What did Germany need to win the war?

OK, guilty as charged!

What did Germany nee dto win WWII?

a) Britain (= U.S.A.) allying or at least folding down and agreeing on German Hegemon over Continental Europe

b) a full, uncondidional support of the U.S.S.R on Germany's side against the U.S/CW Alliance or a broken USSR - would helped the Axis at least for a certain time period.

Anything else...no way to see a "win" situation for Germany.

Not even warm clothes for Army Group Center in November 1941

Cheers,

 

As for the"Med-First"-strategy, you have do decide in 1941: Med Sea or Russia. Either or, not both.

A "Med-Sea-first" Strategy would have f***ed up Britain's "soft underbelly"-strategy, so more emphasis on the U.S.'s "Rainbow"/"Europe first"-variants (= France first).

Plus a nice, untouched Russian giant waiting for his chance to roll on once the Nazis got in trouble.

Cheers,

 

This should be interesting......

What if Germany and Russia were allies? Russian Me.262? Cold War even colder? You know, like a Nuclear Winter.........?

 

Don`t invade the SU

 

Didn't the Russians copy the Me 262 anyway? Wasn't it the La 11 or something?

 

Andy, didn't you say in other thread that there were no intentions by the Soviet Union to invade Germany?

 

dp, sorry for screwing it up, it's sat.night...

[ 12 October 2002, 08:28 PM: Message edited by: AndyW ]

 

Did I write that the Russkies were about to roll on GERMANY? I don't have doubts that the USSR would try to grap her pieces as put out in the Hitler-Molotov-visit 1940. Surely this was not Germany. And even if they had plans, they wouldn't have invaded in 1941.

Cheers,

[ 12 October 2002, 08:29 PM: Message edited by: AndyW ]

 

The Russian army would have been pressured to attack Germany by other allied forces anyway. It would definetely help if Germany had to fight a war on two sides. Meaning that Hitler couldn't direct all of his forces to the west.

 

War with Russia was inevitable, so the only chance of Germany winning the war was defeating Russia. If she did that, than no allied strategy, especially if Germany goes after Britain next, would have worked.

 

OIL, OIL, and more OIL!!!

Give Germany unlimited and easy access to fuel reserves then you may well see a difference. This would certainly be helped by putting the economy onto a war footing very early.

First post in ages back at uni and lacking the net at mo...

 

Hmm.

As one area I'd say thet the Germans had to work out a strategy for dealing with Britain. Either strangle it with U-boats (cheap and pretty likely to succeed) or invade it with land forces (tricky but possible with enough preparation) or go for the peripheral strategy in the Mediterannean (equally possible with enough resources). At various times Hitler tried all of these, but none of them with any deep conviction until it was too late for any of them to succeed.

Jumbo

 

Good points Jumbo and Red. Germany really started reving it into gear too late. If they could have gotten past Stalingrad then they would have a whole lot of oil. The Me.262 used a lot of oil..... They should've surrounded Great Britian with U-Boats before June 6, 1944. With Great Britian at a brief "stand-still" Germany might've been able to builg up a larger army and Luftwaffe to take out the Meditereanean and possibly both England and Russia!!!!!!!!!

 

The Soviet Union must have been defeated by December 1941 if Germany wanted to win the war.

And Great Britain could have been defeated in summer 1941 or 1942 with the U-boats. Great Britain was an easy one...

 

Yes, you did, Andy. You said that the Soviet Union had no intentions to attack Germany and conquest Europe. Do you remember that thread with the neighbours; Mr. B and Mr. S and I don't know what-the-hell-else...

 

Right. Not even the pre-emtive strike plans prepared by Soviet military (don't confuse this with "preventive war" plans, which were even less existant) were paraphied by Stalin.

If you have proof for Soviet intentions to invade Germany in 1941 before the USSR was under attack by her, please post it.

Of course the USSR had intentions to conquest PARTS of Europe (Eastern Poland, Finland, Bukovina, Bulgaria, parts of or even entire Romania), but not ENTIRE Europe. I never wrote something else, not here, nor in the "Hitler/Stalin and the conquest of Europe"-thread you mentioned.

I invite you to quote me to show any contradictions.

Cheers,

 

I have some idea.
-Improve the Enigmas because the British could and can intercept it by the ULTRA
-Air Superiority
-Use Stg44 and Gewehr 41
-Attack Caucasus first it will disable USSR oil production
-Germany must not kill the jew
-Friendship and liberate Ukraine
.

 

Technology is not going to win the war for Germany. You can change or fine tune their equipment but in the end it will not change a thing. The Allies will adapt to it and, the more effective the new German technology is the quicker the Allies will respond.

There are really two broad items the Germans needed to effectively have a chance of victory in WW 2:

The first is massively improved logistics and engineering. Their rail system needed to be very highly orgainzed to move supplies in a timely fashion where they were needed. It was rare that the Germans made full use of their available rail system. Too often there was alot of slack in line use and alot of wait time for rail cars. Engines were hardly used to capacity either.
In engineering alot more mechanization would have been desirable. For instance, how much difference would it have made for every panzer battalion to have 3 or 4 tanks with bulldozer blades? Rail repair units based on a well equipped train or two would have made a huge difference too.

The second need was for a comprehensive and sound strategic plan right from the start. Instead of a strategic plan that went only as far as the current campaign, Germany should have planned for a strategic war involving all their potential opponets right from the start. This would mean that following Poland, France is planned for and Britain is planned for. With proper planning the Germans could have better tailored their equipment to the war they planned to fight.
Thus, they would not have pushed for say, a Luftwaffe with limited strategic range or capacity. The Navy would have had a more comprehensive plan for dealing with Britain including alot more integration with the Luftwaffe than it had originally. As it was historically, the Luftwaffe on the outbreak of war had no maritime patrol aircraft beyond coastal patrols and air-sea rescue and even these were of minimal number. Once it became apparent that maritime patrol was a mission requirement the Luftwaffe only committed to it on a very lukewarm basis and mostly with pretty marginal aircraft.
Of course, this would have also required that there be no Waffen SS (eg private armies including later Luftwaffe ground units) so the army was a monolithic organization on the ground.

 

I believe that Germany should concentrated on Africa instead of Russia. Several crucial objectives would have been accomplished. The elimination of British troops in Africa, more allies from from countries like Iraq, more importantly Germany would have had access to all of the oil. With no war on the Eastern front, Germany could have very well figured out all of the logistics with the transportation of the " black gold. " Also Italian troops might have very well gotten the experience they desperately needed if they fought along side the Germans to begin with and took notes.

With all of this oil and an extra 3 million men not to mention more planning for the invasion of Great Britain, all of Europe might have very well fallen to the 3rd Reich.

 

I expected better than this. Please explain:

a) how is Germany going to "figure out all of the logistics with the transportation of the black gold". How many years would that take? Is the Iraqi oil already fully on line three years after the invasion, after the massive injection of technology by one of the foremost oil-savvy nations? No. So?

b) how long would the Soviet Union sit entirely still while watching the German empire grow until it is ready to gobble it at leisure. Stalin's premise was that the Fascist and Capitalist powers would fight each other to exhaustion, not than one of them would massively overpower the rest. Failing these conditions, direct action need be taken.