I’m a noob on t pc so i’ll end (for my part of this tread u as said go on ofcourse) but Rising did made good points (imo), and everyboby has his/her point s, thoughts etc. but i got to leaf not that im coward but Greetings
What if he didn’t go into the USSR?
He’d already won the European war.
And he’d probably hold Western and Middle Europe, and the Balkans.
Plus he’d have adequate forces to hold in North Africa, although like Greece he’d have been better off leaving the Italians to deal with the consequences of their ambitions exceeding their abilities.
If he didn’t pointlessly declare war on the US after Japan attacked, he might have held what he had.
It’s not like everywhere the Nazis went they were reviled as fascists. Fascism, or at least right wing conservatism, was prevalent in Europe, from Franco in Spain to the Vichy regime under the Nazis in France to sundry other European countries under Nazi occupation.
There’s an old saying, something to the effect that to catch a thief, one should set a thief. So to understand a confused poster…uh, never mind.
Had he?
Hitler himself didn’t seem to think so and Britain, plus other European nations, still had considerable forces fighting him under the ruberic of Free French, Free Polish, Free Dutch, Free Norwegian, etc. As long as these forces and the British, backed by the material help of the US, remained in the war, Hitler could not accurately claim he had “already won” the European war
Possibly, but not for certain, and that was profoundly troubling to Hitler and his plans for a greater Germany. Moreover, since the British blockade of Continental Europe still held firm, Germany (and occupied Europe) would be growing weaker while his adversaries in the West were growing stronger. Neither Roosevelt nor Churchill would have tolerated a Nazi-dominated western Europe indefinitely
To hold what? Several hundreds of thousands of square miles of useless sand? In order to actually win the war Hitler had to completely destroy Britain’s position in North Africa and the mid-east. Neither the Soviet Union nor the United States would have wanted this to happen and it’s likely that any German attempts to accomplish that goal would have drawn the US and the Soviet Union into the war against the Axis. Furthermore, Germany needed a considerable navy in order to successfully transport and supply it’s army anywhere but continental Europe; given the Royal Navy’s superiority, Germany’s navy had no chance of fulfilling any such mission.
Were Fascists and Fascist sympathizers large majorities in most European countries? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I seriously doubt it. I do know that in the countries that counted, Britain and the US, the Nazis were deeply despised and reviled as thugs or worse. In the Soviet Union, public opinion counted for little, but the political leadership certainly had no illusions about the Nazis nor their ultimate intentions.
In the early spring of 1941, Germany appeared to be riding high and holding the winning cards, but in reality the factors that ultimately spelled the doom of the Axis were beginning to converge. The single most important issue which enabled the ultimate Allied victory was Hitler’s inability to force Britain to capitulate in the summer of 1940. To be sure Hitler’s later mistakes hastened the trend but did not significantly alter the factors that would lead to Axis defeat
I was thinking about another possibilities for Hitler to improve his chances of wining the war, since this thread is about speculations I feel free of asking if Hitler or Germany as a nation made any attempt to get some “sense of belonging” with the americans of german ancestors, which according to different sources is the largest ethnic group in America, http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762137.html, was it possible in the USA by the 1930’s to have a double citizenship ?, the point is that a closest relationship between Germany and the Americans of german ancestry would have made more difficult for Roosevelt the task of leading his country against Germany in WWII
Nope. The German-American Bund was never a major force. I don’t think the U.S. has historically recognized “duel-citizenship” and (having a German Urgroßmutter and living in a town called “Hamburg”–largely founded to attract German expatriated farmers–is just actually south of Buffalo, New York where “Friends of New Germany” was founded), I can probably state that the political ties to the Fatherland were politically weak by 1940, and certainly made little difference in 1917-1919…
Hitler more or less saw the U.S.A. as a perversity of unseen “Jewish hands” manipulating or controlling a vast puppet show decorated with the trappings of democracy…
He should have waited 2 years before invading Poland.
Could you please elaborate on that comment. Why do you believe waiting a further 2 years would have helped?
He would hopefully have been assasinated by his own people.
Or Werner Von Braun would have given him his ICBM.
You pick, the subject is purely rhetorical, yes?
Mit Fruendlichen Grusen,
gewehrpatrone
The original question was a theoretical one about what Hitler could have done to win WW2. Hence the reason I asked you to elaborate on why waiting for a further 2 years to invade Poland could have helped him.
That way a discussion on the pros and cons can be had as to whether it would have been feasible or not and to possibly expand or elaborate on the idea.
Won the european war?
Hitler had won the european war as the US have “won” Afghanistan and Iraq … :oops:
Amen to that.
Actually, I’m more interested in how Hitler planned to hold on to his gains if he had won the war. It seems impossible that could have subdued all those populations for very long since his armed forces would have to be on the “alert” for decades over a massive amount of teritory. Doesn’t seem very feasible or likely to me.
Having an unsinkable aircraft carrier off the coast of France was not only galling, it was rather fatal.
It’s interesting to note that the first time - the very first time - that Germany came up against a fighter force that was equal or better than its own, it was defeated. The advantage of surprise did not exist where Britain was concerned and deep flaws within the German air establishment did not take long to materialise: they had no 4-engine long range bomber force; their fighters could remain over a portion of England only for a very short time measured in minutes; their Stukas were useless over England and that force was withdrawn rather early on because it was a sitting duck to the Hurricanes and Spitfires of fighter command; the English had a solid Chain Home radar system that was well-integrated with fighter command; British scientists were able to anticipate Germany’s various “beam” systems at every turn; Germany’s air force was “run” by a strange rather doped-up individual who enjoyed Hitler’s confidence; and of course, for the most part, England could “read” Germany’s encoded wireless traffic for nearly the whole war.
Even though the German army made “plans” to invade England, they were marked by a singular lack of confidence in the German navy’s ability to open and maintain a corridor across the Channel. If push came to shove, the Home Navy would have been committed and sacrificed to wipe out this attempt.
I believe that Hitler wanted war, but in his soul probably craved Gotterdammerung more, and that is what he finally got.
Can’t cite the sources off hand but there are plenty of countries in the world that recognize dual US-other citizenship.
Hitler never intended to invade or fight Britain soil. he wanted peace. It was blunt miscalculation. And yes, you can make the scale of World War II the extent of that as well. German long term policy and short term tactics were evidence of this.
Hitler never wanted to fight anyone, he wanted all the countries in Europe just to accept him as their lord and master, Eastern Europe to be his Germanic Empire.
He hoped it would carry on the way Czechoslovakia, Austria, Romania, Hungary etc went, joining willingly or coerced he did not care, just join.
So no he never wished to fight GB but he was willing to. He just made a few minor mis-calculations.
OHHH you misunderstand. Hitler didn’t what to fight the UK, because he saw the English were part of his ‘glorious Aryan race’. He was so sure that given enough time and bullying, they would see the sense of him cleansing Europe of so-called ‘inferior races’.
From his point of view that’s what the English had already done around the world for centuries when they established colonies for their empire. He saw that Germany had as much right to expand east and take the land from the ‘inferior races’, as the United states government had to take the land from the North American Indians or for that matter the English and French empires built on the ashes of all their conquest around the globe.
Hitler ultimately believed he could convince the English to join him in his war against an American lead ‘Jewish world’. Don’t forget a lot of the rubbish that made up nazi racial doctrine came from the many 19th century English writings on “social Darwinism” that admonished them of their guilt for killing tens of millions of people to establish an empire that rule ½ the world.
Actualy Hitler just wanted the Eastern Libenshraum as he put it on his Main Kampf. He believed the West should let him to clean up the Europe from “judo-bolshevism” and join to Germany in Crusade to the East. What if ,as he pointed to exchange the 3 mln of jews , who rules by the Soviet Russia , by the 3 mln of Germans. The Russians , he wrote, should just get benefit from it.Hitler believed the new master-race governors would be more human for slavs then the jews who had organized, according the NS views, the such bloody genocide like Holodomore in Ukraine.I read Hitler was seriously distressed when Britain has declared war on Germany in september 1939. He felt as he was betrayed.
Have allies that were “true” allies not hindrances. WHAT IF Japan had let sleeping giants sleep and had attacked Russia from the west? That would have kept all the Siberian divisions and their T-34’s in the east and Moscow, probably, would have fallen. But alas, when Japan attacked the USA, for the first time in Hitler’s military adventures, he arbitrarily declares war on America (dumb). What if he hadn’t? The American public had been very anti war until Japans attack. But Hitler had not attacked the USA. Would the Americans have gone along with Roosevelt’s declaration of war on Germany, lacking a German declaration? We will never know
And then there’s Hitler’s other, stellar ally, Italy? They got Hitler involved in a war he had no interest in. Hitler had to come to the rescue of Mussolini when he failed against the British in north Africa. Staying out of Italy’s failure in Africa would have freed up about a quarter million men, hundreds of tanks, artillery pieces, 88’s and all the other equipment to add to the Russian front. Then to compound Hitler’s problems, Italy fails miserably when they attack Greece and once again Hitler must come to the rescue. That one failure cost Hitler 6 weeks, the time it would have taken to capture Moscow.
What single thing did Hitler gain from his alliances? Nothing.
What if is a fun game, like buying a lottery ticket, what if?
Just a few things,
Oil
Manpower, some of the equipment may not have been up to German, Soviet or Western Allied standards but some of it was very good. The troops quite often fought well and bravely despite what is the common cliche for them being useless cowards.
The allies or co-belligerents included Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy, Finland, Japan and at one stage which is often conveniently overlooked the USSR.
Japan was not about to embark on fighting the Soviets again having recently lost against Zhukov at Kalin Gol. Even in 1945 when the Soviets attacked the Japanese troops in Manchuria the Soviet Armour was not all modern types or even old T34’s, there were still BT tanks at least employed there. The T34 was also not the reason the German forces failed to reach Moscow, the KV1 had a greater effect when it was encountered as the T34 could be defeated by German AT weapons. The T34 by the way suffered from some very grave problems at the start due to poor design, crew training and spares. Many were lost through simple breakdowns.