How many divisions to defend France with Britain out?

I would appreciate those sources please, But let me ask you this.

If the US sank so many U-boats in the war using planes or ships then could you tell me were these planes/ships were launched from, Becouse i highly delt they came all the way from America.

Ok i agree that the Germans wouldnt be able to field a competent air naval arm but dont mean it wont be able to couse alot of hassles for the Americans.

Oil shortages would be a problem but atleast they wouldnt be using up oil in NA or in all of those U-boat operations through out the war, Not to mention there would be no air attacks on any of there oil fields (except maybe from the soviets, which i highly delt they could do).

US production may have been double that of German (with Germany using the resources and industries of occupied territory) production. But wouldnt the Germans be on the defence in the Atlantic. Oh and those thousands of pilots and aircraft they lost over the years would be at there disposel, Oh and im also guessing a number of those pilots lost in the Luftwaffe air attacks would still be available.

And if i am reading the statistics properly didnt Germany build aircraft quicker then they could train pilots, Germany had no issue when it came to aircraft production.

And those 90 divisions the US had would just be picked off becouse there is no way the US could transport them all over, And supply them. They could at the most transport 9....MAYBE 10 divisions, which would require every transport ship they had. The fact is that Germany could have built up here fighters/bombers/dive bombers over friendly skys through out the war, And then release one massive combined attack with the Kriegsmarine which would include several hundered U-boats.

Only way the US could have done it would be to go from Canada to Greenland, and from Greenland to Ice land, and then and only then could they attack the UK, By which time Germany is well aware of the US and is going to be more than ready.

 

Ok, I know the Americans had the best production records for ww2. But building the most doesnt mean they would be able to go and just travel across the Atlantic, Attack the German ships and go back without a hassle, You are know giving the Americans too much credit.

U.S armaments production would rise after the defeat of Japan, Thats if Japans defeat does occur, If im not mistaken there was so much the Japanese and Germans could have traded to make a difference but not like they had any effective means of trading, But with Britian out the way they have the Suez canal which means they can trade, Send war ships to each other for lending and even troops.

Yes NA was a sideshow but it still used up oil that could have been used else where, And where do you get the idea the U-boats would go out deep in the ocean like towards the U.S coast to sink some ships, They only ever went out deep to prevent supplies reaching the Russians and the British. But Britian out the way there need to go out deep no longer is there.
Oh and with NA under there control is it not possible that they could move into the Middle East and start setting up facilties to remove oil from the ground and refine it, Oil shortage is fixed then.

And the Eastern front losses of pilots conserne this how? There would be thousands of pilots that could have been givin plentty of training over the years by the more experienced pilots.

And compared to the West those aircraft losses in the East werent that much,

And with the ability to land 15 divisions ment time to prepare, But most importantly the U.S did not just build up 15 divisions at home and go off for an attack, They built them up close to the Enemy couse that was the only way they could transport so many so far, Still giving the US too much credit. So attacking with 15 divisions across the Atlantis is out of the question, Oh and by that time the Japanese had no army, airforce or navy to speak of yet the Germans would have had time to prepare and build up all of these.

There losses in East were not as bad as losses in the West, And know you are automatically saying hte Germans could not win a battle against the US. There fighters would be on the defensive against incomming US bombers......Well i delt that becouse why would the US send so many bombers on a possible one way mission, They would have to travel along way, With possible bad weather, Oh and so far to travel also means greater chance of going off on course. And if they did make it there it only takes a few trained pilots to knock out so many bombers that are being flown by crews that are dead tired. Oh and if the Kriegsmarine stays in Harbour or goes out it is doomed, That sounds to me like you have already picked your side and are unwilling to lisson to reason, Makes the whole point of my post pointless but oh well, ill go on anyway. The Kriegsmarine would be made up of plentty of ships so they can defently do some damage, Then add all of those subs that could attack those transports and then add those Luftwaffe aircraft so many problems for the allies to worry about, It may not work but it also may work we dont know. Oh and that US navy that is so used to air attacks was only used to Japanese Zeros etc adn there tactics. Germans planes are alot different so are there tactics.

You are know assuming that the Kriegsmarine fielding so many ships would only be a large target for the US airforce, But wouldnt the US fleet be an even bigger target for the Germans.

 

Correct, all American invasion forces in Operation Torch came from the US.

 

No it isn't.

Just to quote from one of many sources:

http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2Bard-c2-2.html

and the make up of each landing force:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Torch

 

I've actually faced this problem before, These exact events happened to me in a Hearts of Iron game long ago

You all are forgetting a few key pieces of land that I feel would have been critical given such a war situation.

1) Greenland - was already used as a staging area for flights across the atlantic, I dont see why it could not be a staging area for 3 marine divisions, which should have been sufficient to take Iceland.

2) The Azores - If Europe has already fallen, why the hell not try to take these islands?

3) An Island Hopping campaign: Greenland > Iceland > Britain > (throw Ireland in there, Ireland would be very pro american)


The big question would be whether or not the british people would resist german occupation. (See the film 'It Happened Here')

 

If find this what-ifs quite… ridiculous. I simply don’t know, in the first place, what kind of miracle should have happened for Germany to actually defeat and occupy Great Britain…

Now, if this happened in 1940 or 1941, the amount of extra troops available for the Eastern Front would have been very small. Since then there existed no real threat of an Allied invasion, I can guess that the total amount of divisions fielded in Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and North Africa with the purpose of defending the coast line against an amphibious attack wouldn’t have been of more than 20 full divisions (somewhat between 300.000 and 400.000 men). But of course, Great Britain should have been occupied as well, which recquired maybe half of the previous figure. Even the Luftwaffe would have had to field an even larger number of aircraft than it deployed in Germany (200), the Mediterranean (370), the North Sea and Western Europe (780) in order to guard and patrol the Atlantic. The small German fleet, whose only use in the Eastern Front was of artillery support at the Leningrad front, would have been forced to protect the biggest island of the Atlantic…

Iceland, I think, is almost out of the way… As T. A. has put it, the Germans negligible amphibious capability (Norway, by example, took almost half of the German surface fleet) doesn’t throw many lights at such operations.

Now, I think the British and Commonwealth reaction, in case of this miraculous defeat of Britain, would have been to continue fighting, no matter what. That makes possible that Iceland could have been defended and, almost surely, the whole British fleet would have fled to Dominion ports or scuttled.

It is unreasonable! The Germans did not confiscate almost any French major vessel. The main French battle fleet was scuttled when Vichy was occupied in 1942. And the same happened to the Italian fleet in 1943. Taking into account that the very Germans blew their own defeated ships at Scapa Flow in 1919, why would the British had acted different from French, Germans or Italians?

And what about the gigantic and successful supply network the US did build in the Pacific Ocean, even if its distances are far greater than in the Atlantic and even if the American logistic train didn’t have most of the country’s resources at its disposal, since it was a 'secondary' theatre?

And this brings us to the initial point of this thread… more diversion of badly-needed resources from the eastern front…

I differ. It did have a great tactical impact. During the whole war, the Allies always knew better what to hit and what they were facing. In the other hand, you can see how meaningful it was for the Germans, during the Battle of Britain, to bomb airfields which had nothing to do with fighter command; or in the east, when they fought using XIX century maps, thinking they were fighting a Red Army 1/3 of its real size, always ignoring where, when and how strongly the Soviets were going to attack them. No doubt why the Maskírovka almost always worked with the Germans, besides the fact it was often very well executed: Germany had a lousy intelligence system, at all levels.

And all these technicians, couldn’t they all have fled Great Britain, to Canada or the US and remain fighting the Germans?

What bloody naval support? Half the German fleet went to the bottom of the sea during the Norwegian operation. And I’m also thinking that the weather of the North Atlantic might have been a major factor for airborne operations… as well as the British fleet, which I won't assume would have capitulated just like that.

Why? The ‘Manhattan Project’ was started with the sole idea of beating Germany…

Wrong. The vast majority of German submarines were of medium size. US submarines, instead, were heavy, long-range, which were very successfully used in the much larger Pacific Ocean.

You’re severely under-estimating the huge losses the Luftwaffe suffered in the east from 1941-1944, out of constant and merciless attrition over a frontline of 4.200 km (the losses caused by ground fire and weather conditions might have no parallel in other theatres). The toll catastrophic air bridges, endless air-ground missions, bombing and fierce dogfights took on German crews and production was fatal. The German bomber and transport wings met their tomb in the east. And let’s not forget how many specialised ground crews were also wiped out in the middle of Soviet offensives.

No… the resources released from North Africa, France or Norway by the end of hostilities with the British would have now to be used in the occupation and defense of Great Britain and maybe actions against Iceland. In any case, the extra amount of resources that would have been transferred to the eastern front in 1941-1942 would have been insufficient to cope with the demands of the Russian meat grinder.

And how were they going to transport the oil? With what ships? With what pipelines?

Would they? All of a sudden, the ultra-conservative German admirals were going to switch their strategic thinking, send U-boats and battleships to hell, in order to rescue the already-dropped idea of the Graf Zeppelin?

But the British were. And again, I can think that it was very likely that the Royal Navy would have been almost intact and still fighting Germany based on Dominion or American ports.

Are you kidding? The US reached like half of its potential military power in 1945, and by then it had built the largest combat fleet in the History of the world… It was ready to launch X, Y and Z-Days, which would have made D-Day look like a child’s game.

The air attacks on the oil fields took place when the tide had already changed in the east. The Red Air Force might not have been able to bombard those oil fields, but I guess the Red Army would have, as it did, occupied them sooner or later, killing, capturing and wounding several thousands Krauts in the process.

Not if they had been thrown into the Russian cauldron…

Now, this one did get me! This sounds like the Germans were the masters of combined-service operations!

As ready as they were in D-Day, with Mongolian Soviet POWs with WWI rifles, manning concrete bunkers, and Panzer division which relied on horse transport for food?

OK. That’s enough. Not only that’s a huge hindsight absurd supposition, but also a show of both great ignorance about the war in the east and disrespect for the USSR’s contribution to victory in Europe. Besides, there’s no argument there, only empty-based conjectures!

Exactly! Nowhere near as effective or adequate as those of an old-experienced naval power such as Japan!

I can see a reason… the ill-performance of German destroyers against surface ships, as in Norway. Also, there’s to be noticed that the number and quality of German destroyers compared to Japan’s was, and again I’ll use the word, laughable!

And I have to confess… I’ve laughed a bit in this thread. Thanks for that!

 

There is so much to learn. I feel like an idiot.

 

Why do you say that? It's a matter of clearing your mind of acquired wisdom, prejucice and propaganda and taking a square look at facts. That's what I think Friedrich and Jeff are doing.

 

One "new idea" on the subject of invading Britain I learned from Mr Churchill himself from a document. He himself feared ( post-war thought though ) that the Germans, after Dunkirk, would keep the fighting going on in France and in the mean while would gather troops for the invasion. Churchill himself would be forced to send new troops and planes to fight the battle in France and this might leave Britain more vulnerable for an invasion.

 

Thanks, my friend.