force. Faced with the combined threats of submarines and aircraft already attacking the convoy, a battleship believed to be en route, and more u-boats moving to intercept the covering force, the Admrialty chose to order the naval units to withdraw and the cargo ships to scatter and proceed independently to Russia.

Two thirds of the cargo ships were lost.

Other fallout included US Admiral King withdrawing the American naval units from the joint protection of Russian-bound comvoys, and the Russians thinking the Western allies werre making up the losses to avoid sending supplies.


The naval operations associated with the Norwegian invasion were costly to both sides, but the German took proportionately higher naval losses. Most of the losses occurred after the Germans had already landed troops, who were successful in securing Norway The British-led counter-invasion had some success until the German invasion of France caused the Allied forces to be withdrawn from Norway.

- Ou est la masse de manoeuvre?
- Aucune. There is none.

French had no strategic reserve after being flanked by the Germans. Massive mistake.

Also, not evacuating the Southern French Fleet (based around Marseilles I believe) to North Africa or the UK. France's fleet was basically at port for the whole of the war, and would have been tremendously beneficial to the Allied effort. Petin should be shot.

I think France takes the crown with the 1940 campaign, but thats an easy one. I would say France aside, Dieppe raid was just a massive facepalm for a to z.