Hi al....

I wonder what answers might come up to....

How do you think WW2 would have unrolled if the Germans had not been pushed back out of Russia? What if they had been successful and taken Moscow and consolidated?

Cheers
Peter

Uff, difficult answer. I guess that the WWII would have lasted 3 or 4 more years, the germans would have had lots of guerrilla problems in occupied Russia. But my personal thinking is that the real problem was that they declared war to the USA, that´s the real turn in WWII. Maybe the americans would have entered the war after all, but maybe too late and too slow, with the Nazi Germany already consolidated and giving lots of pressure to UK and the remainings of Soviet Russia.
Best Regards

It may have made it easier for the US and Brits to enter invade Fortress Europa. If I recall there really weren't any useful resources that could have been captured in Russia so the Germans would have had to stretch their supply lines and defend more territory.

Peter
Welcome back Even if you are a wolf :-) If I may I would like to expand on your theory Say the German forces would have used the Ukranians hostility of Stalin against Stalin?
I had heard that the Ukranians welcomed the geram forces at first thinking they were there to "liberate" them from Stalin's rule

I don't know if that's true or not But an interesting what-if scenario

Remember Napoleon, he got to Moscow, look what happened

I think the Germans would have only prolonged the war. The Germans were only a continental power...could not depend on over-seas resources like the British Empire could, or the relatively untouched USA could.

Sean

An occupying force in a huge and ery patriotic country, regardless of how the people feel about the current ruler, is not a tactically good position. I don't know if Chad is correct about the Ukraine, but I can't imagine them abandoning their loyaty to "Mother Russia," especially in the face of Germany's attitude towrad the untermensch of the world.
The resources needed to control this front would have sapped the western front and made invasion easier. Even if japan had declared war on Russia, it would have been a position of defending its territories in the Pacific while engaging two enemies, China and Russia, on mainland Asia.
Continent spanning countries are just not good targets for invasion.

I think that two dates doomed Germany, June 22 when they invaded the Soviet Union, and Dec 11th, when they declared war on the United States. Once they did the first they were pretty much doomed, one they did the 2nd they were certainly doomed.

If they had taken Moscow I still think they would have lost.

There is a book, Hitler's Panzer East, by R.H.S. Stolfi that makes the point that if Hitler hadn't stopped, or diverted the panzers from Moscow that the Soviet Union would have folded. I didn't buy the authors arguements, but you can read it for yourself to see if you do.

Besides "living space" one of the primary reasons Germany expanded into the Soviet Union was because of the great untapped natural resources within the Union. Wood, Platinum (41% of the world's source...but plays a role much later after the war) oil in the Caucasus region and Siberia, 31% of the iron ore reserves, 9% of pig iron, 10% crude steel, Not to mention, water, and huge areas dedicated to agriculture ...like Ukraine. The Soviet Union/Russia then, and now, have/ had a source of natural resources that rivaled those of 19th Century United States.


Had Germany over-ran the Soviet Union were able to consolidate, and were able to harness the resources there, I fear the war would have had a much different outcome. However, there are other variables that could have an influence on this as well.

Interesting topic.

Steve

Some have suggested that the changed nature of Russia might have lent the Germans an edge Napoleon didn't have, had they taken Moscow.

In 1812, Russia was still an empire governed from Moscow and St. Petersburg, but through a semi-fuedal system that meant nobility with their own powers at the regional and local level--the Czar did not have a tightly organised bureacracy built on primary routes for information and resources all pointing toward his capital.

This is precisely what Stalin attempted to, and in a large measure succeeded in doing. Communism at that time, after all, was madly in love with the idea of centralised planning, authority, and resource management, because such a system (theoretically) promises unmatched efficiency. It also ensured that the revolutionary elite could maintain the reigns of power over such a widespread territory--they became the clearinghouse for information. So, by the time the Whermacht was plowing toward Moscow, much of the country's communications, transportation, and bureaucractic systems passed through and were organised by Moscow. What if this had fallen into German hands?

This argument is still specious, however. Both because and in spite of of the willy-nilly insanity of the first few months (years?), lots of local initiative appeared anyway, despite the ironic efforts of the NKVD to quell it. So, the case can be made (convincingly, I think), that the Soviet Union would have perservered anyhow.

Well I just have this to say the Manhattan project (Started by the US Prior to it's entry to the war) was undertaken to originally be used against Germany. I think it would have been finished by Aug 6th or 9th as Berlin and Essen erupted in Mushroom Clouds. Germany never had the resources for a global conflict and capturing Russia would have meant a Tad longer war (But they would not have had the time to utilize the captured resources) but the same result.

Interesting point. Do you think the United States would have used the atomic bomb against the Germans as quickly as they did against the Japanese?

Shaun

Yes, I do believe they'd have used it against Germany. I don't deny that there was racial prejudgecies, especially from the Americans, but I don't think that would have stopped them from using the bomb against Germany.

I tend to think the US might have used the bomb against Germany. After all, the difference in what was done conventionally to Germany and Japan is really a matter of technology--B-29s could heap more destruction quicker. And these were deployed against Japan for primarily for range considerations.

Several clues point to a "yes:" the latest figure I've seen cited is that 800,000 Germans (those we could account for afterwards) were either killed or wounded by the air offensive. Further, examples like Hamburg and Dresden seem to point to the allied ability to conceive heavy German civilian casualties as necessary for victory. While all evidence points to most Americans (but not all) favoring, after the fact, the nuclear attacks against Japan, I do not think a profound gap in racial constructions in the minds of Allied leaders would have led to a different policy in Germany.

Exceptions to this might be A) the thought that a successful ground war might be concluded soon, (Say, if the allies were already inside Germany by mid-August), or B) enough knowledge of the radiological effects of these weapons, fallout, etc. that might endanger allied/neutral European states, which frankly most people, even scientists, had only nebulous ideas about then.

Let's face it, when world war 2 came along, the german staff who decided how hte war would turn out were far from being like Bismark. They failed to isolate there enemy like Bismark had done in the Franco-Prussian war. This made Germany fight a two front war, which is what they feared most in 1914(even before, remember the shlieffen plan?) If Germany would have been a little more patient in there conquere and decide to take over one country at a time, lets say russia first, to take control of natural resources and wait for hte country to be stable before going to war, i think that would have changed things enourmesly.

just my 2 cents
Frank

If the Germans had played their hand different, they may not have had a partisan issue. Many of the ethnic groups did welcome the Germans as liberators. Remember, many of the Germans were former socialists who grew up hearing about the worker's paradise, as per the books SOLDAT, FRONT SOLDAT, WAR ON THE EASTERN FRONT (Lukas), and other Landser's memoirs of the past 15 years.

Also bear in mind that the SS had units of Ukrainians, Georgians, Cossacks and even people from some of the southern Islamic areas. These units fought Stalin's partisans. Understand that Stalin murdered 12 million Georgians and/or Ukrainians.

Russia would have afforded the Third Reich vast resources equal to the US and UK.

It would all come down to how the Nazis would administrate the country. If the "Golden Pheasants" treated the populous as they did, there would have been severe problems. If they had the sense to be more benevolent and continue the "Liberator" policy, the Russians probably would have joined with them, at least in part. After all, do we really think that a mere 20 years completely erased all the anti-Bolshoviic / Imperial Russia / White Russia V Red's animosity that lead the US, UK and France to send supporting armies into northern Russia 1919-1922?

Bear in mind that early in the occupation of France, a lot of the French accepted the Germans. Quite simply, one reason that France disintegrated so fast in 1940 was France had deep political divisions, Fascist, Communist, and democratic groups, as explained in Keegan's BLITZKRIEG or the book BLOOD, SWEAT AND FOLLY. Not only that, but until Barbarossa, commie groups in France and England were inhibiting the war efforts at the direction of Stalin.

Now we really get into the "what-ifs". Had Germany attenuated the resistance in Russia, they would have a landbridge to Iran/Iraq, where they had assisted in a rebellion in Iraq against England. Additionally, there was the independence movement in India, which the Japanese actually exploited. Caucus & Persian Gulf oil, a rail network to the Pacific...

Referencing World War II casualties we see Japan's 1939 population was 72,000,000. China's was 530,000,000, a 7/1 disparaty. Japan dominated China. Why? China was also divided.

Fortunately, we will never know what would have happened had Black Fascism beaten Red Fascism.

Actually, I believe (along with a lot of other people) that the turning point was the Battle of Britain in 1940. If Germany had defeated the RAF, & secured daylight air superiority enabling them to invade, a lot of other battles would never have happened. With the whole of Europe occupied, including the UK, America, which was unenthusiastic about involvement in another European war anyway, would probably not have become involved. The fighting in the Western Desert would have petered out in 1940 for lack of support. There would have been no British involvement in Greece. The Germans would have been free to devote all their energies to the Eastern Front, so may well have crushed Russia in 1941. They did actually come a lot closer than many people realise, & with a more enlightened policy towards Eastern Europe, the rump of the Soviet Union, unsupported by allies, may have had to sue for peace.
If the Japanese had then attacked Pearl Harbor, King & Marshall would have directed the US war towards the Pacific. The US would have won the war in the Pacific, but how long would it have taken? The Dutch dependencies in the Far East quickly came under Japanese control with an occupied homeland. What if the same had happened with the Commonwealth holdings, even including Australasia? (Not that they received a lot of help from the UK anyway!) Also many British & European scientists worked on the Manhattan Project, what if they'd been working for Hitler (willingly or unwillingly) instead? Remember the first ICBM (the V2) was German.
By the time the Japanese were defeated, a German empire in Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals would have been a reality. Even if Hitler had declared war on the US in support of Japan, would the US, on it's own, have invaded & freed Europe? We may like to think they would, but a more likely scenario would have been rapprochment, as in "Fatherland".

Further to my reply above, if Britain had been invaded, the whole of British industry would have been turned to Germany's use. They would also have obtained many British secrets, including RADAR, & large numbers of first rate fighter planes & bombers (assuming the Fllet fled to Canada as planned), as well as guns & tanks. These would have been turned on Russia, to supplement the existing Wehrmacht stocks. They may well have tipped the balance Germany's way in Russia.
In the Far East, India may well have fallen, & there was a pro-independance movement in India which would have taken the sub-continent out of the war. On it's own it may have taken many years of hard fighting for the US to defeat Japan, or the war may have ended in stalemate.

There are some excellent ideas coming out in the thread. Just one other factor that needs to be thrown into the pot. Stalin's rapid 'conversion' into a Russian Nationalist following the German invasion, was a significant factor in the galvanisation of Soviet resistance to the invader. This is a factor which has repeatedly been used in Russian history - despite the political ideology in vogue...Jim

Great discussion. Steve makes some good points re Britain, but I disagree somewhat.

If Britain lost the BoB, there would not have been a large windfall of equipment, technology, etc, fall to the Germans. Much of the British Army equipment had been left on the continent already and had not yet been restored. Britain is not resource rich and thus, without supplies & raw materials coming in, this equipment could not be rebuilt. And so on ... And don't forget that Hitler didn't make that many good equipment decisions anyway, so he probably wouldn't have taken optimum advantage of whatever he did get ...

Not to mention, it wouldn't have been friendly turf & one quite imagines that the British would have set new records for sabotage, etc, and been perfectly annoying and distracting captives .... And I think we could assume Winston & the gov't would have been evacuated, so a second gov't would have been established elsewhere & this would have maintained the leadership, morale, etc -- an intangible but significant factor.

What would have hurt is the loss of the UK as a staging base for not only the bomber offensive but the return to the continent. This means what was a three front assault on Germany is reduced to two and one of those, from the Med, is less than ideal from perspective of distance, terrain, etc ... In short we couldn't have just taken all the (US,UK) forces from the UK & put 'em in the Med and achieved the same effects.

Many of the German industrial sites, etc, would not have been reachable from the Med by heavy bombers. The German naval bases in the north & in France would have been able to operate freely, etc ... Plus the forces arrayed along the Channel & defending those northern cities, bases, industries, could now be shifted to Russia and/or to the Med -- think about how tough it was to get up Italy in the real war, then add even more defending forces ...

I tend to think that the survival of the UK, at least as an allied land mass, was key to the war in Europe. I am unsure if the final result (defeat of Germany) would have changed but it would have taken much longer and I believe the Russians would have held the larger portion of recaptured turf ... possibly everything except the British Isles ...

Would we have used nukes on Germany ? Unsure about that -- remember the primary reason for use against Japan was to avoid Tarawa/Iwo/Okinawa many-times-over if we had to invade the home islands. Too many variables here, including approval of European allies ...

John

I think that it at least would have streched the war about 4-5 years. I don't see the soviets giving up under any circumstances as long as a strong central command remains somewhere. I think that eventualluy the germans would have to give up as supply lines and natural resources were over extended. just my thoughts.

I think the strategic importance of the BoB was realised by the Germans. Shortly after the war, a German general (I think it was Von Rundstedt) was interviewed by Soviet journalists. He was asked, in his opinion what the turning point of the war was, the journalists naturally expecting him to say Stalingrad. He answered the Battle of Britain, & qualified it by saying without British victory in this, what other battles would there have been? The Russians closed their notebooks & left.
While there may have been some resistance in an occupied Britain, remember America was not in the war until more than a year later. Without active support from abroad, what resistance organisation could survive for long in an island? (OSS estimates of active resistants in France before D-Day were as low as 5000). Churchill took the stance that he would not leave in the event of invasion, so with him either dead or a prisoner, how committed would the remainder of the government have been to continuance of the war? Some members of the aristocracy had been pro-German pre-war. Many senior politicians (eg Lord Halifax) had been in favour of a negotiated peace after Dunkirk. The Germans were prepared to use the Duke of Windsor as a puppet king had George VI & the Royal Family fled to Canada. While we British may have kicked out against the Nazi yoke in the short term, without hope of liberation we would have had to settle down & cope with our new rulers in some fashion, as did the rest of Europe.
So the question would be would America have entered the war earlier in late 1940 or early 1941 in order to free Europe? The answer has got to be no. The US was unprepared for war in 1941, let alone a year earlier. Nor was there by any means in America a strong move towards involvement in a European war. Ambassador Kennedy in London was advising the US that Britain was finished in 1940, what if he had been right? As I mentioned above, had the US been brought in in December 1941 by the Japanese attack, the emphasis would have had to have been on the Pacific. Bear in mind that while the US did bear an increasing load of the fighting as the war progressed, there was still a very significant burden born by the British Commonwealth. The first 1000 bomber raid was actually by Bomber Command (sorry Hollywood). Without the disruption of German industry by strategic bombing in 1942-1945, German production under Speer would have increased in leaps & bounds. Also Russia was being supplied with Lend-lease trucks & tanks, & much of the supplies reached Russian ports via the UK. How significant was foreign aid to Russian victory?
Without a significant British presence in the Middle East, there would have been no victory in North Africa, nor an invasion of Italy, so with no threat to the south or west, Hitler would have had 30 - 40 extra divisions to use in Russia. While one cannot discount the effect his meddling in the conduct of the war might have had, I'm sure this would have made a difference.
Without the distractions of the Greek & Cretian campaigns, Barbarossa would have started a month earlier. Moscow would have fallen (Das Reich had reached the outer stations of the Moscow Metro, many vets still treasure tickets picked up there, & the towers of the Kremlin were visible to the naked eye). Moscow was a key road & rail centre, & it's loss would have made movement of Russian forces along the length of the front extremely difficult, so Leningrad, which was invested may also have fallen. Faced with the loss of European Russia, Stalin may have been forced to come to terms. There would have been no Battle of Stalingrad, & no loss of 6th Army. Hitler would have had unlimited access to the Baku oil. Turkey may then have entered the war on Germany's side. These are all imponderables that are conditional on the absence of hard fought British campaigns.

Steve:

I had not thought through the impact in N.Africa if the British had lost the BoB -- good point. That slows things up even more. Without the two-pronged effort, the new & untried US forces would have had a much, much more difficult task, but then being their only option they could focus more resources there.

I have to think America would have come into the war on it's own. The interesting side question is that given Britain out of the war, would the Japanese have accelerated their time-table, particularly in the far east? Might they have also accelerated their attack on the US, kept same time table, delayed it, or even decided to simply ignore the US and focus on the Far East. This certainly would have changed the dynamics.

Ignoring the Pacific, certainly the loss of Britain would have not only cost access to the landmass, but the invaluable assistance the British forces (OK, we won't talk about Montgomery ) rendered in getting the US forces up to speed -- a prime example being the 8AF.

I wonder if Churchill would have stayed ? I suspect reason would have prevailed in the long run. I assume the gov't in exile, the fleet, and others than could get away would go to Canada.

John

First, let me comment that it has been a long time since we've had anything good in this section. We dd this question a year and a half or so ago. I like the responses better this time. This is what this section was set up for not some movie actor died and the like.

My thoughts on the topic have been pretty much done to death. If Germany had gotten into Russia a month earlier and taken MOscow, if they had treated the Ukrinians and the "white Russians" decently. I think it would have resulted in the Stalinists to shift their operations to the other side of the Urals and allowing Germany to suck up all those great natural resources. It also would have given them a greater manpool. They could have employed the White Russian forces supplementing their own. This would have freed up more of their troops to end around and get a hold of the Arabian areas of Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. I think it truely would have become Fortress Europe and the Med would have turned into mare nostrum. A very tough nut for US to crack. Couple that with Germany NOT declaring war on US when Japan attacked. I think war would have ended with US defeating Japan and Germany running Europe and the Meditteranean and the two powers at a stalemate. Britain would have moved to Canada and the islands been pretty much isolated. Hitler probably would have set up a blockade and pushed out as far as Iceland allowing GB to wither on the vine

Blaster, I think what you suggest is the likliest scenario.
With the whole of Europe & North Africa occupied by the Axis, the US would have been presented with a fait accompli, I just can't see that having defeated Japan there would be much enthusiasm for another prolonged war in Europe. The most likely result if the war continued would be the fulfilment of George Orwell's 1984. With Japan defeated, China may well have become a third World Power, assuming the Communist takeover still happened. The three power blocks would then be the US, China (Asia) & Europa.
With contined friction with the former ally in the Far East, particularly over Korea & Vietnam, the US would need to reach a settlement with Europa (Nazi Germany). Likewise there could be friction between China & Europa over the remains of Eastern USSR, so if the Nazis managed to hush up what they were up to at Auschwitz, an alliance between America & Europa would make sense.