The events of WWII without aircraft

[Elmas]

The Blitzkrieg in 1914 was stopped because an airplane discovered a gap between the two German Armies...
The most successful part of the 1939 and 1940 Blitzkrieg in Poland and France was the cooperation between Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, a cooperation that had almost no rival throughout the entire war. Without Stukas ( and other aircraft, of course) destroying antitank artillery and stopping or delaying reinforcing forces I'm not sure that those campaigns would have been so quick as they were. And no aircraft means no aerial reconnaissance, and so no possibility to strike at weakest point of the enemy. Surely Poland and most probably France would have been defeated even without the "assistance" from above: but at what price for Wehrmacht, not only in men and materiel, but also in time, a raw material that Nazi Germany could not afford to waste?

 

[stona]

Well, it's a great 'what if'.
The important point is that no side has aircraft in this scenario.
Cheers
Steve

 

[GrauGeist]

Well, Germany may have had a harder time with Poland without the benefit of the Luftwaffe, but historically, Poland's forces weren't mobilized leading to Germany's ability to gain ground at a rapid pace.

And the situation with France was also a blunder on France's behalf, as they had far more armored vehicles, many of which were superior, but they did not employ them to the front at a time when it was critical, which also allowed the Wehrmacht to gain territory at a rapid pace.

In the case of Belgium and Denmark, their armies put up a heroic fight, but would have still been overwhelmed by sheer numbers of the Wehrmacht

 

[Thorlifter]

With no Luftwaffe to finance, and the investment was huge, what might Germany had spent that money on?

That was my point with the Tirpitz and Musashi (and Shinano). Without putting $$$ and manpower into building an aircraft industry (planes, carriers, factories, research, material, etc) all that effort would have been put to completing projects already started so you would think these capital ships would be completed much sooner, as well as additional smaller vessels (light cruisers, destroyers, subs, etc)

Of course, the thought just crept into my little brain that theory goes the other way too. The US would not have had the Enterprise, Lexington, and others. England would not have had the Ark Royal, Furious, etc. So what would have stood in their place?

 

[GrauGeist]

...The US would not have had the Enterprise, Lexington, and others. England would not have had the Ark Royal, Furious, etc. So what would have stood in their place?

Battleships, Heavy Cruisers and subs. Plus the focused development of torpedoes, aiming systems and radar, most likely.

Same can be said for land-based systems since there's no aviation industry to detract money and development away from armored warfare development.

 

[stona]

Also, without the involvement of aviation, U-boats would have OWNED the Atlantic.

They would have struggled to find the convoys without Luftwaffe reconnaissance (quite apart from the fact I don't agree with the premise in any case ) A lack of aircraft cuts both ways!
It was Luftwaffe reconnaissance, particularly effective against the convoys to the USSR, but also in the Western Approaches and convoys to the Mediterranean, that compelled the British to develop countermeasures, including the Camships with their Fulmars and Hurricanes.

The British were so concerned that a conference to discuss the protection of convoys from Luftwaffe reconnaissance was held on 12th November 1940 at the Air Council Room in King Charles' Street. An idea of its significance may be gathered from the attendees who included Portal, Pound, Philips (Chief of Naval Air Services/Fifth Sea Lord) and the C-in-Cs of Coastal and Fighter Commands, RAF.
None of this would have been necessary had the Germans had no aircraft.

Attached is a detail from an Air Staff Assessment, presented at that meeting.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Trilisser]

An excellent question. And the answer is that if the political situation had been the same in this scenario with the same players as in reality, there would have been no different end result.

However, there would have been one significant difference: far fewer civilian deaths. In WW1 only some 5 % of all direct deaths from military action were civilians. In WW2 it was some 50 %. There are two key factors in this: ideology and air power. I know that some air power fans will be furious of the following statement, but it is fact: air power is far better in killing civilians than military personnel. All major WW2 air forces were responsible for more civilian KIA than military KIA. Excepting possibly the Soviet AF. And then smaller air arms. But especially the R.A.F. and the U.S. air forces record in this is clear. The previus statement is true even today. Air power excels in attacking civilians.

So, a WW2 without air power would have greatly reduced civilian suffering.

 

[Shortround6]

Battleships, Heavy Cruisers and subs. Plus the focused development of torpedoes, aiming systems and radar, most likely.

Same can be said for land-based systems since there's no aviation industry to detract money and development away from armored warfare development.

Or heavy artillery. Artillery being one of the big killers on the land battlefield. Stukas got too much credit in Poland and France, yes they did good work but the German army had more artillery tubes per division (mostly), bigger tubes and had more ammo in the division supply train. The Stukas were a bonus. Fewer aircraft, more artillery or more motor traction and more supply trucks.

 

[stona]

So, a WW2 without air power would have greatly reduced civilian suffering.

It would, but by how much? Your 'direct deaths' comprise a tiny fraction of total fatalities.

You have to put these numbers into perspective. A few hundred thousand people died as a direct result of the Anglo-American bombing campaigns, maybe as many as 350,000 Germans perished.
Nazi policies of starvation and labour killed millions. In Belorus 2.3 million of a prewar population of 10.1 million died.
German demand for food stuffs caused at least 40,000 Greeks to starve to death in the Athens-Piraeus area alone, within 5 months of the German occupation.
I don't like the numbers game, but I could carry on with this for pages.

Goering, 6th August 1942:

"I have before me reports on what you are supposed to deliver...
It makes no difference to me in this connection if you say that your people will starve. Let them do so, as long as no German collapses from hunger. If you had been present when the Gauleiter spoke here, you would understand my boundless anger over the fact that we conquered such enormous territories through the valour of our troops, and yet our people have almost been forced down to the miserable rations of the First World War....
I am interested only in those people in the occupied regions who work in armaments and food production. They must receive just enough to enable them to continue working."

The Germans caused famine throughout the occupied territories, killing tens of millions, it was state policy. Lets not even mention the millions of 'labourers' who died in Germany itself. There were 8 million of them by the summer of 1944. During the war at least 2.4 million perished (a very conservative estimate), this quite aside from the holocaust. This too was official government policy, these people did not starve by accident, they were starved by the Germans.

Do not take the moral high ground over strategic bombing with me! You must understand all the facts, the enemy that was being confronted, in order to understand why the morals of 1939/40 were steadily eroded throughout the conflict.

I have said this before, and I will repeat it for your benefit, the most immoral thing the Allies could have done would have been to lose the war.

Steve

 

[GrauGeist]

Something that might give an idea of how the war in the Pacific might have played out, is the Battle of Surigao Strait during the bigger Battle of Leyte, where U.S. Naval surface forces engaged IJN surface forces virtually unsupported by aircraft.

There were also several battles during the Guadacanal campaign that were devoid of aerial support, too.

 

[Glider]

No aviation, no Stuka.

No Stuka, no Blitzkrieg.

No Blitzkrieg, no Poland.

No Poland, no France.

No France, no submarine bases on the Atlantic coast.

No submarine bases on the Atlantic coast, no England…

Germans would have starved just as in the First World War.

That an airforce would have been not useful, but essential, to invade G.B. was well known from Napoleon's times.

I basically agree with the main thrust of this. Poland would ahve been overwhelmed but it would take longer and this would ahve bought the French time to sort out their defence.
France would not have collapsed like it did and the rest is true. No invasion of Norway, No Battle of the Atlantic. The British may even have concentrated and built better tanks. The Cromwell 12 months earlier would ahve made a huge difference, let alone the Centurion.

 

[stona]

The British may even have concentrated and built better tanks.

Steady on old bean

Cheers

Steve

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

It would, but by how much? Your 'direct deaths' comprise a tiny fraction of total fatalities.

You have to put these numbers into perspective. A few hundred thousand people died as a direct result of the Anglo-American bombing campaigns, maybe as many as 350,000 Germans perished.
Nazi policies of starvation and labour killed millions. In Belorus 2.3 million of a prewar population of 10.1 million died.
German demand for food stuffs caused at least 40,000 Greeks to starve to death in the Athens-Piraeus area alone, within 5 months of the German occupation.
I don't like the numbers game, but I could carry on with this for pages.

Goering, 6th August 1942:

"I have before me reports on what you are supposed to deliver...
It makes no difference to me in this connection if you say that your people will starve. Let them do so, as long as no German collapses from hunger. If you had been present when the Gauleiter spoke here, you would understand my boundless anger over the fact that we conquered such enormous territories through the valour of our troops, and yet our people have almost been forced down to the miserable rations of the First World War....
I am interested only in those people in the occupied regions who work in armaments and food production. They must receive just enough to enable them to continue working."

The Germans caused famine throughout the occupied territories, killing tens of millions, it was state policy. Lets not even mention the millions of 'labourers' who died in Germany itself. There were 8 million of them by the summer of 1944. During the war at least 2.4 million perished (a very conservative estimate), this quite aside from the holocaust. This too was official government policy, these people did not starve by accident, they were starved by the Germans.

Do not take the moral high ground over strategic bombing with me! You must understand all the facts, the enemy that was being confronted, in order to understand why the morals of 1939/40 were steadily eroded throughout the conflict.

I have said this before, and I will repeat it for your benefit, the most immoral thing the Allies could have done would have been to lose the war.

Steve

I agree with you.

It is easy for people to look back at things 70 years later and judge. Germany wanted total war, well they got it...

 

[stona]

Without air power how many German civilians would have died? I would venture far more than died in the bombing. The Germans surrendered in 1918, a year when an extra 200,000 civilian deaths may be attributed to the effects of starvation. The Allied blockade never caused widespread famine, though hardship enough.
Does anyone seriously believe that the Nazi regime would have surrendered because the German people were starving to death. I think Hitler's view of the German people and their 'worthiness' to survive if they failed in their providential fight against 'Judaism and Bolshevism' are well known.
Hitler and the Nazi regime were responsible for the death of every single German that died, not the Allies. Hitler would have tried to take them all with him in a kind of fantastic 'Gotterdammerung'.

Steve

 

[XBe02Drvr]

There were also several battles during the Guadacanal campaign that were devoid of aerial support, too.

You mean, like Savo Island or Tassafaronga Point?

 

[Elmas]

The Blitzkrieg was a kind of lacework: the Germans concentrated an overwhelming effort on a few important points and the rest fell by itself: it is quite clear that without aviation this trick would have not succeeded. After the invasion of Russia an agile foil had to turn into an heavy sword and the defeat of the Nazi Germany was granted: the war was simply won by who had in his hands the bigger…


Regarding hunger, the Germans managed to survive in WWII both with what they stole in the barns of Ukraine at the beginning of the war (some historians say that the somewhat late beginning of the Russian campaign was strictly coordinated with the wheat harvesting ...) and with their logistic organization, which throughout the war was able to distribute efficiently the food resources. Calories eaten by Germans in WWII were more than those eaten by English, if I remember well.


Let's not forget that in 1918 were just a few tens of thousands of Germans, which went home because hungry for the lack of food and simply put out the blast furnaces, that left Germany on his knees: Hitler wanted at all costs to avoid this scenario. Contrary to general believing, the Germany economy in WWII was not a "total war economy" and were present in the shops goods that had disappeared in other Countries, namely England. The manpower represented by German women, for example, was never fully exploited, as the Nazi Germany was able to use laborers from other Countries (France, Italy)

or from slaves from Russia and Poland.
Many of the steam engines drivers were Italians, for example, and the old survivors still narrate of the German girls they had in every town the railway line touched… German men were in Russia.

 

[stona]

200,000 German deaths in 1918 were attributed to the effects of starvation, not necessarily directly. (I say this as I stuff a 5Kg goose for six people).

In 1942, despite the German successes severe rationing was introduced for the German civilian population. You can imagine what this meant for the millions of non-Germans in Germany, particularly those from the East. From the beginning of 1942 until mid 1943 Sauckel 'imported' 34,000 workers a week into Germany. According to the Nazi's own book keeping 1,375,567 civilian workers were sent to the Reich between April and November 1942, they had to be fed too, some weren't.

During the planning for Barbarossa the Germans estimated that 20-30 million 'Slavs' would have to be starved to death (they liked big round numbers). They were surprised in 1942 that the actual number was somewhat lower. It was Backe who consequently drafted a second 'hunger plan', imposing new food delivery quotas on the East and imposing them also in the West.
By 1943 Germany drew 30% of its meat, 25% of its fats and 20% of its grain from occupied territories. Levies on France and the Soviet territories more than doubled from 3.5 million to 8.78 million tons. If the indigenous populations starved as a result, it was all in the plan.

Steve

 

[pinehilljoe]

As the title says, World War Two without aircraft...

Typically, when the name World War Two is mentioned, one of the first things that come to mind, is the aircraft (one of the reasons we're all here, right?) and it is the only time in human history that Airships, Biplanes, Jets and some of the fastest piston powered aircraft in history all shared the same timeline. Airships attacked U-boats, Jets attacked piston powered bombers, biplanes attacked modern Battleships, entire naval battles were won and lost without the opposing fleets being within sight of each other - almost the stuff of science fiction.

Aircraft played a key role in nearly every battle that was fought during the war and this was in most cases, the contributing factor in how a battle was won or lost.

But let's consider for a moment, how World War Two would have taken it's course if there were no aircraft. Keep in mind, that in World War One, aircraft were a novel idea at the onset of the war. It wasn't for two years that the concept of military aviation actually was taken seriously and by 1917, the rush was on for air superiority.

As the war in Europe drew near, Germany was on the verge of the jet age, but it wasn't taken seriously enough to be made a priority and so the cycle once again replayed itself, the jets becoming a priority once the war was well underway, just like the airplane itself had been considered almost 30 years before.

So this brings me to my question: What if aircraft had not developed to the point where it was considered a military asset by 1935? What if the Armies and Navies held firm to their traditional ideologies and insisted that Battleships or Infantry won wars and stifled the introduction of military aviation.


Would WWII have become a contest of Battleships and Trench Warfare like the Great War and ground everything down into a muddy standstill?

I'd be interested in seeing what everyone thinks about this.

Not as far fetched as one might think. If Orvile or Wilbur had an accident on the way to Kittyhawk, or one crashed and died in the early glider tests and the other got discouraged and gave up, it might have set back the invention of the airplane by 20 or 30+ years. The butterfly affect.

I think the RN and emplaced artillery would have stopped the Sea Lion. The RN free in the channel without having to worry about the Luftwaffe would have outgunned the Kriegsmarine. Its hard to say how the Battle of France would have turned out without the Luftwaffe, I suspect in Germany's favor, but but it would have lasted more than 4 weeks.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Not as far fetched as one might think. If Orvile or Wilbur had an accident on the way to Kittyhawk, or one crashed and died in the early glider tests and the other got discouraged and gave up, it might have set back the invention of the airplane by 20 or 30+ years. The butterfly affect.

What about Langley, Curtiss, and the horde of Lilienthal disciples in Europe? I think someone else would have come along pretty soon. Maybe even someone who wouldn't have impeded further development in the early years as the Wrights did with their aggressive patent infringement lawsuits. Progress by 1914 might have been even further advanced. And military authorities maybe even more intrigued with it.

 

[stona]

I don't think that the Wright's dropping out of the development of powered flight would have had such a disastrous effect on early aviation. A delay? possibly. 20-30 years? no chance, maybe a year or two, probably less.
It's not like the Wrights were working on an original idea and they were certainly not the only ones working on it.
Cheers
Steve