Minimum effort to win The Second World War?

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK this is a rather unusual and quite possibly unanswerable question but it was something I was mulling over on my commute this morning and I figured I would throw it out to the knowledgeable minds of the SD to see what they come up with.

Given what we know now with the benefit of leisurely hindsight I imagine there were probably better ways for the Allies to defeat the Axis nations with less expenditure in lives and material. So with some caveats* laid out below the scenario is if you had complete control of the Allied war effort starting from the entry of the USA in 1941 (to prevent the British, French and others just heading straight for Berlin in 1938) how would you have run the war from that point with the purpose of winning it by the most economical and least costly means? ie: were the massive bomber fleets something where the time and resources could be better spent elsewhere, was the invasion of southern Europe pointless or actually a clever idea?

So to summarise, what was the best way for the western Allied Powers (Britain, USA etc) to win the conflict from the entry of the USA, bearing the post-WW2 environment in mind. For example I’m pretty sure the West could have sat back and let the USSR steam-roll their way to Berlin but leaving Europe in Soviet hands may not have been a great idea.

*it is run as a conventional war as actually happened, no biological or conventional weapons, the A-Bomb puts in an appearance when it actually did and no assassination attempts on Axis heads of state. I’m sure there are many other things I’m forgetting but I’m very far from being particularly knowledgeable about WWII.

2

Don’t Lend-Lease to Soviets. Just let Hitler and Russia duke it out.

Simply blockade Japan. No island campaigns, no bombing - just build up huge sub fleets and starve it out.

3

That’s supposed to result in less expenditure of Allied lives and materials?

4

So you want the Brits, French and Allies to take it on the chin, then when the US comes in, try to slack off?

Once France fell and Barbarossa started, there was no quick way to end the war.

The quickest way was to keep it from starting. When Hitler re-militarised the Rhineland, the British and French should have gone in right away. They still had numerical advantage, if I remember correctly, plus that was Hitler’s first gamble, which helped create his air of invincibility with the German populace. If he’d got his nose bloodied by the British and French, he might have lost popular support.

5

I wouldn’t consider the Soviets “Allies” except in the super-technical sense that they were fighting Germany. Fewer American + British + French casualties = good. More Soviet casualties = might not be bad.

If Germany and Russia had bloodied each other even more, maybe the Cold War Iron Curtain falls around the Belarusian boundary instead of at East Germany.

Maybe if Germany had won in Stalingrad but the Soviets barely held on in Moscow, it could have stalemated things nicely for another year or so.

6

Ummm, did it ever occur to you that if the Allies (US and UK) had not supported Russia with Lend-Lease and convoys and tried to let them pretty much wreck each other, that the Russians wouldn’t have caught on and made a separate peace with Germany? Because I have read more than a little and this was a definite concern for England and America. We took 2 years to build up to the Normandy invasion, imagine if the Germans had had an extra 100+ divisions to throw at us in France. Suddenly Russia gets to sit back and watch the Germans and Allies bloody each other.

And before you say it never would happen, I remind you of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of 1939. Both Hitler and Stalin were willing to use the other for their own ends and both were ruthless enough to ignore previous bloodshed.

7

Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt might have disagreed with you. Stalin was one of the “Big Three” for a reason, that reason being that his Red Army was the only military force opposing Hitler in continental Europe. Even in hind-sight, it makes sense to support the Soviets. Given that there were German units that fled from the Eastern front to surrender to the Western Allies, it might even be better to have supported them MORE, and encouraged them to EVEN MORE brutality against the Germans after the Normandy landings.

Keep in mind that 20th Century Germany was not a power to be underestimated. In late WWI many allied leaders expected the war to last into 1919 or 1920. Having the Eastern front open was SUPER IMPORTANT in WWII.

8

Putting politics aside. Forget about North Africa and the Mediterranean theaters; they were strategic dead ends that never would have led to a German defeat. Same with strategic bombing; too many Allied resources were spent to destroy relatively few German resources.

Devote full resources to the Battle of the Atlantic. Send enough supplies to the Soviet Union to keep them fighting. Build up an invasion force in Britain in 1942. Invade France in 1943. Germany wasn’t going to surrender until it was occupied and only route to Germany for the western allies went through France.

9

They tied up loads of German men and materiel.

10

They were allied with the UK and the US in the fight against Germany. That’s not really a “super-technical” sense of allied; it’s the primary meaning of the word.

11

Relatively few in comparison to the amount of Allied men and material they tied up.

12

IIRC the strategic bombing of Germany would have been greatly improved if instead of going after production and logistics centers, they primarily went after power plants and other energy junctions. They were never gone after seriously because it was believed Germany could easily repair them but actual attacks against German power plants tended to knock them out for a while. Repeated bombings of singular German power facilities would have required less aircraft and knocked out German production much more effectively than going after the hundreds of separate targets they powered.

Also in the East Japan’s biggest fear (and what they assumed would knock them out of the war) was American and British bombers attacking them from bases in China and the Soviet Union. The dealt with the former by advancing deep into Chinese territory and the latter via a Non-aggression Pact. But if Stalin were to be convinced of the Western Powers opening an a second front in France as early as 1942 (as Germany only had very limited forces there as most were stationed on either the Eastern Front or in the Balkans) he might have broken that pact and allowed the United States to start mass bombing of Japanese cities by 1943, two years earlier than what happened in real life.

13

As Northern Piper mentions, the easiest victory would have been very early on. Even September 1939 might not have been too late, especially if Russia were invited to join the Anglo-France alliance as they wished. Hitler denuded his western front for the Blitz against Poland.

OP doesn’t mention how fast he wants to win the war. Prolongation to reduce costs would have increased the costs in civilian suffering.

I’m curious if you know how many casualties the Soviet Union suffered in that war. Soviet deaths totaled 30 million or so, roughly equal to the deaths in all other belligerent countries added together, even when the incinerations in Poland are included in that latter figure. And this still wasn’t enough Soviet death? :confused:

Conceding the Mediterranean Sea to the Axis does not seem like a fruitful way to win the war more efficiently. Note that Egypt was almost lost as it was. Killing Germans in North Africa and Italy was a good way to train troops for the invasion of France. The Axis may have been outnumbered in that theater, but they lost more troops than the Allies did — troops no longer available to defend France and Germany. About half a million Axis soldiers were taken prisoner in North Africa; a million or more German soldiers were in Italy at the time of the surrender there.

14

What if Hitler wins in Russia, gains the oilfields, and links up with the Japanese?

15

North Africa and the Med were important in that they not only tied down large amounts of German resources, but they gave the Americans valuable live-fire training. Normandy would have been a total disaster if we hadn’t learned so much about amphibious landings in the Med.

Cut back the strategic bombing campaign to British night bombing against power plants and commit the 8th Air Force to low and mid-level bombing with medium bombers. Do a reverse Battle of Britain and go after the Luftwaffe on the ground.

As for Japan, I agree that subs were the way to go. Fire everybody who held back torpedo development and crank out subs instead of cruisers and jeep carriers. Cut Japan off from her supply lines and she dies.

16

Seeing as how the Soviets advanced westward to central Europe, they clearly still did OK.

17

Nonetheless, it was.

As I wrote above, the Nazis were not going to surrender until Germany itself was invaded and occupied. So fighting the Germans in North Africa wouldn’t have ended the war. Fighting the Germans in Italy wouldn’t have ended the war. Fighting the Germans in the Balkans wouldn’t have ended the war. Fighting the Germans in Norway wouldn’t have ended the war. Fighting the Germans in Russia wouldn’t have ended the war.

We needed to fight the Germans in Germany. A ground war; fighting in the air and at sea also wouldn’t end the war. So any campaign that wasn’t directed at getting troops to Germany was a diversion away from winning the war. Win in Germany and you win in all the other fronts as well. Win in all the other fronts and you still have to go fight in Germany.

18

Surely if you want to further minimize investment and politics is no option you just pour everything you can into the Manhattan Project, right? the OP states we cam’t have nukes until July 1945. Well, fine. Just hold the line until then. And then, boom.

When you have the Bomb, ain’t gonna matter if Germany still holds France. No need to fight them on the ground.

19

Defeating the Germans meant killing German soldiers. Isn’t it almost as good to kill them in Africa or Italy as in Germany? Indeed, weren’t they easier to kill there, far away from their supply lines?

From Wikipedia,

I’m no expert on military logistics, but I have a hunch these deliveries were very useful for the Soviet success.

20

Exactly what I was going to say. Start with Berlin when Hitler and his staff was there, and you’d cut the head off the German effort. In the Pacific you’d have to island hop to get a base close enough to Japan to launch the bomber with the bomb.
However, I’d invade Italy before this (since the OP’s conditions are that we can’t speed up bomb development) in order to tie down the Germans and get Italy out of the war. Which would require getting North Africa also.
That would let you avoid Normandy, but I’m not sure that would be politically possible given that Stalin was pushing for relief, if I remember my Churchill correctly.