Naval History Forums

alecsandros wrote: Japan played an autistic role, thinking herself to be capable of taking on the entire Allied forces in the Pacific, and without offering nor demaning any kind of help of any sort from their theoretical Axis allies.

While that is true of the IJA it should be noted that it was the IJN that offered the KM the use of a base for U-boats at Penang in Malaya (which was taken up) and undertook the Yanagi submarine visits to France. The IJA incidently took part in the Yanagi trade, being recipient for some of the German exports.

alecsandros wrote: ... Perhaps, but on the Stalingrad front I know there were shortages of AT and AA guns even for the German divisions, not to mention shortages in tanks.
So it's difficult to lay blame on Von Paulus 6th Army for not providing equipment to the Romanian 4th Army...

I don't think there can be any blame on Paulus or any of the Sixth Army for the disaster that fell upon the Romanians. Responsibility lies with Hitler and Antonescu.

One other factor possibly is that the panzer commanders in general did make use of captured Soviet tanks where they were able to (as they had previously with French and Czech tanks). Perhaps the Romanians should have acquired some of these captured tanks as at least it was better than no tanks at all.