Was Hitler actually planning on establishing his “New Order” worldwide? I don’t know if that’s true or just propaganda.
If that wasn’t his goal, what was it exactly? Did he want to just control Europe? Plus North Africa? Maybe Russia too?
If he had defeated England and Russia (before the US got involved) was he planning on occupying them? What was his next step? Did he want to take out Spain, Switzerland, Ireland and the other neutral countries too eventually, or was he content to let them sit?
Did he have military and logistical plans worked out for such things or just “It would be great if . . .” plans?
He wanted to incorporate all German people into a single Greater Germany. So he would have wanted to take over Switzerland at some point.
He wanted Germany to be a superpower that controlled Europe and no other country on Earth could threaten. He probably would have been content to allow western European countries nominal sovereignty - sort of like the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact - as long as they went along with what Germany wanted.
He wanted eastern Europe as a German colony. He would settle Germans to rule the land and the Slavs would be the native workers with no rights.
He would have been willing to allow other powers to exist. He figured Germany would run Europe, the United States would run the Americas, Japan would run Asia, and Britain would run the “third world”. This obviously was an early plan before he went to war with Britain and America.
He wanted Germany and German-controlled Europe to be economically independent and have everything it needed within its own borders so no other country could threaten Germany with an economic blockade.
He wanted to eliminate all of the people he saw as inferior people: Jews, Gypsies, etc.
I think it’s tough to assign logic to someone like Hitler, and while he had a vision of a “greater Germany” he was at his heart a fascist and didn’t tolerate dissent of any kind. Exterminate the “weak” and rule with an iron fist. Maintaining tight fisted control of a country is one thing, trying to do it over a vast region is much harder.
He would likely have tolerated petty dictators, such as Mussolini and the Vichy French, as long as they served his purposes. I don’t think he ever intended to occupy and control all of western Europe or North Africa, although he probably would have put puppets in place to do his bidding once those countries were conquered.
Japan was a strong ally and he probably expected them to treat Asia much as he planned to treat Europe. While Stalin could have been a suitable ally, he ruined that budding relationship. Why attack Russia and declare war on the US? What did he think would happen as a result? Unfortunately (for him) he believed his own propaganda.
Since the US and Britain were both democratic I don’t see how he would have been able to work with either of them in the long run. There would have been a flood of émigrés from Europe to North America as a result of the Nazi regime which would have been hard for the Germans to control. Building a Berlin-style wall around half of Europe would not have been practical at that time.
With Hitler getting sicker and sicker toward the end of the war it’s interesting to speculate who would have replaced him as Fuhrer. Was there a succession plan in place?
Rudolf Hess was the original Deputy Fuhrer and designated successor. That obviously got cancelled when Hess flew to England in 1941. Hermann Goering was named as the new official successor. That lasted until 1945 when Goering made a last minute attempt to take over. Hitler denounced Goering and made Karl Doenitz his new successor. It was Doenitz who succeeded Hitler after his suicide.
In case of confusion, it is now accepted that “Russia” (in fact the USSR) would ultimately have defeated Hitler’s Germany without the late arrival of the USA into the war in Europe. The German attack was wholly misconceived, and ran into the ground - largely because the Soviets were willing to sacrifice huge numbers of people. As you know, the USSR suffered about 20 million dead in WW II - their “Great Patriotic War”.
The USA was heavily committed to the Pacific Campaign, taking substantial casualties. It seems clear that the USA only took part in the European campaign to prevent a feared takeover of western Europe by the Communists. The Western front in Europe hastened the inevitable loss on the Eastern front, and left democratic states in Western Europe.
Everything I have ever read is that the United States committed far more of its resources to the European theater, something like 90%. Pacific commanders such as MacArthur complained about them not getting anywhere near the resources the European theater got. Plus FDR was naive enough to believe that he could charm a dictator like Stalin.
The German vs Russian campaign was touch and go for a few years. Hitler cam close to winning in both 1941 and 1942. Plus Germany had defeated the Russians in the First World War so automatically assuming the Russians were destined to win doesn’t hold up IMO
Nitpick: This is not quite factually correct. The European Theatre of Operations received the bulk of the US Army and Army Air Force commitments. Only in terms of USN and USMC assets was the Pacific any where near parity in force allocations.
Only after the downfall of Germany was there planned to be a huge transfer of Army manpower to invade the Japanese Home Islands.
This was the agreement of the ABC Conference (Jan to March of '41), and the US stuck to it.
On force level deployments:
(Granted, King may have been exaggeratting the disparity; the linked wiki article states that King wanted the Pacific to be a primarily American show.)
Actually this is revisionist history. Stalin desperately wanted a second front, and it wasn’t until after the U.S. landings in 1944 that it became clear Germany was going to suffer a general collapse and be defeated in relatively short order. Once that happened Stalin became concerned with taking as much land as possible to improve Russia’s post-war position (I use the term Russia deliberately, despite not being an ethnic Russian Stalin was a true Russian imperialist and the rest of the Soviet Union’s interests were mostly subservient to those of Russia during Stalin’s rule.) To a degree the allies wanted to beat Russia to Berlin, but really Churchill was the only one who properly understood Stalin. FDR and even Eisenhower seemed far less committed or concerned with relationships with the USSR in post-war Europe, until it was essentially too late.
You are correct though that by 1944 the Germans would have lost to the Soviets without a second front. However no one, including Stalin, knew that and thus why Stalin was increasingly advocating for a second front.
It should be noted that without significant help from large scale strategic bombing and massive deliveries of war materiel it is unlikely the USSR would have had the resources to actually invade Germany successfully. I do think that even sans any outside help at all the Soviets would have ultimately repelled the German invasion, but if you look at their production figures during WWII they produced a huge amount of fighter aircraft, tanks, and self-propelled guns. The number of bombers and military trucks they built are very small relative to the size of their army, without the U.S./U.K. bombing effort significantly weakening the Germans and materiel aid from lend-lease it would have seriously limited the Soviet’s mobility for a major offensive all the way into Germany (tanks of the time could not travel all that far without a massive supply infrastructure behind them keeping them fueled.)
In 1928 Hitler wrote a sequel to Mein Kampf called Zweites Buch - the Second Book. It was never published in his lifetime and after he wrote it he ordered it be kept secret because he felt it revealed too much of his future plans. So it was kept locked in a safe in an air raid shelter until it was discovered in 1945.
It focused primarily on foreign affairs and envisaged a war in about 1980 between the United States and the now Greater Germany allied with the British Empire.
Not entirely unrealistic; at least until late 1936.
“After [Edward VIII’s] abdication, he was created Duke of Windsor. He married Wallis Simpson in France on 3 June 1937, after her second divorce became final. Later that year, the couple toured Nazi Germany. During the Second World War, he was at first stationed with the British Military Mission to France but, after private accusations that he held pro-Nazi sympathies, moved to the Bahamas after his appointment as Governor.” Excerpted from: Edward VIII - Wikipedia
For many years I’ve said, “Og bless the man or woman who introduced Wallis Simpson to Davey Windsor.”
Except for the fact even if he had never fallen for Wallis Simpson and reigned throughout the rest of his natural life his personal feelings would not have set UK policy in regards to Nazi Germany.
You could say the Germans “came close” to defeating the USSR in 1941; they would have had to have taken both Moscow and Leningrad (at the least) before winter. IMO they had no realistic chance of taking either city let alone both, unless the Japanese had attacked Siberia instead of Pearl Harbor (which they would never have done). But they were on the outskirts of both cities.
But by 1942 the Germans were beaten. The Russians had information from both Ultra and the Lucy spy ring and they knew exactly where and when the German summer attack was coming. The whole Stalingrad/Causasus campaign was a giant trap, designed to lure the Germans beyond easy supply range and bleed their army and airforce. Which it did, with the unexpected bonus of the Germans abandoning the Sixth Army to its fate in Stalingrad. After that it was merely a matter of time.
Not to me. What seems clear is that fascism and communism were fighting each other and America was hesitant to get involved. Rightly so… I have no doubt that I would not have supported American involvement in the war in Europe, all though in hindsight it definitely was the right thing to do.
America provided material support the Britain throughout the hostilities. They were and are our closest ally. America never - as a matter of policy - support Nazi Germany, even though many Americans, some prominent citizens did.
Yes, me. If you know anything about the history of the time you will note that the response of the UK to Hitler was based on who was prime minister. Neville Chamberlain’s response was tepid and weak, overly cautious and universally condemned by most historians. Churchill’s response has generally been viewed as more favorably.
Both Chamberlain and Churchill were never King of the United Kingdom but instead were Prime Ministers and their position reflected the public’s support of them and their party.
The monarch had no influence on the matter at all.
When Hitler actually did go too far Chamberlain didn’t ask the monarch for permission on what to do, and any thoughts that he did are incorrect.
Earlier in this thread, mention was made of ‘revisionism’. I will mention it again with respect to the quoted text.
The notion that Stalin “lured” the Germans into a “giant trap” is a relatively recent, rewriting of military history by German apologist types, in particular. The Soviets no more lured the Nazis to Stalingrad than the US lured Japan to Pearl Harbor. By attributing strategic military cleverness to Stalin and the USSR, such as that alluded to above, the intent is to deflect criticism away from Hitler’s insane and utterly irrational undertakings in the East.
Please note that my post at #6 was aimed at a specific comment in the OP, which indicated a belief that Hitler would have defeated “England” and “Russia” without the involvement of the USA.
I have no doubt that the UK needed the support of the USA. Hitler could have defeated the UK, if he had focused on it and not on the USSR. My point was that the war with the USSR was the main cause of Hitler’s defeat, the wound that bled Nazi Germany to death. And it seems clear that the USSR would ultimately have triumphed - even if that clarity is in hindsight as posters have suggested.
I am very conscous of the sacrifices by the US Army in and round the European theatre of war. There is no doubt that it helped to shorten the war in Europe by opening a second front. It had the effect of guarding Western European democracy in the long term, but the protection they provided was against communism, not Nazism.
