What if Hitler Had Invaded the United States in World War Two?

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.

Continental powers such as France, Germany, and Russia appear incredibly strong but are never capable of winning global wars.

Hitler's primary problem was that he bit off far more than he could chew just on the continent. His first policy should have been to leave Russia the heck alone. Save that adventure for another lifetime, even, and consolidate the hold on Western Europe and North Africa.

If you're Hitler in that scenario, you first sign a cease-fire with Britain to buy time, while your cargo ships and tankers do a brisk business back and forth through the Mediterranean. Use the time to build ships in Oslo and Naples, and to build up heavy industry in Aleppo and Tripoli. Meanwhile your propaganda machine is running 24/7 to paint you as a benevolent strongman who has brought order, intellectual rigor, and ethical purity to the mishmash of decadent cultures formerly known as Continental Europe.

Meanwhile, you're massing troops and materiel just north of Paris, including a new generation of ocean-capable amphibious landing craft. Regular sorties of Me-109s on the French shoreline keep the Brits from flying over to get a look at what you're doing. An arrangement with Josef Stalin enables you to trade shipping rights through the Med for generous quantities of Russian coal and petroleum.

Switzerland, while still sovereign, is landlocked and dependent on its good business relationship with you in order to obtain necessary goods. They do your banking for you, and you allow them bread and paint and clothespins. Neither you nor the Swiss mind so much, because you're making each other rich. You pay for their services with the excellent diamonds that you've got coming out of Africa.

Five years after the signing of your cease-fire with Britain, you arrange a naval exercise in the North Atlantic using most of those big warships you've been building out of Oslo. While the Brits are looking the other way, you send a flight of very high-flying Junkers (the ones with the turbocharged piston diesels) with three of your newest toys (nukes) and you smear London into a smoking grease spot, preferably while Parliament is in session.

With no Prime Minister, no royalty, and no Lords to speak of, the island nation is relatively simple to occupy through amphibious assault. Meanwhile, the U.S. has been terribly busy dealing with the Japanese in the Pacific, and haven't got into the war in Europe because you'd signed a cease-fire with the Brits. And now it's too late for the Yanks to intervene to save England, because you now own it.

So if the U.S. wants to attempt a European adventure at this point, they've got to start by establishing a beachhead somewhere all by themselves, halfway around the world, and nearly half the U.S. population likes you because you've got good press. There's a senator from Missouri who likes to make a stink, but the New York Times paints that Truman fellow to be an ignorant, uncultured hayseed (as opposed to you, that lover of fine cuisine and the arts). Besides, you've got those nukes. There's a lot of bluster, but the U.S. never intervenes to save Britain.

More time goes by, and you cultivate your relationship with Mexico. (By now, you can probably write the ending yourself...) The important thing is, take your time. Don't plan on rolling the Panzer divisions into Texas until 1958, at least. In fact, it's probably better to never invade at all. Do your best to split up the third world between yourself, Stalin, and Hirohito. Now that you've got the nukes, you can take Japan at your leisure. Do your best to own everything around the US and Canada, and let those countries isolate themselves. In fact, encourage them to do it. Maintain as cordial a relationship as you can.

Meanwhile, you own everything else. When you think of it, close down the Med and the Baltic to Russian shipping, line the Polish border with heavy artillery, and let Stalin freeze in his godforsaken Moscow. Meanwhile, you're on the Riviera with your feet up, sipping Reisling and listening to Wagner.

Your views are strongly contradicted by Gallup polls at the time.

I have a three volume set of historical Gallup polls. What they indicate from the very start of the war is that at least 60% of the American public always accepted three propositions as true.

1. The Axis powers are our enemies.
2. If they win this war, we're next.
3. So we'd better see to it that they don't win this war.

Roosevelt at every step had strong, bipartisan support across the regions for a policy of keeping the Allies fighting. In fact one fascinating question went...

What is more important ? Staying out of this war or stopping Hitler even if it means risking war ?

66% of the American people said stopping Hitler. The American people always understood that sooner or later they would be in the war. By late 1941 America was clearly mobilizing for entry. Isolationist, pacifist sentiment had been completely marginalized.

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