GERMANY IN 1939: sHOULD WWII Have Been Launched in 1942-43?

[XT]

@MMI

Xtisme: Zhukov showed a fair grasp of combined arms tactics while beating the snot out of the Japanese in Mongolia. Poor Soviet performance in '41 is as much due to the repercussions of the purges of the Red Army leadership in the end of the '30s. If the lieutenants who were doing colonels’s jobs in 41 had a chance to grow into their responsibilities of their positions, tehy could have done much better. Plus, given the German’s unwillingness to devote resources to logistics would have likely bog them down at the same times and places.

I agree…Zhukov was one the great generals in history. What makes you think he wouldn’t have been purged though if there was no war and no threat to the nation? In addition, even if there wouldn’t have been another purge in the army, it takes more than 3 or 4 years to properly train up a decent officer corps in peace time (and especially in the old pre-WWII Soviet Army)…let alone for that knowledge and training to be more widely deciminated to the Red Army in general. I simply don’t see how the Russians would have been better prepared in '45 than they were in '41.

@MMI

Had the Germans held off til '43 or so they would have lost - badly. Pretty much everyone else took their own rearmament very seriously while the Germans half-assed it until 43 or so (when they finally realized it just might not be a short war after all. One more offensive was not going to do it). Germany prioritized on not interrupting the consumer goods industries to help keep down anti-war sentiment.

Maybe. But I’ve seen no indications that anyone else was really looking at modern combined arms warfare the way the Germans were…until after the initial German successes of course. I never considered the Germans economics as being so badly off though, so I suppose if they were on the verge of economic collapse as some in this thread have stated that the time table for war pretty much had to be what it was. But if thats not the case, I really don’t see even the build up of more arms by the French, British and Russians as being that much of a help. It was the tactics that won the Germans their initial victories…they equipment was outclassed on all fronts by the allies. The French had more and better tanks…and more men. So did the Russians.

Besides, my own theory was that the Germans should not have attacked Russia…consolidating their gains in Western Europe and expanding into Africa and the ME. The allies would never have had the chance to build up…France and western Europe was already in German hands by then. The British were fighting on of course, but couldn’t really do that much to the Germans…certainly not invade.

@ralph124c

One thing I have never understood about Hitler-he never seemed to have a “grand strategy” for the war. For example, instead of sending the Afrika Korps to Libya, he should have send a complete army-then he could have easily captured Egypt, and closed the Suez canal. He might even have been able to capture the oilfields of Iraq. Instead, he frittered away this opportunity.

Didn’t have the resources for more than a half assed attempt on Africa, though I agree he SHOULD have done more there. In fact, my theory was that if he didn’t go to war with Russia when and how he did he would have had those resources to roll through Egypt and into the ME. Wonder how the Germans would have done in Iraq.

@ralph124c

And when pearl harbor came, he should have used his japanese allies better-instead of the japanese attacking south, he should have encouraged them to attack Siberia-that would have taken the pressure off him at Stalingrad. Of course, I understand that he really believed that the Russian campaign would be over in 6 months-but surely his senior generals must have told him the true state of the eastern front. And why was Hitler so at pains to appear to be backing up Mussolini? Once the Italian fleet was sunk (at taranto), the Italians were a negligible force-they were just about worthless as allies.

He tried to get the Japanese to declare war on Russia and attack into Siberia. The Japanese were having no part of it though.

Gods know why the Germans bothered with the Italians. I guess they were strapped for allies, but the Germans ended up pulling there feet from the fire more than once on campaign.

Well, as to the rest, I think it was a bad mistake to take on the Russians at all when and how the Germans did…certainly it was bad to bring in more foes when you still had enemies and goals that needed to be achieved. They should have waited, consolidated their gains in Western Europe, gone after the oil fields in North Africa and the ME, either defeated or gotten a peace treaty from the British, observed the Russians and slowly and quietly build up their military and logistics…and THEN attacked through both Eastern Europe and in the ME to capture the southern oil fields in Russia. I have serious doubts that the Russians would have done any better a few years from '41 than they did in '41…and I am guessing that, because of Stalin, they would have been caught just as flat footed and surprised as they were in real history.

-XT

[Pleonast]

Maybe slightly off topic, but have any of you played the various WWII-era strategy game? I’m interested in the historicity of them. Are any of them good enough to actually give a fair idea of how these strategies may have worked out? I’m interested in the new Hearts of Iron 2 in particular.

[MMI]

(My assumptions: point of departure is post-Czechoslovakia, pre-Poland. Italy plays ball and doesn’t do anything stupid solo. Japan keeps relatively quiet except in China)

Zhukov is merely one of many generals - one whose loyalty was sufficiently well assumed for him to have survived the late '30’s purges. He is not the potential rival that Tukhachevski was - an old Bolshevik with impeccable pedigree.

While the Russian officer corps will not be likely to rival the german officer corps (which in '43 will be a whopping 10 years old to the Red Army’s 5) it will be a heck of a lot better than as built in '40-'41. And the Red Army will have scads of better tanks - which will partially compensate for the lack of doctrine. But as I noted above, unless the Germans get serious about both production and especially logistics, it will be at best a replay of '41 (Pz III’s with long 50’s replacing Pz II’s/38’s and T-34’s replacing T-26’s and BT-7’s in quantity).

Should the USSR in the intervening 2-3 years adopt a posture other than the extremely aggressive *all units forward we look like we are on the brink of attacking * posture, the German’s work will be harder. In 1943 Russia may no longer feel as vulnerable as in 1941 and may not agree to partition Poland.

In the west I think things are more affected by the delay. While there is not necessarily going to be an improvement (other than materially/technologically) in the ground war I think that the other fields of battle everything goes the Allies way. (Although if there are three more years with an assholeish German foreign policy, mutual defense plans with Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium may take a rational form (rather than sending the entirety of the reserves on a Hail Mary into the previously stridently neutral Netherlands to get cut off and destroyed.)) And as Achtung Panzer makes the rounds the British and French enthusiasts may nudge doctrine

The British will produce 6 battleships to the German’s 2, plus larger numbers of aircraft carriers, equipped with the best American carrier aircraft rather than stringbags. Escorts are cheaper than submarines. Long range american bombers and patrol aircraft (PB-Y’s) for coastal command will also be available. Between an increased naval and aerial support the U-boat campaign is stillborn/over more rapidly and the surface raider campaign even more of a joke - maybe the Norway op is crushed navally.

THe RAF will continue to increase in size, weighted heavily towards their newer models. The French will both produce domestically and buy from the Americans. Luftwaffe air superiority over France will be harder to come by. A battle of Britain with a much larger “few” is going to be over more quickly.

1939–41 is a magical time for Germany. The US is just beginning its rearmament. France is still recovering from its last military spending binge of the mid '30s and the UK is just ramping up. The USSR is just beginning to come back from its purges and is starting to mass produce modern armor, while practicing in the Far East. Japan’s antics in the far east distract the US and allow Germany to push the UK a lot farther than otherwise would have been possible if the UK did not fear a two front war.

[dropzone]

So, are we all still writing off France? Is their strategy still mired (pun sadly intended) in 1916? Has their aircraft production still lagged, despite promising models for 1938 that would be insanely obsolete by 1942? Are their tanks still built for infantry support and not grouped together for proper tank tactics, even though their own Charles-freakin’-DeGaulle wrote the book on it? And do you get the impression that I’m writing off France, francophile I may be?

[ralph124c]

My guess is that France would have come out quite well, had the war started in 1942. For one thing, the Armee de L’Air would have had modern fighter planes…including the Bloch fighter (later known as Dassault). The french also would have completed their transition to real independent armored divisions (under DeGaulle). I also believe that most of the super-annuated senior generals (like Wegand, Gamelin, etc.) would have been retired by this time.
Younger, more aggressive generals (like Blanchard, DeGaulle, etc.) would have been much more able battlefield commanders, than the 70+ year old men that the Germans faced in 1939.
That said, Germany had a very narrow window for victory-had i been Hitler I would have delayed attacking Russia until I had a surrender from England. The “two front war” was the hobgoblin of german military planners, and with good reason.

[MMI]

Dropzone The biggest upgrade the French could implement for their tanks would be freaking radios so that they aren’t using semaphore to communicate. But I think that the main French problems in '40 are operational and strategic, not material. The French mishandled their armies in 1939-40 something awful, from deployment through the attempt to relieve Holland. Fix those problems and '39-'40 could become a problem for the Germans, let alone in '42-3.

Wild Cards that could effect the course of the new war:

Japan: Anglo-Japanese detente is bad for Germany, aggressive Japan bad for the allies (a US already at war with Japan is very bad news)

US President: An isolationist Republican or worse, President Kennedy in '40 or '44 could/would be bad news for the allies.