Uh-oh. The AWB have got hold of my time machine and are heading back to 1930 to bump off an Allied commander. I’ve protected (with quantum) Churchill, Roosevelt and - for history’s sake - Stalin, so the Allies are still eventually going to win, but which commander’s premature end will delay Allied victory the longest?
Dowding. Without him, we might have lost the Battle of Britain. And Britain at the time could not have withstood a German invasion. And even if Britain had been merely forced into acknowledging the German conquest of Europe, that would have denied America the Western front. So Americans would have had to fight through Russia. (I’m assuming that Germany still declares war on America when the Japanese do.)
I think Alan Brooke should have been included among the choices.
I was thinking of him and Alexander, but I was getting a bit too many Brits and not enough Russians.
I don’t think Germany ever had the sealift ability to ferry enough Wehrmacht troops for a real invasion attempt of Britain. And islands are very difficult to invade.
It has to be Zhukov for two reasons. He brilliantly executed positioning millions of troops and tons of material across a 900 mile front for four years. Not to mention he managed to do this without being killed by Stalin. To me, that make him an even greater “political” general than Eisenhower.
I went with Zhukov because of his proven track record of crushing both Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Kwangtung Army. But Dowding is a novel choice and I applaud the reasoning above.
In that vein, I’ll also cast a follow-up vote for Raymond Spruance, of all people. A recent reading of Choices Under Fire by Michael Bess reinforced the idea that Spruance’s caution after the carrier exchange at Midway prevented the Americans from blundering into the Japanese battleships in the dark, thus preventing the Japanese from wrecking the lopsided American triumph.
No one seriously thinks the Americans would have lost to Japan even after a defeat at Midway – but Bess claims that an American debacle might well have endangered the “Germany First!” principle Roosevelt had agreed to. Political expediency might have refocused the US on naval warfare in the Pacific. If that had allowed Germany enough breathing room, we’d meet this thread’s criteria for lengthening the war.
But Eisenhower had to contend with dozens of difficult people. Zhukov only had to contend with one very difficult person.
Granted, the consequences were not the same: Eisenhower only risked being demoted back to colonel while Zhukov risked being shot. But Zhukov did have an advantage in that he could focus all his attention on just one person.
I’d vote for Eisenhower. Managing war as part of an Alliance is always the most difficult of possible jobs, and he did it.
WW2 was, above all else, a victory by an alliance. Those who contributed the most were not individual generals on the battlefield - however great they were - but those who made the alliance “work”. Of those people, Eisenhower stands out.
The only thing that, realistically, could have prolonged the life of the Nazi regime was having the allies fall out amongst themselves, or pursue radically different war aims - and given the natural emnities between them (even between the US and Brits, to say nothing of between the Russians and the rest), this was always a possibility - one that Hitler, for one, kept dreaming of. It never happened until Hitler was safely dead, and Eisenhower was part of the reason it didn’t.
I voted for Zhukov, based on the sheer number of major operational decisions where a different commander in the same spot could easily have made a different choice with wide-reaching consequences. None of these would have changed the overall outcome, but the overall length of the European theatre was determined by the start and length of the Soviet offensive.
My second choice would be Dowding or Eisenhower. I can’t see how less operational skill in any of the European-theatre American roles would have significantly changed the timing of Overlord. The big difference would be if the Germany-first policy broke down because of a major Pacific setback; England leaving the war; or the alliance falling apart.
It is pretty clear that other leadership would have made different decisions in the leadup to and during the Battle of Britain. Even without judging if those decisions would have been better or worse, the potential for taking England out of the war was huge. No England = not even a threat of Overlord = a significantly longer Soviet campaign to win.
I’d take issue with the actual likelihood of a German invasion of England. The Germans had no serious plans for invading, and even if the English had lost air superiority, I have my doubts if the Germans could have put one together. A cross-channel invasion requires naval resources Germany simply did not have.
It could have been the case that the English could have lost their nerve and been forced into a disadvantageous peace treaty, thus taking England out of the war - this appears to have been what Hitler wanted. Though that would have required a political upheaval unseating Churchill. Not sure whether that was in any way likely.
I don’t see Colonel Robert E. Hogan on that list.
Zhukov, Slim, Nimitz, Eisenhower… I mean, a really big war is going to produce a lot of brilliant generals on the winning side.
Or Heinrich Himmler.
If the Germans had lost Himmler they might have put someone halfway competent in command of Army Group Vistula, who didn’t insist on working a nap and massage into his four-hour work day and might have held up the Allies a few months more.
I voted for Dowding, on the premise that success in the Battle of Britain was a significant turning point in the war.