HOW HITLER COULD HAVE WON WW2

[Zap]

I tend to think an earlier start at war production together with a later starting of the war(let's say 1942) giving germany more time for war production and weapon development. Could have made it possible for Germany to reach all it's goals.

[SemperAugustus]

If the Germans started in 1942, the British would have even more time to catch up with the Germans, not to mention the French and Poles, who were caught retooling. If the Germans didn't annex Czechoslovakia they would have even more problems. The Japanese would not have had an easy time against the British, French or the Dutch.

Then there is the matter of the German finances which were not the best either, could they have really continued running up their foreign debts until 1942?

[JSS]

ORIGINAL: SemperAugustus

The engines were terrible on the Me262 and it wasn't particularly good at landing either. Jets would perhaps have had a impact on some of the bombers but would they really have been worth the effort?

For the point of this discussion I give the engineers credit for fixing the landing gear and developing a more reliable engine (if they had stayed at full scale development). There's a good discussion on these problems and relatively easy fixes with the group that is building five production model Me 262's. Apparently two are flying now and the third is close to flying.

In large numbers I think the 262's would have wreaked havic on all US-Brit air formations and operations that depended on air supremacy (no large scale bombing raids, no Overlord-MG scale airborne invasions, Overlord would have been much more difficult, etc...). Natural evolution of history would have been a rapid Allied program to put their own jets in the air... might have bought Germany a year or more to stall/stop Russians.

[Clausel]

It can be argued that Hitler's timing of Barbarossa was well judged (ie the original May date) as it gave Germany two full years to defeat the USSR before American could intervene in a meaningful way. Virtually everyone (including I think Stalin himself initially) expected Germany to win within one campaign, and on that basis Hitler had left himself a margin of one year for error. However Germany's failure to gear up for total war by 1941 and therefore cope with the unanticipated loses of men and equipment (plus Russia's impressive recovery) meant that they couldn't take full advantage of that extra year. Whatever choices were made during Barbarossa its clear with hindsight that two campaigning seasons were always going to be needed to defeat the Russians given Nazi Germany's total hostility to Slavs. (An approach such as in 1917/18 would have been a different matter.)

On reflection I am not sure that Germany could have squared the circle in time although it could have increased production somewhat in the early years. It is difficult to be too judgemental considering Germany's rearmanent effort from 1933 to 1941 which was little short of incredible when one recall's where they started from.

The impressive victory over France (then considered the number one military power on the continent) and the other allies led to an understandable over confidence amongst the High Command and troops- remember that at one stage Hitler had to turn down an OKH proposal to launch the attack on Russia in late 1940!

Given the importance of airpower I find it fascinating that Germany launched the eastern attack with fewer bombers than it had at the start of the Battle of Britain. A reflection of the losses suffered throughout that campaign and the subsequent non-stop night bombing campaign combined with Germany's low production. Indeed the Luftwaffe strength in the east at the start of around 2700 aircraft compared with the 4000 plus (ie full force) used in the French campaign so it was inevitable that their airpower was going to be spread thinly in a greatly enlarged theatre that grew greater the further east they went.

All this on a raw material base that was thin in the extreme and increasing distances for lines of supply and reinforcements.

[hank]

IMHO ... if Hitler had simply listened to his experienced generals he would have had a much better chance of holding on to what he had after 1940.  Only on a few occassions did his "hold at all cost" philosophy really work.
 
Manstein, Guderian, Rommel, Hausser, Rundtstedt, etc etc. were much better military strategist than Hitler.  Once he had France he should have consolidated and listened to those with the military brains.  Hitler did have a way with political strategy however exhibited by his rise to power and the takeover in the late '30's of several countries without a shot fired.  But war planning ??? ... I don't know ... he should have left that up to those who had the experience and know-how to win battles.
 
my 2 cents on this subject
 
hank
 

[watchtower]

ORIGINAL: hank

IMHO ... if Hitler had simply listened to his experienced generals he would have had a much better chance of holding on to what he had after 1940. 
hank

Listen???

A drug addicted, egomaniac, occult obsessed uni-testicled idiot didn't have a chance.
Unlike me .. I still have two.

[tacticon]

ORIGINAL: SemperAugustus

If the Germans started in 1942, the British would have even more time to catch up with the Germans, not to mention the French and Poles, who were caught retooling. If the Germans didn't annex Czechoslovakia they would have even more problems. The Japanese would not have had an easy time against the British, French or the Dutch.

Then there is the matter of the German finances which were not the best either, could they have really continued running up their foreign debts until 1942?

I agree with this point but you are drastically understate the Germany's financial
problems. The Third Reich's economic miracle was solely based on deficit spending.
Hitler’s was spending money at a far faster rate than it was coming in. When it became
harder to raise money legally he began to seize if from Jews and other “Enemies of the
Reich” . The Rhineland was reoccupied not because he desired political control over it
(which he basically had already), but to get access to the banks. Germany was
completely out of foreign reserves when he occupied Austria, and again when he occupied Czechoslovakia. He looted both countries and was able to finance the war machine expansion for 9 or 10 months each. Germany was going broke again in the fall of ’39. Hitler’s conquest time table was not set by him or his generals, it was set by his bankers!

Germany was spending enormous sums of money on war materials which generate absolutely no return on investment by themselves. The overseas customers for German products were boycotting Germany as Hitler’s behavior worsened. Must people forget that Germany once held 15% of the worlds overseas trade before World War 1 and got must of it back after World War 2. Trade was the number one reason why Imperial Germany and the Federal Republic became such an economic powerhouse. This was something Hitler never understood (being a socialist) and absolutely bugger up.

Hitler had no possibility of waiting until ’41 or ’42 to begin the war. His economy would have hyper-inflated in 40 when Germany was going bankrupt. There would have been no hard currency to pay for raw materials like steel, aluminum and oil. His economy ultimately did hyper-inflate by the end of the war anyway. Despite his success at looting western Europe, there were problems creeping in to the German economy by 41 anyway. By 1942, the civilian economy in Germany was completely wrecked. There were shortages in basic consumer goods and rationing. The economy in the occupied territories was even worse. The poorer the territory, the worse the rebellions were getting. Faced with a choice of starving or fighting people tend to go with fighting. Even if Hitler managed to beat the Russians and win at Normandy, he would have been looking at a series of unending rebellions all across Europe including in Germany itself. No matter what kind of success the Nazi’s enjoyed on the battlefield, there domestic and fiscal policies would have ultimately doomed them just like it doomed the Soviets.

Remember, always follow the money.

[SMK-at-work]

Tacticon is right on the money...cough......:0
 
Any scenario that has Germany winning involves a massive change in the nature of hitler and National Socialism - and neither was ever going to happen.
 
For example Hitler's "government" basically consisted of him saying wehat he thought should happen, then various subordinates interpreting what he said and setting their own empires to work on it "because the Fuhrer has ordered it" - which usually resulted in several agencies competing for resources to the same goal.
 
This was not a "bug" in Hitler's style - it was a "feature" - he deliberately had the SS competing with the Heer competing with the Luftwaffe competing with Speer & co incharge of "central" planning in order to keep them all weak and subservient.
 
The result is the "well known" duplication of effort in all sorts of areas, interservice rivalry and lack of co-operation, etc that fundamentally prevented Germany from realising it's potential - even if it wasn't going bankrupt!!

[Rooster]

ORIGINAL: TOCarroll

This is the title of a well written article in this month's edition of THE ARMCHAIR GENERAL (PG. 70). The author postulates that if, following the fall of France, Hitler had listend to the advice of Admiral Raeder (as well as Kietel, Jodel, and Halder) and sent 4 armoured divisions to Africa (Lybia), it would have resulted in a domino efect. To wit:
Take Egypt, Suez, and the near middle east. Closing the suez canal would allow the Axis to interdict the Eastern Med. That would knock out Greece (or allow for an easy capture).
Invade French North Africa, Dakkar, Malta, and The Middle East. Take Gibraltar (if anyone is still there).

My issue hasn't arrived yet, so now I'm really looking forward to this.

Liddel-Hart argued for the above. So did JFC Fuller. Neither of them slouches. Both of them British. If Iran had been taken by the Germans, Britain would be up the creek. So strategic was the Iranian (Persian) oil that the British government owned more than half the oil company (later to become BP) that had the concession. Without the Suez and the oil, Britain could be ignored for quite sometime.

[Clausel]

Hitler's decision to attack Russia with Britain undefeated was clearly the major error which doomed Germany to defeat. In an earlier post I had focused on his choice of timing for the eastern attack but of course this wasn't obligatory, especially as Russia was in no position to launch an attack for some years.

By opening a second front he negated his impressively successful foreign policy from 1933 onwards through the early war years. He had good historical examples - WWI and Napoleon which demonstrated what was likely to happen.

Germany instead had available a full range of options - airpower, uboats and a major advance in the Mediterranean which had every likelihood of success against Britain given the latter's strategic and military weakness at the time.

Of course what really sealed his fate was the crazy decision to declare war on the USA, when there was no need to and without which its difficult to see how a Europe first policy could have been sustained by the Roosevelt administration.

[SemperAugustus]

ORIGINAL: JSS

For the point of this discussion I give the engineers credit for fixing the landing gear and developing a more reliable engine (if they had stayed at full scale development). There's a good discussion on these problems and relatively easy fixes with the group that is building five production model Me 262's. Apparently two are flying now and the third is close to flying.

They are not using original engines. The Germans lacked know-how on the high temperature alloys necessary for reliable turbine blades, which is the reason the engines only lasted a few hours.

[cabron66]

ORIGINAL: watchtower

Too right Sarge you know the score - I have been map scouring and ploting our defensive posistion's made in 40-41. It would have been murder. A lot of theses posistions still exist. I will post some soon.

We are a nation born of invaders!! We are Romans, Celts, Saxons and vikings amongst others!!!!

BE AFRAID....BE VERY AFRAID!! [:D][8D][:'(]

While I find your antics somewhat amusing I find it necessary to remind you of one thing. You are a nation borne of SUCCESSFUL invaders: dozens of them, one after another over thousands of years. Far more numerous, in fact, than unsuccessful invaders.

Thank you for the comic relief, though. Jolly good show.

Paul

[.50Kerry]

ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn



Again... this is a fantasy thread so I'm just throwing out some speculation here.

What if there were giant radioactive squirrels carrying secret intercepts from Anglic high command that convinced Hitler to adopt a more balanced world view and lifestyle turning the nazis into sympathetic vegans who longed only to convert Jews to Xianity, and grew out of that pesky "wipe out and enslave the Slavs" motiff that they were anchored on and wanted to have a reverse Potemkin German Hospitality colony there on the Volga to shame the Russians into walking away from "the glories of Communism"?


What if, what if, what if.....?

Well if Hitler had had a Navy geared to Amphib ops, a Marine corps that was specialized in it, had established local air domination, had somehow broke up Team Anglia and kept us from either joining or backing the UK to the 9s, had somehow outgrown those "pesky racist manias" he had etc etc etc and the Nazis rolled several hard sixes several times.....


then "maybe" they'd have stood a chance....

Logistics and reality spoke otherwise.

[SMK-at-work]

ORIGINAL: SemperAugustus

ORIGINAL: JSS

For the point of this discussion I give the engineers credit for fixing the landing gear and developing a more reliable engine (if they had stayed at full scale development). There's a good discussion on these problems and relatively easy fixes with the group that is building five production model Me 262's. Apparently two are flying now and the third is close to flying.

They are not using original engines. The Germans lacked know-how on the high temperature alloys necessary for reliable turbine blades, which is the reason the engines only lasted a few hours.

They had the know-how - they couldn't get enough of the alloys for production tho - as a result the engines used "standard" high temp alloys that were nowhere near enough, and the engines lasted from 5-30 hours depending on how harshly they were used.

The main problem was inexperienced pilots pushing hte throttles full open, thus pouring fuel into the engine before there was corresponding airflow - the lack of airflow meant inadequate cooling air (only about 10-15% of the air in a jet engine is used for combustion) and hence the turbines quickly burned out.

[TOCarroll]

RE: 50 Kerry:   Damn![:@] I knew that we shopuld have sent those squirrels over in '36. Would have been easy to smuggle them into the olympics. [:'(]
 
I's like to thank all who contributed to this "what-if" thread. Some of you I agreee with (those who are correct[:D]), other I take issue with (those who are wrong[X(]). [JUST KIDDING FOLKS [&o][&o][&o]]. But there were a wide spectrum of lucid opinions presented on an issue that has been argued back and forth for more than 50 years.
 
Hope you get a chance to read the article.
 
I'm really looking forward to WIF....such a radical departure from the historical aproach, dealing more with logistics than weapons & tacticts, is VERY hard to put in a simulation.
 
BEST WISHES TO ALL[:)]
 
Tom OC

[Panzeh]

Had the French and Brits held their mobile elements back rather than surge into Belgium and get encircled, they could have easily contained the German invasion of France, resulting in a much more difficult situation for Germany.

Had the initial plan for the invasion of France not been lost, the French would have likely stalled the Germans on the plains of Belgium due to the fact that the French were quite ready for the first plan they came up with.

[TOCarroll]

Good point! Interesting how the Germans (Hitler) altered Case Yellow (Fall Gelb) when the plans were compromised, but kept to the original plan for Fall Blau (Case Blue), when the Russians recovered a copy of the plan. (Well, Hitler kept to the original plan for almost a week, before he started meddeling at Voroznth. If he had let things alone, who knows? [:-]

[RolandRahn_MatrixForum]

Hi!

I don't think that there is a realistic way for Hitler to win WWII.


Operation Sealion/BoB e.t.c.:
http://www.flin.demon.co.uk/althist/seal1.htm


Dunkirk:
Only a part of the BEF was encircled at Dunkirk, the rest continued to fight until the fall of France.
So, even if there would have been no evacuation from Dunkirk, the UK would still have more than enough first-line-professional troops to defend the UK.


North Africa:
"Supplying war" by Martin van Creveld indicates that logistic problems would have stopped Rommel anyway.


Waiting longer to start WWII:
The economic potential of the UK and France together was bigger thatn Germanies potential. After Munich 1938 (and, especially, after the invasion of the remainins Czechoslovalia in March, 1939), the allies started to gear up. Having two more years of an armarment race would have resulted in a Germany in 1941 that would have been stronger than in 1939, but it would have been weaker (in 1941) in relation to the UK/France than in 1939.



Waiting longer with Barbarossa:
The red army was in the process of being reorganized. After the Finnland desaster, even Stalin had to realize that the grerat purge wasn't a smart idea regarding the effectiveness of the red army. Wait one more year, and Germany would not have advanced even close to Moscow.



Building submarines in place for battleships:
Bismark: 196.8 Million Reichsmark
Tirpitz: 181.6 Million Reichsmark
Scharnhorst: 143.5 Million Reichsmark
Gneisenau: 146.2 Million Reichsmark
(Source: Breyer, Siegfried: "Schlachtschiffe und Schlachtkreuzer 1905-1970", Karl Mueller Verlag 1993 (first printed in 1969)

IIRC, a type VII-sub was available for 4 Million Reichsmark. Please note that Bismark and Tirpitz where finished *after* WWII started.

Let's say Germany could have more than 100 additional submarines in September 1939. In our time line they had 61(?), including the training boates in the baltic.
This looks impressive. The UK would have serious trouble in September 1939 and very serious trouble after the fall of France (when Germany had subbases on the atlantic coast).
There is just one minor problem.
In the late 30s, the UK build the King George V-class to counter the new german vessels.
If Germany would have build no battleships but submarines, would the UK still have behaved like in our time line? Or, would they have switched production from battleships to escorts (frigates and corvettes)?
This would mean that there would be a convoy system *much* earlier, that these convoys would be sufficiently protected (more than 8 escorts for one convoy and the situation for the attacking submarine becomes very difficult).
Furthermore, the public opinion in the UK would have remembered the german submarine campaign of WWI and probably allowed to spend more money on defense.
So, this doesn't seem to be a war-winner.


Capturing Moscow in 1941:
This would have been difficult (again, van creveld's "Supplying war"), and why should the USSR have stopped fighting after the fall of Moscow? Isn't there a danger that they would have killed Stalin, thereby removing Hitlers best leader (I regard Stalin as Hitlers best military leader as well as I regard Hitler as the best military leader working for the allies)?


Wonder weapons (Tiger, Royal Tiger, Me262, Arado0234, TypeXXI):
Tiger, Royal Tiger:
There is a wonderfull book by Christopher Wilbeck: "Sledgehammers". It is an analysis of the german heavy tank units. Nice prototypes, but highly unreliable. Other books - the combat histories for heavy tank units 503, 507 and 508 - support this. Between the lines you read of horrible losses due to breakdowns e.t.c., especially in the history for unit 507. By the time they would have ironed out these toothing problems, the allies would have the Pershing, the Centurion, the IS-3 e.t.c. in huge numbers. And more than enough fighter-bombers.
Me-262, Arado-234:
Interesting constructions. The Me-262 had an armament that was dangerous for any allied heavy bomber. However, without materials like tungsten, they could not be built. Germany built them despite shortages of these materials, resulting in extremely unreliable engines.
Moreover, you could not dogfight with a Me-262. When turning hard, it lost speed at an alarming rate. Once having lost the speed advantage, a P-51 or P-47 had a very good chnce to down a Me-262. When starting and landing, a Me-262 would need fighter planes for protection!
Type XXI:
Great construction. And the potential for mass construction. Building them in segments can't be wrong. The US did it with their liberty ships, so why shouldn't Germany be able to use that technology, too?
There is only a minor problem.
A liberty ship does normally not operate underwater. It's draft was 27 ft 9.25 in (8.5 m). While the draft of a type XXI was smaller (6.3 Meters), the pressure in the welding seams would have been at maximum when diving. At 100 ft deep, it would have been more than 3 times pressure than for a liberty ship. It is highly unlikely that those massed-produced type XXIs would have been very reliable. Moreover, at this point of the war, the allies had more than enough escort ships to counter the submarine thread.
Oh, and please do not forget, there was one wonder weapon that had the potential to decide the war on it's own: The atomic bomb. Only problem was that it was an US wonder weapon and that the US would have it sooner and in huger quantities than germany.


So, I really see no chance for a german victory and only a low chance for preventing complete defeat. Maybe....
....giving independence to Belorussia, Ukranine e.t.c., thereby winning the local population as allies (would have demanded a complete change in course for the NSDAP, but might have led to a bloody stalemate on the eastern front)
....after the fall of France, declaring that lorraine and versage (the territories captured by Germany in 1870/71, recaptured by France in 1914/18) would be the last and final territorial demand. Give independence to Poland (only annex territories that where part of the german empire between 1871 and 1914), do the same with France, but keep France occupied as long as UK is at war. No BoB (except a few reconnisance flights over england, and a massive CAP in northern France), no submarine campaign (except against warships)=less support in the USA for the UK. Problem: What if the UK is still at war in, lets say, 1943 and at this moment, the USSR attacks? And, it would demand a huge change for the NSDAP).
Perhaps....
What if the Georg Elser would have been successfull? Hitler would have been killed on November 8th, 1939; Goering would have taken over. Since Goering was more interested in his personal well-being, there might have been the possibility for a radical change in the german politics - don't get me wrong, Goering was an antisemitic criminal, but IMHO not as worse as Hitler. He followed Hitler in everything (including the Holocaust), but would he have done such things without Hitler?


Just my 0.02 Euro,
Roland

[TOCarroll]

Excellent observations. We keep running into the, "Germany could have won if the didn't have Hitler," arguement. But no Hitler, no WW2. A point to keep in mind is that some of the scientists integral to the atom bomb project fled Germany or Italy to escape political persecution (antisemitism and other such features of the regemes).
 
Tom OC 

[RolandRahn_MatrixForum]

I agree with you. However, the bomb plot by Georg Elser was on November 8th, 1939. What would have happened if Hitler would have been killed on that date? Goering wouldn't have started WWII, but would he be able to end it when coming to power on November 9th, 1939?

Kind regards,
Roland