What went wrong most for Germany?

[swampyankee]

Someone else (apart from Manstein) just made the point that the war was lost for Germany when Britain remained undefeated in 1940. This led almost inevitably to the projection of US economic and then military power across the Atlantic.
With no war in the east, Germany would still have lost eventually. Possibly not so catastrophically

...but possibly more so. It would have taken longer, and, with nazism's intrinsic antisemitism, they would have still alienated many of the best and brightest in Germany and Austria to take up arms, either directly (when I was at Lycoming, one of the managers was an Austrian Jew who flew for the RAF) or indirectly (Manhattan Project). If Germany takes too long to lose, atomic glass from Berlin becomes a souvenir.

 

[stona]

In the realms of what iffery, but I would argue that the Germans would not have felt compelled to fight to the bitter end against the Western Allies. The chance of a negotiated peace may well have emboldened those who might have removed Hitler and the regime.
We will never know

 

[swampyankee]

In the realms of what iffery, but I would argue that the Germans would not have felt compelled to fight to the bitter end against the Western Allies. The chance of a negotiated peace may well have emboldened those who might have removed Hitler and the regime.
We will never know

They were given the a negotiated armistice in 1918. The Allies wouldn't repeat that mistake; they'd want to make very, very sure that another "stab in the back" myth wasn't invented. Also, liberating one or two death camps may have made the Allies unwilling to do anything else.

 

[michaelmaltby]

Illuminating .... George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf, 1940

George Orwell's 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

 

[The Basket]

Orwell knew much.
Like that

 

[stona]

You can hardly expect a man who fought for a Marxist militia in Spain to be a fan of Mein Kampf !

Orwell had a brilliant mind, whatever his politics he wasn't likely to fall for Hitler's clap trap.

Cheers

Steve

 

[swampyankee]

You can hardly expect a man who fought for a Marxist militia in Spain to be a fan of Mein Kampf !

Orwell had a brilliant mind, whatever his politics he wasn't likely to fall for Hitler's clap trap.

Cheers

Steve

Nor Stalin's. He saw oppression both by Franco's Falange and its Nazi and Fascist allies and by Stalin's bolsheviks. Adding outsiders to a civil war makes it worse, as the outsiders' agenda is never in the interest of the people who started fighting.

 

[The Basket]

Orwell has Hitler down to a very fine point.
Not degrading him as a nut but speaking of Hitler as the the historical megalomaniac with cosmic hatreds and a vision where that hatred can take you. It was written in 1940 but was disturbingly accurate.
Hitler has said to them 'I offer you struggle, danger and death,' and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.
That's scary.