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.
“My central point is to show that the outcome could have been different in many, many ways, up until the breakout from Normandy.”
Actually, the fate of Germany was sealed before that, in frozen Stalingrad. The losses there were huge, and simply could not be replaced. Of more importance than that, was the effect it had on the German Allies, Hungary, Romania, and Italy.
The losses among the allied forces at Stalingrad represented almost the whole of Hungary and Romania’s militaries. the losses in men and material simply could not be replaced.
The Italian losses, which were pretty much everything and everyone they sent to Russia, were politically devastating for Mussolini.
The wipeout of the Southern Front, with no reserves available to stabilize it, before it became a rout, forced the withdrawal from the Caucuses, where the Germans were within eyesight of the Oil derricks, and the Caspian Sea.
Had the Germans withdrawn from Stalingrad before it became a quagmire, and consolidated, they may well have had the reserves to not only prevent Uranus, but to consolidate the Caucuses, and keep the allies in the war.
BUT DUDE….without the eastern front, they wouldn’t have been running out of fuel.
You cannot cannot cannot analyze any one factor in a vacuum. Without the Russian front, absolutely no fact about the rest of the war would remain a fact. IT WOULD CHANGE EVERY SINGLE THING about the war, period.
Being a vegetarian tends to do that.
actually the key was the Japanese
They never should have attacked the US...
Other than the Philippines all the Japanese main strategies interest in the Pacific really in British, French and Dutch colonies
As an ally of the Germans they could go after those, steered clear of US interests, etc it in the Philippines..
and leveraged US isolationism and anti colonialism against the French and British to keep the US out of the war and not be that giant “arsenal of democracy”..pumping out all those tons and tons of war material that kept all the Allies afloat
Once the British French Dutch colonial interests in the far east were secured and Japan had the raw materials needed ..then could then join Germany against Russia....
Again keep the US out keep the war and isolated in the Americas ......keep the war focused on Asia aka Russia and China and and leverage the Gandhi pacifism, anti British movement to neutralize India .with a Japanese coming from the east and the Germans coming from the west..
It was truly the Japanese thinking the lost the war
They focus so long on the US being main enemy in the Pacific they didn’t really notice the political landscape change with Germany and the war in Europe...and Japan being ally of Germany and heavy US isolationism at the time stay out of the wars
The Japanese could go on after all the European colonies in Asia..under an anti colonialism pretext...and where vast majority of all the raw materials they wanted were ..and leverage US isolationists and anti colonialism sympathies to keep the US out
Germany versus USSR without Lend-Lease?
Well, I knew he suffered tremors, so it was speculated he had Parkinson’s. His health also wasn’t so good after the attempt on his life with the bomb in the meeting room. Nearly getting blown up will do that to you.
What if Hitler had a B-52?
I think your timeline is wrong. This exercies begins Dec 8 1941. STalingrad had not been attacked, yet alone repelled, at that point. The entire battle of Stalingrad does not happen under this scenario.
Stalin had calculated with the pact to carve Poland Hitler would not be ready to attack the SU until 1942 which worked for Stalin since he had decimated his officer corp. That's why he refused to believe the reports of the massive build up of forces on his western borders in 1941.
Again, a vacuum analysis. Without the Russian front, it is highly likely that many folks who wanted Hitler dead would not have felt that way. Again, this changes every single fact about every single issue of WW2. Every one.
Is that the English translation of "Kesselschlachten?"
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Hitler was dumb enough to believe his own propaganda about being invincible. Our military leaders were against assassinating Hitler because he was too valuable to our side.
Although lost their Army group, but it was still recoverable, as Mannstein was able to provide some stability. Else they would not have later gone on the offensive at Kursk.
That assumes the war would have continued without Hitler. I don't think that's a foregone conclusion. At least at a certain point, in 43,44, when the assassination attempts excalated.
“Mussolini lost the war for Hitler, he lost valuable time in launching Barbarossa in order to bail out the Italians in the Balkans.”
An often-over-looked factor. Not the only one, but without the diversion of resources, the Russian offensive could have begun when the rains stopped in mid-May. What kind of a difference would that two-three weeks have made?
Another factor is that the Russian resistance in the South was much bigger than what the German Intelligence had predicted it to be. Stalin kept huge forces in the South to repress dissent, and German Intelligence didn’t account for that, nor did they account for the speed of the Russian Mobilization in the South, which was aided by those already existing units.
That resistance, and the need to move forces South to account for it, would have a huge effect, later on, as forces neared Moscow.
This is true….not only were the "final solution" and the Russian front both disastrous resource killers, they were linked for the reason you mentioned.
that could have kicked off the Jihad 70 years earlier
remember, muslims dont believe in national boundries, if they felt oppressed, they are all oppressed if the mufti said to unite against the NAZI crusaders
The sheer scale of the U.S. economy is still hard to comprehend. In 1939, our military was virtually non-existent. Just a few years later, we had pushed the Japanese Empire back to their mainland and we were filling the skies of Nazi Europe with bombers, filling the oceans with ships and material and landing millions of troops on foreign soil with not only enough supplies for the troops but for the liberated refugees as well.
All this without a single successful enemy attack on our soil (Hawaii was not a state at that time). In fact, the war ended as we were just getting ramped up. If the war continued into 1946, we would by then have had triple the resources and if that wasn't enough, we would have tripled them again in 1947.
The atomic bomb made that pretty much unnecessary.
I believe the Nazis should have concentrated on Moscow trying to create chaos in the Soviet leadership....Stalin was on the ropes, getting him out of the picture should have been Job One for the Nazis, who would have taken his place? I think without Stalin, the defense falls apart.
“I believe the Nazis should have concentrated on Moscow trying to create chaos in the Soviet leadership....”
Probably a tougher target and not as strategic as Stalingrad.
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