Well, it would have been a major surprise to everyone, including the Japanese, given that the only ways Japan could attack the USSR from the west would have been (a) to go east across America, the North Atlantic, and northern Europe or (b) go over the North Pole and sneak down through Finland or (c) go through the Indian Ocean and up through Iran or (d) fly west over the USSR to the western jump off point or … or … look at a map for other impossible possibilities, all of which were beyond Japan’s resources then. And now.
You might like to check out the forces the USSR kept against the Japanese throughout the war, even in the darkest days of the German advance.
The Japanese didn’t attack because they faced Soviet forces sufficient to defeat them, at least if Japan attacked from the east, which is where its forces were stationed and would advance from relative to the Soviets.
If Hitler had no interest in a war in North Africa, why did he get involved in it?
He feared, correctly, that african soil prevented southern Allied landing.
True enough at some degree.
Indeed Germany had grown an envy towards 19th century or older colonial succes of other “older” nations.
And of course western society featured scientific and cultural racism as well. Belgian King Leopold II had native black people of Congo as part of “fauna” planted on the world exhibition in +/-1900… USA created a parallel black society similar to south africa.
But again, the context explains but never defends.
Till today …
(which extended into the sixties …)
Hello all:
There is quite a few things that Hitler (Germany and even posibly Japan) could have done to either will the war or least force a favorable outcome, most I have seen though would require the equivalent of a crystal ball by Hitler. Generally have noticed throughtout the war, things and decisions were made for a reason and didn’t have the benefit of hindsight such that we have. Take for example the early posting that Hitler get Spain in the war and then take Gilbraltor and turning the Med into an Axis lake. Without going into much detail on how that benefits the Axis in the long run and posible consequences, Hitler did have a discussion with Franco (Spain) about getting that country into the war on Germany’s side. Franco had his wish list and Hitler decided that it wasn’t worth the cost to get Spain in the war, though did take the “Blue” division help in Russia. What could have changed Hitlers mind with the information that he knew at the time to decide that the cost was worth it?
We all have our favorite what if scenario and I will talk about my later here in this post. Decisions in the war were made for reasons even if we don’t agree with them, Hitler didn’t decide to invade Russia on 20th June, 1941 and then invade two days later, anybody who knows anything about Hitlers atitude about Russia will know that he planned to invade Russia sometime, it was a center point to his thinking. Any alternate history that has Germany not invading Russia should have a very good reason Hitler would decide to change a critical point of his views. That is what I’m looking for in alternate history, why it might have changed without the benefit of being able to look into the future.
My favorite on the European side is that Hitler should have ignored England and done more to finish off the Empire before invading Russia. Other reply’s are of course correct that Hitler was hoping that the British Empire would join him or at least negotiate a peace for he invading Russia. When the British said no, it wasn’t beyond Hitler to attack for punishment as in the invasion of Yugoslavia. There were posible various ways to defeat England, but starving them out as in the U-boat war would be a long term plan and Hitler didn’t have much patience. Other commentators are also correct that a German invasion of the British was daunting at best, but most miss a point from what I have seen. The Japanese may have had “Victory Disease” after six months of easy conquest, the Allies had what I call “Defeat Disease” and the German military at that time was the “Can Do” force at the time.
Though I would also like to discuss the how and ability of the German invasion, does anybody have any reason why Hitler might put off (delay) is invasion of Russia to put England out of the picture?
Seriously, I don’t think Germany had the resources and material to invade England.
It wasn’t designed and reinforced enough for anything actually, but had a lot of luck in reality.
If you are talking resources, then Germany shouldn’t have been able to do much, the invasion of Norway in face of a vastly superior British Navy, the invasion of France with England/France having more tanks (and better tanks) than Germany and the German invasion of Russia. Germany did have luck in the begginning of the war, but also made much of its own luck with audacity and boldness in the face of Allied timidness. The Allies in the first couple years of the war very much had what I call “Defeat Disease” and was the cause of much of German early victories.
The first German attempt on England after the fall of France was very much a haphazard affair with little planning or even conviction of how hard a fight it would be. I believe Germany did have the resources to attack/invade England though by no means was it going to be easy or quick. There were many other ways to attack England also, such as bringing Spain into the war to take Gilbraltor and seal off that end of the Med from the Allies. Hitler wasn’t a patient person, waiting around for the U-boats to starve England to death wasn’t an option for him, he was more into the direct attack.
But my original question is still out there, what would have changed Hitler’s mind or historical reality? The German invasion of England is just one of my pet idea’s, there are plenty more of them out there on how Germany (or for the most part the Axis) could have won the war, but how does the actual historical decision get changed (without someone going back in time and showing them the error of their ways)?
A german invasion of the UK was possible especially after Norway. The Admiralty admitted this much to Churchill as late as September 1940. Admiral Pound told Churchill that up to 100,000 German troops could land in a ‘port to port’ invasion and their was nothing his navy could do to prevent this. His belief was any counter to invasion of the UK , was the job of the Army and the RAF , not the RN which already had its hands full covering the convoy routes. Churchill ,while admittting this possible, belived that no more than 50,000 could land , while Admiral Pound would later admitt that this total could have reached 200,000troops.
The Admiralty believed they could halt any flow of supplies to sustain any landed force,but such Admiralty calculations were based on UK assumptions of consumption vs flow & logistics. The Germans showed their supply system during the war ,was was capable of sustaining power projection over considerable distances, as in North Africa where the amount of supplies were something like 1/10th to 1/4 of what a German motorised army demanded in Russia.
Allied doctrine was dependant on a ‘logistics based attritional warfare’ to sap and slowly defeat an enemy country/morale, while German docrtine was dependant on operational maneuver to bring close battle to the enemy army quickly , leading to their collapse. One effort is an order of magnitude harder to achieve than the other. Allied prewar doctrine and strategy hinged on the assmuption that they could hide behind the Maginot line for the two years it took to fully mobilise its troops/navy/airforce & total war economy, plus allow their strategic bomber force to bomb the Germans ‘back to the stone age’. None of these assmptions/calculations turned out to be valid.
Like it or not the Germans were at the top of their game near the end of 1940, while the UK was probably at its lowest point at the same time.
Hitler was a person formed by malfortune and a very raw mark of failure.
He was deeply convinced of hard and open bravery in every sense of the word on every level. At the time he knew what went wrong, he turned to Gotterdämmerung. There simply was no grey zone
The fact the RAF forced the Germans away, leads to the fact the British would have ruled the skies anyway… There couldn’t “suddenly” have been another Luftwaffe to fight with. The UK could have bombed everyone even with the small range planes, while the Germans didn’t have adequate medium-range bombers.
And why would the UK hold away their navy anyway? :shock: a supply route is small use if the main land is under sudden attack.
Invading the UK with 200.000 troops? lol !
It would take at least that much casualties…
And by the way: You assume the USA wouldn’t have joined the Allies if the Germans would threaten the vast UK soil?
You take the official US propaganda a bit to serious. They would never let a European power become that strong. The Japs were a scapegoat …
The Germans controlled the channel in the summer of 1940 attacking British ports and conovys at will and their was precious little the RAF could do to prevent this. Worse RAF bombing was terrible until mid war. Most targets were missed by average of 20 miles over Germany. Some of the best bomber squadrons had miss distances of 60-80 miles during this period.
Over the Channel, the miss distances would have been more like 10km CEP. In one week of bombing in Sept 1940 the best they could do was to destroy 65 German barges all lined up row upon row in easy to find ports. While the RAF claimed to have destroyed 265 vessels , German sources report only 65 destroyed, which is common in BDA.
The key to defeating the UK was to go in like Norway, with every thing at once, so the enemy command gets overwhelmed and quickly losses control of the battle. If the magnetic mines were not used and just stockpiled to be used en mass only when the invasion began, the Germans could have bottled up the RN in its ports sufficently to buy enought time to cross the channel and establish beachheads.
At least one out of every three RN ship would be sunk just trying to get through the mine barriers to the ‘Straits of Dover’ . Historically allied attacks on German conovys only averaged one enemy ship sunk per attacking sortie, while suffering a 1 in 3 chance of attacker being damage/sunk . So it would take couple thousand sortie to sink 1/2 of the 4000 civilian vessels the Germans were assembling for the invasion. And in the process they could lose hundreds more warships and take weeks.
As it was UK survaillance of the coastal waters was Generally poor, even in the channel detection of enemy ships in the channel featured a delay of 6-8 hours and 3/4 of the ships transitting the channel in the first half of the war went un challenged.
While the USA would not like to see the UK fall it would take them weeks/months to get involved and the battle would likely be over by then.
The Germans launched a surprise attack from close range, with some forces actually invading by land and air not the sea. The Kreigsmarine was pretty much gutted during the naval operation by the British. Air power won the battle for the Germans.
You may need to actually look at what tanks were employed by the French and British as yes they had more tanks in total and some were better in some ways than the German ones but it was not a case of the allies having more better tanks than the Germans. The French had since the end of WW1 suffered from a sort of war phobia and the leadership was indecisive but I would not say the allies suffered from defeat disease. Many battles and campaigns were fought bravely but the troops were simply outfought by generally better tactics.
The first German attempt to what on England?. If you mean the Battle of Britain then it was a planned operation but the Germans made the mistake of underestimating the RAF while overestimating their own power. They lost the battle of attrition.
Germany may have had the resources to invade as in Army type but it never had the Naval power to or the transports to do the job. The kriegsmarine and the Wehrmacht could not agree on locations for the invasion, the Luftwaffe could not agree with either on the targets. In the end with the failure of the Luftwaffe to meet Hitlers directives as a pre-requisite to invade Zeelowe was postponed and never resurrected so no second attempt.
Hitler tried to get Spain involved or at least allow German forces to pass through to attack Gibraltar but Franco would not allow either.
The U Boat arm did not get upto its minimum required strength of boats that Donitz said he needed (300) it got upto 100 boats at sea for the first time in Aug 1942 and the number included those on way to patrol and returning. Donitz required 100 on patrol with a further 100 on way or returning. The number stayed above 100 for 11 months peaking at 159 on 29th April 1943 just in time for the devastation of the U Boat fleet.
Uh-oh, somebody’s taking the unmentionable aquatic mammal seriously!
May I suggest you go and read just about any serious look at the German plans for Seelöwe - it would have been a suicide run had it ever been attempted.
- The shipping used was overwhelmingly converted Rhine barges. These were generally made of cast iron, not steel - so extremely fragile and at risk of battle damage. Many were unpowered, so the speed of advance would have been about 3 knots giving a transit time of ~24 hours.
- They also have a very low freeboard when loaded (even nowadays it’s common to see them on the Rhine with decks awash), meaning that either the Germans would have to accept heavy losses from the weather in any sort of sea or their carrying capacity would have been severely limited.
- They had no attrition reserve among the barges - the supply chain was reliant on all the barges continuing to run throughout the invasion, but the plan for getting tanks ashore was to beach their carrying barges at high tide and blow the front off the barges with explosives.
- People take the piss out of the Home Guard, but have a think about the demographics for a second. The 18-35 age group would have been in the regular army, meaning the 35-50 age group would have been in the Home Guard. Knock 22 years off to take us back to 1918, and that gives us an age group of 13-28. In other words the overwhelming majority of those in the Home Guard would have been in the British Army in 1918, the same army that won the greatest series of victories in British military history, and largely destroyed the German army in the field in 1918. Armed with the same weapons they had in 1918. Bit of a different picture now.
- The British were planning on hitting the invasion beaches with Mustard Gas. A LOT of Mustard Gas. The German army weren’t planning on taking their chemical warfare equipment in the first wave, and were almost exclusively horse-drawn. They would have taken horrendous casualties from the gas, and would have been left almost without transport.
- I’d love to see your reasoning behind both the 1 in 3 ships sunk trying to get through the “mine barriers” in the channel (I would note that the British were still running merchant convoys through the channel until about August - they stopped when the shipping losses reached ~5% or so). I would also love to see the reasoning for the 3:1 exchange ratio of British to German ships in Germanc convoys - I’d bet that these were convoys hit by light forces (MTBs and the like) and even then I suspect your numbers are dodgy. In a for-real invasion, the British would have thrown everything at it. They had ~100 destroyers on anti-invasion duty within about 5 hours steaming of the invasion beaches, and the entire Home Fleet was within 24 hours steaming.
- The Germans were relying on the Luftwaffe to keep the RN away from the Channel. Given how little threat they had proved to be to Destroyers at Dunkirk (sinking a handful even when many of them were tied up in port!), what makes you think they would be any more effective in an invasion?
My addition to the thread is so not going where I was interested in, guess that was my fault in the resource question/answer. I put out the German invasion of England as an example, not what was interested in being discussed. I’m pretty sure we all have our examples on where we think the Allies/Axis could have made changes that would have won the war or other favorable outcome. The first German attempt at attacking England was in no means extensively planned out by the Germans, as such was the attack on France and Russia, because for the most part Hitler wasn’t too interested in it unless it was proved to be pretty easy. In my defense I never said any German invasion of England was going to be easy or quick, but no extensive planned attack was attempted becuase Hitler wasn’t interested, my question is what could have changed Hitler’s mind?
Hitler made decisions (at least early in the war) for reasons, we may not agree with them especially since we have the benifit of what is called 20/20 hindsight, Hitler and other leaders of that war didn’t have. There are plenty of examples of what might have changed the outcome of the war, creating favorable or winning conditions for one side (especially the Axis since they lost the war). I don’t for the most part want what could have changed as those have been discussed in plenty of forums, books, movies, etc, but what could have have changed the reason why the decisions that were made could have been changed.
In my example, what could have changed Hitler’s mind in saying okay the English won this battle, now he would want to finish the job on England before invading Russia? At the official moment that Operation Sealion was shelved, what could have changed his mind to put it on the forefront and delay Barbarosa (given his views on Russia, its unlikely he would have put it off indefinitely)?
Quote by SFM : "My addition to the thread is so not going where I was interested in, guess that was my fault in the resource question/answer. I put out the German invasion of England as an example, not what was interested in being discussed. "
Your answers will be only as good as your questions. Specific, and concise questions, and observations will help insure that you get the answers, or discussion you actually want.
I guess will have to try again, as it seems only steben seemed to pick up an inkling of what trying to get at. We all have the what if’s out there that especially the Axis side could have done to win the war or at least create a favorable outcome. For the most part the decisions made in World War II were made for a reason, Hitler didn’t decide on 20th of June, 1941 to invade Russia, it was made a long time before that, what could have changed his mind? Not for just this event but many other events, such as the invasion of England, helping the Italians in the Med, Long Range bombers, not declaring war in the U.S. when the Japanese attacked at Pearl Harbor or even if the Japanese had actually launched that hypothetical third attack at Pearl Harbor? I concentrate on Hitler, because for the most part his decisions drove much of World War II, what could have changed his mind on these hypothetical history alterating choices that people have come up with over the years?
The Germans may disagree with you about controlling the channel as they claimed they controlled the air in the day but the RAF and RN controlled the night.
Air raids on the Channel ports sunk 12.5% of invasion shipping, 12.6% of invasion barges, 1.4% tugs, unknown number of motor boats these were replaced by the reserve but there was no reserve left after these losses. Source was German report of 21st Sept 1940.
The bombing also caused extensive damage to the port facilities slowing down their operations and the conversion of barges.
The invasion shipping was actually dispersed from the invasion ports due to losses and would have to be moved back again for actual use.
The Germans had 6000 live mines and 800 dummys for use to build two barrages to stop the RN from entering the channel. The KM said that was not enough. The British South Coast ports were never put out of action and the channels were swept regularly by the AS/MS ships.
Crossing the channel to establish a beachhead was not the Germans biggest problem. Their second wave would not arrive until 3 days after the assault wave due to the type of craft and qty they had and that was after collecting all the craft they could.
The first and most important prerequisite that had to happen was defeating the RAF which never happened.
Norway cost the KM very heavily and meant they had very little to use for Zeelowe.
A large portion of those 3500 vessels assembled were 1100 motor vessals many of which were river and lake craft unsuitable for sea use, 1900 were river barges and unpowered, you only had to hit the tugs.
The invasion fleet would be sailing for 24 hours to reach Britain, there was a coastal standing patrol watching for it. The ships transiting the channel are normally named as the warships doing the channel dash not quite the same.
Previously you made several statements that were factually wrong. You also posed everything as a single paragraph which makes it harder to read. I just pointed out some things including answering some of your ‘what if’s’
the fact is, even the German generals themselves were scratching their hair with the same questions. Many rejected the delay of operations inflicted by the Balkan campaigns, but they reached no ears.
Conclusion might be that Hitlers views were heavily influenced already, causing deeply rooted stuborness and a fixed mind. It could be a joke but perhaps a brain transplantation is the answer. 