Posted on 06/08/2014 9:06:40 AM PDT by tom h
In an old issue of American Heritage, there was a passage stating that, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Hitler decided to declare war on the USA. In response, his generals recommended ceasing the offensive war against Russia, retreating to defensible lines, and taking the very reasonable military approach -- consolidating their very extensive gains in continental Europe, adding Greece and Spain to the mix, securing northern Africa, and turning the Mediterranean Sea into a "German Lake."
Hitler initially agreed to this very reasonable strategy. But within days the Soviets mounted their first winter offensive, on the outskirts of Moscow, and Hitler was so infuriated that he forgot his initial agreement and decided to continue his total war against Russia.
The rest, of course, is history. Russian bled Germany dry, the Allies invaded on D-Day 3.5 years later, and Germany lost.
You are correct. As even other arch-Nazis said, Hitler was the most fanatical Nazi of them all. He couldn’t help but do what he did.
I’ve read that the German Army had 800,000 horses in World War II. To a large extent, what we think of as the first fully mechanized army in history was largely horse-drawn, at least where logistics were concerned.
“I’ve read that the German Army had 800,000 horses in World War II.”
Germany had trucks, but never enough for the huge logistics tails. Horse-drawn carts could carry a heavier load than most of the available German trucks, and were thought to be sufficient for the slow-moving Infantry units. Horses required fewer supplies than trucks did, and in a tough moment, could become food for the army, as well.
In the late war, as fuel supplies dwindled, they became much more important.
I've read several books on the subject, and I disagree.
There were several problems the Germans faced if they were to build a Bomb.
The biggest was ideological. The physics needed were considered to be "Jewish science," which was fairly accurate, and thus even those more intelligent Nazis who recognized the potential of a Bomb faced enormous resistance from the true-believer Nazis who were opposed to even studying the subject.
The resistance was similar to though somewhat less extreme than modern liberal resistance to any scientific research that might turn up facts about genuine racial differences in intelligence.
The other factor was simply one of cost. US spend upwards of $20B, in 1996 dollars, to built the bombs and the infrastructure to support them. The Germans would have had a similar cost, possibly higher due to the costs associated with constant bombing destroying or damaging facilities.
The US economy was something like 4x that of Germany, making the load on the German economy at least 4x greater.
I really don't think they could have done it.
http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/manhattan
His spirituality was wickedly weird. He thought that he could literally will success by being ruthless enough.
I don't have time to do the research but there is very good reason to believe that the USA would not have dropped the atom bomb on a European city. Call it a racist motive if you will.
As for "repeat as necessary," the USA postured that they could have bombed every Japanese city to rubble but the fact is we did not have enough fissile material for a fourth bomb. Extracting U-238 was still a slow and imperfect process; ditto with Pu-239. If I recall correctly the absolute dearth of fissile material in 1945 was a classified secret for many years.
The fact that we were still, seriously, preparing for the invasion of the island of Honshu is proof positive that Truman and the Department of War did not think that two atom bombs would not be enough to deter the Japanese.
Well, I was reading some WWII books on the shelf that I hadn’t touched in ages, and was pondering it all in light of D-Day. It was on June 6th that I read that piece where it conveyed that Hitler seriously considered terminating the Russian war on the advice of his generals. Hitler might just have prevailed overall; and there would have been no D-Day. Possibly just a sustained naval war and then a negotiated peace. Because his only nearby enemy would have been Britain, and if was able to starve them they too would have sued for peace. The USA could not have fought Germany without having the UK as a staging ground.
World War II was total war! We sure as hell would have dropped atomics on Germany.
The preparations for the invasion of Honshu were because at that time we did not know if the bombs would work. We had tested one U235 bomb at White Sands, New Mexico. Therefore, we knew the one we dropped on Hiroshima would work. As mentioned U235 was in critically short supply. The production pipeline for coming bombs was mostly plutonium. The first test of a Plutonium bomb was when we dropped it on Nagasaki. It worked, its yield was actually greater than the predictions. We then knew we could start turning out workable atomic weapons on a large scale.
An irony of history is the work of German and East European Jewish Scientists. They fled to the United States because of persecution and worse by Hitler. Those German Jews were loyal German citizens. In effect Hitler gave us the bomb by driving out these brilliant scientists. They would have built the bomb for Hitler as loyal Germans if Hitler had not persecuted them.
Pressing the Danzig issue too hard, Hitler though provoked war earlier than planned, perhaps because he learned that he was suffering from tertiary stage syphilis. As you point out, under the stress of war, neither Hitler nor his land-minded generals fully recognized or exploited the opportunities of the larger strategic context.
In contrast, the US and Britain planned and conducted WW II on a global scale. Weapons development and production programs were geared to the demands of such an effort, the economy mobilized, and millions of troops inducted and trained.
As John Keegan has pointed out, even in the 1920s at the Army Air Corps war college in Montgomery Alabama, when most military aircraft were open cockpit biplanes, a class final assignment called for the students to project the specific targets and the kinds and numbers of aircraft needed to bomb Japan into submission. The students were to become the wartime generals who did just that in practice.
The British developed the turbojet engine, not the Germans and the Meteor went into production BEFORE the ME 262. The Allies simply didn't waste as much time and effort developing weapons that relied on untested technologies that wouldn't have influenced the outcome anyway.
The Wehrmacht and its capabilities was been highly overrated because of initial successes against unprepared foes at the beginning of the war. Despite the reputation for blitzkrieg, the Heer was heavily dependent on horses for mobility, particularly with artillery. The Luftwaffe never had any effective strategic bombers, and precious resources that could have gone toward subs were wasted on the Kriegsmarine's dreams of re-fighting the Battle of Jutland.
All these alternate histories are interesting fantasies, but were as close to reality as my dreams of playing in the NBA.
Hitler had already conquered Greece before he declared war on the US.
The Trinity test was of a plutonium device. There were no doubts about the U-235 bomb. But there were questions about the plutonium approach.
There were plenty of things Hitler could have done differently. Once he was in Russia, if the Russians were counterattacking, though, there would be limits to how many troops he could siphon off to fight in Africa.
Sure, he could have skipped declaring war on us and let us take that step, promoted rebellion in the Middle East and India, and gone for Moscow (or the Caucasus?), instead of Stalingrad, and that could have helped him. I'm glad he lost in the end, though.
Even if Hitler not declared war on the US, it really wouldn’t have mattered.
Britain declared war on Japan right after we did, thus any restrictions on arming Britain were gone....only a matter of time before the Germans sank one of our ships giving us the Casus Belli to declare war on Germany.
you made a couple of MAJOR mitakes in here, first being about the Russian tanks. I hate to break it to you, but this entire thread was about a scenario where RUSSIA AND GERMANY DID NOT FIGHT EACH OTHER AFTER DEC 1941.
Second, your analysis of the German atomic program is not in sync with some history networks. I don’t know if you’re right, or they are, but your view is hardly “settled science.”
You obviously just in a contrarian mood today…..bye
The “gun bomb” was fabulously expensive and time consuming to make. I’d even hate to venture a guess as to how much it would cost to build one in today’s dollars and electricity costs.
At one time, Oak Ridge consumed 1/7th of all of the electricity generated in the US!
You can find a detailed discussion of Hitler’s overall eastern strategy, before the war began, in Paul Carell’s “Hitler Moves East.” A superb read..
I’ve never heard that story, however it appears to be speculation/fantasy based upon the Japanese fleet attack on Ceylon and against the remainder of the British fleet based there for control of the Indian Ocean. The Japanese, as far as the extensive reading on the Pacific War I’ve done, never had a plan to aid Italy in North Africa.
That plan would have been a year too late in the spring of 1942, seeing that the British had expelled Italy from Ethiopia in January 1941.
As for German efforts to develop an A bomb, the program was so feeble it suffered because the stupid Germans were drafting physicists into the Army, and the Heer gave up on it in 1942 and handed it over to the Reich Research council. Like many Nazi armaments programs there was no coherent effort and control like the Manhattan Project and rivalries and infighting slowed progress. Even if they did develop the bomb they had no way to deliver it, and while a nuclear war in 1945 would have been disastrous, eventually all the Fatherland would be glowing after the B-29s had done their work.
Bye.
you changed the basis of the entire thread with what you say “everybody knows” - and frankly, I do believe it’s likely that Stalin and Hitler would have gone to war again with each other - if it had been delayed 2-3 years, the entire war would have been totally different.
You’re trying to act too smart by half…….you’re just being an ass
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