In 1917,submarine warfare was bringing the US in the WAR.hagen wrote:(i) Why is two years too long for Germany? They have signed a 10-year peace treaty with the Soviet Union (with what value is a moot point) so why not take a few years to grind down the British. When you want war with the Soviets you will not face a two-front war. Stalin was waiting for the other powers to exhaust each other first.
(ii) The British are going to put everything into winning the war at sea but the Germans are going to start putting a lot in too. Air and sea war is all about capital equipment and there is no reason to suppose that the British are going to stay ahead technological as well as beat the Germans in building rates.
(iii) Submarine warfare might bring the Americans into the war but it is not clear that it will. Sinking rates may have been poor but then we are going to concentrate resources so as to improve that.
(iv) Logistically the Germans had real problems in the vastness of the Soviet Union. However, the population was only about twice that of Germany. I am doubtful that taking the Moscow region would have won the war. It might be the capital, an industrial region and communications centre but there was a reserve capital and the Soviets would have fought on. Then there are all those troops in the Ukraine. However, the generals seem to think it was the right move
(v) The racialist policies of the Nazis makes it difficult to see what deal they might make but I should have thought they might have acted in the east as they did in the west until the war was won and then the screws can be tightened.
Well the leaders in Britain and the Soviet Union were clearly worried men.doogal wrote:Its quite simple really-
a) Germany alone - with minor allies had the fighting power(within its armed forces) to force a decision against one country at a time: possibly two-
b) The Soviet union was not one country but a communist empire made up of several:
c) Germanys allies had not the infrastructure to support or supply mass field armies- and Germany itself did not have the economic stability to maintain attrition (we all know this)
d)How could anyone ask if Germany could of won WW2 ? There would of had to be some pretty crazy changes in direction structure AND policies of not only Nazi Germany but the Soviet Union Britain and the USA.
For all the prowess of the Heer on the battlefield, the navy was gone as a force before it started and the BoBritain tore the heart out of the Luftwaffe. This is before we even enter the Yugoslavis Greece USSR Africa etc.
As a premise it does not get off the ground:
Wars between countrys may be geopolitical in dimensions, but the reality is mass death through battles-with-men-machines and logistics being the final word in gaining victory. War is destroying the others Armies-pulverising industry- breaking the will of a people- The main allies were never any where near having this happen to them. Britain and the Soviet union up till 1942 only suffered one or two of this triumvirate never all three. The world would have had to stand on its head for Germany to be victorious.
Doogal
(a) Agreed
(b) Which made it politically vulnerable
(c) Only because it faced enemies who were bigger. Britain survived because of lend-lease and maybe the Soviet Union too; France did not survive at all.
(d) History had an outcome but I suggest if different choices were made there might have been significant differences in the outcome. Is all deterministic? Was it all inevitable? Churchill only slept soundly once the US was in the war so he was of a view that the outcome was undecided until that moment.
Already before Pearl Harbour,Germany was loosing the submarine war :in 1941,the UBoats sank less tonnes of shipping than in 1940.