@crusaderiv:
First mistake = Bad strategies during the battle of britain.
Second mistake = declare war to USSR.
Third mistake = No good heavy bomber for the luthwaffe.
I agree that the Nazis could have done a better job of devising and implementing strategies for the Battle of Britain. But even if they had used their resources perfectly, Germany lacked the shipping capacity and other tools required for a D-Day style invasion. Their exit strategy was to hope Britain would agree to a peace treaty. Instead, the British government ramped up airplane production, and American factories added many more military aircraft.
After it became clear that Churchill had no interest in a negotiated peace agreement, the Germans concluded they needed another exit strategy. German military intelligence had grossly underestimated both the military strength of the Soviet Union and its military production capacity. A quick victory over the Soviet Union would provide Germany with the manpower, access to raw materials, and the industrial capacity required to stay in shouting range of Anglo-American military aircraft production.
Hitler’s notion of invading the Soviet Union was broadly accepted by senior army and Luftwaffe staff, in large part because they had no other alternative strategy for successfully getting Germany out of the war. Initially, the German Navy didn’t have a well-developed alternative either. But in the months leading up to Barbarossa, they gradually developed an alternative plan.
Their proposed alternative involved Axis control of the entire Mediterranean, of most or all of Africa, and of the Middle East. Germany itself lacked the naval resources necessary to execute this plan, so its success was contingent on the cooperation of its allies and purported allies. Spain would seize Gibraltar, closing the western Mediterranean to the Allies. The Vichy French would expand their influence in Africa and the Middle East. The Italians would push east from Libya, would take the Suez, and would then swing north into the Middle East. When all was said and done, the Axis would own all British possessions in Africa, and everything British in Asia west of India.
The problem with this plan is that Germany’s would-be allies were greedy and uncooperative. Franco demanded Vichy France’s Northwest African colonies as his price for entering the war. (In reality, Franco had no intention of entering the war, and therefore named a price well beyond what Hitler could reasonably consider.) The Vichy French demanded large territorial rewards as their price for entry–territory which Mussolini had also demanded as his price for entry!
Possibly, Hitler should have written off the Spanish–Gibraltar wasn’t worth that much–and focused on getting the Vichy French and the Italians to agree to something. He did make a halfhearted effort in that direction. But the efficacy of that effort was undermined both by his own determination to pursue Barbarossa, and by Italy’s subsequent military adventures in places like Greece. If Hitler had somehow forced the Italians and Vichy French to agree to something, it’s quite possible that Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean could have fallen into Axis hands. Oil from Persia would have been very welcome in Germany, and losing so large a portion of its empire would likely have reduced the number of military aircraft Britain might otherwise have produced.
But would this have been enough to get Germany out of the war? Or would the British have continued to send British and American-made planes against German cities, while shrugging off the loss of so much of their empire? If the latter, then what would Germany’s exit strategy have been? 1941 represented a period of temporary weakness for the Red Army. Even if Germany had not attacked, the Red Army would have been a much tougher opponent in 1943 or 1944 than it had been in the summer of '41.
