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.
They were a good way from it. The best they could have done by the end of the war was a dirty bomb.
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It's a little like opium. It's a great place as long as that's all you have to do and you never need to leave it for anything serious.
I live in a town where school was taught in the German language until WWII. Many of my neighbors (descended from German immigrants of the 1830s) still speak English with German accents because the German language was spoken in their homes and churches. Their families may have lived on this land since 1832, but they still call themselves Germans.
I think that if the Japanese had invaded from the Pacific (their little 2 man subs were caught along our pacific coastline in oregon and California) and German subs tried to invade through Canada that there might have been an internal rising of sorts.
Scary to think about all of this.
And Mexico had already decided to do that using civilian rather than military invaders.
During the war their was a "Guest worker" program for Mexican nationals to come work in the US legally. Many Mexican citizens joined the US military to fight the Nazies and the Nips. Many of those did not stay in the US after the war, as they could have, but rather returened to their homeland. They were the exact analog of Americans who joined the Canadian or British forces to fight the Germans before Pearl Harbor. I think you are letting current affairs lead to some revisionist "history".
That was the plan. It would have taken a very long time and there was no guarantee of success. During that time anything could happen in Russia or China to bleed the 3rd reich dry. Prognosis: ultimately the same situation we have now and in the same period of time.
Well, Russia wasn't defeated, so we'll leave it out of the mix. But we have a perfect example of Hitler's perfidy when we examine Czechoslovakia. After the European leaders gave eastern Europe's only democracy to Hitler on assurances that some little peice would be left, Hitler wasted no time in carving up the nation an parceling it out to friends.
Russia made Hitler's conquest of Poland possible when Stalin agreed to a non-agression pact. This was driven largely by Britain and France's unwillingness to engage in war if Hitler should invade Poland. If Russia had agreed to back up France and Britain, it would have carried almost the entire load while the westerners dithered.
The "Non-Agression Pact" didn't last very long. No. The southerner that contemplated trusting hitler would be a really stupid southerner, and he would be silenced by his more intelligent neighbors.
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.
Not a chance. The Germans had no intention nor the capability to conquer all of Russia, much less continue rolling into North America.
FYI, aside from addressing Versailles related greivances, Hitlers principal objective for the war was to sieze and colonize Eastern Europe extending to the Caucauses oilfields. The majority of the conquored peoples who didn't meet Germanic racial criteria were to be deported across the eastern frontier with the remainder to serve as menial labor.
Hitler didn't set out to conquor Western Europe. The only reason he attacked France and England was to protect his flank due to their unexpected war declaration following the invasion of Poland.
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).
The Germans already tried this in WWI and it backfired. The Mexican army of 1941 was little advanced from their army that was so soundly trounced 100 years earlier.
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).
He tried all those things.
4. Germany could have offered the South a second chance. -snip-.
5. -snip- A shared interest in race issues would have brought the Nazis and the New England Eugenicists together.
FYI, The Best thing Hitler could have done to keep America out of the war was to not to have declared war on us. He declared war on America, not the other way around. Why did he declare war on us? Because on December 7, 1941, the German offensive had bogged down in the snows of Russia. Hitler was desperate to get the Japanese to attack the Russians from the east and thought by declaring war on America, he could get the Japanese to apply pressure to the Russians.
Too bad for Hitler that the Japanese were determined to move south in order to seize the crucial oil and other raw materials in SouthEast Asia and Indonesia. Zuhkov had recently bloodied the Japanese nose and the Japanese highest priority in 1941-1942 was to secure sources of raw materials to the south. Stalin also knew this which is why he moved units from the east to take part in the Red Armys successfull counter-offensive in the winter of 1941-1942.
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