Could Germany have won on these conditions?

Yes, Germany building battleships was a mistake, as it diverted scarce German resources into something that didn't have war-winning potential. The British, on the other hand, would always be able to divert the assets needed to counter the German large surface ships. With German warships affixed in the Anglo-German Naval Treaty at 35% of the RN in various ship categories, in 1935, it was never going to really threaten the British. Worry, yes, but never threaten the existence of the UK.The estimate was, that it would take until 1942 to even get to 35%. With Project X's stop-start-stop status, it wasn't anywhere near that either. 35% parity with the RN was a distraction and a needless concession to Britain, that severely hampered the development of the KM as an effective force that Germany needed it to be. Smaller ships, and submarines. You are correct, however, that it wouldn't be the PR coup of driving a nail into the Treaty of Versailles.

Bismarck cost nearly an estimated 200 million RM to build and fit, had a crew of ca 2,000 men, and a displacement in excess of 41,000 tonnes.
Scharnhorst cost an estimated 140 million RM to build and fit, had a crew of ca 1,600 men, and a displacement in excess of 32,000 tonnes.
Add in the hull of the ships not completed (Graf Zeppelin, etc); and the opportunity costs of these large ships for Germany are enormous in terms of what else could've been achieved instead

A type VII submarine cost an estimated 4.5 million RM, had a crew of ca 50 men, displaced 871 tonnes submerged.

A crude estimate puts 30-40 U boats in the sea, for each battleship. Assuming of course, there are enough shipyards capable. Given the size of the U boat fleet in 1939, that'd be a sizable contribution to the early war effort.




(a ) Home Fleet commanded by Adm Sir Charles Forbes with 7 capital ships, 2 carriers and 16 cruisers based at Scapa Flow and Rosyth; Channel Force with 2 battleships, 2 carriers and 3 cruisers; Humber Force with 2 cruisers; and various destroyer flotillas.
(b ) North Atlantic Command based at Gibraltar with 2 cruisers and 9 destroyers; America and West Indies Command at Bermuda with 4 cruisers; and South Atlantic at Freetown with 8 cruisers and 4 destroyers.
(c ) Pocket battleships "Admiral Graf Spee" in the South and "Deutschland" in the North Atlantic.
(d ) included U-boats on patrol in the North Sea and British coastal waters.

Table from http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm


Not that the UK would sit idly by, mind you.

 

The problem is...the threat of them being used as surface raiders, was the great WW2 shell game You had to retain enough forces in Home Waters to close off all possible exits to the Atlantic convoy routes...AND you had to have equivalent-strength units actually WITH the more vital convoys. So a bit like a "fleet in being" a "surface raider in being" tied a greater number of RN units to home waters and to escort duty than would otherwise be the case.

The Bismarck breakout is typical of the entire problem - there had to be enough units strong enough to close ALL exits north of Scotland to the enemy....and each task force with some chance of holding here or at least surviving the contact. Then you also had to have the strength available to counter a surface raider if you at last coernered her. In the RN's case in Spring '41 this did indeed mean bring up units from Gibraltar AND stripping out units from convoys on the verge of leaving the UK. We were lucky on that occasion that a bare minimum number of contacts with the Bismarck had shortened her radius of action sharply AND slowed her, allowing all the forces told off to intercept her to close on her; with no damage, and at full speed, she'd have outrun her pursuit AND broken out of the circle southwards/south-eastwards towards the French coast before it could converge.

Numbers are a false indicator sometimes of real strength; if those numbers are scattered all over the map board, then it takes time to assemble overwhelming forces. That table looks fine - but it's a snapshot of the RN's disposition on the eve of war only. Various events resulted rapidly in that conentration in home waters being scattered around the globe....VERY rapidly actually, with the killer groups sent out hunting the Graf Spee scattering them all over the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans!...segue'ing into the mustering of Force H at Gibraltar.

And the Admialty KNEW how close-run the bismarck incident was; they maintained a minimum blocking force at Scapa Flow until something could be done about the Tirpitz....and that took some time to do! Only then were they truly free to dispose Home Fleet's major units elsewhere.

 

I thought the Allies had supply problems at around 300 miles......Warsaw to Moscow is around 700.....? this is not going to be a 6 day war or Desert Storm...the longer the lines of communication, logistics, etc the weaker you get.........

 

Well, Phylo-roadking, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Because I see your points, yet find them wanting. The German Battleships were an irritation that hampered the RN, but they were never going to be or do more than that. Of course the RN is going to paint a terrifying picture of what could've happened, but it isn't likely over time, given the expected British response. It is precisely the reasoning behind the Anglo-German Naval treaty.

In a few against many situation, the few need luck repeatedly. Bismarck's ran out quickly. Counting on luck to evade destruction by the RAF and/or the RN is a strategy doomed to fail.

 

...except the "fleet in being" idea....but in this case split up into individual fighting units able to sorties individually or in very small numbers...meant that the RN had to spread its resources thinly. Yes there were times like late '41 when the clustering of Kriegsmarine ships in Brest gave them a few months' respite as they passed responsibility for keeping them bottled up to the RAF...but years like 1941 and the depredations in the Med ALSO meant that the RN's resources got thinner before the destruction one by one of the KM's raiders meant that the resources didn't have to be spread as wide.

Unfortunately, the loss of Force Z didn't help the parcelling-out of available units either...! But the KM problem was largely resolved by then.

 

Given the increasing range, duration, and capability of allied air power, it was only going to get worse, not better, for large surface raiders. Although that was not understood in the 30's when these plans for glorious ships made.

No one builds battleships anymore. They still build submarines.

 

My understanding was that Germany was not a signatory to that convention nor were they addressed in it at all. The Versailles treaty limited them to a few "armored ships" and the British German naval treaty already mentioned upped that limit considerably.

 

300 miles was about the limit for truck supply of division size forces during WWII. That could be 300 miles from a rail head capable of supplying the force. The German logistic problems in the East were a combination of many things the restricted nature of the rail system among them. There's a very good thread or two on this over on the axis history forum by the way.

 

'Very Good' isn't a sufficently emphatic description, IMO. There is an amazing thread of truly remarkable quality, with real solid gems of knowledge. It really brings home the logistical limitations in German occupied territories of Ukraine/Belorus/Russia and enlightens the reader on the state of the Russian and German railroad systems, prior to and during Barbarossa and the incredible efforts made to overcome these obstacles.

 

Actually Phylo, the Panzerschiffe were built under the provision of Article 190 of the Versailles Treaty, which allowed Germany to replace the six pre-dreadnoughts allowed them as of 20 years from their original commissioning date. Thus the first, Deutschland, was laid down - a few months later than allowed - on 5 February 1929, four years before Hitler became Chancellor. Furthermore, there was originally two concepts for them - one was a coast defense battleship and the second, which was accepted, was as a long-range cruiser. Note that only three were built, although technically there were six Linienschiffe they could have replaced. Braunschweig and Preussen were broken up in 1931, after being replaced by Deutschland and Admiral Graf Spee. Elsass was broken up in 1936. Hessen was replaced by Admiral Scheer and then rebuilt as a target ship, Lothringen was in reserve, and Schleswig Holstein and Schliesen remained operational.

It was the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935, which ended the Versailles navy restrictions and replaced them with a 35:100 German:British tonnage ratio (while allowing parity in submarines). However, both German and British assessment was the Germans could only reach the agreed level sometime in 1942. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement was renounced by Hitler on 28 April 1939.

Note, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were laid down shortly before the ratification of the Anglo German Agreement on 18 June 1935 (6 May and 15 June respectively).

 

About Italy remaining friendly neutral and the proposed receiving land to make it look strong, did Italy have an Italian Military Administration in France and occupy Tunisia ? Another proposal would be Italy and Germany securing Syria in peace talks leading up to the conclusion of France. From Syria, Germany could operate diplomacy with Turkey and take Iraq for oil. An even more ambitious idea is to go thru Armenia to Baku. Armenia was torn between Imperial Russia/Soviet and Ottoman/Turkey struggles, how useful Armenia was to Germany would remain unknown. Think of the Kurds torn between Iraq, Syria, Turkey and the IS but is supported by the US. Syrian politics is interfered by Russia. Was Armenians in the interwar years similar to nowadays Kurds ?

 

Wow I haven't even realized this thread was approved until a couple days ago. I want to get rid of everything I said as most of it was ridiculous and start a new round here in this thread. Okay well I have some new things to add:

What if...

Hitler had not entered North Africa? He would have had Rommel on his side to aid in the campaign along with the other potential soldiers, tanks, planes and material he needed. I understand the British could then divert their resources to provide much more funding to acts of sabotage against Germany, but would the British have been able to supply the resistance groups with enough resources to have any significant effect in the year they decided not to invade North Africa and save up for Russia. I understand not invading North Africa would have caught Stalin's attention and he would have been on the alert, but wasn't he already trying to prepare his best even when the USSR suffered an embarrassing campaign with Finland.

Hitler had attempted to appease to the oppressed peasants to join him in the revolt against the Soviet Union? There were constant terror acts and violence throughout the Soviet Union in part due to Stalin's brutal dictatorship. If Hitler had set aside his ideas of killing every Soviet Citizen he saw and offer them to take up arms wouldn't he have succeeded? I mean there were thousands of trucks and tanks left behind the countryside of the Soviet Union and having Russian citizens joining liberation armies would have helped Germany with the men it lost on the Eastern Front. Having Russian against Russian would have helped Hitler with his expansion policies in the east, and have would have exhausted the Red Army giving the Wehrmacht the opportunity to have attack the Red Army with less of their initial strength. So my point is, in this case Hitler could hit two birds with one stone, defeat the Soviet Union and help clear out some the population for his initial startup of Lebensraum.

 

1)The war in North Africa was only a side-show and had no influence on the war in the east : in june 1941 Germany committed 2 divisions in North Africa and 150 in the east . And,Germany intervened in North Africa for political reasons : to prevent the collaps of the fascist regime


2) There is NO proof at all that millions of Soviets were willing to fight against Stalin on the German side :most of the Soviets who fought on German side were POW's who chose to fight for Hitler to avoid certain death in the German POW camps .

One can thus argue that with a more "liberal " coccupation policy,less Soviet citizens would have volunteered .

 

-Ah so North Africa was really no more tactical than it was a full committed front.

-No proof? So then what about the Soviet citizens who had greeted the Germans as liberators when first meeting them along with the Rsssian Liberation Army late in the war? If the peasants had greeted them as liberators and the fact that late in 1944 a Russian Liberation Army was created with 100,000 men than they would have been able to have recruited much more into the war effort had they tried. If I recall, around 1-3 million Soviets had served with Germany until the end of the war. Imagine if Hitler had put aside his goals and enter as a liberator of Stalin-ism. The Soviet Union has an early history of taking small independent nations notably Ukraine, Armenia and just recently the Baltic States.

 

Hitler had to secure his southern flank which is why he invaded the Balkans before Barbarossa. I also believe if he pushed on Moscow sooner and didn't order so many diversions it could have been achieved. Also, have two army groups in a giant pincer converging on Moscow rather than three. Dunkirk they had to slow the advance, their logistics, supply lines, communications, were stretched and maintenance was needed on many of their mobile equipment. Plus the men were drained. Goering assured Hitler the air force could handle that task.

Even if Germany went down the road of air craft carriers, they would have taken time, and the Royal Navy would have relentlessly attacked and went after them as they did the surface raiders of the German Navy. They wouldn't have materialized at the end of the day.

It really makes you wonder what Hitler's ambitions really were... He didn't convert his economy to full wartime capacity, the factories still put out peacetime goods... He cancelled all air craft development that wouldn't be ready by or before 1942, so how forward and far of combat was he thinking? Did he really have the world conquering ambitions that the mainstream says?

 

I agree, if Hitler was more humane to the Russian civilians and didn't employ his hate ideology to all citizens, and used that strength in numbers to join in the revolt with the German army, so that resistance, sabotage, partisan activity that was effective against the Germans in Russia could have been utilized against the Russians. Compound that with the massive early defeats and losses of the Red Army it could have been the deciding factor.

 

No, it doesn't make me wonder.

He had converted his economy to a war economy, already prior to the war, as proven by Adam Tooze in "The Wages of War."

World? Maybe not, but a very significant portion of it, he did, as evidenced by his own writings, his speeches, the way he lead Germany, the diaries of those near him written at the time, and by the statements of witnesses corroborated with further documentary evidence.

 

He did mobilize to a war economy but he never mobilized to a "total war" economy unlike Britian or the Soviet Union had. According Albert Speer, Germans would work 10 hour shifts, and would take breaks on Sundays and holidays. For a whole year that in terms of workers hour that could have been available would have been 50 billion hours. Imagine how many thousands of tanks planes, along with millions of rounds of ammunition that could have been made because Hitler didn't mobilize to a "total war" economy.

 

Not so.

1) Albert Speer is thoroughly discredited.

2) The German economy was not dependent on voluntary German labour. It was based was on imported foreign labour, forced labour, slaves, and, once the war began, Prisoners of War.

Exhibit A: Verordnung zur Sichersellung des Kraeftebedarfs fuer Aufgaben von besonderer staatspolitischer Bedeutung (Decree for Securing Labour for Tasks of Special State Importance). June 1938. Workers can be redeployed for any period required by the Reich whilst their former employers were required to keep them on their rolls. Already by the end of 1939, 1.3 million workers had been subject to such compulsory orders.

Exhibit B: the number of workers employed in consumer industries was already significantly lower in 1938 than in 1933. It continued to drop, as workers were siphoned off to military service, or industries and companies not producing war essential goods were closed, or unable to continue.

Exhibit C: In January 1941, with the war against the Soviet Union already a "foregone conclusion", vast investments in military-industrial complexes were made on top of the already significant expansion programmes of 1938.

Exhibit D: As an example more than 30,000 people (hint; they weren't Germans...) died just building IG Farben's chemical plant at Monowitz.

Exhibit E: Leistungsernaehrung, or "Performance feeding". Originating with Ostarbeiter in the Silesian mines it required an "adequate" performance to receive the normal food ration. And was endorsed by our friend Albert Speer.

Exhibit F: German women were more actively engaged in the labour force in 1939, than Britain's women were to be even at the end of the war. When the Reich Labour Ministry investigated the issue in 1943 and 1944, their conclusion was there were too few not already involved. In 1943, it was estimated at most 1.5 million women, but at least 700,000 required part-time positions. In 1944 the Reich plenipotentiary for Labour announced he would be able to mobilize no more than 1 million additional women. These figures are not going to make any difference, given the enormous losses of manpower in the East, and the vast numbers of foreign workers, slave labourers, and Prisoners of War.

Already in the Spring of 1941, Germany was utilizing 1.2 million Prisoners of War, and 1.3 million 'foreign civilian' (mostly Polish) workers in Germany, accounting for 8.4 percent of the workforce.

Totalling just the deaths of various categories of forced labour alone, after January 1942 to war's end; 7 million.

Exhibit G: In Spring of 1944 onwards, a seventy two hour week was the norm in all aircraft and aero-engine facilities. Henschel's Tiger plant in Kassel worked around the clock in two twelve hour shifts from the Autumn of 1942...

 

The essential problem for Germany is that it did not move to a war economy fast enough and did not focus on air superiority and aircraft production.

The UK very early on - 1936 - realised that air superiority and air defence would be the decisive factor and started to mobilise its war economy on that basis from 1937 onwards. While German the manpower and military power to dominate in a land war it had neither the ships or aircraft required to control the global economy. It lost the war with the battle of Britian - it was then forced to attack in the East to make up for its lack of resources, notablly oil.

Germany fought the land battles it could win not the battle for global dominance that requied sea and airpower. Mahan's doctrine held. Although Germany could win local, continental battles it did not have the resources for a global war.

The Germans were well aware of this and mobilised for a short war of 'shock and awe' at the expense of the strategic investment in air and sea power that was required to win a global war.

All the tanks in the world don't make a lot of difference if the other side has air and sea supremacy.