I recently watched a documentary on German invasion of USSR and was surprised by the enormity of the battle compared much publicized western front.
I am just wondering what if Hitler decided to unite the europe excluding Britain and did not invade USSR. Wouldnt they have been nearly invincible given the military superiority they had?
Rather than expanding and getting in to unnecessary wars, Germany could ve stalled the expansion for 5 years while getting spain , turkey, sweden , switzerland under him. If that was the case , I would hardly think US would ve got involved in war.
Germany could ve easily defended western entrance to their empire and British would ve been slowly bled to death. What stopped Germany from not doing this? I hardly think they were dumb. Afterall this idea occured to me, surely it must ve been occured to one of the German top guys.
I’m no military expert, but I doubt that WW-II would have been averted. It may have occured later, but it still would have happened.
The sheer number of people killed in the concentration camps would have necessitated that somebody put a stop to the madness. Resolutions would have been passed (especially if, as you say, the UK were cut off and bled dry), and the US would have eventually gotten involved (we were already at war with Japan, remember.)
By the 1940s, defending the borders had become a largely futile effort for national defense, evidenced by the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima.
While WW-II might have been delayed had Hitler not invaded Poland (et al), the battle between the Axis and the Allies would certainly have come about, eventually.
How many atomic bombs did Germany have in August 1945?
No matter how you slice it, come 1945, the United States has the trump card. All the Panzer IVs and Bf-109s in the world wouldn’t have helped.
As has already been pointed out, destroying Russia was basically the prime objective of the entire thing. Saying “Would Germany have not lost if they hadn’t invaded Russia?” is kind of like saying “Would Germany have not lost if there had been no war?” The question sort of misses the point.
The other problem is that if Germany hadn’t invaded the USSR, that by no means guarantees that the USSR wouldn’t have invaded Germany at some point.
Most of lossed Germany had was from North Africa, USSR . What if Germany took a slow approach to world domination?
2 years of intense action then lay low consolidating on france and other captured countries rather than fight for new ones. Build france,poland in to the empire over a period of time. Have some deals with British and US for the moment. After all the pacts and agreements are broken all over the world all the time.
Surely US would not come to war all the way to europe to free Jews , while having a war with Japan surely?
p.s. And I never understood why jews didnt have a terrorist campagain going on against germany. Few suicide bombs and killings would ve made some impact on germany. Now all Tom Dick and Harry’s starts a terrorist campagain if their mothers say something against them. Nobody had the right for a terrorist organization against germany than Jews and they never had a proper one. :mad:
Yes, the US would have gotten involved. Even if not for the atocities or to save the Jews or whatever, keep in mind that all the same players had been involved the the same drama only a few years before, during WW-I.
After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, there is simply no way that the US would have allowed the German war machine to roll unchecked. Far too much chance that Germany would have tried to repeat Japan’s successful surprise attack.
Funny that you’d call the Jewish resistance to the Nazis “terrorists”.
I’ll take this “What if” as being “What if Germany had prosecuted the war as historically, but did not invade Russia in '41?”
This would leave Germany in control of:
all of western Europe except Spain, Portugal, and Britain
western Poland
all of the Balkan states
You propose that Germany stops there and consolidates relying on their military superiority to keep Russia at bay, and wonder how this would have affected the war.
The main problem with this is you basic supposition that Germany had a vast military superiority. What they had was the best tactical use of combined arms to that point. The ydid not almost conquer Russia because they had good tanks, but because they used their tanks well offensively in conjunction with infantry and air support.
By 1941, Russia had the best mass produced tank in the field, the T-34. The T-34 was greatly superior to the German PzKpfw III and arguably superior to the PzKpfw IV of the same years (And yes, it is argued a lot by those who argue such things. But the T-34 is usually seen as coming out ahead.)
So had Germany not invaded Russia, they would have had to hope that lovely Uncle Joe Stalin would also abide by the Mototov-Ribbentrop Pact. Meanwhile Germany would be fighting insurgent campaigns in Poland, France, and Norway. The Battle of Britain was pretty much over by then (by over I mean generally seen to not be a feasible means to topple Britain.)
Italy and Britain still stalemated in the desert.
US comes into the war in early 1942 due to Japan.
OK, enough background. No way Germany would have pacified any occupied countries by the time the US came in, even with more troops to patrol.
Russia would have it’s armies intact poised in eastern Poland. Shortly ( 6 months, a year) after the US started sending troops to Britain, the Russians would have poured over the borders using the same tactics the Germans did in real life. Only the Russians wouldn’t have as far to go as the German’s did. And the Germans would not be saved by a bad winter. With the technology of the day, offense had it all over defense.
So, long story short, had Germany not invaded Russia in 41, odds are good that the war would have been much shorter with Germany still losing. The only way this would hold true is if Stalin was happy to sit in eastern Europe while he saw all the rest of Europe fall under Nazism. Remembering that Nazis preached that communism was evil and Russians were subhuman.
Hmm. While Germany still would have lost, the aftermath could have been quite different. Russia might have swept the field.
And on preview… the US didn’t get involved in Europe to stop the Holocaust. It wasn’t even widely known in 1942. We got involved because we didn’t want to see Germany take over Europe. And Jewish people were widely involved in resistance organizations. People simply fail to realize the difference in scope of WWII vs what we see today. Over the course of the war, Germany had 13 MILLION men in the army. Allied bombing was obliterating entire cities. A few car bombs wouldn’t have done jack squat, and the Germans would retaliate by wiping out villages. That’s why the resistance concentrated on knocking out communications and passing intelligence.
Suppose that on December 8, 1941, Hitler had communicated to Roosevelt and Churchill Germany’s refusal to abide by its pact with Japan and swore neutrality toward the US, leaving japan hung out to dry by itself. I am sure Hitler considered treaties with Japan expendable, and after all, the Japanese were not exactly Ayrians.
The US, if Hitler could be believed and trusted, would have been free to concentrate on defeating Japan, and Germany could continue its war in the Atlantic against British merchant shipping without American inteerference. American attitudes toward Germany would have been nothing compared to the unremitting hostility against Japan.
Have you ever heard anyone saying that the United States should have avoided the Cold War by attacking the Soviet Union in 1945? The supposed argument is that a war between the two countries was inevitable at some point and that was when the Americans had the biggest advantage over Russia.
The reason Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 was the same logic - a war between the two powers was almost certain to happen and the Germans figured the summer of 1941 was the most advantageous time for them. In the German viewpoint, the German military was at its peak, the Axis allies were all committed, the British Empire was on the verge of collapse, the United States was unarmed and neutral, and the Red Army was in a state of disarray. Waiting until 1942 or 1943 might have changed any of these factors.
Again, from Germany’s viewpoint, December 1941 was a better time to go to war with the United States than any foreseeable future point. The Germans weren’t stupid - they knew that Japan couldn’t beat the United States. If they didn’t declare war on the US, the Americans would build up their miltary and defeat Japan. Then sometime around 1944, Japan would be defeated and the United States would be at full strength. However, if they did declare war in 1941, they would be fighting the United States before it had a chance to develop its full power and with the Japanese still in the war as an ally.
As others have said, Hitler had planned all along to invade Russia. The Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact was strictly a pragmatic maneuver on Hitler’s part. He was trying to buy time. The invasion was inevitable, as Hitler thought he needed the land to the east to serve as Lebensraum for Aryan farmland. Also add to the mix Hitler’s racial views on the rest of Europe (he didn’t think highly of Russians/Bolsheviks), and the Nazis’ anti-communist ideology, I don’t see any way that the Nazis wouldn’t go through with an invasion.
There were Jews that resisted the Nazis, but the problem with those that resisted is that they usually eventually lost. Since they didn’t survive, it makes it difficult to pass on the stories of resisting. Also, it’s important to remember that there was a long history of Jews being persecuted in Europe. There were pogroms and disabilities, but nothing ever on the level of the attempted genocide by the Nazis. The Jewish councils in the ghettos took an approach of cooperating with Nazi leadership in hopes that eventually the community would be able to ride it out, rather than what really happened with Nazis escalating their antisemitic policies. With the benefit of hindsight, or a crystal ball, then I imagine there would have been a significantly higher amount of resistance throughout the Jewish community.
So what you guys are all implying is that Germany started something it could never finish. Obviously USSR was going to attack and USA would get involved while Britain was already involved! So Germany didnt have a chance in hell to start with…war with 3 super powers of the world!
But they basically held on against all odds till 45 from 39 incurring millions of casualties to other parties while having massive offensives in both western and eastern front. IMO if they consoildated played to the hearts and minds of the people in occupied areas they would ve been unbetable. Would Stalin mobilize a whole country just to attack Germany , if he had the easier option of peace for a long time?
About ressistance , I have not heard any stories of french or jews going on suicide mission to kill any German, Italian leaders. I think its not simply within western culture to accept giving your life totally for the casue. You dont need to bomb Dresden to defeat germany, you have to take out the leadership. Taking out comms and bridges all that is fine for a conventional warfare , but what they needed was a modern terrorist style campaign.
If Russia were the target all along, why not attack them first? Hitler might even had the British as allies in such an endeavour - after all, we did help the White Russians after the Revolution.
One of these days I’m going to write an alternate history novel with precisely this premise. If the Nazis had organized a pact against the Soviets, they would have had the full support of France, the UK, and the US in their invasion of the USSR. All of the western countries involved would have seen it as a perfect chance to get rid of the Reds once and for all, not to mention distracting people from the Depression and jumpstarting the economy. The Soviets held out admirably against just the Nazis, but it was a close thing for a while. They would have been driven well into Siberia and forced into guerrilla campaigns in this scenario, with the Japanese nipping at them from the east all the while.
Of course, this would have completely destroyed all Jews, Slavs, Roma, and so on in Europe and Asia. Anyone who thinks differently is idealistic and naïve. We had our own relocation camps for Germans and Japanese and we were more than willing to overlook the missteps of our allies. Hell, US companies were more than willing to sell the Nazis supplies even in the real WWII.
So it would have been a large coalition against the Soviets in the European Theater, the US, China, and various others against Japan in the Pacific and East Asia, and absolutely no help for the people being murdered by the Nazis. Oh, and the Cold War would have been fought between the USA and a Germany that now owns Russia and probably bits of China.
I seem to recall an issue of a air route between Germany and Japan. The planes needed a air field for fuel between the 2, and if Germany invaded Russia this would provide it. After Germany started to loose ground this airfield was lost and the air route closed, at which time the only remaining way was a u-boat trip around Africia.
According to my reading, Stalin didn’t trust Hitler, and planned to invade Germany as soon as his military was ready, because he expected Hitler to attack him. His mistake was in deciding that Hitler would wait to attack, and shooting anyone who disagreed with that conclusion. Thus, the invasion came as a complete suprise.
As for invading Russia with the support of the rest of Europe, No Go. Germany had a mad-on for France after WWI, and the whole purpose of the war was revenge for that defeat.
The Nazis had orginized a pact against the Soviets, though, the “anti comintern pact”, between Germany and Japan, which Italy then joined. The problem is, even though one of Germany’s foreign policy goals might have been expansion into the Soviet Union, that wasn’t its primary foreign policy goal, especially in the pre-war period. It’s primary foreign policy goal was unification of the German-speaking peoples and regaining the territory it lost after WWI, and if you look at Germany’s actions; the remillitarization of the Rheinland, the annexation of Austria, the Sudetenland, Memel, and Danzig and West Prussia, you’ll see that they all have that goal in mind.