Things Hitler could have done to win WWII

World War II German Military
#41

We might as well ask how a Corsican subaltern came to be a French emperor who took Moscow, and blame it on, say, the Catholic Church because one of its clergymen supported Napoleon’s coup.

Such men were the products of complex events in tumultuous times rather than simple and single things such as backing by rich capitalists or the Catholic Church or anything else.

Every rich man, every bank, and every national bank outside Germany could have backed Hitler but it would have come to nothing without the tumultuous conditions which existed in Germany between the wars, and without Hitler’s personal drive and ability.

#42

The extermination of the Jews began in earnest with the attack on the Soviet Union.
By December 1941 229,052 Jews had been murdered in the Baltic states alone, and the only Jews left there were those whom the Nazis required for labour.
The Wannsee Conference was less a decision on the implementation
of the Final Solution and more of a meeting on how to do it more efficiently and profitably.

#43

Every rich man, every bank, and every national bank outside Germany could have backed Hitler but it would have come to nothing without the tumultuous conditions which existed in Germany between the wars, and without Hitler’s personal drive and ability.

Conditions that the British Empire played a large roll in with the demands that Germany accept ‘responsibility’ for the horrors of WWI and then imposing a fine of reparation that Germany could not pay. A fine, of couse, that had to be paid in the British Pound, which the Germans did not have.

Do a little reading on the German ‘economist’ Hjalmar Schacht and his roll with the Weimar Republic’s hyper-inflaton.

Money is the mother’s milk of politics, without out it the politician will perish. Follow the money.

(As for Bonaparte, look to the destabilizing events of the French Revolution and you will discover the hand of the Britsh Empire there as well)

#44

All right, I’m going to take a crack at it.

First of all, EVERY SINGLE TIME I see one of these ‘what if’ discussions, the EXACT SAME THINGS are covered, w/ the EXACT SAME RESULTS.

Let’s start w/ the most common fallacy, the Luftwaffe Strategic Bomber.

[b]According to US sources, the AAF losses of bombers were as follows

of 12,731 B-17’s 4,688 lost; of 18,431 B-24’s 3,626 = 8314 Heavy Bomber (27.68%)

of 9,984 B-25 380; of 5,288 B-26’s 911=1,291 Medium Bombers (8.453%)

of 4,189 A-20 265; of 2,446 A-26 67=332 Light Bombers (5%)[/b]

As you can see, Heavy bombers are much more likely to be shot down & being more expensive in terms or resources & manpower I won’t even get into how many Bomber Command planes were lost as well, but one figure I heard was that over 50,000 aircrew were lost. (Not the best use of lives I’d think)

The real flaw the Luftwaffe bombers was their defensive armament. Which during BoB was the MG 15 w/ only 75 rounds. An RAF pilot had 8 TIMES this firepower to bear on his target & had some 300 rounds per gun.

IS IT REALLY TOO HARD TO FIGURE OUT HOW ANY SUCH AIR CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE ALLIES WOULD END?!

During BoB, there was an alternative, the MG FF. Put 3-5 of those in a He 111 or Ju 87 and watch your loss rate plummet. The Spits & Hurries won’t wanna go near them. They weigh about as much as a Browning .50 so thhe weight penalty isn’t too bad.

Another problem is that the Bf 109 has too little range & a poor view from the cockpit. Solution? Raise the cockpit a foot, stick a fuel tank underneath, put a bubble canopy on top, take out the MG 17’s (They’re useless anyway) and add a second tank in it’s place. Also, would it be feasible to place a 300L drop Tank under each wing of an Emil-7 model?

Continued in Part 2…

#45

I sort of agree, but suspect “plummet” may be too strong a word. The B-17G had 13 guns of at least .50 cal, yet still suffered from serious losses to the Luftwaffe single-seat fighters.
The other thing to remember is that the weight penalty will cut into your bombload - not just of the guns themselves, but for the gunners and the room to put them in (German bombers were pretty cramped) and turrets to mount them. Given that the bombload wasn’t all that big anyway, you might be looking at losing 10% of your force! Replacing guns probably costs you very little, but adding guns is where you suffer.

Raising the cockpit that much is difficult - you get all sorts of nightmarish potential stability problems that you don’t find out until you build a prototype. It might work if the stability isn’t a problem, in which case it would provide a lot of benefits (the fuel tank is already there for example, which is right on the CofG). Bubble canopy happened later, and wing fuel tanks are a doddle (although having said that the firepower was a bit deficient as it was, so the extra fuel might not be worth the sacrifice). Drop tanks were feasible (although it might need to be centreline rather than each wing) - I can’t remember the load carrying capacity of the aircraft however, 300L might be too much. The caveat however is that drop tanks are actually very difficult to get right in practice - the Luftwaffe and USAAF always had trouble with theirs, while the RAF ones were actually pretty good. I don’t think anybody in 1940 had good ones.

#46

Heh, ‘plummet’ was too strong of a word, I just thought it sounded good.

I know that more gunners adds WAY more weight… The He 111 Crew was 5, 1 pilot & 4 gunners (1 guy fired both beam guns) So, the He can be upgunned from 5 x MG 15 to 5 x MG FF. I’m not sure of the ammo weight but the gun weight penalty is 69.5 kg. If you drop the beam gunner & put his cannon in the Dorsal & Ventral positions (for twin MG FF in each) Then Weight penalty is negligible. But the nose position HAS to be enlarged! It’s way too cramped to have a decent field of fire.

BTW, what is the field of fire for various WW 2 gun positions? (Axis & Allied)

Also, as lethal as the .5 cal is, 1 hit from a 20 mm mine shell at the very least would force a Spitfire to turn for home.

A Ju 87 w/ 1 MG FF in each wing & 1/2 in the rear would be far harder prey than the single MG 15 it was stuck w/.

The result of making the bombers more self-reliant has the benefit of freeing the fighters to make their sweeps. (in effect, this was how we killed the Luftwaffe. Though we still lost over 8,000 heavies.)

I have to disagree, the Erla-Haube isn’t a TRUE bubble canopy. (like the FW 190 has) Every picture of it I’ve seen shows it to be just as obscured by the raised rear fuselage as all the other models. I understand about the drop tanks, but the P-51 still used them to terrific effect nonetheless.

I found that the P-51D had 392 US Gallons internal vs 106 US Gallons for the Me 109 (if the site I got this info from is accurate! :rolleyes: ) a considerable advantage. Triple the fuel=triple the range. The key is the landing gear of the P-51 allows room for 2 huge fuel tanks. The Bf 109 landing gear doesn’t & it causes stability problems. but still, even raising the pilot’s seat a few more inches would yield considerable gain. (I’d need a cutaway drawing of one to check how much.)

One further note, the most serious flaw to the Ju87 is it’s fixed landing gear. Image how fast it would go if it could retract. (at least 50 mph faster perhaps). It would require additional hydraulics & some wing redesign, but far less than making a new plane from scratch.

#47

Part 2: The pre-war Kriegsmarine.

Oh God, where DO I start?!

How about this?

The High Seas Fleet in WW 1 was saved at Jutland by forewarning from Zeppelins. The WW 2 Kriegsmarine had no such ‘eye-in-the-sky’ despite it’s known value. One benefit to the airship is that it can be built in the guise of a ‘civilian’ craft, but converted to military use in an instant.

Say if 100-200 were built for the Navy’s use instead of the Condor. It has much farther range & can keep pace w/ U-boats & surface units. While many hear ‘Zeppelin’ & think ‘OH THE HUMMMAAANNNIIITTTYYYY!!!’ Much of that was due to volatile chemicals in the skin, which accelerated the flames. The Hindenburg served for some time w/ perfect safety (unlike the Titanic, which just couldn’t manage to FLY over those pesky ice cubes!)

for payload it can carry radar, whatever the lightest unit available was, or several BF 109 T (modified w/ trapeze system) The Germans, BTW, built the USS Akron & Macon, which used this system.

Anyways, a Zeppelin would’ve made the Graf Zeppelin more efficient, since it wouldn’t have to fly it’s own planes for recon & could save them for strikes only.

BTW, can anyone dig up info on how much an airship weighs? All I can find is Cubic gas volume & length. (the weight of an airship = lifting gas + quantity of material in its body)

One further note, if an airship escorted the Blucher to Oslo fjord, it could’ve spotted the ambush waiting at Oscarsbjorg fortress. Another could’ve saved the 10 destroyers at Narvik as well.

Surface ships:

Little could be done to improve the light cruisers or panzerschiffe, they were already built. (they were pretty good designs too!)

But the ‘heavy’ cruisers were the worst ever designed. An 18,000 ton ship w/ only 3 in of armor belt?!

GODDAMNIT! A 4 inch destroyer could sink one before morning tea!

The Hipper design would’ve benefited from heavier armor & a nominal arm. of 3 x 3 x 8 in (but be secretly capable of 3 x 3 x 11 inch, ie, the guns meant for further Panzerschiffe) The engines should’ve been K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) rather than advanced, but unreliable.

I can’t find info on the armor for the Scharnhorst class, but for it’s size, could’ve been built to the Treaty Standard of the N. Carolina Class: 14 inch proof armor & 3 x 3 x 15 inch guns

AH, the Bismarck, pathetically undergunned & outgunned by ships half it’s size. If it were built to the same scale as Scharnhorst, it’d still be large enough to wield 4 x 3 x 15 inch guns, like the 7 battleships of the Pennsylvania, New Mexico & Tennessee Classes.

Any moron could tell that the 37 mm CK C/30 was 100% useless as an AA gun. IT WAS SINGLE SHOT!!! There was no reason why the FlaK 18/36/37 couldn’t be used instead, in QUAD mount to boot! (Surely any German Admiral w/ half a brain cell would’ve heard of our Quad 1.1 inch AA & want similar for their ships.)

A scaled down Bismark & Tirpitz would free enough steel tonnage to build a THIRD ship in their class, or a further Graf Zeppelin.

The G.Z. would’ve benefited from carrying only Bf 109 T since they’d be better at defending themselves than any carrier bomber & their payload would be similar to the Japanese Val. 1 x 250 kg bomb.

‘Ideal Surface Group’

2 x Hipper Super Heavy Cruiser

1 x Scharnhorst ‘Battlecruiser’ (Battleship)

1 x Bismarck Battleship

1 x Graf Zeppelin Carrier w/ 50 x Bf 109T

U-Boats:

Whenever I see the crew dive to escape escorts in Das Boot, I cream at them, “SINK THE F@#&ING DESTROYERS!!! THEN YOU CAN ATTACK THE CONVOY AT THE SURFACE!!!”

The UBoats sank 2,000-3,000 transports during the war, at a cost of over 700 of their own (80% loss rate) But what if they focused this energy on ONLY Royal Navy Warships? They already sank the HMS’ Courageous & Royal Oak & almost the Warspite & Ark Royal before the Bismarck was lost. What saved the other 2 ships was the fact that the UBoats had these insanely complex triggers, which were totally unreliable.

Note, if Ark Royal was sunk when 1st hit, it wouldn’t have been available to stop the Bismarck’s retreat in 1941.

Note #2, if this strategy was pursued in WW 1, the Lusitannia wouldn’t have been sunk & we wouldn’t have been able to use it as a pretext for war. The Death of the Royal Navy would have GUARANTEED the victory of the Germans in both wars! Certainly the sheer loss in life would have affected British Morale. The loss of all their battleships would be a powerful symbolic message. More so than the waves of bombers over London. Their “Barrier of Iron” ringing their islands would be torn away, leaving them naked to invasion.

If I may digress, the computer game, Warcraft 2, involves considerable naval combat. you always start HEAVILY outnumbered in warships, but through good strategy, you can destroy them all. much like if the Germans chose to.

Part 3 coming very soon. (How shall the trilogy end?!)

#48

Can I interject here for a moment?
(well, I am going to anyway, even though I am way outclassed)

Part III: How about a discussion of Barbarossa and the drive on Moscow?

Now, about the Strategic Bombing:

The Luftwaffe and Allied bomber forces had different main objectives.

The German objective should have been, Destroy Soviet Tank Production and capability. Period.

The true objective of the Allied Bombing effort, the one not published in text books, was to Blast the Luftwaffe out of the skies and out of France. Look up ‘Operation Big-Week’. It was simply a massive effort to target Luftwaffe production on the ground and shoot down the aircraft in the sky. It took place in Feb. '44.

Big Week, combined with the targeting of German cities for round the clock bombing, forced the Luftwaffe command to withdraw their fighters from France to cover the skies over Germany.

I’d say the plan worked. The total number of Luftwaffe ground attack aircraft on June 6th, 1944—exactly 2. After that, the Allied ground attack forces had a free hand all over Western Europe to destroy tanks, trains, troops, ect.

As for the German strategy, recall that the Russians had nothing close to the FW190 or even the 109. A strong fleet of bombers could have severely hurt the Soviet tank factories before they could be moved past the Urals. Then, in '42 they could have returned and taken out the centralized tank production at Tankograd with repeated strikes. I say, F the bomber losses, you win wars on the ground and you win on the ground with tanks.

Now, about the Battle for Moscow…

#49

Have any of you considered that if the ‘advice’ you give here to Hitler was implemented that the Allies would have invented counter measures?

I mean they were not dummies and would have made their own counter to whatever Hitler did. And unlike Hitler, they not only had many more resources, they had ULTRA. And ULTRA, reading the other guys mail, was an awful big advantage.

#50

What I wonder is how the Poles managed to solve the Enigma code in the first place?

#51

A combination of some very good mathematicians indeed and a stronger motivation than everyone else to try the impossible.

#52

It’s nice to see that you have a clear understanding of your ‘outclassedness’:wink:

Let’s get to the 3 reasons why the Jagdflieger were slaughtered in Big Week.

1: They took-off ‘loaded for bear’. That is, they were so weighed down w/ extra cannon, that they were sitting ducks to our fighters.

2: We had the Gyro gunsight, which allowed even a novice pilot to outshoot the best marksmen. The Germans had this tech in 1942 & KNEW we had it, but delayed production until 1945! When it was TOO LATE to do them any good! Their lack of trained pilots wouldn’t have been as much of an issue if they could actually HIT their target!

3: My God! “Berliner Luft” must consist of Stoopid Gaz! Not only did their Uboats waste time sinking transports while escorts became more & more numerous, their Fighters actually IGNORED OUR fighters to focus on our bombers!

Picture trying to rob a bank w/ a bunch of cops outside waiting for u to show up, but ignore them while yu go fer teyh cache. Guess what? they’ll shoot u down before you even reach the door! Same w/ Big Week. They ignored our P-51’s while targeting our bombers, we just slaughtered them all!

Here is a breakdown of losses:

US: 247 Bombers + 28 Fighters = 275

Luft: 355 Fighters ~ 100 pilots killed

Our pilots had a 12.7:1 kill ratio, no nation can win against such loses. We were playing the Air Superiority Game, the Germans weren’t. Guess who won Air Superiority?:wink:

If they went ALL OUT against our fighters, they’d have stood a real chance at beating us. But they let themselves fall into the trap of protecting their homes & families at the cost of their lives. Thus GUARANTEEING the deaths of them & their loved ones in the long run!

My Part 3 won’t be about Barbarossa. If you didn’t notice, from Parts 1 & 2, I’m doing this Essay from Fall Weiss onward, in ORDER. Part 1, Luftwaffe. Part 2, Kriegsmarine. Take a guess at what Part 3 would be.

As for the Allies countermeasures, the improvements I made are the kind that are LEAST likely to provoke a major reaction. How WOULD the RAF deal w/ bombers which an take out ‘Spitz w/ a few hitz?’ They still had problems w/ their Hispano-Suiza cannons.

Or Hit & runs on their coast by Scharnhorst or Bismarck while Uboats lie in wait to ambush the battleships & carriers of the home fleet? If they pursue they’ll lose many ships. If not, then whole coastal towns would be flattened.

The British shipyards were going all out anyway, they couldn’t endure an increase of pressure on their fleet. For example, the Uboats sank up to 60 cargo ships a month, imagine if that was destroyers, battleships & carriers instead! Even OUR navy couldn’t keep up w/ military loses of such a scale! w/ Britain out of the war, we American’s would likely accept Hitler’s Fait Acompli, we did when Stalin devoured all of Eastern Europe.

#53

Given that the U boat commanders were generally very skilled and determined in carrying out their and Germany’s aims, why do you think they didn’t do that?

Which was the greater benefit to Germany, and the greater loss to the Allied war effort? Sinking one tanker carrying oil to Britain or the USSR? Or sinking one escort instead and letting the tanker proceed? With the same response in both cases from the remaining escorts?

#54

How does blunting the defender’s fighter force against the attacker’s fighter cover help to avoid the damage inflicted by the attacker’s bombers?

Doesn’t it merely distract the defender from the real tactical and strategic threat and improve the attacker’s tactical and strategic bombing effect by allowing more attacking bombers to get through?

How is this relevant to Allied bombing raids which had no fighter cover for much of the final part of their trip?

Weren’t the Germans engaged in the sensible tactical and strategic response of attacking the main threat to their capacity to continue the war?

Which was bombing directed primarily at military and war production targets rather than homes and families?

Wasn’t the only ‘trap’ Germany fell into the unavoidable one of defending itself against the Allied bomber fleets by attacking the bombers which threatened its ability to continue the war by attacking its production and transport centres?

#55

My “vote” goes to treating all the eastern european population blocks nicer (“promising” them independence, etc).

That would have caused:

  • Germans to have much more axis divisions early on (and had Germans armed them, saved/freed quite large number of Germans).
  • Less partizan activity (which tied up a lot of troops, and made frontline less effective without sufficient amount of supplies).
  • Less soviet divisions (they pretty much forced population to “enlist”).
  • More chaos/distrust/executions/mass-deportations inside the Soviet Union (Stalin was very very paranoid about this kind of thing).
  • If it had seemed like Germany was liberating all the small countries from the godless soviet union, western powers would have been less keen to help soviets.
  • Natural resources in those areas would have not been destroyed, and they would have been eagerly offered to the liberators (=Germans).

It’s just amazing how Hitler used all the possible means to get what he wanted before 1940 (promises, politics, talking about peace, signing treaties, whatever it required)… After that he just basically unleashed Wehrmacht and didn’t want any help from anyone. In one word: Hubris.

#56

They did exactly that in WW1. Initially it worked reasonably well (viz. HMS Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue), but once the RN got their act together it just wasn’t worth it. In WW2 this would have been even more strongly the case, with the advent of effective land-based aircraft.

Except they wouldn’t have a hope of getting nearly that number - unless tied to a convoy, naval vessels would steam at about twice the speed while zigzagging, and are a significantly smaller and less obvious target than a convoy. At best they’d get 6 a month, which is a bearable loss rate for the RN of the early 1940s.

#57

Yes Alephh,

That’s what I was getting at.

Hitler was obsessed with race hatred. With that strategy, all he could do was self-isolate Germany. In the Ukraine the German troops were initially greeted as liberating heroes. However, within weeks that euphoria turned into hatred of the Germans as their ‘ethnic cleansing’ began to take place.

Could additional troops have made a diffrence in the drive on Moscow and Eastern Front in general? Perhaps, as has been noted, that the logistical problems were too great. Or, perhaps fresh troops who had a real inate hatred for Stalin and the Soviets (Under Stalin, millions of Ukraininas had been forced to starve) could have been the decisive factor.

Oh,
Nice analysis of Big Week. You have bolstered the case the the whole objective of Big Week was to knock the German fighters out of the air and clear the way for the Cross Channel Invasion.

US Bombers were the bait that the German fighter command had to deal with. Of course, it was the Allied fighters that got to do the stomping. They delt the Luftwaffe a blow that it never recovered from.

Why ignore the June '41 to December '41 time frame?

In all of the German High Command’s plans, speed was the critical element. They knew that in a prolonged war, with the industrial output and population size of the Allies, they would end up losing. Just as the Germans ‘won’ WWI by 1915-1916, only to lose in the end when the industrial might of the US and populations of the West were brougth into play.

Happy 4th of July all.

#58

Major problem.
Due to a lack of resources, the German military leadership had already accepted the fact (even before the invasion) that they would have to strip the areas of the Soviet Union they managed to conquer of all available foodstuffs and fodder just to supply their army, which would, and did, cause massive starvation amongst the local population.
So they were always going to turn the local population against them.

#59

Stalin did the same before the Germans occupied some Soviet territories, notably Holodomor in the Ukraine, but the populace didn’t, or more probably wasn’t able to, turn against Stalin’s regime.

After the Germans attacked, the populace in those areas fought against the Germans.

Was that due primarily to antipathy generated by the Germans taking food or to the control Stalin had of the unfortunates under his reign?

#60

Ah yes, the racist policies. I’m not sure why the Nazis (not only Hitler thought this way) couldn’t realize, the fastest way to exterminate untermenschen, was to trick them into killing each other. In this case, tricking Ukranians to kill Soviets. There was plenty of time for the Holocaust AfTER the Nazis win. The death camps were a hideous waste of resources.

(compare the money & materials they used to kill 6 million Jews to the resources the Hutu spent to kill 1 million Tutsi. On a per month basis, 300,000 Tutsi were murdered. In the Holocaust, let’s say direct Jewish killings started Sept 1, 1939 & ended May 9, 1945 (some Jews were murdered before & after this) for a per month rate of 88,235.3. So the Nazis, wasted huge resources to kill LESS efficiently, than a bunch of illiterate machete armed savages.

Sadly, the Nazis could’ve praised the Jews instead of kill them. Imagine if Hitler promised them the Holy Land. He’d have had millions of the the fiercest soldiers, smartest scientists & skilled workmen siding w/ him. Plus Amarica would likely have sided w/ him. but Anti-Semitism plagued the minds of many if not most European leaders. The Holocaust was likely predestined, it was just the Nazis fell into the role of mass murderer.

As for the bombers, er, I forgot to mention the 2 engine fighters of the Jagdflieger. Obviously the Me 110 & 410 would attack the bombers once the 1 engine types are all keeping us busy. It beats having them sitting on the tarmac.

(I’m to tired to think of anything more for now.)