That’s by modern standards. If there’s anything that Depression-era America had, it was a lot of expendable young men.
They don’t have to nuke Germany necessarilly. They can just nuke a German base in France in Calais a few miles from Dover.
Perhaps for some of the more weak-willed isolationists but most Americans and Brits would still be willing to fight. America suffered in WWII only half the deaths in the American Civil War, if it could stomach that it can stomach a bloodier World War II. In addition there would be a stronger peace party in Germany without the threat of Soviet invasion (most Germans by 1944 were willing to surrender to the Western Allies though not the USSR)
both Stalin and Hitler wanted an annihilation of Poland, Hitler wanted the same for Russia.
from 1939 to 1941, for 21 months both Russia and Germany co-occupied Poland and the Molotov - Rippentrop (sp?) line was established. It was only when Hitler decided to invade Russia that things went awry.
Had Hitler taken Moscow like he wanted between 31 - 45 million Slavs would’ve died during the first year, mostly of starvation/exposure in the first year alone. The breadbasket of the Ukraine was immensely important to feed the German people and resettlement would’ve been by German people.
The ironic thing of how the Final Solution ended up was that it was really about the fourth idea of how to handle the jewsish people. First there was to be an exile to some defined geographic area where they were to live out their lives, a sort of general gov’t area, then the deportation to Soviet Russia which Stalin refused, then the idea of shipping them to Madagasgar , then controlled by the French which the Germans hence controlled, but because the British still controlled the seas this was impossible.
Japan was always concerned with expanding south, even though the Russians were concerned about them invading Siberia.
Soviet resistance would have been larger, better-equipped, and much more fanatical than the French resistance, and almost totally ineffective.
Resistance as a threat to Germany has been heavily played up by all sides; the Free French, the Western Allies, Hollywood, and even the Germans themselves, who “overreacted” in furious reprisals against the resistance and local population to deter it from getting bigger, not because it was winning or anything.
Historian John Keegan has devoted some effort to debunking the myths of resistance in his books The Second World War and Intelligence in War. On June 5th, 1944, the last date Hitler was fully in control of Europe, historians can identify fewer than 20 divisions assigned to pacifying resistance, most of them second- or third-rate formations not suitable for frontline combat. And not all of them were actively fighting resistance at any one time. And those that fought resistance had less trouble than we’d hope. That’s out of 300 divisions on the continent.
The British Special Operations Executive, taking Churchill’s “now set Europe ablaze!” speech as a mandate, made a major effort to train, equip, and militarize resistance forces, especially in occupied France and Yugoslavia. What they discovered was that when those forces actually killed Germans or sabotaged the war effort, German reprisals were so harsh that British officers eventually resorted to trying to dissuade the resistance from conducting such operations. Particularly instructive is the fate of the Maquisards on the Vercors plateau. They rose in support of the D-Day invasion, but when the Allies got hung up in the Bocage country, the Germans were able to isolate the plateau and send in ordinary German infantry to overwhelm and annihilate the Maquisards. This was perceived as a routine mopping-up duty by the Germans.
In some cases, resistance achieved noteworthy success, particularly at sabotage. The efforts of the French resistance in coordination with D-Day and the Soviet partisans behind German front lines are the best examples. In both cases, however, the respective large-scale regular armies were very nearby, and able to either quickly come to the aid of the resistance, or threaten to do so, and thus fix the attention of sufficient military assets to dramatically weaken any effort against the resistance fighters. (If armed men are breaking in the front door, you’re not going to go investigate that creaking on the basement stairs.)
The military effectiveness of the resistance movements was principally from intelligence-gathering and secondarily from helping downed fliers escape capture. And of course they were good for morale and for post-war political purposes (in fact, many resistance movements spent an inordinate amount of their time and effort jockeying for postwar political positioning instead of fighting the Nazis).
Keegan’s analysis is that resistance ultimately posed insignificant threat to Hitler’s military control of the continent.
I’ll agree with you that the US could have taken more casualties, albeit not happily. But even with the less-taboo attitude toward nuclear weapons and startegic bombing then prevalent, I have trouble imagining that even a desperate US would have found it politically acceptable to nuke an ally’s soil instead of Germany.
France was bombed heavily during World War II and provided its a military base, and civilian casualties are nonexistent it should be acceptable even to the French (after all their country gets liberated once the Reich surrenders).
I find the idea of the USSR losing so bizarre that I don’t know how to reasonably answer the question.
But the idea that the USA might nuke Germany is interesting. I wonder. Lots of Americans had northern European ancestry; would they have been less keen on nuking Germany than the “Japs”?
In a world in which the Soviets give up the fight in early 1942, would there have been the political will among the American people to go through an invasion 2 and a half years later (especially if N. Africa were lost)?
In a sense, without the drama of the continuing Russian-German war, there would be little news (and thus little reminders) of the situation in Europe. At the very least, in our world, the Russian-German struggle kept the war on the front page during America’s buildup, which underplayed the urgency of the need to do something.
But in a world where from '42-onward Europe is essentially lost… I don’t know, we just might go the Cold War option before we invade.
There’s also the possibility that Hitler could sue for peace after achieving his objectives in the East. I know the common belief is that he was crazy, but he was crazy like a fox and he could have offered to end hostilities with the US before any actually commenced… and with the Soviets gone and the French gone, a strong argument would be made to accept his offer.
If Herr Hitler had been more pramatic and tactful and had cut a deal with the oppressed peoples of the USSR, puppet states would have been formed out Belarus, Ukraine, etc. and the USSR crushed under the strength of the Wehrmacht and loss of support from its own citizenry.
Yes the A-Bomb was originally developed to use against the “Jerries”.
Yes, we did – most of the planes built in America were delivered by being flown over there. This trip did require extra fuel tanks, ‘drop’ tanks that were discarded when empty. But such tanks are cheap & easy to build.
(Fighters use more fuel than bombers, so bombing missions deep into Germany had to go without fighter cover for the last part of the mission, leading to big losses. When somebody finally realized that they could use the same kind of drop tanks on fighter planes, to allow them to protect the bombers all the way into Germany & back, the bomber losses decreased greatly. And the bombers, facing less attacks by German defense fighters, were able to do a better, more accurate job with their bombs. The effectiveness of bombing raids increased greatly.)
If Herr Hitler was more pragmatic and tactful and wasn’t looking to carve out lebensraum in the East by exterminating the Slavic peoples, he wouldn’t be Herr Hitler and the war wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Even if Germany had defeated the USSR it would have been at tremendous cost. Germany is still isolated, especially after the USA blockades Japan.
Where does Germany get the finances to keep the war going?
North Africa was really a side show for Germany. If they had defeated the USSR, they could have placed more resources there if they could get them landed safely.
However, realistically, once the USA was in the war Germany was on the way out.
Oh hell no. Germany would have been nuked with enthusiasm.
I also find the idea that the U.S. wouldn’t have had the stomach for casualties interesting.
I may be wrong but I think this is a ‘modern’ viewpoint. If WWII had started to look grim and the U.S. in real danger of losing I think the U.S. would have stomached large amount of casualties and kept slugging.
This may have been the case up to 1938 maybe 1939 but by the time the shooting war started the UK was united in a way not seen since the Napoleonic Wars to whatever was necessary to win the war.
The main thread of dissent was not pro-facist but desire to do more to help the Soviets, “Second Front Now” and all that. The anti-semitic tendencies of the upper classes were still there but were irrelevent when the very future of the nation was stake.
Quite.
I knew Americans of German ancestry, who still wrote to their relatives in Germany. Even during the war, they exchanged letters (through Switzerland, maybe?). Both sides of the family had sons/grandsons in their armies.
At one point, they figured out that their sons were on opposite sides of the front lines in the same battleground, across from their cousins. But all they said in writing to them was that if you saw your cousin there, ‘try to shoot to only wound him, but otherwise be sure to say a ‘latse olung’ over him before advancing’.
So even close relatives didn’t let that interfere with their patriotic feelings. I doubt that there would have been any hesitation about nuking Germany*. There was none about the bombing campaigns, which caused much more casualties.
*Besides, the public wouldn’t have been asked.
The military never asked about Japan. They didn’t even tell the VP, or Generals Eisenhower or MacArthur.
It was also the viewpoint of the American people prior to Pearl Harbor.
I honestly think that, with Europe lost to the Germans, a 2.5 year wait until the D-Day invasions would cause a number of people to ask “Why are we invading Europe when we were attacked by Japan?” It was easier IRL because there was an active Soviet war machine, one that would assist the US in beating the Germans. In a world in which the perception is that the fighting is all over, except for what we bring to the table, it is not inconceivable that America would decide that Europe is a lost cause and focus on fighting Japan.
I also wonder what the level of commitment to build the Bomb would be in a world in which we didn’t fight Germany. Probably the same, but I wouldn’t bet my mortgage on it.
That depends on what you think of as “losing.” Coming to terms with Germany and crushing Japan would not have been portrayed as a loss.
I think people are massively underestimating not only the casualties that would have resulted in an invasion of Fortress Europe absent an Eastern front, but also the attitude that would have been present in both the US and the UK, facing war with Japan, and an apparently impregnable Germany in Europe. I just don’t think the will would have been there.
And the united Britain idea isn’t as certain as people seem to think. There was massive class unrest in the UK at the time - labour problems were only kept under control though Bevin’s very close ties with the unions, and during the Blitz, for example, there were huge problems, in particular because of the provision of bomb shelters only in wealthier areas and the early refusal to open the Underground stations as shelters.
I’ve heard my mom talk about that in as much know one knew at the time which way Russia was
going to jump and everyone was pretty much scared to death they would back Germany.
I think what everyone forgets is the German science developement.
If the Germans put SU into relative submission, they would be free to place all their aircraft in western Europe for defense.
US and UK air fleets would have much harder time bombing Germany. D-Day, if ever occured, would have been much delayed. Result: Germans are free to develop reactive aircrafts, advanced submarines, long range ballistic weapons, and even the nukes. Probably the US would be first to develop a nuke, but even if they bombed Germany(taken they would need extremely large escort to even deliver it) Germans PROBABLY would not surrender and Hitler would soon throw his A-bomb, most likely in Britain. And we have Nuclear War.
If the US managed to kill der Fuhrer and top members of Nazi-Party in atomic explosion, Germany would get a more reasonable goverment(hopefully) and would have been forced to ceasefire. Thus we have Cold war. Of course, if Germans managed to throw a bomb on East Coast, it would be similar.(maybe even more devastating)