What If...?

[cheddar cheese]

Pig. I deliberately made mine wet, and gave my self an amazing hairstyle at the same time

 

[plan_D]

I am a pig...but it's also a very humid and hot day...so what did I do? Opened the patio door and took my shirt off...

...don't get horny...

 

[cheddar cheese]

Too late..

 

[plan_D]

Talk about premature ejaculation...

 

[cheddar cheese]

I know

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Oh Boy and he we go again!

 

[cheddar cheese]

Oh yeah 8)

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

We have a habit of taking things into the gutter dont we?

 

[plan_D]

Don't try and pass it off as 'we' - Adler. Everyone knows you take it far beyond the gutter and into the sewer.

 

[cheddar cheese]

Actually I take the blame, I live in a gutter

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

That is why I said we PD.

 

[plan_D]

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

it's more me and CC though aint it?

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Probably.

 

[MP-Willow]

So is there any hope of getting back to near the topic?

I would sugest this, the US stays out of this bloody European war? We deal with the Japonese and as best we can to avoid being drawn into the war in Europe this would be hard if Germany declairs war on the US, but maybe they will think it over with help fom Japan and we all are happy

 

[plan_D]

You're saying that Japan attacks Pearl Harbour on the 7th December, 1941 and the U.S takes it as a declaration of war. Germany doesn't declare war on the U.S and the U.S concentrates on Japan and leaves Europe (actually Britain) to fend off Germany on it's own?

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Would not have happend. Roosevelt and Churchhill had already decided that Germany was first a year before Pearl Harbor when they met in Nova Scotia.

 

[vanir]

What if...

Hitler had a bout of semi-consciousness instead of megalomania shortly after the opening of hostilities and although still seeking what he felt were his nation's tactical and strategic dues, left his waning personality out of the whole mess.

Takes the Sudetenlund but leaves it at that (doesn't press further into Austria and Czechoslovakia than the Germanic homelands originally promised to disposed and relocated Germans during the mediaeval Hundred Years War, as was his claim to the region). Refuses to take a contract out with the USSR over Poland but delivers demands for parts of that country anyway (WW1 counter-reparations and the period of Prussian rule in mind perhaps), with no intention of immediately making good on any threat. Don't want the angry sickle to come down on Germany just yet (gotta wait for Britain to attack them first).

Avoided that whole "night of blood" thing which set his secondary leaderships in stone during the prewar years...instead of sanctioned shooting of Hitler's political rivals and giving people like Himmler, Goebbels, Goering and others their permanent foothold (remember as those individuals certainly knew, Fuhrer was a title more than a man, though it took a man to create the title, Hitler did promise, after all a Reich that would last a thousand years...I don't think he quite intended to be there personally and I am absolutely positive his secondary leadership most certainly didn't).
This was in my opinion his single greatest strategic error (aside from being all too willingly played like a harpsichord initially), as they systematically destroyed any sense in the armed forces, probably encouraging Hitler's poorer sides in concert, in everything from implementation to engineering specifications in military equipment and doctrine.
In fact I should think Goering's poor attempt at assuming the Reich's leadership in early 1945 was merely a premature execution of something the original extreemist Nationalists had always intended...once their vaunted construction of a Reichs-Monarchy had been satisfactorially generated in the minds of the German people.

The original "German" monarchy was in fact a Prussian dictatorship, organised during the creation of Germany by those nations who'd been using Germanic peoples as hirelings and mercinaries for centuries. We'll give you homelands, they promised, we'll give you back your original tribal farming areas. They relocated them in what became Germany, after taking the pick and division of Germanic regions and put the russo Prussian state in absolute authority over them. Then some of the very same bastards did it again at Versailles...
(it's just Lawrence of Arabia all over again isn't it..."we promise we'll give you homelands if you fight for us, honest we will...now get in your box and don't bother us again")

But an insular monarchy generated through nationalism, now that would create a true homologated monarchy from within. Goodbye German Empire under Prussian Aristocrats, goodbye German workers doing it hard under the thumb, hello Germanic Empire all of their own making.

But most especially the whole anti-semitism cum holocaust thing just smacks of purist National Socialism at its foundation to me, the same way political synonymities around the world feel about aborigines, african-americans, hutus, kurds and any perceivedly dissident cultures that coincidentally have alternate political views in the majority.

Hitler and his cronies didn't even come up with Blitzkreig. It was published by a high ranking Wehrmacht officer in the late 20's from memory and although copies were held in libraries throughout the later allied nations, it was ignored in favour of early "battleships, brigades and (carpet) bombers" tactics favoured by the world's armed forces.

So say, Germany holds off further conflict in the low countries whilst development of the later 109E/F models, heavy bombers and a wider range of newer heavy equipment is made, instead of waiting until 1941-43 for things like Tiger tanks, Ju-88's, Fw-187...ad infinitum. No urgency and therefore concentration on resources to individual companies like Messerschmitt for development but a more rounded, longer sighted military expenditure right from the stalls.
And personally touring industrial sites to discover they were still running at peacetime production rates until midwar...finding that out and putting them on track say, before hostilities were even begun might've pushed contemporary line equipment in the field ahead to 1941-42 instead of 1943-44 with the highest war production during 1944 (a bit late don't you think).

I think it's been established well enough on this site, whilst Germany was perhaps supreme in ideas, it did not have the monopoly on actual military technology in the field except in isolated examples and for relatively short periods. Hitler's doctrine as it stood was never designed to fight a lasting war but merely short, fierce actions. He should've stuck to it until the military was developed enough (compared to say...any of the major powers), to do more.

Invaded Norway sure, but held off there for its industrial value and just strengthened defences in case French and BEF invaded. The Brits and Soviets were on shaky terms and close to war with each other.
It would have been a crazy-scary time for the Germans but if they held out until say 1941 without going another step forward (ie. leave Poland, France and the low countries alone for the moment), GB may have warred the USSR (especially over Finland), GB probably wouldn't have tried to invade Germany or anything, the USSR was unlikely to without yet stepping into Poland (untreatised) and here's an example of the French attitude:

Shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, when German lines on the French border had been weakened due to Wehrmacht attacks in the southeast and north, a journalist was interviewing French troops manning defences. Across the fields to the German lines their soldiers could clearly be seen openly playing soccer in the fields, barely a couple of hundred metres away.
The journalist asked a French NCO, why aren't you shooting at them, they're the enemy aren't they?
To which the soldier replied, why should we shoot them? They're not shooting at us, they're fine.
Within two weeks the Wehrmacht was marching on Paris.


I mean you can probably see where I'm going with this and I'd like to be the first one to admit my overall knowledge of WWII is less than many on the site, some of the opinions expressed above are just that, from a perhaps incomplete appraisal of information and comparitively limited resources.
I can take being corrected on any point matter.

 

[plan_D]

"Hitler and his cronies didn't even come up with Blitzkreig. It was published by a high ranking Wehrmacht officer in the late 20's from memory and although copies were held in libraries throughout the later allied nations, it was ignored in favour of early "battleships, brigades and (carpet) bombers" tactics favoured by the world's armed forces."

What became known as "Blitzkrieg" (coined by a NY Times journalist in 1940) was created by a collection of ideas from France, Britain and Germany. The British forces were most advanced in armour doctrine in the 1920s. The one man that brought everything together was Heinz Guderian - hardly high ranking but he was in the German General Staff. The whole idea was published and given freely to the world in 1937, in the works; Achtung! Panzer! by Heinz Guderian (Preface by General der Panzertruppen Lutz). Which I currently own.

 

[vanir]

That's the one. I'd thought it was published much earlier. The most common layman's view I keep running into in general conversation, of blitzkreig tactics seems to be that Hitler had invented them himself, which is certainly not the case.

I mean the whole evil genius supernatural svengali thing and us poor normal people really burns my bacon. It's like blaming a red light district for extra marital affairs.