The Allies' worst World War II mistakes

The Allied forces mad many mistakes throughout the course of WW2. Some didn't impact the war in any way, others cost the lives of many. What then are the most humiliating mistakes that the Allied forces in WW2 made?

Not attacking Germany after the invasion of Poland

The German Invasion of Poland

This is one of the major mistakes made by the British (and the French) during WW2. On September 1st 1939, German troops invaded Poland. Since Britain and France were both allies of Poland, they immediately declared war on Germany. And then proceeded to do absolutely nothing. This was not only regarded as a betrayal of Poland, it also allowed the Germans to conquer Poland without any major resistance, especially at a time when Germany was unable to sustain a war on two fronts (with Britain and France to the west and the Soviet Union to the east). 

This was one of the major strategic mistakes made by the British and French, especially considering the fact that the German forces would have been overwhelmed. In fact, German generals at that time were so afraid of and immediate counterattack than they had 46 divisions (11 fully trained) along the western border, few compared to the hundreds of division that Britain and France were able to muster. The situation in Poland was so bad that their only option, as noted by Field Marshall Erich von Manstein, "hold out until an offensive by the Western Powers compelled the Germans to withdraw the mass of their forces from the Polish theatre." An offensive which, sadly for the Poles, never materialised.

This failure to attack Germany for an entire year after the declaration of war, ended up giving Germany a major strategic advantage. The woefully ill-prepared German army had an entire year to prepare for war with the west, a war that could potentially have ended much earlier.

The raid on Dieppe was aborted almost immediately after it started

The Dieppe Raid
One of the most useless and ridiculous raids conducted by the Allies, one that historians (and canadians) up to this day are still wondering, why? The Dieppe Raid took place on 19 August 1942, where about 5000 Canadian troops, together with a thousand British commandos and some US Rangers, attacked the German held port of Dieppe. The raid started at 5.00am in the morning and Allied commanders called a retreat in under 6 hours.

The objectives of the raid was presumably to prove that holding a major port for a short time was possible, along with collecting intelligence and boosting Allied morale (something it failed miserably at). None of the objectives were achieved. The Allied forces on the beach had insufficient fire support and were trapped by obstacles and German return fire by the roughly 1500 German troops who were there. 

Almost 60% of the men who made it ashore were either killed, wounded or captured by the Germans. The Royal Air Force lost 106 planes, in comparison to the Luftwaffe's 48. The Royal Navy lost 33 landing craft and 1 destroyer. Instead of showing the world the Allies power, the raid ended up showing that the Allies were unable to invade France for a prolonged period of time.

Operation Market Garden
One of Bernard Montgomery's most epic failures, Operation Market Garden was the largest

Allied paratroopers in Netherlands during
Operation Market Garden

airborne operation up to that time. The objective of the operation was to force an entry into Germany's rear areas, capturing as many bridges as possible in order to allow rapid advance of Allied armoured units into Germany. 

The Allied commanders were overconfident when planning for the attack and they thought that the Germans were done for. However, Allied troops encountered overwhelming German resistance during the operation, leading to an Allied operational failure. The Allies lost 15 - 17 thousand of their original 41 thousand, with the German losses estimated at 3 - 13 thousand. The failure of Operation Market Garden effectively crushed Allied hopes of ending the war by 1944.

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What went wrong with the ENIGMA?

A German ENIGMA machine

No code can be made completely unbreakable. Since cryptography is essentially based on mathematics, anyone with enough patience, time and resources would eventually be able to crack any code. The ENIGMA however, was very hard to crack as it used a rotor system. What allowed the Allies to crack the German ENIGMA code relatively easily was the capture of multiple German code books, in addition to German pride and the laziness of the German operators.

The Allies were able to capture a significant amount of code books which German sailors failed to destroy when their U-boats were captured. These code books, coupled with a large amount of help from the Poles, helped them to decipher pretty much of the communications going on between German forces. If the Allies had not had such luck on their side, they would have had a much harder time cracking the code.

Another main flaw of the ENIGMA system was that it required human operators to run. These people eventually became cocky and put too much faith into their system. This led to their laziness to change the encryption each time they used the system. Later on, they refused to believe that their system had been cracked and this led to the allies being able to extract such a large amount of information from the Germans.

As such, although the German ENIGMA was a very strong system, it would not have been completely unbreakable. However, if it was used with proper discipline by its operators, I would say that it would have been virtually unbreakable by the Allies, at least throughout the course of the war.

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The Effectiveness of the British Double Cross System

Bletchley Park -
Headquarters of the Government Code & Cipher School

The British Double Cross System was a program overseen by the Twenty Committee, chaired by John Cecil Masterman. The objective of this program was to capture Nazi agents sent to infiltrate Britain, and if judged acceptable, turn them to disseminate false information to their Nazi controllers. 

By the time the Abwehr (German intelligence) started sending its spies into Britain, the British MI5 had already cracked the German ENIGMA code. Furthermore, the German spies were not exactly the best in the world. They lacked proper training and motivation and were generally recruited from civilians. This made the German spies relatively easy to spot.


As a result, the SIS was able to capture and turn the German spies as soon as they entered the country. Post-war records showed that none of the German spies were not caught, save one who committed suicide. After their capture, the German spies were given a choice to either work as double agents for the British, or face imprisonment or execution. 

Joan Pujol Garcia

The Double Cross System was so effective, largely because the British were able to convince the Nazi handlers that their agents were still loyal. They managed to accomplish this in a number of ways. For example, in the case of Joan Pujol Garcia, the British were able to use him to convince the Germans that Normandy was just a diversion and that the real attack would be coming from Pas de Calais. The German High Command believed him so much to the extent of keeping more German troops in the Pas de Calais region two months after the Normandy invasion than there had been on D-Day.

In order for him to retain his credibility with the Germans, he forewarned the Germans about the D-Day landing in Normandy but too late for them to take any effective action. The Germans never found out that they were being misled by him and awarded him with the Iron Cross Second Class over the radio, an award that required Hitler's personal authorization. The Germans never found out that he was double-crossing them and this made him one of the few, if not the only person to have received decorations from both sides during the war.

Another instance which the British Double Cross System was so effective was when they were able to convince the Germans that their V bombs were hitting on target, where in reality they were falling short. The disinformation was able to make the Germans aim short and this prevented the bombs from hitting densely populated areas in Britain and saved the lives of many British civilians.
Thus, the success of the British Double Cross System was largely due to the Germans' failure to properly train and equip their agents, coupled with the excessive trust that the Germans had in their agents.

For example, on June 22 1944, the German agents reported that only one of the bombs fell south of the Thames, where in truth there had been 3/4 of the bombs landing there. Despite being able to plot where the bombs had fallen using radio transmitters in the bombs, the Germans trusted their agents so much that they disregarded the telemetry in favor of the intelligence provided by their agents. 

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