Germany Winning Second World War

Here is an alt his on WWII, IMHO, that works.
1)Everything continues the same until summer/fall of 1940. During the Battle of Britain Hitler gets a clue and brings Germany to full wartime economy, realizing its not going to be as quick as he thought. Minister Todt is removed and his production ministery disbanded or seriously altered. A new Commission is set up linking industry heads with competent military planners. Coherent productions plans are laid out, number of models reduced, redundancies corrected, production streamlined, government money is poured into new, high tech production facilities. 2-3 million foriegn workers are brought in to build and operated these new industries.
German fighter production is increased to 500/month by December of '40. AFV production is raised to over 200/month in the same period. Existing stores of French, Belgian, Dutch, and Polish raw materials are at easy reach to construct these machines, as is the skilled labor, as consumer goods have been curtailed. Significant numbers of captured prime movers will have to be used in Barbarossa in '41, but with the production reforms the loss of these vehicles can be weathered by tripled or quadrupled production of Osttractors, Maultiers, and OpelBlitz's.
Hopefully by mid '43 German production should mirror US production, using massive amounts of slave labor. Some of the highly complex machines like the Panther, A-4, 262, 163, will be cancelled, others will be slower in reaching combat, BUT this will allow vast numbers of improved and streamlined P-IV's, maybe as many as 15,000/year(actual wartime total of all types was less than 30,000) to reach units in those critical years of '42 and '43. PZ-II and PZ-III will disappear, a single hull being used as a universal platform, fulfilling all roles. Italian, French, and Czech companies are allowed to produce vehicles and parts, without the pain of royalties. Hopefully by mid '42 Italy and Czechoslovakia are producing PZ-IV's and PZ-IV based SP guns, lowering the production pool, or at least producing parts and assembling machines. Helping to raise those production numbers even higher, Axis allies maybe adding 1,000 vehicles/year. Slowly a successor platform would replace the PZ-IV, but never more than a single platform at once in mass production, this successor would use as many interchangeable parts as possible. These practices will pertain to the aircraft industry also, interchangable parts, streamlined production, more facilities and Axis allies will be allowed to produce Bf-109's without fees. Also, flight training schools will be opened in Germany increasing the number to 10 by early '42.
more tomorrow

 

Very intriguing--I will be looking for more to read.

 

Me too.

 

#2) This is the biggest stretch. Hitler has to accept that he will need the support of former Soviet citizens to topple Stalin. What happened was Hitler was such and idiot he had all initial support expunged!!!! During September or October(to lazy to check the books right now)when the Germans liberated Kiev, the Ukrainians prior to the Germans even arriving set up an oppisition government of anti-Stalinist Ukrainian patriots. The Ukrainians appointed a president wrote up writs of conscription and were planning a government of cooperation towards Germany. This government was sitting when the Wehrmacht arrived. The first unit commander on scene radioed HQ about what to do with this government which greeted them, asking for guns to kill Russians. He was told to leave them alone, politicians not soldiers would take care of them. Five days later, after massive local support was drummed up, Rosenberg and his goons showed up. Rosenberg, Governor of Eastern territories, immediately had every member of the Ukrainian government they could lay hands on, shot!! Hence, many Ukrainians became partisans. If an agency who could use these Soviet minorities against the Soviets with efficiency was instead in charge its concievable a quarter Million Osttruppen will be fighting in Operation Typhoon!!! (in '43 only 400,000 HiWi's were in German service)
Several generals, I believe Rundstedt(sp?) was one them pressed Hitler to accept these former Soviets into his army. He stupidly refused. To win, Uncle Adolf must use them.

 

The whold thing as to the Germans winning the war but not, was mainly due to their racial policies. Had Rosenburg not been the ahole he was, stalin would have either been defeted or at least kept at a stalemate. I dont really think that a good portion of these racial pograms (not misspelled) were actually thought of nor started by Hitler. Many of them were started by jerks like Rosenburg, who wanted to advance politically and impress Hitler that they came up with solutions on their own.

 

The thing with these kind of speculations is, one always winds up positing self-contradictory premises.

For example - yes, the Wehrmacht would surely have had a lot easier time in Russia if not for the Nazi Party's racial policies -but the Nazi party was built on its racial ideology. Exploiting these latent prejudices and animosities was a major factor in how they came to power in the first place. Nazism without the Rassenkrieg is a contradiction in terms.

You might as well speculate, what if, instead of being a murderous power-crazed tyrant, Stalin had been a wise and judicious leader?

What if, instead of executing Tukachevsky and his followers and disbanding the modern mobile armoured corps, he had supported and promoted Tukachevsky's modernization projects and training programs? You'd have had a blitzkrieg-style force in 1938, with 30,000 tanks (T-34's and KV's, too: would have eaten up the Mk II, III and IV Panzers).

What if, instead of exiling Sergei Korilov to Siberia, Stalin had supported him and his work? You'd be looking at a Soviet Union with a viable ballistic missle program by 1936 and operational jet fighter squadrons in 1941. Heck, even bombed halfway to oblivion, the Germans managed to produce tens of thousands of V-1's and V-2's late in the war. Imagine the same thing, multiplied by the Soviet production factor vs. Germany, and implemented in 1939 instead of 1944!

What if, instead of his anti-semitism and xenophobia, Stalin had embraced the German and Italian refugee scientists? A good number of them were communists, you know, and but for Stalin's persecution of Jews, his campaign against Trotsky, and his co-opting of the Comintern, he might have had a bunch of Fermi, Einstein, and Oppenheimer types working in Moscow instead of New Mexico. Now, there's a scary thought. Stalin, with nuclear-armed ballistic missles in 1942-43.

Under those conditions, the Red Army would have been literally invincible. They'd have marched clear through Europe (the parts they hadn't nuked, anyway) before the Brits and Americans even started thinking about Normandy. Then, good luck trying to get Stalin out of France.

Of course, under the premise of Stalin being a wise and noble leader, his rule of Europe would have been a great benefit to all the people there, and the US would now be playing second fiddle to Soviet Pan-Eurasia.

Well, yeah, that's all real interesting, but the fact of the matter is, Stalin was a brutal tyrannical paranoid nutcase mass murderer. The qualities that brought him to power were the same qualities that caused him to execute and exile the most brilliant people in his country. If he hadn't executed Tukachevsky and exiled Korilov, (along with literally millions of others), and literally dismantled the Red Army and terrorized his entire country into paralysis... well, he wouldn't have been Stalin.

 

Whats amazing is the people "untermensch" willing to support the Nazi regime. The Green corps and other Russian exiles were lined up, salivating over fighting commies. The Germans displayed their willingness to have Italians, French, Romanian, Hungarian, and the rest to fight for them. The astounding stupidity of the early policy, remember it changes as things go south for the Germans, isnt a mind boggler, it just points out the shortcomings of a criminal syndicate running a country.

 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by talleyrand:
it just points out the shortcomings of a criminal syndicate running a country.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Exactly, I agree.

In addition, it's pretty clear that the initial welcome of the Nazi invaders was very much a reaction to what Stalin had been doing to those populations - "Hitler can't be worse than Stalin" must have seemed pretty appealing at the time. Also, when it looked like the Germans were winning, well, there's always someone who will jump on the bandwagon.

Throughout the war, there were large numbers of people who had no future to anticipate under Soviet rule. Even the Red Army defenders of Brest were persecuted after the war despite heroic service to their country. There were literally hundreds of thousands of people facing that reality, and literally had nothing left to lose.

 

Any 'what if' that calls for Germany going to a full-blown war-oriented economy significantly in advance of when it did has a very good chance of having Germany winning the war. Because the problem at the start was not having enough material, and at the end it was not having enough skilled men to use it and not enough fuel eiter. So while, for example, 1400 Me-262 were built, only 100 ever flew.

If Germany had switched to full war production in 1939 or 1940 it would easily have been possible to fight a war of attrition successfully in the east and Russia could have been defeated by 1943. After all, we're not only talking about an increase in production of tanks and planes but also trucks, synthetic petrol, railways and so on.

 

I agree with what Andreas has said because, if you look at what the German scientists and Engineers came up with in the way of weapons etc, I DO believe that Germany would have whipped the russians to a standstill, if not because of superior amounts of materials but also for the simepl fact that the German military wanted junior Officers to be able to think and lead and not only in case the higher leaders were killed or incapacitated for some reason or another, but also that helped make these junior officers much better field commanders, than their russian counterparts.

The russian junior commanders cannot be compared to junior German officers. Hands down, the German Officer Corps would beat the Russian Officer Corps in any way and turn. The Russians we so afraid of showing initiave or in trying to lead small units of men, the Germans were not. This is one of the many reasons that there are so many officers to becoms an Knights Cross Recipient. I know and I know many RKTs.

I am in the process of getting a chance to interview one of Germanys most famous and top scoring Night Fighter pilots--Herr martin Drewes.

Many of the RKTs in ww2, became RKTs as junior commanders. One has to have much respect for men as these, I sure as heck do. To face the odds that these men faced and to make the sacrifices these men made, is totally phenominal.

But to shorten this agree-disagreement, yes many russians were tough and brave, but their oficer corps really lacked talent, all thanks to uncle joe. Of course, I only mean the junior officer corps in this statement, not the Army, Corps and Divisional commanders. We all know what happened to most of them. Most of the Army and Corps Commanders were purged as well as I believe ALL Divisional Commanders.

Shame that the White-Russians did not win after Russia quit WK1

 

Just the junior officers? Not by a long shot. In our army (and the doctrine actually hasn't changed for at least a hundred years, please don't ask me why nobody's copied it!), everybody is supposed to be able to take the initiative and lead. Down to the lowliest private.

All privates in our army have to take over command of their squad sometimes, once a comrade of mine even lead the platoon. And he did it well, though no better than any of us could have done. So even conscripts get this sort of training. IMHO it is impossible to decaptiate a German unit because everybody knows what to do. Hey, the first thing officer trainees do is handle a battalion in a combat simulation - when their normal command is a squad! In our army, everyone is expected to think and have initiative.

Like I said, it's been the same model for a hundred years.

 

In definate agreement with you Andreas. I simply wanted to point out that a major problem the Russians has was the fact that their junior officers were nothing like the Germans junior officers. I had not included NCOs and other ranks for lack of time.

As they say, chop off the head and the whole body dies--as what consistantly happened to the russians.

 

Andreas, thats sounds brillant. I always thought we were quite advance, although i realised we get most thibgs from what the germans did in WW2. And although we encourage initiative, it is not to this level. We expect each person to be able to do the job of the rank above. But i have never heard of Privates taking over a squard. Although as a senior Private i might be expected to if needed, we never get taught how, or get the chance to experiance it.

 

Going to a "wartime economy" would help, but wouldnt be a war winner by itself. The Germans procurement system resembled that of the Mafia, so just increasing production across the board wouldnt work. As I've said in earlier posts, the Germans needed to create a production and procurment board to bring a coherent plan to their production methods, cutting out graft and ineffiencies. Much like the US model. Nazi's being Nazi's This is probably impossible. A perfect example is that the Luftwaffe had to fight in '43 to get aluminum termite proof tropical shelter production cancelled as they were eating up a decent amount of the German aluminum supply. It took an official edict from Hitler to end the production of such things usually, and as unreachable and more unhinged he got as the war went on, production problems were hard to fix.

 

That also used to be in the US Army, but one wonders now that since kommunist klinton so thouroughly demoralized our militery in its 8 yrs in office. One has to wonder how long it will take in order to get our military back into good shape?

 

Bish: It certainly is quite an experience. Once I took over a squad from a petty officer who had to go back to the base and the first thing I discovered was that the whole position was messed up. If I'd had the time, I would have relocated the machine gun, panzerfaust and so on. You also really learn from your mistakes if you have the responsibility to lead your men (even if you're no more than they are) to a certain spot and emerge somewhere completely different. It happened to me, and sure taught me a lesson. It wasn't completely my fault since the spot where we were supposed to be was not where it was marked on the map, but it could still have been avoided. Just out of interest - what branch are you? I was engineers!

Talleyrand: "resembled that of the mafia"?? I don't understand this bit, could you please explain what you mean?
On the one hand you're probably quite right - simply raising production across board wouldn't work, in fact that couldn't work in any country that doesn't have access to raw materials from outside. But I mean only an increase in war production with a decrease in civilian production (especially consumer goods) automatically attached. Hey, I've seen a German newspaper from early 1941 with a big Coca-Cola advert in it!! Would you believe that!!

 

I believe the Coca Cola advertisment. I know you have had to have heard of the great boxer Baer. He was drafted into the Luftwaffe and he was a Fallschirmjager. He had a famous fight with Joe Lewis and lost.

After the war, Max Baer and Lewis renewed their friendship which became a lifelong friendship. Max Baer became involved with the Coca Cola Company and became fairly wealthy in the years he was there. In the mean time, his friend Joe Lewis, became destitute and was poor because of how colored people were badly treated in those days.

Anyway, I think it was in Hamburg? where Baer became a partner with the Coca Cola Company--correct me if im wrong in which city it was in.

At any rate, Baer and Lewis stayed the best of friends with Baer often coming to the USA to visit Lewis. When Joe Lewis died, Max Baer payed for the funeral costs, and gave money to his widow.

What a sad story.........

As far as I know, Max Baer is still living and I think he is in his 90's.


[ 28 September 2001: Message edited by: C.Evans ]

 

The German military procurement system resembled the way a Mafia organization worked because:
1) Quality of product was not as an important issue as which company had more political pull at any given time when deciding contracts
2) Graft was commonplace
3) No coherent plan. A good example is the German Postal Service ran their own military reasearch programs including rocket and nuclear programs.
So their production was rather hit and miss compared to the Allies. Later in the war, starting in '43 many things were changed cleaning up the German production mess. But they were too little to late.
A side note, the Germans only outlawed the production of civilian motor cars in the fall of '43 I believe

 

Thanks, you're absolutely right. But I think that the issue here is that they clear up the mess a little more vigourously a little earlier (for whatever reason).