Posted on 06/16/2003 6:15:57 PM PDT by AveMaria
This is a nightmare scenario targetted towards all of you World War Two history buffs.
About a week ago, a statue of Eisenhower was unveiled at the Capitol in DC, honoring President Eisenhower in his army uniform. In a speech commemorating that occassion, Bob Dole asked the audience to consider what would have happened if Ike had failed in his crusade. Is there a possibility that Hitler would have managed to take advantage of political, regional, and ethnic divisions in America in the 1940s, and defeated good old USA?
It certainly would not have been possible for Hitler to stage a successful naval invasion across the Atlantic to take the Eastern Seaboard, irrespective of whether or not America succeded in Europe. He simply did not have a Navy that was large enough for that task.
I considered various ways in which the Germans would have defeated America, assuming that they had succeeded in their mission to conquer the Soviet Union:
1. They might have attempted to conquer Alaska, based on their ability to control Siberia and the arctic regions of Russia. From there, they would have rolled over poorly defended Canada, from which they would have launched a massive invasion from the sparsely populated North-Western US.
2. Using the historic grievances that Mexico has, especially over territorial loss in the 1848 war, Hitler could have encouraged the Mexicans to stage a massive military invasion from the South (something similar to what their illegals are already doing). Given that many South Americans had pro-axis fascist feelings during the war, Brazil and Argentina could have send their own armies as well, to support the Mexicans. And, considering that Latin America continued to trade with Germany in the war years, Germany would have been able to move massive armaments and troops to South America, support an invasion from Mexico. As a reward, Mexico would have been rewarded with the return of California, New Mexico and Arizona. The rest of South America would have had a chance to be freed from American regional dominance that has existed since the Monroe Doctrine.
3. Hitler could have reached out to the anti-FDR right-wing, the likes of Charles Lindberg, Henry Ford, Rev. Charles Coughlin, and their many followers who were influential in the America First Movement. He could have used the resentment that Irish-Americans and German-Americans had for Anglo elites who wanted to save Britain, a nation that many in both groups disliked (I am Irish myself, and I am aware about how many Irishmen resented going to help Britain. The Republic of Ireland made a conscious decision to stay neutral in the war to the very end).
4. Germany could have offered the South a second chance. If the South militarily supported the defeat of the Yankees, they could get back the Confederate States of America. The CSA would have been a fully independent right-wing nation that was allied to Germany, like Franco's Spain. They would have been allowed to preserve their system of segregation, a system that Germans approved of.
5. In the 1940s, Eugenics was highly favored by both liberal and conservative elites in New England. American race scientists like H. Goddard, Carl Bingham, Madison Grant, and Lothrop Stoddard were standard readings in the school system in Nazi Germany. A shared interest in race issues would have brought the Nazis and the New England Eugenicists together.
A combination of all those forces would have overwhelmed the FDR administration.
Can't you see the evidence of the Mexican Invasion, all over the country? Taco Bells in every strip mall and little town..!
And even though I am a rocket scientist, I don't pretend to be able to develop new theories of matter. Yes, I was serious. The talent necessary to build the bomb was chased out of Germany before the war.
One of the best resources on atomci history is Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun (a history of the hydrogen bomb and the fifties espionage that surrounded it).
The Nazis expected that result. What they found was resistance, and comments along the line of "you should have come ten years ago." By the time the Nazis invaded the worst was over for the people in the soviets, and things had been looking up, sort of.
What were they? B-17's that Doolittle flew off the Hornet? They operated at extreme range and everyone new it was a one way trip over Tokyo and into China. The range was so extreme the bombers flew straight to target after take-off and didn't pause to create a formation to fly in.
And, yes, if he had been sane, he would have left Russia until he secured his Western Front. He said as much in Mein Kampf, or so I've been told.
Yes. Of course. Germany was the second home of socialism, which migrated from it's birthplace in France.
The "socialism" in National Socialism was a front, and the Nazis were in heavy competition with the real socialists for votes in the '20s and '30s.
But an invasion with foot soldiers? Hah. It would have been a slaughter. 80 million snipers who know how to shoot, and know the terrain.
I made a similar statement in post #17
I'm thinking of how a victorious Germany treated Liege in 1914.
Not a happy thought.
Hitler declared war on America to try to show the Japanese that he supported (and most of all wanted) them to concentrate on a 2nd Russian Front.
Unfortunately, in 1939-40, Russia (under Zhukov no less) inflicted horrible casualties on the Japanese and the Japanese left Siberia to the Russians and proceeded with their conquest for the rich oil/rubber in the Dutch East Indies.
And that assumption could not be more wrong. I'm a southerner, and I lived in both NY state and the deep south during that war. Believe me, there was not a more patriotic, pro-America, anti-Nazi, anti-Fascist, anti-Japanese section of the nation than the south. I don't mean to say that the south was any more patriotic than the rest of the country, but it certainly wasn't any less so.
I think if you check you will find that the per capita enlistment rate in the southern states was higher than in any other section of the nation. I remember that boys from my hometown walked and hitch-hiked 60 miles to the nearest recruiting station in the weeks following Pearl Harbor. Another boy I knew lied about his age (he looked older since he was 6'-6", 250 lbs) with the full cooperation of his father so he could join the Marines. Later that year he celebrated his 17th birthday in a foxhole on Guadalcanal.
Anyone who thinks that Americans anywhere on American soil would have collaborated with the Nazis simply weren't there back then, and they don't know what they're talking about now. Most Americans north or south would rather have fought a buzz saw barehanded than to betray their country. Patriotism and hatred for the enemy has never been at a higher peak than it was back then. I guess you had to be there to know what that time was like, and I was there.
Then the '60s generation, Viet Nam, and the hippie culture came along, and patriotism has become a trite anachronism in some effete liberal areas of America. But patriotism was very strong and enthusiastically expressed all over the USA in WWII, and it still hasn't gone out of fashion down here in red clay country.
Weeell, it did seem to work out that way didn't it? We got the bomb by allowing Jewish immigrants fleeing German Naziism and Italian Facism to come here and develop it, and the Germans got the V-2 by keeping their "Aryan" supermen at home to mess around with metal tubes and alcohol fuel.
I don't necessarily subscribe to the theory that any one race is intellectually superior to another, but if I did I would put my money on Jacob's kids.
So I don't think any of your nightmare scenerios are feasible. But the oil of the Mideast would have been in Hitler's hands and the Soviet Union would have been gone. England- even without an outright invasion would have been a vassal state like Vichey France. Trade with Europe would have continued but a "cold war" would have descended between Germany and the United States. We still would have gone to war against Japan as Germany did not have an obligation to declare war on the United States if Japan attacked the US or was attacked by the US. ANd in that case with the full weight of the American war effort agaisnt Japan that war would have over in 2 years at most or at least Japan a non player. And Hitler would have lived a long life and would most likely still be in full control of a Nazified and German dominated Europe in the 60's. We would have nukes pointed at each other and strategic bombers doing a dance in the mid Atlantic instead of the Artic. China would not have fallen to the communists but would be our ally and bulkwark against Hitler in Asia and Siberia.
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