According to many military historians, Germany’s conquest of the mount

I chose C

I was making a lot of mistakes whenever there is if-then in the middle of some big sentence or in complex sentences.

I have created a sheet for myself which has common scenarios of if-then usage and their following clause. GMATNinja could you please help me validate these and is the way to go while handling if-thens. With me, whenever the sentence correction question is a long long sentence, I take a lot of time to read and understand.

If clause has resent tense---> The Main clause will have the present tense or future tense depending on the context.

If clause has present continuous/present perfect----> Main clause will have simple future. (will/shall)

If clause has past tense/past continuous----> could/should/would (Like the one in the question)

If clause has past perfect-----> could have /would have / might have.

there is also a pattern

if do,,, then do

if temparature is 100 C degree, water boil

this is a fact, not a condition. I know this pattern from a question in og (if they do not hold monoco...). but honestly, I do not fully understand this pattern.

so, choice C can be correct. but why choice C is wrong. because choice C shows a condition. so the pattern: " if did,,,, would do" is corect.

moreover, choice C suffer from serious meaning error,
if Navarone’s strategic location was not exploited

this is not show who exploit. without who exploit, the meaning is not logic. C is wrong

meaning/logic error can be clear or subtle. passive voice can make logic meaning error as in this case of choice C. meaning error can be illogic meaning or unclear meaning. inclear meaning is hard to realize. but unclear meaning can be tested because we need to make clear meaning and clear sentence.

GMATNinja

According to many military historians, Germany’s conquest of the mountainous island of Navarone in the Aegean Sea was of utmost military importance throughout the Second World War because they realized that, if they did not exploit its strategic location, their survival against the indomitable naval might of the British would always be in peril.

(E) the nation’s generals realized that, if they did not exploit Navarone’s strategic location, Germany’s survival against the indomitable naval might of the British would always be in peril.

How do you know that the nation's generals realised this? It could very well have been the leader's call, right? Because this information was unstated in the original question, I was hesitant to go with it.

What "leader(s)"? This sentence doesn't mention any leaders, and we can't refer to something that isn't there! The following sentence is wrong for the same reason:

• "Whenever I go to the bank, they offer me a lollipop." --> Who does "they" refer to? Sure, we can fill in the blank with something that makes sense (i.e. "bank employees"), but this sort of thing doesn't fly on the GMAT.

In choice (E), "they" can only refer to a plural noun, and it is obvious that "they" refers to the "generals", not the "historians". So (E) is okay!

EEEEEhaaaa..
Let's make it simple:

Marked the errors in the question stem above.
A)Pronoun ambiguity: what is its referring to ? Germany's no it is island's.
what is they referring to ? Historians . NO WAY. They can't be historians because the sory itself is according to Historians

B) AGAIN: Pronoun ambiguity: what is it referring to ? Germany no it is island.
C)WAS as marked in stem is wrong because it didn't happen. They thought it would happen
D)WAS as marked in stem is wrong because it didn't happen. They thought it would happen

E)Perfect with none of the above errors. Therefore ANSWER is E. EVERYTHING is FIXED in E

Hope it helps
Thanks

GMATNinja Oookaay so lil hesitant to ask this but whenever there's a if then construction and the if part has simple past I believe we could go two ways (simple past or could,should,would + verb) So C is saying the general realized that if we didnt exploit it then germany was definitely always in peril and E is saying yeah it could be peril in future like FOREVER . So It's rather the context right Verbal God? Unlike , few people making this a concrete rule
e.g If James was not at home ,then He was at the bar
and If James was not at home, he would be at the bar

Hi GMATNinja thank you for your explanation.
Just wondering, if answer C was changed to be like this, "(C) the nation’s generals realized that, if Navarone’s strategic location was not exploited, Germany’s survival against the indomitable naval might of the British would always be in peril.", would it be grammatically correct?
Thanks!

"Verbal God" - Haha, if only we were omniscient when it came to GMAT SC! In reality, many of the questions we encounter on the forum make our heads spin and are extremely difficult for us to answer, but thanks for the good question, the kind words, and the laugh!

Great approach here: thinking about context and meaning is almost always better than resorting to black-and-white grammar "rules" when it comes to GMAT SC, and you seem to have the right idea:

• "... if Navarone’s strategic location was not exploited, Germany’s survival {...} was always in peril." - This does seem to suggest some sort of "either/or" scenario (as in your bar example): either Navarone's location was exploited OR Germany's survival was in peril. We have two distinct past actions, and only one of those past actions actually occurred.
• But "being in peril" is something in the future (from the generals' perspective), so we want "would be in peril" not "was in peril."

Are there rules governing this sort of thing? Sure. But when you pay too much attention to "rules", it's easy to lose sight of what's really important: the meaning and the context.

For a bit more on if-then cases, check out this post.

Yes, changing "was always" to "would always be" would make (C) better. But in (C) we have, "if Navarone’s strategic location was not exploited" -- here we don't specify who or what is doing the exploiting. In (E), it's clear that the nation's generals are the ones doing the exploiting, so (E) would still be a bit better.

In any case, our job is to select the best answer choice out of the five available options, so I wouldn't drive yourself crazy thinking about tweaked answer choices .

I hope that helps!

Hello from the GMAT Club VerbalBot!

Thanks to another GMAT Club member, I have just discovered this valuable topic, yet it had no discussion for over a year. I am now bumping it up - doing my job. I think you may find it valuable (esp those replies with Kudos).

Want to see all other topics I dig out? Follow me (click follow button on profile). You will receive a summary of all topics I bump in your profile area as well as via email.