This would be my first "What If" so if this has been covered then kindly let me know and point me towards its location so that I can read it. I have seen many comments as to "Thats just simply not possible", however in 1938, just a year before Germany invaded Poland the majority of the world said, "thats just not possible". If it's one thing that Germany proved throughout WW2 is that many things thought impossible are very much possible.

To fit this scenario it must be understood that one of the most damaging turn of events for Germany was the loss of the Luftwaffe through the Allies' constant use of upgraded planes such as the Mustang and Corsair, not to mention their long range bombers.

Scenario

Its 1936 and Hitler is planning his invasion of Europe. He knows that in his drive both East and West that eventually every major power will be involved in a truly global conflict. His hope is that his new Blitzkrieg will catch most countries off guard and allow him a swift victory. However the one truly unknown factor in his plan is the United States. If the US remains out of the fight then her economic might and nearly endless supply of men won't impact his plans. However he must plan in the event that the US enters the fray.

The Plan

While the world looks on from the sidelines at Spain's civil war Operation Irritus (Latin for "the void") is launched. Fearing the involvement of the US in his plans Hitler has commissioned an SS task force to infiltrate the United States along with equipment to wage a secret war against the US. Using civilian cargo ships the SS slowly brings in weapons to wage sabotage against the United States' industrial might.

When the US enters the war she immediately begins pumping out the vehicles of war that will fuel the fight in Europe. At this time Operation Irritus is in full swing with factories falling prey to sabotage, key personnel with companies such as North American Aviation would be assassinated and productions delayed if not totally stopping the release of the P51 Mustang, F4U Corsair, Sherman Tanks as well as ammunition and key materials. With their industry damaged and the fact that the US considered itself relatively safe the air superiority of the Luftwaffe remained in place allowing its ground forces to continue its fight with an umbrella of protection.

Conclusion

When the invasion of Normandy comes about the skies above France are filled with Stukas, 109s and the frightful new 262 Swallow.

The luftwaffe was badly mauled during the BoB which had next to no help from the americans, the stukas prved infeior agasint fighters and the Me109's came up against the Spitfire is comparision both were close. The simple fact is that the Luftwaffe suffered badly before the americans showed up, both from combat and the british bombing of German industry.
Plus it was superior numbers which won the battle for the allies, not upgrades.
Hitler never intended to 'drive' west agaisnt Britain, and I doubt that hitler has this kinda foresight.


The USA never wanted to be brought into the war seeing it as Europe's porblem, Hitler himself seled his fate by allying himself with Japan who in turn declared war on the USA thus bring the USA and Germany to war.

The Plan

How does Germany get enough men into the USA to achieve what you are proposing?, how does he get these men citerzinship and these specific jobs in the war industry? You think the Americans will just allow the GErmans to bring in say an 88mm Flak gun without noticing it, or tanks or any type of military hardware in.

Very unlikely that these German spies could find all these scientists, researchers, technicians and blueprints to all these military designs, and even still be able to assassinate them. What you are proposing will require thousands of men, and so where will the Germans get these SS men from, since teh SS at this time were a select few certain people? How many men are we talking about?

Now once the Germans invade Russiam what happens there?, They crushed the German invasion without alot of help from the Americans, they sitll will produce 64,000 T-34 aand all there Js1, JS2, JSU series as well as all the other different tanks of the war. Basically even if america didn't enter the war German will still lose just against the Russians.
Conclusion

The Stuka had already been largely withdrawn from western fronts at this due to its ineffectivness in the BoB, there were never enough ME 262's in the real war, so how do the Germans suddenly come up with a 'swallow' of them, I may be wrong But I don't believe that Me262 was in combat during the Normandy invasion.

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They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We shall remember them. Lest We Forget

I'd say the problems here are:

1. The Germans literally have no clue as to where or what to attack in the US.
2. The plants that might make good targets are very scattered. From the examples given:

North American: Inglewood California
Chance Vought: Trenton New Jersey
Boeing: Seattle Washington
Consolidated: San Diego California
Ohio and Pennslyvania are the major tank plant states.
Other industries are spread throughout the Northeast US.
Shipyards are scattered along the entire length of the US coast.

3. The Germans had probably, if not certainly, the absolute WORST spy networks and agents of any major military power during the period. The British turned or shot the entire German network in their country by the time the Battle of Britain started. Up to then, what agents that did exist acted ineptly and were of absolutely no value to the Germans. There was no network in Russia or the US historically. The one attempt to land three sabatours in the US by U-boat failed within a week. The spys had little ability to blend into the local population. They had literally no clue how to travel to their targets nor the funds to do so. The FBI was on them like stink on......well you get the idea.

Prior to 1938 the US was seen by Germany as absolutely no threat in any case. The US ranked 36th as a military power. Italy had a larger and better equipped military at that point. There was literally no one in Germany who could have or would have predicted the US surge that actually occured.

Conclusion: The Germans would have put in place some inept plan. Their agents would have been caught by the FBI and imprisoned or shot in short order. The plan would fall apart. Nothing would be accomplished.

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Truth is stranger than bullshit!

What I was shooting for was a more "what if it happened" not a "what if, could it happen".

I know that just across the river where I live is Nitro, WV a place named after the fact it produced explosives for WW2, and 10 miles from here is Ordnance Park also named for a plant that turned out ammunition and both could have easily been destroyed with a car bomb and the only local defenses was one AAA emplacement on the hill above Charleston.

So what I was getting at was if the US could not flex its industrial might, what would D-Day have looked like, or would it have even have happened.

As for Germany invading Russia, in my opinion that ranks in the top of Hitler's colossal blunders.

Read the previous post regarding what we think for this.

As for d-day without the americans, the combined allies without the americans would in my opinion still have been successful in the end, they still would have a minor air superiority over the germans(being engaged across three fronts) the british commonwealth and free french and polish troops as well as other countries engaged would still have pushed the germans back, just much slower then normal. WHy? Because you could never cripple the american industry in the way you are proposing.

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They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We shall remember them. Lest We Forget

I suspect this is photoshop. but I'm not sure. Surely the B-2 shadow should be smaller dure to perspective, don't you think? If you expand the photo, isn't the pilot wearing a tinfoil hat?

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Everly Brothers - What I Have To Do Is Dream
"Never wrestle with pigs, you both end up getting dirty and the pig likes it."

what does this have to do with anything here Za

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They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We shall remember them. Lest We Forget

Ok. The Germans bring in a handful poorly trained spys that have been given radios, explosives, and other sabotage equipment either by airship (dirigibles are still flying in 1936) or passenger ship. As the Germans are woefully ill-informed as to what constitutes American "war industries" at the time, and most industries that will eventually be major war producers are currently engaged in solely civilian market production (eg., Ford, General Motors, Balwin Locomotive, Kaiser Aluminum, etc.) the spys are left to their own devices to attempt to identify suitable targets.
This they do attempt in crude ways such as asking locals about various plants, and that sort of thing. They focus almost entirely on the Northeastern US in states like New York and Pennslyvania having no real conceptual understanding of the size of the US. They also lack the funds and transportation to really move feely about the nation.
Within a few weeks to a month or two, one or more of these spys screws up and get caught for some reason or another. The FBI quickly becomes aware of the plot (just as they historically did in the one German attempt).
This leads to two things: The arrest of the other persons involved. A diplomatic disaster for Germany.
The US public opinion that varied from supporting Hitler and the Nazis, to indifference, to mild distaste for the regieme is now heavily solidified against the Germans. Hitler is denounced as a criminal assassin, hater, etc. The US government announces embargos of critical materials to Germany and begins to press US corporations to divest themselves of their German holdings.
The long term result is that the two biggest auto manufacturers in Germany; Ford and General Motors (Opal) fall in size and scope leaving the German auto industry a fraction of its historical size. This in turn forces virtually a demotorization of the military. The aircraft industry is hit hard for alloying agents that the US provided. This retards development. The chemical and petroleum industries are badly crippled by the embargo forcing the Germans to spend considerably more on development of these critical industries.
The embargo in turn retards military investment and limits the size of the German military expansion. By 1939 even though Hitler has still greatly expanded the military and made many of his political gains that were historically done he is facing a more thoroughly equipped Britain and France due to the US being far more willing to provide military materials. In addition, he is in poor shape to invade Poland or force a military solution to his demands due to having a smaller mechanized force. This forces either a delay in invading Poland or the invasion takes much more effort and is far more costly. This in turn delays the various operations in the West sufficently to end those in a stalemate rather than a lightining victory.
Germany faces political problems at home as Hitler is now accused of starting another World War One.

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Truth is stranger than bullshit!

Louis Farrago spent a considerable ammount of time sifting through the Abwehr records the US Army brought back to the US, and some fragments of the Gestapos record concerning spy and sabatoge efforts in the US and Britian. He published his research in the 'Game of the Foxes'. Its long out of print but I'd recomend it as a primer for this subject. Get the hardcover edition. the paper backs lack the annotations or footnotes and the bibliographys. Unfortunatly I have not been able to locate any more recent literature on the subject.

Cross checking the Abwehr records with FBI and the limited releases of Britans counter intelegence Farrago confirmed that vitually every German agent sent to Britian was 'turned'. A few who made it to Ireland remained loose, but their efforts were largely failures. The Allied deception programs depended on the Germans thinking these agents were still reliable sources.

In the US a few agents remained undetected. One sent regular signals from New York with details on cargo ship traffic in the New York and adjacent harbors. Another was a engineer who worked in the Brewster Aircraft company. He was finally arrested in 1944 during a US Navy investigation of production problems in the Brewster factory. A few others attempted to organize spy networks, or to fund pro German organizations. Those were mostly nuetralized by the FBI & US Justice Department. The very few who remained loose were entirely ineffective.

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I forgot my password, can I use yours?

What it has to do is that this has all the features of yet another tiresome "let's make the Germans win WW2 again in the Twilight Zone".

Now if the Germans had some Tinkerbell Pixie Dust TM they might have employed all their Fallschirmjäger without need of all those Ju52s and used them to supply their invasion force in Iceland! (see Waht-If of a year ago or so...)

And looking up some online Latin-English dictionary I find "Irritus - vain, useless, ineffectual, undecided, void, unfixed, of no effect". Yes, quite appropriate.

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Everly Brothers - What I Have To Do Is Dream
"Never wrestle with pigs, you both end up getting dirty and the pig likes it."

Don't forget the Germans had a cheat code they just never entered

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They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We shall remember them. Lest We Forget

Now this got me laughing! What if the Germans did use their cheat code? Then all the Allies would have to do to reboot.

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Everly Brothers - What I Have To Do Is Dream
"Never wrestle with pigs, you both end up getting dirty and the pig likes it."

German sabotage plan seems doomed from the beginning, I think.

Then again the Soviets I believe had a very well developed spy system even at very high levels both sides of the Atlantic. If the Germans could have used this to their advantage, this meaning of course there was no Barbarossa....a very unlikely situation but just a thought here on how to achieve a possible sabotage plan.

But it´s not always the direct action that might give the victory:

German ownership cloaked...

I do think those lowered figures if caused by sabotage would mean hundreds or thousands of successful sabotage actions?!!

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