Hi all,
Im new at this forum. I am interested in WW2 since my childhood. My grandfather was in Germany for his college education between years 1939 - 1943. He was always telling me stories about years of wars. He even made bet with his friends if Hitler can capture Paris or not (His answer was “No” and he lost the bet). I even have his photos in Germany but I am not sure if I can upload them here because they are not war photos, just simple daily life photos.
My first topic is about alternative history. Some people claim that if germans was captured Moscow, they could win the war. Well… lets start from the beginning. According to some historians, attacking to Soviet Union was Hitler’ s worst fault. Actually, I dont agree with that because I dont see what else he could do. Considering the naval superiority of Britain, It was almost impossible to occupy British Island. And the time was running against Hitler; it was a matter of time for USA to join fight together with Allies, also Stalin’ s army getting stronger everyday. So, Hitler decided to launch a surprise offensive to Soviet Union. The objective was to destroy enemy divisions fastly, capture Moscow and finish the war before winter. But this plan was failed, and in 1943 the defeat was sure for the Axis. The question is, was this plan realistic? I dont think so… because considering that they could not even capture Leningrad or Staligrad, It was just a dream for Germans to capture Moscow. Even they could capture it, Russians would not surrender immediately because USA was helping them to supply their troops.
Finally lets consider that everything went right for Germans and they captured Moscow… There was an invention, for some historians it started a new age: it is the atomic bomb. Germans were far from inventing it. Even they invented it, I dont see anyway for them to drop it to USA. But USA could easily drop them over the German cities by using British Airports.
In conclusion, Germans would definetly lose this war. What is your opinion?
If Hitler did capture Moscow, and assuming that he captured Stalin and STAVKA at the same time, then he’d at least eliminate the 2nd front that Germany keeps creating for itself. But if he didn’t find some way to either destroy/occupy or isolate the UK, we’d eventually take the fight into Europe anyways. The Eastern Front definitely siphoned off a lot of German resources (2 million men compared to 700,000 deployed in Western Europe in late 1944) but the strategic bombing campaign that us and the British carried out severely hampered Germany’s ability to produce advanced military hardware. Not that it didn’t stop them from devising new and ingenious weapons that are being used in modified forms today, but in any case, I think that kicking the Russians out of the war would have made it a LOT bloodier for us to do, but it would still have been won.
Um. We already have a thread on this. Please look through the “German” military forum and search in the future…
Check this thread for such speculations:
http://ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?p=164849#post164849