At least with horses they could fuel them and if they ran out of food they could eat them.
Not in winter could horses be so easily fed. Horses get broken legs, and panic under shellfire and air attack.
The US in WW2, for all the faults that the board does go over, was pretty much the nation's finest hour. (Well, finest years.)
Arguably, the driving factor for much of the postwar US politics and foreign policy has been to find an enemy as clear-cut as the Nazis...
And while we quibble over whether the world really
needed saving, I don't think there's any question that the world certainly benefited hugely from the efforts of the United States. We definitely
wanted saving
Now, if the country could stop being quite so smug about it (while at the same time properly appreciating exactly
why and how the US saved the world), that'd be lovely.
The UK saved the world by SURVIVING, and thereby providing the means to allow the USA to come to grips with the Axis, both in Europe and the Pacific (only the Central Pacific Drive was an All-American affair). That, and providing a level of war mobilization that by the last six months of the war was probably much more than the UK should have been asked of or provided.
The USSR saved the world, at incredible cost, by destroying the army that was the only real threat to the whole world.
They might do better if Italy stayed neutral. (1)
The odds are still against them even if they can avoid going to war on America. (2)
1) Yes, but Hitler couldn't control Mussolini, and I don't think even Adolph realized just how weak the Italian Army was.
2) Hitler couldn't control the Japanese either. Post-Pearl Harbor he was left with the image of a USA allied with the British Empire and Free Dutch in the Pacific, and as a
de facto Associate Power in Europe, leaving them a free pass to send all the Lend Lease they wanted to the UK, who would be free to slap "Made In Britain"
labels on said aid and ship whatever they wished to to the USSR. Thereby nullifying the Atlantic War. And with Raeder and Doenitz screaming in his ear that the Bolshevik Jew President Rosenvelt
was making a fool of him...its WAR!!
Attempting to restore borders is still kind of a sucky reason for a war.
Now, imagine if an alt-revanchist regime had gone for the Sudetenland but not Czechoslovakia. Their economy would be weaker, but they'd appear to be a nation of their word. And then they start pressing for plebiscites on the Danzig question - what happens then?
Whatever it is, it sure ain't WW2 - if only because of the Czechs sitting on most of the southern German border. Taking on the Poles and the Czechs at once, without the assistance of the Skoda works' production for the last several months, might actually be too much for Germany...
The Nazis screaming about the poor Sudetenland Germans was complete and total bullshit. Hitler wanted the Sudetenland because it contained the Bohemian Mountain Frontier Fortress Line. The Czechs' only natural defense. Take that, and Czechoslovakia is an open door.
I don't see the Germans winning World War 2 the way they acted is impossible but perhaps if certain things were changed I can see that. Especially if Britain was under different leadership, and if the Germans was wiser about their policies in the East. The Germany in my WW2 timeline has been forced to enact policies it wouldn't have in our timeline due to the changed but eerily similar war.
I don't think the Third Reich could have won but I think it might have been able to stalemate had it not acted so foolishly post 1941.
Britain HAD no leaders left but Winston Churchill. Everyone else of any standing whatsoever had been stained by appeasement, or were already Winston's devoted followers. Indeed, Stanley Baldwin confided to his closest allies that he didn't want Churchill in any role in his government (in the 30s), but rather he wanted him "fresh, if need be, to be our wartime prime minister". Because Baldwin correctly calculated that in case of war, every major figure in British politics would be ruined.
It occurs to me that much of the back and forth in this thread implicitly goes back to the theory of history one subscribes to.
The believers in the "great man" theory think that it's the great men who make history. As a consequence, an apparently minor change in the events - if it affects, directly or indirectly, the great man - will radically alter all of history.
Whence the endless line of proposals like "Hitler chokes on a cabbage", "Hitler is killed by a mountain goat" (no, I'm not joking, look this up), "Churchill dies under a bus", "Stalin has a stroke", etc.
But of course there is another theory according to which it is history - the chain of events, economic factors, political ideas, people, climate, geography and whatnot - that actually makes the great men, and not the other way around. If that theory is true, then getting rid of a great man only gives rise to another one who will implement those historical forces.
In other words, did Britain not come to terms with Nazi Germany because Churchill was the PM, or was Churchill the right man to be the PM because Britain would not come to terms with Nazi Germany?
Naturally, even if the second theory is the right one, there is some leeway for change and therefore for our hobby, alternate history. Because, even if Churchill was in command because that is what the British people, and other historical factors involved, wanted, then again if he has to be replaced, it's unavoidable that his replacement, while still not wanting peace with the Nazis, will be a different man. Maybe he won't insist on sending troops to Greece. Maybe he'll be a non-smoker and will encourage the British to stop smoking as part of the war effort. Etc.
But - will the changes made by such a... "replacement great man" be enough to change the outcome of the war?
...I really doubt it. Even with poorer leaders than Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt, the fact remains that the Allies had manpower, industry, resources, territory, and time on their side. They count more than the "great" men.
As a Tolstoyan, I really have to be saying this
, as I agree with you that environmental forces WILL rule the day eventually. But the history of WWII has shown that not so much Great Men as Competent Men (or the lack thereof) DO make a difference.
ALL of the Axis rulers and Stalin had various degrees of incompetence. Japan in fact didn't really have a central ruler at all, just a series of factional warlords. Benny the Moose was a complete fool. Hitler was an Anti-Christ and had an artistic temperament (as one poster said) and a corresponding illsuitedness to rule. Stalin was a compulsively rational super-paranoid mass murderer.
So yes, I'd say that Japan, Italy, Germany, and the USSR were ALL crippled by their leadership. In the case of the USA and UK, their Great Men made their greatness known by letting the generals do their job (often grudgingly by Churchill, tho
)
2) How would falling back to El Alamein change the outcome of the British defence in 1940? Surely the African units that the british had were much weaker than the ones that Montgomery used in OTL Battle of El Alamein. Italy entered the war already before the France signed the armistice and thus were at war against the british before the armistice was signed with Vichy France.
Italy utterly lacked the supply network to support an invasion of Egypt. Even
reaching El Alamein would have been impossible. Having the Afrika Corps there would only have shattered a badly over-stretched logistical train. Remember, the closest functioning major port was all the way back in Tripoli, as Benghazi was only a minor port (they can't try to use Tobruk without the Royal Navy giving them a world class hosing), and the tiny amount of rails were not capable of supporting modern warfare. And with hundred of thousands of Italian troops still needing to be fed (they haven't been captured, after all), just who is going to feed the Germans?
Oh, and El Alamein is a very narrow front with the Med to the north and the totally impassable Qattara Depression to the south. And regarding that desert swamp that is the Qattara Depression, when I say impassable, I mean
impassable.
The Italian Army in Libya was in no way shape or form ready to launch a blitzkrieg. And the British troops in Egypt just happened to include some of the best trained, led, and equipped forces in the Empire, including one fully equipped Armoured division that could go through their Italian opponents like a hot knife through warm butter. And did.
4) Also the advanced weapon research were put to halt at this stage, only to be reactivated again in 1942-43.
The cut back on production I know about. But they really cut back on R & D?
I think that the Eastern Front would have been winnable by Germans, but would require a lot of things to change. Strategically the entire war was really hard to win, but to achieve some kind of a peace was maybe possible vs. unconditional surrender.
Germans, not Nazis. You're not in WWII if the USSR isn't in a war to save the very life of its people as a whole.
