Chiefs of Staff of the Axis Navies – Comment Response 3/4

The answer separates common wartime submarine practices from Nazi crimes and unlawful orders, while arguing that Dönitz could not credibly be both uninformed and fit to lead the navy.

The trials were inconsistent, but failure to prosecute every offender did not erase the case for prosecuting defendants who were in custody for distinct crimes.

A viewer's institutional argument explains how seizure from occupied territories can mask shortages and administrative failures without making a wartime economy efficient.

Three early campaigns show why political withdrawal, improvised deployments, and operational timing cannot be reduced to a verdict on British troop quality.

North Africa, Malaya, and Singapore illustrate why flawed strategy and force employment should not be turned into a blanket claim that Allied soldiers were ineffective until 1943.

Market Garden is presented as a planning and sustainment problem rather than evidence that Allied soldiers remained ineffective late in the war.

German success in France is traced partly to armoured commanders pressing beyond the planned fuel halt, a gamble that created both speed and vulnerability.

The quality of the opposing armies is separated from failures in French senior leadership, communications, and the psychological legacy of the First World War.

Dönitz is framed as a true believer whose political alignment shaped his rise through the Nazi system.

Italy, Britain, and the United States each had strengths, but no navy combined adequate ships, resources, and support infrastructure so completely as to be fully ready.

A critique of Dönitz separates the Kriegsmarine's impossible strategic position from his own preference for central control and continued commitment of U-boats.

A quoted assessment links night attack opportunities to the Type VIIC's smaller size, manoeuvrability, and popularity with experienced U-boat commanders.

U-boats concentrated where escorts, convoys, and aircraft coverage were weakest, forcing the Allies to build costly defences before the threat could shift elsewhere.

A viewer recounts a Biber midget-submarine strike on Antwerp's locks, which is left as a lead for further investigation.

Some larger ships could have gone with replenishment support, probably as a small contingent attached to a British structure rather than an independent fleet.

One working guess is that cooperation and investigators' low estimate of Shimada's capacity reduced his apparent culpability; the exchange does not present this as documented tribunal reasoning.

Koshirō Oikawa is presented as one of the few Japanese leaders who understood that the country's nationalist course was driving it toward disaster.

Percy Walker Nelles, whose Royal Navy experience and Canadian commands made him central to the service's wartime development.

Possibly, but the answer remains tentative and does not establish the connection in this exchange.

A viewer's case for Ichi-Go's gains in China is weighed against its effects on Nationalist forces, the Manchurian front, and Japan's competing demands for troops and transport.

Japan could not effectively pursue its southern maritime strategy while the services allocated resources independently; a coherent island-defence and naval effort required joint priorities.