Finland was a parliamentary democracy with a strong presidency that was being governed during World War II by a fairly shaky parliamentary coalition of the social democratic and two classical liberal parties. The Finnish fascist party, the Patriotic People’s Party, had 8 seats in the 200 seat parliament, was actively persecuted by the Finnish government, and was pretty much marginalized, even though one of their MPs, Vilho Annala, was briefly made Transport Minister in an attempt to shut the party up.
Basically, the Finnish government wasn’t Nazi or fascist in any shape or form. They were a democratic social welfare state that joined the Germans in their attack on the Soviet Union to try to get back the territory they had lost when the Soviets invaded them in 1939.
The Russians were beating the crap out of Germany well before the strategic bombing campain took hold, or the invasion of France. Stalingrad was over before the spring of 1943. The 8th Air Force was still being established in England and had launched only a few very small missions by then.
I agree with this assement.
I am not going to look through my books to get the quote, but I believe Yamamo believed that their army and Navy cold only last a year with the oil imbargo and would not be able to replace it by any victories with in the year.
And if the US stopped sending supplies or escorts Britian would have sued for peace. That would have allowed more German supplies to the army going into Russia.
Another factor was the German leadership. they were just a few days from winning the battle of Britian and gaining air sepiority when they changes operation. They would mand other mistakes.
I don’t remember the exact figures, but I believe the USA supplied at least 10% of the USSR’s supplies. It might not seem like alot, but 10% could be enough for an army to stay on defense instead of going on offensive. Also, the British Commonwealth was supplying the USSR with another 2% to 5%. If the USA was not supply the UK with anything also, I’m sure most of those supplies would have been diverted the British war effort. Of course, as mentioned, there’s a chance the British would have sued for peace if the USA didn’t help them with the Lend-Lease.
As Boyo Jim pointed out, Hitler’s over-reaching might have saved the USSR. The question is how much ground would the German’s be able to seize and control before the USSR with a decimated supply could push back. The Germans might have had more time to build a larger and more experienced Europäische Freiwillige to fight the USSR.
Additionally, if the British did sue for peace, that would free up German troops on the Western front, African front and Italian front. If that’s the case, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Germans occupied the everything west of the Urals. Of course, the Germans would have been fighting insurgents/partisans some of this territory.
The tide didn’t start to turn for the Soviets and against the Germans until after '43 and the battle of Kursk. One has to ask though…how would the Soviets managed to hang on that long without American (and British) aid? Without the distractions of the Brits (and later, in '42 the American’s) in North Africa? Without the slow draining of their industrial strength due to British (and later American) bombing?
How would the Soviets have built those massive defenses in Kursk without the trucks, supplies and money from the US? Where was the MONEY going to come from without US aid?
Yes…and? You are assuming the Soviets could have made it to '43 when they finally turned the tide. How? How would they have suppled Stalingrad or built the defenses at Kursk? How would they have moved all those troops and supplies?
Even WITH the US’s aid, the soviets lost over 20 million men. How many do you suppose they would have lost without the US and the Brits? How many COULD they lose? And this was with the Germans fighting on multiple fronts, with their homeland being bombed, with the dilution of their forces from France to Sicily/Italy, to North African. With a large part of their air force committed to defense in Western Europe and their home land, instead of deployed against the Russians in a concentrated fashion.
Sure…and the Russians could, in theory, have moved their factories beyond the Urals. But how would they get their men and materials to the front in quantities to matter? If they were building trucks and jeeps that takes away from building tanks. Also, where does the money come from? HOW do they build everything AND fight at the same time? In our universe they did so because A) they held out in Moscow, thus their industrial heartland was saved and still in their train logistics area, B) they were able to concentrate production on heavy weapons since they were being supplied transport by the US, C) they were able to fight a Germany who was forced to dilute it’s forces (at Kursk Hitler ordered several divisions to pull out because of the invasion of Sicily, IIRC), D) they were able to fight a Germany who’s air force wasn’t able to concentrate fully on wiping out the Russians air force, E) they were fighting a distracted and increasingly harassed Germany, who’s industries, civilian and military targets were increasingly being bombed day and night and F) the US supplied the money they badly needed.
All of this factored into the eventual and VERY bloody way the Soviets finally managed to wipe out Germany. To me, all 3 major Allied powers (and many of the minor powers) were absolutely essential to victory. Take away any one of them and the Germans either win or at the very least they get a draw, with most of Western Europe either directly part of Germany or at least nominally in their sphere of influence, and much of Eastern Europe divided up between Germany and Russia, who are snarling and snapping at each other as they build up for the next round.
Yes…we disagree, and have had this discussion before. I’ll just point out that if the Soviets are building trucks and light transport that is going to take away from them building heavy tanks. The Soviets weren’t supermen…they couldn’t build everything AND fight an all out war against the Germans all by themselves. They simply didn’t have the industrial capacity to do everything. And they were fighting a Germany who was, even in '42, distracted by the Brits over England, over Germany, and in North Africa.
Also, there is the money situation…the Russian economy was a mess due to the same purges that crippled it’s military prior to the war. The US and Brits gave them hard currency that they needed, in addition to raw materials (especially steel) and finished goods (trucks, tanks, arty, guns, ammo, planes, commo gear, etc etc).
I know that this kind of thinking stems from a backlash to some idiots who spout that the US won the war single handedly. It’s rubbish. But the Soviets didn’t and couldn’t have won the war all alone either…nor could the Brits. It took the concerted effort of all three countries to do the deed. One has but to look at the correspondence between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt, especially in the early days, to realize that, especially the first 2 deeply believed they NEEDED the last one, and his country, to enter the war. If Stalin thought he could have won the war by himself he wouldn’t have bothered doing the things he did do to keep the alliance going…he would have gone it alone, taken Germany out and then Western Europe too.
America had very little to do with Hitler’s defeat in Russia. Without America, there would have been nobody to calm the Russians down, and Germany would have been burned to the ground. German citizens would be begging for British intervention. Japan would have more concentrated force in Russia, which would piss the Russians off against them, too. Russia would have intervened for China (after thoroughly stomping the living shit out of Germany) and kicked the Japos off the mainland. Russia and China would have a close relationship today. Ditto Russia and France. Germany would not exist. The USSR would have dominated western European politics.
My opinion is that Germany did not have the power to defeat either the United States or the Soviet Union - both were stronger powers than the Reich. If Germany fought both America and Russia, it loses in 1945. If it fights either one alone, it loses in 1947 or 1948. The American/Soviet coalition greatly hastened the German defeat but it didn’t cause it.
I once posted that Germany was simultaneously fighting three wars - a land war in the East, a land war in the West, and an air war - and it lost all three of them.
To answer the oft asked question I was assuming no overt military action barring a direct attack (ie Pearl Harbour).
I was also looking at Hitler as a cult of personality (perhaps wrongly) and wondering if the 3rd Reich had a leader that was capable of maintaining the popular support needed for war and continued success as a regime after Hitler was retired/assassinated/dead of natural causes.
I’ve watched some documentaries that said that Britain was a few days from collapse and resorted to putting plywood planes on runways just to make recon flights think they had more planes than they did. So I’ve pretty much figured Britain was just about done and with them Europe.
Upthread someone said Hitler wasn’t much of a military leader and my reading (comparatively sparse I grant) has given me the impression that his victories came as a result of his generals but he became increasingly interested in the occult and started taking advice from psycics and mystics and that’s when the turn around started to happen.
I guess I’ve always considered the German and Japanese war efforts to have been individual and largely unconnected and I’ve never fully (okay even partially) understood why Japan decided to go after the US at Pearl Harbour. Seemed to me they were doing just fine until then.
I know very little about military tactics and strategy but why wouldn’t the Japanese have just hunkered down in the Phillipines and waited for an American attack to come (I’ve always understood that it’s easier to defend a territory than attack it <— refer back to the first sentence if this sounds truly stupid).
So back to Germany vs the non-Asian world the consensus seems to be that without any assistance Germany wins, Russia is reduced to a fraction of its former self and Japan and Germany duke it out for all the marbles.
With minimal intervention (convoys and supplies etc but no overt military involvement) it’s a crapshoot that likely results in very different borders and an unstable peace.
Of course we all know what happens with direct, balls out intervention by the US.
So new/rephrased questions:
1)Was Hitler a cult of personality and if so was there some one who could have carried it on after his demise/retirement?
2)Why DID Japan go after Pearl Harbour? Did they think the US were a bunch of pacifist pussies that would roll over and die? Or did they think they could roll over the US?
3)With American involvement restricted to what it was pre-Pearl Harbour would Europe have fallen?
4)The Canadian Army would have been (I think) decimated if the European front was lost which would leave the USA as the sole defender of North America. Could they have held it?
5)If it is true that no American involvement beyond what they did could have resulted in a 20 years peace (similar to that after WWI) and then another World War or might Europe have stabilized under the Reich
6)Could the Reich have held out long term against the underground activities (grinding down of men, sabotage of materials, H&I etc) or would "the underground "have collectively broken the hold in a few years?
Probably at some point. But if Japan were able to postpone a war with America until after it secured its resource supply and pacified China, it would have been a very different war.
I’m not sure but I believe the quote you’re recalling is Isoroku Yamamoto’s supposed quote “I can run wild for six months… after that I have no expectation.” It may be true (it’s never been proven he actually said it but it’s in accord with his apparent opinions) but he was talking about avoiding a direct war with America which is what I’m suggesting Japan could have avoided.
Nah. China would never have been wholly Japanese. My guess is, the instant the Japanese controlled a little bit too much of it, the commies and nationalists would have stopped fighting each other for five minutes, just the time to curb stomp the invaders, then go back to their cat fight. China was very much Japan’s Russia, and it held fast without much direct Western help.
However, with the US not taking part in the Pacific, the Japanese would most likely have kept N.Guinea, Borneo, the Solomons, Java, New Zealand, Australia etc…, which alone would have made post-war Japan a third superpower.
Not sure if they would really have gone further on, swinging NW to have a go at India, as it was not in their initial plan - rather, my guess is they would have either pooled all their newfound resources into a futile Sino-Japanese war they couldn’t win, or sat on Manchuria and taken a stab at far east Russia to take back the Kurils, Kamchatka and Sakhalin, probably Vladivostok as well since one more major port never hurts. From then on, it all depends on how Russia’s been doing in the West so far, but ISTR Stalin kept important forces back there just in that eventuality (and to keep China in check).
No, by 1942 the United Kingdom itself was probably pretty safe from invasion and occupation. The likeliest outcome of an ongoing war between the UK and Germany without any other powers would have been an eventual armistice with the UK agreeing to accept German control over the territory it occupied and a “cold war” between them.
True about the military stuff. Hitler mistakenly believed he knew more about military matters than the professionals did. I’ve said one of the key factors in the outcome of WWII was that every time Germany lost a battle, Hitler became less willing to listen to his generals and every time Russia lost a battle, Stalin became more willing to listen to his.
But Hitler was not a believer in psychics or mystics or the occult. He always thought that stuff was bullshit. It was Himmler who bought into the mumbo jumbo.
True about there being no connection between the German and Japanese war efforts.
Japan was deeply involved in a war in China, which the United States disliked. So the United States placed an oil embargo on Japan to force it out of China. The embargo turned out to be too effective - Japan needed oil to keep fighting. Without an oil supply they would have to stop fighting in about six months. So Japan had two choices; back down to American demands and withdraw from China, or conquer its own oil supply. They decided on choice number two.
And Japan felt that conquering Southeast Asia (where the oil was) would inevitably result in a war with America. So they figured their best chance was to get in the first shot and hope that they could dely America’s counterattack long enough to be able to build up a solid defensive position. Then they hoped they could hold out until the American people got tired of fighting and demanded an end to the war.
But a line in the Philippines wouldn’t have been enough to form a solid defensive line. They needed a defensive zone halfway across the Pacific to be relatively safe. And they were never able to reach that far.
Hopefully this won’t all come out to mushy…it’s hard to see the computer when the room is spinning.
Without any assistance at all from the UK or America I think that a much reduced Russia is forced to rebuilt it’s factories and logistics beyond the Urals, where the Germans can’t (as easily) get at them. Assuming that Stalin and the Communists are able to survive as a political force after losing so many many, so much material AND the Capital, they they would have a strong place with which to rebuild and fend off further German advancements. And of course, they would have Old Man Winter on their side…an ally not to be taken lightly.
My guess is that if Japan KNEW the US was staying out of the war, and IF Germany would have made much deeper inroads in it’s initial attacks (which is plausible without US and British aid), then it’s possible (though not all that likely) that Japan would have agreed to German pressure to open a second front against the Russians. Even a serious thread of opening that front and the Siberian reserves that Russia used in their '41 campaign wouldn’t have materialized in the same strength that they did in realizty. IF Japan enters the war, or even if they threaten to enter the war against Russia in a believable fashion, then suddenly it’s not a Russia fighting concentrated on a single front, but a Russia fighting on two horribly distant fronts that they would be unable to logistically support fully…or at all, without US aid. THey’d be fucked.
So, it all boils down to your initial assumptions, and the time frame where things ‘change’ from the real world.
Hitler certainly had a cult of personality about him. He also controlled a fairly solid political and communications/propaganda machine and had plenty of muscle. Assuming he was assassinated (I seriously doubt he’d retire or have been retired), it would depend on when in the war it happened as to what the impact would be. Early in the war (say in 41’ or 42’), I could see some short term problems as people scramble for power in the system.
<sorry, totoallly lost my train of thought there>
For several reasons. First off, they went after Pearl Harbor because it was one of our majur fleet bases in the Pacific…taking it out, in theory, would have prevented the US from being able to mount any serious fleet operations in the Pacific, thus it would have prevented the US from stopping the Japanese advance into their target areas in the southers Pacific RIm.
I think that the Japanese felt much like Hitler did…that the American people and the American leadership didn’t have the stomach for real war, and that if they gave us a hard enough snack down we’d sue for peace. The other thing they though was that American’s were more interested in money thaaan in what was right or wrong, and that eventually, after the feelings had been soothed, we be back to trading with them again. THis time on their terms.
Western EUrope had already fallen. The fight in the east was still up in the air. Personally, I think it would depend on how long the Brits managed to hang in there as to where the armistice lines would have eventually been drawn. Myself, I think Germany would have held onto all of Poland and parts of south western Russia, but would have had to give back most of the rest of the territory they captured in Russia.
I don’t see how the Canadian Army would have been decimated…the Brits wouldn’t have committed them or their own army to fight in Western Europe without direct US intervention. And I don’t think the Germans would have or could have taken out the Brits on their own soil. Or, to put it another way, the price they would have had to pay in terms of loss of life and destroyed equipment would have been unthinkable…and could possibly have brought the US in at that point anyway. So, I think the UK would have remained a diminished but still viable power, so the CommonWealth would have alos remained intact, for the most part.
Assuming both Russia and Germany survived the war more or less intact, I’d say all the pieces would have been in place for a WWIII at some point in the future. And this time it’s more than likely that at least Germany would have had an atomic weapon. I doubt the Soviets would have, unless we made one and they stole the plans from us as they did in real life. It might have come as a complete surprise to them.
I’m also unsure if the Soviets would have gotten something like the Mig 15 built…the engine design was given to them by the Brits, and that might not have happened in this alternative. I don’t think the Soviets could have built the same levels of jet air craft OR their improved tank designs later without all the captured German engineers and scientists, and without all the transfer of technology they got from the US and Brits. No rocket program, for instance, or at least a heavily gimped one without all those German rocket scientists and engineers.
I don’t believe the underground resistance was all that serious for the Germans until they started to lose, when it picked up. At least not the resistance in Western Europe. That in Russia was a bit more serious. But I think they could have held out, sure…especially if the fighting with the Russians had stopped, leaving them free time to consolidate their conquests.
Yes he was, but that’s no problem to a master propagandist such as Goebbels. There would have been bitter infighting for his succession, but whoever won it would simply say that he carried on the legacy of the Führer, then progressively erased him from the picture. Kind of like Stalin did with Lenin.
They thought that crippling the entire US Pacific Fleet would buy them enough time to conquer all the islands between Japan and Australia. With this wealth of resources, they would have hunkered down and sued for peace with the US, betting that the US population would not support a costly distant war for people they didn’t care for.
And it could have succeeded, too, were it not for the fact that a few aircraft carriers survived the attack, as well as most submarines of the fleet (the Silent Service alone was responsible for 70% of Japanese losses at sea)
Yes and no. Even had the US military not entered the war itself, Eisenhower would have kept lend-lease going, meaning Russia would have eventually curb stomped Germany… and swallowed Europe while they were at it.
Sure. No one even attacked it, nor was it in any of the Axis powers’ plans.
I think Europe might have stabilized under the Reich, but then I don’t think the Reich would have survived the war even without US intervention. See above.
Good question. I don’t think partisan action alone would have liberated any of their respective countries, but in the long term they’d certainly take a toll on Germany’s finances and manpower. Plus, considering how the Germans dealt with partisans (ie. take hostages, commit random atrocities as “payback”, etc…), it’s a good bet the underground would have only kept growing.
Doesn’t the OP imply the USA had a choice after Pearl Harbor - sure, it had a choice* before* Pearl Harbor and that choice was to make money out of the war. After, there was no choice.
We had choices after Pearl Harbor as well. For instance, we COULD have chosen to focus primarily on the Japanese and perhaps just send naval units against Germany (subs and such to beef up the convoy system)…possibly send over some air force units to the UK to act as fighters and bombers. After all, Japan had directly attacked us, so it wouldn’t have been all that unreasonable a decision for the US to focus on our primary enemy and leave the other allies to fend for themselves, with just token support.
At a guess, if either the UK OR the Soviets thought for an instance that they could just do it by themselves, that they didn’t need the American’s, then they would have both been, um, a bit less eager in trying to get us to modify our own plans so that Germany became the primary target, and Japan became a secondary one that mainly the US would be fighting as the principal combatant on the allies side, and only as a secondary effort, until Germany was finished off.
If they had, the Japanese Navy would be fighting an American navy more than twice the size of the American navy that kicked their ass. Japan was convinced America would be entering the war soon, and they bombed the shit out of Pearl Harbor to give the Japanese navy a chance against America’s mighty Pacific fleet. With all those ships sunk or disabled, the Pacific fleet was STILL equal or superior to the Japanese fleet.
Once the Americans wiped the Japanese navy off the planet, which would have happened much more quickly had there been no Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese would have been left with a much more difficult task to maintain supply lines to the armies on the mainland and Philippines. The Japanese army began to shrivel as their navy began to lose. The faster the navy lost, the faster the army rots.
You’re still ignoring the fact that there was very real discussion at the time about where to concentrate forces. Germany and Italy were never a threat to the USA, but we sure did spend a whole lot of energy knocking the stuffing out of them which we could have spent beating up the Japanese harder.
