FDR and World War II

[ZeletDude]

Another thing to add, Germany would still have fallen even with out the US joining, It did not have the military might to combat The Soviets and The British.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I think I'm somewhere between you and Lord, but closer to your side. England had no chance, but it would've taken a long time for the Axis to take them.

An utterly insane proposition, as I have repeatedly proven.

Its just not easy to invade a country. France (Who was connected continentally) had British help, never had a chance against Germany

Of course France had a chance. There were about a million things that could've gone wrong with the Ardennes drive, the Germans were just so insanely lucky that none of the happened, so it came off like it was easy. But even after the breakout, Guderian, in his drive towards the sea (during the period when he went out of radio contact!) was sweating bullets the whole time. He was afraid of a French counterattack on his flanks; they were so vulnerable, in fact, that it might be called reckless and stupid for him to have continued forward. But the French, in the incredible confusion that resulted from "holy crap, what are 45 divisions doing coming out of an impenetrable forest!", never mounted an effective one, and Guderian got away with what was probably a foolhardy move.

 

[LightSpectra]

Of course France had a chance. There were about a million things that could've gone wrong with the Ardennes drive, the Germans were just so insanely lucky that none of the happened, so it came off like it was easy. But even after the breakout, Guderian, in his drive towards the sea (during the period when he went out of radio contact!) was sweating bullets the whole time. He was afraid of a French counterattack on his flanks; they were so vulnerable, in fact, that it might be called reckless and stupid for him to have continued forward. But the French, in the incredible confusion that resulted from "holy crap, what are 45 divisions doing coming out of an impenetrable forest!", never mounted an effective one, and Guderian got away with what was probably a foolhardy move.

I don't think it's quite fair to attribute the Manstein plan's success to pure luck that the French were intellectually paralyzed after Sedan. A purpose of, if not the primary objective of blitzkrieg is to strike at the enemy's nerve. That might just be the historical determinist in me saying that, though.

Not that I agree whatsoever with any of the ridiculous counter-factuals in this thread.

 

[Lord Baal]

Warning: long post.

Quite. And iirc due to the risks involved the UK didn't run convoys through the Med unless there was a specific reason, such as to supply Malta, anyway. Otherwise things were shipped around Africa etc., entirely avoiding the cramped and contested conditions in the Med.

Correct. Except for supplying Malta, Greece, Crete, and on occasion the Egyptian coastal cities and the Free French in the Levant, the British steered clear of the Mediterranean due to the threat posed by Italy.

Hmmm...IIRC the U-boat wolfpacks were doing quite well at cutting England's supply lines until the US helped out with a bunch of destroyers (50, IIRC), not to mention lots of slapped-together freighters (Liberty ships).
I don't think it was quite as cut-and-dried as you make out, here. Churchill himself counted the war as won when the US entered the war, not before.

Churchill overestimated the danger that U-boats posed to British supply lines, but they still caused some damage. Most of the damage, though, was logistical. Convoys were needed to protect merchant ships from potential attack, slowing down supplies to Britain, but the actual tonnage sunk was miniscule compared to the amount on the water. And Churchill never really had any doubt of an eventual British victory anyway. Other members of his cabinet did, but not Churchill himself. And even those members didn't really have the power to push through a peace deal in the face of a very hostile public had they gained power anyway.

And, BTW, whenever production capacity is argued, it seems that only the capacity of the pre-war Reich is counted. How about the added capacity of the conquered territories? Czechoslovakia had quite a military production capacity, as did France.

I include the production capacity of the Reich at its greatest. Britain still had greater capacity, without even including the Empire. Greater than Germany anyway, though probably not than all three unless the Empire is included.

Comparing a continental Europe subjected to the Nazis, with no war against Russia and a neutral US, to an isolated Britain with it's supply lines undere constant U-boat attack .... seems a much more even proposition to me than you are making out.

Another problem facing Germany was that they used forced labour, and tended to treat voluntary labour from non-German countries as if it were forced labour anyway. This created a culture of, to borrow a quote from another time and place, "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." Workers in occupied countries tended to do as little work as they possibly could get away with without being shot. So while the combined productive capacity of all of Continental Europe in peacetime would almost certainly have been superior to that of Britain - and aside from Russia, Switzerland and Spain, that's what Germany had to draw upon at some points (Sweden was basically an unwilling armourer and supplier for the Reich) - the mere fact that it was wartime severely limited the productive capacity of those areas. Especially since even under Albert Speer's leadership German production was unable to rationalise military production effectively, though he was light years ahead of Goering or Fritz Todt.

Of course, this is all smoke - Hitler was always going to attack Russia, it was at the core of his philosophy. Just saying...

He may have been talked into waiting a little longer had certain of his toadies pushed harder. But yes, he would have eventually gone after the USSR. If by some miracle he didn't, Stalin would have eventually preempted him anyway, though not in 1942 as many people erroneously believe.

On your next point I would say Germany would find it near impossible to be able to invade Britain before 1942 at the earliest and by that point who knows what the Soviets are up too and remember a big part of the Manhattan Project came from British Scientists (or at least scientists who defected to Britain first and then joined the US bomb) so who is to say we won't see a Lancaster dropping A-Bombs on Berlin and Nuremberg in 1945.

Germany couldn't invade Britain ever. In the time it would take to build the necessary airforce and navy Germany would have collapsed from its internal rot anyway. This is irrespective of the fact that Britain was producing defences against an invasion faster than the Germans were building offensive materiel.

The Soviets would have been up to nothing except preparing for an eventual invasion of Germany. My educated gues is that this invasion would have taken place in 1944 at the earliest. This is based on Soviet estimates that 1944 was the earliest possible date that Germany could launch an invasion of the USSR.

Never heard this view before. Why is that?

Where are you getting this from?

I don't really have time to go into this in detail now, since my dinner is very nearly finished (I'm typing this last, even though it's in the middle of my post) but I promise I'll get to it later. Suffice it to say that Britain was capable of starving Germany and Italy of the resources necessary to wage war, especially oil. Even with Soviet assistance, Germany's economy was not just stagnant, but actually collapsing upon itself. Germany would have collapsed under these internal stresses before 1950, winning the war in Europe for Britain by default. Italy would probably have made some sort of peace deal, after Mussolini's overthrow.

Britain would then have been free to pursue the war with Japan, which would have stalled in Burma. The British in India could have held down any localised rebellions, Japan never seriously considered invading Australia - though we didn't know that at the time - going so far as to say that "the Australian character makes the successful prosecution of such an invasion impossible, even if the requisite military means were available." In other words, the Australian people would fight to the death, unlike in China where collaborationists eased Japan's way. And Japan was too bogged down elsewhere to launch full-scale assaults on either Australia or India.

With Japan unable to push past roughly where it managed to reach in OTL, it would then have dug in and fortified the positions it held. This would mean that the British attempts to reconquer its lost Empire in the Far East - and presumably the French and Dutch territories as well - would have been long, bloody and brutal. But Britain would have undertaken these efforts, out of pride if nothing else. Britain needed to at least regain control of the Malacca Straits if it was to remain the dominant global power - assuming an isolationist US - and would have done so eventually. Japan's economy, like Germany's was rotten, though not to the extent of its Axis partner. Eventually, isolated from trade with Britain, Australia and presumably Russia, it would have fallen in upon itself, even if the US still maintained a healthy trading relationship with it.

I agree with Quackers. No offense to British people, but you aren't the modern US on the power demographic. You would have had a tough time with Germany alone. I agree Churchill would never surrender, but eventually the nation would have been rubble.

Based on what? The fact that Germany failed in a bombing campaign in 1940? Germany couldn't even bomb two-thirds of Britain, how the hell would they have reduced the whole country to rubble? Unless you're proposing an invasion, which is even more ridiculous. And "a tough time" doesn't imply that Britain wouldn't have won. Obviously a Britain that stood alone would take longer to defeat Germany than one with powerful allies in the US and USSR. But it would still have won.

What we should have done was jump into the war right away, while Russia was still Axis, defend Britain and France, and taken them all out. Years it would have taken, but eventually an Atom Bomb would have still ended the thing, and we would have stopped the Cold War.

Russia was never in the Axis. It was certainly an ally of convenience in 1939-40, but that's still a far-cry from being a member of the Axis. And that alliance was almost certainly a mere ploy to keep Germany occupied until the USSR was ready to launch its own invasion anyway.

The US could not enter the war that early. The earliest it could possibly have entered the war, as I've said numerous times, was in June 1940, when Italy invaded an already-beaten France. There was an infinitesmally small chance that FDR could have pushed Congress into declaring war then, but it is still highly unlikely. FDR had to pull a few strings to push things like Lend-Lease and the destroyer 'loan' through. He didn't stand a chance in hell of pushing the US into the war.

You could have stopped the Cold War by not having FDR be Stalin's biatch throughout the course of the war. He turned a blind eye to Russian imperialism while simultaneously decrying British imperialism. Probably because the US sought to benefit from the dissolution of the British Empire, while it would not have done so (in an obvious way) from the strengthening of Eastern Europe against the Soviets.

An atom bomb would not have been necessary to defeat Germany. And if the US stupidly grouped Russia and Germany together, forcing them to ally against the West - an interesting alternate history novel idea, but impractical in reality - it would have taken at least a decade to win such a war. Unless you think Russia would have gone quietly into the night, and American supply lines wouldn't be stretched to breaking piont in such a war. Atomic bombs would have been useless, as the US couldn't build them fast enough to be much of a deterrant until the mid-50s, by which time the Soviets had them themselves - and likely still would have in this timeline, with their excellent espionage network - and their range was limited to however far a bomber could travel anyway. Moscow and other centres of Russian transport, logistics and production would have been safe, well behind the line. Most of them were in Siberia, for Pete's sake.

Russia on the Axis? WTH?

He's doubtless talking about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which was undoubtedly a short-term alliance to achieve clearly-established goals (Cheezy will disagree with me on this) but is still far from being a member of the Axis. Molotov did go to Berlin in December 1940 with the express intent of negotiating for Russia's entry into the Axis, but such negotiations were almost certainly a time-gaining ploy of Stalin's. Regardless, Hitler balked at Stalin's offer, which pretty much ruined relations between the two countries.

Well in my whole life i have never encounteted Lord's position. Maybe the many alarmist documentaries which seemed to exaggerate Britain's position as the lone opponent of the Nazi's in the West have shaped my postion. It felt like Britain was on the brink of the abyss, we were about to be annhilated by evil Germany and we were sitting ducks. But Hitlers obession with the Judeo-Bolshevik East focused there attention onto Soviet Russia and saved us. I always believed without the Americans assistance we would of never won the war. That if Hitler had decided to assault Britain we would of been finished.

These documentaries and books certainly do give the wrong impression. Britain is depicted as much weaker than in reality, and Germany as far stronger. Remember, France could have defeated Germany on its own, if it wasn't for the boldness of the Manstein Plan and the sheer incompetence of French military leadership at the time.

I think I'm somewhere between you and Lord, but closer to your side. England had no chance, but it would've taken a long time for the Axis to take them. Its just not easy to invade a country. France (Who was connected continentally) had British help, never had a chance against Germany, but it still took 2 years to conquer them. It would have taken at least two more (Until 1943, probably 1944) to finish them. However, If America joined any later, it would have been inevitable, as it would have been if Germany did not attack Russia.

On what do your base your claim that Britain "had no chance" of defeating the Axis? Or your claim that France "never had a chance against Germany?"

France could have defeated the Germans as late as July 1940, though it woul dhave required a redoubt in Brittany. Reynaud's choice to evacuate the government to Bordeaux rather than Quimper sank that plan, but French Equatorial Africa still refused to acknowledge the Vichy regime, and never came under German control. De Gaulle used it as the base for his attempts to attack Vichy in North Africa after the Dakar debacle, which was mostly Britain's fault, and only failed because his troops would have needed to cross the frikkin' Sahara to reach Algiers or Dakar.

So a claim can certainly be forwarded that France was never defeated by Germany. Hell, it really wasn't, since Vichy was not beaten, it simply surrendered without just cause. It was a government of traitors, defeatists and collaborators, that wanted an alliance with Germany rather than Britain. Petain himself was pro-German and Anglophobic.

Also, France fell in two-and-a-half months, not two years. Nine months if you count the Phoney War.

That aside, even by location alone, England was a tough nut to crack. But it would have happened eventually.

No, it wouldn't have. This is so woefully inaccurate that I'm beginning to doubt your intentions in startingg this thread. You literally cannot still believe this if you've read this thread with an open mind, making me belileve you are either trolling or just possess poor reading skills.

And Britain would have not fallen, Germany had NO way of invading Britain with the Royal Navy guarding the British Isles..I don't care how much the luftwaffe could control the airs still it'd be one heck a problem getting German troops over the English Channel into Britain.

Exactly. Especially since the Luftwaffe never controlled the sky, either.

Without air superiority over Britain, Operation Sea Lion would have been a horrendous disaster.

Look at D-Day. The Allies had air superiority over France and were able to successfully invade Normandy. Can't say the same for the Nazis and their invasion plans.

Even with that air superiority the Allies suffered heavy losses. The Germans never had any comparable superiority. The only time Germany ever possessed aerial superiority over the British was in Crete and mainland Greece, and that was merely due to localised conditions. Even in the Battle for France Britain had aerial superiority, the Germans were simply advancing too quickly for it to be of any use.

An utterly insane proposition, as I have repeatedly proven.

You, me, LightSpectra and half the population of this forum.

Of course France had a chance. There were about a million things that could've gone wrong with the Ardennes drive, the Germans were just so insanely lucky that none of the happened, so it came off like it was easy. But even after the breakout, Guderian, in his drive towards the sea (during the period when he went out of radio contact!) was sweating bullets the whole time. He was afraid of a French counterattack on his flanks; they were so vulnerable, in fact, that it might be called reckless and stupid for him to have continued forward. But the French, in the incredible confusion that resulted from "holy crap, what are 45 divisions doing coming out of an impenetrable forest!", never mounted an effective one, and Guderian got away with what was probably a foolhardy move.

This. A thousand times this. Though one can not discount the skill which with Guderian and others executed the Manstein Plan, which was indeed brilliant and audacious. That the French would be stupid enough to fall for it was part of Manstein's reasoning.

I don't think it's quite fair to attribute the Manstein plan's success to pure luck that the French were intellectually paralyzed after Sedan. A purpose of, if not the primary objective of blitzkrieg is to strike at the enemy's nerve. That might just be the historical determinist in me saying that, though.

Not that I agree whatsoever with any of the ridiculous counter-factuals in this thread.

Blitzkrieg was never a German operational doctrine (though Guderian claimed to his deathbed that it was). But you are correct that Guderian and Manstein were striking at France's nerve. They sensed that France was weak-willed, and they took advantage. Though I'd put that down to political paralysis rather than an intellectual one.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I don't think it's quite fair to attribute the Manstein plan's success to pure luck that the French were intellectually paralyzed after Sedan. A purpose of, if not the primary objective of blitzkrieg is to strike at the enemy's nerve. That might just be the historical determinist in me saying that, though.

I wouldn't attribute it to pure luck but it was an enormous gamble. Any observation of the German Army moving through the Ardennes would have immediately turned the German offensive into a long, slogging mess. The kind they couldn't win.

With Japan unable to push past roughly where it managed to reach in OTL, it would then have dug in and fortified the positions it held. This would mean that the British attempts to reconquer its lost Empire in the Far East - and presumably the French and Dutch territories as well - would have been long, bloody and brutal. But Britain would have undertaken these efforts, out of pride if nothing else. Britain needed to at least regain control of the Malacca Straits if it was to remain the dominant global power - assuming an isolationist US - and would have done so eventually

You also leave out that Britain wouldn't stand alone in such a conflict. There remained China, and Japan never realistically had any hope of defeating them. And while China was hampered by internal troubles, they would have likely remained a serious problem for the Japanese, and late in the war could have made up for limitations in British Manpower.

Japan's economy, like Germany's was rotten, though not to the extent of its Axis partner. Eventually, isolated from trade with Britain, Australia and presumably Russia, it would have fallen in upon itself, even if the US still maintained a healthy trading relationship with it.

This depends. Japan was seriously hamstrung by a lack of serious trade partners, almost the entirety of it's foreign currency reserves was dependent on Silk Exportation, which it mainly competed with Britain for. Now two things become an issue when we suppose a "Isolationist" United States. First, do we include the ever increasing financial measures taken against Japan in the lead up to the attack on Pearl Harbor to be "interventionist" and ignore them? In which case Japan by this time would have been without foreign trade from something approaching a decade now, as obviously they're not trading with the Pound Block, or the Germans, or the Dollar Block, and the Soviets don't take foreign currency. This leaves them able to trade with any degree of liquidity only within their own sphere. Oh, and depending on which policies we're selecting in this time line, they also have no Gold Reserves, which leaves them trading to no degree with anyone. At any rate, even supposing not even that action by the United States, they quickly deplete their foreign reserves, as Nylon was quickly cutting into their silk market anyway.
To make the list short, this leaves a Japan completely without Fuel (even assuming Oil from the Dutch Indies, Oil requires refining, high quality metal (scrap might have supplied their low quality metal), Food, IIRC Horses and any number of little things. So even before the Sino-British-French forces begin their push, the Japanese are starving, out of Gas, and low on quality equipment. This is not mentioning the fact that they had about as much talent for balancing a budget as the Third Reich, something made worse in wartime. I'd say you could claim an equal ammount of internal rot.

 

[Lord Baal]

I wouldn't attribute it to pure luck but it was an enormous gamble. Any observation of the German Army moving through the Ardennes would have immediately turned the German offensive into a long, slogging mess. The kind they couldn't win.

Too bad for the French and British that their strategy was pathetically short-sighted. They should have either advanced into Belgium before the invasion or held back and not advanced into it at all. This isn't a strategy based on the benefit of hindsight; it was blindingly obvious even at the time. While they mightn't have caught the Germans coming through the Ardennes, they still would have been in position to withdraw to more defensive positions.

You also leave out that Britain wouldn't stand alone in such a conflict. There remained China, and Japan never realistically had any hope of defeating them. And while China was hampered by internal troubles, they would have likely remained a serious problem for the Japanese, and late in the war could have made up for limitations in British Manpower.

The Chinese question is whether or not China could have put aside its internal troubles long enough to actually mount an effective fight against the Japanese. The Communists never did, despite their claims to the contrary, and the Nationalists didn't do much better. With them presumably seeing far less supplies from the British and Americans, they may well have been largely overrun, forced into guerrilla activities. That said, hiding guerrillas amongst a population of half-a-million people has its advantages.

This depends. Japan was seriously hamstrung by a lack of serious trade partners, almost the entirety of it's foreign currency reserves was dependent on Silk Exportation, which it mainly competed with Britain for. Now two things become an issue when we suppose a "Isolationist" United States. First, do we include the ever increasing financial measures taken against Japan in the lead up to the attack on Pearl Harbor to be "interventionist" and ignore them?

That's what I was presupposing.

In which case Japan by this time would have been without foreign trade from something approaching a decade now, as obviously they're not trading with the Pound Block, or the Germans, or the Dollar Block, and the Soviets don't take foreign currency. This leaves them able to trade with any degree of liquidity only within their own sphere. Oh, and depending on which policies we're selecting in this time line, they also have no Gold Reserves, which leaves them trading to no degree with anyone. At any rate, even supposing not even that action by the United States, they quickly deplete their foreign reserves, as Nylon was quickly cutting into their silk market anyway.
To make the list short, this leaves a Japan completely without Fuel (even assuming Oil from the Dutch Indies, Oil requires refining, high quality metal (scrap might have supplied their low quality metal), Food, IIRC Horses and any number of little things. So even before the Sino-British-French forces begin their push, the Japanese are starving, out of Gas, and low on quality equipment. This is not mentioning the fact that they had about as much talent for balancing a budget as the Third Reich, something made worse in wartime. I'd say you could claim an equal ammount of internal rot.

You may well be right. I'm not as knowledgeable about matters in Japan as I am in Europe, but I do know that mercantilism was a self-defeating policy before the rise of the European global empires. After their rise, it was suicidal in far swifter fashion. I certainly don't see Japan lasting long after Britain actually manages to turn its attention to them. I see them holding out for a while based on sheer bloody-mindedness and their dogged refusal to surrender. Of course, since Britain would probably have atomic weaponry by this point, repeating the US's real-life feat of bombing Japan into submission is more than possible.

 

[Masada]

I don't see why the Japanese would have necessarily been out of gas. The Dutch had refineries in the East Indies that could have supplied, most, if not all of Japan's fuel requirements. Literally, the only thing the Dutch did right in the East Indies was to do a reasonably thorough job of destroying the wells and the accompanying refineries. The Japanese didn't have the capabilities to repair much more than the wells and what the Dutch had missed in the refineries. It was obviously insufficient for Japanese industrial requirements but I can envision a scenario where American guarantees in the region are not given and the Dutch roll over to Japanese demands for oil. That nearly happened in reality as is.

 

[xchen08]

I don't see why the Japanese would have necessarily been out of gas. The Dutch had refineries in the East Indies that could have supplied, most, if not all of Japan's fuel requirements. Literally, the only thing the Dutch did right in the East Indies was to do a reasonably thorough job of destroying the wells and the accompanying refineries. The Japanese didn't have the capabilities to repair much more than the wells and what the Dutch had missed in the refineries. It was obviously insufficient for Japanese industrial requirements but I can envision a scenario where American guarantees in the region are not given and the Dutch roll over to Japanese demands for oil. That nearly happened in reality as is.

Not really. The DEI supplied Japan with ~13% of its fuel requirements and what the Dutch nearly rolled over on was promising to continue supplying that despite the U.S. led embargo. While the entirety of DEI production is actually very nearly identical with total Japanese imports, there are many other demands on DEI oil, and the Netherlands were never going to promise exclusive rights to DEI oil to Japan, something that was only going to happen with outright conquest.

I have to say though, that I strongly disagree with the notion that Britain alone was capable of defeating Germany and Japan alone, except insofar as being impossible to defeat in turn and waiting for the rotten foundation of the Nazi economy to implode after long enough under blockade and then slowly pushing Japan back, except each and every battle there will have a force disparity like that at Guadalcanal rather than that at the Philippines or later. Fact is that Germany even without its European conquests had a slightly higher industrial base than Britain plus all its Dominions. Sure, there's a problem with natural resources requiring heavy industrial diversion into synthetics production, but that's not solely a German issue without the U.S. Britain was able to outproduce Germany into 1943 because 1) Germany did not actually rationalize its output until it realized it was losing, and 2) heavy lend-lease support in every field with notable mentions in rubber and aviation gas/other fuel, both of which plummeted after Japan overran SE Asia. Considering that Britain was essentially bankrupt by 1941, it's not at all clear that German economic collapse will not be followed shortly by British without American loans, and I doubt even Britain has the will to continue the struggle into the 50s which is necessary for victory in this manner with ongoing trade between Germany and the USSR.

As for a British atomic bomb...well I suppose it is vaguely possible even if the Manhattan project cost as much as 30 Essex class carriers. Sure, it would require additonal diversion from military production which Britain could poorly afford, but maybe they could get away with it. Though its useful to remember that without the U.S., Britain would also have to fund itself the research and production of a whole range of technologies that was done by the U.S., including the VT shell, centimetric radar, even the RR Nene engine which benefitted a great deal from cross-pollination with GE and Allison.

 

[Lord Baal]

I have to say though, that I strongly disagree with the notion that Britain alone was capable of defeating Germany and Japan alone, except insofar as being impossible to defeat in turn and waiting for the rotten foundation of the Nazi economy to implode after long enough under blockade and then slowly pushing Japan back, except each and every battle there will have a force disparity like that at Guadalcanal rather than that at the Philippines or later.

Which is pretty much exactly what I'm arguing.

Fact is that Germany even without its European conquests had a slightly higher industrial base than Britain plus all its Dominions.

But you have to look at what exactly those industries were. It's a little known fact that the second or third-largest German industry right up until Albert Speer took over the German economy was the German textiles industry. Now, while equipping your soldiers with uniforms is important, the industries that Germany really required were automotive, constructive and aviation industries. While all three industries were vastly increased during the pre-war period of Nazi rule, they were also pathetically small in comparison to that of just Britain, without taking the dominions into account.

Sure, there's a problem with natural resources requiring heavy industrial diversion into synthetics production, but that's not solely a German issue

I think that's where you intended to end that sentence. Let me know if I've got it wrong and you meant something else here.

Germany's main problem was its lack of natural resources, period. The anschluss was done more to get Austria's iron ore deposits than for any ideological reasons, which was also a large part of the reason for the push to take over the Sudetenland. While Hitler pushed for the research and development of synthetics to replace the resources which Germany lacked, the only appreciable advance made by a German corporation ini the area during this period was I.G. Farben's creation of buna (synthetic rubber) and even that resulted in only small increases of German rubber supplies, as it happened to require many other resources that Germany didn't possess. Even if Germany's industrial output had been geared towards exactly what was needed this lack of supplies would have killed them. And even a compliant USSR couldn't supply Germany with everything it needed, though it supplied them with an awful lot.

without the U.S. Britain was able to outproduce Germany into 1943 because 1) Germany did not actually rationalize its output until it realized it was losing,

Even after Speer's rationalisation of German industry Britain outproduced Germany. This is because German industry was inferior to British industry, even though the latter wasn't all that well rationalised either. There was the added difficulty of the "wonder weapons," which were a net drain on German industrial capacity as they diverted resources Speer needed into experimental projects which never resulted in any practical benefits. That includes the V1.0 and V2.0 rocket programmes.

and 2) heavy lend-lease support in every field with notable mentions in rubber and aviation gas/other fuel, both of which plummeted after Japan overran SE Asia.

Britain outproduced Germany even in the dark days, after the fall of France and before the institution of Lend-Lease. And their production at that point was greater than Germany's at its highest.

Considering that Britain was essentially bankrupt by 1941,

Where are you getting this information from? Britain was operating at a pretty sizable deficit, true, but it was hardly bankrupt. It was largely American policies during the war that actually led to Britain's post-war bankruptcy. The Mediterranean solution to the war proposed by Churchill may not have ended the war as quickly as striking in France, but it would have been considerably cheaper.

it's not at all clear that German economic collapse will not be followed shortly by British without American loans, and I doubt even Britain has the will to continue the struggle into the 50s which is necessary for victory in this manner with ongoing trade between Germany and the USSR.

Germany would have collapsed long before 1950. If not for the war, their economy would have shattered before 1942. They survived on plunder, and after their armies stopped advancing that plunder dried up very quickly. Britain was very poor, but they weren't nearing bankruptcy. Especially not if they'd won the war without US help, which would have meant the continuation of the Sterling Bloc and Britain's continued dominance of international finance. Unless you think they'd agree to the Breton Woods agreement or something similar without American wartime assistance.

As for a British atomic bomb...well I suppose it is vaguely possible even if the Manhattan project cost as much as 30 Essex class carriers. Sure, it would require additonal diversion from military production which Britain could poorly afford, but maybe they could get away with it. Though its useful to remember that without the U.S., Britain would also have to fund itself the research and production of a whole range of technologies that was done by the U.S., including the VT shell, centimetric radar, even the RR Nene engine which benefitted a great deal from cross-pollination with GE and Allison.

Who said the British wouldn't have farmed out the research? There's a big difference between the US not being involved in the war and US corporations being willing to pass up huge profits by not involving themselves in research projects at the behest of the British government. There's also the fact that many of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project came from Germany via Britain. If the US hadn't entered the war against Germany, they may well have stayed. I'd foresee the British testing a-bombs in Australia sometime in the early-fifties, which might be soon enough to use against Japan.

And Britain could afford to divert resources from military production better than anyone in the war in OTL, excluding the US. They could certainly have diverted some personnel and materiel for a project of such importance. Hell, they did; it just didn't amount to as much as America's efforts in OTL.

 

[Masada]

Not really. The DEI supplied Japan with ~13% of its fuel requirements and what the Dutch nearly rolled over on was promising to continue supplying that despite the U.S. led embargo. While the entirety of DEI production is actually very nearly identical with total Japanese imports, there are many other demands on DEI oil, and the Netherlands were never going to promise exclusive rights to DEI oil to Japan, something that was only going to happen with outright conquest.

Yes, there were competing claims on DEI oil. But it wasn't essential to the war effort. Consequently, the Dutch could have sold it to the Japanese. There's no reason why they couldn't have and furthermore there's plenty of compelling reasons why they should have. Not the least, was the stated Dutch desire to maintain control in the NEI regardless of the consequences. Handing over oil to Japan to ensure that continuity was a relatively small price to pay. It was also a policy consideration that the NEI authorities had made. At the time, British and American assurances both implicit and explicit were felt to be adequate safeguards but it the absence of even some of those an alternative result is feasible.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Are you should refining was sufficient at all Grades? Because it wasn't even Gasoline that Japan was short of, but specifically high grade aviation fuel, anything else they could have strung along for ages, but that was the critical area.

 

[xchen08]

Germany's main problem was its lack of natural resources, period. The anschluss was done more to get Austria's iron ore deposits than for any ideological reasons, which was also a large part of the reason for the push to take over the Sudetenland. While Hitler pushed for the research and development of synthetics to replace the resources which Germany lacked, the only appreciable advance made by a German corporation ini the area during this period was I.G. Farben's creation of buna (synthetic rubber) and even that resulted in only small increases of German rubber supplies, as it happened to require many other resources that Germany didn't possess. Even if Germany's industrial output had been geared towards exactly what was needed this lack of supplies would have killed them. And even a compliant USSR couldn't supply Germany with everything it needed, though it supplied them with an awful lot.

The USSR could have supplied Germany with everything it needed for a war effort with the exception of rare metals, which Germany was getting an insufficient but not critically so trickle from the Balkans and Turkey, even rubber from Japan, as long as it stays neutral. On the other hand, Britain was entirely dependent on American rubber and rare metals after losing its Far East holdings, holdings which won't be recovered anytime soon, and that will certainly kill Britain if lesser shortages would kill Germany.

Britain outproduced Germany even in the dark days, after the fall of France and before the institution of Lend-Lease. And their production at that point was greater than Germany's at its highest.

Precisely because Britain went to full wartime production in 1940 rather than 1943 in the case of Germany. Which is also the reason for British production declining in 44-45 in line with Germany production declines despite not being bombed or having resources/production overrun, instead because of total exhaustion of manpower/labor reserves and unsustainable use of pre-war capital despite Lend-Lease.

Where are you getting this information from? Britain was operating at a pretty sizable deficit, true, but it was hardly bankrupt. It was largely American policies during the war that actually led to Britain's post-war bankruptcy. The Mediterranean solution to the war proposed by Churchill may not have ended the war as quickly as striking in France, but it would have been considerably cheaper.

The point is that Britain was out of foreign exchange by 1940 and even out of industrial/business concerns that could be sold off, and was not going to get any more as long as it stayed in full wartime production, which it certainly can't afford to leave. This means it cannot afford to buy anything from neutrals in cash including things it cannot get any other way described above. A nation fighting a seemingly hopeless war is not going to be able to get non-government-sponsored loans, even if those weren't illegal before the Lend-Lease Act. And if somehow does manage to get the loans sufficient to actually buy the same level of goods it got through Lend-Lease, the loans would be far more than it could repay, hence bankrupcy.

Germany would have collapsed long before 1950. If not for the war, their economy would have shattered before 1942. They survived on plunder, and after their armies stopped advancing that plunder dried up very quickly. Britain was very poor, but they weren't nearing bankruptcy. Especially not if they'd won the war without US help, which would have meant the continuation of the Sterling Bloc and Britain's continued dominance of international finance. Unless you think they'd agree to the Breton Woods agreement or something similar without American wartime assistance.

Britain's control of international finance ended long before Bretton Woods, which was an acknowledgment of the facts on the ground. And Britain would have but a fraction of the production it achieved (if it doesn't collapse entirely from resource shortages) without American assistance, either semi-charity as Lend-Lease was or outright loans, so it would be forced into agreeing to whatever the Americans proposed with or without direct American entry. As for Germany, unlike with Britain, bankrupcy proper in a wartime economy means little because of the Blockade keeping it from buying things. It'll take outright starvation before general collapse, and that won't happen as long as there's still looted gold or machine tools with which to buy Russian grain, and Russia needs a lot of modern machine tools without all it got through Lend-Lease.

Who said the British wouldn't have farmed out the research? There's a big difference between the US not being involved in the war and US corporations being willing to pass up huge profits by not involving themselves in research projects at the behest of the British government.

What huge profits? Britain can't afford to pay them for their services except through credit, and who's going to take Britain's credit in 1941? It'll take the U.S. government stepping in and paying for both research and providing a credible customer for the Corps, and the government being willing to provide Britain with the results of the research in exchange for the preliminary research Britain did/rescued from fallen European nations. And there goes Britain being able to do it alone again.

There's also the fact that many of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project came from Germany via Britain. If the US hadn't entered the war against Germany, they may well have stayed. I'd foresee the British testing a-bombs in Australia sometime in the early-fifties, which might be soon enough to use against Japan.

And Britain could afford to divert resources from military production better than anyone in the war in OTL, excluding the US. They could certainly have diverted some personnel and materiel for a project of such importance. Hell, they did; it just didn't amount to as much as America's efforts in OTL.

So in other words, any alt-Tube Alloys will have much fewer scientists than the Manhattan project with just the Commonwealth and conquered Europe contingent. It wil recieve funding in fits and starts as Britain diverts 30 carriers worth of resources from whereever it could be found without damaging the war effort too much. It may or may not produce results by the 50s, but Britain will most certainly be bankrupt by then.

 

[Lord Baal]

The USSR could have supplied Germany with everything it needed for a war effort with the exception of rare metals, which Germany was getting an insufficient but not critically so trickle from the Balkans and Turkey, even rubber from Japan, as long as it stays neutral. On the other hand, Britain was entirely dependent on American rubber and rare metals after losing its Far East holdings, holdings which won't be recovered anytime soon, and that will certainly kill Britain if lesser shortages would kill Germany.

The USSR most certainly could not provide Germany with everything it needed. Even with the massive amounts of materiel Russia supplied Germany with between the Pact and Barbarossa Germany was still starving for resources. Russia could provide Germany with only oil and grain in sufficient wartime quantities. Everything else the Soviets gave to the Reich, while useful and better than nothing, failed completely to meet the demands of the German economy.

Japan could not give rubber to Germany until the conquest of Malaya and Borneo in 1941 - the timeline wouldn't have changed that much that the Japanese would attack Britain in the Far East until the second half of 1941 at the earliest - and those supplies would have to transit through Russia. That's a long, slow supply route, prone to sabotage from British agents in the USSR, or Polish partisans closer to the Reich. Such supplies would have been negligible, given Japan's own dire need for rubber. It would also have been quite a coup for Japan, Russia and Germany to make a deal between all three of them, given the mutual distrust between Russia and Japan, with the very recent conflict between them fresh in the minds of both nations.

Britain could get all the rare metals it needed from Australia and South Africa. And why couldn't it have traded for them with the US anyway?

Precisely because Britain went to full wartime production in 1940 rather than 1943 in the case of Germany. Which is also the reason for British production declining in 44-45 in line with Germany production declines despite not being bombed or having resources/production overrun, instead because of total exhaustion of manpower/labor reserves and unsustainable use of pre-war capital despite Lend-Lease.

Why did Germany go to full wartime production? Because Fritz Todt died in a plane crash and Albert Speer was given his job. Do you really see Fritz Todt being involved in an urgent meeting with the Fuhrer in East Prussia if not for the war with Russia? I actually think the meeting might have been at Hitler's short-lived base in the Ukraine, though I'm not sure about that. I really don't see Goering, the other likely contender for the job, or Todt himself doing the job that Speer did.

British production declined in 1944-45 more because of the increase in men in combat roles than the lack of capital. Remember, the British fightback only began with Operation: Torch in 1942, and that was primarily American. It wasn't until D-Day that very large numbers of British troops were on the move. That included many men who would have formerly been involved in wartime production. Many people deliberately quit or got themselves fired from jobs in protected industries in order to fight in the war. The retaliation also ate up a lot of resources which were sent to the front rather than used in construction. Especially food, clothing and medical supplies.

The point is that Britain was out of foreign exchange by 1940 and even out of industrial/business concerns that could be sold off, and was not going to get any more as long as it stayed in full wartime production, which it certainly can't afford to leave.

There were concerns that could be sold off, though they weren't in Britain proper.

This means it cannot afford to buy anything from neutrals in cash including things it cannot get any other way described above.

They didn't need to buy from neutrals. They did have an Empire. And British currency, while depreciated, would still be worth using on the open market when Britain did need to buy from neutrals.

A nation fighting a seemingly hopeless war is not going to be able to get non-government-sponsored loans, even if those weren't illegal before the Lend-Lease Act. And if somehow does manage to get the loans sufficient to actually buy the same level of goods it got through Lend-Lease, the loans would be far more than it could repay, hence bankrupcy.

You'd be surprised at how many people around the world didn't think that Britain was in a hopeless position at the time. Including the British government, no matter what they said publicly in order to incite the people. But you are right that getting loans would have been difficult for Britain. But I don't believe that all sales from US corporations to Britain were illegal under the Neutrality Act, though it required some clever rule-bending. Britain also had the option of bleeding mmany of its colonies dry, which wouldn't have been pretty, but may have helped it ride out the worst period of economic hardship, which I foresee as being the period between 1941-43.

Britain's control of international finance ended long before Bretton Woods, which was an acknowledgment of the facts on the ground.

Not really. The US supplanted Britain in the number one spot because of its interventionist wartime policies. I recently read a book - which admittedly wasn't very good, but it had one saving grace I'm about to mention - called, I believe, FDR and Stalin: The Not-So-Grand Alliance. It featured correspondence between Litvinov, Gromyko and Molotov in the appendices, where Litvinov and Gromyko mention that it was a well-known fact among the US elite - bourgeoisie-liberals and intellectuals in their words - that America intended to profit from the dissolution of the British Empire. Many of them believed that FDR was intentionally trying to kill the BE so that America could infiltrate colonial markets. I doubt FDR was doing that, because I honestly don't think he was that intelligent, but his policies certainly achieved as much. Without the US's active policy of breaking up the BE, the British wouldn't have needed to abandon the Sterling Bloc, which still dominated international finance until the Breton Woods agreement, even given the war.

And Britain would have but a fraction of the production it achieved (if it doesn't collapse entirely from resource shortages) without American assistance, either semi-charity as Lend-Lease was or outright loans, so it would be forced into agreeing to whatever the Americans proposed with or without direct American entry.

This is likely true, but if the US was refusing to enter the war at all - and we must assume that an isolationist US means no Pearl Harbour attack, ridiculous as such an assumption is - then it was very unlikely to pursue the obviously anti-Imperial policies that they pursured. It would be enough to force the British to open their markets. That would probably have revitalised the Imperial economy, not killed it.

As for Germany, unlike with Britain, bankrupcy proper in a wartime economy means little because of the Blockade keeping it from buying things. It'll take outright starvation before general collapse, and that won't happen as long as there's still looted gold or machine tools with which to buy Russian grain, and Russia needs a lot of modern machine tools without all it got through Lend-Lease.

The blockade didn't keep it from buying things, it just limited the sources of purchases. And I don't think you realise just how rotten the Reich's economy was. It was on the verge of collapse every year from 1938 onwards, only driven by annexations and conquests. When those conquests dried up in 1942, the Reich's economy died. Speer did the best he could, but he knew - though he didn't have the courage to tell Hitler - that the war was lost when he was still working for Todt, before he even took over the economy.

Also, Germany needed its machine tools for its own war effort. Hitler sacrificed basic necessities in favour of military production as early as 1936. He wasn't about to give up his basic ideological assumptions just because of starvation. He'd try to starve conquered peoples to feed Germans first, which would lead to large-scale revolts - hunger riots are the ugliest of all riots, something my father, a former IDF soldier, has told me from first-hand experience - which would require more military spending to put down. The Reich's economy simply could not last after 1950; that's a conservative estimate, as it would probably die sooner. Besides which, Russia wouldn't need all those machine tools and other materiel if it weren't at war to begin with.

What huge profits? Britain can't afford to pay them for their services except through credit, and who's going to take Britain's credit in 1941? It'll take the U.S. government stepping in and paying for both research and providing a credible customer for the Corps, and the government being willing to provide Britain with the results of the research in exchange for the preliminary research Britain did/rescued from fallen European nations. And there goes Britain being able to do it alone again.

I don't know why you think Britain was reduced to credit. It could still pay in gold, if nothing else, which it had in vast quantities. The war also led to an increase in the price of gold worldwide, meaning that Britain could afford more with what it had in 1940 than it could in 1938.

I'm not saying that Britain could do it easily. But they'd certainly put in the effort, especially since they didn't know how badly the Germans were mangling their own research.

So in other words, any alt-Tube Alloys will have much fewer scientists than the Manhattan project with just the Commonwealth and conquered Europe contingent. It wil recieve funding in fits and starts as Britain diverts 30 carriers worth of resources from whereever it could be found without damaging the war effort too much. It may or may not produce results by the 50s, but Britain will most certainly be bankrupt by then.

Britain would not have been bankrupt by the 1950s. Everything else you say here is fairly accurate, but you continue to underestimate Britain's economy, which, while mortally wounded, wasn't dead by any means. Britain would have died a slow death, now a quick one as Germany would have. Honestly, the European nation which would have gained the most from the war in this scenario, excepting Russia, would be Fascist Italy.

 

[Masada]

Are you should refining was sufficient at all Grades? Because it wasn't even Gasoline that Japan was short of, but specifically high grade aviation fuel, anything else they could have strung along for ages, but that was the critical area.

It wasn't aviation fuel. But didn't the Japanese have final production facilities already and just lacked the intermediary goods? Even so, I think that contention is a touch misleading. I know, for instance, that the Japanese had to revert to using sailing ships early in the war because they had run out of fuel for coastal steamers. That alone, caused serious problems for the Japanese desperately trying to extract rice and other essential wartime goods from Indonesia. It light of that, it probably wasn't worth them invading at all...

 

[xchen08]

The USSR most certainly could not provide Germany with everything it needed. Even with the massive amounts of materiel Russia supplied Germany with between the Pact and Barbarossa Germany was still starving for resources. Russia could provide Germany with only oil and grain in sufficient wartime quantities. Everything else the Soviets gave to the Reich, while useful and better than nothing, failed completely to meet the demands of the German economy.

Really, though, for a wartime economy, alleviating the fuel and grain shortages is quite sufficient. Germany remains resources starved, but not significantly more so than Britain without American resources or the output of SE Asia. Indeed, it would be significantly better off in tungsten thanks to having access to USSR production as well as Iberian.

That's a long, slow supply route, prone to sabotage from British agents in the USSR, or Polish partisans closer to the Reich.

Such efforts weren't able to significantly impede Iberian tungsten or Turkish chromium until very late in the war, so why would you think they would be able to do much deep in the interior of the enemy rather than right on the coast?

Why did Germany go to full wartime production? Because Fritz Todt died in a plane crash and Albert Speer was given his job. Do you really see Fritz Todt being involved in an urgent meeting with the Fuhrer in East Prussia if not for the war with Russia? I actually think the meeting might have been at Hitler's short-lived base in the Ukraine, though I'm not sure about that. I really don't see Goering, the other likely contender for the job, or Todt himself doing the job that Speer did.

Umm, I don't think you can seriously argue that Germany simply will not go to to full wartime production even when if it is losing. And I'm also very suspicious of claims that Speer was some mastermind miracle worker and nobody else could have achieved the same things, which are invariable derived from Speer himself. Certainly, those claims never touch on disasters attributable to Speer, like the XXI uboat program.

British production declined in 1944-45 more because of the increase in men in combat roles than the lack of capital. Remember, the British fightback only began with Operation: Torch in 1942, and that was primarily American. It wasn't until D-Day that very large numbers of British troops were on the move. That included many men who would have formerly been involved in wartime production. Many people deliberately quit or got themselves fired from jobs in protected industries in order to fight in the war. The retaliation also ate up a lot of resources which were sent to the front rather than used in construction. Especially food, clothing and medical supplies.

Perhaps, but the process of winning the war will certainly require even greater mobilization than OTL, and thus certainly even greater hits to production. Unless of course Britain simply decides to sit and wait for Germany to collapse of its own weight and then move on Japan which is both exceedingly unrealistic since Germany's economic woes were not known at the time, and would possibly lead to a collapse in India and other none Dominion territories who simply wouldn't be willing to keep fighting many years on end without a recognizable end point.

There were concerns that could be sold off, though they weren't in Britain proper.

It is precisely interests outside of Britain proper that could be sold for foreign exchange, and had already been sold by 1940-41, like the British interests in American oil concerns.

They didn't need to buy from neutrals. They did have an Empire.

Yes, they did. For instance, the only source of rubber once Malaya gets overrun would be Latin America and the U.S. (really just the U.S. since all the Latin American raw rubber is purchased by the U.S. to process)

I doubt FDR was doing that, because I honestly don't think he was that intelligent, but his policies certainly achieved as much. Without the US's active policy of breaking up the BE, the British wouldn't have needed to abandon the Sterling Bloc, which still dominated international finance until the Breton Woods agreement, even given the war.

Some in FDR's administration were actively opposed to the British Empire, like Morgenthau, and in general, the fellow traveler bloc, who would be even more hostile OTL with the USSR not allied with Britain. Since we are talking an USA that is true neutral rather than actively aiding Britain in addition to acting on its own interests, it doesn't do your argument much good. All the actions to break up the BE would still occur except more so, and Britain would be in even more debt.

The blockade didn't keep it from buying things, it just limited the sources of purchases. And I don't think you realise just how rotten the Reich's economy was. It was on the verge of collapse every year from 1938 onwards, only driven by annexations and conquests. When those conquests dried up in 1942, the Reich's economy died. Speer did the best he could, but he knew - though he didn't have the courage to tell Hitler - that the war was lost when he was still working for Todt, before he even took over the economy.

This sounds like more of Speer's self-aggrandisement. That the Reich's economy was rotten is certain. Just when it would collapse despite wartime mobilization is far less clear. More to the point, the knowledge that it was rotten was not available to Britain, and thus not usable for wartime strategy or for boosting morale in a long drawn out, and on the face of it hopeless war. (in the sense that Britain could never defeat Germany militarily, and vise-versa, but morale and public support is far more important to Britain)

Also, Germany needed its machine tools for its own war effort. Hitler sacrificed basic necessities in favour of military production as early as 1936. He wasn't about to give up his basic ideological assumptions just because of starvation. He'd try to starve conquered peoples to feed Germans first, which would lead to large-scale revolts - hunger riots are the ugliest of all riots, something my father, a former IDF soldier, has told me from first-hand experience - which would require more military spending to put down. The Reich's economy simply could not last after 1950; that's a conservative estimate, as it would probably die sooner. Besides which, Russia wouldn't need all those machine tools and other materiel if it weren't at war to begin with.

Yet starvation is unlikely to occur anytime soon as long as there is trade with the USSR. And machine tools is one thing that Germany was never short of during the war. Germany had a far larger stock of machine tools than it had the manpower or raw resources to use. This is in large part the reason for the failure of the Schweinfurt raids and similar failing to do damage worth the massive losses.

I don't know why you think Britain was reduced to credit. It could still pay in gold, if nothing else, which it had in vast quantities. The war also led to an increase in the price of gold worldwide, meaning that Britain could afford more with what it had in 1940 than it could in 1938.

If it had the gold to do the job, why was it selling off business interests at below market prices during Cash and Carry?

 

[innonimatu]

I'm really liking this thread, discussions about the economic troubles of both the UK and Germany during WW2 are not common!

Anyway, the only thing which I can add is that some of the the neutral european governments even at the end of WW2 still believed that the UK remained the big financial power in the world. The inability of the british to extend loans and the necessity of accepting the Marshall Plan from the US with all the strings attached certainly came as a shock to the portuguese government, from what I've read about portuguese diplomacy at the time. So did the swift collapse of the British Empire afterward.

One other thing, perhaps: britain might have had another weakness, which it shared with post-war Europe: lack of food. One thing which forced many reluctant european post-war governments to accept the Marshall Plan in 1946 and after was the inability to buy american grain otherwise. I don't know how able britain might have been to keep buying from from the US during the whole of the 1940s, of if it could somehow extract what it needed from its empire.

I still think that the insistence of the EU in keeping its CAP, even now, and grantee a food production surplus, originated in that common experience.

 

[ParkCungHee]

It wasn't aviation fuel. But didn't the Japanese have final production facilities already and just lacked the intermediary goods?

It had some. Not enough to fullfill it's own needs. It could be swimming in oil and would have been short on all high quality fuels.

Edit: This is because it was dependent on fuel importation anyway. During peacetime they saw little need in attempting to build up self-sufficiency in the processing of a material then were not self-sufficient in.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

The type of oil being mined matters, too. Not all are suitable for processing into aviation-grade juice. The Germans encountered a similar problem with the Ploesti fields; German bombers became notorious in Britain by the end of the war for announcing their presence ahead of visual range by way of chronic engine backfiring, thanks to barely-acceptable aviation fuel.

 

[Masada]

It had some. Not enough to fullfill it's own needs. It could be swimming in oil and would have been short on all high quality fuels.

As it was, it was chronically short of all fuel. The aforementioned reliance on sailing vessels was just one example.

This is because it was dependent on fuel importation anyway. During peacetime they saw little need in attempting to build up self-sufficiency in the processing of a material then were not self-sufficient in.

Sure, I don't disbelieve that. But ultimately, the Avgas had to come from somewhere and I'm not wholly sold on the notion that the Japanese with access to oil couldn't have produced it. Its an impediment, certainly, but it isn't insurmountable.

The type of oil being mined matters, too. Not all are suitable for processing into aviation-grade juice. The Germans encountered a similar problem with the Ploesti fields; German bombers became notorious in Britain by the end of the war for announcing their presence ahead of visual range by way of chronic engine backfiring, thanks to barely-acceptable aviation fuel.

Sure, I think that's a consideration. But not a particularity large one in this case. The fields in question were not known to be all that complex in terms of there chemistry. Its the only reason they were worked on in the first place as distance from centres of consumption would have mitigated against extraction.

 

[Racsoviale]

I as innonimatu also really like this threads heading and find it really interesting.

and I have a few questions aswell

In this scenario does Stalin still pursue his plan with an invasion of Germany in the mid 40s? if so would that not change the amount/type of goods he would be willing to sell to the germans(this question is mostly related to a hypothetical non intervensionist USA - would the Soviets still be on track for a german invasion)

Someone mentioned the production capabilities of the nations the germans conquered, how noteworthy was the production of those? I understand Czechoslovakia had a sizeable arms industry as well as France, but how useful were the minors without a significant arms industry: Norway, The Netherlands, Denmark and so on.
The occupied countries that didnt see a much destruction on their infrastructure, but at the same time would not be able to provide anything useful for the Nazis. Was it only for strategical purposes and maybe vague ideas about uniting the arian race?
I know Denmark, and I suspect Norway too, was still based on farming, fishing and light industry and only very little on heavy industry. Which is the kind you want if you want to conquer the world i suspect.