I am an arm chair war historian at best, but am fascinated by the many facets of WWII. So I pose a question for debate among those with the knowledge:
Is there any scenario aside from changes in faction allegiance (Russia) or the US not entering, where the Axis could have won the war just by making better strategic decisions (i.e. Germany not trying to march on Stalingrad in the Winter, Japan not bombing Pearl Harbor, etc)?
In other words, if Germany and Japan had leaders who made all the right choices (and Italy had someone with an IQ over 80) how likely was it that the Axis would still be defeated?
90%? 99%? or something much less?
I was always under the impression that due to resource availability (men, oil, arms, GNP) that the Axis had something close to zero percent in terms of probable outright victory (i.e. Allies surrendering not negotiated peace) regardless of any tactical or strategic factors outside of a Russian/German alliance or the US never entering the war.
pre-Pearl Harbor, the British strategy was basically re-hash the strategy from the Napoleonic Wars, blockade the continent and nibble at Germany at the periphery and wear Germany down through a long war of attrition.
On the opposite side in hindsight, Hitler’s best strategy would likely be the same, stay put, hunker down in Fortress Europe and not invade Russia, find a way to get Turkey into the Axis fold/ignite a populist movement in India/Egypt/Persia/Iraq and aim for a negotiated settlement with the UK. As in 1941 Russia was still selling Germany all the raw materials Germany wanted, though very warily.
So what could’ve evolved would be a UK-German Cold War/stalement from 1941 to ??? and the Pacific War being something entirely different between only the US and Japan.
I kind of wonder what would have happened if Hitler had taken on his enemies one by one instead of at the same time.
E.g. ally with Soviet Russia to defeat England. Then once England is eliminated, declare war on Stalin and ally with America to defeat Soviet Russia. Finally, once everyone between Ireland and the Urals has been beaten into defeat or acquiescence (and your Japanese allies are keeping the rump Russian state occupied in the east), declare war on America.
It’s theoretically possible to construct scenarios where Germany could have won some version of the Second World War.
To do that, though, requires an entirely theoretical Germany, one that was not ideologically Nazi. The manner in which they chose their wars was generally determined by Nazism itself; that’s what drove them to invade the USSR, which is what took them through Poland, which is what started the war with the UK, so on and so forth.
Once Hitler lost the Battle of Britain, it was only a matter of time. Britain would have developed the atomic bomb first and that would have been that. So, to win, Hitler had to win the Battle of Britain. Then he would have had to invade and conquer the whole UK well before Pearl Harbour - in enough time to put diplomatic pressure on America to ease up on Japan and thus to obviate the need for the attack on Pearl Harbour.
I’d even wind it back one further step and say that, had Hitler trusted his generals more they would not have allowed operation dynamo to succeed and Britain would have negotiated a settlement. That would have raised the possibility of an axis “victory” (of one flavour or another).
Once a quarter of a million troops were rescued from Dunkerque though, the country had the will to fight the Battle of Britain and the die was probably cast.
Was there anyone in the world not already sided with one of the Axis or Allies that could have come into the war and made a difference and helped the Axis win?
Had Halifax replaced Chamberlain rather than Churchill there’s a strong possibility than the UK could have negotiated a peace deal with Germany. If Japan then went North after Barbarossa the Axis might have been able to defeat an isolated Soviet Union. Two huge ifs for that to have happened though.
Two major weak points in Germany’s wartime performance could have realistically been handled better, possibly enough to change the outcome of the war. (And I am speaking to a relative “better” from the Nazi point of view, not better for the world or for my own personal beliefs.)
German industry did not start to seriously transition to a full war footing until 1943. Check out the increase in tank and aircraft production from 1942 to 1944, during the Allied strategic bombing campaign. Tank production went from 5500 in 1942 to over 18,000 in 1944. Aircraft production went from 13,000 to 35,000 during the same period. Shift that output ahead two years, and it has a major impact on the war.
The Luftwaffe could have performed better and been better designed. With foresight, the Luftwaffe could have been designed to carry out a strategic bombing campaign against Britain’s aircraft manufacturing industry. Longer-range aircraft with more anti-shipping capability (sort of a land-based naval air arm) would also put a lot of pressure on the Royal Navy: imagine a few sinkings of major capital ships in the waters around the U.K., ala Prince of Wales and Repulse. Coupled with not wasting time bombing cities and with the extra production mentioned above, a better designed, more powerful Luftwaffe might have allowed Germany to suppress the RAF enough to successfully launch a cross-channel invasion, allowing the Germans to knock Britain out of the war and focus all of their efforts on the USSR. A strategic bombing arm also allows the Germans to treat Soviet production capability more roughly during that conflict, as well.
If Britain is already out of the war and if Hitler doesn’t honor his treaty with Japan by declaring war on the U.S., maybe the U.S. does not become involved in the European conflict after Pearl Harbor, content to let the fascists and the communists kill each other in large numbers.
If that happens, you could easily envision the Reich lasting decades, depending on how the war with the USSR went, and of course their ability to hold together an immoral empire through terror.
It’s not a certain result, though. But I don’t think the two “improvements” I indicate above were out of the realm of possibility, i.e, they don’t require a leap in technology or anything other than foresight to the same extent that their opponents had.
Go on a full wartime footing early in the war. Rationalize production. Fire Todt and put Speer in charge.
Don’t try to build a surface fleet. They were never going to catch up with the existing naval powers. They should have instead put those resources into submarines.
Don’t trust the Enigma machine.
Find the oil fields in Libya. That would give them access to all the oil they’d have needed to fight the war.
Don’t waste resources building rockets and missiles. Build four-engine bombers instead.
Target British airfields, aircraft production, and radar. Don’t waste time bombing cities.
Accept the fact that conquering Russia will take a while. Don’t try to do it all in a few months.
That is pretty much what they were doing. They switched to city bombing after their attempts to knock out airfields, radar and production had limited effect. It was an acknowledgement that their initial objectives couldn’t be met, not a cause of it.
The greatest strength of the RAF was the network of detection, command and control. Coupled with the ability to recover their precious trained pilots over friendly territory and a brilliant organised system for repairing, re-arming and re-deploying existing aircraft it meant the Germans were up against it right from the start. There really wasn’t any point during that summer when the Luftwaffe had any semblance of air-superiority.
With hindsight, different planes and different strategies may have helped somewhat but ultimately they were losing pilots and planes over enemy territory and were not geared up to replacing either.
I don’t think that’s true. Britain’s bomb work was largely theoretical. I don’t think they had the resources for their own Manhatten project, especially give that they also needed to replace war-material lost during the Battle of France. Between the two of them, Germany was probably better placed to get the bomb first.
And even if Britain had the bomb, they wouldn’t have had very many of them, and would’ve needed a reliable delivery system. They couldn’t just send out waves of bombers with atomic bombs, like they did with conventional ones. It’s a mistake to think of the bomb as an instant winner for whomever got it first. It worked for the US because they’d already spent most of the war gaining air dominance over Japan and conquering places to launch bombers from.
Well, that’s more or less what he did. By 1941 France was out and Britain, while not totally defeated, had been kicked off the continent and wasn’t going to be more than a nuisence for at least a few years.
Germany lost the war by loosing to Russia in 1943. I don’t think any changes having to do with Britain would’ve changed that. Keeping the US out of the war probably wouldn’t have either. Preventing Lend-Lease and similar aid to the Russians might’ve, but that wasn’t really something Hitler could control. Delaying the invasion of Russia might’ve helped, but since Russia was outproducing Germany, attacking them right away when Russia was unprepared and Germany already had a mobilized army made sense.
Hitler could have had Britain. He had 150,000 British troops cornered on the western coast of France after trampling through the Western front, and inexplicably let the foot off the gas.
Those troops escaped, allowing Britain to recover and prepare for invasion. Had the Wehrmacht not let up, Britain could have been invaded and taken easily.
With all of western Europe in his hands, Hitler could then focus on a more reasonable, strategic attack on the Soviet Union.
Wasn’t that accomplished by relying more and more on slave labour though ? Can’t do that in 39 or 42, when you’ve got Germans who need jobs. And paychecks. In 44 they’re all mostly frozen in a ditch on the road to the Volga, so that’s one fewer problem to handle.
Anyway, the problem with any Axis Wins scenario is that they all mostly hinge on “don’t fuck with Russia, or if you have to don’t do it so soon, and if you do don’t expect them to fall in a week”. But fucking with Russia was the very first bullet point on Hitler’s agenda. That was what everything else was about : invading Russia and the Balkans, slaughtering everyone, replacing them with Germans. Attacking France and England, attacking the US, allying with Japan were all just preliminary means to that end. And similarly, the conviction that communism was a rotten system that would not be able to oppose any kind of resistance was central to nazi ideology, soooo…
But I **do **wonder how things would have gone down if he’d done exactly what the European Allies hoped he would do, and left Germany grow in military power for - that is to say if he’d just gone staight for Stalin’s throat, no holds barred, no diversions, no side trips. Possibly even asking for a lend-lease kind of deal wrt the British-controlled ME oil fields or US steel. All in the name of strangling Zee Hydra of Judischer Bolschevism, dontcherknow. Or possibly letting the Russians invade Poland by themselves (and face the whole of the Polish army, the better to blunt their forces), then use that as the “Come see the oppression !” casus belli needed to keep international opinion on-side.
[QUOTE=Hector_St_Clare]
E.g. ally with Soviet Russia to defeat England. Then once England is eliminated, declare war on Stalin and ally with America to defeat Soviet Russia. Finally, once everyone between Ireland and the Urals has been beaten into defeat or acquiescence (and your Japanese allies are keeping the rump Russian state occupied in the east), declare war on America.
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Stalin was many things, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. There would have been no point in letting a known hostile and aggressive Germany grow unchecked while Russia gains nothing whatsoever. It’s obvious Hitler would have turned on him next.
If the US doesn’t enter the war, Germany still loses. Russia might take a little longer to cream them, but cream them they will.
100%
The Axis did about as well as they realistically could have under any reasonable alt-hist. They caught basically ALL the breaks in the first two years, and still lost in three more years.
Nope. He has to get across the channel against an undefeated airforce that’s as big as his is (and better equipped) AND the most powerful navy in the world. He had tug-boats and river barges to cross the channel, and half-a-dozen destroyers left to protect them with. The Royal Navy had committed itself to die in the channel if necessary to protect Britain, and there’s nothing he can do to counter that. Nothing.
The German Army was overextended at that point. They had not been simply marching freely through France, but were facing very desperate and determined rear-guard actions but British and French units. Some units were at 50% capacity or worse and they couldn’t be resupplied (having outrun supply lines). You can’t run tanks constantly for 2 weeks without maintenance. Add to that the fact that you couldn’t just barge into Dunkirk with tanks. The area is one big trap for larger vehicles.
They needed to regroup, refit, and repair. It is very easy to say ‘keep going!’ but attacking with an undersupplied, worn-out army could have made for disaster. Especially if they had battered themselves on Dunkirk while French forces south of them were still not neutralized (and could take the offensive).
Hitler didn’t even make the initial slowdown orders. von Runstedt approved the slowdown order and Hitler approved after Goering said the Luftwaffe could handle it.
While true enough, there are a large number of things that have to be borne in mind when looking at those production figures. Everyone’s production increased dramatically from 1942 to 1944, not just Germany’s. The failure of the strategic bombing campaign to put a dent into German production is more indicative of the failure of the ability to achieve the primary objective of strategic bombing than anything else. German aircraft and AFV production also shifted towards simpler, easier to build defensive equipment during this period. The percentage of AFV production that consisted of tanks decreased and the emphasis shifted to turretless self propelled guns and tank destroyers, which are easier to produce and can mount a larger gun on the same chassis by omitting the turret. The tradeoff is they are not as effective on the offense as a proper turreted tank. The production of aircraft by 1944 had shifted almost entirely to single engine fighters in an effort to defend against the strategic bombing campaign, which are much easier to produce than twin engined bombers. A major problem Germany was facing at this time was a spiral of decreasing pilot quality caused by the need to turn out pilots to replace those lost to attrition and fuel shortages which meant less flight time for training replacement pilots. Lower quality pilots didn’t last as long in combat meaning they needed to be replaced even faster leading to decreasing training times further, which became a self feeding death spiral.
The Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk because they lacked any air cover. Any attempt to sink major capital ships in the waters around the UK outside of the English Channel was going to get the Luftwaffe slaughtered. The Me-109 had extremely short legs, and the few efforts the Luftwaffe made during the Battle of Britain to conduct daylight bombing outside the range of the Me-109 using the Me-110 as an escort fighter ended in disaster. Considering the failure of the combined efforts of the US and UK to damage German aircraft manufacturing in a multi year strategic bombing campaign with resources devoted to it that Germany could not dream of using, I can’t realistically see the Luftwaffe doing any serious damage to British aircraft manufacturing. Strategic bombing against the USSR would have been an extremely futile effort; Soviet production had been moved to the other side of the Ural Mountains and notably even if it was within range of German strategic bombers, Germany didn’t even know where tankograd was.
A proper strategic bomber force is also extremely expensive; creating such a force out of the Luftwaffe is going to have to come at the cost of something else.
Hitler was under no obligation to declare war on the US, the tripartite pact was a defensive treaty and Hitler would only have been obliged to declare war on the US if the US had attacked Japan. In any event, the US was already engaged in an undeclared naval war with Germany at the time of Pearl Harbor, with US warships escorting British convoys with orders to shoot on sight any German U-boats or warships encountered.