World War 2 What If

[BeBMan]

Convoy duty doesn't involve ASW?

[Drake Tungsten]

Way to miss the point. With reasoning ability like that, it's no wonder the Germans are so strategically inept.

[BeBMan]

[Elok]

WRT OP, I assume Hitler would very predictably take the extreme offensive as soon as he had the USSR reduced to a puppet state. That would mean crossing the Atlantic to invade America. What a nightmarish pain in the ass that would be, even if he got more than half the boats safely across...

[David Floyd]

Germany couldn't even cross the English Channel. Now you have them crossing the Atlantic?

[Al B. Sure!]

Actually, if the Nazis wanted to invade America, they would probably try to use Mexico or the Dominican Republic as staging points.

[Drake Tungsten]

Luckily, both Mexico and the Dominican Republic are across an ocean that the Germans could never cross in the face of American naval opposition.

[Kitschum]

Essentially even without Russia in the war, once the US joined the war - it was the death knell for the Axis - the industrial capacity of the US and Britain combined would overwhelm them in time.

Perhaps. Historically you're right in that the US in particular were absolutely superior in industrial capacity, but in the scenario at hand, Germany has basically free reign in continental Europe after 1941. Its development after that point is up for debate.

With combat on land basically ended Germany can start constructing its Festung Europa, including an economic community of the entire continent centered on itself. While this Nazi EU might still fall short of the combined production of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc it is not obvious to me that the anglosphere would be strong enough to overcome the logistic and military disadvantages involved in an invasion of Europe. And if they are, is the population ready to make the blood sacrifice, which would be much higher than in history?

In conclusion, I vote stalemate. Americans hearts are too soft.

[Drake Tungsten]

Americans hearts are too soft.

[Kitschum]

Japan was already beaten at that point.

[Drake Tungsten]

Which makes it even more cold-blooded.

[Kitschum]

Let's look at this another way. The invasion of Normandy, in history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy

The Anglo-Allies have their 1,332,000 versus the Germans' 380,000 (about a 3.5:1 advantage). The Allies also achieve almost total surprise due to deception maneuvers that succeed beyond their expectations, they have crushing aerial superiority, naval artillery to aid them and get to choose the time and place of fighting.

Yet during the campaign they still manage somehow to inflict less casualties on the Germans than the Germans do on them (120,000 v 113,000)! It's hard to say what this means if terms were more equal, would that be 4-5 British and American casualties for each German, or more? That's Soviet levels of inefficiency.

More importantly, is that a price the public is ready to pay for some ungrateful European colonialists to save them from some other European colonialists who aren't even a direct threat to America (or Canada or Australia) anyway?

[giblets]

But even if the Allies can't land, what happens in Nazi Germany after an atomic bomb destroys Berlin?

[Kitschum]

I don't know. They suffer a whole lot and rebuild in time, I guess. I just don't think Hitler would ever surrender if he were undefeated on the battlefield.

Maybe it can gain the Allies an acceptable peace settlement...

[BlackCat]

Yes, going after British warships would have been awesomely intelligent for the U-boats. I mean, holy ****, they could have easily wiped out the Royal Navy. Gosh, I guess Admiral Raeder was a ****ing dip****

Or do you think maybe there was a reason why U-boats weren't primarily tasked to go after major surface warships?

Uhmn, yes. The transport ships were the primary target because they affected the land war in russia. If russia is out of the equation, it means that all german subs can concentrate on transports to england.

For a sub there isn't much difference between a military target and a civilian as long as it's undetected.