If Enigma had never been cracked add millions of additional tons of shipping to the bottom of the Atlantic.
What if the holocoust never happened
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If the Nazis in Germany had not held such strong feelings towards ethic cleaning how would the War in the East been different? The Nazis treatment of “lesser races” cost Germany the War.
I just ate all my wife’s pie!!! :|
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@LT04:
Think of all those SS troops guarding those camps, they could’ve bin just one more platoon of elite soilders that could’ve hold off the allies for a few days. It’ didn’t take many SS to scare the living crap out of any allied soilder…
I was wondering if those few days could have been added to the Normandy invasion. That could have had a very diffrent outcome with the war.
On a one to one basis, ok, I’ll give you 1 SS was more scary than 1 Allied Soldier.
Then, of course, I could say that 1 US Delta Force Member is more scary than 1 Terrorist. However, there are like thousands of terrorists for every delta force member in America, so I don’t think adding a few dozen more delta force members are going to make a SIGNIFICANT (notice the emphasis here) impact on the over all course of World History.
It might have impacts on getting XYZ objectives done a few hours faster, maybe a day or two (in a 6 year war) but that’s not SIGNIFICANT. (Emphasis.)
By significant I mean to say that if all those guards were added to the front lines, would Russia have been defeated in 1942 instead of Russia defeating Germany in 1945?
By significant I mean to say that if all those guards were added to the front lines, would England have fallen before America joined the war? Or would France have never been liberated and all the allies slaughtered on the beaches of Normandy.
The answer to all of the above, IN MY OPINION, is no. The few thousand soldiers used to guard political and war prisoners in National Socialist Germany just would not have any significant impact on the over all course of the war.
Just my opinion. I’m not saying, btw, that it would have NO impact. I am saying the impact would not be SIGNIFICANT.
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Jen,
I am just making the point that in the right place with an event as pivotal as D-Day having 1,000 extra SS troops manning the beach heads would have been at a minimum a lot more costly to the Allies.
Had the Allies known they were there they may have even waited, postponed or decided to go a diffrent route into Europe. That would have also been a very diffrent out come.
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Yes, but if we want to get down into the absolute minutia, then we could say if Captain Smith - Army Air Corps - had not gotten ill then the 101st Airborne may have been dropped on the correct target, and thus not been in position to resist the Germans during the battle of the bulge resulting in the loss of World War II.
We commonly refer to a poem written a while ago:
For want of a nail, a shoe was lost
For want of a shoe, a horse was lost
For want of a horse, a message was lost
For want of a message, a battle was lost
For want of a battle, a war was lost
For want of a war, a kingdom was lost.But how often does the war hinge on a mere nail? Now, consider if it was one battalion of soldiers (and I think I am being generous with that number of soldiers). In a war that huge, do you think one battalion is going to be the lynch pin that saves your side? Possibly. But how likely is it they are the nail that stops your horse from losing a shoe and saves the kingdom?
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Jen,
The whole point of this topic is “what if.” The holocoust did happen so to discuss a “what if” is all purely speculation.
Some would say it isn’t the best idea to dwell on “what if’s” because your right it will only lead to a nail losing a kingdom and when the smoke clears all you have left is a lost kingdom.
I don’t think we are going to get to that extreme (well at lest I’m not. I’d stop posting in this topic before it came to that).
Jen I do enjoy you playing devil’s advocate in these topics. If nothing else you do bring up points I would not have considered.
LT
LT
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I was thinking more along the lines of the battalion being equivalent in scope to the nail in the horse’s shoe. Perhaps that nail would have kept that shoe on and resulted in that specific horse getting the message needed to the right person at the right time to save the front from being defeated and thus save the country from falling. But that’s a lot of ifs.
Even if all of them had a 90% chance of happening
90% those soldiers would have been at the right place
90% those soldiers would have been at the right time
90% those soldiers would have been the decisive factor of that battle
90% that battle was the turning point of the front
90% that front was the turning point of the campaign
90% that campaign was the turning point of the warWe’re talking 0.90.90.90.90.9*0.9 or 53% they would have been the key to Germany’s victory over the allies. Bear in mind, that’s assuming 90% for all of them. I’d wager that percentage is much lower. I’d even suggest that the correct percentage would have been much closer to 5% for each aspect, in which case the chance that those specific soldiers would have effected anything at all of significance to winning the war in Europe is (1.6 * 10^8)% or 0.000000016%
That’s an infinitesimally small number, but much more realistic when comparing just how capable those men would have been and the odds they were assigned to the right places at the right times with the right equipment and that the allies would have neglected to consider the increased threat levels with those extra assets in place. Actually, thinking more about it, I think that number is incredibly inflated compared to the actual affect those assets would have been to the war if they had been used by the army and not the German political machine.
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i said peace treaty almost happened in ww2 seriously
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I doubt it would have had that much difference at all. Most of the camps were more or less self sustaining and war materials were produced by slave labor at some. Remember Germany never did mobilize its economy to full war production until almost the very end so having more factory workers would have mattered little anyway. And as far as freeing up more SS troops the camp guards were a different branch of the SS (Allgemeine) than the ones the Allies faced on battlefields (Waffen).
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More men ='s longer war (except now with nukes blowing them all up countless of more men there)
Also the u.s.a has found ways to defend form nukes example they have solidified some important parts of the state
And now working on europe if this happens then russia and u.s.a will soon have nukes as useless weapons -
Think of all those SS troops guarding those camps, they could’ve bin just one more platoon of elite soilders that could’ve hold off the allies for a few days. It’ didn’t take many SS to scare the living crap out of any allied soilder. 6 million died. Thats 6 million more people that couldv’e bin torward to the war effort. And if Hitler had the sense to not kill them off, then he also might of had sense to other situations. Like Battle of Britian to keep bombing military and not switch to civilian.
Lets say it prolonged the war for 3-4 months. Think of the ME 262s and all the other amazing german enginiering that could’ve bin put into service in mass. Trains are sending troops and supllies to the lines instead of inocent to their death, contracters and builders reinforcing fortifications instead of building death camps, women, men, old, young who died, could’ve bin building more tanks. Even if it was only 1000 soilders, which I doubt, that could’ve won Bastgone The Allies would still win, but they’d be getting a real pounding all the way to the end.
That’s a really good point. Hitlers bad decisions, pride, and lack of a cognitive central leadership within his armies would have lost him the war regardless. Oh – and people that deny it ever happened are just ingnorant. What pisses me off even more is how much greater the atrocities were in Russia with at least 21 million murdered and we’ll never really know the whole story. The NKVD units were never brought to justice. All that ever gets talked about is the holocaust. That’s good because we should NEVER forget it but Russias own mass murders and death camps are all under the rug. I know, I know, …they were our allies. But seriously, where’s the memorial for those poor 21 million???
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They say if geramyn kept bombing britian in military parts for 1 more week germany would have succeeded and great britian would have surrendered the next week!
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As we all know, Hitler ordered in the"final solution" and began to discriminate certain ethnicitys. Millions were killed, I say what if it didn’t happen. What if Hitler had never ordered a “Final Solution” of any kind.
What you think would’ve happened?
Hitler killed 6 million jews, but only very few of this was german jews, most of the jews come from eastern Europe, France and Russia. When Hitler come to power in 1933, he stole the money from rich jews like Rotschild, and some say this money was used to build up his military forces. So if Hitler was not purging and looting the german jews, he would not got all this money at this early time, and the war would be delayed some years.
Lets say 1 million of this jews was german, that would give him 100 000 more soldiers. Not a decesive factor. The rest 5 million jews was foreigners, and would not contribute to the german war effort what so ever.Hitlers war goal was Lebensraum. He wanted to kill all the slaves in eastern Europe, and make a Reich from France to Ural Mountains. If he did not discriminate other ethnic people, this war would never happen. Why would he attack Russia ? Would the common German soldier volunteer to die just to free the russians from Stalin ?
Because of the Versailles Treaty that left 20 % of the german population under foreign rule, and the financial depression with hyper-inflation and large scale un-employment and starvation, some kind of war was expected. Even the Weimar Republic prepared for a war. But without the ethnic factor, the war would likely be limited to just conquer the territories that was lost because of the Versailles Treaty. The Germans, with a soft Hitler or without Hitler, would just conquer Sudetenland and Schlesien, and then want peace. And since this would happen before Churchill come to power, the war would likely stop there.
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As we all know, Hitler ordered in the"final solution" and began to discriminate certain ethnicitys. Millions were killed, I say what if it didn’t happen. What if Hitler had never ordered a “Final Solution” of any kind.
What you think would’ve happened?
Hitler killed 6 million jews, but only very few of this was german jews, most of the jews come from eastern Europe, France and Russia. When Hitler come to power in 1933, he stole the money from rich jews like Rotschild, and some say this money was used to build up his military forces. So if Hitler was not purging and looting the german jews, he would not got all this money at this early time, and the war would be delayed some years.
Lets say 1 million of this jews was german, that would give him 100 000 more soldiers. Not a decesive factor. The rest 5 million jews was foreigners, and would not contribute to the german war effort what so ever.Hitlers war goal was Lebensraum. He wanted to kill all the slaves in eastern Europe, and make a Reich from France to Ural Mountains. If he did not discriminate other ethnic people, this war would never happen. Why would he attack Russia ? Would the common German soldier volunteer to die just to free the russians from Stalin ?
Because of the Versailles Treaty that left 20 % of the german population under foreign rule, and the financial depression with hyper-inflation and large scale un-employment and starvation, some kind of war was expected. Even the Weimar Republic prepared for a war. But without the ethnic factor, the war would likely be limited to just conquer the territories that was lost because of the Versailles Treaty. The Germans, with a soft Hitler or without Hitler, would just conquer Sudetenland and Schlesien, and then want peace. And since this would happen before Churchill come to power, the war would likely stop there.
I agree with some points here. Hitlers wants were far beyond German means under his time frame. Even if the Jews, Slavs, or other “undesirables” were simply deported or used in combat, this would have NO real effect on the war. Germanys failure to take on the long range bomber program of Walter Weaver before his untimely death and Goerrings demmand for MORE aircraft instead of BETTER aircraft left the Allies with air superiority.
In my personal opinion,
1. NO. The Brits would NEVER have surrendered and fought building to building just as the Nazis did.
2. If peace was negotiated with England after territories were taken to satisfy Germany, this would have closed down the wester front. I believe England would have negotiated peace. This would have still led to the war with Russia which had been brewing since the Spanish Civil War. Germany may have had an excellent chance to take Russia if you take all those resources from the western front and put them against the communists. -
War with the Soviets equaled war with England and France. In order to have avenues for blitzkrieg’s high speed advances I don’t see how Poland could be left alone. There never was the option for Hitler to just focus on the USSR.
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Aldertag is correct in that the vast majority of Holocaust victims were not from Germany. It’s also worth mentioning that the majority of camp guards were not elite SS soldiers but psychopaths recruited mainly in the occupied countries. But while the divertion of manpower didn’t hugely effect the war effort, the program did adversely effect the Axis army in two ways.
Firstly the number of transport vehicles, principally rail stock, needed was a big drain on supply services to the front, as well as bottling up some routes altogether.
Secondly Hitler’s order for the plan dates to the winter of 1941/2, at just the time the war started going badly. From one perspective the entire German war effort from here on was fought as a giant holding operation while the business of the murders was put into effect. Hitler already realised that he could not win in the long term, hence his seemingly wreckless declaration of war againt America. So he was getting in a “victory” while he could before the inevitable military defeat. By this time he did not consider any proposal for a ceasefire, as the cost and outcome of the war was already subordinated to the Holocaust order.
Another point to consider is that when the Soviets “liberated” the camps they kept them going to murder their own long list of “enemies”, and may have murdered twice as many people in the camps after the war as the Nazis killed during it. -
Thank you Flanshman. FINALLY, someone who speaks out against the Soviets atrocities. 21 million murdered in Russia alone. Their “labor camps” people rarely returned from. When The Soviets began raping and murdering axis refugees after the war, American soldiers happened to be present. At first, when out soldiers tried to stop it, the Russians turned their weapons on us. Finally, the soldiers began opening fire into the air and a Soviet commander had it stopped.
To save face in front of us, that commander had a number of his men hung on the spot.
I do however disagree that the holocaust interfered with the war effort on a significant. My backbone to this opinion being that many camps were bieng used as slave labor for profiteers. Inmates were helping not only the manufacturing of war goods such as clothing, shells and aircraft, they were also used in other companies such as Germanys main porcelain concern.
Suprisingly, Himmler actually suggested that skilled workers be fed and housed better but this was not really followed.
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