well instead of the Japanese this time- what could of the germans/hitler done differently in world war 2 to maybe last longer.



matt

Moderator edit: I didn't notice this before, somehow I missed this thread, but the word you used is considered by many a racial slur. I've changed it to Japanese.

Just saw this on the History Channel the other day. Apparently Germany had jet fighter aircraft (they were about equal to Korea War jet fighters) as early as 1941 but because the ME109 and FW190 were holding their own during in 1941 the jets were never put into production.

Ummm, not started the war...?

choose a sensible leader :-)

A lot of the German generals/ marshals complained about having to take orders from a corporal

Back around the 1994-1995 era,Newt Ginrich wrote a book with a sci-fi author who's name escapes me for the moment It was to be the first in a series of three books called 1945

In it it says how the Nazi govt. decided to take advantage of the Ukraine's distrust of Stalin I have heard that during the invasion of The Motherland that a fair amount of Ukranians that that the Germans were there to liberate them from Stalin's power

In real life that didn't happen In this book,1945,it did happen It's possible that scenario would have forced a different outcome on the eastern front

Sadly only yhe firs book in that series was published Books 2 and 3 weren't

If hitler listened to his generals a lot more then things might have been different :-)

also waited a few more years to build up more arms.

Actually a lot of this was already discussed in these threads:

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/70142&page=1

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/70007&page=1

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/73075&page=1

The most obvious thing that could have been done different, but actually would have had & did have serious reprecussinons, was to get rid of Hitler.

A number of battles ( Stalingrad, Kursk, etc ) had dire outcomes because of orders issued by Hitler himself.

You can compare this, for example with Viet Nam.
U.S. President Johnson and Sec. of Defense, Robert McNamara really screwd things up and put a "black mark" on the U.S. Military , especially giving direct orders to the U.S. Navy & Air Force bombing strategy . An example is the White House gave the orders on what target's in N. Viet Nam could and could not be bombed / targeted and also the ordanance the was to be used. The war in Viet Nam would have had a different outcome had it been put in the hand's of the U.S. Military commanders in the field & air, rather than the idiots in Washington D.C.

Getting back to Germany, there were, however some blunders by military units themselves. Such as being totally out-smarted by the Russians. One example was Kursk ... though the Wehrmacht recon / scouts knew Russian defensive positions ( tank traps, anti-tank weapons / troops, etc. ) would be in place, they had ample time to locate them but they failed to find these positions because the Russians did such an outsatnding job concealing them so well.

Actually, there are other German tactical & logistical blunders & failures that also add up. Those I mention are only but a couple. I also think that the Germans thought that the Russians were going to be a "push over ". As history has shown us the Russians were vastly under estimated by Germany. They out classed and out fought the Germans through they're sheer will to survive.

- ralph

My 2 cents:
Get rid of Hitler would be the first thing.
Second, take time to consolodate and strengthen positions taken in western Europe. Wait a long, long, time to invade Russia.

Just a quick simplistic interpretation.

Nothing. Given that Hitler has to stay in charge, many of the decisions taken had been arrived at in essence years before. It was inevitable that the Germans would invade Russia. The German/Soviet pact was little more than a necessity in order to get Poland out of the way. Hitler was committed from early on to finding "Lebensraum" in the East for the new "Greater Germany" he intended to create, this would automatically lead to a clash with Russia. Moreover Hitler was as committed to the destruction of Bolchevism as he was to that of the Jews (in his twisted thinking, the 2 were synonomous). So the Invasion of Russia would have happened anyway, & probably at the same time, because Hitler knew that Germany would be at peak strength in about 1941, while Russia would get relatively stronger after this date, as the purges receded & the Red Army settled down under it's new commanders, & new equipment came on line.
Whether declaring war on America or not would have made any difference, I couldn't say. Personally, I believe that FDR was being drawn into the war anyway, but he was aware that a sizeable proportion of the US population was not in favour of this. So the US may have entered the European war later on, having first dealt with Japan.
Without the US influence on the European war, Hitler would have had more forces to use against Russia, but it is possible that if the Russians could have hung on through 1942, they would have defeated Hitler in the long run.

Well assuming that the war would start in September 1939. And purely speaking from a politico-military point of view:

1) Do not halt the armored thrusts before Dunkirk. The Germans had a good chance to bag the BEF, and let them get away. This might have been suffcient to knock Brittain out of the war. It certainly would have immensely hampered the British war effort. In the extreme it could have forced them to give up North Africa.

2) Go to a total war economy from the start. The Germans never completely converted, untill they had to in the face of the allied onslaught (and even then halfheartedly. Combine that with more standardization.

3) Better control of Mussolini and the Italians. Doing his own (and royally messing it up) delayed Hitler's invasion for Russia with a couple of months. Allegedly units already in attack position had to be withdrawn and sent to Yugoslavia.
Add to that that the Italians probably could have done a whole lot more to make life miserable for the Royal Navy and hence the British in North Africa.

4) Keep continuously developing your tanks... the alleged break in tankdevelopment (and aircraft development) just before and the early days of the war came to cost them dearly). It left them for a period without tanks that could face the enemy one-on-one.

Given the way the Nazis came to power in the first place I know that this would never happen but one thing I can think of is if they hadn't alienated, to put it mildly, such a large segment of their population, the Jews. Instead of using these people as slave labor, or as people to be disposed of, and freeing up not only all their labor, not to mention the effort the Nazis put into eliminating them, and all the others, this would have added a sizeable addition to their manpower and war effort. Also all the Jewish scientists, who were Germans first and Jews second, who were driven out of Germany and helped the Allies.

As I said I realize there was no way this would have happened, but it's an interesting "what if."

" Germans first and Jews second"

Many of them were Hungarians, actually (Teller, Neumann, Karman, Szilard, etc.)

The whole invasion of the SU was a big mistake. They could have as easily push for the Middle East; Stalin was in no position to start a war.
And if you invade, you don't start massacreing 21 million people. That tends to have a huge effect on the population; it makes even the most rabid anti-Communists fight for Stalin and the Motherland. (And also it's not a very nice thing to do.) If you have the backing of the population, you can destroy the "Bolshevic Evil". This whole racial-idiotism lead to the final defeat. The Eastern Front was the turning point.

Hi,
4 Things:
1. not have been anti-semetic.
2. not declare war on the US.
3. had a large surface navy
4. had a strategic air force

just an opinion.

Chris