Photo: © Russell Cobb 2018Had the Führer’s strategic vision gone according to plan, the Third Reich would have reached its full military might in 1948.
On June 22, 1941, Operation Barbarossa had begun. The military successes achieved in the following weeks and months proved astounding. More than three million German soldiers and over 600,000 other Axis soldiers participated in what was then the biggest military offensive in history––the Soviet Union was on the cusp of collapse.
At the beginning of December 1941, Hitler’s troops besieged Leningrad and Nazi reconnaissance units scouted the terrain a mere 12 miles from Moscow’s city center.
At the same time, large tracts of Northern Africa were in the hands of the Germans. Furthermore, most of Europe was under the Nazi jackboot. Only the United Kingdom and her Empire stood in the Führer’s way.
Adolf Hitler was at the pinnacle of his hegemonic power. Apparently, nothing could stand in his way and the Nazi world domination was no longer a mere nightmare, but a reality that threatened to take hold.
And true to his word, Hitler declared war on the United States of America four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 11, 1941. A world at war had begun in earnest, but it would prove to be Nazi Germany’s downfall less than four years later.
OKH commander Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch and Hitler study maps during the early days of Hitler’s Russian Campaign
“The American public is made up of Jews and Negroes,” Hitler once said of the nation he considered inferior in every way.
Yet in December 1941, Hitler was not ready to invade the US mainland. The Nazi blue-water fleet was not yet complete. Moreover, the Royal Navy had destroyed many of the Reich’s few capital ships. Even worse, winter had arrived in the east and the Soviet war machine was poised to launch a major counter-offensive to drive the invaders out.
But what if Hitler had been prepared? What if the Second World War had broken out seven years later in 1947?#vid5cab536102e3f{margin: 1em auto;max-width:640px !important;}
Had the Führer’s strategic vision gone according to plan, the Third Reich would have reached its full military might in 1948. Further, Plan Z would have come into effect and the Nazi Kriegsmarine (navy) would have been ready for war.
The German navy would have had a force of four aircraft carriers, ten state-of-the-art battleships, three battlecruisers, 15 fearsome pocket battleships in the image of the Admiral Graf Spee, and more.
According to the Spandau: The Secret Diaries by Albert Speer, Nazi architect and Minister of Armaments and War Production, Hitler was fascinated with the notion of seeing New York City in flames.
R boats operating near the coast of occupied France, 1941.Bundesarchiv, Bild 101II-MW-1956-30 Hasert CC-BY-SA 3.0
Advanced missiles similar to the V2s that struck London would have been stationed along the western French coast, and in Iceland and Greenland. The Amerikabomber was to be a long-range strategic aircraft capable of flying the round trip from Europe to the United States.
The expected aerial and naval attacks on the USA would have been to support the ferrying of thousands of land troops across the Atlantic Ocean. These divisions, including panzers and armored personnel vehicles, would have landed on the East coast of the United States.
The Messerschmitt Me 264 V1 (first prototype Me 264).Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1995-042-37 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Almost simultaneously, the Japanese Imperial army and navy would have swept in from the west, resulting in a two-front war on the continental United States. Furthermore, incessant Nazi bombing of American cities would have sapped national morale.
Amazon’s hit TV show, The Man in the High Castle would have become a reality. The North American continent would have been divided into two spheres of influence. Imperial Japan would have ruled in the West, while Nazi Germany would have controlled large swaths of territory from the East Coast to Kansas or Colorado.
American servicemen inspecting a shell crater after the Japanese attack on Fort Stevens, Oregon
The US magazine Life even published an article in early 1942 suggesting such a horror scenario during the war, although presumably without knowledge of Hitler’s exact military capabilities. The magazine presented six possible invasion plans to an anxious American public in an attempt to boost morale for America’s participation in the war.
The magazine predicted the Japanese would attack from the west either directly on California or via South America. Meanwhile, the magazine suggested that the Nazis would either invade from Greenland and then Canada, or via South America and the Caribbean. The magazine considered that Hitler’s plan to attack across the Atlantic Ocean, had he gone through with it, would have been the most challenging strategy.
A SB2U Vindicator scout bomber from USS Ranger flies anti-submarine patrol over Convoy WS-12, en route to Cape Town, November 27, 1941. The convoy was one of many escorted by the US Navy on “Neutrality Patrol”, before the US officially entered the war.
Hitler’s plans for the USA after victory
Once the fight for world domination was won, the US would have been rearranged according to Nazi ideas and doctrines. Hitler’s plans suggested that the German-born American population should be rapidly expanded in the guise of the so-called “Wehrdörfer” or “Defense Villages” in the Soviet Union.
A strategic hamlet in South Vietnam c.1964 similar to the Wehrdörfer in the Soviet Union during WWII.
Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s confidant and German ideologue, also had thoughts about the US. Rosenberg’s particular concern was the so-called “race problem” and supposedly wanted to relocate all African-Americans and Jews to Madagascar. Rosenberg was later executed for crimes against humanity after the Nuremberg Trials.
Read another story from us: What Would Have Happened to Him if The Soviets Had Captured Hitler?
What is certain is that the Third Reich would have exported its racist policies to the United States. The United States would have been treated like the other occupied countries such as Poland, Ukraine, and France. There would also be little stopping them after the defeat of the United Kingdom and the United States.
