Awesome! So again, who do you think will win?
The easiest thing Germany could have done to win the war.
-
The kind of scenario described by Karl is imaginative (I don’t think I’ve ever previously heard a scenario along those exact lines), but I think it’s improbable for a number of reasons. Hitler had a visceral hatred for France (dating back to his WWI experiences, and to Germany’s 1918 surrender, which Hitler regarded as a national tragedy), and his 1940 conquest of France was to a large degree (though not exclusively) motivated by a desire for revenge; it wasn’t entirely about securing his western flank for a campaign against the Soviets. The concept of Hitler defeating France and then basically saying to the international community “There, I’ve proved my point. Now, shall we all sit down and discuss a reasonable settlement?” strikes me as being out of character with Hitler, who wasn’t known for his reasonableness or for his subtlety. And I’m not sure he would have found any buyers among the international community, which by then understood that treaties with Hitler were meaningless stopgaps at best and a prelude to invasion at worst.
The concept of Hitler unilaterally withdrawing from France and leaving behind a puppet regime in charge of the whole country would probably have been problematic both to Germany and to France. Germany did set up a few puppet regimes during WWII, but as far as I know they were all small, obscure, and buried deep inside German-controlled Europe. In other words, they were strategically inconsequential. The concept wouldn’t have worked in France, which is a large country, which controlled a vast colonial empire, and which has an Atlantic coastline within eyeball distance of Britain on a clear day. Hitler was very worried about that coastline, as can be seen from which parts of France he chose to keep under direct German occupation; it constituted a threat to his western flank which could not be eliminated even with France under German occupation, and it would have been even more of a vulnerable area if it had been left in the hands of the Vichy regime, which Hitler rightfully distrusted. The Vichy regime was a collaborationist regime, but it was too much of a loose cannon to be considered a puppet regime; part of its agenda was maintaining the fiction (in its own mind as well as among the French population) that it was its own boss. Consider what happened when the Allies invaded North Africa: Germany was angered that the French colonial forces had not resisted more energetically, and it promptly occupied the southern part of France controlled by Vichy; the Vichy regime responded by scuttling its fleet to keep it out of German hands. True puppet regimes are much more docile than that.
-
I think the easiest answer to why Hitler didn’t withdraw from France was simply because he didn’t trust the Vichy French government. Let’s say he did pull out the Wehrmacht, I wouldn’t find it surprising if UK tried to land a full force on the country just to have easy access to invade Italy and Germany. Easiest answer is that he didn’t trust the French and knew Italy was a weakness for him as he had to save Italy once already against Greece.
-
Yeah, doubtful Hitler would have walked away from his prize….
As for a France, I think Germany could have pulled out with monitors left behind etc to make sure France didn’t rearm etc. Further, the UK didn’t have the power to land a big enough force to singlehandedly secure France before Germany could move back in… assuming there was enough German reserve troops in Germany for such an operation.
Well, as historical what-ifs, I think it would have been a brilliant, if risky, stroke to unilaterally pull out and turn the English people against their leadership and the continuation of war, not to mention to put wind in the sails of the US isolationists.
-
Good thought Karl, and I do like the vien that it’s on, but I don’t think it would have worked.
The international community still would have seen it as a puppet government - and invaded anyways; and the German ego at that point was too big to accept that kind of situation.
Yeah, but the “international community” at that point would have only been the UK and its Empire… not enough to reinvade by itself.
-
Yeah, doubtful Hitler would have walked away from his prize….
As for a France, I think Germany could have pulled out with monitors left behind etc to make sure France didn’t rearm etc. Further, the UK didn’t have the power to land a big enough force to singlehandedly secure France before Germany could move back in… assuming there was enough German reserve troops in Germany for such an operation.
Well, as historical what-ifs, I think it would have been a brilliant, if risky, stroke to unilaterally pull out and turn the English people against their leadership and the continuation of war, not to mention to put wind in the sails of the US isolationists.
Except he allowed the Vichy French to be armed. The condition of surrendered France was allowing Vichy to control its southern half and all of its colonies. Vichy France and a full army, navy, and air force. I still believe if the Wehrmacht pulled out, UK would of seized momentum and land on France in full force. Hitler knew this, that’s why France lost complete control of the northern half.
-
@Caesar:
… UK would of seized momentum and land on France in full force. …
which would be a delight for the Germans as the Brits would be concentrated once again for destruction.
-
@Caesar:
… UK would of seized momentum and land on France in full force. …
which would be a delight for the Germans as the Brits would be concentrated once again for destruction.
I don’t believe so. The force that UK put on France in 40 was a joke and not a full force as it should of been. At the time, the whole point of that X force UK sent was because it was believe France would pull the same thing they did in WWI and actually fight.
-
Seems time for some shameless self promotion. Let’s get down to it.
The easiest thing they could have done - is put GARGANTUA in charge. :D
-
For my part, I think based off of cost to the German war effort with the least impact on German policy during the War the easiest thing they could have done to benefit themselves would have been to get Spain involved in the War.
Had Hitler gotten Spain involved in the war it would have changed almost nothing, certainly not the outcome… Spain was no super power, they had no massive military, even the most beneficial thing getting Spain involved in the war could do, possibly take Gibraltar, would have been nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Spain was militarily and emotionally depleted after the long Civil War… they were in no-condition to take on America, the US and Russia alongside Germany. If anything, adding Spain would have actually weakened Hitler’s position, as adding the entire Spanish coastline as a possible landing spot for Allied forces in continental Europe would have been yet another further manpower drain on Germany.
Nope, sorry… there’s many things you can argue that would have given Hitler a better chance at winning the war, major or minor… getting Spain to join-in is not one of them.
I never said that Spain’s military was going to change the war, I said their location to Gibraltar would. Spain’s military may not have been much for the reasons you stated, but it probably could have taken out Gibraltar, and even if it couldn’t the Germans could have attacked it by land and it would have fallen. Or even if the Germans didn’t want to commit the troops to seize it they could have lined the the coast with 88’s and aircraft to destroy British supply to Africa, which would have seen Africa/Suez fall (IMO).
To me Spanish entry into the war means the fall of Gibraltar, and an argument could def. be made that had Gibraltar fallen not only would Africa have fallen, but the Battle of Britain would have ended up differently. All of that just for forgiving some debt that Spain incurred during their civil war, which eventually they never paid back since Germany lost. That’s a bargain.
-
@Imperious:
All Hitler would need to do is after finishing off France, be the best of friends with Stalin and even use him to take the UK colonial assets within reach with the spoils going to each party in a fair way. Make peace with UK or bomb them into rubble and never get allied with Japan or DOW USA. After this just let the holdings percolate for at least 20 years.
Not the dumbest thing Hitler could have done to be sure… there is merit here…
Uh, no.
The basic premise of the question was what could Germany have done that was relatively minor that could have influenced the war. Saying that Hitler could have joined forces with Stalin is absurd. The ability of Hitler to have a legit alliance with Communist Russia is like saying the war would have ended up differently had Hitler converted to Judaism. The non-aggression pact was about 2 gangsters dividing turf, and at the soonest op. one of them made a grab for the other’s turf (Barbarossa). Had France not been conquered so quickly and trench warfare started up again the U.S.S.R. would have attacked in the same land grab that Germany did in 41.
The idea of a real German/Soviet alliance is about as real as an American/Soviet alliance during the cold war.
-
All interesting points, and I will only add this:
It seems odd to me that Germany would not have driven a harder position regarding a negotiated settlement with the UK after the fall of France. I know there were some tepid efforts that went nowhere. But what if Germany delivered an “inverted ultimatum” in which Germany declared it was going to unilaterally conclude a final peace treaty with France and then withdraw from France. (Albeit France would be under a right-wing, Vichy-ish government.),
What would UK have done? Said no? The UK people would have continued supporting a war government that was going to “reinvade” France? The US would have been off-footed too. The UK would no longer been under threat, taking the wind out of the US interventionist sails.
I think such a deft move would have thrown the UK off balance. Why go on fighting after a bruising loss when the enemy is ostensibly giving up its gains?
True Italy would have been a problem to get to go along given they were losing their colonies, but if I were Hitler I would have said, “tough luck.”
My understanding was the Hitler never intended to “conquer” the west, just defeat them so as Germany could move eastward without a potential 2nd front in the rear.
I like your point here. Perhaps more of an effort to end the war in 40 would have been the best way to go. I am not sure if Hitler would have turned unoccupied France into a Vichy like system. I think Vichy was created because France was Germany’s west flank and it had to be protected. Because Hitler was so into revenge for WW1 I think he would have set up reparations for France to pay and limit their military had Britain agreed to end the war.
While I agree that is the least intrusive as far as German/Nazi mentality during the war, Hitler was a stupid gambler.
It is a dumb game show, but if you have ever watched “Deal or No Deal”, you would know it is a game of chance about really dumb people (usually) going for the big money even though the math does not add up. Their greed gets in the way, and they fail. I don’t think Hitler had it in him to stop in 40. He was just too dumb.
-
Two things here:
1: Vichy France was a necessary thing for Hitler because I believe he didn’t have the ability to take control of French colonies because Germany didn’t have the navy to do it and I think a puppet France would eventually be taken directly over if Germany won.
2: I don’t buy that crap that Germany and USSR couldn’t be allies if it came down to it. While I agree they both hate a distrust of each other and why wouldn’t they, both sides fought each other in Spain. You can find opinions of Stalin/Hitler talking about possible alliances with the other. Stalin openly said he would of gladly joined Germany in France if he was asked and would of asked Hitler for assistance against Finland if UK/France entered Finland.
Oh and I don’t buy that crap that comparing Germany/USSR alliance would be the same as US/USSR alliance in the Cold War because US/USSR ended up technically be allies in the Iran-Iraq war.
-
@Caesar:
1: Vichy France was a necessary thing for Hitler because I believe he didn’t have the ability to take control of French colonies because Germany didn’t have the navy to do it and I think a puppet France would eventually be taken directly over if Germany won.
Germany had the ability.
BUT: It would have bind necessary resources needed for the east campaign.@Caesar:
2: I don’t buy that crap that Germany and USSR couldn’t be allies if it came down to it. While I agree they both hate a distrust of each other and why wouldn’t they, both sides fought each other in Spain. You can find opinions of Stalin/Hitler talking about possible alliances with the other. Stalin openly said he would of gladly joined Germany in France if he was asked and would of asked Hitler for assistance against Finland if UK/France entered Finland.
Communism and nationalism don’t go well along.
The Ribbentrop pact alliance was a military pact and not of the idealogies.
Sooner or later they would have killed each other off anyway. -
Sooner or later yes however we’re talking about military politics which always differs from civilian politics. Why is it that everyone find the idea of Hitler and Stalin being possible allies alien yet, the western allies spent years trying to destroy communism yet we ended up allies with Stalin? Military campaigns always change alliances because Sun Tzu golden rule never changed regardless of ideals. Enemy of enemy is my friend. This rule is universal. You can argue with me Stalin Hitler alliance was unlikely and it was, but don’t sit here and pretend it would be impossible when it almost happened twice.
-
It is pretty simple. While AH and JS build an informal group, the Western Allies had an formal group. AH and JS had no common goals nor projects nor anything likely in common.
The Western Allies had. AH and JS joint for a short time together but after the goal was reach they had nothing to keep the group alive and left the alliance. -
@Caesar:
Sooner or later yes however we’re talking about military politics which always differs from civilian politics. Why is it that everyone find the idea of Hitler and Stalin being possible allies alien yet, the western allies spent years trying to destroy communism yet we ended up allies with Stalin? Military campaigns always change alliances because Sun Tzu golden rule never changed regardless of ideals. Enemy of enemy is my friend. This rule is universal. You can argue with me Stalin Hitler alliance was unlikely and it was, but don’t sit here and pretend it would be impossible when it almost happened twice.
Good points, on which here are a few follow-up thoughts. It’s very true that alliances can change over time in dramatic ways. In 1915, for example, the French and the British were allies against Germany; a hundred years earlier, at Waterloo, the British and the Germans were allies against France. (When Blucher arrived with his army at the tail end of the battle, he reputedly embraced Wellington and exclaimed, “Ach, mein lieber Kamerad, quelle affaire!”) And although some wartime alliances are indeed “natural” alliances between ideologically similar powers, other alliances are very much temporary alliances of convenience between powers who detest each other. The Soviet/Anglo-American alliance in WWII was a classic case, i.e. an alliance of circumstance between the godless communists and the decadent capitalists against the fascist regime they both disliked and feared more than each other…and even on the Anglo-American side, there was no love lost between the Brits and the Yankees. And regarding the Nazi-Soviet thing, it should be remembered that powers have more options open to them than a simple binary choice between being allies and being enemies; a third option that’s often exercised is “mutually suspicious co-existence.” That’s roughly what the relationship was between the US and the USSR during the Cold War, and it’s certainly a credible scenario for the relationship that Hitler and Stalin might have maintained over the medium to long term (even if only to given themselves more time to prepare for a military showdown). That relationship certainly existed in the short term, beginning with the establishment of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939 and ending with the start of Barbarossa in June 1941.
-
Yes, I agree Germany ended such an alliance, end of story. However, given that if several allied powers said yes instead of no. Course of WWII could of gone differently. Obviously, my point is moot because we live in 2017 and seeing everything in history. However, France and UK almost joined Finland against USSR. Stalin would of asked Hitler for help, what kind and how much? I personally have no idea. Stalin hoped Hitler would of been bogged in France like Germany was in WWI and Stalin said he would help Hitler conquer France, that of course didn’t happen. Germany basically steamed rolled France. Six weeks which is incredibly fast when you think about it.
-
As you say, we’re limited to speculation when it comes to considering historical what-ifs, so it’s impossible to nail down what would have happened if Britain and France had joined Finland’s side in the Winter War against the USSR. For whatever it’s worth, however, here are some thoughts on the subject.
An important point to remember is that “going to war” during the WWII era took many different forms. The form we tend to think of is a full-scale general war, in which Power X invades the territory of Power Y on a massive scale with the aim of destroying its armed forces and conquering its territory; the German campaign against France in May-June 1940 was one such case, and the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941 was another one. There are other gradations of war, however. For example, Japan and the USSR fought a couple of undeclared, low-level wars with each other in the late 1930s along the borders of Manchuria and Mongolia. Those conflicts are little-known because they were short and localized and relatively inconsequential in terms of territory change…though they did have strategic importance, in the sense that they were part of the reason why Japan and the USSR eventually signed a non-aggression pact.
An even better example would be the Phony War phase of WWII, from September 1939 to May 1940, because it potentially parallels what might have happened if Britain and France had declared war on the Soviet Union to support Finland. “What might have happened” might actually have been “very little.” Britain and France declared war on Germany in early September 1939 to support Poland…but other than clearing German shipping from the sea, they basically sat on their hindquarters until the following spring, even though the border between Germany and France was minimally defended by Germany (whose army was concentrated in Poland). France did launch the so-called “Saar Offensive”, which basically involved a few French troops advancing a few miles into German territory. Their advance was unopposed. France and Britain got some great newsreel footage out of this, but they did little else; sometime later the French quietly withdrew back to the Maginot Line. Given how pathetically unenterprising they were at crossing the border between their own country and Germany (something which can be done with a single footstep), I find it hard to imagine that the French would have posed any credible threat to the Soviet Union if they had declared war against Stalin and had announced that they were going to send an expeditionary force to the Russo-Finnish border. Ditto for the British: during the Phony War, Chamberlain thought that the nasty business of combat could be avoided by, among other things, using RAF bombers to drop propaganda leaflets on Germany to convince its citizens that this whole war was a bad idea, and that they should be sensible and overthrow Hitler. Some of his more aggressive military commanders advocated more concrete action, like bombing German munition factories, but Chamberlain nixed the idea on the grounds that German munition factories were private property and that bombing them would therefore be inappropriate.
Assuming for the sake of argument, however, that the British and the French had sent some sort of token expeditionary force (it’s hard to imagine them sending a substantial force, logistically or politically) to Finland to participate in the Winter War against the Soviets, we come up against the question of how Stalin would have responded. I can’t imagine Stalin contacting Hitler – his ideological foe – and basically saying to him, “The French and the British have sent troops to help the Finns and my army can’t handle them. Can you please help us deal with them?” I think a more likely reaction by Stalin to an Anglo-French expeditionary force would have been the same one that a senior German officer (I think it was Hindenburg) had during WWI when he was asked what he would do if the British (as they contemplated doing, and as the tried on a small scale at Zeebrugge) if the British landed troops by sea on the coast of Belgium or Germany: he answered that he’d send the police to arrest them.
-
The name of the thread is “The easiest thing Germany could have done to win the war”, and the answer is, let UK and France declare war on Russia. Not a far fetched idea, the capitalist UK did in fact have troops in Archangelsk in 1920, fighting the Reds, but was kicked out. The trick would be, what kind of bait would Germany need to pull off ? The Russian attack on Finland in 1939 was out of German control. I cant see any action that Germany could do, to make UK attack Russia. Maybe leak fake information to Churchill that Stalin is about to attack all oil rich UK colonies in the Middle East, and India too. That would be an easy and cheap thing to do, and if Churchill took the bait and declared war on Russia, it could have won the war for Germany
-
UK and France in Finland would be a threat for USSR because by the time when they were suppose to do it, USSR already knew that taking Finland was a problem and the Red Army being weakened by lack of officers and tactics. Red Navy had it easy over Finland and I believe the Royal Navy would be an eye opener for Stalin. Hitler himself didn’t want war with UK however he also didn’t want them to gain any strategic advantage either. One of his reason for invading Norway was because of this, stops the flow of ore to UK. We could also experiment with the crazier idea that maybe Germany could of joined UK and France against USSR however I am pretty sure UK or France wouldn’t allow Germany be friends with them due to the large violations Hitler did with his military.
Suggested Topics
