As some have quoted Patton as saying “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
The war was won by three things: Churchills bullheaded refusal to deal or surrender.
The USA massive industrial might, and The USSR’s manpower. Even Stalin agreed that without American aid, he would have lost.
Before Poland, the Germans could have made a nice settlement by killing Hitler*. Austria, the Sudetenland, parts of Czechoslovakia, etc. The question would be- the URRS had plans to invade Poland- what would happen then?
Stalin? Maybe the USSR would have collapsed and withdrawn behind the Urals. Maybe.
Churchill? Well, without Churchill, Hitler could have made a deal with the Brits, withdrawing from most of France, etc. Now, could a concentrated just against the USSR Germany have won the war? No sideshows in Africa or Yugoslavia or Greece, the invasion leaving on time? It’s a maybe. Wargames show a Yes, they *could *have done it.
Roosevelt? No, the USA would have entered with Pearl harbor anyway.
*The German General staff was going to remove Hitler if the Allies stood up to them in
Czechoslovakia. Thus in theory the man most responsible for Hitler and WWII was Chamberlain.:eek:
loss of leadership is exactly what would have happened had Stalin been killed.
Wargames and reenactments show the Germans would have had a *slight chance if they didnt waste a month going into Yugoslavia . But with no Western front at all *to worry about, yes, they could have beaten the USSR.
Stalin himself agreed with you and said both were needed.
But honestly, once Barbarossa was launched late, with the Western front being a distraction, and allied aid pouring into the USSR- the war was over. The Germans lost it right there.
Maybe, just maybe if the Japanese had invaded the USSR from the East. But the Imperials had no interest in doing that.
OK, Germany and the USSR divvies up Poland.
USSR takes Finland.
Rest of Eastern Europe is then divvied up, at least becoming protectorates.
The western war drags on. Germany takes Egypt and seals the Med.
Since Hitler is dead, Churchill can justify making a deal. France gets demilitarized, Germany gets A/L, France then is “free”. A uneasy peace is signed.
The American government considered the same kind of idea during the Civil War. They wanted to kick all the freed slaves out of the United States after the war and send them to Africa. Black leaders spoke with Lincoln and members of Congress and protested that they didn’t want to go to Africa; they had been been born in America and lived all their lives here.
I’m pretty sure most European Jews felt the same way prior to the Holocaust. Most of them wanted to live in Europe where their families had been living for centuries. It took the horrors of the Holocaust to break that sense of community and make a significant number of Jews want to leave Europe and start over in a new land.
Those of us looking back at what the Nazis actually did can agree that forcibly exiling millions of Jews would have been far better than killing them. But if the killing hadn’t occurred then that forcible exile would stand as the worst crime ever committed against the Jewish people and the Nazis would justifiably be condemned for it not praised.
Actually, depending on when the putative German assassin might have been brought into play, the biggest bang-for-their-reichsmark might have been to kill Dowding before the command and control system for the Battle of Britain was fully worked out and in place. But even then, they would still have had to reckon with the ability of the Navy to limit their capacity to keep an invasion force supported and supplied.
And on the other side of the world, breaking the Japanese codes was essential to winning the Battle of Midway, generally considered the turning point in the Pacific.
This fails on the one-big-man-makes-history fallacy.
Dowding *was *important. But the organizational and electronic tech was coming anyway. Being delivered by a large group of people all working generally towards the goal.
This fails on the one-big-battle-determines-a-war fallacy.
Imagine that around the time of Midway the US had no such decoding. The battle may not have even occurred. The Japanese may have taken the island with little effective resistance from the hopelessly outnumbered garrison. OK. What next?
Eventually the two fleets find each other. Either in a big set-piece aircraft-centric battle like the real Midway, but on a different date in a different place. Or instead a bunch of more minor skirmishes happen over 8 months. Slowly attritting both forces. Maybe the US gets lucky and catches the IJN with its pants down a couple times. Maybe the opposite occurs.
Either way come 1944 the IJN is not getting any new ships. And the USN is getting a new (escort) carrier and air wing every 3 weeks. Plus new and better subs. And destroyers. And improved aircraft.
The IJN and the Japanese government was doomed at 7:48 on 12/7/41. The only question was how long it was going to take and how many people would be killed finishing the job.
TLDR: Winning Midway was very, very helpful for the USN and the US. But not essential.
I’m not sure that killing any one single person would have changed the war very much. These leaders that have been mentioned didn’t become leaders because only a very few people agreed with them, they became leaders because they had immense followings.
I’ve picked Hitler, I think if he had been killed, then Germany would have had the greatest probability to change directions, not that this probability would be very large. My reasoning is that Germany may have settled for less as the win condition. Having half of Poland and crushing France, calmer heads in the German Nazi party may have felt that undoing the Treaty of Versailles was enough.
I agree this is a slim chance, just that it’s a better chance than the UK or USSR surrendering if they lost their top leader.
Killing Albert Einstein before he signed the letter to FDR would have prolonged the Pacific War, perhaps long enough that Japan gets their conditional surrender. It’s assumed that the atomic bombs made invading mainland Japan unnecessary, but it’s entirely possible such an invasion wouldn’t be successful. How many more years of fighting would the American public tolerate?
He insisted upon wasting a year on air attacks on Britain at a time when they were very vulnerable. Eventually the Brits rallied, ramped up the war machine and secured their island. The next 3 years Britain was a base for the devastating bomber attacks that destroyed German industry.
As stated above, without Churchill the US would never have entered the war when it did. The cooperation between GB and the US was substantial and led to many advancements which shortened the war.
Patton was a great American General, probably the best General of the war, However I don’t know that he would have been a good Coalition General. I don’t think he would have been willing to swallow his pride the way Eisenhower did.
My guess would be that if Eisenhower wasn’t around, Roosevelt would have had to allow Marshall to assume command of SHAEF. Marshall had wanted that job but Roosevelt insisted Marshall was too valuable in Washington so Eisenhower was assigned instead.