Could of Nazis Won WW2?

To my understanding, the Nazis were VERY powerful in number. I believe that if Hitler was not greedy and foolish, his Third Reich would still have control of Europe today. He was very stupid! I hate him for what he did, but I admire his military strength. What idiot would fight Russia, America, and the rest of the world all at once? Germany, Japan, and Italy were quite foolish too. Now...if he kept the agreement contract with Stalin, he would of definately won and Germany & Russia would of been the 'Super Powers' of today. I want to see other peoples' opinions.

*What stradegies should of the Third Reich of done different to win WW2?

[edit on 20-7-2005 by agentlopez]

Originally posted by agentlopez
To my understanding, the Nazis were VERY powerful in number. I believe that if Hitler was not greedy and foolish, his Third Reich would still have control of Europe today. He was very stupid! I hate him for what he did, but I admire his military strength. What idiot would fight Russia, America, and the rest of the world all at once? Germany, Japan, and Italy were quite foolish too. Now...if he kept the agreement contract with Stalin, he would of definately won and Germany & Russia would of been the 'Super Powers' of today. I want to see other peoples' opinions.

*What stradegies should of the Third Reich of done different to win WW2?

Actually from what I have read on the anaysis of WWII ... if certain events had not occured when they did ... Germany could have won the war.

Basically, the Blitzkrieg nature of the initial stages was the most effective and efficient ... had Germany stopped on the continent without a russian and british (and thus American) confrontation ... I think it would have turned out quite differently.

Hitler tried to grab too much at once without consolidating the gains ... this doomed the potential goal of world domination.

... but in retrospect, IMO the single most signicant event which prevented a german victory was actually a mistake on the part of their ally Japan ... in the attack of Pearl Harbor ... the idea had merit, but the lack of total destruction and no occupation ... allowed the U.S. to recoup losses and it provided a very strong argument for U.S. entry into the war ... one which Roosevelt used quite effectively to rally the american public into "war mode".

Thank goodness for such oversights.

LCKob

[edit on 20-7-2005 by LCKob]

It's all "what ifs". Brazil could of ruled the world "if" it had more money, "if" it had more man power, "if" it had a different histroy. Germany could of ruled Europe "if" Hitler was not in charge, "if" it had more resources, "if" it had more man power, 'if" the United States and Russia were not around.

the only thing to admire Germany for was their mechanization and production of weapons. As you pointed out, they overextended themsleves into russia during the winter months, and were completely fooled on D -Day. Its been reported hitler was a drug addict who planned military stategy around his horoscope, so it's reasonable to think he could have survived had he had kept the jewish scientists in his operation, and nuked us

Even with Russia and the United States around, he could of won! His darn problem was he was greedy and faught Russia and America together, hahaha. Russia was sort of allies with Germany and would of faught America together, but your right, it is all 'what ifs'...That is what this post is about though, what if something different would of happened?

[edit on 20-7-2005 by agentlopez]

he lost his talisman... And I am going to make that the topic of my next thread starting soon... it was taken from him..

#1 He attacked Russia, which was the single biggest mistake. However, you could argue that a war between Russia and Germany was unavoidable, but the eastern front, in terms of lives lost, resources expended, and sheer military strenght, dwarfs all the other fronts of the war combined. Russia would not have simply folded had they lost Leningrad or Moscow, but continue fighting all the way back to the Urals. Germany had virtually no hope of defeating them, evne without British or US involvement.
#2 He didnt finish off Britain. Germany was outproducing Britain in terms of aircraft and also had more resources to expend to defeat them. Granted, invading the british isles, being nessesary to vanquish UK, would have required years of time and preparation before it could become a reality for the Germans.
#3 He honored his pact with Japan, bringing the US into the war. You could argue the US would have declared war regardless, but the fact that Germany had a pact and thus declared war on the US was a factor. The US public may not have supported the war in europe, simply because pearl harbor was not Hitlers doing. However, the US would have eventually entered the european theatre to assist the UK.

Personally I think Germany was far too ambitious and tried to hold mroe land than they could handle, and it didnt help that they made the error of declaring war on a nation with a 10 fold population advantage and industrial superiority not once, but twice.

Originally posted by jetsetter
It's all "what ifs". Brazil could of ruled the world "if" it had more money, "if" it had more man power, "if" it had a different histroy. Germany could of ruled Europe "if" Hitler was not in charge, "if" it had more resources, "if" it had more man power, 'if" the United States and Russia were not around.

True, but some "what ifs" are more compelling from the standpoint that small changes in actual events could have made huge differences in the world of today ... and the reality here is that rhetoric aside, Nazi Germany came perilously close to achieving their goals and objectives.

Now, i am trying to think of a similar situation for Brazil? Is there one?

LCKob

no Nazi Germany wasnt even close to winning, since they havent even conquered 1/4 of the territory. the Soviets were already pushing the Nazis back before the U.S. joined the war in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Hitler thought he beat Britain to the ground and invaded Russia because he thought Britain be surrendering by then. bad mistake.

Let us say hypothetically, Germany conquered all of Europe, what would be their chances of being able to invade the US on thier own homeland? I know, I laughed at this one. Ya just have to think hypothetically though. Also, don't forget that all the countries they conquered, they obtained more military and vast more resources. Could they of built the atomic bomb faster and invade the US?

last yaer I read an article that pointed out there were 3 main reasons which led to the german defeat

""In his prison cell at Nuremberg, Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, wrote a brief memoir in the course of which he explored the reasons for Germany's defeat. He picked out three factors that he thought were critical:
1 the unexpected 'power of resistance' of the Red Army;
2 the vast supply of American armaments;
3 and the success of Allied air power.

Read the original source its quite interesting:
www.bbc.co.uk...

There's always "what-ifs." Britain could have gotten America back if they really wanted to in the Revolutionary War, but they decided it was just going to cost too much money and too many lives (the public wasn't too much in favor of that war in its latter stages in Britain).

The Soviet Union could still be around if they hadn't tried to invade and conquer Afghanistan, which crippled their economy in the long run.

The United States could've won Vietnam, but Vietnam was fought sort of like Germany in WWII. Just as Hitler picked what targets to attack in WWII instead of letting his generals handle the warfighting, Lyndon B. Johnson personally picked what targets to attack in Vietnam (incredibly stupid) and wouldn't let the U.S. bomb Northern Vietnam to cut off their Soviet supply line.

If the U.S. had not let its military get into a super sh*tty state after World War II, Korea wouldn't have been so difficult as it was either. If the U.S. had nuclear bombed North Korea, there'd probably be no North Korea today.

If Rome hadn't let the standards of their military degradate so much in the latter years of the empire and hadn't let the empire get so vast, the roman Empire *might* still be around even.

If Napoleon Bonaparte hadn't been stupid and tried to invade Russia, France might still be a military power.

There's 9 million "what-ifs" when it comes to military campaigns throughout history.

I belief there is no way that Germans would have won WW2. Stalin was amassing troops in Poland to brake the agreement with Hitler. To his surprise, Hitler did this first and massacred the red Army. That is the sole reason why the Germans got so far In Russia...where they started making bad strategic plans.

The Anglo-Saksen powers would have never allowed Germany to spread so far that they could hold Fortress Europe. There trade position would have been comprimised greatly!

[edit on 20-7-2005 by CrazyOrange]

As a military historian and automotive historian I have a particular interest in the scenario with a British capitulation or a peace agreement being reached in late 1940. The evidence I have is that the UK may have had a Gauleiter appointed but it is likely that if Churchill and King George VI and family had left for Canada, then Lord Halifax may have become Prime Minister and the Duke of Windsor offered the throne.

Hitler had said he was not interested in the British Empire, and if the British saw sense and allowed Germany free rein in Europe, Britain could keep its Empire. The appeal that this had from an economic point of view is that Germany could have used Britain as an off-shore means of trading with the Empire and other countries that were unable to trade directly with Germany. The Office of the Five Year Plan under Goering saw complex trading arrangements with the UK & Empire and neutral countries with barter and exports as essential to earn foreign currency and materials essential for the attack on the USSR. Back in 1935 Germany had tried to barter cars for Australian wool...wool that would be used in uniforms, blankets, and other military uses.

Had the UK agreed peace terms then the evidence suggests that its manufacturing capabilities would have been used to produce warlike stores, vehicles, etc for the attack on the USSR. In the event the Germans used thousands of recovered British and French military vehicles plus sequestred Chevrolets, Buicks, Pontiacs, Cadillacs, GMCs, etc which were refurbished and then used in Barbarossa.

The fact is that after Hitler invaded Poland, the Russians - due in part to the so called 'Non-Aggression Pact' - occupied Eastern Poland and deployed upwards of 1M men along Hitler's extended borders.

That canny Austrian then fooled Stalin into believing he had no use for Russia, by invading the Low Countries, Norway, Greece and Yugoslavia.

Stalin withdrew his forces for 'retraining' or 'special treatment'. (At this time, Hitler's Special Forces were working their way through the Stavka - Russia's high command - planting rumours and denouncing officers to the forerunners of the NKVD who promptly executed them). During this period, the Russians lost most of their experienced officers and SNCO's so that, by the time Hitler invaded on July 21st 1941 at 0445 hours, there were no senior officer staff to hold the front line.

One of Hitler's many, many mistakes, was the Declaration of War against America, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour. I think he only did it to bolster his ally (Japan) and in so naieve a way, offer them limited military aid] Once America entered the European war, Hitler's Third Reich was as good as over.

Another mistake - in my opinion, was the German demand for engineering perfection. Everything had to be engineered to an exacting standard. This meant that, as the war progressed, and at a time when production of tanks and anti-tank guns, fighters and ammunition should've been increased, production actually fell off not only because of enemy action but also because production of certain basic equipment took far too long.

There was also the preponderance for the 'magical fix'. His [Hitler's] demand for ever more fantastic war machines stretched to near breaking point, an already overstretched and overworked design team.

True many projects came to fruition - sea skimming anti-ship missiles, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, jet fighter aircraft, heavier and more powerfully armed tanks and very potent tapered bore anti-tank guns like the PaK 43/44 - were rushed into production towards the end of the war, when quantity was the goal - not constant upgrading and squabbling over eventual deployment.

The Me 262 was a fine example of Hitler getting his own way against the advice of his Generals. It should have been used exclusively against the B-17s and not deployed as ground attack aircraft.

In the end, Hitler was defeated - not only by Lend-Lease, GI Joe, Ivan or Tommy Atkins. but also by his own stupidity.

If Hitler had not invaded Russia, declared war on America; If Fat Herman had not switched targets away from the airfields to concentrate on bombing London; If Scharnhorst, Gneissenau and Bismark had not been sunk; If Germany had not lost the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic,
If Germany had not let the bulk of the BEF escape from Dunkirk and If Rommel had won in North Africa - then Yes!

Hitler would have won the war.

They needed a stronger navy too. Without control of the seas you have nothing.

I cannot see any credible circumstances in which Germany could really have 'won' in WW2.

The usual scenario for this happening assumes that like a gambler Germany could have pocketed her immediate gains and 'left the table', but IMO once Britain decided to go to war I don't see any way that would have been allowed to happen.

Even if the Battle of Britain had not occurred the only outcome that would have engendered would have been a further advance into and later subsequent retreat out of Russia.

My view is that when Russia successfully moved her war production to the Urals and beyond the fall or not of Moscow would have been irrelevant to the outcome.

Germany's arms production was woeful - even Britain out-produced her in many important areas! They simply didn't bother trying to mass produce armour (incredible, considering they had experience of modern mass production techniques thanks to their car industry) or aircraft.

They didn't even go over to what they referred to as a 'total war' footing until 1943!

Of note too must be the order to disband research into anything but that likely to give a 'result' in the short term (2yrs was the timescale I believe). Therefore even if Germany had simply held onto Europe and not wasted men and material in the Battle of Britain and held off of the invasion of Russia her technological advances would simply have been further delayed as the orders effect would have lasted longer (and some possibly dissipated entirely).

I agree that war between Russia and Germany was probably inevitable, the issue was who moved first and most likely not 'if' at all.
I have read that Stalin did not expect it for quite some time though (maybe he was aware of the 1942 ideal many in Germany had been working towards).

Also one cannot ignore the utter defeat Germany experienced (east and west) regarding the intelligence war.
In the west we had the enigma machine cracked (thanks to the Poles, the French and the British......no matter what Hollywood tries telling people today ) and could read German orders and signals in real time - we know/knew that sometimes we got the information faster than the intended recipients!.
In the east the Russians had a spy network which was so effective they didn't need Enigma.
Btw you might be interested in 'Hitler's Traitor' by Louis Kilzer on Presido books; as well as detailing just how extensive, not to mention plain stupid ('funkspiel' especially where the Germans fed Russia significant genuine intel in the hope of gaining credibility and pulling a big bluff later.....er, which never came) the German intel failure was it points to Russia's top man in the German inner circle as no less than Martin Boremann!

There is no reason to believe that the Hitler regime would have had any less failure in this area than they actually had.

I really cannot see any serious prospect of anything other than a German defeat in WW2 (something many Germans could foresee only too clearly then too).
They had neither the manpower, resources nor sheer capacity to take and hold the enormous territories required......and all this in addition to practically everything in that absurd 'political religion' of theirs doing just about everything possible to encourage resistance and defiance.

When one thinks of the difficulties current peacetime 'normal' Germany has had re-absorbing the old east German state one can only wonder at the scale of the fantasy those nutters enveloped themselves in attempting to conquer, hold and integrate all of Europe and beyond by force.

IMO, thankfully, it was never going to happen nor be in any way sustainable.

The pity is it took approx 60 million people the whole world over to find that out.......approx 5.5 million of whom were Germans with a further 2 millions or so military wounded, God knows how many German civillians were wounded.
Then there were the years between defeat and rebuilding where the German people suffered terribly.
Then there was the treatment the vengeful Russians handed out (and who can deny they had provocation?).
Such was the 'gift' those deranged 'patriot nationalist' maniacs gave to Germany.

.......and of course we cannot forget or ignore the damage to the national psyche the association with the Holocaust etc etc has brought to subsequent innocent German generations and will continue to trouble future generations of innocent Germans.

Originally posted by fritz
Stalin withdrew his forces for 'retraining' or 'special treatment'. (At this time, Hitler's Special Forces were working their way through the Stavka - Russia's high command - planting rumours and denouncing officers to the forerunners of the NKVD who promptly executed them). During this period, the Russians lost most of their experienced officers and SNCO's so that, by the time Hitler invaded on July 21st 1941 at 0445 hours, there were no senior officer staff to hold the front line.

- Actually the 'great purges' happened very much pre-war (in the mid - late 1930's).

The net effect was indeed to rob Russia of her most experienced 'core' officer staff.

It is generally believed - but IIRC as yet there is no actual proof - that these purges were at least partly due to rumours Germany planted but it is equally likely to have simply been the product of a paranoid Stalin and the exposure of the several attempts (by official and decidely unofficial contacts) from the western govs (whom Stalin distrusted intensely) to try and get Russia to side with the west and not Germany.

[edit on 20-7-2005 by sminkeypinkey]

It's my theory that Germany could have one that war a million ways, course the Allies could have won it a million other ways.

I feel that if Germany worked with the Soviets instead of fighting them he would have made more progress. Next would be to divert troops those troops to Britain instead of wasting there time trying to invade Russia, which is suicidal to say the least.

Next would have been for the Japanese to hold off their attack on Pearl Harbor until after Germany and maybe the Russians invaded Britian. Without a place to stop the US probably would have been unable to launch a counter invasion (assuming they enter the war), unless we decided to take over Ireland. But that would be no problem with a Blitzkreig by Germany with Russian support. Plus without American intervention, the Japanese might have had a good shot at taking over nearly all of the important parts of China (not Tibet).

Oh yeah and next key would be to actually listen to Rommel. That man was there best leader. I figure if he had been given the nessesary support in North Africa he would have taken Egypt and moved onto the Middle East. From there he would have given Germany control of the worlds largest oil source. Plus if Rommel was commander in chief Hitler would have accomplised so much more.

Well, there is th case which has been made about the Yugoslavia operation. This operation was largely unplanned and force the delay of Barbarossa for 6 weeks. The Germans could have taken MOscow in that extra 6 weeks before the winter. However it reamins to be seen what effect the loss of Moscow would have had on the Russians.

Also, HItler's policies toeard the Russian people were going to alienate them from the very beginning. He had an opportunity to use the Russian people who hated Stalin in vast numbers. INstead he treated them worse. Very Stupid and the epitomy of Nazi arrogance.

The war against Germnay was not won by any western powers rather by the Soviet Union. The allied slaughter in France would have been massive if only one veteran German field Army was redeployed from Russia.