Could American and British troops succeed in Europe without Soviet offensives in the east? To my mind they would have never dared to even land in Europe if the Germans hadn’t send the bulk of their troops to the eastern front.
What are your ideas on this issue?
I think they woud have been sent back into the Atlantic by the Germans. Remeber, 3/4 of the German Military was on the Eastern Front, and most of the experienced soldiers were on the Eastern Front. IF they were all at the beaches, and all of there armor, artillary, etc. was at the beaches, they would have massacred the Allies. But, the Allies but probably try to invade Europe from the south (ie: Italy)…but that’s a whole other story.
Not only would America and Britain try invading Europe through Italy, they did. Italy is part of Europe. And they invaded it successfully. Germany only became involved after Italy surrendered. It wouldn’t have mattered if Germany was involved on the Eastern front or not.
The focus for a land invasion needs to be shifted from just the land situation in Europe to to include the wider naval situation. Germany was steadily losing at sea, and it had nothing to do with the Soviets. British and American success on the sea would have had consequences for Germany’s ability to resist an invasion of Europe. If Germany couldn’t attack the sea lanes supplying a beachhead, it risked the beachhead becoming established.
Germany also faced the problem of having an immense coastline to defend in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theatres, while America and Britain could strike anywhere along that coastline from bases in England and North Africa. Germany then had the problem of shifting forces to meet an attack and, worse, several attacks. The defender’s inevtiable indecision in responding to an attack, as happened with the Normandy landings, always risked the invader establishing a beachhead before it could be ejected.
While Germany had much larger forces than Britain and America if not fighting the Soviets, it still had problems in moving them around and concentrating them against likely invasion points, or actual invasion points.
I wouldn’t say it’s a foregone conclusion that a well planned and well executed American and British invasion, such as D Day was, had to be thrown back into the Atlantic. Not least because it might have come up through, say, Italy or the south of France in the Mediterranean.
One would certainly think so given that US production alone was far greater than that of Germany. The US could send in more tanks, planes and guns than the Germans could ever hope to muster. Adding the British and commonwealth forces in makes things even more one-sided.
Also allied airpower could massacre German ground forces that sought to repel an invasion.
couls the breathing space of not fighting the eastern front allowed teh germans to beef up and consoldate their hold on western europe. And been more able to fight off the wesern allies, had 70+% of their forces been facing off the russians?
knowing that the americans would becomign at some point would or could they not have developed longer range bombers (after all the FW200 could meance the eastern USA)
would they have tried another invasion of britian?
and if sucessful would franco been more prepared to support hitler?
what if the japanese had attacked Pearl harbour a year later?
the americans we not exactly rushing to war before that event?
in the long run them US industrial might would have been a significant factor, but lest not forget, that despite what most people imgaine german war production was ironically increasing dramtically in the later years of the war, depsite the bombing campaign (with the exception of 1945) and what they did with these production units compared to the 3-6:1 production advantage the allies had.
They didnt have the fuel, mind you…
just a few thoughts
The Western Allies would still have won the war, although it may have taken longer - Allied air power would have seen to that.
Germany would still have been hamstrung with having Hitler in power too - having all the tanks in the world won’t help if no-one has the bottle to wake your commander up so that he can give the order for them to be used.
It is a chance of that the allies might have won without russia but wolfgang had a point that most of germanys troops were at the eastern front trying to take russia and if they were not focused on russia and on the beaches instead yea you should get the idea
If Germany didn’t advance beyond Poland, where was it going to get its oil from to move its troops all over Europe to meet the numerous points of potential attack by the Americans and British?
Well, we would still have had the atomic bomb first…
In any case, I think a frontal assault on “Fortress Europe” would have largely been out of the question, as it was even in 1942-43. The assault would have had to take place in the Balkans, as well as in Italy, with landings passing through the Middle East and a solidified North Africa. And Hitler did conquer a large swath of the Soviet Union, providing food stuffs and soldiers to buck up the depleted Wehrmacht. So yes, if Britain remained in the War, I think the Anglo-American alliance could have defeated the Nazis, but many more people would have died with casualties being comparitivly enormous. Of course, a separate peace with Japan would have had to been reached. Also don’t forget the Soviets would still have been a factor forcing the Germans to still deploy a large number of troops and tanks in defense. And I think there would have been a much larger chance of a negotiated settlement with a greater possibility of an anti-Nazi military coup seizing the German gov’t without the binding fear of the Soviets…
Oh, this “what-if” stuff is pretty mind-boggling…
Good points, Rising Sun, especially the one about not knowing where such an attack might take place. Many German generals thought the allied invasion would come at the most obvious place which was the Pas de Calais and the allies certainly encouraged them in this belief. The essential problem for the defenders is that they don’t know exactly where or when so a schwerpunkt would be most difficult to identify, and then the contriobution of the local maquis in hindering German transport would also be crucial.
The other thing is that by the time of Normandy, the United States had accumulated vast knowledge on how to conduct amphibious landings. These were lessons learned at very great cost in the Pacific which resulted in the development of special weapons, ships and tactics specifically suited to seaborne invasions.
The allies benefited rather greatly from the fact that weather systems in northern Europe generally move from west to east so the allies always knew what the weather would be and the Germans, with 99% of their buoys and weather ships knocked out, did not.
Thus the release of German forces to the West would have presented great difficulties, they would not have been insurmountable ones.
It’s amzing Kato ,but i/m fully agree with you.
Now you can rise your UPA as much as you could;)
Hi Nick
Sure you right the USA should get the A-bomb first - but how a long time they could hold the monopoly?
In fact the germans could repeate it in 1946. And then …
They had already the A-4 rocet and possibly they could get two-stage trancecontinental A-9/10 in the 1946.
BTW if the USSR were out of WW2 ( this is a pure abstract conclusion though) the war could be continied in the 1946-47 nd probably later.
becous i have no any doubt using the 170 Eastern division additionally with 50 western the Germnany could esy crushed the allies in everywhere in the European continent - Italy / Balcan/Normandy.
Oh, this “what-if” stuff is pretty mind-boggling…
this is ONLY the right thought in whole this thread
I really, really doubt that - check out the Farm Hall transcripts. That’s where Heisenberg and the rest of the German nuclear programme were interned immediately after the war. Their rooms were bugged, and when they heard about Hiroshima they didn’t believe it - they thought that a critical mass of Uranium would be the size of a room.
Not only that, but they were pretty clueless when it came to obtaining fissile material. They never realised that Graphite was a suitable moderator (their samples were contaminated heavily with Boron - a ravenous neutron absorber - and they never noticed!), and when they eventually got enough heavy water they managed to blow up their reactor through what can only be described as spectacular incompetence.
In summary, I would have to see some VERY strong evidence before I believe that the Germans could have built a nuclear weapon in 1946…
If we take the long view, German occupation of Europe and European Russia was doomed to failure. If we consider that WW2 was an extension of WW1 and it was an extension of the Franco-Prussian War, then it’s not difficult to see the 19th century origins and assumptions that underlay this war. What the instigators failed to see because they were too caught up in it was that these wars, horrible as they were, were really outmoded. Like colonialism, it was the end of an era. Wars of conquest accorded no rights of permanence on the conquerors. If anything, the speed of change meant that conquest was very limited in its opportunity and success. The Germans certainly learned that; the Russians learned it in Eastern Europe; the Americans should have learned it in Vietnam but didn’t. Hitler was quite myopic about this and thought he had a limited opportunity to pull it off. He was right, but failed to see that his opportunity to hold on to it was even more limited. In the end the number of divisions would have made a ‘local’ difference, but never a permanent one.
The Germans do not appear to have been very close to developing a bomb. The USSR was able to build an atomic bomb by 1949 but their effort was aided by spies in the US which the Germans did not have.
i think it was almost impossible to land on D day the Soviet offensives in the east killed the German army ! outnumbering it 1 to 5 but no one say any thing about the hellp that the soviets got from the U.S.A and the UK ever one who know about WW2 . knows that the German Army was doing good aginst the soviets in Operation Barbarossa but in Kursk July 4 - 17, 1943 the german start losing the war . why some one will ask ? the answer is the hellp that soviet got . so i think its not fair to say that the soviet was the main factor that germany lost the WW2 .
I think pdf27 nicely put this issue to rest. There is no way the Germans were getting the bomb within’ a decade of WWII…
BTW if the USSR were out of WW2 ( this is a pure abstract conclusion though) the war could be continied in the 1946-47 nd probably later.
It probably could have gone into 1950…
becous i have no any doubt using the 170 Eastern division additionally with 50 western the Germnany could esy crushed the allies in everywhere in the European continent - Italy / Balcan/Normandy.
Yes well, the Soviet Union doesn’t fall off the face of the earth here. Dozens of German divisions would have had to guard against a Soviet attack.
Also, many of those units were tied down into occupation and internal security duties. And in fact, the USA was quite capable of fielding more divisions than it ever did, and it’s war economy far outstripped anything that has ever existed, and simply dwarfed even the height of German industrial output. The point is that the Wehrmacht could not have defended everywhere, for “he who defends everything defends nothing” or something like that. In any case, and Anglo-American pincer would have been gradual, and we would have suffered massive casualties, and the world would look far different that it does now, but I do believe that the Allies could have theoretically overcome Germany eventually…
this is ONLY the right thought in whole this thread
Well, I got something right anyway.
Cheers.
It’s always interesting to discuss the German distraction of the Eastern Front and its effects on the invasion. At the same time, I wonder what effect having many Allied forces focused in the Pacific Theater had on the timing, location and scope of the European invasion?
Russia soaked up the Germans war machine like a particularly bloody sponge.
The Western offensive would have been impossible for many years had they not been in the war.
true, 1000yd, except that B29s based in England would have atom bombed the Germans into submission in August 1945. That bomb was really designed to be used against the Germans and not the Japanese who should have surrendered bu who happened to still be combatants when the tests were completed.