Posts made by KurtGodel7

@balungaloaf:

England and France said they would go to war to protect poland from invasion.  Then when poland is invaded they say this is the reason for war.  so they delcare war on germany.

But what about the soviet union.  why in hell didnt they declare war on the soviet union?

You’ve raised an excellent point, and one which I’d like to expand upon. The treaties that Britain and France signed with Poland in 1939 were very specific: Poland would receive protection from a German invasion, but not from a Soviet invasion. Moreover, France promised that if Germany attacked Poland, France would launch a general offensive against Germany within 15 days of general mobilization. That French attack would force Germany to fight a two-front war, and would prevent it from allocating the majority of its military assets to its eastern, Polish front.

On paper, the combined French-Polish forces were at least the equal of the German forces. Together, Poland and France had both more men and more tanks than did Germany. In a long war, the large-scale advantage that British and French industry had over its German counterpart would dictate the outcome of the war; especially when military purchases from the United States were added to the mix. Polish military strategy therefore revolved around a fighting withdrawal during the first few weeks (while France prepared its promised general offensive against Germany), with the thought that lost ground could be regained after Germany was forced to shift its forces west. However, the general offensive France promised never came.

The question we should be asking is, why did the French promise Poland a general offensive when it was clear their military strategy involved simply hiding behind their Maginot Line? While multiple explanations are possible, I personally believe that at least part of the reason for that involved Frances’ centuries-long anti-German foreign policy. At the end of the Thirty Years War, France imposed the disastrous Peace of Westphalia on Germany; and its policy since then had generally been to keep Germany divided and weak. France fostered disagreements between Germany and Poland by giving the latter nation West Prussia after WWI. To worsen the relations between the two nations situation, it made false promises to Poland as a counterweight to Germany’s efforts to reclaim Polish-occupied German territory.

In 1939, the Polish government made France’s promises the centerpiece of their foreign policy. Polish leaders flatly refused to negotiate with Germany, and refused to return any Polish-occupied German territory to German control. This, even though Germany in 1938 had given Poland a portion of Czechoslovakia in an effort to improve relations between the two nations.

Other nations in Eastern Europe had successfully maintained good diplomatic relations with Germany. Poland could have done so as well had it returned West Prussia to Germany, and had it continued to avoid any kind of alliance with the Soviet Union. The Polish leadership’s decision to rely on the promises of France, and to adopt an anti-German foreign policy, cost Poland its existence.

I agree with the overall thrust of Allweneed’s argument. I also really, really, really don’t like how heavily luck-based tech is.

1. First is the binary tech/no tech luck-based outcome. You could spend 5 IPCs and get a tech. Or you could spend 40 and come away with nothing. Either way, luck would exert a huge influence on the outcome of the game.

2. Once you’ve obtained a tech, there’s the question of whether it’s a tech you actually need. That too is dependent on luck.

3. Assuming the tech is useful, there is then the question of whether you caught your opponent with his pants down. (Tech kicks in right away.) Can your long-range aircraft reach the transport fleet your opponent thought was safe?

If someone gets lucky on 1 - 3, it could decide the game. Which is ridiculous, because that’s not how games should be decided! And don’t tell me that luck is a part of war!! In a real war, it would be possible to build a highly adaptive command structure, where generals and soldiers could adapt quickly to changing circumstances in order to minimize the effects of bad luck while capitalizing on good luck. The interaction between luck and battle outcomes is far more complex than the rolling of a few dice.

What I propose is the following:

• Technology should be purchased for a fixed cost. No more die rolling
• You should choose which technology you’re getting, rather than rolling dice.
• The cost of technology should decline over the course of the game.
• More effective technologies should cost more than less effective technologies.
• Possibly, different nations should pay different prices for specific technologies, depending on the requirements of game balance.
• Technology should not kick in until after you’ve placed new units. That way there’s one less thing for players to worry about.

@orcageo:

I agree with you Kurt and I am playing the game that way. But what do you mean by hitpoints?

In my rules set, most units take multiple hits to destroy. Normally, whichever player is inflicting the hits gets to decide how to allocate them. That means that wounded units will get finished off before hits get allocated to healthy units.

As an aside, a land combat value of 2 means that when firing against land units, you roll two dice. Each die roll hits on a four or less. The extra hits help balance out the extra hitpoints.

@orcageo:

Sorry i didn’t answer earlier but I went to sleep and had to work because I live in Greece and we have a big hour gap. Ok I agree that some BB may have been hit by strategic bonbers but mainly when they were in naval bases. I didn’t know that with the guided torpedo, I was unaware they had that technology. Did they use it widely?
Whatever, if we agree that strategic bombers bomb BB’s shouldn’t they have an attack less than 4 because they for surely aren’t that accurate as the tactical bombers?

You have a good point here. Fighters were single engined aircraft intended to destroy enemy aircraft. Single-engined bombers–such as Kates and Stukas and so forth–were intended to destroy enemy tanks and ships and so forth; while holding their own against enemy aircraft. Large, four-engined bombers were intended to destroy enemy cities.

Capturing that distinction was one of my primary goals in creating the Flames and Steel rules set.

I employed the following definitions for aircraft:

Fighter
    * Air combat value: 4
    * Land combat value: 1
    * Naval combat value: 1
    * Hitpoints: 4
    * Movement: 4
    * Cost: 10 PUs

Dive bomber
    * Air combat value: 2
    * Land combat value: 3
    * Naval combat value: 3
    * Strategic bombing value: 1 PU
    * Hitpoints: 4
    * Movement: 4
    * Cost: 10 PUs

Strategic bomber
    * Air combat value: 1
    * Land combat value: 1
    * Naval combat value: 1
    * Strategic bombing value: 3 PUs. Plus a permanent, 1 PU reduction in the territory’s value.
    * Hitpoints: 6
    * Movement: 6
    * Cost: 16 PUs

As you can see, I gave strategic bombers some ability to be used tactically; on the theory that they could be used that way in a pinch. But it’s not what they’re best at or intended for.

@aequitas:

wich “nearly 1 million Soviet citizens joined Germany’s army” are you talking about,please?

From Feldgrau.com:

The forerunner of the volunteer formations was a voluntary auxiliary service, of a para- military character, which was started in the autumn of 1941 by the German Commands on the front. On their own initiative, they organized auxiliary units of various services, made up of Soviet deserters, prisoners, and volunteers from among the local population. These so-called “Hilfswillige,” or “Hiwi,” were employed as sentries, drivers, store- keepers, workers in depots, etc. The experiment surpassed all expectations. In the spring of 1942 there were already at least 200,000 of them in the rear of the German armies, and by the end of the same year their number was allegedly near 1,000,000.(2) . . .

During 1943 the number of volunteers in the eastern formations increased allegedly to some 800,000.(19)

See http://www.feldgrau.com/rvol.html

According to Wikipedia, 1,000,000 Soviet residents who joined the German Army were taken prisoner by the USSR; and an additional 215,000 Soviet residents were killed or MIA. That implies a minimum of 1.2 million Soviet citizens or residents took up arms against communism. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)#Casualties

The source for the Wikipedia quote is Richard Overy–a highly respected historian.

@CWO:

If Germany had occupied the Middle East, I’m not sure Germany would have been able to recruit the local population to its cause (assuming Germany was inclined to try doing so in the first place).  During the early days of Operation Barbarossa, some of the population groups in the western Soviet Union briefly entertained the hope that the Germans might prove to be more agreeable rulers than Joseph Stalin.  The SS and the Gestapo soon came along and dispelled that particular notion.  Germany was able to raise a certain number of troops in the various countries it occupied, but even with the help of collaborationist governments like those of Vichy France the forces asssembled in this manner were relatively small.

Similarly, the Japanese were never able to capitalize very much on the anti-British (and anti-French and anti-Dutch) sentiments that existed in the Far East.  When Japan marched into one country after another in 1941-1942, it tried to market its conquests as a campaign for the liberation of Asia from white European colonial oppression.  The conquered locals soon realized that they’d simply traded one kind of foreign imperialism for another, and that life under Japanese occupation was no picnic.  Even Thailand, which was nominally an ally of Japan, was squeezed in a way which convinced pretty much everyone except the country’s top leadership that the proper response was to resist rather than collaborate.  Japan also made efforts to cultivate the Indian nationalist movement, but apart from getting some support here and there from people like Subhas Chandra Bose it never got anywhere near to provoking a serious uprising against British rule.

In the Soviet Union, anti-communist sentiment was strong enough that nearly 1 million Soviet citizens joined Germany’s army. Had Germany actually been in a position to feed the people in the territories it conquered–which it was not–the number of people who joined might have been significantly larger. You also raised a good point about the heavy-handedness of the occupation effort–a heavy handedness which may have been due at least in part to the desire to suppress Soviet partisans and guerrilla warfare.

In the scenario I have hypothesized, Germany would have ruled its Middle Eastern colonies with a light touch, with an eye toward winning over as large a percentage of the local population as possible. Cooperation with local leaders would have been paramount. Obtaining adequate food supplies would also have been critical–if necessary by advancing southward along the Nile.

@aequitas:

ok Kurt Godel, explain please how you would have seen the Invasion against the Soviet Union without the Oil of Ploesti in '44-'45?..I see you would have tried to obtain the oilfields in Mid.east but I think you would be out of gas right then…

better weapons introduced in early '43 would not have much of an impact to win the war for Germany since it was more likley overkill in the diversity of types of ammo and ammo at all…
for example Stug III w. 3 -4 diffrent KwK’s and up to 6 diffrent Panzergranaten/Panzer grenades…

the Wehrmacht was on top in '41, undefeated and fearless. providing the Wehrmacht in '41 w. SturmGewher '44 modells, Panthers and panzerfaust and they would have conquered siberia on foot…lol

Far fewer tanks, soldiers, and planes were involved in the Middle Eastern conflict of 1940 than would later participate in the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. All else being equal, a smaller conflict means less need for gas. Also, Germany had access to some fuel supplies, both from its own synthetic fuel production and because of Romania. That fuel would have been perfectly adequate to launch a full-scale invasion of the Middle East in 1940 or 1941; just as that fuel was instead used in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Long-term, of course, the plan would have been for the Middle Eastern invasion to result in the capture of Persia’s oil fields; which at the time were the most abundant and best in the world. Persian oil would have been instrumental in the invasion of the Soviet Union.

There were several reasons why the Wehrmacht wasn’t provided with Panthers, Panzerfausts, etc. in 1941. One was that those designs were largely the result of Germany’s experience fighting the Red Army, and its resulting insights into the needs of its military. Another reason was that the Wehrmacht was thrown together quickly from 1933 - 1941. In 1939, for example, the German Army’s tank force consisted almost exclusively of obsolete light tanks which could not penetrate the armor of enemy tanks. They added large numbers of medium tanks to their army between the invasion of Poland and the invasion of France. But even during the invasion of France, roughly 70% Germany’s tank force was still obsolete light tanks.

During the early 1940s Germany could not devote its entire effort to military production, because Hitler wanted to also devote large amounts of resources toward building up Germany’s production capacity. He realized that unless he did so, Germany would fall behind in the air production race against Britain and the U.S., and that its cities would consequently be destroyed. The resources devoted to building up industrial capacity (as opposed to immediate military production) are one of the reasons why the Soviet Union was able, in 1942, to outproduce Germany 3:1 or 4:1 in all major land categories, and nearly 2:1 in military aircraft.

Well over 80% of Germany’s WWII military deaths were experienced at the hands of the Red Army. The decline in strength the German Army experienced from 1941 - '44 was almost entirely due to the loss of men on the Soviet front. Had Germany postponed its war with the Soviet Union until 1945, that decline in strength could have been postponed. By 1945, Germany would have been in a position to match or exceed Soviet military production. That military production would allow the German Army to be fully armed and ready for war; rather than inadequately prepared as it had been in '41. Germany would also have been in position to use its jet technology to establish long-term dominance over the skies of the Soviet battlefields–not just with jet fighters, but soon enough with jet-powered dive bombers as well. That delay would (potentially) have allowed it to develop simpler, better, more easily produced tank and artillery designs.

The main reason why the Germans lacked winter uniforms during the winter of '41 - '42 was because of inadequate supply lines. Due to the limited amount of fuel and military trucks, and the fact that so many supplies were shipped by train for most of the way and horses for the rest, there were sharp limits to the amount of supplies that could be delivered to Germany’s rapidly advancing army. Instead of adequate winter clothing and tents, German soldiers were often sent food, medical supplies, and ammunition. There just wasn’t enough logistics capacity to send them everything they had to have. The conquest of the Persian oilfields would have solved the lack of oil problem. The threefold or fourfold increase in military production capacity from '41 - '44 would have solved the problem of lack of military supply trucks. Not only would the German Army of '44 or '45 been fully armed, it would have been fully supplied.

There was a great deal of anti-British sentiment throughout the Middle East. Middle Easterners were tired of being colonies of Britain and France. Initially, that sentiment would have allowed Hitler to recruit men for war against Britain. Later, those same recruits (and others) could be informed about the Soviet Union’s persecution of all religions (including Islam), and its repression of Muslims in the southern Soviet Union. A large force of Muslim men could invade the Soviet Union from the south, creating an additional front for it to have to deal with; not to mention entire armies that it simply didn’t have to face in WWII. Germany could supply this force with some jets and other modern weapons to improve its morale and military effectiveness.

One key reason all these things did not happen was because the German military had underestimated the size of the Red Army. German military planners had believed the Soviet Army consisted of 200 divisions, total. Against a force like that, the German Army with its 150 divisions (as it had in 1941) would have been more than enough. The German Army was better on a man-for-man basis than was the Soviet. The plan was to quickly conquer the Soviet Union; thereby eliminating the long-term threat of communist invasion, while obtaining the resources and industrial capacity Germany needed to defend its cities from the Anglo-American bombing effort. However, by the fall of 1941, the Soviet Army consisted of a staggering 600 divisions. German military planners had grossly underestimated the sheer size of the Soviet military; and hence the difficulty of conquering the Soviet Union. It is also worth noting that the Soviets were significantly ahead of the Germans in military production capacity in '41 and '42, but that the Germans had caught up by '44. Had German leaders been aware of these things, it’s quite possible they would have postponed the invasion of the Soviet Union until '44 or '45.

@Subotai:

Your post adds even more to the fact that Germany was not ready for war against Russia in 41.

Imo, Germany could possibly win anyway, but we see in retrospect that the odds for Germany winning against Russia was very much lower than (i.e.) 40%. At the very least, Germany should go into total war modus from the time Hitler decided to attack Russia, probably a few months before operation Barbarossa (?), this would at least give Germany better odds of winning.
I think the A-bomb is the only weapon that would help Germany win the war in Europe. But if Germany had invented the A-bomb before the US, the victory would also be certain.

I fully agree that Germany was far from ready for war against the Soviet Union in '41. In the key year of 1942, the Soviets outproduced Germany by a 3:1 or 4:1 margin in the major land weapons categories, and even built nearly twice as many military aircraft as did Germany. By '44 Germany had eliminated that production gap. In many ways, '44 or '45 would have been a much better time for Germany to declare war than '41. In the meantime, Germany could have focused its attention on the Middle East; so as to obtain critical oil supplies for the Wehrmacht. Not to mention the potential to recruit Middle Eastern men into Germany’s North Africa/Middle East force–a force which could then have been used to invade the Soviet Union from Persia.

The main problem with that plan would have been American military production. In 1941, the U.S. produced over 19,000 military aircraft to Germany’s 12,000; even though the U.S. was still technically at peace. Plans had been put in place to expand American aircraft production to a staggering 72,000 planes a year, with half of that production going to Britain to be used against Germany. By 1944 Germany had increased its aircraft production to nearly 41,000 planes a year. The U.S., however, produced over 96,000 planes that year.

Any plan to postpone invasion of the Soviet Union until 1944 or ‘45 would also have had to address the problem of the tens of thousands of American military aircraft that would have been produced in the meantime. Possibly in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack, Germany should have announced dismay at Japan’s actions, and repudiated its alliance with Japan. While those actions would not have changed FDR’s personal goals of the destruction of Germany and a postwar world dominated by the U.S. and the Soviet Union, it would have altered the political climate he faced. His opponents in Congress would have questioned the need to send large numbers of aircraft to Britain, when the more urgent need would have been to wage war against Japan. This would have been a major gamble on Hitler’s part, in the sense that he would have been relying on political factors in Washington to hamper FDR’s ability to wage an undeclared war against Germany. But isolationist sentiment in the U.S. was still strong–despite institutional elites’ efforts to change it–so these acts on Germany’s part could well have reduced the scale of America’s war effort against it.

With (fewer) American-made bombers over Germany’s skies raining death on German cities, Hitler would have had time to gear up for war against the Soviet Union. In addition, grabbing large portions of Britain’s empire would have made it more difficult for the British to obtain the raw materials they required to produce large numbers of aircraft; while providing Germany with access to those same raw materials.

@CWO:

A quote attributed to Eisenhower (I’ve seen several different versions of it, but containing the same elements) states that he considered the following four items to be the key war-winning weapons of the Allies: The bazooka, the jeep, the atom bomb and the C-47 Dakota transport plane.  The jeep and the C-47 might seem surprising choices at first glance – and indeed might not even be considered weapons in the strict sense – but they gave the Allies tremendous battlefield mobility and logistical capacity.  Both these things are critical in modern warfare.  Richard Overy, in his book Why The Allies Won, makes the same point.  He notes that during the war, Germany produced highly advanced next-generation weapon systems like cruise missiles (the V1), ballistic missiles (the V2) and jet fighters (the Me262), but neglected to pay much attention to such unglamorous basics as providing its army with enough trucks to break free of its continued large-scale use of horses.

Another factor Overy mentions is the technical fussiness of the Wehrmacht.  Its weapon specifications and quality-control standards were so exacting that they got in the way of efficient mass production.  The Panther, for example, was an adaptation of (an in some respects an improvement over) the T-34, but it was more complex and time-consuming to build, so the Germans never had enough of them.  The Russians stuck to the philosophy of “make it simple, make it work, and make more of it.”  The British applied the same approach to manufacturing the early versions of the Sten gun, which was intended to be a simple, cheap weapon which could be produced in vast quantities to meet the emergency Britain faced after Dunkirk.  The Sten Mark III, which looked like a piece of scrap iron, was probably the ugliest gun ever used by the British Army, but it got the job done, and the British were sensible enough to realize that the second half of 1940 was not the time to get sentimental about having to give up finely polished walnut rifle stocks and carefully blued gun barrels.

People interested in this general topic might like to read a sci-fi short story by Arthur C. Clarke called “Superiority,” the inspiration of which he said would be clear to anyone familiar with the Second World War.  It describes how a galactic war takes an unexpected turn when one side becomes obsessed with developing fancy new high-tech weapons, while the other side sticks to producing huge numbers of good old-fashioned “primitive” ones.

This is a very solid post. Just to add to what you’ve written, during WWII Canada produced more military trucks than the entire Axis combined. One reason why Germany didn’t do more to mechanize its supply lines was its lack of oil. You can have all the military trucks in the world, but if you can’t fuel them they are useless. A strong effort was made to gear its logistics system around the resources it did have, which in this case meant coal. Supplies would be shipped by coal-powered trains to drop-off points, and then via horses the rest of the way.

During the '20s and early ‘30s, Germany had fallen behind the U.S., Britain, and even the Soviet Union when it came to implementing mass production techniques. That was partly the result of the Versailles Treaty, which helped cause economic stagnation in Germany while the Allies moved forward and advanced their own economies. Hitler sought to reverse that stagnation upon taking power. But building up industrial capacity and mass production expertise takes time. Notably, Germany produced nearly three times as many military aircraft in 1944 as it had in 1942. That increase demonstrates that Germany was at last catching up to the Allies in terms of industrialization and the implementation of mass production techniques. However, the Allies’ sheer size and access to raw materials allowed them to significantly outproduce Germany even in 1944.

Toward the end of the war, efforts were underway to allow Germany to simplify its tank designs to make them more easily mass produced. The goal of the Entwicklung program was to replace all of Germany’s tank designs with simplified yet improved E-series designs. The E-25 was to replace all Mark III and Mark IV designs; the E-50 Standardpanzer was to replace the Panther and Tiger I designs, and the E-75 Standardpanzer was to replace the Tiger II design. The main benefit to this program would have been tanks that were simpler, more mechanically reliable, and more easily produced. Improvements were also made to the tanks’ combat ability. For example, the E-75 had better armor and a more powerful weapon than the Tiger II, as well as better long-range accuracy.

However, the war ended before the Entwicklung series program had resulted in wide-scale production of new tanks.

@MrMalachiCrunch:

I did not compare drunks to potheads, or at least did not intend to.

I would not think Richard Bransons life a waste nor that of Bill Maher.  You are free of course to disagree but would like to know the basis of your reasoning

I’d like to comment specifically on Bill Maher. While I’m not familiar with the majority of his work, I have seen his movie Religulous; as well as some of his television appearances. Nothing I’ve seen of him so far has made me want to see any more.

Intellectual discipline and intellectual rigor begins with the humility required to work hard. The attitude that, “I need to work as hard as possible here, because otherwise I’ll make a mistake or fall prey to intellectual shallowness. Only through this relentless hard work can I maximize my chances of being right.”

From everything I saw, Bill Maher utterly lacks this humility. He strikes me as being smug and condescending to those who disagree with him. He seems to believe that he’ll be right about things not due to effort on his part; but because he’s Bill Maher. I have no respect for the kind of person who thinks this way, or for any conclusions that result from that kind of thought process.

To return to the subject of the film he’d made. He managed to find a rabbi whose views would be considered far from mainstream, both in general American society and within the Jewish community. He interviewed this rabbi as part of his movie, and interrupted him in such a way that the rabbi was prevented from finishing very many of the points he’d tried to make. Maher then stated that the rabbi had attended a “Holocaust denial conference” in Iran. The rabbi agreed he’d attended the conference but denied Maher’s characterization of its nature.

But supposing, for the sake of argument, that Maher’s characterization of the conference was accurate, what could any of that possibly have to do with the theme of the movie? Am I really supposed to consider something like that relevant to whether God does or doesn’t exist? If Maher expects his audience to be persuaded by stuff like that, it’s obvious that he either a) has no respect for his audience, or b) is himself persuaded by this sort of technique. If the latter, we should have no respect for the rigor of his thought process. If the former, he is a mere propagandist who has chosen dishonest tactics to promulgate his views.

The movie did make one good point; which was to provide information about an Egyptian religion that had existed prior to Christianity. Something like that really is relevant to the movie’s theme. But that was an oasis in the midst of a desert; with the overwhelming majority of the movie being like the interview with the rabbi.

Because politics are off-limits on this board, I will not comment specifically on which of Maher’s views I agree with, and which I disagree with. But where his opinions overlap with mine, it is because I’ve reached my conclusions independently from him; and not because I have any respect for his thought process or his opinions.

@Lazarus:

The usual fantasy where every German weapon is assumed to be 100% successful and the Allies stand by and do nothing to counter the threat.
The truth is Allied Jets were in the wings, proximity fused radar guided guns would deal with any missiles. Millions of Panzerfausts were made and they did not stop the T34 or the Sherman. I could go on but I know someone is going to bring up Nazi Flying Saucers and secret Artic Bases!

Probably any scenario for an Axis victory involves at least a small element of fantasy; as the odds were heavily stacked against them.

It is true there were Allied jets in development. Allied jets used centrifugal flow jet engines. That type of jet engine had the advantage of being relatively well-understood, and was a relatively simple design that was comparatively easy to engineer and to build. However, the kind of centrifugal flow jet engines used by the Allies were associated with severe technical limitations; which is why late in the war Allied jet were not better than the best available piston-driven craft.

German engineers avoided the limitations associated with centrifugal flow jet engines by replacing the centrifugal compressor with the axial compressor. This was a radical change; and entailed years of engineering headaches before the problems could be ironed out. But once they were, Germany had a jet engine that was significantly better than anything the Allies had. M2 262s shot down 500 Allied aircraft to only 100 losses (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_262 ); an exchange ratio which demonstrates the Germans had obtained a commanding qualitative advantage. From the same article:

Willy Messerschmitt regarded the Me 262 as only an interim type when it went into production.

Swept wings had been proposed as early as 1935 by Adolf Busemann, and Messerschmitt had researched the topic from 1940. In April 1941, he proposed fitting a 35° swept wing (Pfeilflügel II, literally “arrow wing II”) to the Me 262,[30] the same wing sweep angle that would later be used on both the American F-86 Sabre and Soviet MiG-15 fighter jets. Though this was not implemented, he continued with the projected HG II and HG III (Hochgeschwindigkeit, “high speed”) derivatives in 1944, which were designed with a 35° and 45° wing sweep, respectively.[31]

Interest in high-speed flight, which led him to initiate work on swept wings starting in 1940, is evident from the advanced developments Messerschmitt had on his drawing board in 1944. While the Me 262 HG I actually flight tested in 1944 had only small changes compared to combat aircraft, most notably a low-profile canopy (tried as the Rennkabine (literally “racing cabin”) on the Me 262 V9 prototype for a short time) to reduce drag, the HG II and HG III designs were far more radical. The projected HG II combined the low-drag canopy with a 35° wing sweep and a butterfly tail. The HG III had a conventional tail, but a 45° wing sweep and turbines embedded in the wing roots.[32]

Given the above plans, and the aerodynamics research being conducted at the Göttingen laboratory, it is likely the Luftwaffe would have maintained or increased its qualitative advantage for the next several years. As for the Panzerfaust–the early versions had a disappointing range of only 30 m. However, the widely-produced Panzerfaust 60 had a range of 60 meters. Toward the end of the war, Germany began producing the Panzerfaust 100 (range of 100 m). Near the end of the war, it deployed limited numbers of the Panzerfaust 150; and was in the process of developing the Panzerfaust 250. Each version of the Panzerfaust–from the Panzerfaust 30 on–could penetrate 200 mm of enemy armor; with later versions having improved armor penetration.

In Normandy, 6% of British tank losses were because of Panzerfausts. The proportion later rose to 34%; due partially to the lack of other German anti-tank measures, and partially to the improvement of the Panzerfaust.

Edit: the purpose of the Panzerfaust wouldn’t necessarily have been to destroy the enemy tank force outright. Rather, widespread deployment of the Panzerfaust would have made it far more difficult for enemy tanks (unprotected by infantry) to obtain breakthroughs or offensive advances against German infantry. The fact that German infantry would have been able to hold their own against enemy tanks would also have had the added benefit of freeing up other German forces for other purposes (as opposed to being confined to anti-tank duties). The Panzerfaust was not a miracle weapon; but it did have the potential to exert significant influence on the outcome of a land war given a rough degree of parity.

@MrMalachiCrunch:

While it’s true many specific technologies have accelerated development during war as well as needs for systems not thought of to counter threats not realized.  That being said, the foundations of the russian t-34 tank occured pre-war and the chassis design was from an american christie I believe.

Early jet design and theory started in the 20s and 30s.  The first jet plane to fly was the German Heinkel He 178, which first flew on August 27, 1939.  So, before the war started Germany was already ahead in jet planes and would probably be fielding something like the 262 in a short period of time war or no war.

British Radar was developed before the war and lots and lots of base technologies were being discovered that would easily be militarised.

The German military science advantage accelerated during the period 1933-1939 as Hitler was planning for war and the west was in Pacifist mode.  When the war began, Hitler slowed down weapons research as he as sure it would be won in 18 months.  The west now awake did the opposite.  So if anything, it was the start of the war that signaled the closing in military science gap.  It was only toward the end of the war that massive research into new weapons occured, but at the cost of mass production.

The worlds first never gases were German Tabun (1936), Sarin (1938) and developed before the war.  Synthetic fuel was also a german innovation and occured before the war in anticipation of the war…so yeah, waiting 6 more years for industrial policy and science to pay off would have won the war for the Germans I think.

Excellent points! Just to add to what you’ve written–Germany and the Axis had a significant disadvantage in terms of available manpower, industrial capacity, and access to raw materials. To make up for these things, Hitler felt he had to win the war quickly, or not at all. That was true in 1940; when he sought to avoid a long, drawn-out war with France. It was also true in 1941, when he hoped to quickly beat the Soviet Union.

The Allied plan for victory, on the other hand, was as follows:

1. Make false promises to Poland. The idea was to convince the Polish military dictatorship that, if Germany attacked Poland, France would launch a full-scale invasion of Germany. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_betrayal#Phoney_War

According to the Franco-Polish military convention, the French Army was to start preparations for the major offensive three days after the mobilisation started. . . . On the 15th day of the mobilisation (that is on September 16), the French Army was to start a full scale assault on Germany.

On paper, the combined French-Polish force was significantly stronger than its German counterpart; causing Polish military planners to conclude that, together with its British and French allies, Poland could win such a war.

2. Because the Polish leaders believed the French promises, they deliberately provoked a war with Germany. (From pages 566 - 567 of Adolf Hitler by John Toland. Toland’s book was praised by the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Library Journal, etc.)

That noon Hitler issued the second order for invasion [of Poland], driven to this extremity (according to A. I. Berndt, his liaison man with DNB) by a gross lie. Berndt thought the reported number of German nationals killed by the Poles too small and simply added a nought. At first Hitler refused to believe such a large figure but, when Berndt replied that it may have been somewhat exaggerated but something monstrous must have happened to give rise to such stories, Hitler shouted, “They’ll pay for this! Now no one will stop me from teaching these fellows a lesson they’ll never forget! I will not have my Germans slaughtered like cattle!” At this point the Fuhrer went to the phone and, in Berndt’s presence, ordered Keitel to issue “Directive No 1 for the Conduct of the War.”

From pages 567-568:

Lipski never asked to see Hitler’s sixteen point proposal . . . He was following his orders “not to enter into any concrete negotiations.” The Poles were apparently so confident they could whip the Germans (with help from their allies) that they were not interested in discussing Hitler’s offer. Nor were England and France extending themselves to persuade the Poles to negotiate.

3. After the Polish government had been misled by promises of a full-scale French offensive against Germany, France would instead fight an almost purely defensive war against Germany. The thought was that trenches and fixed defenses would be roughly as effective in WWII as they had been in WWI. In the spring of 1940, the Allied armies arrayed in the west were, at least on paper, stronger than their German counterparts. The Allies had more men, and more and better tanks.

4. The British and French empires had more industrial capacity and access to raw materials than did Germany. Plus the British and French had the option of purchasing large quantities of weapons from the United States. The Allies had the option of putting that industrial capacity to use on the ground (tanks and artillery) or in the air (a bombing campaign).

5. The British imposed a food blockade on Germany during WWII, just as they had in WWI. Part of the plan for victory was to starve the Germans into submission, as had been done in the last war.

6. The British and the French were strongly influenced by the theories of Douhet. Douhet was a strong proponent of strategic bombing. Like most other prewar planners, he significantly overestimated the damage a strategic bombing campaign could do to civilian populations.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_bombing#Period_between_the_world_wars

Douhet’s theories were successfully put into action in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) where RAF bombers used conventional bombs, gas bombs, and strafed civilian populations identified as engaging in guerrilla uprisings. Arthur Harris, a young RAF squadron commander (later nicknamed “Bomber”), reported after a mission in 1924, “The Arab and Kurd now know what real bombing means, in casualties and damage. They know that within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured.”

Arthur Harris would later play a leading role in employing British bombers in the systematic destruction of the German population; and on a much larger scale than the bombing missions conducted against Arab and Kurdish villages during the '20s. It was felt that the starvation caused by the Allied food blockade, in combination with the death and destruction of the bombing attacks against German cities, would cause the German morale to collapse; and the German population to lose its will to fight.

Even after the fall of France; the basic Allied strategy of starvation of the people within German-held territory, plus bombing of German cities, proved very difficult to counter. It was the sort of strategy destined to create a long, grinding war well-suited to take advantage of the massive Anglo-American advantage in industrial strength. One of Hitler’s hopes in invading the Soviet Union was to gain access to the industrial capacity, manpower, and access to raw materials he needed to even the odds in this war waged against civilians. However, he would have been better served waiting until 1945 to invade the Soviet Union; even despite the fact that he would have been at a significant disadvantage to the British in the meantime. Germany in 1941 - ‘42 simply lacked the industrial capacity it needed to match the Soviets’ production of land or even air weapons.

@allboxcars:

OK so aside from genocide, to get back to the thread topic: you chose waiting until 1945 as the option that would’ve helped Germany more in WW2?

#603

Yes. Early in his administration, Hitler had used various government policies to dramatically improve conditions for the German working class, while simultaneously increasing employment. But after the working class had reached a reasonable standard of living, Hitler arranged things such that additional economic gains went largely into corporate profits. He then placed sharp restrictions on the amount of those profits that could be paid out as dividends. Lacking anything else to do with all those profits, German firms invested them in upgrading their production facilities and equipment. This was exactly the result Hitler had intended when enacting these measures.

However, those efforts did not fully pay off until 1944. In 1942, Germany produced 15,000 military aircraft; as compared to 41,000 in 1944. Granted, Allied nations also experienced dramatic gains in their military aircraft production during that time span. But the gain in German production was especially dramatic.

It is also worth noting that by 1944, the Germans had developed or were in the process of developing potentially war-changing technologies; including the following:

• Jets: obtained a 4:1 kill ratio against enemy aircraft.

• Wasserfall: a guided surface-to-air missile capable of helping defend Germany’s skies

• Type XXI U-boat (in development in '44): a very quiet, stealthy, highly advanced submarine difficult to track or kill. It had advanced electronics, allowing it to hunt and kill enemy ships without being detected. It used electrically powered torpedoes that did not leave telltale bubble trails.

• Panzerfaust: a shoulder-launched rocket used to destroy enemy tanks. Easily produced and effective.

• Panther tanks: significantly better than their Allied counterparts.

If in 1945 Germany had gone to war with a mostly jet air force, with a tank force consisting largely of Panthers, with infantry equipped with Panzerfausts and other advanced weapons, and with production capacity at or above the level it had historically obtained in '44, it would have been very difficult to stop.

Between 1933 (upon taking power) and 1939 (going to war), Hitler’s government executed a few hundred people in non-judicial proceedings. Those executions occurred in 1934, at a time when the German Army consisted of rough,y 100,000 soldiers, and the (armed) SA had 500,000 members. The SA in general, and its head in particular, had become disillusioned with the moderate nature of Hitler’s then-government, and there was concern that the SA would rebel. The non-judicial executions were performed because Hitler believed an SA rebellion was imminent; and because he wanted to forestall the possibility of a civil war between the Army and the SA.

In contrast, Stalin murdered tens of millions of innocent people before the Soviet Union went to war. While millions of the victims were Ukrainians (including 3 million Ukrainian children), millions of others were simply people who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time; and were murdered to instill terror in the remainder of the population. From http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MEGA.HTM

I handled hundreds of signals to all parts of the Soviet Union which were couched in the following form:
“To N.K.V.D., Frunze. You are charged with the task of exterminating 10,000 enemies of the people. Report results by signal.–Yezhov.”

And in due course the reply would come back:

“In reply to yours of such-and-such date, the following enemies of the Soviet people have been shot.”

----Former Soviet Spy-Chief Vladimir Petrov

Assigning murder quotas to local authorities resulted in the deaths of people who thought differently or who seemed different than normal, people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and (on occasion) people who really were enemies of the Soviet communist government. This kind of terror killing appears unique to the Soviet Union, at least on that kind of scale. There is simply no comparison between mass murder on that scale and anything that occurred in Nazi Germany before the war began.

During the war, the British and American governments imposed a food blockade on Germany; which in turn caused the starvation of millions of innocent people. Some people have used the deaths that occurred during that period to draw comparisons between the Nazi and the Soviet regimes. However, the food situation during the war was severe enough that the German government could not possibly feed everyone; so the only question was which people the Nazis would choose to starve.

To fairly compare the Nazi and Soviet governments, one must look at what the Nazis did or attempted to do before the food blockade was imposed; as well as the actions they planned to take after Germany’s food crisis had been resolved. In 1938, Hitler had suggested relocating Germany’s Jewish population to a British or French colony. He suggested French Madagascar, but made it clear he didn’t care where the Jews were shipped as long as it was someplace far from Germany. Both the British and French leaders rebuffed this suggestion.

During the war, German bureaucrats devised plans to relocate between 30 - 50 million Poles eastward into conquered Soviet territory. The lands vacated by these displaced Poles would be occupied by Germans. It was clear that if Germany and its conquered territories were still being starved by the food blockade, the deaths of large numbers of dislocated Poles along the way would be an acceptable way of reducing the number of mouths that needed to be fed. But there was not (so far as I am aware) any plan to starve or otherwise murder those Poles if the food blockade had been lifted.

There is always the chance that the Nazis would have chosen to murder millions of innocent people even in the absence of a food crisis. However, I have not been able to uncover any actual evidence that they had planned to do so. Conversely, the Soviet government murdered tens of millions of its own citizens at a time when no food blockade had been imposed, and when it was actually exporting millions of tons of grain to fund Stalin’s industrialization program. Absent any evidence that the Nazis would have engaged in Soviet-style mass murder (except when forced to do so by a food crisis), there is no basis for concluding that the moral failings of the Nazi regime were comparable to the pure evil of the Soviet regime.

@221B:

Can we get some numbers on the food shortages in the sphere of influence of Nazi Germany? I’ve read about the food shortages in WW1 but never for WW2.

Below are some quotes from The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. Tooze’s book has been praised by The Times (London), The Boston Globe, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, etc. From p. 168:

One way or another, virtually everyone alive in Germany in the 1930s had an acute, personal experience of prolonged and insatiable hunger. [Due to the Anglo-French food blockade of WWI and the hunger during the Versailles Treaty.]

From page 419:

The rations set for the German population at the outbreak of the war had been relatively generous. But they could be sustained in 1940-41 only by making severe inroads into the large stocks of grain accumulated since 1936. . . . The shortfall in the European harvest of 1940-41 confirmed Herbert Backe’s worst fears. Unless Germany could find additional sources for millions of tons of grain, it would soon need to make serious cuts to food rations . . . And the situation in the urban centers of the occupied territories was, of course, far worse than in Germany. By 1941 there were already signs of mounting discontent due to the inadequate food supply. In Belgium and France, the official food ration allocated to ‘normal consumers’ of as little as 1,300 calories per day, was an open invitation to the black market. Daily allocations in Norway and the Czech protectorate hovered around 1,600 calories.

From page 477:

The second programme, which openly envisioned the killing of millions of people within the first twelve months of the German occupation, was agreed between the Wehrmacht, all the key civilian Ministries and the Nazi political leadership as early as the spring of 1941. Nor can the so-called ‘Hunger Plan’ be described as secret. It was referred to in official instructions issued to thousands of subordinates. And, perhaps most importantly, no effort was made to hide the wider rationale of the individual acts of brutality that the programme required. On the contrary, all German soldiers and occupation administrators were enjoined to understand and to commit themselves to its strategic logic. This genocidal plan commanded such wide-ranging support because it concerned a practical issue, the importance of which, following Germany’s experience in World War I, was obvious to all: the need to secure the food supply of the German population, if necessary at the expense of the population of the Soviet Union.

As we have discussed, the ‘bread basket of the Ukraine’ played a key role in all the various military-economic assessments of the Barbarossa campaign prepared over the winter of 1940-41. For Hitler it was the key priority, to be achieved prior to any other military consideration, the importance of which was only reinforced by the alarming decline in German grain stocks. By December 1940 the entire military and political leadership of the Third Reich was convinced that this was the last year in which they could approach the food question with any confidence. Nor was this simply a German problem. All of the Western European territories which had fallen under German domination in 1940 had substantial net grain deficits.

From page 539:

Backe had not been bluffing in 1941. In light of the extension of the war into the indefinite future, Germany was facing a severe food problem. The German grain harvest of 1940 and 1941 had been well below average and imports from the occupied territories had not made up the difference. For lack of feed the swine herd had been reduced by 25 per cent since the start of the war, triggering a cut in meat rations as of June 1941. Bread rations had only been sustained by making severe inroads into grain stocks. By the end of 1941 these were nearing exhaustion. When the order to ship large numbers of Eastern workers to Germany for work was first given by Goering in November 1941, Backe protested vigorously. The 400,000 Soviet prisoners of war already in Germany were more than he could provide for. Goering had spoken casually of feeding the Eastern workers on cats and horse-meat. Backe had consulted the statistics and reported glumly that there were not enough cats to provide a ration for the Eastern workers and horse-meat was already being used to supplement the rations of the German population. If the Russians were to be given meat, they would have to be supplied at the expense of the German population.

From page 541:

Backe was in an impossible position. The Fuehrer had demanded more workers. Gauleiter Sauckel was dedicated to delivering them. Hitler and Sauckel now demanded that the workers be fed, which was clearly a necessity if they were to be productive. And yet, given the level of grain stocks, Backe was unable to meet this demand. What was called for was a reduction in consumption, not additional provisions for millions of new workers. The seriousness of the situation became apparent to the wider public in the spring of 1942 when the Food Ministry announced cuts to the food rations of the German population. Given the regime’s mortal fear of damaging morale, the ration cuts of April 1942 are incontrovertible evidence that the food crisis was real. Lowering the rations was a political step of the first order, which Backe would never have suggested if the situation had not absolutely required it. The Wehrmacht had prepared the way in 1942, by decreeing a ration cut for the fighting troops. When the reduction in the civilian ration was announced it produced a response which justified every anxiety on the part of the Nazi leadership. . . . [The morale effect of the cut] was, reported the SD’s informants, ‘devastating’ like ‘virtually no other event during the war.’ Studies by nutritional experts added to the leadership’s concerns.

From page 549:

The overriding need to improve the food situation actually created a perverse functional connection between the extermination of the Jewish population of the General Government [of occupied Poland] and the improvement in food rations that was necessary to sustain the labor force in the mines and factories of the Reich. . . . . In the summer of 1942 it was the concerted extermination of Polish Jewry that provided the most immediate and fail-safe means of freeing up food for delivery to Germany.

Elsewhere, Tooze describe near-starvation conditions among the people of occupied Poland. He also described Germany’s inability to prevent starvation among the millions of Soviet POWs in German factories, despite the clear necessity of feeding Germany’s factory workers. The food situation in Germany and German-held territories was abysmal during WWII. Allied propagandists were able to persuade the general public that the suffering, starvation, and death which occurred in Nazi Germany were due solely to Hitler’s cruelty and racism; as opposed to being natural, inevitable consequences of the Anglo-American food blockade and the Soviets’ scorched earth policy.

Every major area under German occupation was a food deficit area. That included Germany proper, France, the Netherlands, Poland, etc. Soviet territories were also food deficit areas, with the Ukraine being the sole exception. But the food surplus from the Ukraine was not nearly enough to offset the food deficits that existed everywhere else in German-occupied territory. Because of the Anglo-American food blockade, Hitler did not have enough food to feed the people within his borders. Because Hitler lacked the food with which to feed everyone, he enacted the Holocaust (fewer mouths to feed), and assigned unskilled Slavic laborers the second-lowest priority for food rations. Because there wasn’t enough food to feed everyone, large numbers of people within German-held territory were going to suffer, starve, and die no matter how Hitler or some other leader had chosen to allocate Germany’s food. Had Hitler chosen to forego the Holocaust or the starvation of the Slavs in the eastern territories, some other group of people would have had to have been starved or otherwise killed instead to balance out the food equation.

I also didn’t choose the “assassinate Hitler in 1934” option. No major western democracy had an anti-Soviet foreign policy until 1948. In 1919, Poland and the Soviet Union found themselves at war. Neither Britain nor France sent soldiers to help. Britain even refused to sell Poland weapons, but sold them to the Soviets instead. France provided Poland with military advisors, but little help beyond that. When Poland was on the verge of being annexed by the Soviet Union, Britain and France advised the Polish government to negotiate the best surrender terms they could. Instead, the Polish won an unexpected victory outside Warsaw; a victory which paved the way for Polish freedom from Soviet oppression for the next twenty years.

By the 1930s the major Western democracies had, if anything, become even more pro-Soviet. In 1935, France and Czechoslovakia signed defensive alliances with the Soviet Union. For the previous several centuries, France’s foreign policy had been emphatically and strongly anti-German. The plan–at least in the mid-‘30s–was for Britain and France to join the Soviet Union in ganging up on and conquering Germany. That plan failed not because of any lack of willingness on the Western democracies’ part, but because Stalin regarded both Germany and Western democracies as equally enemies. He wanted a long, bloody war between Germany and the Western democracies–a war which would bleed both sides white, without in any way involving the Soviet Union. Then after both sides had been sufficiently weakened, the Red Army would move westward into Europe to pick up the pieces.

Just as the Western democracies had been perfectly willing to abandon Poland to its fate back in 1920, so too they would have done nothing to counter any Soviet expansion into Eastern or Central Europe. Given the Western democracies’ nearly complete lack of interest in countering Soviet expansionism, the only viable counterweight to the Soviet Union would have been a militarized Germany. A militarized Germany implied defiance of the Versailles Treaty, which would have implied at least a certain lack of political moderation.

In the spring of 1941, the German Army consisted of 150 divisions; 100 of which were used to invade the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941, Soviet recruitment efforts had increased the size of the Red Army to 600 divisions. Dealing with a threat like that would have (and did) require a high degree of militarization; which in turn would be interpreted as a threat by both the British and French governments.

Given the cards Hitler was dealt (a lack of Western interest in opposing Soviet expansionism, and strong Western opposition to German militarization), he probably did as good or better job of opposing the Soviet threat than some other German leader would have done. Assassinating Hitler probably wouldn’t have let Germany escape from the terror and brutality of a Soviet occupation.

Instead, the option I chose was to wait to invade the Soviet Union until 1945. However, from 1940 on, Germany would have faced massive numbers of British and American aircraft. In order to protect its cities from firestorms, Germany would have needed to focus largely on fighter production; while also employing jet aircraft and Wasserfall weapons as early and in as wide a scale as possible. Possibly, such efforts could have provided at least some protection to Germany’s cities and its people from the massive Allied advantage in aircraft production. Then in 1945–after Germany had been fully industrialized–it would have had a better chance of taking on the Red Army.

Military aircraft production represents a (somewhat) reasonable proxy for overall military production. In 1940, military aircraft production was as follows:

UK: 15,000
Germany: 11,000
USSR: 11,000
US: 6,000
Japan: 5,000

A large portion of the American aircraft production was being sent to Britain, through lend-lease and other means. Moreover, British and American leaders had made plans to expand American military aircraft production to the staggering total of 72,000 planes per year, with half of that production going to Britain. Those plans placed significant intermediate-term pressure on Germany; and created a strong incentive for it to increase its access to manpower, raw materials, and industrial capacity to counter the Anglo-American threat to German cities and the German population. Hitler hoped to conquer the Soviet Union before the Anglo-American air threat had really kicked in. At that point, he’d use the resources gained from that conquest to even the odds in the air war.

In 1941, the US increased its aircraft production to 19,000 planes, even though it was still technically at peace until December of that year. By 1943, it had increased military aircraft production to 86,000 per year; surpassing the goal American and British leaders had set back in 1940. If that American military aircraft production could have been kept neutral (as opposed to being sent to the British and Soviets under Lend-Lease), it would have radically altered the strategic equation.

In 1942, military aircraft production was as follows:

US: 48,000
USSR: 25,000
UK: 24,000
Germany: 15,000
Japan: 9,000

Those numbers would seem to spell doom for the Axis, even if American military aircraft production could have somehow been removed from the equation. However, if American industrial capacity had remained neutral (as opposed to being sent to the Allies), Hitler would have had the option of waiting to invade the Soviet Union. That would have allowed Germany to consolidate its position in Central and Eastern Europe, while building up its industrial capacity. By 1944, increases in military productive capacity had led to the following aircraft production:

US: 96,000
Germany: 40,000
USSR: 40,000
UK: 26,000
Japan: 17,000

It’s also worth noting that in 1942, Germany produced 4,000 tanks (excluding light tanks) to the Soviets’ 15,000 tanks (excluding light tanks). That difference was exacerbated by the fact that over 12,000 of those Soviet tanks were T-34s; which were significantly better than any widely produced German model of that year. In 1944, however, Germany produced 17,000 tanks (excluding light tanks), to the Soviets’ 21,000 (excluding light tanks). 5,000 German tanks were Panthers or Tigers; which were qualitatively superior to most Soviet tanks.

For the Axis to have had a realistic chance of victory, the following would have needed to occur:

• The U.S. would have needed to stay neutral.

• American military production would have needed to remain neutral (no Lend-Lease)

• Hitler would have needed to wait until 1944 to invade the Soviet Union.

• Germany would have had to obtained a 1944 military production level at or near historical levels without prior access to Soviet POW manpower or resources obtained from conquests of Soviet territory

• The German military would have needed 12 million people (historic 1944 level) rather than 8 million people (historic 1941 level).

@MrMalachiCrunch:

Kurt hit it right on.  I would add Hitler hated slavs in general but actually was rather fond of the Brits.  Hitler had hoped to commit genocide on the slavs in the USSR and resettle the land with brits and french whom were aryan enough for his likes.  He didn’t want to crush the brits, merely have them lay down their arms.

I am no bleeding heart liberal by any stretch, but nazi germany was a right wing capitalist utopia but treated german labour much better than the brits and americans and others treated their own respective labour force.  The nazi regime would have no problem living with an uber-right wing capitalist US and facist puppet governments in occupied aryanish europe.

Communism was supposed to take hold in Germany NOT russia.  russia was pretty much for the most part a backwards peasant economy in 1917.  Hardly a target for a workers paradise as was industrial germany.

This was a nice post; and I agree with over 90% of it. I’d like to expand on the point you raised about how German labor was treated. Hitler’s emergence into power was associated with an economic boom for Germany due to several factors; one of which was that Hitler’s regime managed to solve the foreign currency crisis inherited from the previous regime. In the '20s, Germany had borrowed large sums from the United States in order to make reparations payments to Britain and France. That borrowing reduced the short-term economic pressure on Germany, and there were times in the '20s when Germany was able to perform a passable job of feeding its own people. But Germany’s debt to the U.S. kept piling up due to all the reparations payments it had to make. Then nations such as Britain, France, and the United States closed themselves to German exports. The closing of those markets deprived Germany of the foreign currency it needed to make its debt payments, as well as to purchase imported food and raw materials for its factories. That foreign currency crisis caused economic collapse in Germany, thereby paving the way for Hitler to gain power. Upon assuming power, Hitler decided that Germany would repay its debt to nations which accepted German imports, while defaulting on debt to nations which refused German imports. In particular, he defaulted on Germany’s massive debt to the United States.

Short-term measures such as that one were the first step toward Germany’s climb out of the economic misery of the late '20s and early '30s. Initially, the lion’s share of those gains went to the German working class. Hitler also implemented improved workplace safety measures, and improved clean air and clean water standards. Several years into Germany’s economic program, the German working class had reached what would widely be considered a reasonable standard of living. At this point, Hitler diverted a very large share of additional German economic growth into corporate profits. He then placed stringent restrictions on the amount of those profits that could be paid out in the form of dividends. Because German companies didn’t have anything else to do with all that money coming in, they invested it in upgrading their manufacturing facilities. That effort created a long-term increase in German manufacturing capacity–an increase which reached its zenith in 1944.

As far as Hitler’s foreign policy–after Poland fell, he offered a peace treaty to Britain and France. Both nations turned him down. After France fell, he explored a peace treaty with Britain. The British refused. The British imposed a food blockade on Germany in WWII; just as they had in WWI. Hitler responded to Germany’s food crisis by choosing to provide an adequate diet for the Germans, and by starving the Jews outright. The fate of the people in most occupied territories was between these two extremes; with local populations having to hope for good harvests to avoid starvation. These problems were created by the fact that Germany itself was a food deficit nation, as were France, Poland, and most conquered Soviet territories (except the Ukraine). However, the Ukraine’s food surplus was not nearly enough to offset the food deficit of the other territories Hitler controlled.

During the war, German bureaucrats were in the process of making plans to relocate between 30 - 50 million Polish people eastward; with the vacated areas resettled by Germans. If Germany as as whole was still in a state of food crisis, then the death of a portion of these people along the way would have been seen as an acceptable way to have fewer mouths to feed. Conversely, if the food blockade had been ended, there is not (so far as I know) any indication that these resettled people would have been starved to death. Nor am I aware of any plans to impose genocide against the people of the Soviet Union in the postwar era.

While Hitler’s attitudes about ethnicity clearly played a role in how he allocated starvation, it is important to remember that the source of the starvation was the Anglo-American food blockade imposed on Germany. Stalin’s scorched earth policy contributed to the problem by causing the removal or destruction of local food stores, farming equipment, and other implements necessary for the creation and distribution of food.

Neither Germany nor Japan had a realistic chance of invading the U.S. As has been pointed out, the D-Day invasion required almost complete local naval supremacy, a massive buildup, and a relatively narrow English Channel to cross. For either Germany or Japan to ship a large-scale invasion force across the Atlantic or the Pacific does not seem feasible to me. The best possibility that I can see along these lines would be for Japan to use an island hopping campaign to gradually capture the Aleutian islands, one by one, and so to eventually reach Alaska. But there would have been a number of inherent problems with that plan; most notably including the comparative weakness of the Japanese Army relative to the American Army, the fact that Japan’s army was tied down elsewhere (especially in China), the adverse weather conditions that the Japanese Army and Navy would encounter during the Aleutian island hopping campaign and on the Alaskan mainland, etc.

It is also worth noting that neither Germany nor Japan had any plans to conquer the U.S. (The idea that Germany wanted world domination represented part of FDR’s pre-war and wartime propaganda effort, and bears no relation to reality.) Nazism was in large part a response to WWI and the Versailles Treaty. During WWI, Britain and France had imposed a food blockade against Germany; resulting in the starvation of about 750,000 people. After the war was over, Britain continued the food blockade into 1919 to force Germany to sign the Versailles Treaty. After that treaty was signed, a large portion of German foreign currency was used on reparations payments to Britain and France; which during hard economic times meant there was not enough foreign currency left over to buy imported food with which to feed the German people. As a result of this widespread hunger within Germany both during and after the war, Hitler wanted to conquer enough lebensraum to ensure that Germany could adequately feed its people out of its own resources.

More generally, Hitler wanted to ensure Germany was too strong to ever again experience a Versailles Treaty. The long-range goal of Nazi foreign policy was the conquest of the Soviet Union; or at least that portion of the Soviet Union west of the Ural mountains. That conquest would secure Germany against any future Allied food blockades, would prevent it from being defeated in any European land war (as it had been in WWI), and would give it the industrial capacity and access to raw materials necessary to hold its own in an air war against Britain or any other belligerent. It would also wipe out communism, at least assuming (as Hitler evidently hoped) that the communist government of the Soviet Union collapsed after losing everything west of the Urals.

@Imperious:

But short of that I think they could have won if Japan even made the gesture of attacking Russia.

The forces in the ‘far east’ didn’t cause Hitler to lose, Hitlers decision to attack Stalingrad and how he did it destroyed his chances in 1942.

In 1941 The winter caused Hitler to lose because he didn’t prepare for it and underestimated the Soviet army. Those forces were just icing on the cake used for the foiled counteroffensive, AFTER the Germans failed to take Moscow. The battles just before Moscow at Vyzma are the ones that cost the Germans too much time, so they didn’t get to Moscow in force after fighting 5 Soviet Armies.

“Contrary to German expectations, the encircled Soviet forces did not surrender easily. Instead, the fighting was fierce and desperate, and the Wehrmacht had to employ 28 divisions to eliminate the surrounded Soviet armies, using forces that were needed to support the offensive towards Moscow. The remnants of the Soviet Western and Reserve Fronts were able to retreat and consolidate their lines around Mozhaisk.[22]  Moreover, the surrounded Soviet forces were not completely destroyed, as some of the encircled troops escaped in groups ranging in size from platoons to full rifle divisions.[23]  Soviet resistance near Vyazma also provided time for the Soviet high command to quickly bring some reinforcements to the four armies defending the Moscow direction (namely, the 5th, 16th, 43rd and 49th), and to transport three rifle and two tank divisions from the Far East.”

I hardly think “three rifle and two tank divisions from the Far East” were the cause of the German failure. The weather and Hitlers unprepared logistics past a campaign of over 4 month duration were catastrophic.

If Japan attacked Russia it would have done nothing except expose yet another front to them and cause a 3 front war for Japan. The balance of the Soviet forces on the border were more than enough to wipe out the japanese Kwangtung army as they did in 1939.

Japan would gain nothing but another defeat, and tie up units that were used after Dec 41 in a protracted battle. Declaring war and doing nothing was not an option either. Stalin would go on the defensive if he was engaged with Germany. If Japan didn’t get her feet wet, the ploy would fail and 5 divisions still head toward Moscow. If they committed, it would have hastened japanese defeat in Asia. Stalin had more than enough forces for both once Moscow was protected.

You are obviously very familiar with this period of history. I think that the forces from the east to which the earlier poster was referring may have been the 100 divisions the Soviets shipped west during the winter of '41 - '42. After the Japanese attacked Britain and the U.S., Stalin knew they would have little attention to spare for a war against the Soviets.

I agree, however, that Stalin was probably guilty of being overly cautious on his eastern front, and that he could have safely sent large numbers of divisions westward against Germany regardless of what Japan did.