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

Sweden and as many air bases as the Allies can build there.

The threat to the British economy was in German late-war pressure mines. All the shipping in the world does no good if the ports cannot disembark trade.

 

"lwd", I became interested in Native Americans long before I moved to Billings from other parts of Montana, and have always had nothing but the highest regard for them. As in all populations, there are "good ones and bad ones", and unfortunately only the "bad" get the press. I am fortunate to have personally met and been befriended by many members of assorted tribes. T

One of the men I hold in the highest regard at the moment is Dr. Joe Medicine Crow, who resides just outside of Billings at Lodge Grass, and has lectured at my alma mater any number of times. He is the last living Crow "war chief" since his deeds in WW2 fulfilled the four requirements. Touch an enemy, hand to hand combat, stealing the enemies horse (s), etc.. He went into battle with "war paint" under his fatigues, and an eagle feather in the webbing of his helmet liner.

Joe Medicine Crow is most likely going to be the last war chief as well, pretty hard to steal an enemy horse in combat these days, although it might be doable in Afghanistan, it is less than likely.

See:

Joe Medicine Crow: Life and Work

 

The Germans have to finish off the Brits before 12/41, otherwise the US production capabilities will outstrip any shipping losses U-Boats can cause. At least that's my unsubstantiated opinion. I don't think Germany can produce enough additional U-Boats in such a short time to make a difference.

If the Germans were able to call the Japanese off Pearl Harbor and prevent/delay the US entry to the war and reduce its resolve you may have something.

 

Hitler's declaration probably accelerated the US getting into Europe, but it probably would have happened the next time a UBoat sunk an American vessel which had already happened.

What I'm talking about is the American shipyards being ramped up even more than they were to eclipse the Uboats ability to sink shipping.

 

Indeed since the Japanese also attacked the British it's pretty clear that we were going to be allies at that point. Once we're allied shipping muntions and such to Britain would have been a natural part of the alliance and as would protecting such traffic. Hitler could hardly aford not to attack US vessels at that point.

 

Sweden? Sweden is neutral....


Why build airbases in Norway when GB is closer?

 

One must remember that the ship building of merchant shipping had been stepped up long before WW2 erupted, and that FDR had foreknowledge that Hitler was likely to declare war on the US. This allowed him to only ask for war against the Japanese, knowing full well that the Germans would "return the favor" within days. These old files of mine contain dead links in them, but I'm too lazy to look up the new URLs!

Between 1939 and 1945, the U. S. Maritime Commission ordered almost 7,000 ships with over 5,500 being delivered, totaling 56.3 million deadweight tons, or almost five times the size of the nation's entire 1939 fleet. In 1940 the entire U.S. merchant marine, from ocean liners to tow boats included some 65,000 men [and a few women]. In 1943 it was 85,000. In 1944 it was 175,000. At end of WW II 250,000.

The Maritime Commission also constructed vessels for the British merchant fleet, eventually adopting a British design for an emergency eleven knot, 10,800 dead weight ton dry cargo ship with reciprocation oil fueled steam engines, designed for rapid, mass produced welded construction. This was what would become the design of the famous Liberty ship.

By the end of the war there were eighteen shipyards located along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf Coasts that build Liberty ships. But that said, well before any "war worries" in the real sense, on June 29th 1936 the US Congress authorized the "Merchant Marine Act of 1936".The called for the construction of fifty ships a year over a ten year period, in order to modernize the American merchant fleet, and to make it competitive with foreign fleets extant, as well as provide employment for idle shipyards. By the entry of the United States into the war a total of 850 ships had already been contracted for (and construction started). By wars end contracts had been signed for nearly 7,000 ships. Around 5,500 were actually built and delivered into service.

I found this site to especially interesting, but rather than duplicate it I will simply pass on the URL (dead occasionally):

OpenDNS

I believe those totals of over 5,500 include the later Victory ship designs and the 500 or 600 T3 tankers. But it sort of looks like around nearly 1,000 or so in the pre-war fleet, and nearly five times that in 1945.

From the book LIBERTY SHIPS by John H. Lienhard:

"The United States built only two ocean-going, dry-cargo freighters between 1922 and 1937. Historian James Chiles tells how our merchant shipbuilding was nearly dead in the water on the eve of WW-II. All the Allied shipbuilders were hopelessly committed to warships, and Axis nations were torpedoing merchant vessels off the surface of the sea. Great Britain in particular was in desperate straits. Without cargo ships, she couldn't hold out. Someone clearly had to start making freighters from scratch.

"The British carried plans for a lowest-common-denominator freighter -- the sort of simple steam-powered merchant ship you'd expect to see in a 1930s movie, set on a foggy waterfront.
Kaiser had neither workers nor shipyards. But more than any of the builders, he turned his lack of preparation to remarkable advantage. Did it take years to train a well-rounded shipbuilder? Fine. He rearranged work so he didn't need well-rounded people. He broke shipbuilding into prefabricated components so each worker had to learn only a piece of the job. Did he need heavy equipment to cut metal plate? No matter. He used oxyacetylene torches. He replaced rivets with welding. He even cut the time it took to train novices to tightrope across steel structures by hiring ballet dancers as fitters.

"Kaiser redefined shipbuilding to match his resources. He introduced assembly-line techniques -- interchangeable parts on a gigantic scale. Ford had tried that in WW-I and failed. But Ford had tried to build an avant-garde torpedo boat. There was nothing remotely new about Kaiser's product, the famed Liberty Ship. It was only 440 feet long, and it carried 8,500 tons of cargo. The first one was launched just after Pearl Harbor. Soon the Kaiser yards were building Liberty Ships in a month -- then in ten days. Finally they finished one in just four-and-a-half days. Kaiser plants ate steel so fast he had to set up his own mill.

"Behind the schoolboy excitement lay a dark side. We produced eleven million tons of shipping in 1942, but submarines sank twelve million tons. The next year we raised that to twenty million tons of shipping, and we prevailed. The Liberty Ship saved us. The Liberty Ship shows what happens when war drives technology. When Kaiser held shipbuilding up to the clear light of his amateur scrutiny, it wasn't ship design that profited. His work, rooted in a powerful common purpose, redefined shipbuilding.

and another now dead online site:

http://www.worldcity.com/news/libertyship.html

but, it had this:

"From 1941 to 1945, the United States increased its shipbuilding capacity by more than 1,200% and produced 2,718 Liberty Ships, 800+ Victory Vessels, 533 T-2 Tankers, and various other commercial and naval auxiliary vessels for a total of over 5,200 non-war-ships for the period."

(me again) My Mom was a "Wanda the Welder" at Kaiser's Oregon Shipbuilding in Portland. She stick welded composite sections together when they appeared on the "ways". She and her two sisters were three of the nearly 11,000 women working at the Oregon Shipbuilding plant throughout the war. America was "gearing up" for merchant shipping production before war broke out, and would swamp the Germans with ships when war was declared. Oh, and BTW Roosevelt was well aware that he didn’t need to declare war on Germany when he asked for the declaration of war against the Japanese. He had been privy to the diplomatic messages between Berlin and Tokyo for some time, reading them in real time it appears.

Just by accident I ran across this telegram sent from the Japanese representative in Berlin to his Tokyo "office". This seems, if my interpretation of the International Time Zone and the 12 or 13 local time zones between the two cities, is correct, to be the early afternoon the afternoon of the Pearl Harbor attack. But, I could sure be wrong. Sometimes I feel sort of like Col. Blake on MASH when he asks Radar O’Reily about the International Date Line; "does that make our today their yesterday, or our tomorrow, or is it always a week from Tuesday?"

Goto:

Documents Related to World War II

From: Berlin
To: Tokyo
December 8, 1941
Purple (Priority)
#1437 Limited distribution

Re my #143(9?).[a]

At 1:00 p. m. today (8th) I called on Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and told him our wish was to have Germany and Italy issue formal declarations of war on America at once. Ribbentrop replied that Hitler was then in the midst of a conference at general headquarters discussing how the formalities of declaring war could be carried out so as to make a good impression on the German people, and that he would transmit your wish to him at once and do whatever he was able to have it carried out promptly. At that time Ribbentrop told me that on the morning of the 8th Hitler issued orders to the entire German navy to attack American ships whenever and wherever they may meet them.(my emphasis)

It goes without saying that this is only for your secret information.

Army 25978 Trans. 12/9/41

[a] Not available.

(EXHIBITS OF JOINT COMMITTEE , EXHIBIT NO. 1 INTERCEPTED DIPLOMATIC MESSAGES SENT BY THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT BETWEEN JULY l AND DECEMBER 8, 1941)

So, there ya go. The merchant shipping was going to be increased from 1936 on, and with the decoding of "Purple", the diplomatic code, FDR also knew that Germany was probably going to declare war on the US very soon after Pearl Harbor was attacked.

 

I agree with you. I was saying that U-Boats alone, at that time could not reach their expectations. They could not reach that amount in that time. Maybe they should have hastened the production initially.

However I also should add that they could not delay Pearl Harbor because USA was already sending shipments to England. Hitler would have to eventually declare war on USA to cut Britain's supplies. The sooner the better I guess.

 

10 million casualties or worry about Sweden’s pro-German neutrality….frankly, I don’t see the issue. Neutrality works only when one side or the other doesn’t have a military imperative to ignore it. It’s about 600 miles to Berlin from England. It’s about 300 miles from southern Sweden. Securing Denmark after occupying southern Sweden would be optimal. The islands at Copenhagen are only about 200 miles from Berlin. 8th Air Force could really go to town on Germany from that range. But to take Copenhagen, you have to already be in southern Sweden.

U-boats probably could not defeat the Allies at sea, not with U.S. production. However, they sure could make a dent, and do so relatively inexpensively.

 

You might not see a problem with invading a neutral country but other neutral countries might. The Soviet Union in this scenario is still neutral and is just as more pro-German if not more than Sweden is. Attacking Sweden might not sit well with Stalin. How about Spain or Switzerland? Are these countries the next victims of the allies? Spain was pro-German in actuality and remained neutral during the war even while sending troops to fight in Russia and the allies didnt invade....

 

The objective from the American perspective must be to eliminate the scourge of Hitler from the face of the Earth while losing as few men as possible in the process. This is done by getting U.S. air bases as close to Germany’s heartland as possible, and then bombing it off the face of the Earth. Anyone not on board with that agenda would have to go. The Scandinavian route offers the benefiet of forcing the Germans to fight a major campaign with sea lines of communications – like in North Africa, that will be far less costly in men and time than going into France or Italy. Sweden’s fate politically is small potatoes; if Joe doesn’t like the new map of Scandinavia then Joe can get off his arse and attack Germany.

The major question for Allied policy in this A-H is towards the Japanese Empire and China. I would argue that if the Germans and Russians remain together, under no circumstances could the Allies afford a war with Japan.

Spain is irrelevant.

 

US fighter victories would have jumped dramatically. Much less time escorting bombers, eliminating the need for secondary forces to escort the bombers home as the first group's fuel ran out... they could effectively double the fighter escorts. Much less warning time for Axis fighter command...

Plus fighter raids / target of opportunity raids into Axis territory would have been even more effective.

Good "what if." Thanks Glenn239

 

One also has to wonder why (what if?) the real war did not move masses of bomber and / or fighter squadrons to French and Italian bases once areas were secured. Never heard any explanation for this. Fuel supply was grim as it was: this is the only limiter I can think of. Were French tanker ports really this few and far between? No more tanker ports at all, beyond what they used in the real war?

 

I wonder if the allied summit ever seriously considered this option (an invasion of Norway) in the real war. The actual British raid into Norway was more like a small scale Dieppe rather than a real full scale, serious, invasion. One wonders what they could have done if they had really put their hearts into it.

I wonder what Stalin's blunt opinion on the Norwegian invasion fiasco was. Boy would I have like to be a fly on the wall. He must have been just livid.
Anybody have a real quote?

Also: does anyone have actual statistics of how many Axis forces + Luftwaffe were stationed in Norway during its occupation?
I have to wonder if Churchill etc had justifiable reasons for why they did not conquer the country.
The Luftwaffe was a big enough pain as it was. Northern England and Scotland were easily within reach, plus their attacks on convoys destined for Russia.

 

Well the Allies had a precedence to waive in the Axis / Russian faces:
Belgium, Denmark and Holland were officially neutral states before the Axis invaded. Right? Finland also before Russia invaded. Right?
Not to mention a bunch in the middle east and elsewhere.

 

Apparently they did. I've seen some discussion of it. Will see what I can find.

Found one source at:
Planned Operations of World War II

If you search with that info you can probably find more.

 

I’ve seen accounts that indicate Allied tactical airpower was unleashed onto western Germany from France in the fall of 1944 onwards.

I suspect the Allies looked at all options, but with the German army heavily engaged in Russia there was no incentive to waste more time on side shows; going straight into France was the correct decision in 1944, and would have been in 1943 had the Allied supreme command more stomach for an intensive fight.

 

They may well have, I am not an expert.
But all the accounts I have read so far said bomber streams flew low, below detection, over France from Britain, then climbed to altitude near the front line where last minute window, electronic counter measures etc. further delayed and confused Axis fighter control. At the same time, feint attacks were launched elsewhere on the northern coast.

There were other fighter squadrons that were troop support "only" and some of these were for sure based on mainland Europe after D Day, but I have never read of any from the RAF or USAAF Bomber Command or its support squadrons (significant #'s for sure) that moved from the UK to the mainland. Likewise for the Italian theatre.

Thus USAAF fighter squadrons were still replaced by replacement squandrons as their fuel ran out, especially for deep strikes into the fatherland. If all these had been stationed around central France (say) one wonders (what if?) how much more effective they could have been with half the fuel requirements and doubling the fighter support numbers.

I know significant numbers of fighter support planes used their ammunition up on "targets of opportunities" on their way home, but in the cases where the Axis sent up masses of fighter groups, imagine the "what if" of German skies blanketed by twice the otherwise available Mustangs, Lightnings etc.

Remembering, aside from the real war, we are also dealing with the "what if" of at least doubling, tripling the Axis fighter / bomber (blitzkrieg especially - which was effectively wiped out on the Russian front) response.

Threads taken off rather nicely I would say, its becoming quite a stimulating read. Thanks all! Keep it up!

Hmmm. Had to go back into "Advanced Editing" to add a smiley whilst editing.

 

This re Operation Jupiter (Norway Invasion plans.)

Too bad winstonchurchill.org's Road to Victory: 1942-1945 is such a glitchy site. There is a snippit there, but I challenge you to find it!

All I've ever found (and I always thought it was a deception plan) was from "D-day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion" By Mary Barbier.
D-day deception: Operation Fortitude ... - Google Books

If there is a full and proper treatise on this, I would appreciate some pointers.