Where would the Germans have stopped?

@jim010:

Good analysis. +1 to you.

Had the Germans had these, though, it would be hard to say what they would match up against.  Britain and France would have ships to counter these.  Instead of being an answer to the Deutschland class, they would have had to have built answers to the more powerful Mackensens.  The KGV very likely would have had 15 guns rather than 14s.Â

Very hard to figure out what France and Britain would have responded with.  And in turn, whatever the French did would influence the Italians.  My guess is you would have seen a much more aggressive battleship race between the major powers.  The super battleships planed by everyone probably would have materialized sooner.

Well said.

@abworsham4

I’ll settle with Japan giving Germany two “I-boats” (basically the Japanese version of U-boats, but with totally different functions due to differences in doctrine). I call them I-boats because all the ships in this group of ships (with several classes) started with the letter”I” (there was also the shorter range, possible cheaper, older, and generally inferior RO- boats). These submarines carried the type 95 torpedo, superior to the famous type 93 on Japanese cruisers and destroyers. More submarines for the Battle Of The Atlantic is always a great thing, and U-boats, especially those manned by great crews, with these torpedos could have been deadly.

In return, Germany could give Japan some of their experience in radar and optics-it was a real problem for the Axis, not sharing technology with each other, even though the Kriegsmarine was ordered to under direct orders from Hitler (who they didn’t follow). This is especially a problem as the Allies did share technology with each other.

I think German panzers would not have helped Japan anyway, as they would have been too heavy to transport, and armoured warfare in general was not needed on the islands of the Pacific and China (who didn’t have many good tanks at all, so Japan had no need to have better tanks). If I had to choose a land weapon for Japan to use, I would choose the 88mm anti aircraft gun. A superb anti tank gun that can fight any US tank and possibly a good help for the anti aircraft armament of Japan’s ships (if it could be adapted to naval use).

@221B:

I had to vote other as I think a good proximity fuse ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze )could have made a tremendous difference in the naval battles the Japanese lost.  It certainly made a difference for the Americans.

There is no doubt that Japanese Anti Aircraft were the poorest of the major nations of WW2. Only Rabaul had any success in air defense, and this was due to the massive amount of Allied bombing missions on that target and the practice the Japanese gunners gained. Rabaul would claim 500 aircraft, mostly singing engine bombers.

The Japanese would use several warship superstructures that were sunk to create " flak towers".

The allies who cleared the sky’s of the south pacific of Japanese planes and bombed at will anything desired dreadful hated missions to bomb Rabaul.

@The:

@CWO:

@ABWorsham:

Did I forget a category or person?

I don’t know how his numbers stack up against the others, but Adolf Galland shot down over a hundred Allied aircraft.

Galland ranked right up there, if not surpassed, most of the airmen in the Luftwaffe.

He could also light a cigar and smoke while wearing his oxygen mask. Great fighter pilot! Had he not been promoted to General he may have added another hundred kills to his score.

Goering’s boost: “everything that fly’s belongs to me” this is the major source of the problem. Inter-service rivalry was catastrophic to getting the needed changes done. Goering would not let his power diminish to booster Karl Donetz.

Hitler should have just stopped the war after May 1941 and just fight UK and take her colonies and use his pact with Stalin to co-capture the Middle-East and finish off India. After 10 years of consolidation of capturing most of Europe and finishing off UK, invade the Soviet Union with the full enjoyment of all the jet fighters, super heavy tanks and greater war making capacity.

So i guess invading Soviet Union was the worst mistake and not using them as true allies until you didn’t need them anymore and causing a two front war.

Hitler should break any military treaty with Japan and try to 5th column USA with sympathizers to keep US neutrality.

Thanks for sharing, that was an interesting Article.

@balungaloaf:

without US aid assistance via lend lease, without the allied strategic bombing campaign tying up much of the luftwaffe and anti air defenses, and without the threat of invasion keeping millions of german soldiers in europe, the soviets would have been smashed before they could ever set up a counter attack.  if moscow was taken, the people would give up on their communist overlords and capitulate.

You alluded to the pressure the U.S. and Britain put on Germany; and I fully agree that pressure was immense. Even in 1940–before the U.S. was technically at war–its industrial production created profound implications for the balance of power in Europe. With massive numbers of American aircraft being produced and sent to Britain, Germany had to either a) find a way to keep pace, industrially, with the U.S. and Britain combined, or b) watch its cities and people be destroyed by waves of British and American bombers. The invasion of the Soviet Union was largely precipitated by the desire to allow Germany to attain the raw materials and industrial capacity to achieve outcome A.

However, keeping pace with the production capacity of the U.S. and Britain also required Germany to invest heavily in its own production facilities. That investment diverted effort from what would have been immediately useful production against the Soviet Union. During 1942, the Soviets out-produced the Germans 3:1 or even 4:1 in all major land categories of production, and even out-produced the Germans 2:1 in planes.

Prior to launching Operation Barbarossa, the German military staff had incorrectly believed that the Soviet Army consisted of 200 divisions. Divisions which had fought very poorly in the Soviets’ 1940 invasion of Finland. In the spring of 1941, the German Army consisted of 150 divisions; 100 of which were used for the invasion of the Soviet Union. But in the months after the invasion, the Soviets were quickly able to expand the size of their army to about 600 divisions. Given the imbalance of sheer numbers, it is very unlikely Germany could have prevailed in a war against the Soviet Union even despite its military’s advantage on a man-for-man basis.