What if........Hitler never invaded the Soviet Union?

Such a foreign policy sounds very similar to a recent U.S. one. One can not simply discard a country's sovereignty in order to further his own agenda with out having some kind fall out. Such a move on Sweden may end with disastrous results...


Why is Spain irrelevant?

 

Before war with Finland broke out, negotiations were underway in regards of a land swap (for the sake of Leningrad). Only after Finland refused did Stalin attack. This is not the same as Germany taking Belgium in order to bypass the maginot line.

I also very much doubt that the Allies would conduct war in the same fashion which Hitler had. The allies would respect a country's neutrality or would they?

 

Total war was it not? There goes the good-versus-bad thing again!

 

That's not a bad argument, but it doesn't compare to getting 10 million Allied soldiers killed or badly wounded in France. If you can use a neutral route, secured at less than 1/10th the cost, it doesn’t make sense except to exploit it on the grounds that the act is necessary to safeguard the future of democracy in Europe. A sea power must use its logistic flexibility to force the land power to fight at the periphery of its logistical tether. That means picking a campaign theater across a major body of water and forcing the land power’s logistic tail to be seaborne. As such, an invasion of France or continental Europe is out – the German army would be too powerful for the Allies to fight there on its terms, in the heart of its communications network. It would be utter disaster.

A strategic air campaign based from Britain is also a non-starter. With Russia supplying tremendous quantities of material to the Axis Powers, as with North Vietnam, no Allied air campaign can succeed. Whatever production shortfalls it causes, Stalin will happily make up, to allow the capitalists to better kill each other. Further, at these extreme distances the losses to the Luftwaffe (now 2-3 times stronger than historical) would be unacceptable.

Using WMD’s (A-bomb) is not an option while the Luftwaffe possesses the ability to relatiate against England with large-scale nerve gas attacks.

The Allies invaded and occupied neutral Persia in WW2, and would have invaded Norway if Hitler didn’t beat them to the punch. The Russians invaded the neutral Baltic States, Finland, Rumania, and Poland, and would have done so to Turkey and Bulgaria too had matters turned out better for them. The decision by Britain to invade/not invade Thailand in December 1941 (to preempt the Japanese) was not taken until the last second.

Because operations in Spain would not further the Allied objective of putting American tactical air power on top of Germany’s heartland.

 

I think that's applying modern thinking to a historical case. At the time the A-bomb was basically considered just a bigger bomb. Poison gas was however outlawed and while the allies didn't have nerve gas they could have produced huge quantities (in deed they did produce them) of mustard and chlorine. Mustard would arguably be a superior gas for attacking population centers at the time. Especially if you are looking for maximum dislocation of industry.

 

This is sort of incorrect, the allies did have MASSIVE stockpiles of the new version of nitrogen based mustard gas, chlorine gas, and Lewisite. But they also had nearly as much tabun nerve gas as the Nazis did. I don't recall reading about the soman (sp?) nerve agents, whether America had started production of that one or not.

When Hitler was informed that the "secret" of tabun was far from a secret (it and sarin had been patented internationally) since the mid-thirties. Eventually the Nazi' IG Farben had about 17,000 tons of this nerve agent stockpiled, and DuPont had about 12,000 tons in America's reserve. DuPont internal records reveal that much, and they also "infer" that sarin was also produced during and post-war.

The terms of the Geneva Convention on poison agents stated that if one nation uses any such agent "first" all the others are free to use it against that nation if possible. The Nazis knew full well that the western allies had the capability to retaliate in kind, so they held their's as well.

Here is a post of mine from earlier:

Speer, who was strongly opposed to the introduction of tabun, flew Otto Ambros, I.G.'s authority on poison gas as well as synthetic rubber, to the meeting. Hitler asked Ambros, "What is the other side doing about poison gas?" Ambros explained that the enemy, because of its greater access to ethylene, probably had a greater capacity to produce mustard gas than Germany did. Hitler interrupted to explain that he was not referring to traditional poison gases: "I understand that the countries with petroleum are in a position to make more [mustard gas], but Germany has a special gas, tabun. In this we have a monopoly in Germany." He specifically wanted to know whether the enemy had access to such a gas and what it was doing in this area. To Hitler's disappointment Ambros replied, "I have justified reasons to assume that tabun, too, is known abroad. I know that tabun was publicized as early as 1902, that Sarin was patented and that these substances appeared in patents. (...) Ambros was informing Hitler of an extraordinary fact about one of Germany's most secret weapons. The essential nature of tabun and sarin had already been disclosed in the technical journals as far back as 1902 and I.G. had patented both products in 1937 and 1938. Ambros then warned Hitler that if Germany used tabun, it must face the possibility that the Allies could produce this gas in much larger quantities. Upon receiving this discouraging report, Hitler abruptly left the meeting. The nerve gases would not be used, for the time being at least, although they would continue to be produced and tested." (Joseph Borkin; The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben)

From "Wiki…" (I know, bad source):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_a...g_World_War_II

But since it quotes the book, figured it was worth the adding.

 

Such as conflict can not be without enormous casualties. If a country isnt prepared to make such a sacrifice in order to achieve absolute victory over evil, then perhaps she should not enter such a conflict?

A war on such a scale can not be won with out boots on the ground. I still fail to see how Sweden solves this problem or how the Luftwaffe is unable to defend the skies over Europe with air bases in Sweden. Supplies from Russia would still be coming in and that's all Germany would need. I do however see a resistance (partisan movement) forming in Sweden to now fight against the occupiers.

This is of course all speculation.

 

I think the Allies will conclude that dropping an A-bomb on Berlin would result in the Luftwaffe making saturation gas attacks on British cities and other targets. Invasions against resistance, for instance, would be impossible if the Germans are now willing to use nerve gas. So I don’t think the Allies drop an A-bomb on Germany (at least on a city) until the Luftwaffe has been rendered completely ineffective.

Any neutrality that protects Nazism is not neutrality and cannot be respected. I hear your argument, but all I can say is that if we were making the decision, and the Scandinavian route passed the test at the staff level, and you instead advocated getting 10 million of our boys killed or badly wounded just for Sweden’s neutrality, then one of us would be out of a job within a week.

The entire thread is speculation, so there is no crime in that.

With respect to Sweden, I would say that a few thousand casualties to partisans would be a better penalty than a few million casualties to 75 German panzer divisions in France. Also, I would add that Stockholm could be reminded that preserving Sweden was worth it to the Allies only if Sweden demonstrated that it wanted to rid the world of Nazism. That if Sweden instead joined Hitler and fought the Allies, then the Allies would have lost all incentive to resist Soviet demands for a partition Sweden after the war.

 

Probably sooner than that.

Very well, lets say Sweden falls and air bases are created, then what? Germany still has more than enough experienced pilots, planes and fuel to counter this. I would suspect that Sweden would also get volunteers from other parts to fight the new occupiers (allies).

 

Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer. by Peter Wright, Former Assistant Director of MI5 is an excellent book. Highly recommended. Very interesting stuff. No wonder the British Gov't went to such lengths to try to prevent its publication and ban the book from Britian once published!
taoyue.com: Book Reviews - Spycatcher

The first few chapters covers the WW2 period and the years leading up to it. How secret technology helped win the war stuff.
It also lists two spy missions into Sweden vs Tirpitz, one by him, one by his father that had active support by the Swedish intelligence agency which must have been authorized at the highest level...

After the war, they provided the British MI5 with a complete log of intercepted messages between Soviet controllers and their agents in the UK during the war. (Churchill had banned counter-espionage against his Russian allie.) For a neutral country, they were quite helpful to the Allied Cause. (Albeit their anti-aircraft accuracy scared the you know what out of several bomber streams that violated their airspace. See "A thousand shall fall" by Murray Peden.)

One wonders "what if" the Swedes encountered similar traffic from the Axis that was of such importance that they would be forced to consider joining the Allies. Being so close to Germany, they would have paid a heavy price from the Luftwaffe, but the price to pay would have been worth it for the allies in order to open up multiple simultanious fronts to strech the Axis defence capabilites to its limit, especially given this thread's "what if?" scenerio.

 

That's possible but I doubt it. As I said A-bombs were view as just large bombs and in any case were not against the laws of warfare. If the Germans use gas then the allies will to and the British had very deliberatly not conducted their biowarfare experiments in secret. There's also some question of just how effective nerve gas would have been in WWII.

 

That is an excellent point, not only did Hitler know that the DuPont people had tabun and perhaps in greater quantities than he, it wasn't that effective an agent anyway in the open. It was deadly in enclosed spaces, but not in the open.

Tabun (Ethyl N,N-dimethyl phosphoramicocyanidate) is a pale to dark amber liquid which releases a colorless vapor. It has no odor in a pure state. It gives off rotting fruit odor as it oxidizes (8).

Tabun was perfected by Dr. Gerhard Scharder in 1937 who became poisoned from a single drop of the new chemical when it spilled onto his lab bench. The new agent was immediately transferred to the control of the Wehrmacht military chemical laboratory in Berlin for further testing.

Tabun was the first German nerve agent developed, and twelve to seventeen thousand tons were produced for use as a weapon but it was never deployed.

Tabun forms a stable vapor cloud over a persistent liquid and is rapidly absorbed via the skin as a liquid or as a vapor. Between 1-1.5 grams of liquid solution (0.01 mg/kg concentration) will cause death in two minutes after dermal contact (8).


Tabun presents the least vapor hazard of the nerve gases in terms of spread, whereas sarin presents the highest vapor hazard (8).

Tabun as a liquid can persist for two days in areas of shade in temperate climate conditions. Its vapor density is 5.6 times that of air and thus it will spill into lower elevations, confined spaces and low lying areas in buildings and structures.

Liquid skin exposure results in death in two minutes while vapor inhalation exposure results in death in ten minutes.


(8) Compton J. Military chemical and biological agents: chemical and toxicological properties, The Telford Press, Caldwell, NJ, 1987.


See:


TOXIC TERRORISM

 

If that's is true, then the invasion of the soviet union was the most stupid action in the history of man!

If germany didn't invade the soviet union I think that the western allies wouldn't risk a massive offensive agains't France: The limitations in logistics would not allow for the deployment of an army capable of defeating germany's 6.5 million men army.

Also, even if we assume that it would be possible for Britain and the US to defeat germany, they would lose around 20 times more men than the historical causalities. The american and british people wouldn't support warmongers that would waste the lives of millions os soldiers in a invasion!

 

If the strategy: Bomb germany until they surrender if followed, then one should expect that without the eastern front, the germans would allocate much more resources to the air defenses.

First: Germany would have cranked 50 thousand combat aircraft in 1944 without the bombing (second to Speer). With more resources allocated to combat aircraft production one should expect around 60-70 thousand aircraft per year. For comparison, in the same year the combined efforts of Britain and the US resulted in nearly 100 thousand combat aircraft.

Also, I think that with the extra time and resources given to the germans, they would have substituted all old fighters with jet fighters.

With 100% effort dedicated to the aerial defense of germany, the losses of the western allies would have been much higher. Making the bombing offensive unfeasible.

 

And certainly would not constrict the logistics of the western allies? They needed to invade france because it was the only place in europe where they could get enough frontage to be able to use their superior numbers to win the war. In italy a stalemate was reached because that boot didn't have the width to make enough frontage to do that.

 

I think invading the USSR was the only choice Hitler had;what was the alternative ? Due to the US support,he had no chance to eliminate Btitain.
He was depending from the USSR for a lot of raw materials. What if the supply was stopped ? At any moment ,Stalin could black-mail him . At any moment Stalin could treathen the oil wells of Roumania . He had to get Stalin on his side or he had to eliminate Russia . Russia beying neutral was not enough,a neutral can always choose the side of one of the belligrants .

 

Yes.

 

From bases in Denmark and Sweden, US tactical airpower then overpowers Germany in a bloody multi-year campaign. While the Luftwaffe will be far more powerful than historically; it won’t matter.

Better 200,000 lost in the air than 5 million on the ground in France.

Invading France against the entire German army would be suicide; without the Russian front the Germans would have had the resources to fortify the entire coast of France, to deploy panzer divisions on top of all possible landing points, and to have massive mobile reserves on top of that.

 

The Allies would win a WMD war I’m sure. All I’m saying is that they wouldn’t want to fight one and would look for alternative conventional strategies that didn't involve attacks into the teeth of German defenses in France. How effective nerve gas actually would be, I’ve no idea. Perhaps it would have been the greatest ‘fizz’ of all history. However, my understanding is that the threat is not so much that of its lethality upon first contact, but rather the devastating effects that even trace amounts can have on the second or third exposure.

 

This makes one ponder how effective the Luftwaffe defenses would be in this "what if?"

To do this we would have to look at how many:
a) fighters the Axis actually had in years following the American entry ie: Luftwaffe - History; WW1; Inter-war period; WW2; Cold war
b) versus this hypothetical situation adding the some 9000 aircraft and the experienced pilots that were lost on the Russian front, the additional aircraft and anti-aircraft guns etc they could have built with this as a primary defensive strategy.

c) comparing this to actual combined Allied Bomber losses ie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ussb-1.svg
- I can't see the Allies ramping up aircraft production much more than they did. North America would still have had to provide similar or greater numbers of Liberty Ships, Navy, armed forces vehicles, tanks etc. So the Axis air defense / offensive forces would increase dramatically vs Allied being more or less the same.

I don't think I would like the odds as an aircrew member of either side. The question would be: at what % loss rate would the Allies consider a bombing offensive unsustainable?