Germany to Africa, how?

I started by checking my own Global 1940 map analysis document…

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/26161/global-1940-2nd-edition-map-analysis/33?page=2&lang=en-GB

…and the entry for Chile says “Chile, a country with close trading ties with Germany, initially chose to remain neutral (in contrast with many South American countries which, although technically neutral, tilted slightly towards the Allied side early in the war). Chile only started to distance itself from the Axis powers in 1943, when it broke diplomatic relations with them.”

According to this page…

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

the “Declaration by United Nations”, originally signed by 26 nations in January 1942, was signed by Chile in early 1945. Chile was also one of the original 51 signatories of the 1945 Charter of the United Nations, and Chile also apparently declared war on Japan in April 1945. This page…

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

…similarly notes the same declaration of war against Japan and similarly mentions none against Germany.

All in all, it sounds as if Chile was one of the countries (there were several, notably in Latin America) which spent much of WWII playing their cards close to their vest, and which only committeed themselves to the Allied bandwagon once it was clear that a) the war was nearly over and b) the Allies were going to win. Based on the other entries in my map analysis document, it looks as if, basically, the Latin American countries whose real inclination was to be pro-Axis spent the war pretending they were neutral; the Latin American countries whose real inclination was to be neutral spent the war pretending they were pro-Allied; and the Latin American / Caribbean countries whose inclination was to be pro-Allied jumped onto the Allied bandwagon right after Pearl Harbor. The reason for all of these positions (nuanced or overt) isn’t hard to guess: they were all in the western hemisphere, i.e. in the backyard of the United States, so they had to be careful about the public stance they took, even in those countries with right-wing governements and/or significantly large numbers of residents of German ancestry.

@Karl7:

Why wouldn’t that have worked?  How big was the Brit garrison?  I am assuming no more than a couple thousand?

Infantry
In late 1939 the pre-war garrison was reinforced up to an infantry division (commanded by Major General Sir Sanford John Palairet Scobell).[13] The original infantry garrison, plus the three brigades that reinforced the island’s regular British Army were title 1, 2, 3, and 4 Brigades; but were subsequently renumbered in 1943 as follows:[14]

231 Infantry Brigade – assigned to the Southern Sector under Brig L H Cox. HQ Southern Infantry Brigade at Luqa. Its infantry battalions were:
2nd Battalion The Devonshire Regiment
1st Battalion The Hampshire Regiment
1st Battalion The Dorsetshire Regiment
2nd Battalion The King’s Own Malta Regiment
3rd Battalion The King’s Own Malta Regiment
232 Infantry Brigade – assigned to the Northern Sector under Brig W H Oxley. HQ Northern Infantry Brigade at Melita Hotel Attard next to San Anton Gardens. Its infantry battalions were:
2nd Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers
8th Battalion, King’s Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster)
8th Battalion, Manchester Regiment[15]
233 Infantry Brigade – formed on 30 July 1941; assigned to the Central Sector under Brig I De La Bere. Its infantry battalions were:
11th Battalion The Lancashire Fusiliers
2nd Battalion The Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment[16]
10th Battalion The King’s Own Malta Regiment
234 Infantry Brigade – assigned to the Western sector under Brig F Brittorous. Its infantry battalions were:
4th Battalion The Royal East Kent Regiment (The Buffs)
1st Battalion The Durham Light Infantry
1st Battalion The Cheshire Regiment

Malta Forces

16th Fortress Company
24th Fortress Company
173rd Tunnel Company
2 Works Company
127th Bomb Disposal Section
128th Bomb Disposal Section
Malta Command Signals, Royal Signals
8 Special Wireless Squadron
Royal Army Medical Corps
39 General Hospital RAMC
45 General Hospital RAMC
90 General Hospital RAMC
15 Field Ambulance RAMC
161 Field Ambulance RAMC
69 Field Security Section Intelligence Corps
226 Provost Company Royal Military Police
Royal Army Service Corps[23]
32 Company RASC (MT)
Malta Supply Depot RASC
Water Transport Company RASC

That’s because each nation during WWII learned different lessons during that war. USSR build their tanks to be cheap because they know they will lose equipment and men. They accept that losing soldiers is going to happen so they tend to use numbers to gain the edge, however they haven’t needed to do this since WWII. The last tried this in Afgan and it didn’t work so well.

The US can’t take loses for $hit, so we try to destroy you from the air, far way, as fast as possible and units that are designed to be in your face while fighting are armored up.

@CWO:

A question: if the Allies had concentrated their efforts and resources on conquering the southern part of Europe, and had not invaded France, isn’t it possible that the Russians would have driven westward through Germany in 1945 and would have kept going through France (which Germany would still be occupying in this scenario) until they got to the English Channel?  In other words, doesn’t a scenario in which the Anglo-Americans end up controlling the southern and eastern parts of Europe create a situation in which the Soviets end up controlling the northern and western parts of Europe, with France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark and possibly Norway being switched from Nazi occupation to Soviet occupation?

You’ve raised a very good question.

In the scenario I outlined, one possible Allied objective would have been to reach the Baltic before the Red Army arrived. Had this been achieved, all of Europe west of this Anglo-American line would presumably have been protected from the Red terror. Whether that was achievable goal is difficult to say.

@CWO:

@Hobbes:

@RedArmySoldier:

So it’s either ‘join together vs Russkieland’, or ‘fall together’.

Isn’t this what happened in real life?

Not really. In the last days of the war in Europe, the Nazis entertained all kinds of fantasies that the Anglo-Americans would come to their senses and would team up with them to fight the barbarous Soviet hordes, but it never happened.  The Soviet/Anglo-American alliance held together until the surrender of Germany, and indeed until the surrender of Japan: Stalin fulfilled his prior commitment to go to war against Japan three months after Germany surrendered (the time which had been allocated for him to shift some of his forces from Europe to the Far East).  Germany surrendered on May 7, and the USSR invaded Manchuria almost exactly on schedule on August 9.  In Europe, the Soviet, American and British armies all settled into the occupation zones which had been defined ahead of time for each power.  The predefined occupation zones were even respected where the fighting had taken the Americans into areas assigned to the Russians (such as Leipzig) and the Russians into areas assigned to the Anglo-Americans (such as parts of Austria, and of course the western half of Berlin).

Yeah, but afterwards the West set up the ‘denazification’ because they needed the former Nazis to run West Germany, while taking a blind eye to both the fascist regimes of Portugal and Spain since they were anti-communist as well, and had no problems in supporting dictatorships everywhere to prevent the communists from taking power.

@calvinhobbesliker:

How did Poland provoke the Germans into attacking?

they didn’t, they just were in between…

And it is a big difference if those German ships are new (build in 1939, or something), because a lot of British ships were older then that.

In some of my other posts on this forum, I’ve described how even in 1940 (when the U.S. was still technically at peace with Germany), it had devoted a significant amount of industrial potential toward winning the air war against Germany; with plans to considerably expand the effort over the next several years. America’s strongest single asset was her industrial potential, as Hitler clearly understood. But that potential was going to be increasingly turned against Germany, whether the U.S. was technically at war or not.

Hitler’s plan to counter this was to expand Germany’s industrial output over the short-term, so that he could at least keep pace with the air war over Germany in the long haul. His method of expanding Germany’s output included industrialization and conquest. The industrialization aspect of his plan meant that instead of putting everything he had into weapons output for 1941 or 1942–in a massive effort to crush the Soviet Union–he had to divide his nation’s economic activity between short-term military production and long-term output increases. The result of all that industrial investment was that Germany increased its aircraft output from 16,000 planes per year in 1941 to over 40,000 planes per year by 1944. It also increased its military production in other categories, such as tanks and V2 rockets.

In late 1941, Hitler knew that his window of opportunity to win the war was relatively slim; and that 1942 would be critical. Germany had to win a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in that year, both to take pressure off its eastern front, and to provide it with the raw materials and manpower it needed to hold its own in the air war over the long haul. Hitler believed that the overwhelming majority of America’s naval strength would be needed in the Pacific to counter the Japanese; at least until the end of 1943. That gave him what he believed was a two year window with which he could sink the American Lend-Lease Aid pouring into Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Sinking those ships would increase Germany’s chances of obtaining the victory over the Soviet Union it desperately needed.

However, the Japanese Navy proved less adept than Hitler had hoped. The Battle of Midway occurred six months after Pearl Harbor. That battle took the naval pressure off the U.S. in the Pacific, and allowed it to focus more of its efforts on convoy protection in the Atlantic. More generally, the failure of the Japanese military meant that Japan would be far less successful in taking military pressure off of Germany than Hitler had hoped.

In 1942, the Soviet Union outproduced Germany 3:1 - 4:1 in tanks, artillery, and other land combat categories, and even 2:1 in military aircraft. It also fielded a much larger army than Germany. Thus evaporated Hitler’s hope of a decisive victory on his eastern front.

Had Hitler not declared war against the U.S., large amounts of American Lend-Lease aid would still have flowed to his enemies in Europe. Over the long-term, he still would have needed to devote a significant portion of his military production to defending German skies and German cities against American-made bombers. He would have lost out on the Second Happy Time (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Happy_Time ), which would have resulted in a stronger Soviet war effort for 1942. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have had to deal with the U.S. invasion of Algeria in 1942, its invasion of Sicily and Italy in 1943, or the Normandy invasion of '44. It’s easy to say in hindsight that the harm of the American invasions exceeded the benefit of sinking that Lend-Lease shipping in '42. But that distinction was less obvious at the time.