Did Hitler really die in Berlin?

@andrewaagamer

The fact that there weren’t many divisions in Germany at the time. Obviously Germany would have brought several armies if they landed in Berlin, but maybe they could have assassinated some top Nazis beforehand.

Bismarck

@CWO:

Intereting hypothetical question.  One amusing aspect is the idea of Hitler, with his long track record of breaking treaties and of attacking other countries without warning, expressing shock over Japanese treachery – though I guess it’s not unimaginable, since the same track record basically shows that he was quite capable of changing his foreign policies in any way that he felt served his interests at any given time.  And relations between Germany and Japan were not always cordial.  For instance, Germany supposedly expressed shock over the Rape of Nanking and offered itself as a mediator between China (with whom I think it had a degree of military advisory relations) and Japan.  And Japan was highly annoyed when Germany signed the August 1939 nonaggression pact with Japan’s old enemy, Russia.

Even taking Hitler’s impulsive and erratic nature into account, however, it’s pretty hard to fathom why he’d declare war on Japan in December 1941.  The two countries were partners under the Tripartite Pact, whose bottom line was, frankly, that Germany and Japan agreed to stay out of each other’s way as each nation pursued its expansionist policies on opposite sides of the globe.  A war between the two countries, even if it had been declared, would have been virtually impossible to wage since German and Japan were separated from each other by vast stretches of land (notably the USSR, which was unfriendly to both countries) and ocean.

It’s even harder to fathom why Hitler would offer support to the US in December 1941, since the Americans were actively supporting its enemy Great Britain.  I can understand Britain’s wartime partnership with the USSR against Germany, on the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, but Hitler’s support of the US would have been a case of “the friend of my enemy is my friend”, which makes no sense.

Just for argument’s sake, however, I’d guess that if Hitler had inexplicably offered to the US a wartime alliance against Japan, the Americans wouldn’t have accepted it.  Nazi Germany was, to put it mildly, neither liked nor trusted by the Roosevelt administration, and its reaction would probably have been to treat a partnership proposal from Hitler like the offer of a bottle of poison.

it’s pretty hard to fathom why he’d declare war on Japan in December 1941.

I don’t want to speak for Gargantua. But it’s possible that the goal of this declaration of war would be for Germany to distance itself as much as possible from Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack. The underlying objective would be to make the political climate in America less favorable for going to war against Germany.

Nazi Germany was, to put it mildly, neither liked nor trusted by the Roosevelt administration, and
its reaction would probably have been to treat a partnership proposal from Hitler like the offer of a bottle of poison.

The goal of Stalin’s foreign policy was to foster war between Germany and the Western democracies. Stalin hoped to achieve this goal by promoting “anti-fascism.” The Soviet Union would stay neutral in this hoped-for war. This war would weaken both Germany and the Western democracies. Ideally it would be like WWI, and bleed both sides white. That war would set the stage for Soviet expansion westward into Europe. The first stage would be at the expense of Germany and Eastern Europe. The second state would be at the expense of France and possibly other Western democracies.

FDR was extremely eager to embrace the pro-Soviet, anti-fascist foreign policy Stalin envisioned for Western democracies. I don’t see anything Hitler could have done to change that. He didn’t begin to have the kind of penetration into the FDR administration Stalin had. Nor was there any readily available way for him to achieve that penetration. FDR hated Nazis and other Germans, but was very intrigued by communism and by Stalin. It was this mindset which allowed a number of outright communists to achieve positions of great influence in his administration, while anyone with right wing views was either excluded entirely or eased out of any real policy-setting role.

But FDR did not work in a vacuum. Had it been up to him, the United States would have declared war on Germany back in the '30s. The fact it did not do so was because due to strong isolationist forces. While FDR and his allies in the media were working diligently to weaken those forces, even by December 1941 they were still strong. Had Germany declared war on Japan in December '41, it would have been a clear, simple statement. Even FDR and his allies would have found it difficult to distort that statement into something which made war with Germany seem necessary.

By the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, the American pro-war faction had built up too much political momentum for a German declaration of war against Japan to stop them. Sooner or later, the pro-war faction would succeed at getting America into the war; much like it had succeeded in WWI. Even over the short-term, the pro-war faction would still have been able to send large quantities of weapons to Stalin and the Soviet Union, as well as to Britain.

Let’s say that declaring war against Japan would have bought Germany two years of nominal peace with America. While Germany would still have had to deal with large numbers of American made weapons during that two year period, at least it wouldn’t have had to face American soldiers. That two year grace period would have allowed Germany to concentrate more of its military force on its eastern front, instead of having to use as much strength defending against potential or actual Anglo-American invasions elsewhere. (Though they would still have had to defend against the Anglo half of that threat.)

That concentration of force against the Soviet Union would undoubtedly led to a more favorable situation on Germany’s eastern front. More victories, more Soviet soldiers captured, more conquered Soviet land. But I do not think that this alone would have been sufficient for Germany to win the war in the east. In the absence of other factors helping Germany, the German objective on the eastern front should (in this scenario) have been to grab what land it could in the western U.S.S.R., including at least some of the Caucasus oilfields, and then negotiate peace with Stalin. The more successful Germany was on its eastern front, the more presumptively likely Stalin would have been to negotiate an end to hostilities.

This peace treaty would by no means have represented the end of the war. It would merely indicate Germany had survived the first phase of the challenges ahead of it.

I don’t think the situations are comparable.  The Berlin Airlift was intended to bring essential supplies for day-to-day living into a small, well-defined enclave that was entirely under the control of the western Allies and that was being blockaded by the surrounding Russians.  The Crimea is a large peninsula that is undergoing a messy territorial dispute, with fragmented areas of control, and whose problems have little or nothing to do with logistics.

I read the book about him. Very awesome story. Read the book, then watch the movie.  :-D

Sun Tzu is famous for stating that the battle is often won or lost before your troops even engage the enemy.
Alliances were key before the start of war.

I would have

1  Find a way to ally with the USSR for at least a decade  ( hard to do since Ger, Ity and Jpn were joined by treaty in the Axis as an anti-communist effort)

1A Invite the USSR to attack the British through Persia.

1B Concentrate resources to wrestle Arabian oil away from the British and their allies .

2  Leaving the Mediterranean sphere to Italy was a disaster
and I would have ended earlier.

3  Italian troops should have gotten upgraded training before they were lost in the early going.

4  I would have started joint military war games/exercises in Austria and Czechoslovakia with the German, Italian, and other axis troops to get them all up to par.
This would get them all used to German close air support and combined arms tactics that worked so well in the french blitzkreig.

5.  Invited the Japanese admiralty (especially Yamamoto) to inspect the European fleets soon after signing the Axis Tri party agreements

6.  Yamamoto was opposed to the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo  Tripartite Pact.
I would Court Yamamoto and win him over in a way similar to how Hitler got support from the Asters in the UK.

7.  Sponsor alliance ready, facist-type, organizations in Egypt, Cyprus, Ireland, Norway, Iceland, etc… who would at least be neutral to the UK.  Whoever the Axis can use to gain leverage over the UK.

8.  What worked so well in Norway should have been done in Egypt near the Suez Canal and/or Cyprus.  Before the Norway invasion.

@Gargantua:

Of course he could, even if his brain was slow… he would have had THE REST OF TIME!

Probably TIME to let this discussion REST!

@Audacity:

Very interesting.  Can you direct us to published material about this?

I certainly can. My best source is “THE SS, Hitlers Instrument of Terror” by Gordon Williams. It was actually Himmlers idea to incorporate Muslims into SS units as an experiment. They used their new power to quickly murder “religious infidels” including Jews and were eventually given only police authority because of their lack of obediance to SS order. They had their own special collar tabs but were never issued an SS Honour cuff on the sleeve. Himmler had these units engaged in the Balkans, around Greece and a few other minor battles. They were actually fought VERY poorly and were taken off the front lines. For the rest of the war, the units that weren’t disbanded were used for anit-partisan activities and were “attached” to another SS unit but did not have the title SS.

It was a brief experiment that elated Himmler. Hitler has little to do with it as far as I know.

PS – thanks for all the Karma while I’ve been out sick for the last month. You guys rock.