But it didn't suggest as much to contemporary leaders. I'm not offering that historical fact as conclusive, only as a suggestion that your conclusion may be skewed by hindsight application of OTL's air war.Glenn239 wrote:The power of Anglo-American airpower suggests that Germany's oil industry could not have maintained adequate production.
More significantly, you're right that AA airpower would lead to oil industry's destruction if you're right that AA airpower would be decisively stronger. As that's the matter in dispute...
I disagree on the directional impact of the SU on LW production. If un-Barbarossa'd RKKA with 600 divisions is sitting on Germany's border, the Heer gets more production than it would if the SU has been beaten: It needs only ~40 mediocre divisions for occupation but needs >150 to watch the border if the SU is un-Barbarossa'd.Glenn239 wrote:x2 for sure. x3? Not sure on x3. But with the Soviet Union as a German ally, then you can get to x3 for sure, and maybe even where the Axis are outproducing the Allies in combat aircraft by 1945.
Furthermore, Germany benefitted immensely from Soviet forced labor, would have benefitted more had it beat SU, and benefits not at all in your ATL.
OK we're using different assumptions on bombing's impact (I was being more conservative) but arriving at roughly the same German production numbers.Glenn239 wrote: to me x3 would be about 180,000 German planes and x2 would be 120,000. This, assuming that German 1944 aircraft production (about 39,000) would have been more like 60,000 without the Allied strategic bombing campaign.
...which usefully clarifies things.
But it also prompts me to ask: How do the Allies accomplish total air supremacy everywhere against 150,000 Axis plane production?
Your ATL seems to assume that German training programs collapse as in OTL but that again assumes the successful oil campaign that relies on total aerial dominance. Seems circular.
In your ATL I agree that Britain would make peace. Even Churchill probably would have done so. I also agree that absent PH and absent Hitler DoW'ing the US, America probably stays out as well. There's IMO no way for the Anglosphere to beat Germany and/or Japan if fighting both at once; add the SU to the equation and it's even more clear.Glenn239 wrote:Counter question - if Stalin did take the deal and destroyed the British Empire in 1942 (no Japanese attack on the Americans in 1941), do you think Churchill would fall and that the US would enter the war, or do you think that the British would cut their losses and make peace, and the US would stay clear of Europe?
My other thread gives good evidence of exactly this rupture opening had Germany beaten the SU:Glenn239 wrote:Put it another way - what other possible strategy could Germany have pursued that would have ruptured the Anglo-American alliance? (Sealion?)
There was, IMO, no way to invade Japan in my ATL while simultaneously prosecuting war in Europe. There was no way, IMO, that the American public would have abided an indefinite and possibly losing war against Germany+Japan when peace with Germany would allow defeat of Japan.As early as April–May, OPD, G-2, and the joint committees had begun to explore
the appropriate response should this ‘‘desperate situation’’ result in a Soviet collapse, and in early August
the JSSC completed and forwarded to the JPS a massive
study of such a contingency. This study indicated that Russian collapse would be
a ‘‘catastrophe’’ of such magnitude as to put the United States in a ‘‘desperate’’
situation too, one in which it ‘‘would be forced to consider courses of action
which would primarily benefit the United States rather than the United Nations.’’
A revival of isolationism and an ‘‘increase
in defeatism’’ within the country were also possible in this scenario. Even without
British withdrawal, however, the only sound U.S. response to a Soviet collapse
would be to ‘‘adopt the strategic defensive in the European Theater of War and to
conduct the strategic offensive in the Japanese theater.’’
I can't emphasize enough how much SU's fall changes in the Pacific as well as in Europe. Kwantung Army is freed up, meaning China falls. With China occupied the Japanese industrial complexes of Manchuria and Korea are bomb-proof until the 1950's. India is highly endangered by the land routes from southern China to Burma. America probably has to invade China to beat Japan.
In that ATL, there's no way beat Japan while fighting Germany and no way to beat Germany while fighting Japan (or at all). The choice of Japan seems clear. Britain would have to deal with that.