I raised the Uboat and other issues mostly in response to your point a few posts ago that Germany was doomed once the war started because of economic imbalance. My broad point is that factors such as Uboats allowed Germany time to beat Russia before facing the full force of the West. Once it beat Russia and controlled basically all of Europe, Germany controlled areas whose GDP exceeded the U.S.'s (though still smaller than the entire Anglosphere including colonies). At that point, Germany is close enough economically that its higher combat effectiveness and defensive stance make it possibly capable of withstanding any conventional Allied pressure.HistoryGeek2019 wrote:Uboats aren't going to save Germany in your ATL. They won't decrease the political will of the Allies to fight. They will increase the political will of the Allies to fight because one thing the Allies absolutely cannot accept is the threat of Uboats sinking commercial traffic in the Atlantic.
Yes, the Uboats were done by 1944 but by then they'd served their purpose of buying time in the West.
And in the second half of 1945 the Type XXI boats would have restarted the Battle of the Atlantic with serious implications for the Anglosphere.
Good clarification of the issues.HistoryGeek2019 wrote:For purposes of your ATL, we're positing an Allied invasion of France no earlier than the OTL, and I'll even concede that it likely would have been later than OTL if Russia had collapsed in 1942 per your ATL.
As I posted above somewhere, the Allies had ~1.5mil men in France on OTL D+19.
In an ATL where the Westheer can call on 200 divisions, that kind of force will be driven into the channel.
You like to point out that the Allies can diffuse German strength via landings elsewhere but, as we've seen, landing craft and forces committed to a theater were stuck there. So diversionary landings in Italy or the Balkans mean a weaker '45 cross-channel operation. And Germany would be wise, in that event, to merely contain diversionary expeditions while concentrating for a decisive defeat of cross-channel forces. If the Allies land in Italy in the summer, for example, but don't do a cross-channel invasion, then Germany easily pivot forces to destroy the Italian incursion over the winter, once the cross-channel threat has passed. That is to say, any diversionary attacks must be made in conjunction with Cross-channel if they are to survive and any such attacks would unacceptably weaken cross-channel (attacks on islands/Norway excepted).
So IMO we'd need a 1945 invasion at the earliest, and it needs to be ~3x stronger than OTL. Is that possible? As a theoretical matter yes but production of the requisite landing craft would have required cuts in other areas and/or more intensive mobilization in America.
More likely it's a 1946 landing with forces transferred from the Pacific. But by then we have a nightmare scenario of A-bombs and the predictably ghoulish Nazi response (Sarin gas etc.).