World War II

[willemvanoranje]

It seems a bit strange to me that there is no WW II thread yet. It's one of the most popular subjects of history, at least one of my favorites.

So, I think that Hitler could've won the war by:

1. Taking England (= not bombing London)
2. Waiting longer before attacking Russia
3. Breaking with Mussolini or letting him stop to act military in Africa and Greece.
4. Start the war in 1943 as originally planned with far more superior weapons than in 1939.

 

[TheDuckOfFlanders]

5: by insuring oil supplies.That's why they attacked egypt.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Personally I think Hitler's greatest mistake was his supreme race 'ideology'. Had he presented himself as the liberator from Communism when he invaded the Soviet Union, the entire army and people of the Soviet Union could have crossed over to join the German invaders. For years prior to WW2, Stalin had been oppressing the peoples of the Soviet Union like hell, liquidating the officer corps of the Red Army, massacring the kulaks (better-off peasants) in the drive to collectivize agriculture and etc. In fact, in the beginning months of the invasion, whole Red Army army groups simply collapsed and the Germans were capturing millions of POWs.
Had Hitler had done so, he could have conquered all of Europe till maybe the Urals and with the new huge pool of manpower, natural resources and industrial capacity in the East, he could have really built Fortress Europe along the Atlantic coast. Heck he could even have invaded Britain eventually. Or even America maybe. Even if the Americans did join the war, it would be a damn difficult operation even to secure a beachead on mainland Europe. The Germans could throw the entire weight of all the units involved historically in the Eastern Front (both German and Soviet) at any landing force.
Fortunately for all of us, Hitler being Hitler and so we have the world as it is today. Lucky!

 

[Magnus]

If Hitler only would have let his generals run the war, instead of taking personal command, Germany most likely WOULD have won. His extreme hubris was his downfall.

 

[amadeus]

Hitler would *not* have won the war. He may have taken France and Spain, but not Britain, and certainly not the United States or Russia. The Russians had too harsh of a terrain for German ground troops, and we (North America) have distance supremacy.

Hitler used a lot of junk science in making his decisions towards the end (1944) of the war like positions of constellations and all kinds of that crazy crap...

 

[joespaniel]

First of all, thanks for starting a WW2 topic.

I am a military history buff and the second world war is my favorite topic, especialy europe.

It goes without saying that its a great thing for the world that Hiltler's Germany did NOT win, and if you look at the pivitol years 1940 and 1941 it was a very close thing.

Operation Sealion was a total crap-shoot for the Germans and in hindsight may not have been possible anyway. The British admited after the war they were prepared to use gas on invading Germans on the beaches, and no invaison of England could realisticly be supported with the Royal Navy and Air Force still in action.

The critical mistake came in Russia, with Hitler's decision to take the armor from Army Group Center and attack south from Smolensk against Kiev in Autumn 1941. Even at the time it was deemed unnescessary because a sucessful attack on Moscow would have isolated all other fronts and caused them to wither away. Moscow was the political head and heart of the USSR as well as the main rail junction.

At the time of the attack on Kiev, Moscow was ill-defended and the feared Russian winter and Autumn rain still far off. With their armor left unmolested by Hitler, Guderian's panzers would have delivered the fatal blow to Russia, knocking the USSR out of the war and giving Germany much, much more resources and leverage against Great Britain.

However, armchair general that I am, I admit the US entry into the war may have still causesd the end result to be the same. Only many German cities may have ended up as radioactive holes in the ground. Who knows...

 

[G-Man]

Hitler came to power because he had mad ideas and his downfall was his madness.

 

[joespaniel]

Amen to that.:crazyeyes

 

[Siggy]

I once read an excellent article written by a historian about Hitler's blunders which weren't blunders actually. I saw some of htose so called blunders also in this thread. I will see if I can translate the article and post it here. I do not fully agree with that historian but he has some interesting views about the subject.

 

[Flatlander Fox]

I'm inclined to think that the whole war ended for Germany the moment they attacked Russia. Even if Moscow would have been taken, I think that just garrisoning Russia would have sapped the Germans strength too much to overcome. And the Russians would have fought forever, due to the atrocities committed by the advancing Wehrmacht. The Germans had been feeding their war machine with resources captured in their conquests. But during the Russian campaign, the scorched earth policy was slowly degrading that machine's performance.

The only thing that the United States' entry to the war did was ensure that the Soviets stopped at Berlin, instead of the Atlantic Ocean on the coast of Portugal. The Red Army was that big. And the Germans were that

That's why Patton wanted to attack the Russians, he saw what was coming.

In an essence, the U.S. and England were fighting after 1943 to save Europe from Russia, not from Germany.

 

[allan]

"And the Russians would have fought forever, due to the atrocities committed by the advancing Wehrmacht."

Yep, due to the fact that the Slavic people were on Hitler's list of "inferior" races, not that far above the Jews....

Hitler's breaking the non-agression pact with Stalin (at least before securing Britain, which he probably could have done without the eastern front) was, I agree, the beginning of the end for him, even with the initial huge victories. Russia was not only big, but fairly evenly industrialized throughout, even in the wastes of Siberia. Occupation even west of the Urals would have probably taken up his entire forces.... However, one wonders if Stalin would have eventually broken the pact himself, if Hitler was coming close to subduing Britain....

I also agree that his megalomania doomed him from the start, as it does with all such rulers who lose track of their limitations....

Also, even if Hitler did not attack Russia, the US would still have eventually defeated Japan (that was inevitable no matter what Tojo did), and would have probably nuked Berlin and/or the industrial area around Frankfurt or Dusseldorf. Good thing that didn't happen.... Of course, if Hitler could buy enough time after securing Britain, he too might have developed nukes, then a Cold War would have started between Europe and the US....

Arguably perhaps too is Hitler's alliance with Japan--bringing the US against him as well once Pearl Harbor was attacked.

So many ifs, which is what makes civ scenarios so fun....

 

[willemvanoranje]

You know, in an interview I had to conduct for school, my (German) grandmother said she felt the same: they knew the war was lost when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

 

[Siggy]

No, that is far too simple. They didn't lose the war because they invaded Russia. There were more factors that played a part. I will translate that article I was talking about and post it here. It will take awhile and I might even post it in parts because it is a large article.

 

[Sodak]

The Russian industrialization would eventually have overcome the Germans, had they taken Moscow or not. In just a few years, this machine was rolling out trainloads of ammo, guns of all sizes, tanks, you name it - in volumes not before seen. Some of the advance into Germany was slowed only by the arrival of more equipment, not by the defeated German army. In contrast, Germany was more or less a heap of rubble by the end of the war. Production was declining, there was no more labor to tap for war purposes. With this in mind, Germany was in deep doo well before 1944.

 

[joespaniel]

I have read that Hitler's war aims were never to fight France and England but always to push east into Russia. His goal, more or less, was to secure a lot of land and resources for Germany to grow and become a great empire. The greatest of all time.

Some of his ideas, he admited, were spawned from reading American history. I think he forgot to take into account that the Sioux didnt have T-32 tanks and 200 million people.

 

[willemvanoranje]

It's true that Hitler never intended to attack England, I don't know about France. He wanted to ally with England, 'cause he knew they would become a threat sooner or later if not allied with Germany. He didn't expect England and France to declare war on Spetember 3rd, because of one of his advisors who said that England would never do so. Fact is, that he needed more 'Lebensraum', and that the only option for that was the east. He originally wanted to attack in 1943 or later, but his health and other things made him afraid he might die before the completement of his plans, so he attacked a few years earlier.


Another thing was, that Hitler stopped a lot of projects for new great weapon in 1940 and 1941 because he thought the war would be over by then. If he had not done that, he would've had numerous tanks superior to the Tiger, fighters far better than the FW 190, and bombers better than the B-17! That would've repelled the Russian counte-offensives and certainly would've made the war last a few years longer.

 

[Siggy]

Originally posted by Sodak
The Russian industrialization would eventually have overcome the Germans, had they taken Moscow or not. In just a few years, this machine was rolling out trainloads of ammo, guns of all sizes, tanks, you name it - in volumes not before seen. Some of the advance into Germany was slowed only by the arrival of more equipment, not by the defeated German army. In contrast, Germany was more or less a heap of rubble by the end of the war. Production was declining, there was no more labor to tap for war purposes. With this in mind, Germany was in deep doo well before 1944.

I totaly disagree with this. Germany reached its production peak in LATE 1944. There were more tanks and airplanes produced in that year than in 1939 and 1940 together. (or was it 1940 and 1941? well, you get the point?) Again a far too simple statement and simply not true.

The production in Germany didn't just decline because of the strategic air offensive. Production did increase until fall 1944, and finally after that it slowly grinded to a standstill in february-march 1945; as late as that and not because of the strategic air offensive, but because of lack of raw materials and simply the industrial areas were overrun in this period by allied ground forces and offcourse because the infrastructure got messed up.

 

[Siggy]

Originally posted by willemvanoranje


Another thing was, that Hitler stopped a lot of projects for new great weapon in 1940 and 1941 because he thought the war would be over by then. If he had not done that, he would've had numerous tanks superior to the Tiger, fighters far better than the FW 190, and bombers better than the B-17! That would've repelled the Russian counte-offensives and certainly would've made the war last a few years longer.

He didn't stop that. Prototype of the Me262 flew in late 1941 or early 1942. It didn't appear earlier because someone (Hitler himself?) ordered that that plane should be capable of carrying bombs. That extra period of development, testing etc. made the plane appear in summer/fall 1944 instead of spring/summer 1943. That would have made the difference.

How about the Panther tank? It was developed in 1942. Was a great weapon, wasn't it?

B-17 was developed as a strategic bomber. Germany didn't develop weapons like that ( well, it developed some futuristic airplane capable of strategic bombing) because it wasn't a priority. The airplanes germany used were developed to work together with the wehrmacht during the blitzkrieg as tactical support, not as strategic weapons. All those bombers Germany developed were in strict terms tactical bombers and were not meant to be used as strategic weapons.

And the last question: what were those better weapons you are talking about? Panther 2? Mauss? Which airplane, which tank?

 

[willemvanoranje]

I can't give you names, I don't know them. I read it in the book of Ian Kershaw about Hitler. And yes, it was Hitler who wanted to use the Me262 as an attackbomber instead of fighter. The Germans <i>were</i> developping a bomber called 'Amerika' 'cause it had to be able to reach New York.

 

[Siggy]

Originally posted by willemvanoranje
I can't give you names, I don't know them. I read it in the book of Ian Kershaw about Hitler. And yes, it was Hitler who wanted to use the Me262 as an attackbomber instead of fighter. The Germans <i>were</i> developping a bomber called 'Amerika' 'cause it had to be able to reach New York.

Did it ever fly?