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.
North Africa Axis Question
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@221B:
I really don’t think any of the choices would have made a significant difference. IMO, the best alternative would be for Franco to permit Hitler (as Hitler had requested) overland transport of his troops to take Gibraltar. This would have closed the western Mediteranian and as such, the allies would have had no significant reason to hold the Malta or the eastern mediteranian.
A reasonable second alternative would have been if the Axis could have convinced Turkey to join them. Turkish forces, reinforced by the German armaments could have initiated a drive down the Levant in a attempt to close the Suez canal. Not sure if this would have been sucessful but given the British were hard-pressed to stop Rommel in the West, they wouldn’t have had many reserves to be able defend the east at the same time.
Had the Italians had the aircraft carrier Aquila opperational, the British may have not attempted an attack on Taranto. This would have kept the best heavy ships of Italy in the war.
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The period of June 1940-June 1941 I call the lost year for the axis based on the utter waste of operations that they undertook.
After finishing off Poland and France as well as many other smaller nations the only thing they did was take Greece and Yugoslavia when the last 10 months before they accomplished alot more.
Hitler never really committed to a Mediterranean strategy as Admiral Raeder recommended, instead relegating that area for Italy to deal with. If he went after Greece early the British would not be as prepared to defend Crete and cost Hitler heavy loses taking that island, of which would have finished off Malta. Having a clear shipping lane to get his army to Africa could have made the difference against England and exposed the entire middle east to Hitler and given him the oil and probably made it possible to postpone his attack against Russia as he had compensation from these conquests.
He might have put pressure on Turkey to have a go against Russia ( old enemies).
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This is a tough one, I picked the Italian AC option, but its not that simple. I picked that one to represent not only having the AC, but also for the Italian navy to have a different mind set in general. Had the Italians been of the mindset to have naval avation, and been more agressive after their earlier set backs, it would have been a different ball game, so to speak.
Now the point has been made, but it always bares repeating, the fall of malta is key to a real Italian victory. An Italian AC would, of course, go along way to help the Italians in a victory here as well.
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I’m new but have been reading the threads for a while and i choose “another Luftwaffe Fliegerkorps added to the theater” because it would have permitted the German air power to kill the UK convoys and take out Malta. It might of even taken out the USS Wasp or HMS Ark Royal on their missions to bring fighters to Malta which would have altered the course of the war.
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Another Panzer divison WITH A GOOD SUPPLY LINE!! Thats what killed Rommel was lack of supplies.
Had the Italian Navy been in control of the Mediternean the ports of Tobruk and Benghazi could have been used more, this would have helped shorten the supply lines for the Axis.
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I’m new but have been reading the threads for a while and i choose “another Luftwaffe Fliegerkorps added to the theater” because it would have permitted the German air power to kill the UK convoys and take out Malta. It might of even taken out the USS Wasp or HMS Ark Royal on their missions to bring fighters to Malta which would have altered the course of the war.
After giving this some thought I chose the Luftwaffe option for similar reasons. As has been pointed out, the biggest problem the Axis had in North Africa in 1940 was supply. German planes could help solve that problem; both by sinking Allied ships bound for Malta (as you suggest), and by destroying Allied aircraft on Malta’s airfields. The more planes Germany was able to throw at Malta, the less of a thorn in the Axis’s side it would have become. As some pointed out earlier in this thread, those planes could also have been used to support German operations against the British in Egypt.
I ruled out the Italy-related options because of the overall ineffectiveness of Italy’s military and war effort. Giving Italy radar-equipped, modern ships or an aircraft carrier would have been useless except to the extent that Italy had the will, military preparedness, training, and military awareness necessary to use those weapons to dominate the Central Mediterranean. Given that Italy achieved so little in relation to the military resources it did have; giving it still more military resources seems rather pointless.
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Ultimately, anything that would help the Axis get supplies and troops to Africa (including a successful assassination of Hitler :-P) would have made a huge difference on that front IMO.
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I’m against the efficency of an Italian AC. Mussolini tought he didn’t need any, because you know, Italy itself is an AC in the medi.
What killed the italians in North Africa? Low Tech, they where basically fighting with ww1 equipments. Same thing for the navy. No radar? pfft.
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What would have helped the Axis achieve victory in North Africa? I’m tempted to answer “More interference from Churchill.” Wavell and O’Connor scored a huge victory over the Italians with Operation Compass, and Churchill promptly blew it by sending British troops from North Africa to reinforce Greece (where they ended up being driven into the sea by the invading Germans).
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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.
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@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.