could hitler win the war?

Is there any chance at all that Hitler could defeat Russia, England and America?

Personally, I think yes, if Hitler did not cancel the German nuclear program, started the war three month earlier, did not mind Greece, concentrate only on Moscow, did not waste any of his time on Ukraine, just surround and bypass. He might be able to capture Moscow and Stalin as well, before winter.

As for England, it won’t take anything more than a few nuclear bombs to get it to surrender.

With all the resources of Europe, the best generals, and the most experienced and well trained, well equipped troops in the world, it would be a whole new situation facing the Americans when it invades Europe.

That is just my personal thoughts, what do you guys think.

 

There are a mighty lot of if's there, the biggest one is if he had paid more attention to the nuclear programme, yet you miss the biggest if of all, if he hadn't started to persicute the races of his best scientists they would have stayed in germany and worked for him. alas they got out when they could and fled west.

 

I think we are fortunate that Hitler got greedy. By establishing his position after winning in France (the US and the USSR would be out of war for a while) he could have made Germany a continental super power for a long time.

 

I agree with kai on this one. Also if Hitler hadnt invaded Russia well then he could of concentrated on Britain. Eventually I believe that he would of succeeded. Even Churchill said that after Hitler invaded Russia England is spared.

 

Also with England in his hands Spain would off joined the axis power. With a German europe the U.S. has nowhere to land thus making the situation very difficult.

 

On nukes: Germany was at least a decade and more like 15 years from developing a bomb. At the end of the war they barely had a working reactor let alone a means of producing nuclear bomb grade fissionable material. A fusion bomb is simply out of the question.
Now, there are two basic means to get fissionable weapons grade nuclear material: Enrich uranium 234 by seperating it from U238. The other is to use a fast fission breeder reactor to make Pu 239 from U 238.
Germany possessed neither means of production in 1945 outside tiny amounts in a laboratory. No nuclear material, no bomb.
The US will beat Germany to the punch. Likely, given the far superior Soviet spy program, that the Soviets will too. It doesn't help that Hitler and his close cronies pretty much despised physics, and in particular theoretical and nuclear physics, sufficently that their program would languish in obscurity until several of their cities disappeared under mushroom clouds.

Ignoring Greece (and, I suspect the Mediterrainian): If Italy enters the war then Germany must worry about their southern flank. If Britain, even alone, is able to defeat Italy and remain on the continent they are a threat that cannot be ignored. They will be a constant drain on resources for Germany.

Germany vs Britain: Germany is a land power that has poor access to large petroleum reserves and the sea. Britain is a seapower with access to plenty of petroleum reserves. Land powers generally cannot maintain their land power and produce useful amounts of seapower. Germany is in this situation. Therefore, Germany cannot get at England so the best the Germans can hope for is a draw or stalemate.
Note: with one or two exceptions, and usually when the user combines it with already existant seapower, the Guerre de course will eventually fail as a naval tactic. It can be costly to the seapower it is waged against but it is rarely successful on its own.
What this means is U-boats are very unlikely to win the Battle of the Atlantic on their own, no matter how many you have.

Hitler's best course of action was following the fall of France to simply quit. Just wait out England, keep the US out of the war, and sit on the spoils already obtained. There will be time in 10 or 15 years for a rematch after the 'empire' has settled down into a stable state.

 

Paul Lawrence Rose

Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945
A Study in German Culture

http://ucpress.edu/books/pages/8006.html

On that book you get the feeling in the end that the Germans were so close yet millions of miles away. ANd it would have required Heisenberg´s thought on thinking about the diameter of the bomb first. Once he heard as a POW that there was a bomb in japan, even twice, he got the numbers calculated within two weeks after it had happened.

ANyway, Heisenberg was working on a nuclear power plant bomb type of thing. Not really going as a bomber mission but through this might havew gotten the idea of Plutonium and its usage as material for the bomb. IN fact if the Uranium was left out Plutonium could be used instead and what would the calculations be for this. Also it must be epmhasized that the calculation system was already known in 1939 by all sides, only that the allied believed it and used it.

SO the Germans were off the correct line of creating the bomb. IT seems that the fact SPeer did not give much priority to the planning guaranteed it would not work. BY making big plans there could have been more understanding about Plutonium and how the critical mass would be smaller etc. Now just by Heisenberg´s calculation the idea of the bomb was almost put aside...except for the nuclear power plant type.

 

At this rate the whole world would be under Nazi control, can you image that world? A bloody nightmare, I'm glad that B*****d was defeated.


PS. Ironcross, I am not having ago at you.

 

I do not think that was possible; Stalin knew what he was facing and have begun to prepare for an inevitable war with Germany since WW2 started, and Hitler knew that.
How can it be possible for Hitler to sit back and watch the Russians train more and more troops, mass more and more army, make more and more tanks?
By the way, I am sure you know how much Russians the Germans captured on their first week of operation, which kind of gives you an idea on how many Russian troops are close to the border.
I think it is possible for Hitler to defeat Russia without going to war with the Americans.
When Hitler declares war with America, there is no way in hell he could win. Maybe I am wrong, but I really think Hitler had a shot at defeating Russia. Like I said, only if he would let his generals fight the war; if that was the case, in my science teacher’s word: “we would all speak German now”. Well, I do not know how many people would be left to do that.

 

Ironcross,


Declaring war on America did not impact germany for almost 3 years. By the time the U.S. entered the war Germany had already lost. Infact by the end of 1942 German generals like mienstien tride to convince Hitler that Germany could not win the war in the eastern front. This was more that a year before U.S. entered France. In other words if U.S. hadnt entered the war the war would off probably dragged on war another year but Germany would off still lost.

 

in other words no, Germany could not off defeated Russia

 

I´d say it was the stubborness of Stalin and the Soviet people that stopped Hitler.

If you just consider the losses by the end of 1941. Almost all of the tanks lost ( 20,000 to begin with, although many obsolete ones ), over 3 million POW´s to Germans and how many killed and injured, thousands of planes lost.

Just how many countries would continue fighting with the losses of this magnitude? No wonder Hitler said in 1941-42 many times " The Russian is dead". Which he definitely was not.

 

I agree with Kai, how many other countries would have fought on after heavy losses. It's true to say that summer was for the Germans but winter was for the Soviets, that is until the summer of 1943 at Kursk.

Sloniksp, After the Battle of Stalingrad, Manstein knew from this point on the war in the east was lost and the Russians would advance and liberate Mother Russia.

 

Great point guys im glad im not the only one who thinks like this....


But on another note, most of Russia had no paved roads and in most cases the Germans would advance further in the winter or summer rather then spring and fall due to all the rainfall that would turn the roads into complete muddy swamps in which tanks would just sink along with heavy artillery

 

Was there any chance at all that the Axis powers could defeat the Allies?


Well, giving my 10 cents worth I would say no.


And the problem was much deeper then just taking Moscow or not,[or the myriad of other so called Hitler mistakes once the war started] the whole Nazi regime was built on Corrupt and rotten foundations....

Industrial war potential and not just the quality of the military forces determined the outcome. The Nazis forgot that economic potential had to be activated.

Class and party corruption and Bureaucratic infighting was rampant in Germany, and branches of the military fought against each other, key Nazi leaders like Goering tried to maximize their controls over industry to gain more power and wealth at the expense of centralised production [and Goering couldn't even run the Air force.]

Germany could not even outproduce Britain or Russia [even after most of White Russia was over run] until Speer organised things, but by then it was too little too late, and of course the tremendous production power house of America was in a league of it's own, the Americans out produced every Axis power put together.

The Allies also used low-cost mass production techniques, while Japan and to some extent Germany continued to rely on expensive hand-crafted methods. Germany focused on the production of costly high-tech weaponry such as the V rockets, jet engines, and heavy tanks which were propaganda victories but strategically impotent at that stage of the war.

The Nazis did not really understand what total war meant. Nor did they initially have a real strategic aim.

'Why the Allies Won' by Richard Overy is a good book on the subject.

 

Wasn´t it Göring alone from the top nazis who could ( at least in 1939 ) understand how much the US could produce planes, tanks etc once the machinery got going. Later on Hermann also believed the big figures to be lies ( or at least acted like he believed ).

You must also remember that Hitler wanted to keep the "normal" German daily life going on with dog racing, zoos etc during war. The production levels for army were not meant to be high because 1. the war was won already 2. the social life of people would suffer from long working days. That was until Stalingrad.

I don´t think if this had been different the end result would have changed but anyway I´m happy the Germans were not producing war material at their highest level from the beginning.

Especially I think the V-weapons production "ate" the money from other more dangerous projects. Just think they would have put all the money instead in the ground-to-air missile projects, the "wasserfall" or other similar projects.

 

Besides being luftwaffe leader, and latter Reichsmarschall, Goering was responsible for the economy as well as the build-up of the German military in preparation for the war.

He admitted he knew nothing about economics, and being a morphine addict probably didn't help.

I think the Germans spent about a quarter of the total Manhattan project on the V2, and ended up with an almost worthless weapon system.

The money, materials, and immense effort put into the V2, could have built over 20,000 fighters.

 

they just didnt have time to work out the tweaks im sure it would have been pretty good, but our atom bomb was far superior, it just couldnt fly on its own

 

Yes, i agree with fortune

It was a revolutionary idea it just in its preliminary stages.......being on the recievinb side of this flying monster would off been more then devistating, especially not knowing how many the other side had and how the heck to shoot it down.

 

that was one of the scary things about the early days of the V1, nobody knew what the hell it was... im not sure, but werent a few V1s shot down by RAF pilots?