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

And what would UBoats do in a Norwegian port ?How much time (and fuel )would it take to reach the Atlantic ? The obvious place to attack the convoys heading to the WEST coast of Britain was the West coast of France .

 

We were talking about trained naval crewmen, not Wehrmacht soldiers. How many U-boat crews would have been freed up by avoiding the opening of an Eastern Front? Manpower still would have been in short supply for the KM.

And there were shortage of everything in Germany before Operation Barbarossa was launched, including synthetic rubber. Do really think the Germans manufactured it out of air?

 

Is it? My understanding is the Germans were already building and expadning their U-boat produciton at a significant rate. If you start throwing more money at it in 1940 when do you really start seeing any significant effects?

 

Money that went to the production of naval vessels in 1940 and 1941, second to Overy:

Money spent on naval vessels:

1940 - 474 million RM
1941 - 1,290 million RM

U-Boats made:

1940 - 40
1941 - 200

Note that in 1940 and (to a lesses extend, 1941) much of those money was wasted on Bismarks and other surface fleet wastage, with cost 200 million RM each, while a U-boat cost only 2.5 million RM.

 

1- In the long run production capacity increases.

2- In the short run you are correct.

Well, to double the amount of resources would be almost implied in diverting resources from other ends to the increased budget of the u-boat making process.

 

somthing wrong here. If much of the 1940 budget was sepnt on surface vessels but the same is not true of the 1941 budget that would imply something like 800M RM additional devoted to subs. Given 160 extra subs were prouduced that comes out to 5M RM per sub.

 

Indeed but how much and how long? Note also that it's easier and cheaper for the British to ramp up production of escorts and ASW vessels than it is for the Germans to do the same for subs.

 

i leave for 2 days and this happens? thankyou glenn, now trained UB crews im sure out of millions of men wasted on the eastern front a fair percentage could have survived in a submarine. and looting other countries......ahhh yes ukraines muddy roads are paved in gold arent they ...i must have forgot that. if i am correct russia was in poverty the only thing there to loot was wheat, salt? some other minimally useful elements. after the balkans there wernt any more 1st world countries to loot unless you can come up with something from russia? but im sure it would be hard becasue even the russians wouldnt leave anything precious for the germans...they even burned down houses so the germans have no cover....remember scorched earth policy?

oh LJaD can UBs get through suez canal? if yes i will draw a picture for you but i want confirmation of a UB being able to pass through suez canal if it were in german hands.

 

In the fall of 1940 as the historical German economy (ramping up for war with Russia) diverges into this A-H German economy (ramping up for war at sea and drawing down the army)

GTE, you will find everywhere you go on the internet, people pull "facts" out of their rear ends when it comes to nebulous issues likes war economies and such.

 

Glenn,

In all fairness it'll be much harder then you think to draw down the army to ramp up for a war at sea. The problem with building more subs will be certain raw materials & skilled labor. Materials from the SU? Well one of the things that drove Hitler to invade the SU was an increasing debt with the SU ,everything has to be paid for one way or the other. The UK could for one thing divert it's bomber force from bombing Germany to cover convoys instead that alone will drastically cut lossses ,it was proven many times during the war about aircover effects on anti-submarine warfare.


Now on the issue of availiable shipping well if no invasion of the SU then probably that means the 8th Army just playing defence in the Dessert which in & of itself means far,far less shipping having to make that long trip around the Cape of Good Hope.


On the blockade & trading it's intersting that Switzerland was allowed to trade with Allies during WW2/Overruning of Europe just read pages 56 & 57 of the "The Neutrals" of Time Life series on WW2. the Swiss were able to sell typewriters in Macy's in New York throughout the war. There were machine tools sold to the Allies that helped them in a war against Germany furthermore the Germans needed light AA guns,aluminum,electric power and most importantly broad credit terms very essential to the German War Effort. You can also throw in bearings,fuses, and electrical machinery to the list of essential items that Germany had to import from the Swiss. The British meanwhile provided the Swiss with rubber,copper,nickel,tinplate,and steel sheet all useful in the products supplied to Germany . On several of those materials there just wasn't surplus for the Germans to supply the Swiss with.
This was in the time period of 1940 & 1941 so even before the US entered the war & the onset Barbarossa the RN blockade was no laughing matter for the German economy. In fact the Swiss had to create their own merchant marine to get raw materials since after the Germans overran Europe their administrative skills didn't match their military prowess and because transportation networks were so messed up this is even before the Allied Bombing raids really took effect. A lod of peanuts/foodstuffs left India for Switzerland because of beauocratic & transportation snafu's it went from one port to another with the load finally reaching the Swiss more then 6 months after leaving India.

 

I didn’t express an opinion on the difficulty involved. I said that posters pull facts out of their arses on the internet when dealing with complex questions such as this.

The invasion of the Soviet Union had nothing to do with balance of trade statistics.

 

Well I said it was one of the things that lead him to invade not the sole or main cause. Now as far as pulling facts out of one's arses well it seems quite clear that Germany was having problems well before Barbarossa but after overruning Europe.

 

Translation: Glenn doesn't know what he is talking about.

Since Germany and the Soviet Union were engaged in considerable trade right up to the day the German Army crossed the Soviet border, the invasion most certainly affected Germany's balance of trade. That is just basic economics.

Germany definitely needed Soviet materials in order to continue the war. The fact that it might not be able to pay for them was an immediate concern of the Nazi regime, and therefore a factor in determining whether or not to invade the USSR.

 

Germany received more than just wheat and salt from trade with Russia prior June 22, 41' All of which Hitler received from Russia during the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact could be looted for.

 

Too true, people tend to forget that it wasn’t just "wheat and salt" that Hitler and the Nazis were receiving from the USSR, as you mentioned. But the last train across was carrying grain. As an aside, Hitler held the launch of Barbarossa for those two hours so that the grain delivery could be completed! And don’t forget the petroleum supplied to Hitler by the USSR.

"The Soviets had sent over 4.5 million barrels of oil to Hitler in the time between Dec.1939 and June 1941 when he (Hitler) sent his armies east in Operation Barbarossa. The Soviet Union was at the time the world's second largest oil producer (far, FAR behind the USA). Despite strict rationing internally however, it still had to import oil from the United States to meet its own needs while shipping oil to Hitler!"

"…Hans Kolbe, a U.S. spy in the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin, offered this assessment: "The German need to obtain Soviet oil was deemed the primary reason for the attack. Since the Soviet deliveries were insufficient to satisfy German needs for bringing the war (in the west) to a conclusion, the only recourse appeared to be the seizure and exploitation by the Germans of the oil resources of the Soviet Union."

Goto:

The Quest for Fuel in WWII

The Soviets also supplied the Nazis with a great number of non-ferrous, and light metals, as well as many rare earth elements needed for alloys. Starting (pre-1941) with manganese, chromium, copper, lead, zinc, tin, tungsten, molybdenum, niobium, tantalum, nickel, and bauxite. The Soviets had sources of metallic magnesium which is a "sulpher fixer" when used as an alloy in the production of high-grade steels, especially in the high-nickel "stainless" steel. Manganese, as a mineral, was largely mined in the eastern Ukraine area, I think the other main known sources at the time were in southern Africa, China, and the US at the time, certainly not Germany. This was to come to haunt the Nazis in the production of the turbine blades for the Jumo 004 turbojets.

Even today, metallic magnesium is widely used in aircraft production as an alloy of aluminum, and still used as well in the "de-sulpherization" of high grade steels. Each mineral was mined and shipped from the USSR to Germany, nickel from Norilsk (northeast of Moscow) and magnesium from Sverdlovsk (formerly Ekaterinburg). The Nazis were receiving chromium from Turkey and some tungsten from Spain. The former Soviet Union had been Germany’s major supplier of both those raw materials (nickel and magnesium), until June of 1941. The Finns had supplied Germany with some nickel, but after the "Winter War" Finland lost its own nickel deposits to the USSR in one of its territorial concessions. Norway’s nickel deposits were and are pretty small, and Sweden (while originally identifying and naming "nickel" in the 1700s) had nearly none to export to Germany.

The "advanced" alloys needed to produce the great "Krupp Stahl" of the Krupp works needed high quality iron ore (Sweden), chromium (Turkey), nickel (originally Finland and to a lesser extent Norway), tungsten/wolfram (USSR, Spain), and magnesium (USSR). None of were or are local minerals in quantities sufficient in Germany for mass weapons production.

The Nazis were receiving much more than simply grain and salt from the Soviets, but it is hard to "loot" mines that cannot be reached beyond the Urals and inside of Soviet borders. And it is next to impossible to get petroleum out of sabotaged refineries and fields.

 

You'd have thought the conquest of Poland would have given the Nazis their adequate "lebensraum". Lets assume Adolph came to his senses as you say, decided NOT to attack Russia and it simply a Mexican stand-off ensued with the Commies. The Germans now turn their war effort instead back against England, and to the Mediterranean, manage to take Gibralter, and Rommel now has more then enough tanks, troops, and fuel to kick the British out of North Africa and Egypt. The Germans might also have managed to capture the Suez canal also (with all those millions of troops, tanks, aircraft and everything else that was NOT busy fighting Russia in 1941 but was instead available for the Mediteranean. Hitler sweeps into the middle east and captures an Arab country or two, and has all the oil he wants. The British would certainly be in a bad spot if all this had transpired, and if Hitler had not invaded Russia, all of it could have happened instead.

Don't forget there is ample evidence to show Stalin was planning to invade Germany eventually anyway. One acount i read from a book with notations from one of Stalin's speeches in early 1941, even named the year they were planning to do it: 1943. So if Stalin had invaded Hitler FIRST, the Germans might have actually beat them, since they were now fighting a defensive battle (probably in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe), and their lines of communication would be much much closer to Germany. Anyway there's no guaranty Stalin wasnt just blowing smoke and would have ultimately decided against the attack.

Pearl Harbor caused Hitler to make a really stupid decision, he declared war against the United States. There was no reason for him to do this (even Ribbentrop tried to talk him out of doing it) and Germany gained almost nothing except another powerful enemy that would eventually help crush him. Again with the benefit of hind-sight, suppose Adolph had simply sent a letter of condolence to the USA (not likely) or at least NOT DECLARED WAR when he didnt have to, it might have taken an additional 6 months or year for the US to enter the war against Germany somehow (perhaps over U-boat attacks on US shipping same as in WW1).

The additional time the Germans would have gained by Hitler not declaring war against the US, would allowed Germany to be the masters of the Mediteranean and perhaps much of the Middle east oil countries too. Germany would also have had time and resources to build very strong defenses against a Russian attack.

So your "what if" is a good one, since the entire nature of the war would have changed. I just cited a few of the things that MIGHT have happened if he hadnt attacked Russia, im sure alot of other people might have different scenarios that come to mind.

 

I am too lazy to read the nine pages of posts, so I will just post my opinion. USSR was planning to invade Germany in 1942, so Hitler just beat him to it. If I remember correctly, Stalin had a total rearming plan going on, although the purge did slow him down considerably. By 1942, both of them will probably be even, causing a stalemate, which will probably be broken the U.S. if they enter the war. But if they do not, my money is on the Soviet Union

 

As you indicate, the entire nature of the war might have changed. But I believe the US still would have viewed the independent survival of Britain as a key to the defense of the Western Hemisphere.

Given that outlook, the US would never have allowed Germany to push Britain out of the Mid-East. The US would have entered the war before letting that happen. By 1940, the isolationists in Congress were too weak to prevent the US eventually entering the war in Europe, and a disaster like a German victory in the Med would push the US over the edge.

 

My first words here, hope they make sense: Churchill was almost right. The invasion of Barbarosa went reasonably well until outside Moscow , winter arrived. Having read the histories, it seems to me that Hitler's biggest mistake was bad timing, had he arrived outside Moscow not to face General Winter but more temperate weather, and better equipped for the cold, his armies may not have suffered such setbacks as ocvcurred. Yes Stalingrad was a great loss, so were later reverses such as D Day, The Falaise gap, Kursk, and the last sally west, and other defeats including the air assault depriving him of industry and fuel, but it all really started to go belly-up outside Moscow. That in my view was when Hitler lost his war. All the rest were stages of a lingering defeat. Well, does the theory hold-up?

 

too true, i think overall in the grand scheme no one, NOT ONE NATION or alliance can fully control the world. too much diffucult terrain and the amount of resistance groups would be in the thousands. almost every continent (except europe) has a hard barren land that no land army can control whether it be the bushland of australia, the himalayas in asia and russian steppes (as proven), the canadian wilderness, the amazon jungle and the african uncontrolability.

sorry if the post seems a little off topic.