In which Under L brings up the Big One in alternate history cliches:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

One thing that surprises me, particularly decades after WWII when the infighting and inefficiency at the heart of the Nazi regime are more well-known, as is the murderousness of the Wehrmacht is the degree to which people think the Axis Powers could seriously have won WWII. While the http://www.amazon.com/Man-High-Castle-Philip-Dick/dp/0679740678 cliche seen here is common it does not IMHO reflect the actual military capability or long-term viability of the Axis states.

There are five fundamental myths of the European War and three of the Asian one. The first myth is why I'm starting with the Asian one: 

World War II began in Asia as a Japanese attempt to annex all-China. This war sputtered on and off during the early 1930s and went into a full-scale war in 1937, with Japan fighting two Chinese factions that fought each other as much as they did Japan. The Japanese actually made their first aggressive move on the Big 3 Allies with the USSR in 1938 and Georgi Zhukov proved how much of an awesome badass he was by taking the rickety Soviet military of 1938 and curbstomping Japan with it. Consequently the entire European phase of WWII was a chapter within the Asian war. This length and duration and that Japan, unlike any of the Axis powers but like the future superpowers was actually fighting two major wars at the same time tend to be overlooked in discussions of the Atomic Bombings. As does Japanese physicists' research into nuclear weapons projects.

The second myth of the Asian War is that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were natural allies. In fact the Nazis had started back Jiang Jieshi in that war, while Jiang's first foreign policy patron was Joe Stalin, not anyone from the USA (that he made it through so many indicates he wasn't a political idiot). Nazi Germany backed Imperial Japan due to a series of rather treacherous political developments on both sides. The process had to do primarily with how both sides dealt with the USSR and the USA and was not the product of any natural link between the two. If anything the most eloquently imperial non-white Great Power working together with a KKK on PCP and gamma radiation doesn't exactly seem......logical.

The final myth of the Asian War is that the Imperial Japanese Armed forces were a joke, this usually in connection with debates on the world's only instance of atomic warfare. Thing is those guys were fighting for two years by the time the Nazis decided to go to war in Poland and were fighting both Cold War superpowers months after Hitler committed sucide in the Fuhrerbunker. The Japanese opening move in the Pacific War was an instance of badassery that no nation thus far has come close to and any one that tries today would make the world green glass, so nobody will ever. Oh, well...*shrugs.*

As far as the European theater of WWII, these days there are two rival myths: one, the USA wins everything and the UK and USSR provide simple background for a tale of US military prowess. In the other, the Soviets begin the war in 1941 and come back in an Ivan Drago movie. In reality, it was a coalition war and the co-operation of the UK, the USSR, and the USA as a trio was the key to victory. Any two of them on their own would at best have won a stalemate, at worst they'dve been defeated.

The second myth is that the Nazis went to war with ultra-modern armies and blazed unprecedented paths to success. This one in particular is a hoot, the Allies invented Blitzkrieg and the Soviet concept of Deep Penetration (insert Beavis and Butthead joke here (rinse, wash repeat about the previous joke in a set of Russian dolls) was what happened in 1943-5 when the Soviet army became without a doubt the greatest of the Allied armies. Nazi armies had an ultra-modern minority of combat troops but most of their army was still the one of 1918, which as you'll remember was the one that had lost WWI. Nazi victories in 1939-1942 were a result of strategic surprise that had more to do with political weaknesses of the Allies than anything to do with the Axis.

The third myth that has arisen is that the Allies were always lily-white. This of course overlooks that the colonial territories of say, France, usually preferred the fascist Vichy regime to De Gaulle while the USSR was for all practical purposes an Axis Power in the 1939-41 phase of the war. For some bizarre reason strategic bombing has taken precedence in lists of Allied atrocities over the various massacres committed by Allied armies, which may speak to one extent about history in the Allied countries (with of course Russia having obvious reasons to obfuscate what the USSR did).

The fourth myth is that Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt were special buds. They actually weren't, they all hated each other and the Grand Alliance was a purely anti-Hitler alliance, it held together for that purpose only and once Hitler was gone enter the Cold War. This didn't matter very much when the Big 3 Axis were fighting three different wars.

The fifth and final myth is that WWII was some glorious, universally accepted thing at the time. It really wasn't, the Republican Party had a lot of isolationists, some who simply didn't want to fight Europe's wars for it, some who really, really liked Hitler, and some who were actual pacifists (imagine, pacifist Republicans). The UK suspended elections for the duration of the war, and in the USSR there were things like the Vlasov Army and other manifestations of Soviet dissent with a militarized edge (including the forgotten Soviet Civil War of the 1950s).

In my view, there is no way that the Axis Powers could have ever overcome their weaknesses, both political and military, relative to those of the Allies and expected to win that war. It's fine as a basis for novels, but it's not something very likely to happen from any scenario that could be spun out of the actual war. Your thoughts, O Homeric bards-fellow members of this community?

Comments

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

One reason why I find the Pacific War so fascinating is that it was the first war between major modern naval powers who were more or less evenly matched; the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1941 was on the cutting edge, well-trained, and often brilliantly commanded. Take away the U-Boats and the Nazi Kriegsmarine was by comparison a moderately effective regional defense force with little real worldwide power projection capability and virtually no air power.

If a few more things had gone the Japanese way (say, American carriers at Pearl Harbor on 12/7/41, where they very well might have been) the world today would be very different.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Quite so.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Maybe, maybe not.

I've read industrial output projections that show that Yamamoto was right -- the Japanese would have had to destroy the entire Pacific fleet and then land enough troops to drive all the way to Chicago to force peace.

The U.S. industrial war output capacity was pretty well destined to swamp the Japanese. If the U.S. carriers had been taken out at Midway, that might have delayed the end of the Pacific war by two years, but in 1943 alone, the U.S. turned out 65 carriers, light carriers and carrier escorts, 2 battleships, 11 cruisers, 128 destroyers, 298 escorts and 55 subs. Japan managed 2 carriers of all kinds, 3 cruisers, 12 destroyers and 37 subs. In 1943, the U.S. put 11,448,360 tons of merchant vessels into the water...Japan? 769,085 tons.

Yamamoto was right -- they had no chance and once Midway forced him to redeploy in the hopes of luring the American fleet into the "decisive" battleship engagement the heads of the Japanese military still thought was necessary to win, the Combined Fleet was toast.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

As a counterpoint-were material calculations everything the USSR should have been in Berlin by January of 1942 from June of 1941.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

I'm not a military theoretician, but it might have something to do with the difference between fighting ground wars versus air and sea wars. Japan made the Marines bleed for every inch of ground on every island.

But a navy needs boats. And a carrier based navy needs planes. The Combined Fleet was doomed the moment they launched the attack on Pearl Harbor because they were going to be swamped by sheer numbers. They had no capacity to build even replacement levels of warships and merchant shipping -- once we got our full mad on, we were cranking out more merchant supply ships in the first 5 months of 1943 than Japan put in the water during the entire war. Add in that warships had stunningly better fire control technology relying on computers and radar while Japan was still using optics and that Japan basically relied on variants of the zero for the entire war while we were putting out faster and better armored planes?

Doomed.

[404.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I suppose Saturdays are now underlankers history wank/whack off day?

But seriously, anyone with a modicum of historical knowledge would know about much of your OP to begin with, the rest would probably not care enough.

Also, it was quite possible for Hitler to defeat the Allies as early as 1942, by not following Napoleon and not invading Russia, but to concentrate on consolidating power in Europe and finishing off Britain. If he wanted to take on Stalin afterwards, he would have had a much easier time, as the likelihood of a US intervention after the capitulation of the UK would have been almost nil at that point.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not exactly. If he waits until 1942 he runs against a Soviet military with competent leadership and better technology where his best case is a stalemate. This, BTW, is not history wank. It's *alternate* history wank. There is a difference.

[404.livejournal.com]

The German Army was always strained, with having to guard off the Brits, prop up the Italians, and keep the Balkan allies in the war. If Hitler could have concentrated all his men and material (with the possible assistance of other capitalist countries like the UK and USA) towards Stalin, it could have been a different story.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

This argument always assumes the Soviets will and can do nothing themselves before the Germans invade.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

For someone who says he doesn't care enough, you seem to have wasted an awful lot of time and effort to drop your usual ad hominem at the OP. Tell me, is it some kind of sport for you?

[404.livejournal.com]

Least it's not soccer.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I think it's great that you're familiar with soccer. You must know how the cards system works, then.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I suppose Saturdays are now underlankers history wank/whack off day?

A talk_politics historic porn parody directed by Axel Braun would be AWESOME. Between me and rasilio, you've already got TWO roles for Ron Jeremy, plus panookah could be played by Xander Corvus and Lie Lani could be cast as underlankers when he's using his Joo Dee icon.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

I find it disturbing, yet also erotic that all your porn roles are filled by men. I may want to see the final product.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Just as a matter of curiosity, who would be cast with me using my Grant icon? That guy who's playing Will Riker in the ST: TNG porn pardody?

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Is this because of my comment to Jeff that Rand Paul's hypothetical opposition to the draft would have led to the Nazi State of America(or alternately a Japanese Protectorate?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Somewhat, yes.

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

So wait, do you think U.S. conscription was necessary to win the war?

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

And I'm somewhat late in getting back to the party and while I'll admit my grasp of history is muddled by the History Channel's offerings about UFO's, the Spear of Destiny and Bigfoot, what about the German intelligence assets that were able to wander freely in America?

The other topic that veers into pseudohistory is all the stuff about atomic bombs and such the Nazis were feverishly working on. Could some of those have realistically changed the balance of power?

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

A large portion of the people are Americans but we have people from all over. Honestly its always interesting to get news of the inner sausage factory workings of other countries.

[raven-blue.livejournal.com]

This depends on what weakness you consider the driving one. In my opinion Hitler was the greatest weakness. He ignored the advice of his best military generals in favor of Nazi sycophants. England and France could have been defeated at Dunkirk were it not for his reliance on Goering’s Luftwaffe. Without England the war would have largely come to a halt in the West and it is doubtful that America would have come to the aid of Russia.


If German were able to conduct the war without American involvement for another few months they likely would have won. All German forces could then have faced Russia with no real danger from their Western front. Remember that Stalingrad came close to falling (at one time most of the city was in German hands) and in Kursk the Germans had vast technological advantage in that their tanks were more than a match for even the heaviest Russian T-34s. Plus had the war in the West gone differently the Luftwaffe would have been fully invested in the east and pitted against an inferior Russian air force. Of course, this all depend on what came before so the truth is that anything could have happened.

Just look at WW1. When the Germans, Austrians, etc surrendered they were in the middle of an offensive that was actually regaining lost territory and costing the allies a great deal. Both sides were still evenly matched. One side simply blinked first.

Japan is a wild card. Hitler was furious that Japan attacked America when they did. Had Germany had a better handle on England at the time some historians, and I agree, think that the alliance between Japan and Germany would have been dissolved which would mean that America would fight only a Pacific war. The state of the American Aircraft carriers is the tell all. Had we not lost the battleships at Pearl harbor then our naval strategy would have relied on battleships with carriers in support roles. Our Battleships (minus the Japanese not having radar) were not up the task of taking head on the best of the imperial navy. It was our forced reliance on carriers that created new strategies that really made the difference in the Pacific.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Hitler was scapegoated by his generals as they figured rightly that the man himself was so appalling most people wouldn't bother looking too closely at how the Wehrmacht actually fought the war. Had Hitler let the generals retreat in December 1941, bye-bye Army Group Center. Had he listened to them in 1940 the Germans would have struck right where the Allies wanted them to, against superior numbers and equipment, meaning they're screwed. Had he listened to them in 1942 the Nazis would have attacked right into the teeth of the Soviet defenses and the USSR would have started winning decisive victories far earlier, right in time to start significantly disrupting the Holocaust by Soviet advances.

There is absolutely no guarantee that lack of US intervention would have changed the Axis-Soviet War prior to 1943, when the Soviet Union's supplies of civilian and non-combat equipment was starting to run low, and in that time the Soviet army developed superior tactics, firepower, and discipline to its Nazi counterpart. Stalingrad was never intended to be the kind of battle it was in the first place, that it was that was due to General Yeremenko taking General Paulus to the woodshed.

At Kursk all that effort was to eliminate one salient, and no more, and that technological advantage did nothing in the north and was blunted in the south in a single Soviet counteroffensive.

When the Germans surrendered in 1918, they'd been spending several months having their asses handed to them by the Allies, who had driven them from the Marne to Mons in a matter of months, with their army in disintegration and their society in the midst of no less than two communist revolutions produced by said military disintegration.

The Japanese had better carrier technology and at Midway it was a stroke of extreme luck that let the USA win the decisive victory there. Cloud cover that favors the Imperial Japanese Navy and with overwhelming force it wipes out the first major US naval counteroffensive, delaying anything the USA can do elsewhere navally for several months of a longer, bloodier attrition struggle, though it won't do anything in the Aleutians.

[raven-blue.livejournal.com]

You pick and choose only key decisions that support your view. You should look at the bigger picture. The desire to retreat you talked about has as much to do with Hitler forcing them to commit to actions they were opposed to begin with. Kursk was a key battle that both sides considered a hinge. It was a defining moment in the battle for the east.

Ypres... Passchendaele... Key late war battles that gravitated back and forth. Both sides gained and lost territory. The Germans pulled out in the end in a victory that cost the allies heavily. Amiens was a one of the greatest forward movements of the war and a great German success. The Allies had a profound weakness at Cambrai the Germans could exploit. The Germans also created the Storm Troops that hit targets with alarming speed and wreaked havoc on the lines. During this last Spring offensive British commanders actually lost control of the situation. Paris came under fire from the giant Krupps guns. After a few days the Germans had nearly won the war. The Kaiser declared a day of victory. The only flaw in what was a master plan was the rapid advance meant supplies had to be left behind. This was the Achilles heel of the German army. When the allies pushed back it was with the help of the American army. The last offensive was a tactical masterstroke that broke down in the end. The Germans ordered one final offensive with huge losses. But their losses were not so much more than the British (depending on accounts). When the end came the German army still had high moral and the supplies which were still present after leaving them behind for the spring offensive. The allies were bruised and very nearly beaten. Paris was shelled and the trenches that had dominated the war for so long were made obsolete by the new German tactics. There is also no reason to think that the Allied commanders, Haigh and Fochs among them would have entered another offensive with any sort of new strategy to counter the Germans. While the Germans were defeated it was as much because they blinked first. Number are important but time and time again during the war armies came back from losses that should have put them out of the war.
Ludendorff himself felt it was the arrival of the Americans at that time that made the difference. Remember that the Russians were out of the war which gave the Germans new resources from the East that could have been exploited. The arrival of the Americans who were new, fresh, not battle fatigued and had access to vast resources forced the Germans to reconsider any new plan. The last semi offensive I mentioned was directed in part against the Americas as a test of their ability. No American army had fought in Europe so no one really knew how they might fight. It turned out the Americans fought rather well, especially when the average American soldier wanted a piece of the action and they fighting an enemy that was already tired. More than anything, the Germans lost because they were to tired to fight a brand new enemy. But they would have continued to fight the old, equally tired enemy.