@ Lord Baal
I'd think that the UK was incapable of staging a land invasion of German occupied territory. So how would the UK beat Germany on its own? By a mere war of attrition? I don't see it, Germany had half of Europe to draw resources from.
Of course, in reality, the SU would probably eventually attack, or at least the USA, but assuming they wouldn't...
Germany's economy was absolute horsecrap. It would be lucky to last until 1950, even with the USSR as an ally and dominating Europe. Many of Germany's actions in the lead-up to war were actually predicated on economic problems in Germany itself. The original idea for a second attempt at the
Anschluss was Hermann Goering's as he'd recently been put in charge of the German steel industry and recognised that Germany needed Austrian and/ or Czech iron ore supplies in order to function at even the basic level required for the German armaments industry. This is ignoring consumer products, which are necessary for any economy. Most other industries were actually in worse shape. Economics was one of the hardest-hit areas of tertiary education under the Nazis as well (only Medicine and Engineering did well under the Nazis) which meant that most high-ranking officials weren't even aware of how close to collapse the German economy was. A few of the more intelligent bureaucrats, like Goering and Albert Speer, understood Germany's economic situation, but Hitler himself had no knowledge of economics - his concepts of economics don't make sense according to even
outdated theories at the time - and neither did the only alternative power structure, the army. Germany would have collapsed on its own without Britain firing a shot.
Of course, Britain would have fired a shot. I once made a post here on CFC, based on research that I did at university which showed that the British Empire was actually capable of defeating
the entire Axis (yes, even Japan) all by itself, with no assistance from the USSR, US or even France. It would have been a long, bloody, world-shattering war - far more so that OTL WWII was - but it was possible.
I've made this argument before here in CFC, with references, so I might have to track down where I did it. It was likely not even last year, but the year before. Maybe even as far back as '09, when I was still in uni. It's not like Hitler and WWII threads are uncommon, and I seem to be the go-to-guy for events in Germany from 1933-40. But suffice it to say that the UK was far stronger than even the British realised. In many ways, it was similar to the American belief that they were the weaker party for a large portion of the Cold War, when in actuality their NATO partners were probably strong enough to resist the Soviets without them by sometime in the 1960s, and the US was ridiculously stronger than the USSR before that.
I don´t think it´s realistic to assume that the UK could have defeated Germany singlehandedly; Churchill´s eagerness to get the US involved in the war had a very sound reasoning behind it, and the U-boats came close to bringing Britain to its knees, even without an invasion.
The U-boats were never as effective as people think. They performed as well as they did more due to British inexperience than any real threat they posed. Once the British had learnt how to deal with them - destroyers, convoys, air patrols, etc. - they were capable of handling them quite nicely, without US assistance.
It is true that the UK never had more than six weeks worth of supplies in the British Isles at any one time. People hear that and think; "wow, the British were really close to starving!" What they don't realise is that, historically, having only six weeks worth of supplies on an island that imported the majority of its foodstuffs was actually not that problematic. It not like Germany was ever capable of shutting off the imports from the British Empire. They were mostly only good for attacking ships bringing materiel from the US and Canada. And British ship production (not to mention technological innovation) outstripped German ship and submarine production, meaning that the UK actually grew more and more able to defend itself from German - and Italian and Japanese - depredations as time went by. The same went for aircraft, which will be important to know later.
Also, it wasn´t necessary for the Luftwaffe to destroy all Britsih airfields (this wasn´t the plan, actually), but to destroy enough airfields in the south to make an invasion at least feasible. Lastly, considering that the BAF was very much outnumbered during the Battle of Britain - not so much in planes, as in trained pilots, who can´t be as easily replaced - makes its performance a feat to remember. Though ofcourse, the decisive act was to shift from bombing the strategic airfields to bombing cities - a fatal error.
Unfortunately, this is all another popular historical myth. Even if the
luftwaffe had destroyed every single airfield
and plane
and anti-aircraft weapon
and every radar tower in Southern England - which is obviously ridiculous, as any flat piece of land can serve as an airfield and the RAF was producing aircraft faster than Germany was, with superior firepower, speed, durability, distance and climbing ability - the planes and airfields to the north and west, outside the range of German bombers, would have been more than adequate to either bomb the crap out of a German invasion fleet, or bomb the crap out of any troops lucky enough to actually reach England. And they could do it with cover from fighters the whole time, less distance to travel for re-fueling, the ability to recover downed pilots - a British airmen who crashed over Britain could be taken to hospital and put back in the pilot's seat whereas a German who crashed on a mission to Britain would be either captured or drowned - and the huge morale boost that comes from defending your homeland. Operation;Sealion was never feasible. The British and German armies actually tested it with a very elaborate wargame in the '90s, and discovered that Britain could have destroyed an invasion force three times before it even landed on British shores, and that was assuming the best-case-scenario for the Germans.
You are correct that British airmen were poorly trained compared to their Continental counterparts; many of the better performers on the British side were actually French, Polish and Czech airmen that had enlisted in the RAF when their nations fell. But they tended to survive to learn from their mistakes, gaining valuable experience in very short order. The Germans didn't. You are incorrect in the assumption that the RAF was outnumbered badly; while I think the
luftwaffe was technically larger by this point, it would have required sending almost the entire
luftwaffe - including ridiculously obsolete aircraft - to attack Britain simultaneously for the Germans to achieve even temporary local air superiority. And since the Germans had to return to the Continent to re-fuel, the window in which they could damage the British was ridiculously short. Many missions had to turn back after less than an hour over Britain, especially at night, where navigation difficulties required extra fuel.
May be because the strategic goals were unrealistic ? I can't call the events in the Estern front from 1941 other than smasgin the soviet army. Providing that it had significant advantage in strenght, they were driven back without beeing able to organaise adequat ressistance. Also 4 months earlier the soviets were definetly less ready. In those final months before the invasion the Soviet union reorganised(or tried to) their tank force, pulled their armies from the far eastern military districts and significantly increased the number of troops in the western military districts.
Actually, increasing the numbers of men in the western districts worked against the Soviets. Their deployment was so awful that they were sitting ducks for the German attack. In fact, their deployment was far more effective for an attack on Germany than to defend against a German attack, which has long been the beef-and-potatoes of conspiracy theorists claiming that Operation: Barbarossa was a pre-emptive strike. In practice, the USSR believed war would break out with Germany in 1944, not 1941, and their offensive deployment was designed as a bluff. It backfired on them pretty badly. If the Germans had invaded four months earlier -which they were never capable of, nor had any intention of, doing - they'd have actually destroyed fewer Soviet divisions, though their advance may have been similar.
One point, taking Malta would certainly not cut off Egypt. Egypt was supplied through the Suez Canal, from shipping around the Cape, and it is a supply line far beyond German ability to interdict. Malta was a symbol and a useful base to interdict Axis shipping across the Med, but it's not clear whether it was a net positive or not for the Allies. One the one hand, it made Rommel's supply situation worse, but on the other hand, the British suffered extremely heavy losses pushing convoys through the Med to supply it, the only convoys forced to go through air and water generally dominated by the Axis.
Of course taking Malta wouldn't have cut off Egypt completely. But it would have hampered their efforts somewhat. The bigger issue is that Malta was a stumbling block for supplies getting to Rommel from Italy, something which I should have been clearer on in my post. But I was in rant mode by then.
The problem is that even if they force the RAF to withdraw temporarily (and it would only be temporarily as the BCATP is kicking into gear), they have no way of holding the Channel against the Royal Navy. Short of forcing a negotiated peace due to the British fear of an invasion, the Germans had no chance of winning against Britain.
One thing I would add to Baal's comments on the delay of Barbarossa is that it wasn't winter that bogged down the German Army it was the wet autumn weather turning the country to muck (in fact they had some success early in winter once the ground started to solidify) and an invasion any earlier would have run into the same wet muddy terrain and slowed them down out of the gate giving time for the Soviets to regroup and potentially avoid some of the disasters that occurred.
As far as Britain winning, of course they can't do it themselves, but it just has to wait until the US joins them, the Soviets attack, or the German economy collapses. All of which are almost certainly going to occur.
Agree with this post except for the last bit. Has no-one hera read the posts I and others have made in the past regarding the German economy, at least?
That never happened though. Allied bombings were far more effective in terms of civilian deaths than in sabotaging the German war economy, which was churning out materiel right until they were overrun by the advancing Allies.
The German economy was based off of pillaging conquered territories. This was evident even as far back as the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, which provided a boost to the already lagging German economy in 1936. It was very inefficient -as illustrated by the fact that when Albert Speer took command of it, he actually improved its output despite Germany losing territory and suffering bombing at the time - and was purely militant in nature. An economy based solely around war cannot survive, for obvious reasons. The lack of consumer goods leads to dissatisfaction among the general populace, a thriving black market, crime, corruption at all levels and eventually, even dissatisfaction among the military itself. This can be seen in the collapse, during the early-90s, of the economies of both Cuba and North Korea, both of which relied on Soviet subsidies. The USSR, while concentrating too much on war materiel, actually produced a huge amount of consumer products, albeit inferior in quality to American products and not very successful as exports.
Germany in the 1940s had no viable trading partners - Italy had very little worth trading for, Romania was a vassal which survived solely by giving Germany oil at raped-at-gunpoint rates, Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia had nothing to offer Germany and the UK successfully blockaded the Continent very effectively. Spain's economy was broken from the recent civil war. Only Vichy France and the USSR had any potential as trading partners; Vichy could barely control its own territory and had to fight Charles De Gaulle's increasingly successful insurgency and Petain's economic ideas were almost as short-sighted and damaging as Hitler's whereas Stalin only assisted the German economy when it actually helped the Soviet economy more, thereby increasing the USSR's already significant lead over Germany in arms race. Sooner or later, Germany would be unable to avoid the USSR's price, and would end up either collapsing outright, or becoming to Russia what Romania had become to it.
What happened in fact, was that Hitlers armies were at the door of Moscow right at the moment the first divisions of T-34s were trained, assembled and ready to fight, and that, along with the weather and the return of Zukhov with more tanks and veteran troops from the battle with Japan in MAnchuria WAS the fact that turned the war.
You are aware that the Battle of Khalkin Gol occurred
two years before the Germans were turned away from Moscow, right?
Also, I've already pointed out that the Russians had turned the Germans back before the weather turned. This was also before the reinforcements from Siberia had arrived.
As for German army beeing vastly inferior to Allied troops, that´s just plain brainwashing, the german military at the time of the invasion of France, surpassed in number and quality the French and English army.
I'd link you to
Wiki to point out all the problems with THAT comment, but I hear it's down for 24 hours.
The german luftwaffe was superior in all ways to the french and english aviation at the time of invasion (2 german to 1 allie plan in number), a english former air minister visited Germany before the war and submited a full report on the new models of German Messerchmits and their high maneuverability and speed compared to english and french designs, IT was this man who SAVED England, he also comissed the creation of a new and revolutionary plane The Spitfire that could take on the new and faster german planes. The same report was sent to France, but their selfish and confused Generals blinded by petty diferences ignored it.[/quote]
It just keeps getting funnier. The British airman in control of the RAF before the war was fanatical about strategic bombing, which was exactly the wrong thing to be fanatical about. The
luftwaffe was outnumbered by the Allied air force, featured almost entirely obsolete planes - the Stuka and Junkers, especially.
It was mannned (the Siegfried Line) by some 1 million men (just estimating at a glance, counting number of divisions + taking into account that there were also some non-divisional units - but if you want I can count more precisely) - including those in reserves & behind the main front of course - yet on 9-10 September. Of course you can argue that between 3 and 9-10 September France had 6 days to attack before Germans had 1 million men at the Siegfried Line.
But the point is that France also needed time to mobilize. And as it turned out - it needed more time to mobilize than Germany (maybe their mobilization was badly organized, sloppy, etc.). Germans also left considerable part of Luftwaffe (but mainly fighters - as nearly all bombers were over Poland) in West & North Germany.
Even though Germans sent majority of their forces and best part of their army against Poland, they still had in West Germany - by the end of the first decade of September - an army bigger than entire Polish army, facing the German borders with France, Belgium, Luxemburg & Holland.
They also had more artillery in the West alone, than entire Polish army had (even though they sent majority of their artillery to invade Poland).
You cannot say that a German army bigger than entire Polish army is something France could deal easily with.
And Siegfried Line - even if still incomplete - was anyway much more powerful than anything Poland had, when it comes to fortifications...
And German mobilization was still in progress, new divisions were being formed.
Just throughout September / October they formed at least 8 new divisions...
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It is a myth that Germany was weak in the West in September 1939. It was created by Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg Trials (it was then when they testified that Germany had allegedly just several divisions to defend against French offensive, and that invading Poland was a gamble). By doing so, those Nazi war criminals wanted to put the blame for the fact that WW2 did not finish and Germany did not collapse yet in 1939 on France and Britain.
You'll have to find me a reference for all of that. I'm not aware of any source that places German numbers in the west at greater than those in the east.