Second World War 'what if?'....

[welshbairn]

I bought this book abroad following good reviews but I was really bored of it after about the first 1/3. Never went back to it.

Have to agree, quite liked his Roman stuff and the Hitler Diaries though. Anyone know some good Steampunk writers? They imagine an advanced world that runs on steam and clockwork, read one once that was really good but can't remember his name.

[shiltrum]

What if ? His biggest mistake was not invading us he should have put us to the sword and closed the back door then he could have put all his efforts into the war on Russia he had plenty of new weapons in development which no one had at that time his scientist's would have went on to develop the atom bomb and he would have used it against Russia then America. Game over!!!

[Hillonearth]

What if ? His biggest mistake was not invading us he should have put us to the sword and closed the back door then he could have put all his efforts into the war on Russia he had plenty of new weapons in development which no one had at that time his scientist's would have went on to develop the atom bomb and he would have used it against Russia then America. Game over!!!

Two things probably saved us.

First, the fact we're an island meant they'd have had to effectively run D-Day in reverse to invade us and they didn't have the capability to do that - Operation Sealion involved troops landing on converted canal barges and so on - and as someone mentioned earlier anytime their plan has been wargamed to see how it would have panned out it ends with the Germans making it no more than five or ten miles inland from the Kent and Sussex coasts before getting leathered.

Secondly - and this one sounds strange - the Germans never really wanted a war with us. Most of the high heid yins had Anglophile tendencies seeing us as fellow examples of the "master race", and had hopes that after a brief skirmish we'd come to terms with them, letting them have their sphere of influence on mainland Europe while we kept our overseas empire.

They even entertained hopes that we'd eventually come round to their way of thinking - prior to WW2, plenty of the British ruling classes openly admired Nazism - see the "Royal Nazis" thread over on the politics forum for much more about this.

[Paranoid]

Winston Churchill once wrote that '... the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril'. So U-boats for me.

link

[Dr Koop]

The 262 development was put on the back burner with a few other programs in 41 when it was decided only projects that would deliver weapons within a year, before they thought the war would end, were to be continued so the jet engine and Me 262 was shelved for a bit. But the single biggest obstacle was the engine heat. The Germans had very little chromium or other metals to allow with steel to allow steels that could sustain high temperature. The engines only had lifetimes of 24 hours operational use and often gave out quicker. Brilliant machine but could never be deployed in the numbers to have an affect.

And it was decided they'd be effective as ground attack aircraft/bombers.

[dorlomin]

he had plenty of new weapons in development which no one had at that time his scientist's would have went on to develop the atom bomb and he would have used it against Russia then America. Game over!!!

The only technology the Nazis were ahead on was liquid fuelled rockets. A very expensive way of making a big hole in Kent. The British heavy bombers could land 5kt on a city in one night by late 1944. They cost more than our bomber forces and that annihilated German industry by November 1944

The German V-weapons (V-1 and V-2) cost $3 billion (wartime dollars) and were more costly than the Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb ($1.9 billion).^[10]:178 6,048 V-2s were built, at a cost of approximately 100,000 Reichsmarks (GB£2,370,000 (2011)) each; 3,225 were launched. SS General Hans Kammler, who as an engineer had constructed several concentration camps including Auschwitz, had a reputation for brutality and had originated the idea of using concentration camp prisoners as slave laborers in the rocket program. The V-2 is perhaps the only weapon system to have caused more deaths by its production than its deployment.^[51]

The V-2 consumed a third of Germany's fuel alcohol production and major portions of other critical technologies:^[53] to distil the fuel alcohol for one V-2 launch required 30 tonnes of potatoes at a time when food was becoming scarce.^[54] Due to a lack of explosives, concrete was used^{[clarification needed]} and sometimes the warhead contained photographic propaganda of German citizens who had died in Allied bombing.^[16]

The V-2 lacked a proximity fuse, so it could not be set for air burst; it buried itself in the target area before or just as the warhead detonated. This reduced its effectiveness. Furthermore, its early guidance systems were too primitive to hit specific targets and its costs were approximately equivalent to four-engined bombers, which were more accurate (though only in a relative sense), had longer ranges, carried many more warheads, and were reusable. In comparison, in one 24-hour period during Operation Hurricane, the RAF dropped over 10,000 long tons of bombs on Brunswick and Duisburg, roughly equivalent to the amount of explosives that could be delivered by 10,000 V-2 rockets. Moreover, it diverted resources from other, more effective programs. That said, the limiting factor for German aviation after 1941 was always the availability of high test aviation gas^{[citation needed]} (not planes or pilots), so criticisms of the V-1 and V-2 programs that compare their cost to hypothetical increases in fighter or bomber production are misguided

those of us who were seriously engaged in the war were very grateful to Wernher von Braun. We knew that each V-2 cost as much to produce as a high-performance fighter airplane. We knew that German forces on the fighting fronts were in desperate need of airplanes, and that the V-2 rockets were doing us no military damage. From our point of view, the V-2 program was almost as good as if Hitler had adopted a policy of unilateral disarmament." (Freeman Dyson)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket#Assessment

The British also had the jet fighter, which while slower than the Me262 had a far more reliable engine. The Me262 had barely 24 hours of engine life while the UKs plane had hundreds of hours.

We had proximity fuses the Nazis did not, these a huge advantage in anti aircraft weapons and for artillery against infantry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze

We had far better radars including and during the war the gap between US\UK radar and German accelerated.

We had early computers that automated code breaking.

We had better fuel for our aircraft, tetraethyllead that allowed 100 octane fuels, the Nazis efforts to make this produced a much more expensive and less effective derivative.

While our mid war tanks sucked, we ended the war with one of the best tanks in history, the Centurion, its still in limited service. Nazi tanks were over engineered and could not be trusted to drive more than 25 miles.

The myth of Nazi technical genius comes from places like the history channel and programs hyperventilating about "wonder weapons" that were little more than prototypes forced into production.

As for the nuclear bomb, the Nazis had very few first rank physicist. Otto Hahn, co-discoverer of nuclear fission, was black listed and had risked his life and used family heirlooms to help save Jewish scientists escape Germany so not really going to be allowed to work on their bomb program. Many of the others like Einstein, Lisa Mietner, Max Born (all Nobel winning physicists) were Jews who were forced to flee and worked with the allies, the like of Otto Frisch and Peierels fled Germany out of disgust at the regime (those two performed the critical calculations that showed a nuclear weapons was possible and thus kick started the allied program in earnest), while many other young bright phsyicists who were less well known also fled.

Simply put most of the best and brightest Germans were on our side either teaching like Born or helping us make our bomb for us. The only real first rate physicist in Germany who the Nazis trusted, Heisenberg (he who knocks....) chose the wrong moderator (heavy water rather than the graphite chosen by Enrico Fermi) and screwed up the calculation for the amount of uranium needed for a critical mass, thus thought the bomb was impossible.

The very core nature of Nazism forced the worlds best scientists into our hands. Our comparative tolerance, openness and freedoms that they and their modern day admirers see as our weaknesses handed us the tools to crush them.

[Jacksgranda]

I bought this book abroad following good reviews but I was really bored of it after about the first 1/3. Never went back to it.

I bought if for a £1 at Tesco (the Coleraine store do a second hand book stall for a Diabetes charity - never seen similar in any of their other NI stores) and was glad I only paid a pound.

Struggled through to the end but was a bit disappointed in it.

[wirez]

I picked this book up in a charity shop and it had an interesting section by the historian John Keegan - http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-If-Military-Historians-Imagine/dp/0330487248/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

He argued that Germany's best chance to win the war would have been to totally ignore mainland Britain after Dunkirk.

Instead using a small amount of their forces (but not a token amount like the Africa Korps) they could have backed up the Italians in North Africa, go on to capture the Suez canal and carry on through the Middle East to the southern border of Russia. This would have given Hitler all the oil he would need for his armies. It would perhaps also make any future attack on Russia more likely to succeed as they would now be facing a giant pincer movement from the Axis forces instead of the direct frontal assault that happened in June 1941.

Keegan states that with all of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East under Axis control and the prospect of a successful invasion of Russia, it is hard to see how Britain would have been able to take the fight to Germany.

All with the benefit of hindsight though. Nae luck Adolf

[ajwffc]

I picked this book up in a charity shop and it had an interesting section by the historian John Keegan - http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-If-Military-Historians-Imagine/dp/0330487248/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

He argued that Germany's best chance to win the war would have been to totally ignore mainland Britain after Dunkirk.

Instead using a small amount of their forces (but not a token amount like the Africa Korps) they could have backed up the Italians in North Africa, go on to capture the Suez canal and carry on through the Middle East to the southern border of Russia. This would have given Hitler all the oil he would need for his armies. It would perhaps also make any future attack on Russia more likely to succeed as they would now be facing a giant pincer movement from the Axis forces instead of the direct frontal assault that happened in June 1941.

Keegan states that with all of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East under Axis control and the prospect of a successful invasion of Russia, it is hard to see how Britain would have been able to take the fight to Germany.

All with the benefit of hindsight though. Nae luck Adolf

That is a good book as is the follow up More What If?. I bought both of them early 06 and enjoyed reading them .

[LongTimeLurker]

If Hitler had captured Suez and the Middle East then India would have been under threat from the west as well as the east when the Japanese reached Burma. The key stumbling block preventing that was Turkish neutrality (looney Aryan racial theories were off-putting to them in a way the Kaiser had not been in WWI) and Hitler's fixation with Ukraine as lebensraum and the need to crush Bolshevism.

[dorlomin]

If Hitler had captured Suez and the Middle East then India would have been under threat from the west as well as the east when the Japanese reached Burma.

The Germans had nothing like enough trucks to keep an army group supplied between Tripoli and Kabul. The Germans never got beyond 50% motorisation, that is about half their forces relied on walking or horses for transport. That amount of motor transport means no Barbarossa, thousands of miles for the RAF then USAF to interdict ground supply, a never ending series of mountain ranges and other defensible positions and the high likelihood that Nehru would have mobilised millions to fight to prevent the Indians becoming subjected to Nazism.

Nazism as an ideology is very deeply flawed. It valued wacky ideas about "will power" and "race" over logistics, economics and rationality. Beyond France, Balkans\Greece and Poland everything it tries to do becomes exponentially more difficult to support logistically with every mile gained. The Nazis could have plausibly pulled of some coup de main that put puppet governments into Tehran and Baghdad. But every step beyond that is through mountains, under attack from the air and transport trucks require other transport trucks to provide fuel for them to move forward.

The UK could have capitulated after losing its Middle East oil supplies. But if they did not then the Nazis would have eventually collapsed due to UK\US bombing.

[NotThePars]

An interesting book I picked up recently was Savage Continent which explored the closing stages and aftermath of the war and the breakdown of society in Europe.

[jagfox]

Even Hitler wasn't barmy enough to lead an army into Iraq and/ or Afghanistan

[Ya Bezzer!]

I picked this book up in a charity shop and it had an interesting section by the historian John Keegan - http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-If-Military-Historians-Imagine/dp/0330487248/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

He argued that Germany's best chance to win the war would have been to totally ignore mainland Britain after Dunkirk.

Instead using a small amount of their forces (but not a token amount like the Africa Korps) they could have backed up the Italians in North Africa, go on to capture the Suez canal and carry on through the Middle East to the southern border of Russia. This would have given Hitler all the oil he would need for his armies. It would perhaps also make any future attack on Russia more likely to succeed as they would now be facing a giant pincer movement from the Axis forces instead of the direct frontal assault that happened in June 1941.

Keegan states that with all of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East under Axis control and the prospect of a successful invasion of Russia, it is hard to see how Britain would have been able to take the fight to Germany.

All with the benefit of hindsight though. Nae luck Adolf

Isn't this pretty much what Germany did, or at least tried to do? Of course they failed in North Africa and near got far enough East to take the Suez canal.

Germany had enormous supply problems in North Africa as it had to bring everything in and out over the hotly contested Mediterranean whereas the Commonwealth forces (and Americans when they joined) could bring in supplies from the Atlantic, West Africa, Middle East and Indian Ocean without too many problems.

North Africa was a theatre that the Germans just couldn't win in without a full scale invasion of India and Australia by the Japanese, something they weren't capable of doing either. The fact that they battled so well in North Africa was purely down to the genius of Erwin Rommel but even then Rommel had to make command decisions based on preserving a functioning army, over grander strategic aims that could have aided the ability of Germany to win the war.

[LongTimeLurker]

Instead of invading Russia or the UK in 1941, they could have taken out Gibraltar by leaning a lot harder on Franco to do something about it, and then moved through Turkey as well as Libya to take over the Middle East. With the Med sewn up and the oil secured, odds on the UK would have have shat it and cut some sort of deal, then Stalin could have been dealt with.

[Satans_Husband]

Don't mention the war.

I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right.

[Roland B]

I think Dorlomin has researched The 3rd Reich, very knowledgable on it's shortcomings.

[hope street]

How Wall Street financed hitler is a good read.

[stimpy]

Biggest mistakes as have been said was invading the Soviet union, also declaring war on the US. 'Merica were quite happy to stay the hell out of Europe's war and saw their war as the one in the East.

The thing that would have done for the greater German nation eventually even if no mistakes had bee made was having an empire spread over so many countries, he'd have been lucky to get his 1000 years. 100 at the most before it started crumbling, history dictates.

[Newbornbairn]

Read elsewhere that German generals were interviewed by the Soviets after the war and asked to name the decisive conflict. They expected to hear them cite Kursk, Stalingrad or Operation Bagration so they were surprised when the Germans all said "The Battle of Britain". the Germans reckoned that if Britain had been nullified, the US would have stayed out of the war. No US arms supporting British resistance in N Africa therefore a clear run to the Middle East oilfields, no US arms and materiel support for the Soviets and of course, no second front in the West.