Did Hitler really die in Berlin?

@Wicked:

Don’t forget, unlike France or Norway surrender was no survivable option for the Russian population. Hitler made very clear quite early that he considered them “subhuman” and GeStaPo and SS did their deadly job in notorious german thouroughness in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. So I’m not sure if taking the capital would have ended the war in Russia - perhaps the regular war, but not the need for massive amount of troops there. I’m pretty sure the long term need and lack of administrational staff and police for this vast area with millions of deads causing disobeyance and riots would have been more than a pain in the a… for the Reich.
The Nazi dictature based on nationalism including/featuring hatred towards Jews and Slaws, denunciation and a powerful police - that wouldn’t have worked there. But on second thought, they might have been able to get some russians to help and give some incentives like surviving a month longer… It would have been hell on earth.

In the end Hitler had not enough of his beloved true blood Germans to realize his megalomaniac ideas - you don’t make many friends by hating them constitutionally.

An important part of German planning for the postwar period included the intention of forcibly relocating 30 - 50 million Poles eastward, to make room for German expansion. Had the Allied food blockade still been in effect, the deaths of large numbers of Poles along the way would have been considered an acceptable way of relieving pressure on Germany’s food supply; thereby preventing the starvation of an equal number of non-Poles.

During the war, the combination of the Allied food blockade and Stalin’s scorched earth tactics made it impossible for Germany to feed all the people within the lands it had conquered from the Soviet Union. The physical impossibility of Germany feeding those people proved a boon for Soviet propagandists; who took advantage of the situation by claiming that Germany planned to starve or kill all the people of the conquered Soviet Union. Soviet propagandists were not normally considered a highly reliable source of information. In this instance, however, the fact that large numbers of people in German-occupied portions of the Soviet Union were actually starving seemed to lend a hint of credibility to these claims.

As the war in Europe became increasingly less favorable for Germany, large numbers of Soviet civilians fled west into Germany. The westward flight of many Soviet civilians demonstrates that not all Soviet citizens believed Soviet wartime propaganda.

He would be housing Hitler himself, not helping Germany. And yes it would be stupid to announce they were holding Hitler. He would be taken in secret, probably until death.

Just wondering if Franco would be willing to take him in, which im guessing is a no.

We are loosing a great many of WW2 veterans daily.  :oops:

Sun Tzu is famous for stating that the battle is often won or lost before your troops even engage the enemy.
Alliances were key before the start of war.

I would have

1  Find a way to ally with the USSR for at least a decade  ( hard to do since Ger, Ity and Jpn were joined by treaty in the Axis as an anti-communist effort)

1A Invite the USSR to attack the British through Persia.

1B Concentrate resources to wrestle Arabian oil away from the British and their allies .

2  Leaving the Mediterranean sphere to Italy was a disaster
and I would have ended earlier.

3  Italian troops should have gotten upgraded training before they were lost in the early going.

4  I would have started joint military war games/exercises in Austria and Czechoslovakia with the German, Italian, and other axis troops to get them all up to par.
This would get them all used to German close air support and combined arms tactics that worked so well in the french blitzkreig.

5.  Invited the Japanese admiralty (especially Yamamoto) to inspect the European fleets soon after signing the Axis Tri party agreements

6.  Yamamoto was opposed to the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo  Tripartite Pact.
I would Court Yamamoto and win him over in a way similar to how Hitler got support from the Asters in the UK.

7.  Sponsor alliance ready, facist-type, organizations in Egypt, Cyprus, Ireland, Norway, Iceland, etc… who would at least be neutral to the UK.  Whoever the Axis can use to gain leverage over the UK.

8.  What worked so well in Norway should have been done in Egypt near the Suez Canal and/or Cyprus.  Before the Norway invasion.

@Gargantua:

Are you on DRUGS?

Uhm, I won’t answer any questions without my lawyer present.   :wink:

I regard most television documentaries as highly entertaining, but at least sometimes containing information of dubious reliability.  They are there to entertain and inform, and sometimes propagandize, not simply inform.

It is in stacks of dry dusty books that one finds interesting facts, and hot lonely librarians.   :evil:  The internet also does decently as a search tool, although you often have to have a good idea of what you are looking for.  (For example, you won’t typically find mention of “The Protocols of Zion” in any discussion of the Holocaust, which is, well, really bad.)

My understanding of the history of the StG 44 is that production of the gun itself was generally approved of by Hitler.

The MKb 42, FG 42, and MP43 were the predecessors.  I think the referred to “stoppage of the StG 44 by Hitler” (to paraphrase an earlier post) referred to the real infighting in Germany over the design and production of these various predecessor guns.  To sum up, there were various plans for various assault rifles / machine guns, but there was a lot of bureaucratic infighting.  Rather than allowing them to continue arguing to no positive end, Hitler at various points told them to shut up and shut down.

So naturally there was some delay in StG 44 production, but saying Hitler made a stupid decision, or that he completely lacked vision, is like yelling at your cat after you burn your toast.  It’s not the cat’s fault, even if it was in the room at the time.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091261/Inside-Hitlers-private-world-Wartime-pictures-rooms-Fuhrer-spent-quiet-time.html

The defeat of Leningrad would have been easier than Stalingrad.

The loss of Moscow would have been much greater loss than Baku and resulted in a shortening of the front of which a latter southern drive could succeed without fear of getting cut off because at that point all logistical support for Soviets would be coming entirely east of the Don and this country is not too developed. The last Soviet Factories would be in range of Axis bombers and the front would have rolled up more easily, than committing the 6th to Stalingrad with all other Soviet logistical and political objectives are intact allowing easy reinforcement from rail heads running south from Moscow.

Hitler would have lost all credibility of being an anti-Communist in the NSDAP, and all his followers.