How COULD Nazi Germany win WWII?

[MarkA]

Naval forces need to be balanced. If the KM had only U-boats as the major threat it would have facilitated the RN's response. With the BB's, large amounts of allied resources were tied up watch for or trying to destroy them. Capital ships were needed for convoy escorts and so on, requiring substantial manpower.
More U-boats would have helped, more importantly a coherent policy for their employment was needed. More L/R a/c were needed for recon duties and general anti-shipping operations at the beginning of the war.

Had Speer been in charge of the industrial resources in 1939, things would have been different also. More war materials would have be produced & reserves built up. (If Germany started manufacturing armaments at the level they achieved in 1944 it would have been a different situation)

If the German's can resolve the situation on the western front prior to Dec. 1941 there is a chance.
Even in the worse case senario, had the UK been occupied, would there be a British government in exile that would continue to agitate for US involvement.

The German's failed to exploit the British attacks on French naval units in North Africa. It was a great propoganda opportunity to alter the French attitude toward the UK.

Once the US entered the war, the balance tipped.

Also, Stalin would probably declare war on Germany in any case.

One interesting approach - almost all the eastern nations were afraid of the USSR. It would have been interesting to see Germany form a European Defense League to challenge the USSR. This league would include just about every nation in Europe (after all, at some point in time, volunteers from every European country fought on the Eastern Front). This would mean that should the US declare war on Germany, they would be declaring war on most of the European states. (Maybe the RM would have become what the Euro is today)

When do you propose that this League be created?

Up to 1939 the French were desperately trying to forge a collective security system in Eastern Europe the 'Little Entente'. It very nearly succeeded. Poland torpedoed it by refusing to allow Red Army troops on its soil in even in defence of the Polish state.

After 1939 the Germans either installed puppet governments or absorbed the conquered territories or bullied the other countries into forming governments sympathetic to them.

 

[tinfoil]

For Germany to win WWII, she had to either 2) defeat Britain, or 1) make peace.

1) Britain may have caved in if Churchill had not gained power. There was a sizable group in Britian that wanted to sue for peace in 1940. They are usually downplayed now, but the whole "fight them on the beaches..." attitude was NOT a foregone conclusion. If Hitler had simply offered to cease hostilities with no further demands on England, AND if he had a creditable threat (see below), things might have gone quite differently. A Germany that did not have to fight off England would have fared differently against Stalin (although the USSR would have to be idiots to not see Barbarossa coming if Germany makes peace with Britain).

2) In order to DEFEAT Britain by occupation, Germany needed a whole new branch to her military: A blue-water fleet of invasion ships, including a way to land panzers. Many historians and military types have examined/wargamed Sealion and concluded that Hilter had virtually no chance of invading England even if the RAF was gone completely. Hordes of river barges were NOT going to allow for any sort of organized landing, and amphibious assaults are not the kind of thing that lend themselves to tactical improvisation. They didn't know as much in 1940 about these things as they did 5 years later.

So, for Hitler to remove Britain from the war, he needed a way to be able to successfully invade. For THAT, he needed ships.

But Hitler never really wanted to be at 'total war' with Britain, so he did not build such a fleet in 1939-1940 (if he could actually foresee the need), nor did he build enough U-boats to fight an effective battle of attrition (although one wonders how things would have changed if the Luftwaffe had tried harder in an antishipping role).

 

[Tony Williams]

2. Type VIII vs Type VIIIB. The former sailed 1936, the latter 1938, I cannot see 300 of the latter being ready by 1940 come what may. Whilst the former had many problems. This, and Tony Williams electroboat reference brings us to the eternal dilemma of military technology - many tried and tested models, or a few of the more advanced. There is no right answer, simply swinging to extremes however will just bring different problems - see the Tiger tank for one extreme, the Sherman perhaps for the other.

I don't think that the choice is quote as stark as that: the resources needed for producing an accepted design are not the same as those required to develop a new one. The Type VII was a very traditional (basically WW1-type) design. Production of that could have been up and running while the development of the Electroboat was underway. In my timeline, the Electroboat is not available at the start of the war, but gradually replaces the Type VII in production from 1940/41 on.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

[Grey Wolf]

I covered a lot of this in my novel The Foresight War, in which present-day historians from both Britain and Germany wake up in 1934.

You wrote that, wow ?!

I've read a lot about it, and its on my list for my next little book-buying splurge (along with some Ottoman and Nazi stuff).

Has it made you a millionaire (assuming you weren't one already) ?

Grey Wolf

 

[Grey Wolf]

I bought an interesting book on the Maus - whilst this is usually dismissed as a crazy idea, Porsche made the prototype work. It moved, it did not sink, it could be manoevred and it entered gunnery trials.

I think the question is whether the TACTICAL advantage gained from a few of a successful super weapon outweighs that from a larger number of more usual weapons

It is not a foregone conclusion - see the armoured car and what the early ones could achieve when used singly or in pairs, or the tank itself where despite the less than enthralling experience of 1917, their use in 1918 was a great success, especially and most obviously in the advance.

You could say the same with regard to Nazi jet fighters and missiles. People on this forum often denigrate these efforts as wasteful, but can one say that the Me-262 was NOT a successful design ? Sure, it had flaws (mainly due to raw materials) but its emergence cause the Allies to massively increase their own production in this area to counter it. A missile fired from an aircraft sank the Roma. V1s and V2s caused a lot more strategic disruption than people usually like to remember now - its probably easier to think of them as wasteful than as effective in part.

Maybe it is a question of optimum numbers. How many Maus would have been needed to have made a SUFFICIENT or SIGNIFICANT impact in any battle ? And where would it go from there ?

Grey Wolf

 

[DMA]

Naval forces need to be balanced. If the KM had only U-boats as the major threat it would have facilitated the RN's response. With the BB's, large amounts of allied resources were tied up watch for or trying to destroy them. Capital ships were needed for convoy escorts and so on, requiring substantial manpower.
More U-boats would have helped, more importantly a coherent policy for their employment was needed. More L/R a/c were needed for recon duties and general anti-shipping operations at the beginning of the war.

Forget balance in this situation. There's no chance whatsoever that the Kreigsmarine has a chance to compete against the RN with capital ships & the like. It can't be done conventionally. Germany cannot beat the UK in a direct confrontation. It needs to apply strategy & not tactics. It needs to find Britain's weakest link that'll force it to surrender. And that means Britians supply routes on the sea. To cut them you don't need a large surface navy. You need U-Boats. Anyway, the Germans still have their pocket-battleships, Scharnhorst etc. They just don't have Bismarck, Tirpitz & Graf Zeppelin etc.

Had Speer been in charge of the industrial resources in 1939, things would have been different also. More war materials would have be produced & reserves built up. (If Germany started manufacturing armaments at the level they achieved in 1944 it would have been a different situation)

IMHO 1939 is too late. It really needs to be around
1935-36 if you want your cake & eat it too. Yet, if you cut back building capital ships such as Bismarck, likewise Germany isn't building complicated tanks such as the Tigers & Panthers, you can probably have enough resources to build the 300 U-Boats.

If the German's can resolve the situation on the western front prior to Dec. 1941 there is a chance. Even in the worse case senario, had the UK been occupied, would there be a British government in exile that would continue to agitate for US involvement.

The thing is, though, with the U-Boat blockade, the UK has been starved into surrender some 6-12 months before USA's entry into the war. That's if, of course, America ever goes to war against Germany.

The German's failed to exploit the British attacks on French naval units in North Africa. It was a great propoganda opportunity to alter the French attitude toward the UK.

Good point. So say the Vichy join the Germans. What does this mean numbers wise, especially naval shipping, not to mention troops etc?

 

[Tony Williams]

Has it made you a millionaire (assuming you weren't one already) ?

I wish... what I've mainly got out of it is a lot of fun discussing it with people. Those interested in buying alt WW2 novels which concentrate on the technical and strategic aspects are a select but rather small band!

You can read the first chapter on-line - there's a link from my website. For that matter, you can buy the whole book to read on-line; it's cheaper that way

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

[Tony Williams]

I think the question is whether the TACTICAL advantage gained from a few of a successful super weapon outweighs that from a larger number of more usual weapons

That's an interesting question, and the answer (as ever) is "it all depends".

There is no doubt in my mind that if the right circumstances occurred in any one battle, a clear technical superiority could provide sufficient advantage to determine the outcome. However, those circumstances might not apply in the next battle and, even if they do, other factors might still prevent such a superiority affecting the course of the war in any significant way.

Let's take your Mauses (Mausen? Mice?), for example. If they were fighting a defensive battle, in well-concealed positions but with a long, clear field of view towards the only feasible line of Allied advance, and in the absence of effective Allied air support, they would wipe the floor with the Allied armour - it would be a massacre. Conversely, if they were trying to attack in broken terrain with lots of cover for the Allies, then they could be in serious trouble. I forget the side armour thickness but I doubt that it could keep out a 6 pdr APDS. And, of course, if they were trying to make an advance of any distance, all the Allied fighter-bombers would have to do is wipe out their fuel tanker train and they would grind to a halt rather quickly.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

[Tony Williams]

IMHO 1939 is too late. It really needs to be around
1935-36 if you want your cake & eat it too. Yet, if you cut back building capital ships such as Bismarck, likewise Germany isn't building complicated tanks such as the Tigers & Panthers, you can probably have enough resources to build the 300 U-Boats.

Agree in general (which is why I started my novel in 1934 - it also enabled me to stop the building of S&G). However, on a point of detail, the Panther wasn't that expensive. From memory, it was about 15% more than the late Pz IV and more like half the cost of a Tiger.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

[Bulgaroktonos]

I think that it does come down to the invasion of Russia.

As it was, the Germans came very close to knocking Russia out of the war in all the three major cities, Stalingrad, Leningrad, and Moscow. All three battles were near-run things.

In Stalingrad perhaps give a few German platoons better positions during Paulus' September offensive, which reduced the Soviets to a perimeter half a mile long by 100 yards deep, IIRC. If they can get into some of the major buildings overlooking the Volga with machineguns and steady supply, the Soviet landing grounds may well fall. Or have the Germans successfully take Pavlov's house, which sucked up forces for months.

You may not even need to change too many grand-scheme things, but instead give the Germans a bit better luck......

 

[hans]

For Operation Barbarossa.....AH

http://www.luft46.com/prototyp/me264.html
Also less 100 aircraft of Me-264 can be destroy Moscow !
http://www.luft46.com/prototyp/fw191.html

 

[Tony Williams]

Also less 100 aircraft of Me-264 can be destroy Moscow !

Don't you believe it...it was widely held before WW2 that no city could survive aerial bombing, but with a few exceptions (when firestorms were started - or of course the atom bomb was used) this proved not to be the case. Just work out how many bombs those planes can carry, then calculated the damage radius of each one (especially when constrained by surrounding buildings), then calculate the ground area of a city like Moscow - and divide one by the other (allowing for the fact that the bombs would 'clump' and not be evenly distributed, so many places would be 'destroyed' two or more times, others not be touched).

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

[MrP]

Let's take your Mauses (Mausen? Mice?) . . . I forget the side armour thickness but I doubt that it could keep out a 6 pdr APDS. And, of course, if they were trying to make an advance of any distance, all the Allied fighter-bombers would have to do is wipe out their fuel tanker train and they would grind to a halt rather quickly.

Mäuse, I think. However, I grant my German's rather rusty. Side armour was 180mm according to p.148 of the Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two.

 

[AMBOMB]

Don't go to war with the United States.

 

[AMBOMB]

A) Switch to a full war economy after the invasion of Poland, at the latest.

B) Ignore the surface Kriegsmarine, concentrate on submarine warfare against British shipping.

C) Concentrate the Battle of Britain on actual military targets.

D) Don't invade Russia.

E) Be lucky enough to have an isolationist in the White House, and convince the Japanese to take the Dutch East Indies without worrying about the Phillipinnes base.

Remember, Hitler's whole reason for starting the war was to conquer Russia. So, not invading Russia would've been out of the question. An easier way to keep the United States out of the European war might've been simply not to declare war on the United States after Pearl Harbor.

 

[AMBOMB]

A) Switch to a full war economy after the invasion of Poland, at the latest.

QUOTE]

How many times do I have to post on this topic? Clearly you do not lurk on this site ENOUGH.

The Nazis had a full war economy from about 1936.

They didn't have one until 1942.

 

[Grey Wolf]

I wish... what I've mainly got out of it is a lot of fun discussing it with people. Those interested in buying alt WW2 novels which concentrate on the technical and strategic aspects are a select but rather small band!

You can read the first chapter on-line - there's a link from my website. For that matter, you can buy the whole book to read on-line; it's cheaper that way

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

I think its certainly going to be EASIER to buy online... I tried to buy it in a shop today - Forbidden Planet had some woman who said sahe had vaguely heard of it, couldn't see it so it wasn't there, Waterstones said they could order it but as it was listed as 'Print on demand' they could not estimate a delivery date, and Borders did not have it, and offered the same as Waterstones but as I assume they have the same catalogue I didn't see the point in wasting their time with them looking it up to say the same thing to me

So, I'lll now hunt it online this weekend. I've a couple of interesting-looking Ottoman books to order, and couple of Nazi ones referenced in the book I just finished reading

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[Grey Wolf]

Remember, Hitler's whole reason for starting the war was to conquer Russia. So, not invading Russia would've been out of the question. An easier way to keep the United States out of the European war might've been simply not to declare war on the United States after Pearl Harbor.

I would certainly have no problem with saying that Hitler's long-term aims in war were to conquer Russia, but I find it odd to see stated that Hitler's aims in going to war with Poland after an agreement with the USSR on partition was to go to war with the USSR

Grey Wolf

 

[AMBOMB]

Maybe if the Germans don't turn on Stalin, or if the Germans build the Bomb?

Hitler's whole reason for starting the war was to conquer Russia. It's extremely unlikely the Germans could've built the A-bomb before the United States.

 

[AMBOMB]

The Most importian thing Germany needed to do was stop over engerning the equpment . There tanks were to complex what they needed was a less complex tank that they could of mass produced like the sherman or the T-34 tank.

The Germans did overengineer their weapons. And making them simpler would've allowed them to make more of them. But, that wouldn't have won the war for them, maybe prolonged it, but nothing more than that.