You look at a map of Europe and tell me how he was going to invade the USSR with out invading some other country first. England and France told Hitler they would go to war if he invaded Poland. Hitler didn't think England and France had the balls to do it. It was Always a no win for Hitler.

My point is that by 1940, he had achieved a pretty sizable eastward expansion, as well as an unprecedentedly successful YOLO conquest of Western Europe.



Eastward expansion may have been a historical desire, but much of that was based on the assumption that those were the only lands Germany could realistically add to its territory.

Not even the most optimistic militarist expected that Germany would be able to essentially purse snatch all of Belgium and France in a matter of weeks with minimal casualties.

One you have France - the 2nd most desirable land in Europe after Germany - the rationale for eastward expansion becomes decidedly less appealing.

Ironically, it was the very ease of conquering France that likely prompted Hitler to become overconfident and seize defeat from the jaws of victory by invading Russia.

So let's say you're right. He stops at the original Molotov-Ribbentrop line and holds tight. Maybe things go differently. However, once he starts the genocide of the central European untermenschen to make way for German settlers would the world have still be cool with him?

They wouldn't have been cool with him, but at the same time, they probably wouldn't have done shit had Hitler kept his Peace Pact with the UK/US/USSR.

Notably, during WW2 and rallying Britain and America against the Germans, the Final Solution featured minimally in propaganda. And the full extent of the horrors were only really known once the Allies began liberating the camps in '44.

And of course, if the War had ended in 1940, Germany would have been able to spend 41/42/43/ fully re-arming using the combined industries of an un-bombed Germany + France/Belgium/Austria. This would have allowed him to much more fully fortify Europe to repel invasion - all of which would have further reduced the likelyhood of the US+UK trying to retake the continent for humanitarian reasons.

We can see a pretty easy modern parallel today with China. A totalitarian, Fascist state, which oppresses its own people, and has 1 million religious minorities in brutal concentration camps.

Despite that, there is zero desire to confront China over humanitarian reasons, much less invade to liberate those camps. And even if China started going full Final Solution in Tibet and Xinjiang and Honk Kong, the world would most likely not invade so long as China kept the horror limited to its internal borders.

Imagine if a bunch of counties got together today and made a pact called "Anti International Communist Pact"

He took western Europe as a means to attack Russia.

Context, what is it

Well starting Operation Barbarossa 6 weeks late certainly didn't help.

Lebensraum was the central concept for the Nazis. It was about righting 'wrongs' since time immemorial to the German peoples (in their eyes).

After bringing security to Germany (persecution of the Communists, Social Democrats, etc) then eliminating influences that could challenge Nazi authority (the churches, Intelligencia, the professions, academia, etc) then defining who was a good German and going after those not like them (persecuting Jews, asocials, gypsies, gays, the infirm/ disabled/ mentally challenged, etc) the Nazis went immediately into war footing. Goring kicked off his Four Year Plan. In 1936.

Their plan was from the very start to invade Poland, then the Soviet Union- for acquiring central and east Europe. It was the plan. Always. Everything developed in relation to that and afterward.

The consolidation of Germany with the anschluss of Austria and taking  Czechoslovakia. The invasion of Poland. All rightfully (in their minds) German lands.


They claimed all land having Germanic heritage since Charlamagne. Tuetonic
Knight acquisitions. Lands conquered by the Prussians. The land agreed to in Brest- Litovsk Treaty.

They were going to Germanize everything. Get rid of  everyone not German, either by expulsion or working them to death as slaves. And by depopulating Europe of Jews is how they came up with the final solution. It all revolved around Lebensraum.

As soon as they conquered territory in the East, primarily Poland, they would begin 'Germanizing' the area by depopulating the area of non-Germans and bringing in ethnic Germans to live there.

Everything the Nazis did centered on Lebensraum and the Germanic homeland.

I imagine his greatest fuckup was poking the Bear.

Operation Retribution was another mistake too. Shit was falling apart before Hitler's forces ever hit Soviet soil. The astronomical loss of human life from that entire war is mind boggling.

It was those damn Italians who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag and had to be bailed out by Germany.

Then demanding that his troops go into combat through a Russian winter without proper cold weather gear and when his troops were being defeated ordering his troops to hold ground and fight to the last man standing instead of pulling back to save his men.

That was one of many blunders that contributed to the defeat of Germany.

Correct. According to the 1973 British television series The World at War, narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier, German commanders at the Eastern front asked Berlin to send their men cold weather uniforms because their troops were freezing.

Hitler responded by saying something like "do not ask us for any further unnecessary requests!" As a result, German troops suffered about as many deaths from cold as bullets.

Wrong, the German soldiers were super men and Hitler was a supreme planner and strategist and planner a complete genius. The typical soldier could'a fought the war in shorts and Hawaiian shirts no matter the weather. The greatest thing that could'a happened to the Allies would have been if Hitler had been leading them and micromanaging their forces.

He's not alone in making that blunder:  We did it 4 years later at Bastogne.  

I still think the US and Britain should have withheld any and ALL aid to the Soviets.  They already proved to be assholes after invading Poland, Lithuania. Latvia, and Estonia.  Their crimes against humanity had already been well documented, going back to the early 30's.  Stalin was a shitlord of the highest caliber and we should have sat back and watched him bleed.

Fuck that guy.

ETA - The Western territories conquered by the Soviets were hit very hard by the NKVD and hated Russia with a passion, especially the Ukranians.  Hitler would have been wise to harness this hatred and act as liberators instead of just another tyrant.  He could have raised countless divisions among the local populace and would have needed much less rear guard troops to deal with the partisans, hence, even more bodies for the front.  The grain harvest would have probably doubled in 42 and been a good supplement to the army rations had they been treated like actual human fucking beings.  Despite tight controls on communication, word would have gotten back to Red Army conscripts taken from these lands and defections would have been legion.  

Instead, they acted just like murderous shitbags, and gave Stalin the "fight for the motherland" card.

For later

Tag for later.

Have Poland as Allie. Poland has defeated a previous invasion by the USSR.

It would be fascinating to know what would have happened if Germany had stopped after defeating France. Wait maybe 2 years, spending the entire time kissing Brit/American ass and offering the limeys reparations. Meanwhile, solidify their position and unify the economies under their control. Also, make some effort to bring Spain into the Reich as a client state and send some 'advisors' to Italy to get them whipped into shape, especially their Navy, much of which needed a good purge. Get their factories building planes and armor etc. that are German designs.

"Greater Germany" had a lot of resources, good strategic positioning, and industrial potential, but there was no time to integrate it or really harness it the way things played out in.

One can only imagine the likely results had Nazi Germany not dedicated such vast resources to their "Afrika" campaign, and instead reallocated assets to the Eastern front. This is assuming of course that they had never warred against UK, France, and USA. I think there would be a lot of places besides Germany still speaking German.

Half a million men killed or captured
2,550 tanks lost
70,000 trucks lost
6,200 guns lost
8,000 aircraft destroyed
2,400,000 gross tons of shipping sunk

That doesn't count what they threw at Malta or Italian fleet losses to the RN.

Bullshidinsky.

Invasion of Russia and letting his men and material freeze was the beginning of the end. Fuel literally froze in their tanks.

The resources in Africa weren't 'massive', not with respect to the Eastern Front. I seriously doubt they would have made much difference.

Thanks Nick.  Finally listened to it.

Anybody here got Ike's Crusade in Europe?  I'd like to know if Hurtgen Forest and Market-Garden were seen as a pincer operation to open Germany from the North and to isolate the Ruhr industrial region.

Germany Spent TOOOO many resources on stuff like the Tiger 1 and 2 and the Maus, if they kept building panthers and Pz 4s
they would've had a better chance




If they left Russia alone then they might have had a better chance also

Germany always makes the same mistakes. They declare war on the whole world. Not a winning plan in my opinion.

That was never going to happen. Soviet agents, rank-and-file communists and their fellow travelers had penetrated all levels of both the FDR/Truman and Churchill administrations - like Harry Dexter White, the Treasury official under whose department much of the Silvermaster Ring worked. The pro-Soviet machinations of subversive government employees led to, among other things, the exportation of more than HALF of US wartime production to the Soviet Union and the total compromise by espionage of US materiel from the proximity fuse to the atom bomb, to the postwar Deutschmark printing plates.

I never thought about this. The amount of casualties for Germany in North Africa and the Battle of Britain and loss of material to go with it is not insignificant. Especially when you think how close they got to winning the eastern front.

The numbers look big, but it's what, 4 months worth of stuff on the Eastern Front? I suppose it's possible it would make a difference, but there's a lot of factors going on here. If they ignored the South, the allies surely would have attacked from that direction earlier, and it wouldn't have been long before their only real ally was lost and allied planes were threatening southern Germany and even the Romanian oil fields. Going to NA made a lot of sense. It wasn't especially heavily manned / fortified, you had the Italian Navy (well, on paper), and Egyptian oil would have been a HUGE win for the axis if they had been able to get it. You also force the Brits to go the long way around Africa to do anything in the region.

So yeah, there were reasons. The other thing about the numbers is that it was a gradual thing. You read Rommels book and there's times when he only has a few dozen operational German tanks. Even at it's largest, the German contingent on Africa was never all that big.

From 1941 to 1943, Germany lost more men and every category of equipment (especially planes) in Africa than they lost during the Stalingrad campaign.  They also effectively trained the US and UK armies in modern warfare.

Yes that men and material would have turned the tide in their favour in the East.

They also had 1 million men and 3/4 of the Luftwaffe in the west to counter the allied bombing offensive.

The war really turned against the Germans in the East when they lost air superiority against the Soviets.  Soviet tactical air support took an enormous toll on German supply chains.

Shit the number of 88 flak batteries in the west ALONE could have turned the tide in the east as anti tank batteries.  The East is a wet dream for an 88 crew.

WW2 was a much closer run war than most people think.  No battles in the Mediterranean, Balkans, Africa and Germany will probably win or get very favorable peace treaty swallowing most of Eastern Europe in 1942-3.

Germany with a 1 front war against the Western Allies would be very interesting.  
I don’t see the invasion of the continent being a success.

5 months vs 26...and Stalingrad wasn't exactly the only thing going on out East. I'm not saying those resources wouldn't have been helpful in the East, but the real problem is that the Germans were simply massively outnumbered. Most of the time in Africa, the Germans had just a few hundred tanks, often even less. The OKW gave formations in Africa grand names, but it was often a relatively small force in the grand scheme. Sure, a bunch of Italian tin can "tanks" were there, but they were nearly useless. In any case, we'll never know, but I don't believe that any Corps ever made would make up for the personnel /strategic shortcomings out east. If the krauts had no enemies other than the Soviets...now that would have feed up a lot of resources.

The aircraft losses in North Africa would have allowed them to maintain air superiority in the East.

The war turned against them in the East when lost air superiority.  Kind of the most important thing a modern war.

They did that for a lot of things. Over-engineer the fuck out of everything.

I think that was what Stalin believed was going to be the deal. He was incredibly resistant to the idea of Germany launching an offensive against the USSR while warring with the West.

Hitler was operating under a disadvantage.   He was insane.

For an insane guy, he had a pretty good run- for a tyrant. His strategy for outrageous claims, taking from and defeating his enemies to acquire land/ property/ people/ etc. and sticking to the plan was pretty much jaw dropping. Dicks out all-the-time. Thank God it caught up to him.

Debatable. Just because they lost 8,000 planes overall, it's not like it was a force of 8,000 you could just drop into the east. So the question isn't "would 8000 planes have made a difference?" the question is, would another 350 planes per month made a difference?

Another factor you're ignoring is that it takes a sizeable air force to defend the Reichs southern front regardless of where that front is. Just because you decide "screw Africa!" doesn't mean that you don't need ANY  planes protecting Europe from attacks from the south. It's a world war, you just can't have completely undefended fronts. Before you know it, you're only talking about adding a couple hundred planes / month to the Eastern front, which is only going to delay the loss of air superiority. Your enemy in the east will make 125,000 combat aircraft and lend lease another 15,000 more. Meanwhile, the USA made over 100,000 planes in 1944 alone...and that number would have got larger with each subsequent year had the war been extended. So yeah, while more air forces would have certainly helped in the east had they been operational early on and employed at essentially the perfect time, in the grand scheme you're hoping for a magic bullet scenario. It's much more likely that you'll lose the numbers game anyway, eventually. The way things worked out in real life, sure, the Germans lose air superiority, and then shit starts to go poorly for them. In your alternate reality it's entirely possible that Russia would have turned into more of a stalemate and what would have been the decisive campaigns would have been in southern Europe. Either way. Krauts lose. They simply don't have the man power or the production capabilities to protect every front from an enemy alliance that can essentially choose when/where to fight (outside of the Eastern front where the Soviets had little choice). We had the logistical superiority to land large invasion forces, protect them with massive navies, and attack beyond that beach heads with enough planes to blot out the sun.

To actually win, what the Germans really needed was improved V2 rockets armed with nuclear warheads. Otherwise they are pretty much toast in any realistic scenario.

No I don’t think he was.

Hitler’s problem was he was right about the invasion of France in 1940.  

The greatest collection of generals told him it was impossible, and after giving the ideas of Manstein, Guderian and British Generals Fuller and Liddell-Hart, the Green Light, he ends up winning one the greatest victories in military history.

He broken watch’d his generals, and Germany paid the price at every turn from then on because he knew better.

Kind of the same principle how a gambler gets hooked because they won big, their first time in Vegas.

6 million Ukrainians may have a slight disagreement with you on the let live part.

Please clarify this.  Don't quite understand the connotation of the comment.

It is a fascinating topic to speculate on.  Germany winning or signing a highly favourable peace in spring 1943, then pivoting to the West.  

Starting with the Battle for Moscow through Stalingrad, were all very close run ordeals.  The material that went to North Africa would have had very significant impact in the Germans favour.  How much is speculation.  It could be anything from it delays their inevitable defeat 12 months - it allows them to win 1943.  We just don't know.

What we do know is that in the West if there was no war in the East the Germans will probably be able to prevent a successful Allied invasion of the continent.  A shift of German men and resources West from the East in 1943, allows them to confront the Western Allies with millions more men.  Furthermore, German victory or favourable peace in the East means they will at the very least still possess the Romanian oil fields at worst and the Southern Russian oil fields at best.  

This would give them a massive boost in capability.  The Germans lost WW2 for a multitude of reasons, at the very top of that list is running out of gas.  Adolph Galland said one the biggest problems the Luftwaffe faced wasn't the enemy, but the chronic fuel shortages that plagued their ability to not only operate, but more importantly to train new pilots.  

The extra gas would and material shift West would allow them to confront the Allied air offensive not only with more piston engine fighters, but also with large numbers of ME-262s.  The problem was they just didn't have the gas to train enough pilots.

I don't think the Germans would have ever "won" WW2, but what I do think they would have done is signed another favourable peace treaty in the West after stopping an Allied invasion of France.  They couldn't ever win, because from the ground up their military was never capable of invading Britain.  And Britain was an unsinkable aircraft carrier for American industrial might.  

With an peace treaty signed between Germany and the Western Allies in the 1944-1945 timeframe, it would be interesting to see if that would have been the next "Cold War".  Both sides would have developed nuclear capability at around the same time.

During the Russian counter-offensive following the failure to capture Moscow, a large group of Germans were caught in a pocket near Demyansk  The Luftwaffe was able to resupply them and they were later able to break out. This success was part of the reason Hitler believed Goering could supply the 6th Army

Without the massive resources the US and Britain sent the Soviets?  It would have been a no biggie, just as the Russian Empire's huge population and resource base advantage over Imperial Germany was a no biggie in WWI.

The Soviets get a lot of traction from the fact they were on the winning side in WWII, but in reality without Lend-Lease they would have been unable to do anything other than keep the Germans out of Moscow.  The quarter-million Dodge and GMC trucks we sent them was what allowed the Soviet Army to logistically sustain large mechanized offensives during the last half of the war.

Yep, without American lend-lease supplies they were in dire straits.  American corporations pulled the USSR out of medieval times.  

Anthony Sutton has an excellent book on the US aid to the USSR.

https://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Bolshevik-Revolution-Capitalists/dp/190557035X





They were basically insolvent without American loans.  

Almost 40% of their aviation gasoline came from the US.  

The US provided the bulk of the Red Army's vehicles, sending them over 500,000.  

The US also sent them something like 22,000 tanks.  

30% of the Red Air force were American planes, 10% were British planes.  

The US also gave them a sizeable percentage of locomotives.  

A conservative estimate is without Lend-Lease the Red Army would have been half as effective.  But being that the majority of their logistics tail was made up of US vehicles and locomotives, that may be optimistic.  

Without US aid the Germans would have probably won in the east, or got a favourable peace treaty in 1943.