What if the eastern front closed down in spring 43?

[Just Schmidt]

A couple of threads right now discuss the consequences of ww2 not having happened, at least at the historical time. The problem, in my opinion, is that it is impossible to Guess what would have happened after september 39. The argument that the Germany couldn't have launched the war in, say, 45 because it was insane, dosn't cut mustard. For one thing Hitler didn't set out to launch a world war in 39, he just bargained for a little war. The problem is not only that people like Hitler, Stalin and Mussoline are considered rational agents, but also, to put it basely, that **** happens. If Hitler refrains from his attack on poland, do we expect Mussolini to sit on his hands for 5 years? How does japan react to the economic squese? Will we see another fascist coup in Europe, possibly followed by a French civil war?

So ta make matters simpler, i suggest the following scenario: Up to november 42 everything expires as in Our timeline, but on 20th of november Paulus is killed in a soviet air raid. Von Manstaein is appointed head of 6th army, and upon experiencing the hopeless situation (especially the futility of supplying by air) he boldly ignores Hitlers stand fast order, and on christmass eve 1942 about half of the 6th army makes it out of the encirclement without most of their Heavy Equipment. Equally miraculus the german forces in Caucasus are extricated, and the front is, barely, stabilized at mius and donets rivers.

Upon flying to Mansteins headquarters to personally sack him, hitler and other top brazz are killed when his personal Condor breaks its back in a sudden Blizzard. A military government takes over in Germany, stabilises the front in Southern Russia, but are frustrated in negotiating a general Peace by the total surrender condition. When Katyn is made Public in april, the US and british government decides that enough is enough, and threatens end of lend lease supplies unless Stalin substantially changes his polish policies.

The outcome is that Germany and USSR comes to an understanding. The status quo of 41 is reinstated, with the exception that USSR gets predominance in Bulgaria (never at war with the USSR to start with), and common pressure is put on Tyrkey to give up Istanbul and the Straits (formally) to Bulgaria. In Return Stalin agrees to deliver Germany oil and other Strategic materials, in exchange for german Technology, including jet power and rader. USSR goes back to being neutral, and Stalin sits back and watch with considerable interest the continued world struggle, intent on this time to break the non agression pact before the Germans do.

Now Germany, 3 years late, finally can concentrate on getting it's airpower in shape to repell the coming onslaught of the western Powers, naval Power in the meantime having provedtoo vulnerable at least near air bases, With the possible exception of Advanced enough submarines.

Is it too late for Germany to increase and change its air force so she can at least achieve a stalemate, continuing to dominate the European continent? What course could, and should, be taken?

 

[davebender]

No but that's rather beside the point.

Without Russian front 1943 Germany will have four times as many first rate divisions in the west, twice as many combat aircraft, a lot more flak weapons and they will have a lot more fuel available for both vehicles and aircraft. Supply of nickel from Finland and chromium from Turkey will be secure. Chances are Spain and Portugal will continue to ship tungsten. Millions of Ukrainian refugees will continue flooding into Germany so there will be no labor shortage.

Under such circumstances I doubt USA and Britain can seize Sicily, much less Italy and France.

USA Lend-Lease to Soviet Union was dependent upon an agreement which required Soviets to drive Japan from Manchuria three months after German is defeated. In this scenario Soviets have broken the agreement so Lend-Lease shipments to Russia come to a screeching halt. Without American economic assistance Soviet military production will plummet, which means they are no longer a major threat to Europe anytime soon.

Why would USA and Britain continue the war under such circumstances?

 

[fastmongrel]

Why would USA and Britain continue the war under such circumstances?

Because the WAlies cannot be beaten Germany is bankrupt and there is a Bucket of Sunshine coming in 2 years.

 

[Greyman]

Why would USA and Britain continue the war under such circumstances?

There were many who were still itching for a chance to prove air power could win the war by itself.

Russia or no Russia, 'The Bomb' is still on its way.

 

[GrauGeist]

A couple of things here: first off, King Boris of Bulgaria was well thought of in Germany and it would be very unlikely that Germany would have just tossed Bulgaria to the Soviets. Plus, it wasn't until 1944 that Bulgaria tried to distance itself from the Axis by declaring neutrality and requesting the German military to leave. Romania switched sides in August of that same year and allowed the Red army to cross through it's territory to Bulgaria's borders. Then on 8 September, the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria and invaded.

As far as the "bomb" goes, one of the reasons the Allies were working so hard on developing an A-bomb, is because they thought that Germany was well advanced in developing their own. After Germany surrendered, there was no longer an urgency for the program.

 

[kool kitty89]

Because the WAlies cannot be beaten Germany is bankrupt and there is a Bucket of Sunshine coming in 2 years.

As far as the "bomb" goes, one of the reasons the Allies were working so hard on developing an A-bomb, is because they thought that Germany was well advanced in developing their own. After Germany surrendered, there was no longer an urgency for the program.

Aside from that, if Germany had been able to maintain Air Superiority with air power focused on the Western Front and improved military leadership addressing at least some of the efficiency problems hampering Germany, getting bombers into Germany ... and back out would be increasingly difficult.

On top of that, the German Nuclear program might have improved in that period but aside from that they had very serious potential in chemical and biological weapons. Germany may have not have been willing to go that deep into breaking the Geneva Protocol during periods of conventional warfare, but if the allies went nuclear, counter-attacks with chemical weapons (be it botulinum toxin or synthetic nerve agents) were very possible.

That Germany's alliance with Japan would complicate matters too, if they didn't break it as part of the armistice with the USSR. Still, the relative token support Germany offered Japan during the war probably wouldn't have stopped more focused Allied efforts in the Pacific ... though continued aggression over Western Europe might have eaten up more American resources and slowed progress in the Pacific. (possibly to the point that Japan might have an operational Nuclear Bomb of their own)

 

[stona]

The Germans were years from a workable weapon, no matter what nonsense conspiracy theorists have come up with in recent years. The reason the atomic research program in Germany was so minimal after 1942 is because the German scientists themselves had reached the same conclusion. The Nazis wanted quick fixes, not expensive projects that might pay off in five or ten years time.
There were some fundamental errors made, mostly by Heisenberg, in the calculations on which they were basing their program. It's why they were all so surprised when not only did the Americans produce a weapon in 1945, but it was also small enough to be dropped from an aeroplane.

The Japanese were probably decades away. It is telling that as the Americans prepared to use nuclear weapons against targets in Japan, the Japanese were launching primitive balloons with a small payload of anti personnel bombs into the jet stream, in an attempt to target the western seaboard of the USA.

Take a look at the resources allotted to the Manhattan project and compare those committed by the Germans or Japanese. Whether the US would still have been prepared to build the plants and spend the money in the scenarios proposed above is a difficult question. I doubt it, but they might still have come up with a workable 'Little Boy' type Uranium based device in the 1940s. One things for sure, without such plants and investment the Germans and Japanese were not going to produce the required amounts of Uranium for a weapons programme, let alone Plutonium.

Every 15 year old Physics student knows how a nuclear weapon works and the better ones could draw a diagram to show the operation of such a device. Actually producing the materials and making the thing work is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Cheers

Steve

 

[GrauGeist]

The Germans were years from a workable weapon...

The Allies didn't know that at the time.

As far as the "primative balloon" weapons go, they weren't anti-personnel bombs, they were incendiary. It was the intention to have these bombs fall among the vast forests of the Pacific Northwest, starting massive fires and in doing so, create confusion, panic at the same time consuming manpower and resorces to contain them.

While it was a sound idea with plenty of potential, seasonal timing and unpredictable jet stream currents denied the Japanese any success.

 

[stona]

While it was a sound idea with plenty of potential, seasonal timing and unpredictable jet stream currents denied the Japanese any success.

It was an act of desperation and highlights the parlous state of Japanese war industries at the time. It was almost completely ineffective. 90% of the balloons never even made it to the US. At least it was relatively cheap, a fully equipped balloon cost the equivalent of about $2,000 dollars.
By contrast, the US spent at least 2 billion dollars on the Manhattan project, but at least it worked. I reckon that's at least 30 billion of todays dollars.
Cheers
Steve

 

[davebender]

No but they can certainly go bankrupt in a futile effort to destroy Europe. Just as happened to Britain historically.

 

[GrauGeist]

It was an act of desperation and highlights the parlous state of Japanese war industries at the time. It was almost completely ineffective. 90% of the balloons never even made it to the US. At least it was relatively cheap, a fully equipped balloon cost the equivalent of about $2,000 dollars.
By contrast, the US spent at least 2 billion dollars on the Manhattan project, but at least it worked. I reckon that's at least 30 billion of todays dollars.
Cheers
Steve

And here's a little bit of irony:
One of the balloon bombs actually landed near the Manhattan projects facility, in March of 1945, exploding and shutting down power to the reactor system. Power was quickly restored and all was well...

 

[Greyman]

... a futile effort to destroy Europe.

Unfortunately, with no prospect of a ground war, this might be achieved when Britain ends up putting all of its eggs in the 'Bomber Command Basket'.

Before the Soviet Union and the United States joined the conflict, Britain's plan was for a front-line strength of 4,000 bombers - three times what was ultimately achieved.

After Barbarossa and Pearl Harbour the situation changed significantly.

 

[kool kitty89]

Unfortunately, with no prospect of a ground war, this might be achieved when Britain ends up putting all of its eggs in the 'Bomber Command Basket'.

Before the Soviet Union and the United States joined the conflict, Britain's plan was for a front-line strength of 4,000 bombers - three times what was ultimately achieved.

After Barbarossa and Pearl Harbour the situation changed significantly.

With German efforts more squarely placed towards night bombing defenses, the losses may have been unsustainable there as well. Not to mention the public/political situation building up as things progressed. (assuming a radical shift in Germany's government and corresponding diplomatic emphasis.

You could compare the situation to Japan on the defensive, but in 1943, Germany had a LOT more area to disperse infrastructure into compared to mainland Japan in 1945, and much more hardened infrastructure for the less dispersed portions. It's a bit late to address many of the Nazi's flawed strategic/economic planning, but at very least things might have started going in the right direction logistically speaking.


And I failed to mention it earlier, but it's a topic that's been addressed in several past threads where atomic bombing over Europe has been suggested: the sorts of architecture used in Europe would be far more resistant to the first generation nuclear weapons than Japan was (for similar reasons to firebombings being even more devastating than the nuclear bombs in Japan -at least in the short term). Fallout might have made for some potential in a scorched earth strategy, but the initial impact would likely be lesser and with potentially horrific chemical/biological weapons as retaliation. (and Germany could easily target Britain, far closer to home than anything Japan could hit)

Terror weapons/campaigns very rarely have the desired demoralizing/demotivational effect and usually backfire, further solidifying resistance and bitterness towards the enemy. The success of the atomic bombings of Japan is one of the very few examples where terror worked in ending conflict. (granted, the Japanese were all but beaten by that point anyway, so it was more a matter of shattering a more futile drive for honor to save face and fight to the last and make invasion attempts as bloody as possible -a simplification of the political/social situation in Japan, granted, but at least partially accurate)

It would be more like the Battle of Britain in some respects, but on a different scale and without the naval advantages. (military government with more efficient coordination of Submarine + maritime patrol aircraft might have put a more serious dent in Atlantic supply lines though)

 

[kool kitty89]

This summary of German radar tech might be more relevant for this thread, particularly in the context of a millitary run German government breaking though some of the former Nazi politics and getting stuff online in the frontlines as well as having air/land/sea cooperation.

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/luftwaffe-vs-ija-43102-post1198344.html#post1198344

The IJN were pretty crap at sinking merchant ships, the handful of German U-boats that were based in Japanese occupied Malaya probably sank more merchant ships than the entire Japanese navy. The German U-boats were very tough, generally able to dive twice as deep as Japanese and Allied subs and could survive a depth charging that would crush the other types. Germans had excellent night vision optics better than allied optics though not as good as the Japanese, they even infrared detection and ranging (it worked to perhaps 10km but was out ranged by radar) in the optical conditions of the pacific it might give them an advantage. The latter German radar, Seetakt, from FuMO 26,25 onwards had blind fire by lobe switching the receive aerial. Unlike allied systems this didn't broaden the beam leading to reduced resolution. (US capital ship radar had a width of 15 degrees which made it hard to select a target).

Generally the Germans had a tactical issue: they didn't switch on their radar out of desire to remain stealthy but were then often surprised (this is what happened to Scharnhorst) as their passive sensors were just not good enough. Their navy was designed to fight in the poor visibility of the Nth Atlantic and to operate as a stealthy raider till they developed a fleet with aircraft carriers.

The German Seetakt was perhaps a little short ranged, it might locate a target accurately but it was essential to detect gun splash for effective long range fire and since Tirpitz and Prinz Eugen was the extent of their fleet they were a little slow in upgrading, nevertheless the 1944 fit out of Tirpitz would have included microwave surface search radar FuMO 81 with PPI and a Seetakt power increased from 8kW to about 120kW. It compared favourably with Iowa Class and King George V.

It's true that the UK had deployed a crude, in terms of frequency terms, but effective radar generally known as Chain Home in the late 30s that had been well integrated in to a reporting system. This long wave radar was practical to implement fast due to its low frequency (around 10m-15m) but had significant limitations over land. Such a limitation would be very unattractive to the Luftwaffe with their need to detect aircraft flying over land (rising out of France) rather than intercepting over the coast.

The two radars the Luftwaffe deployed were Freya and Wurzburg. Freya(named after the F wave frequency rather than the Nordic goddess) which was a version of the German Navy's Seetakt (Sea Tactical) radar with wavelength increased initially to 1.8m instead of 60cm in order to increase power and range.

Freya was demountable and participated in the 1938 Sudeten crisis in Czechoslovakia and one was flown by Ju 52 and erected during Fall Gelb, the invasion of Norway, that arose when Vidkund Quisling informed Hitler that the Norwegian Cabinet had decided to surrender to Britain when the UK's pre-emptive strategic invasion of Norway occurred.

The other radar was Wurzburg A of late 1939, a marvel of portability , it could be towed after folding in half the 3m dish and brought quickly to operation. It was intended as an early warning radar. Wurzburg-A had three operators: one tracked range, the other two would wobble the dish in elevation and traverse to track the target. This gave about +/-2 degrees bearing accuracy and about 120m range that had allowed some crude but successful blind fire. It had Height finding and an ability to move with the troops, rare among portable radars. It was very useful at directing search lights and measuring target range.

By Early 1941 the next edition came out: Wurzburg-C. It introduced conical scan so only one operator was required for elevation and bearing tracking and they could do so to within 0.3 degrees. By June 1941 the Wurzburg-D came into service with 80 on the production line that month. It reduced range accuracy to 25m and transferred the data directly to a FLAK predictor. At the same time Wurzburg-Riesse came into service at several locations using a 7m dish and offering 0.2 degree accuracy and a range of about 140km.

The Allies had nothing like it in service till the US made SCR-584 entered service in late 1943. For two years, between 1941 to 1943, the only decent FLAK/AAA radar was Wurzburg. In late 1943 the Luftwaffe introduced Wurzburg-D's intended replacement, Manheim, which reduced range accuracy to 6m, introduced automatic tracking for the range gate and much more accurate circuitry. If it had locked on to a target even in the worst windows and carpet jamming it could still track though it was hard to find the target.

One technique used on German radars was the locking of the oscillator via a frequency divider/multiplier to a stable quartz crystal that allowed coherent pulse Doppler radar. This allowed the Wurzburg to see through windows. This wasn't possible with magnetron radar. Doppler radar had been developed as part of programs to detect low flying aircraft and weather radar research that proved fortunately suitable to avoid windows. Wurzburg however couldn't cope with simultaneous carpet jamming and windows from hundreds of aircraft until a circuit called k-laus was introduced.

The British radar advance was the use of multicity magnetrons with circular cavities and narrow slits to produce 9cm and latter 3cm radar. The Germans had in fact developed this type of magnetron (multicavity, narrow slits) but had failed to appreciate its uses in radar. In parts this was because their existing naval radars were so satisfactory at around 50cm-80cm. For instance in 1938 both German light cruisers and destroyers could carry 60cm Seetakt that gave a narrow beam able to detect submarine periscopes and conning towers, a problem British radar was still struggling with at the beginning of the war. Latter a special type of receive only lobe switching gave true blind fire to German cruisers.

Ironically the Japanese had Beaten Britain's Randal and Boot to developing the multicavity magnetron by at least one year. They even deployed them on cruisers before Britain deployed them on sub hunting warships, however they were slow to deploy and invest in the technology and to add refinements such as PPI till late 1945.

Being a Japanese Navy sponsored project the magnetron didn't make it to the Japanese Army Air force or the Germans (who ironically shared self calibrating technology called Rehbok that made it practical to deploy Japanese microwave radar on ships to small to carry electronics technicians.

The Germans immediately understood how British microwave radar worked and deployed about 100 radars during 1944/1945, they were hard to deploy because the bombing campaign had massively uped..

They had their own path to microwaves via something called a disk triode, Soviet radar used the German designs till the 1970s. The Germans shared their Wurzburg design with the Japanese, the copy was a bit late: it had been troublesome to make the precision vacuum tubes.

 

[stona]

I've been wading through a lot of Manhattan related material of late.

First to address when the allies became aware that the German effort had failed. This seems to be around mid 1944, but the effort to develop the US weapon continued unabated until the German surrender. Some had second thoughts at this point and it was Oppenheimer of all people who persuaded his colleagues to continue. His argument was essentially that the world should know that such a weapon existed as the United Nations was founded. This was not an argument for using it against Japan, many argued for some sort of public demonstration of the new weapon that did not involve killing hundreds of thousands of people. Many of the scientists working on the project had, to put it mildly, 'Liberal' views.

Second a sense of proportion. The German effort in 1944 was at an experimental stage, there were maybe a few hundred people involved in the project. Most of the 'Manhattan District History' is now in the public domain. This is a diary written at the behest of General Grove during the project. This isn't a history that Groves ever intended to publish, it is an internal record keeping system for someone who knew that over the course of his life, he (and others) would need to be able to access information about the decisions made during the making of the atomic bomb, sometimes to justify them. Wading through the thousands of miscellaneous papers associated with the project would be virtually impossible. With the benefit of this and other sources estimates for the total number of people employed on the Manhattan project have been made. They all broadly agree on a figure of around 500,000.

Here's an interesting chart showing how many plants were involved in the production of Uranium from the 'District History'.

Cheers

Steve

 

[kool kitty89]

Regardless of whether they knew any opponent was working on a bomb (or functioning nuclear reactor for power generation -apparently a bigger priority in Germany), it seems likely the sheer war-winning potential of the weapon would be enough to drive support. Aside from that, Germany DID have alternate resources for mass death type chemical/biological weapons that would have resulted in very blatant war crimes if deployed but could be seriously considered if nuclear weapons were used against Germany.

On the note of nuclear weapons programs, the Allies seemed totally oblivious to the fact that the Japanese had not just one but two (Army and Navy in typical lack of cooperation) projects that were making far more progress than anything the Germans did. They didn't attempt breeding plutonium, but had put much effort into a U235 based bomb and developing and initiating uranium enrichment using thermal diffusion on an experimental and later industrial scale. (bombing forced industrial Uranium enrichment to be set up in Korea, and they may or may not have actually tested a weapon before the war's end -it may have been a 'fizzle' -as in undersized critical mass or assembled too slowly and with too low a uranium concentration with the simple gun-time arrangement -lower enriched uranium grades CAN be more effectively used with the more complex/experimental implosion type mechanism, particularly with a neutron detonation 'sparkplug' ... I don't recall mention of the specific mechanism intended for their Uranium bomb, but an implosion type would merit a test firing much more than the gun type -hence why Little Boy wasn't tested before deployment, the design was felt sound enough to be foolproof and besides that the US was unable to enrich enough Uranium for a test at the time -with Japan's more limited resources, a larger amount of lower enriched -barely- weapons usable Uranium may have been plausible, especially if their test bomb didn't actually work properly -not enriched enough and/or too little material or a flawed implosion type mechanism)

 

[stona]

but an implosion type would merit a test firing much more than the gun type -hence why Little Boy wasn't tested before deployment, the design was felt sound enough to be foolproof and besides that the US was unable to enrich enough Uranium for a test at the time -with Japan's more limited resources, a larger amount of lower enriched -barely- weapons usable Uranium may have been plausible, especially if their test bomb didn't actually work properly -not enriched enough and/or too little material or a flawed implosion type mechanism)

The fact that the US hadn't produced enough U235 for a test shot should give a clue as to what the Japanese programme was capable of. It's just not that easy to do. Several have tried and either struggled or failed, even with substantial information from successful projects.

The US already had its sights set on Plutonium based devices, incredible when you consider that as the Manhattan project was set up there wouldn't have been enough Plutonium 'created' in the world to cover a pin head

When an unmarked Pontiac sedan pulled up at the McDonald ranch at the Trinity site on 11th July 1945 it carried the entire world supply of Plutonium, about 5 Kg. The story goes that the driver asked for a receipt, approximate value $1,000,000,000. The story is probably apocryphal, but it shows what the other projects were up against.


Cheers

Steve

 

[Just Schmidt]

I always thought it remarkable that Germany didn't use chemical weapons in the end.

Hitlers personal experiences may play a part, as certainly the risk of retaliation would do.

In a discussion about the decision to use the Atomic bomb against japan, I read that the USA had the worlds largest store of Chemical weapons (can't remeber which book). Using them were one of the alternatives considered to bypass the need for an invasion of the Japanese home isles.

 

[stona]

General Groves had an eye on history. Here is a transcript made (by me) of a filmed post war interview in which he justified the use of the first bombs against Japanese cities.

"It would have come out, sooner or later, in a Congressional hearing if nowhere else, just when we could have dropped the bomb if we didn't use it. And then, knowing American politics you know, as well as I do, there'd be elections fought on the basis that every mother whose son was killed after such and such a date, the blood is on the hands of the President."

Not particularly eloquent, but he made a point difficult to refute.

Cheers

Steve

 

[GrauGeist]

I always thought it remarkable that Germany didn't use chemical weapons in the end.

Hitlers personal experiences may play a part, as certainly the risk of retaliation would do.

In a discussion about the decision to use the Atomic bomb against japan, I read that the USA had the worlds largest store of Chemical weapons (can't remeber which book). Using them were one of the alternatives considered to bypass the need for an invasion of the Japanese home isles.

There were considerable stores of chemical weapons possessed by many countries at the time and the U.S. had a stockpile of them on hand in Europe in case the Germans used theirs. Hitler did not use what they had because he knew that would bring retaliation.

The Japanese had chemical and biological weapons on hand - this fact was known by the Allies in the Pacific.