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 Sir Arun wrote:
1. Operation Sea Lion. I understand it would have never worked (there was a simulation conducted in the 1970s that arrived at the conclusion that an initial German wave would have been able to land, but the 2nd wave bringing in the heavy stuff would have been destroyed by the Royal Navy).

Operation Sea Lion was basically doomed. The resources available for Overlord were immense, and even then it was fairly touch and go as there's only so many divisions you can put on the beaches in the first few days, it was only with overwhelming naval and air power that the foothold was maintained. In its most optimistic plans Germany's air and naval resources wouldn't have been a fraction of what the allies had for Overlord.

If the Germans had kept the Luftwaffe trained at eliminating the RAF bases instead of bombing London civilians, do you think the RAF would have been defeated? The Brits had the radar on their side plus the home turf, but was there a chance for the Luftwaffe to win the air superiority? Also, was there a realistic chance for the Germans to quickly seize most of the French navy before it was scuttled/ attacked by the RN? If so, would it have made Operation Sea Lion possible? During this time period the Germans had both their main battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz operational.

The German switch to bombing London has to be seen in the strategic context - it was clear Sea Lion wasn't going to happen, and focus was shifting to Russia. As such, continuing to grind the RAF at a loss of 3 planes for every 2 destroyed at best (and 2 lost for every plane destroyed overall) wasn't achieving nothing. So Germany switched to trying to bomb Britain in to submission.

All things considered it wasn't a terrible idea - it's a pretty instinctive thing to assume that the tremendous destruction bombers cause on cities will cause the citizens to demand an end to the war. It just doesn't actually work like that - human instinct is actually to bear the suffering and not give in.

And given the British then attempted pretty much the same strategy with its own air power, even knowing it didn't work on them, well I just can't the switch to London as a blunder Germany should have avoided.

2. Was an assault on St. Petersburg possible? Why did the Germans besiege that city for years instead of storming it?

The German army was exceptionally skilled in manoeuvre but their superiority diminished greatly when it came to more static fighting. And with the resources needed to capture Leningrad reallocated to the assault on Moscow, siege was the best option. And it wasn't a terrible position for the Germans - conditions inside Leningrad were appalling, and the Soviets burned a lot of resources attempting to lift the siege.

Would Germany have been better taking Leningrad instead of attempting Moscow or their other offensives? Yes, but only because we know how those offensives turned out - you can't judge with hindsight, but only with what was known at the time.

3. Why did France surrender?

Two reasons. The first is that there wasn't an army between the Germans and Paris, basically. The French position was utterly hopeless.

The second reason is that the French didn't really understand what they were submitting to when they accepted ceasefire and negotiations. There was a belief that it would be much like other European wars - some territory and treasure would be handed over, and then France would return to governing France. For all his faults, Churchill understood that ceasefire was the thin end of a wedge that would mean the total submission of France to Germany, and so it turned out.

The other political factors in France mattered, but I think those two are the major factors.

Did Britain surrender when the capital of the world's largest empire, London, was being bombed day in day out? Why were the French so cowardly?

There is a massive difference between being bombed, and enemy troops actually in control of your capital city - the first sucks and limits your fighting ability, the second makes any kind of organised fighting almost impossible. And go read about Verdun and what the French did to defend their country, before accepting that old stereotype.

4. Is there any single full length documentary dakka can recommend that solely focuses on the military aspect of WW2, starting from the German invasion of Poland, over the entire Blitzkrieg covering each country that fell, over the Fall of France, the London Blitz and Barbarossa till D-Day and eventual defeat of Berlin?

There are some books I can recommend, if you're interested.

 Soladrin wrote:

 Strombones wrote:

 Wyrmalla wrote:


Do Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter or Band of Brothers count at all?

I've been trying to find and watch Unsere Mutter/Vater forever. Maybe I'll look on amazon.

I did however come across an entire book dedicated to a hypothetical Sea Lion in the library the other day. Only got through a few pages until I had to get back to studying but it seemed like really awesome wargame material. Wish I could remember the title.

It's on netflix here.

Aha! I just found it on my Netflix under a different title!! (Generation War).

Binge watched the whole thing. Really awesome movie.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The largest contributing factor to the defeat of the Germans was Hitler's meddling in the actual military affairs focusing on symbolic targets instead of beneficial ones.

Hitler was a moron when it came to actually knowing how to win battles, he thought his limited experience in WW1 gave him the capacity to make good decisions. Combine this with the drugs he began taking midway through the war and his increasing paranoia and it was a recipe for disaster.

Absolute nonsense. And damn we've been over this a whole lot of times.

Hitler made a whole lot of blunders, but almost all of them were made once the German position was basically screwed anyway. Before then most of his interference was actually positive. Hitler over-rode senior staff to instead opt for von Manstein's plan to drive through the Ardennes. The OKH were utterly pessimistic about war with France, and were committed to a strategically conservative drive through Belgium, even after plans for such an attack were accidentally revealed to the allies. And it was Hitler who insisted on holding ground against the Russians in the first winter, a decision that basically kept the German army intact and in possession of its heavy weapons.

The invasion of Russia was overall a mistake, but not one that was crippling in and of itself. If the Germans had moved more quickly, they could have eliminated the Russian manufacturing capacity located behind Moscow before it got relocated over the Ural mountains. This would have utterly destroyed the Russian's ability to produce any substantial war material, like tanks and aircraft. After doing this, they needed to pull back before winter set in and fortify a defensive line, while also securing the oil fields in the Baltic. They should have also ignored the cities, which were just going to be death traps and bypassed them. Using a similar strategy to the Island Hopping the US used in the Pacific. They could cut off the russians in the cities and waited till they ran out of supplies.

First up, the German army moved with extraordinary speed in its invasion of Russia, arguing they should have moved even faster is just weird.

Second up, German did bypass cities, that was their basic mode of operation. The problem is that in order to sustain the offensive past the city, you need to maintain supplies, and given rail heads and road junctures are all in the city you just bypassed, this means you can't siege the city while maintaining a well supplied offensive past it. So Germany looked to surround and isolate the city, then force capitulation and collapse of the defenders. It worked pretty well most of the time, it only failed when the defenders accepted horrific conditions like Leningrad, or when encirclement of the city was impossible due to effective Russian defence and/or natural barriers.

With the oil fields secure, the Germans would have had more fuel availability. Which would have helped a lot.

Maybe. Ironically the focus on the Caucasus was actually one of Hitler's grand ideas - his senior staff wanted to maintain the offensive on Moscow. Whether Hitler was right is debatable, the war was certainly an economic war in which access to resources was essential, but Germany managed to continue for years after the failure to capture the oil fields, and oil shortages only proved truly critical in the last 12 months.

Of course the best action would have been not to attack Russia at all. Instead fortifying the eastern front to repel any eventual Russian invasion. Instead of invading Russia, head down into Turkey and the Middle East to acquire more natural resources. This influx of material would have allowed for a build up for the eventual invasion of Britain.

That's treating the war as a game of Risk, and not an actual war. Leaders aren't mentats working at all times to maximise their land and power, they are people with goals based on how they see the world. Russia wasn't a diversion, it was the end game, the whole purpose of the exercise.

And, as I've already explained, Germany faced acute shortages in multiple key resources (it had no local production of cotton, rubber, tin or bauxite, and its local production of iron ore, copper & nickel were extremely low). Arguing for Germany to play the long game in the face of that is madness.

And then there's the issue that continuing an expensive attritional exercise against Britain was madness, while Russia continued it's own modernisation and reform program. Germany did as well as it did because it struck Britain and France at their weakest points, and then did the same against Russia. Changing that timeline makes this vastly worse for Germany.

Once that was achieved, they could focus on taking Britain on. First, they needed to take out the Royal Navy. Use their new resources to slowly build up a fleet that could take the fleet on. Use V2 rockets to take out British seaports and ships that are at harbor. Once the navy is taken down, you blockade Britain. You blockade it for years. Let them run out of resources. And only once they are weak do you consider invading.

Same problem - slowly build a fleet to take on the Royal Navy assumes a timeframe that Germany simply doesn't have. The best hope is actually to sink merchant vessels with subs, something Germany came reasonably close to possibly being able to achieve, excepting that British and American developments in convoy defense minimised the threat by June/July of 1943, while at the same time service on a u-boat was close to a death sentence.

I think Germany was always doomed to lose. Small navy, no long term ability to keep fighting and against very superior (if slow to awaken) enemies spells doom. They managed to punch above their weight early on but it would never last.

I think a cooler what if, is what would happen if Germany joined the west in fighting the communists. I think thats what many people thought would happen as the next war.

 Paradigm wrote:
This is very interesting; I've not really looked at France much yet.

Do you really think France could have blunted the blitzkrieg? I imagine they had the manpower, but would they have been able to marshal it in time, considering how fast the Germans reached Paris and forced the surrender?

They didn't just have the manpower, they had a superior number of divisions and a greater weight of heavy weapons. German victory basically comes down to a new concept of warfare - a concentration of mobile forces to achieve a decisive breakthrough.

The tragedy of history is that military theorists, such as De Gaulle in France and Liddel-Hart in Britain, realised the potency of such tactics, but plans were dropped by conservative superiors. In Germany the idea was similarly rejected, but it was only when facing military inferiority against Britain and France that Hitler over-rode his senior commanders, and decided to roll the dice on this idea that von Manstein was promoting through his young General Guderian.

The other tragedy is that it took very little time to develop effective counters to blitzkrieg - the British who's tactical performance in Africa could be described as very underwhelming, none the less had defence against Blitzkrieg pretty much mastered. With a focus on defence in depth, mobile reserves, and a focus on strengthening the shoulders of the breakthrough (to avoid broader collapse and threaten a counter-stroke) you can nullify much of the potency of the blitz. Even if the allies had not committed to a blitz on their own, if they'd adopted just some of the above strategies much of the disaster of WWII could have been avoided.


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 Silent Puffin? wrote:
I think that an interesting what if scenario is if Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the spring 1943 or even the spring of 1944. Britain would probably have lost the battle of the Atlantic by this point and would be suing for peace, Germany would have access to the Middle eastern oilfields, the expansion of the German armed forces would be complete and German equipment would have been of much higher quality. On the Soviet side the RKKD would be a bit more professional after Stalin's purges but I still think that they would have fared just as badly as they did in 1942.

In this scenario are we excluding US involvement in the war? Because without openly hunting US ships I can't see how Germany can completely cut off Britain, and with US involvement you pretty quickly get exactly what did happen - the rapid collapse in the effectiveness of u-boats.

Given that the Germans reached the Moscow suburbs with utterly worn out and largely obsolete kit, reliant on a horse drawn supply line and unprepared for the Russian winter in 1942 I think that its highly likely that an other year or 2 of preparation would have seen the fall of Moscow and with it the USSR.

Russia wasn't a static target. Their own reforms were underway and another year or two they would likely have improved even more than the Germans. They wouldn't have been 'a bit more professional', while there would still have been deficiencies in senior command, there would have been a whole new generation of properly trained junior officers, and truly modern equipment (upgrade to a semi-auto rifle, complete supply of T-34s, KVs upgraded to JS etc).

Oh, and another year or two of modernisation wouldn't have seen the Germans improve their logistics. There was little value placed on logistics - rail supported by horse was considered more than enough. Unlike the US and UK German logisticians were excluded from the most senior ranks, and so it just wasn't how Germany thought about winning wars. For the all strengths of German missiontactics, it produced a group think that meant important ideas were often entirely excluded.


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 Frazzled wrote:
People fault the French but forget:
1. France is not the USSR. They could not trade distance for time. There was no French winter coming to stop the Germans.

Definitely. Soviet performance in the early stages of the war was worse, if anything. They just had land and a vast supply of reserves to call up. In the months it took to reach Moscow the Soviets managed to scratch together an effective defence, something the French had no chance of achieving in defence of Paris.

2. France's manpower had already been drained in WWI, and their economy was reeling from the Depression. They couldn't afford a more mobile force, and their manpower was lower.

Not really. Germany started with 135 divisions, and including Belgium the allies had about 120. So Germany had a slight advantage, but once you factor in reserves of supplies, Germany had a serious problem (there were German artillery units with less than ten rounds per tube, with no plan for additional supply). The issue, ultimately, is that ten German divisions effectively decided the war, as they were the effective concentration that broke through the Ardennes and collapsed the French and British position.

3. they relied on a strong flank in Belgium. That flank went neutral and they didn't have time to extend the line as planned.

Sort of, the French plan was actually for a decisive advance through Belgium, defeat of the best German units they expected to face their, and nice quick end to the war in French and British favour. Contrary to the myth that the French plan was entirely defensive, it was actually a very stupid kind of offensive - one that planned to hit the enemy where they expected them to be strongest, while exposing the flank of that advance to a German counter stroke.

The German counter stroke was far more effectively conceived and executed, and involved a far more sensible strategic goal in the first place.

The whole thing is a bit like planning to win a fight against a mugger by punching him in the knife, only to find out his knife is in his other hand, and heading towards your neck. You're fethed, but even if his knife was where you expected it to be, you were pretty screwed anyway.

4. There was poor political leadership-agreed.
5. There was poor military leadership-agreed.

Definitely.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
If Germany is smart and consolidates their power, without provoking the US unduely, they will also develop nuclear weaponry too.

You can't just choose to develop nukes. You need immense resources and a whole lot of very smart people. It also helps if you have an ally, such as the UK, who'd already done work on the bomb for about a decade, to give you a massive headstart.

Simply put - the Manhattan Project was something that only the US could have managed at that time, and even then it's kind of amazing they poured in the resources necessary to achieve it.


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 Paradigm wrote:
On the other hand, would America be pushed to using nukes given that:
- Germany would have very little capability to threaten them given the distances involved
- In essence, they would be launching on an occupied nation unless they actually hit Germany (and thus get through hundreds of miles of territory without being shot down), and at the least fallout would be all over Europe

If anything, would you not just get America and Eurasia existing as two separate states, each ignoring the other?

The bomb was built with use on Germany in mind from the start. Nobody gives a gak about fallout when you're in total war.


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 Grey Templar wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
But Germany wasn't smart now was it.

Well all WW2 alternate history discussions have to assume intelligent decisions on the part of Germany.

They were stupid, thats why they lost. But what if they were smart?

No. Germany made lots of stupid mistakes, but none of them ever cost them victory. The other powers screwed up way more, France and Russia especially, but Britain had their share. If you want to start playing with history to fix mistakes, and it isn't a Wehrmacht fan fiction where only their blunders are fixed, then things start looking worse for Germany, not better.


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 Sir Arun wrote:
How strong was the French army in 1940? Didnt they have at least more than a million men?

With British support the whole army was fairly close to parity with German forces.

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that a nation with a population 80% that of Germany can be conquered within a month just because the upper echelons agree to a surrender.

Stick your best troops and most mobile troops in a foolish advance through Belgium. Look flabbergasted as the Germans drive their best and most mobile units through the Ardennes, cutting off your best troops and threatening Paris. Begin to retreat your best divisions, abandoning most heavy gear along the way, and getting hammered by the Luftwaffe which is steadily gaining air superiority.

Help the British retreat at Dunkirk, taking many of your own best troops as well. Look flabbergasted again as the British state they won't be redeploying those troops elsewhere in France. Accept a ceasefire, believing the terms of peace will be harsh but limited. Look flabbergasted again as Germany basically enforces a complete surrender, and resuming hostilities has become politically and militarily impossible.

You'd think the army would split into countless guerillas spread all over France, harassing the occupying German soldiers and doing everything possible to make casualties mount.

It generally doesn't work like that. People will be loyal to the government and their decisions, even when that government decision is surrender (the politics of Vichy French forces in Africa is an amazing read - many thought their duty was to Vichy France - effectively working to aid their German occupiers, look it up if you're interested).

And the automatic hate we have for Nazis wasn't in place at the time - the evil of the Nazi regime was poorly understood at that time, and elements like anti-semitism weren't actually that unpopular in France.

More than anything though, most people just want to go home. Given a rifle and told by the powers that be that they have to fight they will, but given the choice to voluntarily fight a guerrilla war or just go home to their families, well most people don't join resistance groups.


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I dont know if there are unanimous sources to back this up, but Hitler had no alternative but to officially declare war on the US in December 1941. Not because of Pearl Harbor mind you, but because the war had already started between these two countries. Hitler mentioned in his declaration-of-war speech that by spring 1941 Roosevelt had already given the US fleet a "shoot on sight" orders regarding any Axis ship they spotted, so even without an official declaration of war, the US was de-facto at war with the Axis powers by 1941, and Germany declaring war on the US after Japan attacked them at Pearl Harbor was merely a necessary formality.

Yeah, it's poorly understood even today, but Germany was actually encouraging Japan to enter the war. They understood that blockade against Britain was impossible without hitting US ships, and if they were to declare open season on the seas then the US would declare war on Germany pretty quickly after that.

Japan eventually came in to the war fearing that if they delayed much longer then Germany would win the war without them, and they'd have little place to argue for territory expansion of their own. Had they delayed another couple of months, until after Germany's defeat on the outskirts of Moscow, they might never have entered the war. That would have been a very different world.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
And Germany has a better delivery system for nuclear weapons than airplanes. They have ICBMs decades before anyone else.

fething what? The V2 had a range of little more than 300kms. THere's nothing intercontinental about that. Stop making things up.


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 Silent Puffin? wrote:
On 1 yes they were reorganising, just very slowly. Given the poor quality of training of all ranks were still receiving before Barbarossa I'm not sure that another year or even 2 would have strengthened the RKKD sufficiently to allow them to successfully defend against a much strengthened Wehrmacht.

There was nothing slow about Russian re-organisation. It was the scope of the re-organisation, basically a complete replacement of the officer class coupled with a complete redesign of the Soviet method of war that took so long. Add another couple of years to that and you would have likely a vast improvement.

I mean, just look at how much the Soviet army improved in a couple of years after the invasion, and they managed that while replacing millions of casualties. What they would have done in reform without the strain of the war effort would have been even greater still.


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chaos0xomega wrote:
1. The RAF was essentially at the breaking point when Hitler ordered the focus to change to terror-bombing. Most military theorists and historians are in agreement that the RAF would have collapsed within 2 weeks if the Luftwaffe had maintained its ops tempo and targets, as the RAF was short on planes and pilots and would not have been able to rebuild itself otherwise.

No, outside of the history channel there's no such consensus. The question isn't even really asked, because breaking point is a bit of a nonsense, basically. I mean, how exactly does an airforce break in one single action? It isn't like a ground force, where resistance can collapse with retreat and/or mass surrenders.

There was a realistic chance of capturing the fleet at both Mers-el-Kébir and Toulon, but in both cases that would have required a bit more forward thinking and political maneuvering on the part of Germany.

The political situation with France was too fragile, and too important to risk by capturing the French fleet. Germany was more than happy to let it remain Vichy if it meant they could be assured of French capitulation.

And the importance of the fleet is another thing only clear in hindsight, at the time Germany was fairly reasonably expecting the UK would acknowledge that they were beaten and seek terms.

meaning that the intended breaking of the city via starvation could not adequately be achieved.

Sort of, I mean supplies still trickled in to Leningrad, but conditions were brutal and it's amazing the city lasted anyway. People were killed to be eaten, afterall.


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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
And the fact that Germany was being squished from both sides in 45 doesn't affect their technological evolution? You're comparing a bombed-out crushed Germany to end-of-war US. I'm feeling rather confident that mass-produced ME262s would've been rather formidable enemies.

Once the US deployed long range Mustang fighters and directly engaged the Me262s, the latter was basically shot out of the sky. This was the effective death knell of the Luftwaffe at the hands of a more numerous and superior plane.


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 welshhoppo wrote:
Also, German production was increasing up until the end of 1945, Speer did an excellent job on getting the economy in order. Even with all the bombing.

Peak German production was July 1944 (it certainly wasn't the end of 1945, six or seven months after the war ended). And Speer's achievements were over-rated, as all he was really doing was bringing Germany to a state of total war, something they incredibly hadn't been in through the first few years of the war.

It's amazing to realise that the USA was in total war production before Germany.


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 Wyrmalla wrote:
Query, does anyone know of any fiction discussing what would have happened had the Chinese stayed as Germany's ally (where in the real world the Axis realized Japan were stronger, and ditched the Chinese). The whole matter, in my understanding, was down to Hitler's distrust of Communism, rather than one held by everyone in either country's governments. German led peace efforts were attempted early in the Sino-Japanese war, but never came to anything after the Chinese lost Nanking (afterwards the Germans just started backing warlords before stopping aid altogether IIRC).

I don't know what German dislike of communism had to do with anything, the KMT government of China were staunchly anti-communist. Germany had little to gain from Chinese relations. They wanted Japan, though, because Japan had the potential to open a second front against the US, and maybe even engage Soviet forces in her far eastern borders.

The former was probably more realistic, as no-one really had any concept of how quickly and effectively the US could expand their capability. The much discussed Germany first strategy of Roosevelt and Churchill didn't actually really mean very much in the end, as US capability expanded so incredibly that they just ended up sorting out both Japan and Germany pretty much simultaneously. If a couple of naval battles in the Pacific had worked out differently the US might have had to return to a holding pattern against Japan, but they didn't.

And the latter was just never going to happen. Japan, for all it's tactical skill, was never ever going to match a major industrial nation in open war. All they could really achieve was requiring Russian forces to remain on the border.

Similarly the involvement of pro-independence fighters from India is an interesting area too. I'm talking about all the Sikh units that were part of the German army in WWII as they saw siding with them as a way to get rid of the British

They were scarce and really ineffective. I think it was Imphal were the Japanese relied on Indian independance troops, and it was a disaster.


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 Swastakowey wrote:
I think a cooler what if, is what would happen if Germany joined the west in fighting the communists. I think thats what many people thought would happen as the next war.

The what if I've often wondered about is if the attack on France worked out like most people expected, a long bloody stalemate. If the Germans went with their original plan, and repeated their right hook through Belgium, and the Allies advanced to meet them, I can see everything becoming stagnant. The Germans would find it impossible to maintain their attack in the face of dwindling supplies, while the Allies would find be unable to launch effective given Germany's stronger air power. It's not certain, or even the most likely event, but it's probable enough.

Let that drag on for two or three years, before Stalin launches his own plan to drive straight across Europe, taking the whole of the continent.



The other alternative scenario that I think is fascinating but I've never seen explored is if the German and Russian peace talks in 1943 had actually gone somewhere. They were held in the wake of the German disaster at Stalingrad. The Russian terms were remarkably generous - they simply wanted a return to pre-Barbarossa boundaries. The Germans wanted peace with more or less the existing boundaries. The nature of demands of each side probably reflects that neither country really understood how tenuous Germany's position was at that time (Hitler's secrecy in Germany was so strong by this point his own commanders often had no clear idea how many men they actually in a given theatre). If Germany had more properly known, they might have accepted the Soviet offer, and then what?

Would the UK and US have continued to fight Germany? Could they have effectively fought Germany - given the difficulties in Italy and Normandy, could breakthrough have ever been achieved against a full strength Wehrmacht? Would it have even been attempted? Would the Soviets have just sat back and watched, or would everyone have just taken a breather for a year or two before piling in again?

After the Moscow state archives were opened after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90s, did anyone find evidence that Stalin had really begun planning an invasion of continental Europe to commence by the mid to late 1940s or is this really just paranoid conjecture from the Nazi party, and historic revisionists' attempt to justify Operation Barbarossa?

 sebster wrote:
There are some books I can recommend, if you're interested.

Just bought "The Second World War" by Antony Beevor. I hear it gives a good summary of the entire war from start till finish within 1000 pages. That should suffice

A good read Sebster, cheers.

I had a big response to this thread planned then I lost it, so here's the short version. The B-36 bomber mentioned in the hypothetical US-Germany confrontation could fly higher than most but not all german aircraft, and the germans specifically build the Ta-152 to fly high and intercept bombers like that. It can fly a good 2000 meters higher than the B-36 and outrun it at that height.

The other point I made is that allied success against the luftwaffe was mostly due to fighter sweeps by typhoons and thunderbolts, and later mustangs, hitting german fighter groups as they formed up to intercept allied bomber formations. Against close escort mustangs the germans had ample time to organize and prepare an attack against allied bomber formations. Galland himself acknowledges this, admitting that once the allies started performing fighter sweeps, the air war was lost for germany.

 Sir Arun wrote:
After the Moscow state archives were opened after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90s, did anyone find evidence that Stalin had really begun planning an invasion of continental Europe to commence by the mid to late 1940s or is this really just paranoid conjecture from the Nazi party, and historic revisionists' attempt to justify Operation Barbarossa?

Well, we know for a fact that he conspired with Hitler to attack Poland simultaneously (a fact often overlooked by the general public), and once there, did commit war crimes that frankly made the Nazis look tame. In the half of Poland that they occupied, the Red Army and NKVD (secret police) basically wiped out the Polish middle and officer classes to keep a proper resistance from forming. It's certain from that* that Stalin had a long-term eye towards expansion in Eastern Europe, though whether or not he planned to launch an offensive into Nazi-held Europe is unknown. Given that the whole aim of these deals with Hitler was to delay the German attack on Russia (as Russia in 38/39/40 would be crushed with ease), I'd say an actual assault on Europe would be unlikely any time before 43+.

*And his later actions, such as parking outside Warsaw and letting the partisan uprising to be crushed before 'liberating' the city, and his post-war 'takeover by proxy' of most of Eastern Europe/the formation of Cominform. Stalin certainly had a long game planned to dominate Eastern Europe, and it worked for the most part. By the 50s, the Eastern Bloc had come together with Stalin at the top.

 sebster wrote:
There are some books I can recommend, if you're interested.

Just bought "The Second World War" by Antony Beevor. I hear it gives a good summary of the entire war from start till finish within 1000 pages. That should suffice

Anything by Beevor is good, especially his book on Stalingrad, which is pretty definitive. Max Hastings is another great historian, and has covered both WWs extensively.

If you want a documentary of the War, the BBC's World at War is still the Gold Standard. Additionally it has a lot of officers and soldiers from the time (including Genda!) that survived and weren't dottering idiots at the time of filming.

Plus Lord Olivier (the only person who could out Christopher Lee Christopher Lee)!

 sebster wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
And Germany has a better delivery system for nuclear weapons than airplanes. They have ICBMs decades before anyone else.

fething what? The V2 had a range of little more than 300kms. THere's nothing intercontinental about that. Stop making things up.

He's not making anything up. The Germans did have plans for improved versions of the V2 that would have had the range to reach targets in mainland america and the Pacific, but it most likely wouldn't have been able to carry a single standard Luftwaffe bomb let alone a full nuclear device.

The Germans also had plans for a tank that carried a battleship turret and a domed hall bigger than any other dome on Earth.

Htiler went a bit crazy near the end of the war....

Liar, the P1000 Ratte and P1500 Monster were completely sane ideas.

 sing your life wrote:
He's not making anything up. The Germans did have plans for improved versions of the V2 that would have had the range to reach targets in mainland america and the Pacific, but it most likely wouldn't have been able to carry a single standard Luftwaffe bomb let alone a full nuclear device.

But drawing a picture of something and saying "let's build this" is not even close to having it. Germany might have had some vague speculation about an ICBM (which would have had to be an entirely new design, not an improved version of the V2), but they didn't have ICBMs. So yeah, saying "Germany had ICBMs" is making stuff up.

I think you are confusing statements about the hypothetical with statements about what really happened.

In a hypothetical world where WW2 drags on, the Germans will have ICBMs before anyone else. They will also acquire nuclear weapons, and they will also have fighters capable of attacking B-36s because Hitler won't interfere in the Messerschmidt program.

 Grey Templar wrote:
In a hypothetical world where WW2 drags on, the Germans will have ICBMs before anyone else. They will also acquire nuclear weapons, and they will also have fighters capable of attacking B-36s because Hitler won't interfere in the Messerschmidt program.

But the point is that WWII won't drag on beyond 1946 or so. You simply can't have it still going into the 1950s because in about 1946 the US ends the war by nuking Germany, if the Soviets haven't ended the war already. So what you're actually looking at is the real weapons that were produced by 1945, +/- slight adjustments like not lowering the priority of B-36 production in favor of more B-17s. And in that scenario Germany certainly does not get ICBMs, certainly doesn't get nukes, and probably doesn't change its fighter production by very much. All of the vague "let's build this someday" speculation that Germany had remains just that: speculation.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
In a hypothetical world where WW2 drags on, the Germans will have ICBMs before anyone else. They will also acquire nuclear weapons, and they will also have fighters capable of attacking B-36s because Hitler won't interfere in the Messerschmidt program.

But the point is that WWII won't drag on beyond 1946 or so. You simply can't have it still going into the 1950s because in about 1946 the US ends the war by nuking Germany, if the Soviets haven't ended the war already. So what you're actually looking at is the real weapons that were produced by 1945, +/- slight adjustments like not lowering the priority of B-36 production in favor of more B-17s. And in that scenario Germany certainly does not get ICBMs, certainly doesn't get nukes, and probably doesn't change its fighter production by very much. All of the vague "let's build this someday" speculation that Germany had remains just that: speculation.

Except Germany doesn't declare War on the US in this situation, remember they are acting much more cautiously. Not using Hitler's crazy suicide aggression. Which leads to the tensions being much lessened. The US doesn't engage much beyond what it was doing at the beginning of the war, supplying materials but not much active participation in the fighting. This is heightened even more if Japan still declares war and engages the US in the Pacific, drawing the full attention of the US while Germany is a potential threat that doesn't escalate into fullblown conflict.

This is really an obvious development I shouldn't have to spell out.

The US also still doesn't have the ability to nuke Germany into the dust, not instantaneously. We would be banking on them surrendering to a partial bluff like the Japanese did, and while the Japanese were fanatical on the other hand Hitler was actually crazy. We made the Japanese think we had more bombs than we actually could produce in a timely manner, at best we could have dropped a new bomb every couple weeks, and this is a much stronger Germany with more resources to pump into getting the ME-262 able to engage the B-36s. Europe also isn't open season for using nukes, unless we wanted to alienate our allies by bombing their occupied cities.

Its a much more delicate situation. Neither Japan nor Germany had the resources to counter the Allies in the late stages of the war, but in this situation they do. And the Germans definitely had ideas and plans, just no resources. Sure, lots of the German plans they came up with were duds, but for each dud there was a gem. They pioneered many modern designs, tactics, and ways of thinking.

In that situation, the amount of resources the US threw at nuclear development wouldn't have been there as well, so saying the US would have nukes is a big what if.

I'm gonna say it would be just because Germany is still there as a looming danger. Urgency might have been even bigger due to the Germans also working on developing it.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I'm gonna say it would be just because Germany is still there as a looming danger. Urgency might have been even bigger due to the Germans also working on developing it.

The Manhattan Project wasn't started until 1942, after we had joined the war. The ground work was laid for it before we joined the war, but nothing started until after Pearl Harbor, and you can bet that lit a fire under asses that wouldn't have been lit otherwise.

Thats right, so in the situation where Japan still attacks but Germany doesn't also declare war we have Nukes but aren't at war with Germany.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Except Germany doesn't declare War on the US in this situation, remember they are acting much more cautiously.

Germany doesn't need to declare war because war is inevitable. The US is already neutral in name only and expecting a war. The only question is whether Germany starts the war before 1945-47 or the US starts and ends the war in a single day.

The US also still doesn't have the ability to nuke Germany into the dust, not instantaneously. We would be banking on them surrendering to a partial bluff like the Japanese did, and while the Japanese were fanatical on the other hand Hitler was actually crazy.

The difference is that we bluffed with Japan because there was no reason not to. They couldn't stop our bombers and take advantage of calling our bluff, so the worst-case scenario is that the war continues on a bit longer and then Japan is nuked again. And since there's an active shooting war with Japan the US has more of an incentive to bring it to an end as quickly as possible, and that means dropping the bomb as soon as the first one is ready. But with Germany there's less of an urgent need to stop the shooting asap, and a much stronger incentive not to reveal the bomb and any weaknesses in the bombing plan until the US can deliver a knockout blow in a single mission.

Also, there's a cultural difference between Germany and Japan. Hitler was crazy and had his followers, but he also had his enemies. If Berlin is wiped off the map by a single B-36 and the US says "surrender now or we'll destroy all of your other cities too" do you really think that Germany is going to continue to fight? That none of the people who felt that he was sabotaging the country and needed to be replaced would remove him from power if he refused to surrender?

and this is a much stronger Germany with more resources to pump into getting the ME-262 able to engage the B-36s

Not possible. The ME-262 was never going to have the ability to engage the B-36. Even post-WWII jets couldn't do it effectively until the 1950s.

Europe also isn't open season for using nukes, unless we wanted to alienate our allies by bombing their occupied cities.

That's why the US wouldn't. But every major German city and industrial area would cease to exist. The occupying army would either surrender without a fight, or be massacred with nowhere to retreat to and no hope of resupply.

They pioneered many modern designs, tactics, and ways of thinking.

Somewhat, but they weren't really that far ahead in terms of what they actually built (compared to what they made some rough sketches of). Germany certainly had a major lead in rockets, but things like jet fighters? Not really. They got the ME-262 into service first, but everyone else had their own jet fighters not far behind.

 Peregrine wrote:

and this is a much stronger Germany with more resources to pump into getting the ME-262 able to engage the B-36s

Not possible. The ME-262 was never going to have the ability to engage the B-36. Even post-WWII jets couldn't do it effectively until the 1950s.

Only because there wasn't an active conflict mandating that such a fighter get built. There wasn't the sense of urgency to drive the innovation. The Germans sure as hell would have if this occurred.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Only because there wasn't an active conflict mandating that such a fighter get built. There wasn't the sense of urgency to drive the innovation. The Germans sure as hell would have if this occurred.

Why? Why would they believe that they need the new fighters? The ME-262 had plenty of altitude to intercept the bombers that were actually used against Germany by 1945, and their first experience with the B-36 and its vastly superior performance would be a single-day war in which Germany is annihilated. It's very hard to re-design your aircraft to respond to a new threat when all of your major cities and industrial areas are gone.

And I also disagree with your claim that there was no urgency to develop interceptors in the real world. I'd say that nuking Japan pretty clearly demonstrated the importance of interceptors, and post-WWII aircraft development continued at a rapid pace.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Only because there wasn't an active conflict mandating that such a fighter get built. There wasn't the sense of urgency to drive the innovation. The Germans sure as hell would have if this occurred.

Why? Why would they believe that they need the new fighters? The ME-262 had plenty of altitude to intercept the bombers that were actually used against Germany by 1945, and their first experience with the B-36 and its vastly superior performance would be a single-day war in which Germany is annihilated. It's very hard to re-design your aircraft to respond to a new threat when all of your major cities and industrial areas are gone.

And I also disagree with your claim that there was no urgency to develop interceptors in the real world. I'd say that nuking Japan pretty clearly demonstrated the importance of interceptors, and post-WWII aircraft development continued at a rapid pace.

No, it would not be a single day war. We didn't have any capacity to make anywhere near enough bombs to wipe out Germany, or Japan, with Nukes in one go. Or even just several. It would have taken years to get enough, and by that time the Germans rush through a fighter capable of reaching higher altitudes.

As for why, well the Germans were always pushing for bigger and better.

Sure, development post WW2 continued at a rapid pace. but nowhere near what it would have been had we been at war with Russia. Which would not have been one sided either even though they had no nukes. We couldn't make nukes fast enough to make conventional warfare obsolete in 1945, or for years afterwards.

And if the ME-262 was lighter as it was originally designed to be it could have reached higher altitudes.

 Grey Templar wrote:
No, it would not be a single day war. We didn't have any capacity to make anywhere near enough bombs to wipe out Germany, or Japan, with Nukes in one go. Or even just several. It would have taken years to get enough, and by that time the Germans rush through a fighter capable of reaching higher altitudes.

But why do they rush it through, when they don't know what the B-36 was capable of and their existing aircraft were capable of intercepting any of the bombers that had been used against them so far. In fact, it might be the case that German fighter development is slower than in reality because there's no urgent need to somehow win the war with a miracle weapon and Germany can concentrate on production of the existing (and, so far, adequate) designs they already have.

Also, US nuclear production was at the "win the war in a day" level fairly quickly, as long as you assume that mass destruction of multiple cities and industrial areas with a weapon of unprecedented power and the promise of more on the way will win the war. The US had 32 bombs by 1947, and 110 by 1948, on top of all of the conventional weapons that would be delivered simultaneously.

As for why, well the Germans were always pushing for bigger and better.

It doesn't work that way. Germany has a limited ability to produce fighters, so they have a choice: do they put the ME-262, a very good aircraft that currently beats anything their enemies have, into production, or do they keep developing better planes instead?

And if the ME-262 was lighter as it was originally designed to be it could have reached higher altitudes.

Maybe, but then you have to consider the stripped-down version of the B-36 that had a much higher altitude limit as well, US jets that will be in production by that point, etc. And you have to answer the question of why they would have stripped down the ME-262, trading lower-altitude capability for the ability to intercept a plane that they didn't know about, when its actual performance was good enough for the situations where it was used in reality.

This is the fundamental problem with these hypothetical scenarios: to even give Germany a tiny hope of winning you have to assume that all of their speculative stuff works and all of their bad design decisions are made correctly with the benefit of information that is only available in hindsight, while simultaneously everyone else does no better than they did in reality.

Well thats how large scale wars pan out. Its whoever makes the fewest mistakes and gets lucky in development.

The Germans made a bunch of mistakes and had a bit of bad luck, and a hefty dose of crazy. of course these all rely on those things not happening. Thats why its speculation.

As for why the Germans build a higher altitude fighter, its because they're going to hear about this super high altitude Bomber the Americans are developing that can hit Germany from US bases. Its not like people on both sides weren't conducting espionage. And the Bomber wouldn't have been easy to keep secret, unlike the Manhattan Project.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Thats why its speculation.

But it's useless speculation. You can't just assume that Germany magically does everything right and turns every random sketch of an idea they had into a practical weapon, while everyone else is limited to what they actually produced. That's not a realistic "what if" scenario, it's assuming "Germany wins" as a conclusion and trying to handwave enough of the reasons why that it's at least semi-plausible.

As for why the Germans build a higher altitude fighter, its because they're going to hear about this super high altitude Bomber the Americans are developing that can hit Germany from US bases. Its not like people on both sides weren't conducting espionage. And the Bomber wouldn't have been easy to keep secret, unlike the Manhattan Project.

But there's a huge difference between knowing "the US is building a large bomber for the worst-case scenario if they lose their bases in the UK" and knowing "their large bomber has a cruising altitude of 40,000' and they're considering a stripped-down version that can go even higher". Without that specific piece of information Germany doesn't know that their 30-35,000' interceptors, which are easily capable of dealing with the bombers that Germany has actually faced, are suddenly going to become obsolete.

Also, note that in reality Germany didn't start building a bunch of B-36 killers and was perfectly happy to stick with the ME-262 and other aircraft designed to intercept the B-17. So why are we granting them more information than they actually had?

Of course its "Germany wins". Any speculation about an alternate outcome to WW2 is going in with that assumption. Or at the very least its "How does Germany not lose".

And yes, Germany is going to have the intelligence that the B-36s fly at very high altitude and can go a long ways away. Thats relatively easy intelligence to gather. And they will have the resources and time to manage that, unlike in reality where they didn't have the resources or time.