Ways Germany could have won WWII

[Jaakko]

Without resorting to hindsight, the only way I can think of is change of ideology. Nazism was so virulent in creating enemies that it had no hope of succeeding in conquest.
Many of the peoples of the western SU did indeed greet the Germans as liberators (as one would expect from people oppressed by Stalin), and could have provided huge amounts of manpower. That way a German Empire of sorts could have been created in the east, but it probably would have fragmented soon after the war.

Of course, without Nazism the political development of the 30s would have been altogether different, so this all just idle speculation.

Edit: to further support my speculation, some people in the German military actually thought they were going on a new Northern Crusade to rid the world of the horrors of communism. Of course, any higher-ups who thought that were clearly in denial of the truth, but all the same it seems that such a stance would have been politically viable for a conqueror.

[mrmitchell]

Originally posted by Lord Merciless
Heisenberg either intentionally sabotaged his own research, or he had never figured out that fission bomb would have worked.

[Arrogant Expert]
If you've ever seen the History Channel's miniseries "Science and the Swastika", and watched the last episode "The Good German", you will know that Heisenberg very grossly overestimated the amount of uranium required for such a bomb and thus basically then kept the project at a level where he didn't have to do any work but wasn't fired.
[/Arrogant Expert]

[Sandman]

This is why I think Germany's solution would have been high altitude jet bombers. They actually had these in use in late '44 They could have had them years earlier if Hitler had made it a priority.

Again:

High altitude = inaccurate
Jet bombers = what makes way for the research?

[The Andy-Man]

[quote[The AndyMan, On the USSR '43 - '45, the USSR had by then come a very long way and had superiority over the Germans in numbers of troops and tanks. As Kursk proved, the Germans could no longer conduct a major offensive. But in mobile warfare, the advantage is to the party on the offensive.[/quote]

You answer alot of your own questions there, think how much better equipped the USSR economy would have been if it hadn't had the devestation of loosing %50 of its industrial capacity for 2yrs...

As to nuking Russia, I think this all changed in '49 when the Russians got bomb as well. They still did not attack

by 1949 it was really to late for them to attack, 45-47 was their window of opertunity, and even after they had the bomb there was no way they could have nuked the USA with it, whilst the US had the air bases to thouroughly nuke homeland russia.

As to Iran, you a probably right. The USSR probably did not want a war with the UK. But this is also consistent with not wanting a war with Germany which at that time had the means of defeating the USSR which the UK did not. If the USSR was avoiding war with the UK, it surely was avoiding war with Germany as well.

War with a Democracy can be avoided, war with Hitler was inevitable, and considering HItler has about 20yrs of Russia bashing under his belt, I don't think Stalin was ready to beleive that war with Germany was avoiodable, he just wasn't prepared or expecting the attack when it happened.

[Ned]

Sandman, What were the state of German bombsights, if you know. American bombsights were fairly good.

As to displaced R&D, I don't think that would have been necessary at all. Germany would have saved a lot of money simply by not invading the USSR.

[Jaakko]

Andyman, Stalin acted very incoherently when the Germans attacked, refusing for a long time to believe that Hitler could have done such a thing. He had apparently convinced himself that he would be the one to attack when the time was right.
No doubt fueled by his paranoid delusions at the time, even reading Mein Kampf didn't change his mind.

[The Andy-Man]

Andyman, Stalin acted very incoherently when the Germans attacked, refusing for a long time to believe that Hitler could have done such a thing. He had apparently convinced himself that he would be the one to attack when the time was right.

This is sdort of what I have been trying to say, Stalin thought he would be the agressor, which is why a war with the USSR was inevitable. Though I never new he refused to beleive it had happened...

[Jaakko]

Yah, and to clarify my post, Stalin read Mein Kampf at some point in the thirties, not when attacked (as my post seemed to suggest), so he fully knew about Hitler's plans at the start of the war.

[Serb]

Originally posted by GePap

Take Serbs' claim that by 1944, without a war, the SU would still have had SU-152's, IS-2's and so forth: why? These weapon systems were designed during the war, due to how the war was going. Same for German {Panthers, or jets, or American and British weapons for that matter. Once you decide to change one event you better provide damn good reasons why an event that happeend in real life still would have happend, without the same given consequences. NO one here has done so. So you can't assume the US would still have nukes in '45, or the SU in 49, or assume B-29's or Il-2 flyoing around just cause they came out of thin air...

I was talking about the same. My point if Hitler didn't attacked USSR in 1941, then Stalin strike first- but only after he would finished his re-arming programm of Red Army.
Il-2 was created in 1939. The predecessors of JS series- tanks of KV series were created in 1939. In 1941 SU had more then 500 heavy tanks of KV series and it was the most thickly armored tank in the world in 1941. Germans had nothing equal. T-34 was created in 1939 too. As for Su-152 you are right there were no single self-propeled gun in Red army in 1941 and SU-152 was first time introduced in 1943, but SU-152 was mostly based on KV-1 tank. Also in 1941 Soviets had Katysha- first missile artilery in the world. Germans created something of that kind- Nebelwerfer (Sp?) only in 1944 (iirc) and it was nowhere near Katysha, even not mobile. Soviets had air-to-air and air-to-ground rockets before the 1941 and succesfully tested them against Japanese in 1936. And many many more.
So my point is- before 1941 Soviets invented a lot of unmatched, supreame weaponry. The only problem is that this weaponry wasn't produced in needed quantity. Mass production of those weapons was just started or planned to start in nearest future. If Hitler gave another year or two for Stalin, Red army of 1942 or 1943 was MUCH greater threat for Hitler. So he didn't have much time.

Ned, Stalin perfectly knew that he can't avoid the war vs. Hitler. Two main reasons for this:
1) Ideology. Commiest were most hated Hitler's foe. He belived that his (Hitler's) historical mission is to protect Europe from communist disease.
2) Geopolitical- Hitler claimed that Slavs should be eradicated and their lands should be taken and settled with Germans.
How anybody could belive that there could be no clash between SU and Germany is beyond me, because war vs. USSR was the Hitler's MAIN goal and Stalin perfectly knew this. Stalin's problem was that he belived that he is ****ing genious and that he triked Hitler with this non-agression pact and won a couple of years to re-arm red army and then strike first. Soviet people paid huge price for Stalin's arrogance. If only he gave the order to put Red army on high alert status, then first months of war were absolutely different. The cheif of Soviet navy- Kuznetzov gave such order (on his own risk) to Soviet fleet, result- Soviet navy didn't lost a single aircraft during first German attack.(yep, Soviet navy had bunch of planes. It's just a note for smart asses who would like to comment this sentance)

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


The IJA did try to attack the Soviet forces. They got the snot kicked out of them.

Sorry for making you endure a long post, but I've always seen people take way too much out of Nomonhan/Khalkin Gol when referring to a Russo-Japanese war.

There are too many differences:

- IIRC Russia wasn't engaged in a death struggle with Germany at the time.

- The war in Mongolia was limited, it wasn't in any way a full Japanese effort.

- Zhukov would not have been in the east in the summer of 1941.

- Just so you know, the Russians only won strategically in Mongolia. The Kwangtung Army went back to Manchuria, and the conflict was over. Tactically, however, the scores were almost even, with 8,629 Japanese dead and 7,974 Russians dead. It was an stalemate man-to-man, but the Japanese were not prepared for total war so they withdrew. This was not a complete rollover for Zhukov.

- Not only would the Russians have less troops to fight with in summer 1941 thanks to Germany, but meanwhile the Japanese forces they would face had increased from 1939 to 1941. There would have been even more after the decison for war was made, as troops from home garrisons and China would be ordered to Manchuria. I estimate that the total troops they could muster for the attack would be around 1.5 million men. Considering the huge damage Germany made with a well-mechanized force of 3.5 million, I reckon 1.5 million Japanese with poor to moderate mechanization would at least stand a chance against less forces than Germany faced.

- Russian forces were hopelessly dependent on the Trans-Siberian Railroad for all supply, and the Japanese planners knew it. The very first objective of every Japanese operations plan was always to seize some portion of their vital railways. For example, Operational Plan 8 (or the Hachi-Go Plan) was centered around marching a mere 50 miles to sever the Trans-Siberian Railroad east of Chita and simply watching any Russian troops east of that cut simply run out of supplies and surrender. Hell, in many places Russian railways were so close to the border with Manchuria that you could see them with binoculars from the Japanese side. A ten-year old could plan out an array of advances that would cut these vulnerable supply chains.

For these reasons among others, the 1939 war (along with the other skirmishes they had in the 30's) is not a very effective gauge IMO; they were complete apples and oranges.

[Serb]

Originally posted by Sava
Âîäêà ïëîõà äëÿ Âàñ

I know.

[Serb]

Originally posted by Heresson


from W³asow's army

Vlasov's army? Ten... perhaps twenty thousands...but one million? I will not buy it.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Serb



Ned, Stalin perfectly knew that he can't avoid the war vs. Hitler. Two main reasons for this:
1) Ideology. Commiest were most hated Hitler's foe. He belived that his (Hitler's) historical mission is to protect Europe from communist disease.
2) Geopolitical- Hitler claimed that Slavs should be eradicated and their lands should be taken and settled with Germans.
How anybody could belive that there could be no clash between SU and Germany is beyond me, because war vs. USSR was the Hitler's MAIN goal and Stalin perfectly knew this. Stalin'swas problem that he belived that his is ****ing genious and that he triked Hitler with this non-agression pact and won a couple of years to re-arm red army and then strike first. Soviet people paid huge price for Stalin's arrogance. If only he gave the order to put Red army on high alert status first months of war were absolutely different. The cheif of Soviet navy- Kuznetzov gave such order (on his own risk) to Soviet fleet, result- Soviet navy didn't lost a single aircraft during first German attack.(yep, Soviet navy had bunch of planes. It's just a note for smart asses who would like to comment this sentance)

Well, then, if Stalin intended to attack Germany when he had the upper hand and knew he could win, when would that have been? 1942? 1943? If it were 1944, I think Germany would have had enough time to defeat the UK.

[Serb]

I guess it's obvious that war at two fronts at once was the Hitler's main mistake.
I guess he beleived he could destroy Red army quite easily like he did before with all his previous enemies, then capture Mascow, force Stalin to sign a peace treaty and then using captured Soviet plants, resourses and population to finish the Brits and start with Americans. He declared war on USA Dec. 10, in accordance with his plans Moscow should have been captured already.
He made a bunch of mistakes- first war vs. Soviets while he didn't finished war with Brits, then war vs. USA while he didn't finished war with Soviets. Insane and arrogant desicions, imho.


As for accurate date when Stalin could attack Germany, I guess it's hard to say now. This would depend on situation, how well/bad Hitler war vs. GB was going. I guess Stalin needed at least five years for Red army complete modernization programm., but he could attack sooner if circumstances were good for Soviets. It's hard to say...I don't know.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I think at the time Hitler sneak attacked, Stalin was doing a semi-Cold War. He thought (reasonably) that Hitler would not attack the USSR while Britain and the US was in the war.

Of course, what he didn't know was that Hitler was afraid of the US's industrial power but thought Japan would contain the US, and while that was going on, he could conclude the war against Britain and the USSR. We should be thankful that Hitler was an idiot, or else maybe Britain would have fallen.