Suppose we had a war declared between Nazi Germany and Today’s Israel.
Ground Rules:
Each nation has their respective era’s tech and personel.
Each fights only the other…no allies are brought into it.
Could tiny Israel, with modern computers, supersonic jet fighters, and possibly the atomic bomb, defeat Hitler’s Juggernaut?
If the two countries are in their actual geographic locations, I see a scenario where the Israelis can attack Germany at will and the Germans have no weapons that can reach back to Israel at all.
Sure, the Nazis could send a fleet of ships into the Med, but the Israelis could see them coming with satellites and radar and such and destroy them long before they got within the 20 miles or less it’d take to start shooting naval gunfire at Israel’s shore. Hitler never had aircraft carriers.
At the same time, Germany is a long way from Israel too. I’m not sure the Israeli’s have any aircraft that can get that far. The IAF is pretty well organized for fighting adjacent neighbors too. And Germany is far from any shore the Israeli Navy / Coast Guard could get to.
But on balance I see the Israelis as holding all the cards in that fight.
OTOH, If we pretend the countries were/are adjacent, then you’ve got a whole 'nother situation.
Nazi Germany was pretty much a land power. If they weren’t your next door neighbor (or hadn’t taken over your next door neighbor), they weren’t that big a deal. Yes, they did a bunch of damage to Great Britain, but even that didn’t get severe until they’d overrun France and had a chance to set up shop within 20-100 miles of the British border (ie shore).
For adjacent countries I see the battle as favoring the Nazis, particularly if they’re permitted the big unopposed build up that occurred in the late 1930s. If the Israeli’s are permitted their usual, more pre-emptive, approach, the war will begin long before the much larger German war machine can get even get built, much less deployed.
Israel is rumored to keep its nukes on its submarines.
Cruise missile deployed.
If the subs sail into Adriatic Sea, a short trip, they’d be in easy range of much or all of Germany.
In the absence of allies, I don’t see how the Germans could amass the necessary troops for an invasion and send them to Israel. Amphibious invasions are ALWAYS problematic. The D-Day invasion required months of preparation, during which time the Allies assembled the troops and transport equipment they’d need for a simple crossing of the English channel- and STILL, the invasion could easily have been a disaster.
Just how easy does anyone think it would have been for the Germans to send tens of thousands of troops to Israel wthout allies who’d let them use their lands as bases? Could the U.S. possibly have staged the D-Day invasion if we didn’t have England as an ally and as a jumping off point?
With modern technology, Israel would know a German invasion was coming LONG before it arrived, and they’d be well prepared to repel the Germans.
Even if they were next door, Germany wouldn’t stand a chance of winning any sort of invasion strategy. Israel has what F-16’s? vs. an ME-109?. Germans have no air cover, and only WWII era AA guns. The Israeli Air Force now destoys Hitler’s Panzers/rail network/autobahn convoys at will.
Just on the ground modern infantry vs guys with bolt action rifles and only wearing a tin hat for defense is a slaughter.
Israeli intelligence would read German radio communications at will.
I’m predicting a one sided turkey shoot until the Germans sued for peace.
Of course, given the size of the Israeli Armed Forces, they, too could never successfully invade.
NB I’m assuming no nukes and that both sides have access to sufficient fuel (given that neither side has any allies).
You just corrected me about Tracy Chapman, so now I get to correct you. 
Hardly a correction. I’m assuming the Israelis are nice people who don’t do that kind of thing. If they wanted too, of course they could turn the Reichstag into a puddle of molten glass, they just don’t have too.
That would be my first assumption.
Nazi Germany declares war.
Boom. No more Berlin.
Boom. No more Bonn.
Boom. No more Munich.
Wait for the white flags.
Israel would win, Hitler couldn’t even get ships into the UK, getting them to Israel would be hellishly hard. Besides Israel may have long range WMD. However the Nazis probably have about 10x as many soldiers as the Israelis, even if 20-40% of the Israeli population went to war.
Even without nuke’s the Germans were hardly strategic idiots sitting there with their thumbs up their asses. Assuming no allied involvement (incluing US based SWAC info etc) to help Israel, and that the Germans were focusing solely on Israel, it’s not out of the question that they would be strong enough to capture an intermediate support area to stage and refuel aircraft or supply troops, Israel might be in serious trouble, for all it’s technological advancement relative to WWII Germany. Beyond that it’s all gravy for the Germans if they can capture modern technology and retrofit parts of it to existing weaponry.
Israel proper is quite tiny, if a large portion of the German Army made a concerted landing in force with armor support, the picture is not clearly in Israel’s favor.
I would take that attitude about the US, too, but they used them in extremis.
Much of Germany’s early success in the war was based on several factors, in particular:
Surprise. Any armchair tactician can tell you that the element of surprise is extremely potent in any battlefield situation. Nazi Germany’s initial moves came as a surprise to some of their initial victims; after all, hadn’t everyone been working so hard for peace?
Unconventional tactics. “Blitzkrieg,” i.e., insanely mobile warfare, was a fairly new concept at the time. Hell, bombers were a new concept. Tank warfare was a fairly new concept. Fighter-bombers were totally unknown. The previous war had still used trench warfare and mounted cavalry – the Nazi wehrmacht practically invented what we today would call “mechanized infantry.”
Unpreparedness of their opponents. The Poles were ready for the Nazi invasion, sort of… but they weren’t ready to deal with armored columns with vicious air support; they were still thinking in terms of the styles and tactics of the previous war. “Ready,” in the Poles’ case, simply meant “not taken by surprise.” They couldn’t deal with what was beating the doodle out of them. France was ready – they certainly should have been, all things considered – but they never dreamed that the Germans would cut through the Ardennes instead of simply marching up to the Maginot Line.
So how would modern Israel deal with these factors?
Surprise. Well, they might well be surprised to deal with a Nazi invasion in the year 2004. I sure would be. Then again, I don’t have a standing army with modern weapons ready to fend off another howling storm of Arabs, the way the Israelis have done on several occasions, now. Hard to say whether a Nazi blitzkrieg would swamp them… or break against their defenses. Insufficient data on my part.
Unconventional Tactics. No contest here; the modern world is more than prepared to deal with any tactics the Nazis could dish out. We’ve familiarized ourselves with them and improved on them. All other things being equal, the Israelis would eat the Nazis for lunch in this arena.
Unpreparedness of the opponent. Hahahaha. Yeah, those silly Israelis, it’d take 'em weeks to scrape together any kind of organized defense, even if they knew the enemy was coming. Just ask any Egyptian, Syrian, or… :rolleyes: Oh, wait, I must be being sarcastic. Is there anyplace on Earth as ready for a berserk invasion out of nowhere as Israel? (excepting perhaps North Korea)…
I’ve just looked up what the IAF has F-16s, F-15s, Apaches, Blackhawks and some EC-2 AWACS aircraft. For air defense, there is a range from hand held Stingers to the Arrow (70km range at Mach 9).
On the ground, it’s this vs. a King Panzer. I don’t think so. Especially as the Israelis would know exactly where the Germans are at all times.
The sky will definitely be clear for the Apaches to commence the turkey shoot.