World War II

He could have invaded England - when the British Army pulled out of France they left all their equipment behind - tanks, ammo, etc. They barely had rifles. If the RAF hadn't held out, if the Germans could have landed with total air superiority (like we did during Operation Overlord) then Operation Sea Lion probably would have worked (if there was good weather they could have landed the troops with barges). And if the Germans hadn't gone into Russia - if they had spent another year pounding the Brits, then Britain would have fallen before Pearl Harbour (possibly with help from the Irish).

The British went so far as to set up resistance organisations inside of England. Secret recruits, hidden bases, the whole bit. They estimated that the resistance groups they established would only last about 34 days before being neutralised by the Germans...

WWII was a very close thing. If Hitler had been a bit saner he might have conquered the British Isles and fought a one front war when he hit the USSR. Then again, roughly 90% of the causalities happened on the eastern front - but another year would have allowed him to get the cold weather gear his army needed and have new weapons (including designs looted from the British) with which to fight them.

No, I don't know how this thread turned to WWII, but as history bluff who plays world games I'm glad it did.

Goodgulf

It should be taken into account, though, that Stalin might well have betrayed Hitler if Hitler hadn't done it first. Their economic ideologies made them natural enemies, and they both had imperial ambitions in Europe. While Hitler should definitely have waited until England was out of the way before attacking the USSR, I think the two would have gone to war sooner or later anyway.

Yes, the European war was definitely a close thing. Good thing the bad guys weren't especially smart when it came to war strategy.

History more or less records that Stalin wasn't getting ready for a war - that he expected his treaty with Hitler to last.

Going East wasn't needed; after England fell Hitler could have hit Sweden and then gone into the Middle East - splitting North Africa and allowed Germany to rebuild its African Empire. Plus, Hitler didn't really want to conquer the lesser peoples (Slavs, etc) - he wanted Aryans for his empire. He could have even used any captured English ships (and the new ships any intact shipyards could build) to go after Newfoundland, Canada, India, and Australia (with the help of the Italian navy - once they were unbottled from the Med by the fall of Gibraltar and or Suez).

Even the US was planning what to do if England fell and Newfoundland or Canada was attacked - if memories serves it involved the annexation of Canada as part of a continental defense plan.

Hitler didn't have to make the same mistake that so many others had made (land war in Asia), but he felt the Russians were an inferior people who would be easy to beat. They came that close to taking Moscow, but without the oil fields and being able to rotate units Moscow just didn't matter.

Goodgulf
(Who almost signed a different name - the name I usually use when I discuss things like this)

Goodgulf
Would Germany's invasion of England really have been successful? We'll never know.

The fact that Hitler's generals were very worried about the damage that the Royal Air Force could inflict on the German Army during the invasion gives us an indication that they were well aware that it wouldn't be as easy as previous campaigns. We do know that Hitler agreed to their request that the invasion should be postponed until the British Air force had been 'destroyed'. As the Luftwaffe had 2,800 aircraft stationed in France, Belgium, Holland and Norway and outnumbered the RAF four to one, we can understand the Führer's confidence.

It is generally accepted that it is the RAF's victory in the Battle of Britain that stopped the Germans from attempting Operation Sealion, The assumption that this is the sole reason that the invasion didn't go ahead is however questionable. On the other hand, experts who have considered the problems of Operation Sealion, have questioned whether the invasion could ever have succeeded even with German air superiority

I think we owe a lot to that fine body of water, the English Channel!! I think it was Hitler that hesitated after Dunkirk, rather than his generals. With hindsight that would have been the time to attack us. Whether he would have suceeded is impossible to say. I am sure he had his pals over here, especially amongst the English aristocracy. We were just lucky we had a bit of sea between us and of course a truly great wartime leader in Winston Churchill.

Hitler thought that the British were the natural allies of the German people and doubtless his sentimental view of us caused him to hesitate. However I think his biggest mistake was in invading Russia. The "blitzkrieg" which had proved so successful in Europe couldn't hope to work over the huge distances involved in attacking the Russians. They ran out of food and supplies and the Russian winter kicked in. I also don't think he expected the poorly equipped Russians to fight like they did. That was what defeated the Nazi's more than anything. War on two fronts.

From Hitler's perspective, he should've thrown his panzer forces against the Dunkirk beachead, at the very least inflicting heavy casualties on the British Expeditionary Force as it was attempting to evacuate, then immediately dropped all of the paratroopers he could into southern England to seize airfields by which they could've been supplied and reinforced by air. Even without disrupting the BEF's evacuation, as the Germans failed to do in reality, a large enough paratrooper force might have been successful because all of the British heavy weapons had been left behind on the beach at Dunkirk.

With that opportunity gone, IMHO "Sea-Lion" wasn't a realistic venture via a cross-Channel amphibious operation, and Hitler really still had hoped to make Britain into an ally or at least a friendly neutral, pressuring the British people to accept a negotiated peace via air attacks and a U-boat blockade--his heart was never in an invasion of the British Isles. (Ironically, British strategic planning in late 1940-41 involved eventually defeating Germany basically via relentless air attacks rather than a cross-Channel invasion of German-occupied Europe.)

Len Deighton's alternate history novel, SS-GB, is set in Britain in '41, following a successful invasion and conquest by Germany... --C.K.

I keep on meaning to read that one. Also see Fatherland by Robert Harris.

The reason they needed complete air superiority was what they planned to use for the invasion - unarmed river barges would have made up a big chunk of that fleet. Don't laugh - the same type of "it floats but it was never intended to go to sea" river boats were used during during the Dunkirk evacuation. The thing is those boats (no one would ever call them a ship) were really vulnerable to... um, everything. Slow moving with no armour and no guns - the perfect target for a strafing raid.

Plus once the men are on the beach you have ship huge amounts of supplies to them. Food, ammo, medical supplies, and everything the "red ball express" had to ship after D-Day. If something had interfered with the supply line (say the RAF had hit it) then the German units in England wouldn't have had those necessary supplies - and everything would have gone bad. Not quite as bad as when the troops on the Eastern Front were out of supply (that mostly happened during the winter when the cold was a factor) but bad enough that no general would want to have included "and if that goes wrong we will be out of supply for three days" as part of his battle plan.

Goodgulf

Germans inflicting heavy casualties on the British Expeditionary Force? Seizing British airfields ? You blokes have obviously been influenced by the propaganda spread by the likes of Lord Haw Haw.

As Captain Mainwaring reminded us in Dad's Army, the truth is that the Nazis never recovered from the beating they took from the British at Dunkirk in 1940

On a more serious note it's a fact that the one thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. Both Napoleon and Hitler allied with the Russians only to have Russia turn against them. Both sent their armies into Russia, and in both cases, those armies were devastated.

Technically Russia didn't turn against Hitler - but in both cases General Winter was the most effective commander the Russians had.

Those lessons are why the US wouldn't rule out a nuclear strike in the event of a conventional war with the USSR - they knew they would need to deal with that huge Red Army and thought they'd have to use nukes.

Goodgulf
(Who just noticed that this has been split into its own thread)