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.
Worst Axis Mistake
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The Holocaust was the worst Axis Mistake.
If they didn’t do that. Then what did they really do wrong?
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The Holocaust was the worst Axis Mistake.
If they didn’t do that. Then what did they really do wrong?
NOTHING
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This was sort of said earlier but I’ll just state it again.
Biggest mistake was hitler not letting his panzer commanders do their thing in russia. Hitler could of taken leningrad almost out right and/or had moscow in his grasp back in aug/sept 41 before he split the panzers or Amry Group Center north & south. I also dare to say that Japan should of restarted hostilities with russia to keep the siberians in the east in order to ease the preassure off germany. Japan just needed to perform about 6 months of fighting (my guess) to adaquately support Germany.
The next 2 worst mistakes would have to be dunkirk and the German DoW on US.
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Major wars and conquests usually demontrate new dramatic combat force multipliers
Eqyptian conquests were based on massed armed chariots.
post Punic Roman conquests ushered in Legion tactics, equipment, and training.
Mongol conquests ushered in mobile archery.
Medieval times bought us armored suit combat.
WWI brought us line based trench defenses, machine guns, and neutralizing death zones.
WWII gave even more.
Submarine and thier countermeasures.
Armored mechanized cavalry.
Air Power.Air power eventually proved to be the biggest force multiplier.
Keys for that air power were equipment and trained pilots.
Axis trained pilot counts dropped dramatically after the Battles of Britain, Midway, and Coral Sea.
The battles themselves were not mistakes.
1 Lack of air power focus,
1A Not building enough aircraft carriers.
1B Lack of sustained pilot training and development.
Lack of air power focus was the ultimate Axis mistake.
This latest war is more based on Identity than expensive ordinance delivery systems.
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A bit provokative, yes, but I really think the worst mistake the Axis ever made was declaring war upon the entire world and still sincerely hoping to win ultimately.
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If peace could have been maintained with the USSR the Germans wouldnt have lost. Either through attacking their colonies (africa ) or the UK itself the UK would have been defeated and all the units that were tied up on the eastern front protecting against the west would keep Germany safe. A 3 way cold war might have developed instead.
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A 3 way cold war might have developed instead.
COOOOOL!
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I like the idea of Germany and Soviet Union versus all the rest.
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From the German perspective was declaring war on the US.
The Pacific/Asian front I don’t think benefited nor hurt the Axis in Europe.
I think Germany could of handled Russia and Britain. Even though Japan might have been destroyed.
Much like the movie “Fatherland”
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Interesting comments Dylan.
If America had stayed Neutral with Germany, I wonder how different things would have been.
No Operation Torch…. No Italian Campaign, No D-day/Normandy, or atleast how we think of it.
WOW.
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Interesting comments Dylan.
If America had stayed Neutral with Germany, I wonder how different things would have been.
No Operation Torch…. No Italian Campaign, No D-day/Normandy, or atleast how we think of it.
WOW.
I think post war there would be no communism, but the US will have to worry about the spread of Nazism. However, I think it would be more unstable and collapse earlier.
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Germany could never have beat the Soviet Union, with America or without America. The harder the war got, the tighter Stalin’s grip over his people became and he was a psychopath so it really would not matter to him if every last one of his people was sacrificed as long as he was still the boss. Same goes for Hitler, but there were more Russians than Germans. America beat Japan fair and square, but what what help they gave in Europe could have been made up by Russia if they weren’t in the war. It might have cost a few more tens of millions of Russian dead and gone on a lot longer, but Stalin would be fine with that.
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would you Vance still stick to your Opinion with the U.S. totally out of the War?…
- No Landlease
- No Support to the U.K. at all
- No Torch and all other OPS
- No Money support
???
Things could be a lot diffrent, even to an extend we might not know of…like a peace treaty of Axis and Soviet Union by splitting the Ukraine…an Invasion of the U.K. and a Arabian league against Soviet Union and /or Germany?..
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Not with US totally out of the war. If Japan were able to resume hostilities in the far east against Russia things could be different, so USA fighting the pacific war was important. But apart from that, the Soviet Union could not have been beat by Germany. Their totalitarian system had no concern about sacrificing their own people by the millions and eventually Germany would have run out of young men to send against them. It would have been a true battle of annihilation with the determining factor being Russia’s 168 million population (as of 1939) versus Germany’s 70 million. But I’m not a historian so I don’t know.
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If it was just Germany vs Russia no outside interference there is no way germany wouldnt have won, they wouldn’t have to divide there forces and their new tech like tiger tanks and the me 262’s etc would have been able to make a decisive difference since the war wouldnt have been lost when it was introduced (tigers first showed up in kursk but they were still teething)
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@Vance:
Not with US totally out of the war. If Japan were able to resume hostilities in the far east against Russia things could be different, so USA fighting the pacific war was important. But apart from that, the Soviet Union could not have been beat by Germany. Their totalitarian system had no concern about sacrificing their own people by the millions and eventually Germany would have run out of young men to send against them. It would have been a true battle of annihilation with the determining factor being Russia’s 168 million population (as of 1939) versus Germany’s 70 million. But I’m not a historian so I don’t know.
You make a very good point here Vance, Regardless of the US’s entry into the European theater the Soviet Union was going to come out on top of its conflict with Germany provided everything up to the invasion in 1941 remains unchanged. It’s important to note that by June 1941 the British were still very much in the fight and recovering from the worst of the Blitz and I think that without finishing of this front (which by this time Germany had no real hope of doing) Germany could not have won its war against the Soviets. IF in this speculative scenario the US is still fighting Japan and still providing lend-lease to Britain and the Soviet Union, then it becomes even more unlikely that Germany could have pulled off even a negotiated victory and as the war dragged on this would only multiply.
The best description I have ever heard was that the Axis (Germany & Japan anyway) were like very sharp swords but with each slash (battle fought) they sword would become weaker and the bigger the slash the weaker it would be.
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If USA had stayed true neutral Russia and England would have fell.
The RAF was pretty much living on aviation fuel supplied by usa. No fuel means no contestation of German air blitz. with out fuel, the RAF would have been doomed with or without radar.
now had the german air blitz worked, Uk would have sued for peace, leaving only russia by it self. Germany with a 1 front war would have crushed russia imo.
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The answer for the Pacific is simple….while Pearl Harbor was a brilliant idea, the fact that they missed the carriers by a week, and didn’t hit ANY fuel tanks. The planning officer should have been shot. Why it isn’t on here (3/4th waves?? c’mon) as a whole baffles me.
For Germany, it was putting their faith in the Italians in the first place.
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I put strikes on Pearl, because I wonder how much a few
more months repairs and set backs would have helped Japan’ s conquests and then consolidation of them. Otherwise my choice would be: Hitler’s unnecessary declaration of war against US.
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