Germany did not lose the Battle of Britain

[Former_Older]

Originally Posted by Avimimus

Former_Older said:
"Failing to achieve your goals in battle never results in your victory. Never."

This statement is clearly flawed. This isn't directed at you sir, but at the whole room as many may share you're opinion. I might even say it is naive and dangerous. For one thing one doesn't always know what the prerequisites for or impact of a victory may be. In the second Iraq war we recently achieved our goals and it did not bring victory, in Vietnam we achieved goals for body count numbers and those goals did not bring victory.

So one can go from an apparent strategic failure to a strategic victory (if one doesn't understand or can't control for all of the factors this is always possible). There are certainly many other cases of tactic failures leading to strategic victories.

Your use of "sir" combined with your general tone tells me something here. Please remember that I am replying to your comments and that I did not initiate this exchange; you desired to call me out on "dangerous and naive" comments, so this is not my doing, OK?

I said quite clearly "Failing to achieve your goals in battle never results in victory", and I am quite clearly restricting ALL my statements on the matter to the topic of discussion, which is ONE battle, not all of WWII

I did not say "You must win every battle to win a war", which are the words you are attempting to cram down my throat. You are skewing my words to alter my meaning, and you are attempting to expand the subject FAR in excess of the topic my statements were made about. You desire to make me have said "Losing a Battle means you lose the war or a campaign", when you know I was specifically commenting on the issue at hand: The Battle of Britain. Not WWII as a whole or even Hitler's European campaign

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


(I apologize for the edits- I just got a new PC with a new low-profile keyboard and I'm mis-typing a lot of things)