What if........Hitler never invaded the Soviet Union?

I dont know guys. yes the English had a fantastic navy but had almost no airforce in fact the only reason the airforce survived was becuase Hitler started bombing cities. In theory Germany didnt need to invade they just needed to starve Britain into submission and this would off been possible with the u boats, and more then 5 thousand planes to bomb the navy if he hadnt launched Barbarossa.

In fact Richard


The day Barbarossa was lauched Churchill clapped his hands and told his cabinet......" England is saved Hitler has just invaded Russia and lost the war!"

But who knows........what if's dont really mean much so i guess we could all go back and forth.
But i respect everybodies opinion, they are all excellent point!!!

 

To starve Britain I suppose Dönitz would have needed more U-boats which Raeder/Hitler were not willing to give.

Also Ultra was getting better and faster on the German military actions and could tell where the U-boats were and could direct the convoys away from the wolfpacks.

 

Don’t forget Kai, the U-Boats enigma codes were harder to crack more so when they introduced the five drum settings.


Hitler made one big error in 1940 that was to cut back on scientific research, at that time Germany was ahead of the world. The result of this decision allowed the Allies to catch up and surpass Germany.

 

i couldnt agree more Richard!!!!

In fact Hitler didnt want to spend money on research which wouldnt give him results in 6 months. He thought that conventional weapons would do the job.

Also Kai,

Hitler wouldnt give Donitz more u- boats is cause he needed the money, man power and idustrial capabilities for the easter front that he had opened up.

 

No he didn't, He never said anything of the sort.
It was only after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, that he wrote " That night I slept the sleep of the saved"

 

redcoat,

He absolutely did!!! and u being from England im surprised u dont know this. Ask around ull be surprised.

 

Where did you get that from Sloniksp?
Didn't sound right to me either I'm afraid.
I recalled the quote as a diary entry relating to Pearl Harbour as well. It would perhaps be odd for him to use the same rather significant phrase twice... but then he was quite an odd man.

Cheers,
Adam.

 

van poop,

I know the pearl harbor phrase that you are referring to. There was a documentary on the russian channel about WW2 and many people were interviewed including german soldiers, colonels and even members of churchills cabinet. That quote was taken from that program. I wish i could find more about it though, havent been lucky enough yet.


But i totally understand your skepticism.......


The original quote where Churchill got it from was from Bismark who told Wilhelm that Germany could not fight a 2 front war.

 

If German hadn't invaded Soviets . Hmm . Yes WWII would have taken place even when they hadn't . They basically(im not saying they did,but basically it was the cause) started it with Molotov-Rippentrop pact. Imo German invading to Soviet couldn't been prevented . Sooner or later it would have happened . So i don't know .

 

I'm unsure that is correct. From Ellis's study of WWII military production & strategy 'Brute Force' Table 41 gives the following numbers:

Aircraft Production.......Germany.........Britian
Combat Models
1939..........................1,476.............3,161
1940..........................6,201.............7,771
1941..........................7,624...........11,732

From Table 42. Front Line Combat Aircraft

...............................Germany.........Britian
September 1939.........2,916.............1,660
August 1940...............3,015.............2,913

What these tables show is that Britan had in Britian parity in aircraft at the start of the Battle of Britian, and that its production outstripped Germanys.

A second factor is in pilot training. In the summer of 1940 the RAF reorganized its training program to produce properly trained fighter pilots in just a few months. The Luftwaffe continued to used its prewar methods that produced a well rounded 'airman' over the course of nearly a year. And, the graduates of its schools required additional training after arriving at their combat unit. The result was the RAF was able to replace lost pilots at a higher rate than the Luftwaffe.

Third the RAF had its famous Fighter Command that systematically provided a superior method for attacking enemy aircraft over Britian. The combination of command doctrine, communications, radio intellegence, and radar & visual observers led to a far more effcient use of British aircraft and pilots than the German methods for organizing attacks.

 

The key to the viability of Sea Lion is aircraft range and ships. The Luftwaffe did not break England in a full scale attack. If they are supporting an invasion fleet, they must protect the fleet and fight for air superiority.

On the ships front, there simply wasn't the military ships to move enough troops to force an amphibious assualt. The Germans must draft most of their merchant marines to pull Sea Lion off. Remember Overlord when the Allies hit the Germans with eight divisions within the space of 12 hours? German assault waves would be in far less impressive numbers.

If all goes increditably and incredulously well, then the Germans would have a weak beacheahd thinnly supported by aircraft. The RAF themselves, assuming the likely event that they lost air superiority, could fall back in land and operate from bases out of German fighter range to strafe the beachhead.

The German logistics situation would remain precarious as their imaginary Atlantic fleet was anything but safe from the RN. So fuel, ammo, spare parts and reinforcements would come in piecemeal. Now, the British Army had been busy since Dunkirk and they would be waiting.

Not a plan that was going to work.

 

In July 1940, Doenitz and his subs accounted for 500,000 tons of shipping. He firmly believed that, if he could sink 750,000 tons in a month, Britain would be forced to surrender. The British had a similar notion, but they put the figure at 600,000 tons.

At the peak of the subs in 1941, I believe more than 700,000 tons were sunk in a single month. And this was with Hitler's buildup for the Eastern Front. Without the buildup occurring so quickly, maybe enough subs could be given to Doenitz.

 

People are forgetting that until Britain herself began to mass drill and pump North Sea Oil and transport it to the British mainland for refining, Britain herself almost exclusively relied on 95% US oil to survive during the war she imported over 100 million tonnes of the stuff, now how would Britain be able to maintain a defence force denied fuel and oil derived lubricants, all the while her oil is been sent to the bottom of the sea.

If Hitler had decided that he would not attack the USSR in 1941 but began a process of building up a massive invasion force to launch an invasion say in 1941 by the process of first starving Britian of vital shipping with unrestrained and unrestricted warfare on any ship that enters the warzone and this is with an additional 150 to 200 U-Boats laying in waiting west of Britain and that Germany does reach the 750,000 tonnes of shipping sunk target, Hitler would have Britain at her mercy.

Starved of fuel even the Royal Navy can't operate as ships are forced into ports unable to refuel, aircraft are grounded and the army can't move as fuel is at a premium. Then we have the effect of starvation of the populace as foodstuffs are running out, starvation related diseases begin to breakout across Britain, finally after 12 months Britain has two choices, continue the struggle or surrender. By mid 1941 Germany would have a very much compliant Britain to deal with.

v.R

 

Laced sea power, yes, but they still had their trusty U-Boat which substantially weakened Allied navy forces, especially England and the SU.

 

Care to quantify that? I strongly suspect that when all is added up the U-boats sunk or damaged only a very small fraction of allied warships.

Indeed U-boat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
states that u-boats sunk 175 warships and in return 743 U-boats were sunk.

The following thread shows some details on the number of British DDs available and includes sinkings:
Axis History Forum • View topic - Royal Navy Destroyers
This one has similar info on battleships and battlecruisers:
Axis History Forum • View topic - Royal Navy Battleships
and this one for cruisers:
Axis History Forum • View topic - RN Cruiser availability

 

Maybe Russia would have been allied with Japan, Germany and Italy. That wouldn't have been too good.
Bob

 

It's not so clear cut; the Germans had to consistently sink 750,000 NET tons a month for at least six months to have any chance of starving out Britain. They never even came close to this figure.

In fact, between September, 1939, and December, 1941, the amount of British-controlled shipping was consistently increasing due to new construction, charters of neutral shipping, and captures of Axis-owned ships. On the outbreak of war in September, 1939, Britain controlled a total of 17,784,000 tons of shipping. By the end of December, 1941, Britain controlled 20,693,000 tons of shipping; an increase of 16%. (Blair, "Hitler's U-Boat War", Vol.1, page 99.)

By the beginning of 1942, the US and British merchant ship construction programs were ramping up and generating a situation where sinking rates by U-boats very often resulted in net increases of available Allied shipping. The U-boats, with or without the invasion of the Soviet Union, never had a chance of winning the war for Germany.

Not really. During WW II, submarines, in general, proved singularly ineffective against warships, and German U-boats never made much of a dent in Allied naval power. They sank some escort vessels, a few cruisers, and a handful of poorly handled aircraft carriers, but they never threatened Allied domination of the Atlantic.

The Soviet Navy was relatively weak, not aggressively deployed, and never a significant factor in the European war, so it's difficult to argue that German U-boats played any role in diminishing it's power.

 

I don't know about no airforce... The RAF managed to defeat the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, and Germany threw 4 thousand planes at England.

The air force was pretty good, and maintained air superiority throughout the rest of the war in the west.

 

No, the RAF did not have air supremacy in the West after the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe was still superior in the West and as an overall force after the BOB. The Germans lost the skies in the West front in 1943.

 

Oops, I completely disregarded the time between 1941 and 1943

I agree, the luftwaffe were much stronger in that gap, but the RAF would put up a good fight if Britain were attacked again!