The easiest thing Germany could have done to win the war.


  • @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.


  • @Narvik:

    The name of the thread is “The easiest thing Germany could have done to win the war”

    In my opinion, the easiest thing that Germany could have done to win the war – and I’ll explain in a moment what I mean by “win” – is to have followed its historical script up to mid-June 1941, then cancelled Barbarossa.  This would have left most of continental Europe and much of Asia were under the control of the Tripartite Pact nations (Germany, Italy and Japan) and/or of countries which were allied to them or which had non-aggression pacts with them (i.e. the Soviet Union, which had non-aggresion pacts with both Germany and Japan.)  Not a bad outcome at all for Germany, and one that Hitler should objectively have been satisfied with (though objectivity wasn’t his strong suit).  That’s the outcome which David Fromkin called “The Triumph of the Dictators” in the chapter he contributed to the book “What If? : The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been”, as I mentioned previously in this thread…

    https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=40095.0

    …which covers much of the same ground as the present thread.

    As a more proactive and aggressive supplement to this non-Barbarossa strategy, Germany could also have tried to put Britain even more on the ropes by invading the Middle East, seizing its oil, and possibly driving all the way into India to hook up with Japan.  That scenario is described in John Keegan’s chapter in the same book I mentioned above; as I recall, it’s titled “How Hitler Could Have Won The War.”


  • Yeah man, I think it was Keegan that suggested Hitler would be better off if he ditched Barbarossa and went for the Middle East oil. Keizer Wilhelm II had already made the Berlin Bagdhad Express through Turkey and to the oil fields of Mosul, starting in 1904, but not finished before 1940. Germany would have been independent of both American and Russian oil. Unfortunately our A&A map does not model this vital resource in any sane way. You just got 2 more IPCs and all the neutrals of the world turn against you, not enough to justify what would have been the winning strategy in the real war. Too bad, man. HUH. But in the real world, Germany would be self supplied with oil, and better yet, get a staging area close to the Russian oil fields in Baku. Nothing Russia could do to stop the 6 crack German mountain divisions from climbing over the Caucasus mountains and seize the oil fields. But would that really be the easiest thing they could do, or do anybody at this forum imagine any even more easy thing to do ?


  • @Narvik:

    Yeah man, I think it was Keegan that suggested Hitler would be better off if he ditched Barbarossa and went for the Middle East oil. Keizer Wilhelm II had already made the Berlin Bagdhad Express through Turkey and to the oil fields of Mosul, starting in 1904, but not finished before 1940. Germany would have been independent of both American and Russian oil. Unfortunately our A&A map does not model this vital resource in any sane way. You just got 2 more IPCs and all the neutrals of the world turn against you, not enough to justify what would have been the winning strategy in the real war.

    Yes, good point.  Without oil, mechanized land warfare, modern sea warfare, and air warfare involving heavier-than-air flying machines all become impossible.  As you’ve said, the sources of oil on land (such as the Middle East) are not properly modeled in A&A, which affects land strategy.  Likewise, the game doesn’t model adequately the importance of the Allied oceanic convoy routes for oil (and other goods, but notably oil) in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, nor of the Japanese convoy routes for oil from the Dutch East Indies to Japan, which affects naval strategy.


  • Hitler may of been better off just sending a full military force into Africa at that point instead of invading USSR. Hitler could of also go all the way in against Malta since that was a huge pain the ass for Italy. A full German and Italy force in North Africa could of changed the outcome where the Axis would of taken Egypt and that would lead to a full invasion of the middle east. Hook up with friendly Iraq and Persia and then go for USSR in the south. I don’t know if invading India from the West could be a good idea but certainly better if they did it the same time Japan came from the east.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    Short answer;

    “Not try to conquer the world at one go”

    Napoleon’s greatest asset wasn’t his leadership ability, it was that his enemies were enemies of one another.

    It took Napoleon’s success and ambition to unite them at all, and as his ambitions grew, so did the opposing, diverse and squabbling alliance until they had got together no less than SEVEN times in just TWENTY SEVEN years.  They really only wanted to contain Napoleon, so he would continue to be a threat that they could play off against one another, but it was only after they realized the danger of allowing him to rebuild and target them one by one that they decided to depose him entirely, which they had to do two, virtually 3 times.


  • Except German end game wasn’t conquer the whole world. This is a huge misconceptions about WWII. Each Axis nation had one national objective;

    Germany was to become the undisputed champion of Europe. Which and whom were allies or enemies didn’t matter.
    Italy was to regain “lost” territory from the Roman Empire but get as much as Hitler would allow. Example; I don’t think Hitler would let Italy capture Spain.
    Japan was to take over control of all Asian nations and unite them under a Japanese banner.


  • @Caesar:

    Hitler may of been better off just sending a full military force into Africa at that point instead of invading USSR.

    Sorry to ruin your day, mate, but that was impossible without a large part of magic and wonders. Germany had a very small merchant fleet and navy. Over a 2 month span they were able to ship 100 000 men with supply from Germany to Norway, and that is a short distance, one day each way. In addition, their air transport fleet was able to get 30 000 men over during that 2 month span. At that time Germany did not poses any port or harbor adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea, so they were shipped by the Italian fleet, and what they shipped was the limit of that capacity. If Germany had captured the old Austrian port of Trieste, and established a shipyard there, the distance from Trieste to Cairo is almost 4 times longer than the distance between Kiel and Oslo, so they would need to build 4 times more trannies that they actually had in the Baltic Sea, just to carry 100 000 men with supply over a 2 month span. At that point, I think the UK shipbuilding capacity was 5 times larger than what Germany had at the Baltic, so even if I too love your idea, I figure it was not very plausible. Sorry.


  • Seeing as Italy still had a fighting force in the Med at 41. Your response is moot.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    most of us do not consider the Italians to have been any kind of viable modern “fighting force” in any theatre or type of arms, at any time from 1917-1944.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    Mr. CS;  You also keep returning to this point about “conquering the world”, I realize their immediate goals did not include the creation of a Greater German Seaborne Mercantile Empire but that clearly follows from their attempts to break the Continental System and disrupt the empires of the UK, France, and the US.

    After some peace was made between Germany and the then reeling and broken allies, are you implying that they would have simply rested upon their laurels having gained control of the Baltic, Med, and Black seas?  And remained a landlocked, dependent “empire”?


  • @taamvan:

    most of us do not consider the Italians to have been any kind of viable modern “fighting force” in any theatre or type of arms, at any time from 1917-1944.

    You would be foolish to think the Italian navy is a joke, it really is the only branch of their armed forces that shouldn’t be taken lightly. I assumed this is why Hitler even bothered with allying Italy, they had a navy. That’s why I meant by a fighting force. They could escort landing craft for Germany. If Germany went all in on North Africa, I don’t think UK could hold on Egypt.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    I was sort of teasing, they fought very bravely.  MAS was amazing, the frogmen and special ops did almost more damage than ship’s guns did.  The ground forces and ‘named’ Italian divisions acquitted themselves well in terms of bravery on both Eastern front and in Africa but that doesn’t matter in the face of so many glaring omissions.

    But I offer sir, that the Italian navy was more like a 1910s navy, than a 1940s one.

    No radar
    No nightfighting ability (only Japan covered this)
    No remote ports or support areas
    Some ships made out of untempered steel
    Attacks and plans made for political effect rather than strategic effect
    Hiding often, Fighting only when hiding didn’t work anymore (this is what defeated the French against the Royal navy also–the overassumption of their own clear but partially overstated inferiority)

    No effective air protection of any kind (same all navies up until 1944)
    Fanciful but ineffective protection (fleet in being concept, torpedo nets, didn’t work…)
    no clear coordination between navy and general air forces (Germany was also horrible at this)
    No clear plan to connect information, sabotage, and non-traditional naval forces (or anything else) with conventional gun-based ships…

    When Hitler decided to declare war on the Western Allies, Mussolini’s  ask in return for a declaration was that Germany deliver the equivalent of 2-3 years of oil, steel, coal and aircraft engines BEFORE they attacked.  The German response was something like “with allies like this, who needs enemies…”


  • Sure but Italy in the med was enough to raise great concern for UK, France, and later the US. However, I am not saying that Italy isn’t the be all end all of the allies in the Med. However if given full escort for German forces, Egypt may of been lost. Some people argue the reason why UK won in Egypt was due to sheer numbers. So the question is, if Germany send a full army and not an X force, would they win?


  • @Omega1759:

    Not enough U-boats in 1939 was also a big mistake. The ~30 that they had really did cause a lot of damage. More “Condor” long range patrol planes to attack allied shipping would have been good as well.

    This was going to be my answer.

    “Plan Z” should have never even been suggested. The idea that Germany was going to somehow “catch up” to the Royal Navy in terms of surface combatants was laughable, even prior to the beginning of hostilities with England.

    The two Scharnhorsts and two Bismarks that were completed cost, in total, upwards of $400 million Reichsmarks.

    I would argue that the 100 submarines you could have had instead for that cost would have probably won the war against England around the same time the historical Battle of Britain began.

    And that’s just subbing out a few battleships for subs. A real committment to a submarine construction program prior to the war beginning would have been decisive, even if countered by the UK with more focus on ASW.

    It took nearly 4 years, US entry into the war, and several technological breakthroughs to both fully implement the Convoy System and win the Battle of the Atlantic. I see no outcome other than defeat for the United Kingdom if they face a Germany with 300 U-Boats in 1939.

    The US can threaten war over Unrestricted Submarine Warfare in 1940, but if the UK is defeated before years end, it is essentially an empty threat, as the US is not going to retake Europe by staging out of Iceland or the Azores.

    Of course, extra naval patrol aircraft would have greatly aided in the goal of strangling the UK…but that would have depended on Göring not being a total idiot.

    In fact, I change my answer.

    –-

    Have Göring and Ernst Udet die in a plane crash sometime in early 1933.

    I’m not sure who takes over the Luftwaffe at that point…but they can hardly do worse.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    they only had 57 so we’re giving them 243 extra boots….the surface ships do seem to have been a waste, but that’s because there was no precise vision of how they’d be used without wasting them, and no idea what Germany would have done without any surface ships at all.

    If they had the capability and long range to control the material war at sea, then that would have been decisive.

    But they didn’t have any of the things they would need to beat each enemy in turn, it was built “just in time”.  Some of it (4 engine bombers) was never built or even seriously considered, partially because of dissipation of effort.

    The submarine strategy was very strong when there was no counter, and very weak once there was, so reliance on that to win the war probably wouldn’t work , it meets an escalating counter-response.    In this way of thinking there would have needed to be no blitz, no Barbarossa, etc., but you can’t simply unwind history and say well, if we’d had 500 more tanks at Kursk, things would have turned out differently.  Of course they would have, which is why the tanks weren’t there, because if they had been, Russia wouldn’t be.

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