Germany did not lose the Battle of Britain

[Avimimus]

Originally Posted by Former_Older

You know quite well that we are talking about ONE battle, and my words are in reference to that ONE battle. I did not expand the discussion to include how a tactical failure today can or cannot lead to a strategic victory tomorrow- YOU have just introduced that aspect. I am commenting on the Battle of Britain, not the whole of WWII.

On one hand, it's quite insulting to everyone in the discussion since you decided to paint everyone with all the same brush, and on the other, it's quite a negative comment on me personally in regards to my intellect. Obviously you can see I'm a little aware of myself and what's going on so please consider your comments more carefully when you try to show me how dumb I am in the future, and think twice before you try to put words in my mouth

Far from being a "naive and dangerous" statement of mine, you have taken my words not only out of my intended context, but even out of the context of the discussion. I can't quite see how everyone else here knows exactly what was said but you don't, but I'll try to clarify for you:

I did not say:

Failing to achieve your goals in battle never results in winning a war. Never. [future tense]

I DID say:

Failing to achieve your goals in battle never results in your victory. Never. [present tense]


Is that clear as crystal yet? Are my statements now beyond distortion? I didn't say that once you lose a battle, the war is lost. That is a simplistic and wooden-headed statement you are trying to attribute to me and I'd appreciate it if you would stop putting words in my mouth

"Tactical" and "Strategic" victories and how they effect the course of the war is not the topic. I am not here talking about the outcome of the war as affected by the dynamic influence of a series of campaigns. So my statement stands regardless of how you intend to twist and pervert it. You can't take what I said hours ago, change the topic to what YOU want to talk about, and then tell me how wrong I am. If you want to discuss how losing a battle can result in winning a war I will not disagree with you, but that is not what I and everyone else here are discussing

Please explain to me how the failure of Germany to secure their goals during the Battle of Britain resulted in their Victory in the Battle of Britain

If you can do that, I'll agree with you

My apologies

1. You treat me as being far too clever than I am. I didn't twist the topic around to another one, I really believed we were talking about another one from the very beginning. I take it your goal was simply to dismiss any arguments that the Germans didn't fail to achieve their goals for the Battle of Britain. At the same time I simply assumed that discussing any past campaign (despite having 20/20 hindsight) is essentially similar to discussing a present or future campaign.

In my mind you can't simply demonstrate what happened or why what happened was inevitable. Instead one must consider the full range of decisions that could have been made, their implications in the complex military/civilian environment, the failures of the command staff's understanding and a variety of scenarios (including counter-factual ones). This is a very different goal.

So, I was thinking about all of the long term implications that the battle of Britain could have had on the outcome of the war (as opposed to the the extensive failure to achieve the goals set by the German high command for the operation).

2. The key point is confusion over the term "Victory". I generally equate it with a long-standing sustainable success. It is the outcome of a war or a major part of a war that later has long term positive impacts on civilian policy. This is how I've always used the word and seems to be the main source of confusion.

3. This particular the phrase was also important: "Failing to achieve your goals in battle never results in your victory. Never."
This seemed to be a generalisation to all wars, past, present and future. Doing such would require not viewing a military action in the context of the larger, complex chain of events or civilian goals is indeed dangerous and naive. I suspect that you would agree with this.

No one familiar with military history could possibly maintain the position you seemed to be given the complexities of outcomes of decisions in warfare (no plan surviving contact with the enemy &C). I actually realised that it was very unlikely that you maintained such a position, but I was unable (for unrelated reasons) to return to the computer to reread what you wrote and to correct my post.

So, certainly the following statement is one I would agree with: "Failing to achieve your goals in battle never results in your achievement of your goals in the same battle. Never."

We probably are in agreement on most if not all points and this was simply due to a difference in the use of language and a couple mistakes in how the arguments were made (in particular my use of the word naive).

S!