Just wondering what all of you thought,

When should Germany have declared a truce or paused during the war to gain the most benefit toward reaching their goal of world conquest? When or where should they have stopped to re-arm and re-group to continue the fight at a later date?

Eg: After the capture of France, strike a deal with the Allies?

they should have paused/stopped before they started their quest for conquest and saved millions and millions of lives.



Sean

Even if Hitler had wanted to,

none of the other combattants was willing to come to an agreement. The Germans had not been able to defeat the British decisively enough for them to give up.

Had the Germans been able to capture the BEF, things could have been very different.

And as far as being able to rest and fefit/regroup, it takes both sides to allow for that. And neither side would let the other.

Once it started rolling it was too late to stop.
Well, maybe just before the invasion of Poland but at that
stage Hitler didn't control enough of the world to be satisfied.
Invading Poland brought UK and France into the war and
at least Churchill was not going to back down.
Launching Barbarossa was the beginning of the end and
even if that hadn't been done Stalin would eventually have
gone paranoid by himself and attacked Germany as a
precaution.
The simple rule is: Don't pick a fight with more opponents
than you can handle.

Hitler wouldn't/couldn't settle with a little. He needed oil and he
could not get it if it involved transport over oceans controlled by
the Royal Navy -> have to go overland -> the Soviet Union is in
the way and also has oil by the way -> war with Soviet is inevitable.
Settling for trade was not enough, it had to be ownership and that
meant war.
Hitler wanted resources, land and raw materials and those were
only to be found eastwards. France and Britain was something that
needed to be removed before going east, the removal didn't succeed
completely.
/ Robin

Totally agree. The most stupid thing ever is to fire the first shot. Once the first blood has been spilled the whole process starts leading its own life and is beyond any control.

The big surprise for Adolf and friends was that the UK and France were prepared to declare war on Germany because of the invasion of Poland.

Just like a criminal can't really imagine that one day he will end up in jail (or worse) I think that Adolf-like types can't imagine that anybody will stand up against them and bring them down.

Its all about confusion. Adolf types confuse aggressivity (of which they have plenty) with strength, and democracy (something they know nothing about) with weakness.

As long as adolf-types are able to get the control of nations, democracies will have to be prepared to pay the price beating them.

Considering the enormous price of such missions, it is in our own interest to beat poverty world-wide and this way eliminate the ground on which such bastards florish

I totally agree with this statement.

As far as when Hitler could have paused here is one possible scenario. France has fallen, Britain stands alone, the Soviets are "friendly" due to the non-aggression pact, and Hitler controls most of Europe. Churchill isn't going to agree to any kind of truce, but what if the Germans try to go directly to the British people? What if they announce very public ally that they have no intention of continuing the war if only Britain agrees to stop? Germany doesn't demand British surrender, just to get them to stop fighting. They could possibly even try to enlist support from the American isolationist groups, like the one Charles Lindbergh was involved in, to try and get them to convince the British to agree.

Once the Germans start heavily bombing Britain, and after they attack the Soviet Union, I doubt there is any chance at all this would work, so it seems this needs to be attempted sometime in June or July 1940.

Is there any chance at all that this could have worked?

I do not think so because fortunately Hitler was countered by a man who was as great as Hilter was bad. Here are some quotes from Winston Churchill from the times that you refer to:

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!"

House of Commons, 4 June 1940, following the evacuation of British and French armies from Dunkirk.

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may more forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their Finest Hour.'

House of Commons, 18 June 1940, following the collapse of France.


From this it should be clear that the UK was not considering at all to stop tehe war. most probably becasue they realised all to well that Hitler would be back as soon as he had gained more strenght.

Just think of it as one big bar brawl.
That's how i passed my history course

Which war? With the benefit of hindsight, they should have called it quits after the Kaiserschlact of 1918! Germany probably would'nt have been so broken and despirited, the peace treaty - or perhaps the surrender agreements - would have had a lesser impact on Germany, and perhaps the post-war bitterness in Germany wouldnt have been so severe. I reckon fascism still would have been popular -but arguably to a lesser extent - and the Nazi party would have just been yet another minority group in Weimar Germany. Utimately, the Nazis would not have come to power in Germany during the still-vulnerable 1930s, Hitler wouldnt not have rebuilt a fab new Germany, and the invasion of Poland in 1939 and France in 1940 would not have occured.

What we must remember is everything is so clear cut and dry when looking at the past through the lens of the present. What we know now wasnt known at the time.

my 2c anyway

Aaron.

From that it appears clear that Churchill was not considering stopping the war, but what about the rest of Parliament and the people? Thank God for Winnie. He warned against "Herr Hitler" before the war, took over the Navy at the beginning of the war, and rallied the people when it was needed most. But even Churchill had his limits. For example he was really worried that he wouldn't have a survived a vote of no confidence after Tobruk fell in 1942.

If the Germans had really played their propaganda card well could they have scared the rest of the British Government, excluding Winnie, to have asked for peace?

well, thanks god they haven't. It would have made a very grim society with the nazis on the steering wheel.

Military victories do not mean that much if the looser can't accept the terms of defeat. By 1942 Belgium, France and the Netherlands had lost the war but resistence was growing by the day.

If the UK would have surrendered, this would have resulted in a form of occupation, like France was under from 1940 onwards. And this would have given resistence, and retaliation, and more resistence and.....

What I mean is that even with a UK surrender, the nazis would never have been able to fully control the huge and very hostile territory that they had occupied.

Further, I don't think that the lunatics leading germany at that time were able to grasp the concept of peace. they would have continued to push the envelop until war would erupt again.


What is more frightening than the theoretical idea that the nazis might have won if circumstances would have been slightly different is that current leaders don't seem to have taken any history classes and are still putting all emphasis on military victory, without any decent strategy on how to deal with the "morning after" problems.

My response to "when should germany have paused", my answer is in 1933. So many attacks against Hitler failed. Only one could have suffice...

I agree with the fact Germany, even if they reached peace with all their opponents, could not have dealt with inside problems, like resistance. In Normandy battles, one of the important factor of the allied succes was french resistants who attack one military train on two. I didn't remember the price paid by Greek resistance, but I remember it's huge compared. Thinkn of Warsaw uprising and lot more heroic actions..

If Germany succeeded in a separate peace with the West, as some of the whermacht and even Himmler wished in 1944, they couldn't have faced the Red wave, which had lot more ressources.


Couldn't agree more. The more sense point in this topic. I guess you refer to Irak....So many lives spoiled there for no results...The same in Indochina war, Vietnam war, Afghanistan, and lot more !

Julien

Right, let's get a couple of things straight!
1) Hitler never intended to do anything other than invade the Soviet Union. Read "Mein Kampf". Bolshevism was regarded as a major threat to world peace (not just by the Nazis either). Hitler wanted "Lebensraum" for Germany, & the only place to get it was in the East. The Pact with Moscow was just to leave him free to crush Poland & the West, avoiding the war on two fronts so feared by German (Prussian) militarists.
2) After the Battle of Britain, Hitler realised that a cross-Channel invasion was going to take more preparation than a normal river-crossing. He genuinely seems to have thought that he could crush Russia in a matter of weeks, then deal with the UK at his leisure.
3) Far from being "frightened" of the likelyhood of war with the west, Hitler positively embraced it! He had wanted to go to war over Czechoslovakia in 1938, & was actually disappointed by Munich! The OKW was stunned - in their opinion Germany was far from ready. But what Hitler knew only too well was that the German economic recovery of the 30's was a sham; fuelled by public works & rearmament, it was unsustainable in the long run, & had already led to the resignation of the head of the Reichsbank, Schacht, who knew Germany was basically bankrupt. The only way forward was by using other peoples (specifically Poland & Frances) resources.
Well that's dealt with the "before the shooting starts" option!
In my opinion, the time to stop would have been mid-1942. Rather than waste time & effort on Stalingrad, Hitler should have followed his economic instincts & concentrated on seizing the oilfields of the Caucasus. Had this happened, Russia would have been more or less out of the war. The land seized already in Russia would have given the Wehrmacht space to deal with any Russian attacks in the classic "backhand" method. All this would have happened before US involvement became significant, & the west would have been faced with a fait-accompli.

As someone else has said here "Thank God he didn't".

The only time Hitler even considered stopping ANYTHING he had started was just after the Battle of France, when he tried to make peace offerings to Britain. The only reason Hitler considered such a deal was because he wanted a free hand to attack Russia, gain the Eastern territories he believed the Aryan nation was entitled to and destroy what he believed was the ultimate foe - the Jews. We know the horrors that such thinking unleashed.

The problem with the initial question 'When should Germany have declared a truce...' is that while Hitler was in charge there were no options for truce or pause - period. Call it meglomania or hubris, once Germany attacked Poland there was no stopping. Hitler was determined and fanatically believed that Germany would conquer all. Hitler's personality meant that by 1939 everything that followed was inevitable.

For a more detailed examination of Hitler and his warped and ultimately destructive personality I recommend
Kershaw; Hubris and Kershaw; Nemesis. Heavy reading

Definitely before Poland! Could the Nazi’s let Stalin invade Poland and then rush to the pole’s rescue? Could they convince the Allies to support them in removing the red menace?

Sorry to light the fire and run but the net has been down in my area until today.

IMHO Hitler did in fact want to conquer everything, there is no disputing that. I think that the ONLY possible time for a truce or any type of deal would be after the battle for France for reasons previously mentioned.

The reason for Germany wanting a truce or pause would be to return to the dogma of a "one front" war. The benefit being that all of their resources could be focused in one spot.

Just my $.02

The problem with considering the possibilities of a "negotiated settlement" in the framework of events in WW2 is that it assumes that at certain points there were two parties able and willing to sit down and come to an agreement. This concept is something that is somewhat alien within the mindset of totalitarian/fascist institutions, particularly that of the 3rd Reich where everything was about total submission to the will of the state as embodied by Adolf Hitler. This mindset is clearly seen in the "victory at all costs" type of pronouncements once the tide had turned against Germany on multiple fronts. Nazi propaganda constantly beat the "at the end stands victory" drum from start to finish. You either won or you lost, there was no real attempt or desire for diplomatic or negotiated settlement.

As already mentioned, any such settlement would've been pursued only in so far as it would've allowed concentration or focus on elimination of a single enemy vs. multiple, in other words if it strengthened the overall strategic and tactical position as an end result and allowed the overall war/struggle to continue without distraction. Once war began over Poland, the inevitable race against time had begun in relation to German industry, resources, armaments, etc. and could not end until either total victory or total surrender had been brought about. Even as the war drew to a close, there were attempts to enlist the Western armies in a "joint crusade" against Bolshevism to stave off complete and total surrender and it was only when absolutely crushed and overwhelmed did a surrender actually take place. In that kind of atmosphere, a "truce" is just not possible or desired...because if you are in a position of strength, you exert it to maximum advantage and don't relent until all your goals are achieved...if you are in a position of weakness, you resist as long as possible and hope for a reversal that turns the tables in time to restore strength and then press the advantage. It can be argued that at the outbreak of war in 1939-1940, the German army was at its near-zenith, definitely so by 1941, and from that point on the advantages it had began to steadily decline. Faced with limited timeframe, limited resources, etc. you don't stop for anything...and this ultimately is what drove the pace of events more than any other factor IMHO.

hey germany wouldnt have stopped,i can remember reading something a long time ago (iam thinking my histroy class in H.S.),that germany had a time line put together.and the knew that in time they would have to face the U.S..but that they would need to secure different areas,to supply thier machine,fuel,equipment,food,ships(aircraft carriers),etc;so they didn't want to go up againest the U.S. ,before 1946.can anyone else recall ,such a article or book on this subject?

Joe

He should have stopped when Britain failed to fall. He turned his back on an undefeated enemy.

Well, you have some truth in this, but are you absolutely sure that there were ANY democracies anywhere in the world at that time? Think about Great Britain, or any other countries with colonies. I'm not sure those people who were subjected to colonial rule would consider them to be democracies. (Or the so-called working class. You didn't have to be a "n..." to be subjected to the state's brutality.) They were empires. England, France, Holland... all of them. And empires are per definition not democratic. Think about smaller countries with the noble ruling class still governing with some kind of "representative" parliamentary system -hardly democratic any of them. The rule of a privileged few is not democracy. Read Orwell... He didn't write about the Soviet or the Nazi state.
The US, well, don't forget had hard-line segregation at that time -hardly something that would be described as democratic. The US was a republic, for sure, but democracy?

Back to the original question: history books I've read many times theoretized, that had Adolf pushed to the Middle East through Russia and with the DAK, he might have been able to starve the Allies and the Russians of oil.
The other really huge mistake was said to be to alienate the inhabitants of the occupied Eastern territories with brutality (21 million people are estimated to have died in the Eastern Front, and 18 million was civilian...). He might have been able to get rid of Stalin with the willing help of the whole population of the SU. This might have had a tremendous effect on their war effort. But this kind of decision can hardly be expected by someone who murders people by the million just because of their origin... (And if these lunatics weren't racist to the bone, they wouldn't have started a stupid war -for "living space"...)

Any thoughts. Are these theories plausible?