Worst Axis Mistake

First, come up with a strategy for Germany, and then one for Japan-you control the respective powers from the start of the war, with these restrictions:

The Axis cannot not go to war with France, the Low Countries, and Britain.

The Axis cannot conclude a separate peace with China.

Other than that, you control all military forces (with no intervention from anyone), and you have the ability to declare war (or not) on the Soviet Union, the US, and all other countries. So how could the Axis have won the war? I’m looking forward to your thoughts!

@abworsham4

Germany spent a lot of money on synthetic oil-it wouldn’t have cost as much to expoilt naturally occurring oil fields, and those resources could have gone to producing more equipment (which the new massive oil fields, in conjunction with Romania’s could fuel). Germany might even have been able to the give the Italian navy more oil, which would help operations in the Mediterranean. Japan would be able to not attack the Western Allies, which would allow them to destroy China more easily, with all of Japan’s resources aimed at it, with a fully fuelled army and navy. Perhaps Japan, without a massive naval war, could even invest more in tanks and mechanized infantry which would be fully fueled, and would make a possible invasion of the Soviet Union much easier. Supply problems in China and the Soviet Union would have been not as bad. Perhaps several hundred more tanks and mechanized infantry at the Battle Of Moscow, completely fuelled, might have been decisive-and if that wasn’t enough, there would have been more casualties, which would set the stage for a renewed German offensive against Moscow without the need to take Soviet oil. Bombing the oil fieleds might have been sufficent enough to allow Germany to take Moscow in 1942. This would have been coupled with Japanese pressure on the Soviet Union. It would still be close, but the Axis may have won on the Eastern Front. After that, Germany can dedicate all their resources for submarine warfare and fighters to protect the oil fields, and the fighter force would still have performed well, as there would not be a loss of oil, which resulted in training cuts. All of this, with Vichy France and Spain joining the Axis, would have created a crisis in the Mediterranean, especially now that Germany could possibly send an entire panzer army to North Africa, and will have enormous amounts to men on the Atlantic Wall. If China falls, then altogether, the Axis would have won.

@general-6-stars

Oh! I understand what you mean now.

Sorry for not figuring out.

If you stick to spankings and Stanford and avoid anything remotely posted in terms of an argument, it makes what your saying look like a weak syntax of problems. Try to do better next time.

The best chance Hitler had to convince Franco to enter the war was in 40 when France fell.
Yes…but heaven with that Franco said no.

_Do you honestly think it would have wasted troops taking the canary islands that serve little if any strategic value (England could barely defend itself, and if Hitler had waited on attacking Russia for a year and focused on England they probably would have been invaded). _

Yes I think because Canaries island would have been easily fall under UK control but worst, it would have been a strategic lost for Kriegmarine.
Uk would have acces to the middle of the Atlantic. A bad news for the U-Boat and give a better protection to cargos.

England did not have a good relationship with Spain.  I would compare that relationship to the US and Iran - yes, we aren’t killing each other but I would hardly call that a good relationship.
Sorry but you’re wrong. Of course it was not a real friendship relation but both konws the importance to talk.

Looking at it from Franco’s perspective, Franco wanted parts of France and Hitler did not want to give it to him.
No Franco wants Gibralter, Morroco and French catalogna but Hitler plan was to annexe Vichy and the southern France in 1942 and Hitler had to meet petain after the Franco meeting so it was not in the interest of Hitler to give to Franco parts of Vichy territory and see Vichy changing camp.

Hmmmm.  This just gave me an idea for a new thread
Good, it’s always interresting to discuss.

I don’t think it’s really plausible that any of the three major Axis powers would have been able to launch an invasion of mainland America large enough to actuallyhewould not have gained ground against the Americans fighting on their own turf. While the German army may have matched that of the United States, their navy was in no way ready to launch any amphibious invasion, especially one of the scale requited to attack the US. Italy… let’s just say I couldn’t see Mussolini walking into the white house.

Most likely, if the Axis were able to overhwelm all of the other allies, a cold war would develop between the US and Germany/Japan (and maybe even between the axis themselves) and all sides would race to develop defenses and nuclear weapons.

If any axis takeover of washington was to take place, it would be a result of either a revolution within the US or (less likely) an invasion by Mexico and other Central/South American countries supported by the Axis. Germany would likely send another Zimmerman letter, but this time would provide actual support. Although by this point, with the US in possession of nuclear weapons, i doubt and invasion would take place.

@ABWorsham:

Should the Italians and Germans occupied Tunisia in 1941? This would have given more airfields to attack Malta bound convoys, provided more ports for shipping, ports that were closer to the Apennine Peninsula. The addition of these ports would forced the British to hunt for shipping west of Malta, which could have helped ease the stress on Tripoli and Benghazi convoys.

Those might have proved to be advantages to the Axis, but they might have come at the cost of negative consequences that would have offset them.  Tunisia was a Vichy-controlled territory at the time.  If the Axis had invaded Tunisia, the Vichy regime would likely have regarded this as a breach of the 1940 armistice terms with Germany, and would probably have reacted in ways Germany would not have liked.  Remember that when the Allies invaded North Africa, Germany occupied the “unoccupied” Vichy-controlled southern part of France, to which France responded with the scuttle of its fleet at Toulon to keep it out of German hands.  France might have done the same thing if the Axis had walked into Tunisia in 1941, and might even have jumped to the Allied side entirely.  So the cost-benefit analysis of an Axis invasion of Tunisia involves some tricky might-have-beens.

The Allies would have lost. Hitler’s turning on Russia at the time and place he did was one of the biggest reasons his thousand year Reich failed when it did. I am sure most people on these forums have tried out the USSR neutral scenario. Just with them neutral the game becomes much more difficult.

FDR was playing for time prior to Pearl Harbor. He had already comment the US to a virtual state of war in the Atlantic and had sent Pacific naval units over to the Atlantic already. Maybe the atom bomb could have still shifted the balance. But the allies weren’t the only ones working on technology. Conflict with Japan was coming, their preemptive strike on Pearl Harbor brought the USA in too early.