Quote:
Originally Posted by Andreas Seidel
Would an experienced military officer managing global strategy have done the trick?
Industry mobilised for war from 1939 onwards?
Winter clothing in Russia?
Jets in 1943?
What events or combination of events do you think would have been neccessary for Germany to win the war?
( [img]smile.gif[/img] And don't say it could never have done it - give them laser guns and they would!)
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A comprehensive plan that envisioned
Operation Sichelschnitt (sickle-stroke) succeeding. The problem with sickle-stroke was that the plan ended at the English channel, there was no comprehensive planning for "what next?".
The important thing missing from sickle-stroke was a long term objective. What is sickle-stroke supposed to accomplish?
Assuming that the objective of sickle stroke is to defeat the enemy completely then sickle-stroke can be extended. If instead of ending sickle-stroke at the English channel, you extend its area of operation into England, then things change in the overall planning. Instead of having the French channel ports as objectives of the breakthrough, you extend their line of march northward and have the encirclement of the Allied forces in Belgium as a second objective. The original plan just called for pushing them to the channel, but if you intend to then move on to England you don't want a long drawn out battle against troops which can be supplied from the sea, you want them completely cut off in a battle of encirclement that Guderian was so good at fighting.
So, when the German units reach the English channel they then move north to link up with units moving south from Holland. The BEF is now surrounded.
Now an invasion of England does not have to contend with the Allied forces which have been shuttled over from Dunkirk. The British at this point have almost nothing to face an invasion with. Home guard units, that's about it.
If you make the paratroop divisions part of sickle stroke and give them British ports as objectives and launch them as soon as it is clear that the BEF is done, there isn't much the British can do about it. The Battle of Britain now becomes what it should have been, every fighter and bomber in the Luftwaffe's arsenal attacking British airfields and radar installations.
An Errol Flynn type of operation launched as soon as the BEF is bottled up would have most likely succeeded. German ships now can transport troops to port facilities instead of needing to land them on beaches. If this had been done quickly the Germans might have been able to get several divisions to England before the Royal Navy could do anything about it. Air power could then be used to resupply these units. As the units advanced they would overrun the RAF bases. As Guderian said several times the best way to defeat enemy air power is to capture the bases they fly from.
Every eyewitness account I have read from people in the British defense forces, preparing to repel the expected German invasion in 1940 read pretty much the same way. "We have five guys and an old Prussian war era cannon to defend 10 miles of beach". "We had to drill with sticks because we had no rilfes". "We had no ammunition to practice with so we had never actually fired a gun"...
I don't think this would have been easy. Every able bodied Brit would have volunteered to fight the Germans with any weapon they could find. The Germans would have massacred British civilians in retaliation. With every pane in the Luftwaffe attacking RAF bases and the RAF fighter planes in the air combined with German units overrunning RAF bases, the Luftwaffe maybe could have established air superiority. And as the fighting in Norway and alter Greece showed, once you gain air superiority the battle is over.
After such bloody fighting there would have been no "peace" treaty. The British would have followed plans laid down long before and fell back on their Empire to continue the fight.
But, Hitler would now be free to jump into Africa in full force. Malta would fall, then the Suez, then the middle east, Iraq would launch their pro-Axis coup a few years early, Turkey would be forced to at least be a friendly neutral, the Balkans would fall.
Then the Russians would have seen the writing on the wall and launched a surprise attack and the end result would have been the same, Hitler in his bunker, the Russians laying waste to Berlin. LOL