Interesting animation of German invasion of Soviet Union…

Thank you very much CWO Marc.

Morning, Worsham.

My favorite German warship actually built was the Bismarck. One of the best battleships of the war.

My favorite planned German warship was the H-44. The H-44 would have had double the displacement of the Yamato battleship. It would have had 20" guns; instead of the 17" guns found on the Yamato. It was planned to have 68 AA guns; compared to 24 for the Yamato. It also would have been by far the most heavily armored battleship Germany had ever built. The intention was to make it impervious to attack.

@abworsham4

Please send me his strategies and game reports!

Impressive…

It would be the 100 million N. Americans against only the Germans plus the “desirable” races.

The massive extinction of these other people would not take place until everything globally were settled. I think the limited nature of the extermination would not be on the grand scale until America was dealt with. I think we are assuming a level of cooperation in former UK colonies akin with the French conquests, so the level of Serbian reaction would have been somewhat mitigated by the axis partners carving up that nation and exacting the type of ethnic violence that occurred much latter. Germany had a commitment to pit old enemies against each other in an effort to make their job easier.

The Soviets i feel would be somewhat difficult, but they did convert a few divisions of Russians who were against Stalin.  The middle east was another basket of potential friends who could be enlisted easily to fight the Jews. Germany raised a number of Muslim units in the war.

If Hitler was removed, the replacement would be far worse because a NAZI victory would remove all the remaining inhibitions against violence against what they deemed lessor men. The SS would have selected somebody like Heydrich who had the most firm convictions of their type.  The choice would have to be political leader, and not a military one.

On the German-Japanese partnership, i think they would not fight until USA had surrendered first. Once all opposition was gone eventually it would happen, but the Germans would have the best scientists, so the Japanese would be at a disadvantage.

@balungaloaf:

without US aid assistance via lend lease, without the allied strategic bombing campaign tying up much of the luftwaffe and anti air defenses, and without the threat of invasion keeping millions of german soldiers in europe, the soviets would have been smashed before they could ever set up a counter attack.  if moscow was taken, the people would give up on their communist overlords and capitulate.

You alluded to the pressure the U.S. and Britain put on Germany; and I fully agree that pressure was immense. Even in 1940–before the U.S. was technically at war–its industrial production created profound implications for the balance of power in Europe. With massive numbers of American aircraft being produced and sent to Britain, Germany had to either a) find a way to keep pace, industrially, with the U.S. and Britain combined, or b) watch its cities and people be destroyed by waves of British and American bombers. The invasion of the Soviet Union was largely precipitated by the desire to allow Germany to attain the raw materials and industrial capacity to achieve outcome A.

However, keeping pace with the production capacity of the U.S. and Britain also required Germany to invest heavily in its own production facilities. That investment diverted effort from what would have been immediately useful production against the Soviet Union. During 1942, the Soviets out-produced the Germans 3:1 or even 4:1 in all major land categories of production, and even out-produced the Germans 2:1 in planes.

Prior to launching Operation Barbarossa, the German military staff had incorrectly believed that the Soviet Army consisted of 200 divisions. Divisions which had fought very poorly in the Soviets’ 1940 invasion of Finland. In the spring of 1941, the German Army consisted of 150 divisions; 100 of which were used for the invasion of the Soviet Union. But in the months after the invasion, the Soviets were quickly able to expand the size of their army to about 600 divisions. Given the imbalance of sheer numbers, it is very unlikely Germany could have prevailed in a war against the Soviet Union even despite its military’s advantage on a man-for-man basis.

I haven’t gotten to “Day of Battle” yet, I am just finishing up “An Army at Dawn.”  With the template he uses, he gathers a lot of personal journal entries and witness accounts. So I think it would be fair to say that there will be a high probability that he will shed some light on Italian battle plans he may have had.  I know he goes in depth about Operation Husky which would be a given. Even if there is not that much substantial info about that specific topic, I would still suggest buying and reading the books.  Its probably one of the best historical war narratives I have ever read.

KurtGodel7, very good post, thank you.

I’m still not convinced however, I’ll reply to a few of your points below further:

Germany desperately needed the Russian oil by 1943 (as well as Russian grain which I will discuss further below).  That they failed to take the Caucasus during this time was their last realistic chance at victory, IMO.  However, had they taken the oil wells, but with the Russians destroying them in the process as was quite likely, would the Germans be able to restore the flow of oil in sufficient time? It might take months, even years to rebuild the necessary infrastructure in the best of circumstances, let alone during a brutal war.  The German industry was already hard pressed to supply the necessary armaments and did not have a great deal of experience with oil industry in the first place.  I think they would not have been able to do this.

The same idea goes for the chromium, vanadium, etc., though this would be less difficult for the Germans to accomplish (or mitigate as you also suggest) than the oil problem.

While Germany might have been able to supply an equivalent amount of money, material and engineers to work on their atomic program, there simply were much fewer top nuclear physicists in all Europe than existed in the US.  Consequently, it would have probably cost more and taken longer than the US program for this reason alone.  I have no doubt they could have eventually done it, but I don’t see how they develop nuclear weapons before the allies developed a delivery system that could get through their defenses.

The German V-2 was a technological marvel, but other than size, no more advanced than the rockets being built by Dr. Goddard.  After the war, when Dr. Goddard was able to examine a captured V-2, he was convinced the Germans had stolen his work.  And the Germans might have because most of his designs were on file in the US patent office, available for public viewing (which the Germans did prior to the war).  I think had the Americans wanted to (and Dr. Goddard certainly did) they could have built a superior rocket in a couple months and have it mass-produced in six.  As the A-bombs designs at that time were quite heavy, it might have taken longer than that to build a nuclear capable rocket…but how much longer?

Alternatively, the Allies could have either copied the German jets to enable a delivery system, or devise other means (boats/submarines? special ops?) to deliver these weapons.

In addition, I consider the German attack on Russia to be about food as well as oil  The Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe, and helped the Germans tremendously in 1943.  But food was scarce in 1944 and onward.  Partly this was due to Russian recovery of territory.  But it was also because the Ukraine was normally not sufficient by itself to feed Germany (the year of the capture of Ukraine by the Germans was one of the best years for Ukrainian agriculture as the weather was nearly perfect).  Of course, the poor treatment of the Ukrainians by the Germans did not lend itself to helping this problem either. In order to assure itself of adequate food, I think the Caucasus (the next logical food source) was needed.