Posted on 06/08/2014 9:06:40 AM PDT by tom h
At least I’m not name calling, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
Correct, the Soviet counteroffensive started on Dec 5, 1941, two days before Pearl Harbor. History books note that it was completely ineffective for two days and largely ineffective for a number of days. Hitler signed Directive 39 on Dec 8th ordering the cessation of offensive operations. On December 11, Germany declared war on the USA and the USA, in turn, declared war on Germany.
The Soviet counteroffensive began to gather steam during this time. Some of Hitler's generals (Halder and Von Kluge) interpreted Directive 39, and perhaps because of the theoretical dicussion with Hitler about America as an enemy, that a general withdrawal to more defensible lines was warranted and provided the order.
On or around Dec 19, Hitler caught word about the withdrawal and forbade it. No doubt his fury was worsened by the reversal of Germany fortunes in the cold Soviet winter.
So I concede the point, albeit a minor point at that. It was the combination of delayed success in the Soviet counteroffensive, combined with the countermanding of his officers' orders, that hardened Hitler's mind about doing the reasonable and militarily correct thing.
I don't have a strong sense one way or the other but I have read German commander(s) grudgingly admit that Hitler's order to hold out at all cost prevented a bad situation from becoming an unmitigated disaster.
Grow up would you? How infantile are you? (that’s not name calling, it’s an adjective).
You made a decent theory, but you did so in response to a totally different question, and you never actually spoke to the topic of the thread. And you did so with attitude.
You know my rule(henkster’s Law) for alternative history scenarios, particularly in regard to the Germans in World War 2. The alternate scenario isn’t valid if it involves Hitler not being Hitler and the Germans not being the Germans.
A cursory reading of the comments on this thread disclosed many violations of henkster’s Law.
I think I responded pretty directly when I wrote initially that under NO circumstances was Germany going to win WWII. Is that adult enough for you?
Anyway, the scenario presented was one which was intriguing. I actually think it was possible for Hitler to have won the war. It was less about the atom bomb and the aircraft and more about consolidating his clear gains in Europe proper.
Had he retreated in December 1941 to defensible lines, Hitler could have refocused on consolidating what he'd won in Western and Southern Europe. In addition, he could have sealed off the Mediterranean Sea and fully conquered North Africa, especially and including Egypt. Britain was in no position to hold back a North African force that was hundreds of thousand of soldiers, not just the handful that Rommel actually had.
With the westward focus, Hitler could have focused entirely on sealing off the UK from the Americans. This would have been possible had so much blood and treasure not been squandered on the Russian front. Even with the two nations formally at war, the battles would only have been at sea, at best. There would be very few alternatives for the Yanks if all of continental Europe was taken, North Africa was taken and the Mediterranean was sealed off. Ireland, perhaps could have been a staging ground. But given the distance it would have only been good for bombing runs, and during 1942 those runs would have hardly reached the coastline of Belgium and the Netherlands.
And, once a sitzkrieg of sorts took hold between the the two continents, nothing would have happened other than some naval battles. America's focus would have shifted to the Pacific Theater and, eventually, Britain would have had to negotiate a peace treaty not because they were conquered, but because they were starving.
The only unknown would be Russia. And that's where it gets really intriguing. I agree with you that Stalin intended to invade Germany himself, so Hitler merely beat him to the punch. But even Stalin considered a negotiated peace treaty with Hitler early during Barbarossa. So the notion that he would have agreed to at least a cessation of hostilities is not beyond the pale.
Hitler would have had a long border to defend in the East, to be sure, yet there is no doubt this could have been done well. It took Stalin 2 full years to make significant gains against Germany, after the Germans had bled themselves dry at Stalingrad, Kursk, the Crimea. Guderian had some very novel plans for mobile defense that Hitler never implemented, because Hitler didn't go off the offense until late 1943. It is very possible that Hitler's lines in the East would have held.
The atom bomb doesn't even figure into this. The Americans didn't achieve this until 1945. The Germans were far behind the Americans. The Russians didn't get a bomb until they stole the details in 1947. I'm talking about 1942 here. The Russians had lost 5 million men in 1941-42, and the only reason the Stalingrad pincer succeeded is because it wasn't a fair fight. Hitler fell into a trap, due his own hubris, and the Sixth Army was surrounded. Had the Sixth Army been fresh there is NO chance the Russians would have prevailed with their Siberian forces.
As for the out years of 1944, 1945 and beyond, who knows? If Europe had become stable, albeit under the Nazi yoke, and if Russia had tried several times to break the line but failed, there might have been an uneasy stability throughout Europe. Would America have still waged a futile war then? Even if the timetable for the atom bomb was unchanged, would they have dropped it on a German nation that wasn't even within reach? I'm not even certain today that the USA would have used the bomb on Caucasians; there is a lot of scholarship about that.
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