Could Germany and the Axis powers have Won the Second World War?

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bigfella RE:Could the Japan Have Won? 9/19/2004 4:05:26 AM

No. To expand: There is no concievable way that japan could have won. Even had they taken Hawaii or won Midway, it would only have delayed the inevitable. I don't consider attacking the Panama canal viable or likely. Japan was already overstretched and Panama is a long way away. Once America was angry Japan's fate was sealed. Take but one example. By the end of the war something like 95% of Japan's merchant marine (not big enough to begin with) had been sunk. American submarines were so dominant that it was no longer possible to move by sea even between Japan's home islands. For a sea-based empire this alone was death (and I haven't even gotten into US superiority in the air, on the ground or in surface ships).

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bigfella RE:Could Germany have won? 9/19/2004 4:28:18 AM

No. This one requires more explanation. First things first. Hitler remains Hitler. No levelheadeness, no sudden bursts of sanity. Germany wouldn't have taken the road to war without Hitler's driving force and probably wouldn't have defeated France so easily, so he stays as is. The starting point for most discussions here seems to be that Germany's run of victories up to 1942 are taken as a base point from which to launch the 'what ifs'. I disagree. Germany's remarkable success up to 1942 certainly involved skill & superior tactics, but it also involved a LOT of luck. Consider just a few of the following pieces of good fortune: - Stalin wipes out Russia's entire high command - The Frenc & Brits sell out the Czechs, allowing Germany to avoid a potentially tough war. - The above do NOTHING when Poland is attacked to slow the German war machine. - An extrememly unlikely treaty with Russia not only speeds up the Polsh campaign, but it provides valuable raw materials and allows troops to be feed up to invade France that might otherwise have had to keep an eye on Russia. - Russia gets tied down in an unbelievably long war with Finland, thus aiding the latter point. - Churchill decides to send an unde equpiied force to Greece, thus denying a chance at defeating the Italians in Nth Africa in early 1941, and ultimately allowing the Germans to take Crete (which would have been a good base for bombing the vital Ploesti oilfields). - Norway: had the Allied forces been remotely competent Norway might have gone in part or whole to the allies. Loss of vital iron ore supplies & a cool base to bomb Germany from. Then there is France. I won't list them all here, but if any one of half a dozen things had gone differently in the initial stages of the Battle for France it would have gone very differently. Imagine if that officer had not been shot down with a copy of the German plans, forcing a change of strategy. There are more. Had any of these things gone the Allies way it would have been a much longer & more bruising affair. France would probably have fallen, but she may have fought on from the empire. The germans would have suffered much more damage, slowing down numerous of their subsequent operations. I'll do a separate post on Sealion. There is no way Hitler would have turned his back on France in 1940 to attack Russia. germany had not expected to be ready for war before about 1943, and war production didn't really start up properly until 1941. Quite simply, Germany lacked the resources to attempt an invasion of Russia in 1940. IMHO it wouldn't have gone any better than 1941 did, except this time France & Britain have huge forces camped a few minutes flight from Germany's industrial heartland.

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bigfella RE:Could Sealion have succeeded? 9/19/2004 4:49:56 AM

Again no. Emphatic this time. This is another of those things that falls apart when you look at the detail. During the battle of Britain, Britain's fighter resources were not as parlous as has often been thought. Dowding and park were keeping several groups in the north, partly to defend against Greman planes in Norway, partly to keep them out of reach. The plan was to withdraw all fighters north if the airfilds & radar bombing continued. This would still have allowed them to protect the coast from bases a) beyond German reach b) closer than german bases in france. Britain was also producing new planes at a furious rate. Things may have seemed grim at the time, but in retrospect they were not quite that bad. Germany could not have prepared for sealion in secret. This would have given Britan time to bring key elements of the fleet home, including aircraft carriers. Unlike the Germans, the Brits had an experienced naval air wing equipped with proper airdropped torpedoes. One of the key issues overlooked by people is just how the Germans were going to get ashore. Unlike the allies in 1944, who had a fleet of specially adapted landing ships & amphibious vehicles, the Germans were going to rely mainly on river barges towed (3 at a time) by tugs. These barges could be flipped by the wake of a destroyer. Can you imagine if a quick storm came up in the channel? The Germans apparently tried a small exercise with unmanned barges near Bolougne. I think 25% - 33% sank!! These things could also only take 1 tank per barge! There is no way the Royal Navy would have let them land anyway. even with the airspace above contested, the RN was powerful enough to sweep away the Kriegsmarine. They would only have had to sail past the German barges to swamp them. Even if the Germans managed to hold the channel for a few days, they would have had no logistical support. 'Living off the land' can only go so far, especially when it comes to equpment & ammo. Britain was not quite as undermanned as it seemed. Given that the germans could not have invaded until France was defeated, There were fresh Canadian units (they landed in Brittany, but soon re-embarked), the Dunkirk troops, and the many more flocking to recruitment stations. With interior lines & better logistics, I think they would have been able to deal with the Germans. I could go on forever on this, but you get the idea.

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Ehran RE:If Germany had won 9/19/2004 10:20:38 PM

Smurf by the battle of Britain Canada had two infantry divisions in place and a good chunk of an armoured brigade. We didn't get there in time for the battle of france but we surely would have gotten our pound of flesh from the germans had they landed. we even sent two divisions to italy despite churchill's demands they stay in england.

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Smurf RE:If Germany had won - bsl 9/20/2004 5:30:44 AM

The Germans have Rocket and Bomber Designs capable of reaching new York and Washington by the end of the war, had Germany been in control of Europe they would have emediatly put these into production. And although they were behind in the race for the Atom bomb they still had dirty bombs that could be used to Negociate USA out of the war.

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perfectgeneral RE:If...Hearts of Iron for PC 9/20/2004 8:12:44 PM

This software simulation of the grand strategic elements of WW2 should answer most 'what if' questions you can think of comprehensively. It's not an advert, honest. I just like the game from this point of view.

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perfectgeneral RE:Could Germany have won? 9/20/2004 8:25:53 PM

In a scenario where the Axis have bottled up the Med, captured the Middle East oilfields (intact) and control all of continental Europe, USA and Anzac still apply the allied hammer to the Soviet anvill, crushing the axis like a bug around 1945/46. I wonder if any country was in a position, even then, to beat the USA once she had geared up (a bit) industrially.

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perfectgeneral RE:If...Hearts of Iron for PC 9/20/2004 8:30:02 PM

If you prefer a map game with counters, try World in Flames. I know that theoretical simulations don't reach the fact of the matter, but when it comes to 'what if', nothing will now.

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Twilight1978 Successful bomb-plot scenario? 9/21/2004 7:31:01 PM

Consider this very realistic scenario, which almost came to pass. Colonel von Stauffenberg's July 1944 bomb-plot conspiracy succeeds in assassinating Hitler at the Wolf's Lair. Stauffenberg and the other military conspirators implement their plans for a provisional government, with the social democrat Julius Leber as German chancellor and probably Erwin Rommel acting as commander-in-chief. The Nazi leadership is arrested, German forces in the west and in Italy break off fighting and withdraw to the Rhine / the Alps respectively, and the occupation forces in the Low Countries, Norway and Denmark are evacuated. Orders go out to the U-boats to cease offensive operations in the Atlantic. All available German divisions except for skeleton formations behind the Rhine and the Alps are sent to the Eastern Front, with messages conveyed to the Allies via Sweden and Switzerland that the restored German Republic will conduct no more operations against British and US forces, and only defensive operations against the Soviets. Given that these are more or less the exact plans of Stauffenberg and the conspirators, how would this have affected the outcome of the war? How would the Allies have reacted?

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bsl RE:Intercontinental attack - smurf 9/21/2004 10:38:33 PM

I have passing familiarity with the German armament programs of that era. I know that both an intercontinental heavy bomber was being developed as well as an intercontinental ballistic missile. They wouldn't have changed the basic balance of power. The bomber was not a great threat of winning a war without nuclear weapons. The designs Germany was developing were conventional heavy bombers. Very visible on radar, very interceptable by contemporary fighters. (The Germans toyed with a wing design, but the ones they were really pushing were just big, conventional designs.) By the mid1940s, remember, America and Britain both had their first jet fighters in the air. Both got off the ground before VE Day. WW2 began with some bomber designs which could fly higher and faster than any fighters of the era. That was not true a few years later. Protecting a country against intercontinental heavy bombers without superweapons was an economic exercise with the gameboard tilted to the defender. Now, apart from fission bombs, of course, there was poison gas. The Germans had it. They didn't use it because of the fear that they would draw retaliation in kind, and Hitler's WW1 experience convinced him that there was no likelihood of good results. Just a huge number of corpses on both sides without any decisive outcomes. Given nuclear attack, I'll postulate that this restraint comes off. Fine. Now the Nazis have poison gas to use against America, thousands of miles away from their bases. Poison gas isn't a magic weapon. Even if you can load a lot of heavy bombers with a lot of bombs, and get through a heavy defense, you don't wipe out whole cities in single raids. You're fighting an enemy with a great, big sword with a little, tiny knife. Each cut you make on his skin is met with a cut which lops off a limb. Gas is not the equivalent of nukes. How about V-3 missiles? Same basic problem. They were not subject to interception, but without nuclear warheads, they were just very, very expensive ways to deliver one or two thousand pound warheads. Actual American and British bombers of the era dropped literally tens of thousands of such weight bombs on the Axis. That bombing of cities never broke Germany. And, again, while Germany is dropping high explosives or gas, America is slagging German cities. One bomb, one city. You can stage the same heavy bombers which actually bombed Germany, from British bases, from bases in North Africa and various Meditteranean isles, too. Base the same P-51s, etc., from fields in Corsica.

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