How could Germany win the war?

[Gen Oldendorf]

As to American involvement, it was inevitable. The headline for the Chicago Tribune dtd 4 December 1941 told of the Kennedy Dawes plan with the story of plans to put a 1 million man army in Europe in 1942. 4 days later it was quietly forgotten.

That aside, I would have to concur with the failure to capture the British Isles as being the principle reason for the German failure to win the war. And until the German's switched to bombing civilian targets they were actually on the verge of breaking the RAF. With the fall of England the men and equipment sent to North Africa would have been severely reduced. There would have been no bombing of Germany, and the Allies would (presuming the British government went to Canada in exile) have had to launch a invasion of Europe from Iceland or Greenland without air support unlesss carriers from the Pacific Theater were diverted. It would have protracted the war possibly long enough for the German wonder weapons to include the atomic bomb to make a difference.

Of course if the British government had capitulated to the Germans, then there would never have been a reason for the Americans to ever bother with Europe.

[phylo_roadking]

Actually - read John Ray. They weren't on the verge of breaking the RAF - far from it. New aircraft were reaching squadrons faster than ever before, and Beaverbrook's auxiliary repair network was returning reconstructed aircraft to units by night.

What WAS happening was because of Dowding's shortshightedness in some areas - Ray's analysis of this is excellent - Eleven Group Fighter Command was...although flying off the same number of aircraft daily...getting exhausted by standing the brunt of the attacks. There were SOME squadron rotations into Twelve Group north of London and Ten Group to the South-West to rest Eleven Group's squadrons - but not many. And the squadrons rotated IN suffered depredations because of lack of experience for a time. "Stuffy" Dowding didn't start the rotation process early enough. But Ten and Twelve Groups were unblooded until Twelve Group's "Big Wings" were given permission to operate down in Eleven Group's area...and this only for four weeks or so, and only a week and a half in effect of the main Day campaign.

Although Dowding had pioneered an integrated defence - he hadn't really done anything about integrating the service and still treated Groups as independent commands. This coupled to his on lack of flexibility once the battle commenced and changed as it went resulted in Eleven Group bearing the brunt of the battle for two and a half months without REAL respite. But it was only a part of the whole, with Fighter Command converting the rest of its squadrons in other Groups to Spitfires and Hurricanes as fast as it could.

[lwd]

... They weren't on the verge of breaking the RAF - far from it.....

Indeed they were on the verge of breaking the LW.

[august]

i've read in at least one book that the raf was almost finished. it was hitler's meddling that cost them the war from the start. only divine intervention and a later rejuvinated raf saved britain.

[lwd]

That was pretty much the opion during the war. It turned out that German intelligence baddly underestimated the RAF and and British intellignece badly overestimated the LW. If you look around there is a very telling graph which shows the relative fighter strength of the two forces and the RAF's was improving through most of the BOB while that if the LW was decreasing. (There's a huge thread over on the axis history forum on this with lots of arguments both ways).

[Tom Houlihan]

Go to a total war footing with the industry and economy no later than 31 August 1939.

Put women in the workforce, starting 31 August 1939.

Don't deport/kill anyone capable of contributing to the war effort.

Recognize that regardless of tactical successes early on, strategic assets will become vital, sooner rather than later than desired.

Don't openly oppress. Use the people you've liberated from some other despots yoke. Nobody's unter- anything if they're willing to fight and die for you!

If you don't want to treat conquered or "guest" workers as well as you treat your own, fine. Treat them like step children that you don't like, but are required to look after and take care of.

Stop pissing off the whole world all at once. Get them all turned against you gradually.

Quit while you're ahead.

[Reb]

Tom

If Adolf had done everything you suggest they wouldn't have been the bad guys! Hitler would be remembered as the "great liberator" who freed Europe (and USSR) from despotism.

Nah...nothing ever works out that way.

cheers
Reb

[Tom Houlihan]

Yeah, but he didn't win, neither, so he lost on both accounts!

[august]

i wonder if anyone else has heard this, that germany wasn't on a total war footing ecenomically until 1943. the german economy until mid to late '43 was still on a peacetime footing. this was about the time of goebbels major speech and call for "total war" against germany's foes. which meant just about every other country in the world at that point.

[phylo_roadking]

But there's an interesting counter-argument to that....

It was because the German economy through most of the war was substantially under-mobilized that it was resilient under air attack. Civilian consumption was high during the early years of the war and inventories both in industry and in consumers' possession were high. These helped cushion the economy from the effects of bombing. Plant and machinery were plentiful and incompletely used, thus it was comparatively easy to substitute unused or partly used machinery for that which was destroyed

Actually, you could argue that government management of the economy and production under Nazi Germany BEFORE the war went much farther than most other countries except obviously the USSR; for Germany was having to centrally manage raw materials, especially imported ones - oil, iron ore etc. - right from the beginnings of rearmament in the 1930s. Elsewhere, the rearmament process was much more purely "private enterprise", simply funded by purchasing contracts from central government.

[Klaus_Arzt]

For Germany it would have been better not to attack USSR during the battle of Britain. I mean the biggest mistake was embroiling in the conflict with USSR without settling the matter with Britain. You can’t solve 2 problems simultaneously (may be you can but actually it’s very hard) and succeed instantly.

At first solve one and then another. Hitler was too hasty and arrogant. ‘cause only after securing all the boundaries, bringing all its forces together into one iron fist, stabilizing economics Germany had a chance of conquering USSR.
But even this is only a theory. When all these horrendous events are in the past of course it’s easy to predict and guess right now what might have happened then.

[august]

without a doubt i agree. germany should have made defeating england it's one and only priority. russia should have been only in the planning stages. defeating the raf first, gaining command of the skies over britain, then pressing home a concentrated war of annihilation against the royal navy and shipping was the road not taken fortunately for england and our world today.

[Klaus_Arzt]

By the way guys, what do you think would have happened if Nazi Germany (let’s picture this scene for a second) had conquered Britain and USSR? Actually I think that even if they had succeeded it wouldve been impossible for them to control such a HUGE territory. It would be like Roman Empire (2 or even 3 times bigger). Any thoughts on that comment?

[august]

difficult, yes, impossible, no. with ruthless efficiency the nazi's could have pulled it off.

[phylo_roadking]

"Controlling" their empire isn't as big an issue as actually working it. The Nazis as a government were as discussed remarkably poor at running a peacetime economy without a BIG foreign loan behind it; the rearmament of the 1930s was funded by the Von papen loans, not by any actual great economic planning on the part of the Nazis except to spend spend spend. The events of WWII - the transfer of goods and produce from conquered European countries, the transfer of labour etc. when they REALLY needed proper developed government of ALL resources in ALL parts of the Greater Reich makes me think that they were actually no more gifted at economics than any South American or African "slash-and-burn" farmer - a few years 100% exploitation with no reinvestment and development....and behind them they leave a desert. Look at the longterm prospects for, say, French industry under the Nazis by about 1944 with the French economy bleeding trained workers and engineers to Germany? And not just engineers - farm workers too.

Yes, Speer worked short-term wonders with slave labour - BUT slave labour is a finite resource unless you start breeding them yourself - so to speak! - and it forces production changes; yes, slave labour in the Mittelwerk could produce V2s...but only once every production process was broken down SO far than trained (and half-starved) monkeys could do them. And it means an ever-expanding frontier and source of new POWS/racial minorities/political prisoners...same as simply slowly pillaging Occupied countries of resources and food produce.

See Peter Heather's recent The Fall Of The Roman Empire - any empire based on military success is doomed to contraction 1/ once the simple post-conquest economic exploitation of new territory brings in LESS than needed to actually defend and administer it OR 2/ unless it keeps expanding and bring in more short-term wealth - just like the Nazis did. The way the Nazis were so bad at materially exploiting the conquered nations of Europe was a position they put themselves in. They were IN Case Two by default,by constant conquest for a number of years - but when they needed to ramp up production everywhere...they showed they couldn't change their ways of doing things in order to avoid Case One as well.

The Germans showed in 1940-44 that they simply hadn't learned ANYTHING from their pre-WWI Imperial days of only averagely explopiting their colonial possessions.