well allegedly if Rommel had been able to get hitler who was passed out on pills on the phone during the D-day landing the rest of the invasion would of been bloodier ……
The Yamato was sunk late in the war when there was no navy or air force to back it up. It was on a suicide mission.
The United states built better battle ships than the Bismarck class but they didn’t exist at the beginning of the war. We were behind the curve in most areas and had to play catch-up. It was a completely different scenario at the end of the war.
I think Hitler could have delayed US support by 6 months if he stayed out of Russia. This would have allowed him to focus on England and that would have changed the political arena of the war.
Are you talking about the USN assets? The capital ships (CV’s and BB’s) will operate together, not split apart. This is the principle of “concentration of fire power”. There will be one or three of each type in the yards for maintenance or refits, but generally, USN doctrine was to concentrate (as much as practical, available fleet oilers being somewhat fewer in number at the time) the CV’s and BB’s in one strike force to operate against enemy fleets, and to use cruisers for scouting and a little muscle everywhere else, and DD’s (and later DE’s) for escort work.
To repat: Bismark was sunk seven months before Pearl Harbor.
If we are going to be waving a magic wand and changing history, why does that wand only work for the Germans? Why not raise the scuttled German High Seas Fleet, or complete the “Z Plan”? Holy, hell. give them the Abomb, and smuggle it in to various harbors on suicidal Type IX Uboats!
The guns at the afore mentioned Forts have the same range, and they are a lot closer to the Atlantic than the BNY. They’ll be shooting back…
Also, you can’t hit a target you can’t see. Can you even see the Brooklyn Navy shipyards from 20 miles to the south-east? I doubt it. The entirety of Brooklyn is in the way!
Hmm. Lend Lease was signed in to law two months before Barbarossa, so help was already beginning to trickle over to Great Britain. Had the Germans taken the Suez Canal, I think the U.S. might have ramped things up (diplomacy, war production, Lend Lease amounts) even more, in that case. But that is, of course, speculation on my part.
Also, the Japanese were not coordinating their activities with the Nazi’s. So the U.S. would have been on a war footing (in terms of production and defensive air and sea patrols) after the Pacific War starts.
Avoiding a two front war would absolutely been better strategy for Germany, but, I think Hitler (who was 52 in 1941) was beginning to feel old. Stress was beginning to affect his health, and he had (or will have) a couple quacks for doctors pumping drugs in to him. Part of his mania was to achieve his “destiny”, and this may have caused him to feel rushed in getting his grandiose plans moving.
Yes. For example, see post #53, closer to the end, for the guns protecting New York.
Also, wikipedia is my dream come true! Seacoast defense in the United States - Wikipedia
Aircraft have been mentioned multiple times. I don’t know why Magiver seems to discount them.
Looking back on the OOB I posted earlier, it looks to me like we had 2-3 battleship divisions, 2 cruiser divisions, 1 carrier division and numerous (8? 9?) destroyer divisions and sub divisions available to fight the resurrected Bismarck and Tirpitz as well as every other surface combatant the Germans had and that they magically got past the British without loss to assault the US coast. This doesn’t count the Air Force air craft on the East Coast or the coastal defenses. We outnumbered their battle ships 6 to 2, and while ours were mostly older, they were still very powerful and well armed ships. The carriers, of course (as well as Air Force assets) would have been enough, alone, to push such a German battle group far enough from the coast to render their guns moot. Just talking of getting within 20 or even 50…hell, 100!..miles of the coast means they are going through the teeth of hundreds of US attack and fighter aircraft. Heck, we had several bomber divisions in the area.
Yeah, the Nazi economy would have collapsed and their energy crisis would have crushed them over the next few years.
Operation Torch used mainly British ships, and the Russian convoys had to be stopped for Torch. Was the US Navy tied up fighting the Japanese?
Hitler’s own explanation for invading Russia is that he felt pressured by the knowledge the US would eventually enter the war. Germany was trapped between Russia and Great Britain. He was making no progress against Britain and it was clear that he could not manage an actual invasion. However, he could strike Russia. The belief was that if Russia was eliminated, Great Britain would give up and at least come to terms. I don’t think this was even the slightest bit realistic, but it wouldn’t be the last time Hitler did a stupid thing for stupid reasons.
Anyway, the real stressor was the clock. Germany needed to keep expanding to gobble up resources, and they knew the US would enter the war sooner or later. Hitler needed to achieve his goals before that happened. Therefore, he rushed into a desperation and started a fight he had no hope of winning.
Really? Neither Hitler’s speech of June 22, 1941 nor his subsequent speech of October 3, 1941 seems to mention any such thing; the closest I can see is a mention in the June 1941 speech of the Soviets supposedly plotting to “together with England and supported by American supplies anticipated*, to crush the German Reich and Italy”. (And here is Hitler’s explanation of Germany’s declaration of war against the United States.)
*I’m not even sure what the hell Hitler was talking about here; I’m pretty sure the United States only started supplying the Soviets (via the “Lend-Lease” program) after Hitler invaded the USSR.
Basically, Hitler–in speeches for public consumption, anyway–blames everything on the Jews, and more or less claims that Germany was just somehow defending itself every time it invaded somebody (or doing unto them before they could do unto Germany).
In reality, the explanation for why Hitler invaded first Poland, and subsequently Russia, is inseparable from the idea of “Lebensraum”, which goes all the way back to Mein Kampf:
“With Old Testament vindictiveness they regarded the United States as the instrument that they and he could use to prepare a second Purim against the nations of Europe, which were increasingly anti-Jewish.”
Purim is a Jewish celebration of foiling a plot to kill them all in Persia.
Julius Streicher, one of the high-ranking Nazis sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trials cried out, “Purimfest, 1946!”
It looks as though the Nazis had studied what happened to people who tried to murder all the Jews.
you seem to be having a problem grasping this. The Battle of Britain occurred before Pearl harbor. Realigning German assets away from the Soviet Union and focusing them on England would involve cutting off their supply lines.
the gun emplacements were added after the fact. Again, I’m talking about interrupting US entry into the war. You somehow seem fixed on Pearl Harbor as the start of the war. We were gearing up to it long before that.
the shoreline is 15 miles to the east and you use people on land as spotters as well as the aircraft which the ships carried for that purpose.
If England falls then a major base of operation ceases. there is no D day.
That also matches what I remember as one reason why countries like Britain did not do much against the rearming of Germany, some leaders in Britain knew about what Hitler had said before against the Soviet Union; and expected that those Nazi guys, who started clamping down on communists and socialists in Germany would then do much more against the ones in Russia.
Problem was that Hitler hated more than just the Bolsheviks.
You are talking about the exact opposite of that. You’re suggesting they accelerate US entry into the war.
They could also have clearly seen the waves of planes and ships attacking them, too. I am aklso confident they would have seen it when the shore batteries started blasting away at them. Yes, shore batteries were in place long before Pearl Harbor.
I think you have to ask yourself, as people always should, if something was so darned easy but they didn’t do it, why it is they didn’t do it, and that it might be there’s something you missed.
What you are proposing is absurd. Bismarck wouldn’t have survived the trip - it is in fact virtually certain she, and her entire escort, would have been destroyed by the Royal Navy before getting anywhere near the USA. As evidence of this, Bismarck did not, in fact, survive her very first trip.
So wait… Are you saying that Germany should/could have bombarded (multiple) U.S. shipyards as a surprise attack (in 1941?)?
(The Bismark and Tirpitz weren’t ready until late '41, BTW.)
If so, you stated earlier that Hitler’s biggest error was engaing in a two front war. How is dragging the U.S. into war in 1940 or early '41 any smarter?
No, they weren’t. Most were added in the 30’s. Two 16inch gun were added in '41-'42, but the rest predated the invasion of Poland.
Again, I am not following your proposed timeline of events.
Wow. Just… wow.
And the U.S.A.A.F. is doing what?
I believe you are confused; Bismarck took to sea on her first mission in May 1941, and she was commissioned the previous August. Also, I hate to be pedantic, but it’s Bismarck with a c.
Of course, while her first mission was in May, she did not survive until June. That was the inevitable fate of any German attempt to project surface naval superiority into the Atlantic. The only chance they had of survival or success was to do what Bismarck was trying to do, or what Admiral Scheer had done the previous fall; race past the Denmark Strait (or way more dangerously, south of Iceland) and try to stay hidden in the vast ocean and just attack merchant shipping. A direct confrontation with the vastly larger Allied navies was suicidal.
and what happens if England is defeated and German aggression ceases? The US sues for peace and Hitler cuts a check for damages.
There was very little appetite in the US for another world war after the first one. It’s the reason Hitler got as far as he did. Nobody wanted to deal with it.
By 1941?? Even by 1940 you’d be wrong on this. Public opinion had been shifting on this since the late 30’s both wrt Germany and Japan as well. By early '41 it had already shifted past 50/50 by this point and I doubt the public would have just shrugged and gone back to neutrality as long as we got a big check out of it.
it would have to be an early strategy taking place in the 40’s. And how do you wage a war against Germany without England? You can’t wage a long distance war with flat-tops alone. You need a base of operation.
If England fell then the US would not be able to fight a protracted war. keeping the US out of it long enough for that to happen is the only viable path to success.
Cool idea. Except it wouldn’t have worked, because the Royal Navy would have wiped out the entire force, and had any lucked out and gotten past then, the US Navy and US Air Force would have finished it off.
Yes, had Germany been able to knock England out of the war, they might have won the war. But they were unable to, and there simply isn’t any reasonable alternate strategy they could have pursued to do it. They tried, using the best and most logical means available to them. It failed. A crazy battleship suicide mission would not have worked - it would have absolutely shortened the war in the Allies’ favour.