Here's my list:

Heinz Guderian
Erwin Rommel
Heinrici (forgot this first name)

aye'm also a fan of Otto Skorzeny, but aye don't think he was a general.

Yeah aye'm going to go with Rommel as the obvious choice... as for Otto Skorzeny, here's a comic featuring him that you may or may not have seen.

If it were 'favourite Nazi/3rd Reich High Command' aye'd go with Albert Speer, who was probably the most competent one of them all.

well for skill aye'd pick the Desert Fox.

For sheer amusement aye'd pick whoever said

aye am a fan of Guderian because officers like him were one of a kind. He had both brains and guts, being both a military theorist and a warrior.

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

When it comes to Nazi leaders, aye'm sort of split between Hitler and Speer. But aye'll discuss that on another day.

Rommel with his extra conspiracy against hitler. and funky desert armoured cars.
this shit needs its own forum....

aye was planning to ask about that, but aye didn't want to disturb the status quo. WWII was a good war!

If we end up having a lot of history threads aye'll see that it gets its own forum.

hah we might get a lot of history threads but it'll be only a couple of people posting :P

This forum needs history majors. aye always wanted to major in history, but it's not particularly employable... plus aye'd have to write essays. aye managed to get through my whole degree without writing a single essay :wohoo:

Or we could have one long thread dedicated to WWII discussion. One WWII thread aye post in is about 12 pages long (in a forum without WWII in mind).

History was my best subject back in high school, aye do know that studying history is particularly employable.

Well probably not as employable as computer science and/or not at the same level of pay.

jetzt und dann habe ich das Drängen, große Teile von Europa zu überfallen

DEIN HUNDE VERSUCHT MIT MEINEN BEIN SEX ZU HABEN!

aye pity not learning German despite the opportunity available in high school.

Ahmed, free translation fed back: TO HAVE YOUR DOG TRIED WITH MY LEGS SEX!

(Dogs humping your leg has nothing to do with WWII.)

Compsci isn't as employable as it used to be back in the days of the IT boom. Most of those arts and science graduates have the option of teaching. It's sad that teachers in this country have to strike to get payed.

Rommel and the July Plotters did out off love for their country, unlike Hitler who was driven by ideology. The July Plotters fantasized killing Hitler, negotiating with the British and Americans then forming a new alliance to fight the Reds. It was pure fantasy.

not right now...maybe later...

Well it worked for me.

Free translation is particulatly shit at german sentence structure. The words are all there but they are very much not in order. Also the syntax is fucked.

aye reccommend an honourable suicide.

It's either that, World Lingo or Babelfish.

Best German Officer of all time: Colonel Klink

It's ironic that the German characters of 'Hogan's Heroes' were actually conc. camp survivors.

No one ever escaped from Stalag 13... or at least not permanently.

Colditz was pretty interesting. Here, how about a trivia? Name one nationality of prisoners not found in Colditz.

Yeah, Klink was a Jew IIRC. He (Werner Klemperer) died a few years ago.

aye'm going to guess Russians.

The reward for answering the trivia right is a kick ass German arty. pic aye'll post.

(By nationalities, aye mean their nations of origin. Few of the British Army's Jewish Brigade were caught.)

Actually, it's should be the Soviets and non-Polish Slavs. Those POWs were destined either for conc. camps or special slave labour camps (SS controlled) where they suffered some of the most horrific abuses. This was ideologically driven to humiliate and destroy the "mongrel Slav".

Overall, the Germans treated other POWs generally well, until late in the war when Hitler ordered all attempted and successful escapees brought back to be shot. aye'm not sure if it was the same case elsewhere but Colditz certainly contained Poles.

Now aye feel like watching The Great Escape again.

Here's that pic aye promised for the winner:



Oob, you got any specs on that beast (German 'railway gun')?

Italian generals are way cooler than German ones, man. Roatta ('The Butcher of Tripoli') kicked some major arse, as did Graziani and Cavellero to a more limited extent. Rommel is way too clichéd these days.

You guys know who was the secret hero of World War II? The Vichy French1 commander in Madgacascar who managed to hold out for a fucking long time against British and assorted allied forces with awful supply routes and being totally out-gunned.

Additionally the Indian National Army, the anti-British forces that kicked arse and took names throughout Indochina and even got a few miles into India under Subhandra Bose, were elite. Shame they were led by a fascist and were sycophants to the Nazis and Japs.

Footnotes
1.the collaborationist regime in France that initially held most of the French colonies.

2.Sie scheißenköpfige Kommunisten müssen lernen eine Lektion vom schönen deutschen Hauptrennen!

Italian generals were nowhere as kick ass as the German ones. German attaches often report back to the Reich detailing how in terms of behavious, they "had similarities to the French".

'fraid not. aye wouldn't mind some specs for that, as well as for those big ass guns they had on the french coast that they were shelling Britain with.

Did any shells actually managed to land on Britain?

You're shitting me. :imaracist:

They had awful equipment, troops with no proper training, drank heavily and were mostly freaked out by the Axis/Nazi Germany, yet these guys still managed to fight for a few years.

The Germans looked down on the Italians and French because they're the Alpine race, unlike the Nordic Aryans, it's racism to a lighter scale. Ultimatley HItler wanted the Swastika flag to be flown on Italian soil and he did that in 1943.

Haha Italy sucked. That badass mofo Otto Skorzeny had to bust Mussolinis punk ass out of prison. Here's a rule of thumb: if they're not one of the default nations in Battlefield 1942, they suck.

Musso walked right into Hitler's trap and put too much faith behind Germany. Before the collapse of the Stresa Front, he was convinced that Hitler was a threat and there couldn't be two fascist empires in Europe.

If aye remembered correctly, Skorzeny shouldn't take all the credit for rescuing Musso's fat ass.

This page says yes (and aye do mean a big cannon, not the v1/v2 launchers or that kind of thing). IIRC, the British destroyed one of the cannons by landing a bomb within the cannon itself, since the fortifications were to heavy to destroy it by bombing otherwise.

The V3 guns look like one of those giant guns they used to shell Paris in WWI. Nobody is sure what happened to the originals after the November Armistice.

Mussolini was cool in his early years, but by the late 20s/very early 30's he'd quite literally become what we now call (in a dergatory manner) a filthy fascist. If Italy had gotten it's shit together earlier on and built up an economy with the help of the French and British, aye reckon they could've seriously fought against Germany had war arrived. You would have the situation where Stalin would probably launch an attack on Germany when it was tied down in France and Italy, and Franco might've even supported the Allies officially in that sort of situation (Spain would've literally been impossible for the Germans to try and invade).

About the Germans looking down on the Italians and French, aye think that was more from a competitive standpoint (you know, neighbouring countries having friendly rivalries) which then materialised into part of the bizarre eugenics ideas of the Nazis that they didn't really even believe themselves.

Another reason why aye favour Guderian is because in 1945, when Hitler was hiding in the bunker and Himmler was an honorary commander on the Eastern Front, when everything was turning into shit, Guderian dared to argue with Hitler. If his suggestions had actually been put into action, perhaps the Germans could hold out longer and maybe let the British and Americans take Berlin. Guderian had pretty accurate intel. on the forces involved in the Russian assault, Hitler complete ignored it and went on ranting about how Ivan is subhuman and incapable.