Posted on 08/02/2015 7:44:26 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Invading the North American mainland can be safely left in the realm of bad Hollywood films. And that's even today, with larger ships, jet cargo aircraft, and more people. While it makes for a great strategy, in the end, it's just a nonstarter. Why?
The Germans had no forward base in the New World. If they had seized Iceland, any of the French protectorates in the Caribbean, or northern South America, then an invasion, while still a stretch, could have been conceivable. Without forward bases to deploy to and from, an invasion isn't going to happen.
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In the battle against Poland, the Germans had far superior weaponry and were able to attack at will (Poland being basically defenseless at that time due to its bulge to the east that had no natural barriers unlike now with the Oder-Neisse)
IN the battle against France, the Germans had inferior weaponry (French tanks and guns and artillery at that time were superior), but had superior tactics and far greater mobility.
Against the Soviet union they had the initial advantage of modern equipment but couldn't compete with Russian land advantage. If they had had better tactics and had consolidated, then things would have been different. Instead they targetted Moscow during winter -- insanity
he was true to his word — what he said in the Mein Kampf is what he did. Arguably one could say that if he wasn’t such an idiot, he wouldn’t have won his way to power
I will agree that Germany lost the war not necessarily “the moment” the US entered the war, more like a year later.
However, if you will, imagine that Germany won the war after say 1.5 years from 1914. The US has not entered. Perhaps Lenin was “exported” to Russia by Germany; perhaps not. Russia suffers 1/5th the casualties they did and perhaps does not collapse into the Communist-dominated but instead turns into a giant Venezuelan basket case. It was, in its way, but backs away from the militarism we struggled against in the 50’s-70s because Germany, oddly, becomes less warlike and never really acquires the aggressiveness it attains pre-WW2 because IT ALREADY HAS those territories it craved. The war trashes Belgium, for sure, but no fighting actually occurs on German soil (there was none, anyway) France would be largely a German colony. They would of course hate it.
So I guess I am asking you to imagine that Germany won WITHOUT a Russian collapse, or that Russian collapse was more a slow motion event. I’m not insisting that things would have turned out the way I am suggesting, it’s just kind of an interesting thought exercise.
Hitler wasn’t interested in Moscow, it was all about getting the Caucuses oil fields.
However by taking Moscow, it could have very well resulted in the collapse of the Soviet government, certainly Stalin was on thin ice as it was. Stalin made a lot of enemies, and once they overcame their fear of him, it would have been only a matter of time before Stalin got his, and new leadership took over. Who knows they may have even abandoned Bolshevism in order to unite the country against Hitler. Then we would have had the best-case scenario. No more Nazism nor Bolshevism.
Japan should have taken the Hawaiian Islands on Dec 7th. Then taken Australia. War would have taken a long time.
All Japan had to do on December 7 was to take out the carriers, thankfully they were all out at sea.
That’s why Yamamoto knew even then, the war was lost.
If the Nips had invaded Hawaii, which was ripe for the taking, those 4 carriers would have high tail it to California.
I wonder why Hitler didn’t try to have someone take out Stalin. Kill the head and the body collapses.
I think in part, it’s because deep down Hitler admired Stalin.
Take out the carriers, and invading Hawaii would not have been necessary.
Taking Hawaii was key to the whole Pacific. Take Hawaii and Australia(which would have been easy with out Brit US help) and the Nips own the whole Pacific. The Nips were timid when they should have been bolder.
They didn’t have a surface navy that could have protected the convoys of ships they would have been required to transport supplies and invasion forces. Even if they did, they also lacked the merchant marine capacity to transport an invasion force and its supplies.
Exactly. The whole purpose of Pearl Harbor was to disable the American carriers. Ultimately Pearl Harbor was a failure for the Japs because they didn’t get them.
If Japan takes out the carriers at Pearl, they have free reign in the Pacific for at least two years.
The keels for two of the proposed six H-class battleships were already laid. Both of these would have been larger, faster and with bigger guns than Bizmarck (16" vs 15")
The Spitfire was a fine plane, in its day. But it was a 370 mph plane vs a 560 mph. 190 mph difference. That's almost 100 yds every second. Even IF a 262 came from directly behind and passed, the Spitfire pilot would have only a matter of seconds to acquire the target to shoot. The effective range of the guns was about 1500 yds.
Unfortunately for Allied pilots, the preferred method of attack for the 262 was a slash and dash, thus not allowing the Allied pilots much countering ability.
Hitler was an idiot, who thought himself a military genius. If he would have paid attention to his military experts, and not only delayed the war, by at least 2 years, but also focus on the projects THEY deemed important, their military would have been FAR superior to anything the Allies had. As it was, it pushed us to the very brink. Britain almost fell in '40. Without Britain, D-day NEVER would have happened. western Europe would have been lost. We could have built all the Liberty and Victory ships we wanted. We would have had no where to stage the operation.
THEN Hitler could have attacked Russia. Then Russia would have been the country trying to fight a war on 2 fronts, with Japan controlling everything east.
The US, without help from both Russia and Britain, could not have gone on the offensive against Germany. As it was, we were limited in our attacks against Germany from our bases in Europe. Imagine trying to mount those attacks across an entire ocean. Of course that ocean works both ways preventing Hitler from attacking us.
If Hitler would have had US conquest in mind, he would have had to come up from South America. By that time our manufacturing would have had us on par, for the most part with Germany.
Personally, I think it would have been in Hitlers best interest to have taken all of Europe, Africa and the entire Middle East and probably India. And then stayed put.
At this point you need to think economics. Germany would have had everything it needed. At the same time, most of the US trading partners would have been overtaken. We would have been either trading with Germany...or isolated.
I don't know about that.
...the political climate in neighboring Mexico was extremely volatile. Agents of the German war machine were known to be active throughout Mexico. Nazi Germany was the leading importer of Mexican oil, accounting for just over half the country's annual production. Italy, another member of the Axis coalition, imported another 25-percent of Mexico's crude.
You cant have an enemy sub/air base at Hawaii and control the pacific.
I don’t disagree, all I’m saying is if they had gotten the carriers, it would have taken much longer to ultimately defeat them.
That being said, I don’t see any way Japan could have invaded Hawaii. But they certainly would have taken Australia if they got to the carriers. Then you’d be talking ultimately fighting land battles in Oz.
...Not without fighter escort. The p-51 was stretched with the English Channel, using drop tanks.
A fourth opportunity not exploited by the Japanese was the failure of the Japanese military to invade the Hawaiian Islands and occupy them. A critical shortage of weapons and ammunition would have made it very difficult for the U.S. to hold the islands and bases had the Japanese chosen to do so. Thus forcing the American navy to withdraw and prosecute the war from as far away as San Diego. A nightmare scenario for Roosevelt possibly forcing the U.S. to sue for peace in the Pacific.Had it been Sun Szu commanding the Japanese military, he would have invaded and occupied the Hawaiian Islands. "The war is won or lost even before the first battle is engaged." Strategy and tactics are everything.
Our Germans you mean like Patton? What percentage of our 12 million men under arms were German-Americans?
The cream of the Germany Army and by far the most casualties were suffered at the hands of the Soviets. The greatest battle in terms of size, casualties, and significance was the Battle of Kursk, which dwarfed D-Day. The outnumbered German Army was chewed up by the Soviets who suffered over 20 million casualties during WWII. We didn't kick the German's ass, the Soviets did.
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