What if Germany magically had Plan Z?

1939:

Germany invades Poland, overrunning it within weeks, followed by a declaration of war by France and Britain.

Despite the pleas of Donitz, however, instead of building U-boats, Hitler orders Raeder to continue on his massive surface fleet. Hitler decides the O-class battlecruisers will be continued.

All other surface ships (besides extra Panzerschiffle) of Plan Z will continue to be built:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Z

How will the Western Allies adapt to a different Kreigsmarine? Will the Lion class battleships continue to be built? How will naval warfare in the Pacific fare, particularly with less development of anti submarine warfare? How many ships of Plan Z could have been built? Will the war have ended sooner? Could the Western Allies landed earlier, therefore allowing them to take over more of Europe?

What do you think?

Part of Hitler’s Götterdämmerung, but lost on me.
It was the capital!
Budapest and the West be damned: stop the  enemy at the gates(back door).
I have read two books on Berlin(10+ years ago) and need to reread them, but they sadden me.

@CWO:

@Hobbes:

@RedArmySoldier:

So it’s either ‘join together vs Russkieland’, or ‘fall together’.

Isn’t this what happened in real life?

Not really. In the last days of the war in Europe, the Nazis entertained all kinds of fantasies that the Anglo-Americans would come to their senses and would team up with them to fight the barbarous Soviet hordes, but it never happened.  The Soviet/Anglo-American alliance held together until the surrender of Germany, and indeed until the surrender of Japan: Stalin fulfilled his prior commitment to go to war against Japan three months after Germany surrendered (the time which had been allocated for him to shift some of his forces from Europe to the Far East).  Germany surrendered on May 7, and the USSR invaded Manchuria almost exactly on schedule on August 9.  In Europe, the Soviet, American and British armies all settled into the occupation zones which had been defined ahead of time for each power.  The predefined occupation zones were even respected where the fighting had taken the Americans into areas assigned to the Russians (such as Leipzig) and the Russians into areas assigned to the Anglo-Americans (such as parts of Austria, and of course the western half of Berlin).

Yeah, but afterwards the West set up the ‘denazification’ because they needed the former Nazis to run West Germany, while taking a blind eye to both the fascist regimes of Portugal and Spain since they were anti-communist as well, and had no problems in supporting dictatorships everywhere to prevent the communists from taking power.

Well, it’s all here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan

The main difference is, that in reality the Germans didn’t make their right wing as strong as it should have been according to the original plan. The plan called for a particularly massive German right flank sweeping through the Low Countries and North West France, and reaching as far as the Channel. The center (Alsace-Lorraine) as well as the Eastern front (against the Russians) would be relatively weak. The idea was, to defeat France before Russia could mobilize in force.

So that entire plan is very different from the 1870 Franco-German war, when Germany first defeated an initial French advance into the Rhineland, and then won a series of victories in Northern France. But I don’t think that the plan as originally conceived, would have met with great success. The main flaws in the original Schlieffen plan were, imho:
(a) It banked on a slow Russian mobilization - in reality, the Russians invaded soon, and while they were soundly defeated, their initial advance required an answer of course.
(b) It called for an invasion of the Netherlands, which would not have contributed much to the main purpose of defeating France and would have consumed valuable additional resources to defeat the Dutch.

I hold it for possible that a different modification of the plan would have been more successful, however. If the right flank had been reinforced at the cost of Alsace-Lorraine, while still meeting the Russians and invading Belgium only, then the Germans might have reached the Channel ports in time, and it could have been more difficult for the British to land in great numbers. But that’s still pretty tough, considering the available roads and means of transportation.
Anyway, that wouldn’t be the original Schlieffen plan, so the answer that most closely resembles my view on the original plan would have been “Germans get slowed down and get defeated near Paris, while the Russian horde takes East Prussia”.

Read “world war 2 behind closed doors” by laurence rees

There was a secret part in the treaty between the french, british and poles which the brits and the french promised military assistance against a German attack not a Soviet attack and remember they did not help in the war between the poles in the soviets in late 1910’s and early 1920’s but instead suggested the curzon line (which the Molotov-Ribbentrop line basicly followed)

Also the soviets at Tehran were more interested in soviet post war borders than they were in actually winning the war and remember in 1943 this was not a certainty. They wanted to keep there pre 1941 gains.

This is just a brief overview of some othe parts of the book I suggest you read it. It is very good.

The brits and the french could have attacked the siegfried line before the germans finished it and probably would have been succesful and because they did not co-operate with the Belgium people (I don’t know the correct word) and the dutch because the later two did not want to appear co-operating with the allies because at that time they were neutral. The Germans had a brilliant strategy in attacking (the aaa territory North West Europe) and then following nit up with the tank drive through the ardennes they cut of the Elite French and British troops from the rest of the army. They shouldn’t have allowed Dunkirk and should have forced the British and French into the sea and this would come back to haunt them.

Most of the transports and escort ships used to ferry men and supplies were Italian ships or in some cases captured French and Greek freighters.

the German navy had very little surface forces in the Med.

@calvinhobbesliker:

How did Poland provoke the Germans into attacking?

they didn’t, they just were in between…

@marine36:

But you see, Roosevelt wanted war with Germany, to help his buddy Stalin, so it would have happened eventually.

And I do believe the Tommies whipped Rommel all by there lonesome at El Alamean, though it is doubtful such success would have lasted once he got back to Tunisia and was reinforced.

The 6th Army. Yes, it was a significant number of men. A quarter of a million Germans is nothing to sneeze at! Personally, I don’t think moral is a factor in modern warfare, at least it isnt in the Corp, but you may be right there as well. It is reasonable to assume that the German soldiers are different from U.S. Marines, and are still affected by moral.

Rampant behavior of rape and murder? I am certain SS divisions maintained their dicipline in Russia, it was not until after the fighting had ended in an area and the soldiers had moved on than Himmler would move in with his death squads. The men of the SS where fine soldiers, do not label all of them barbarians for the actions of Himmler. Perhaps you have information that proves otherwise? Well, despite Himmler’s ruthless treatment of Russians, many Russians still did side with the Germans.

the SS were bastards, the waffen-SS were just foreigners. Can understand them a bit: who doesn’t hate RUSSIAN communists?