What is the smallest change that would have resulted in an Axis victory?

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To be a rock and not to roll

What is the smallest change that would have resulted in an Axis victory?

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To be a rock and not to roll

I am nobody, but I belive if hitler would have let his generals fight the war we would have been in big trouble

feralmerril is dead on. Also Hitler should have left Russia alone. A stupid mistake. The Russians are the ones who actually defeated him. The U.S. and Allies were the second front.

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Have guns...will shoot'em.

About the last chance for Germany to have won (just maybe) would have been for the July, 1944 plot against Hitler by some of his own officers to have succeeded.

And, had Hitler released the SS tank divisions in Normandy in time, that might have ended badly for the Allied invasion.

The Allies also had problems, two of which were Montgomery and Patton and their vanity feuds. This issue at times cost thousands of lives, most markedly during the Operation Market-Garden parachute drops into Holland. But it also caused many casualties in Sicily.

By the way, does anyone think that FDR may have hoped for Japan to attack the US to cause huge wartime production needs to end the last of the Depression? Not that we shouldn't have been helping against the Axis, anyway. The Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis was clearly bent on conquest.

The start of where things went bad for Adolf Hitler was when he failed to finish off England before moving on. If he had won in England, which he could have done if he had remained focused and finished the RAF instead of turning towards London out of revenge.... But then he failed, then he got himself in a two front war with Russia, which became three fronts if you include North Africa... he was horribly over extended and had no hope of winning once America entered the war and had bases in England and the North Africa to bomb him from.

Good points...

And had he built Type VII U-boats in the numbers requested by the Kreigsmarine, before invading Poland.....

Yep! Talk about getting LUCKY!

I don't know if anything could have turned the tide enough for an Axis victory, but, IMO his biggest mistake was invading Yugoslavia in April of '41. There was absolutely no need for this, Hitler was furious over the attempted coup that occurred after Yugo had joined the Tripartie Pact. This delayed Operation Barbarossa for about a month, which caused the Russian winter to become a huge factor in the defeat that winter, they were 15 miles from Moscow when the winter hit and turned the tide against German forces.

Had Russia been invaded in May as originally planned, May 25, IIRC, Moscow would have most certainly fallen in November/December 1941, which may very well have paved the way for a German victory in the East.

The first major mistake was Hitler's sudden caution when he halted the Blitzkrieg just short of the total annihilation of the French and Brit forces in France.

Had he allowed the general, whose name escapes me at this time of morning to proceed, there would have been NO evacuation at Dunkirk. That would have left Britain much more vulnerable to invasion.

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Regards,
Lee Jarrett

1. the germans should have pushed much more aggressively into southern russia, to get to the oil fields, and not been so fixated on taking moscow.

2. the germans didnt realize that the U.S. had broken the japanese codes, and we were listening to the daily reports from the japanese ambassador in berin back to tokyo, explaining to the japanese government EVERYTHING that the germans were planning to do.

3. the germans should have stayed focused on destroying the RAF bases, as mentioned previously, and invaded england before taking on russia.

4. the germans should have put more emphasis on aircraft production instead of overly complex and too-large tanks. (hitler was fascinated with tanks)

If Prozac had been invented 70 or 80 years ago...

Not taking St. Vith during the battle of the Bulge.Pattons tanks held on for three days till reinforced and broke the German advance before they could get to the gas dumps.50 years later in Houston the surviving commanders on both sides met and concluded that St. Vith was the pivotal engagement of the "Bulge". Small change , big difference.

Without "the bomb" Hitler never really stood a chance against the civilized world. His wonder weapons were too little too late. Anglo- American and Russian manufacturing production capabilities are what gave the allied armed forces the tools to defeat the Axis Powers.

LTC

Not a small change but I believe if Hitler had not wasted time, men and machinery rounding up Jews, Poles etc., and diverted those resources into the attack on Stalingrad, he would have won in Russia.
Maybe no won but been able to cut a deal.

Russia didn't win the war, they drug it out at least two more years. Had Russia declared war on Japan in 1942, and let us build air basses on Russian territory, there would have been no need for the island hopping campaign. A year of heavy bombing on Japanese mainland would probably have brought Japan to her knees in '43 and freed up many of the Pacific resources.

In 1938 Gen. Gudeian (sp) wanted Hitler to hold of starting the war until Germany could replace it's horse drawn artillry and supply chain, with trucks.
Most folks don't know that most of Hitlers big guns, beans, bullets, etc had to be hauled to the front by horses.

Jim

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Cast bullets are the true and rightious path to shooting bliss

Churchill dies early 1940, Britain makes peace or surrenders to Germany, Germany goes east and south without Britain in the fight, Germany defeats Russia and takes north Africa and over to Teheran before USA can bring power to bear, Japan takes Australia and India....

Hitler keeps non agression pact with Russia. Focuses on mass production manufacturing of the proven good weapons, Panther and Tiger tanks, 88s, Mg-42s, the best trucks, subs, fighters, and bombers. Go for strategic bombing targets in England instead of carpet bombing, and delay Jap invasion of Pearl, and eventually capture Great Britain. Spread throughout Europe and North Africa but do everything possible to delay the U.S. from declaring war with negotiations, peace treaties, whatever it takes. Any thing else is pretty irrelevant because whoever developed the atomic bomb first would win the war.

To answer the original question, I believe the world would have faced a 'cold war' type situation (neither out right global war, but constant small scale operations and fighting), involving the Axis powers against the Allied powers (now including USSR, but they wouild have cut their own deal as what is another XX millions of dead as long as Stalin and the communists remained in some sort of power) instead of the cold war adversaries we did have!

I believe that the atomic bomb would have been dropped on Japan as was done, but not used in the European theater. There have been numerous books, papers, theories, etc. defining how and why the war was fought differently against Germany versus Japan. Most seem to center on the fact that the European culture was so ingrained within the U.S. versus the Asiatic culture (remember the time frame) that was a definite minority in the U.S. at the time.

Also Germany would have eventually developed a nuclear capability, and then again a cold war type conflict, only different players on the other side.

So in effect nothing different than what happened, just different uniforms!

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Wherever my mind isn't
Jim

Outside of Jimmy Carter replacing FDR, I'm very doubtful that they COULD win.

Axis ends and means were so consistently not just irrational, but ANTI-rational that it's hard to see what would have made a serious difference.

If Hitler had died before the war, Germany MIGHT have had a sane leader to fight the war, but a sane leader probably wouldn't have fought the war, certainly not the war that Hitler started.

If Germany hadn't persecuted the Jews, they might have gotten nuclear weapons first, but as long as there was a Hitler, there was going to be no "Jewish science".

And the list just goes on.

As far as the Japanese go, only Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton could have saved them, and probably not even then. They would have needed a Dennis Kucinich to bail them out. The ONLY way for the Japanese to win was to have the US just roll over. And without a REAL loser at the top, that would never happen. There probably would have been an impeachment or a military coup anyway. The closest approximation I've seen to Japanese "grand strategy" is the machinations of "Drunky Crow" on the Cartoon Network. Attacking the United States was their version of "beer goggles". The general invasion of China was stupid beyond belief and in fact accomplished the EXACT opposite of everything it was allegedly supposed to accomplish. The war against the US and Britain was just a continuation of that monstrously ill-conceived fiasco.

The Japanese would have been better off if Yamamoto had seized power after the last Army mutiny, but he was the loudest voice AGAINST war with the US.

Asking how the Axis could have won is like asking how things could have worked out better for the Alabama mass murderer without him deciding to not BE a mass murderer.

Agreed.

Specifically, his biggest mistakes were:

1. NOT eliminating the RAF when it was on the brink of destruction; and

2. THEN invading Russia.

A distant third would be not eliminating Malta as a British base, which cost Rommel much of the supplies he needed in Africa.

But then that wouldn't have been Hitler. Trains carrying victims to the concentration camps had a higher priority than troop and supply trains to the front. That about says it all.

War between the USSR and Japan any sooner than it happened wasn't likely because they both benefited greatly from the non-aggression pact. Japan had just gotten the living **** kicked out of them at Nomonhan and weren't interested in messing with Stalin anymore for a while. The pact allowed both sides to divert troops to face more pressing opportunities/dangers. It allowed Stalin to shift troops to the west, where they stopped the German drive on Moscow. It allowed the Japanese to shift troops from Manchukuo to China and eventually, the Pacific theater. By the time the bombs were dropped and Stalin declared war on Japan, the Kwantung Army was nothing but the sick, lame and lazy. It's why the Soviets left nothing of the Kwantung Army but a red smear on the steppe.

Prozac doesn't cure syphilis OR Parkinson's...

Hitler's two biggest mistakes and both probably war-losing were:

1- Declaring war on Russia unnecessarily
2- Declaring war on the US unnecessarily

A fair amount of evidence has emerged that the Russians were in fact massing for an attack on Europe and that German attack in June of 1941 was simply a proactive attempt to strike them before they were fully ready. As such, the Germans bought Europe four years before Russians over ran the Eastern half and saved the Western half entiredly.

Where things could have changed slightly, but significantly changed the war, at least in the East, would have been an earlier official policy (instead of the unuffocial policy that existed basically from day one) of arming Russian (and Ukrainian, etc) Nationalist groups and turning them against the Russians.

However, even without an official policy, about *half* the line company strength of even the SSLAH unit were actually "Hiwis" - Russians who switched sides - in the winter of 1941. Somewhere over a million Russians/former USSR citizens fought for the Axis against Communism.

If the Germans had one, there'd have been a Europen Union with Germany and France as the dominant economies. Oh wait... Huh.

I'd reccomend the book.

How Hitler could have won World War 2

By Bevin Alexander.

For a History Nut like myself this was a good read.

Patrick

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John 3:16

Aaah, a question for the ages.
My answer: if only Tom Cruise had been alive in the 40's.



Seriously, the Eastern Front killed Germany's chances of winning the war.

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not limited by 30 characters

Very good thread, I think I'll get that book.

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Forum consigliere

In case you are hungover, this isn't the "hottest celebrity" thread

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To be a rock and not to roll

Not developing a four engine strategic bomber.
They already had a somewhat ready model - the FW200 Condor.

1) Could/should have used it during the Battle of Britain to eliminate the RAF. Take England off the map & where/why would you stage the European invasion?

2) Could/should have used it to bomb Russian war factories beyond the Ural Mtns. No T34's.

There so many "small" errors that could be pointed out.
1) Failing to take the island of Malta.
2) Getting stuck in Stalingrad instead of taking the Caucusus oil.
3) Not using the ME262/jet fighter until 1944 - Heinkel first flew their jet fighter in 1941.
4) Not throwing Goering out on his fat-***.

Bruce

The early development of and unrestricted use of an accurate ICBM with atomic warheads.

Hitler's generals were terrified of the man. One, he wanted total control over the battelfield, despite his knowing so little. If he would have let his generals do their jobs, Germany might have actually won the war. Hitler also promised Admiral Raeder that the war would not start until 1945, so that Germany would have a modern surface fleet. When the war started in 1939, Raeder stated that the best his ships could do was "die gallantly". He knew that he could never beat the British Royal Navy in a straight up fight.

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Vaya con Dios

The Fw-200 LOOKS like it'd make a good general purpose bomber, but in fact the bomb load was relatively small, and even with that bomb load, the airframe was seriously over-taxed. If you actually do some serious reading on the Condor, you'll run into pictures of Fw-200s with broken wing spars (trailing edge of the wing actually touching the ground), and even some with broken backs. Some of the pictures show bombs scattered around the aircraft when the airframes failed.

It was based on a commercial airliner with a small passenger and cargo capacity and just couldn't handle a serious war load. The Condor was built for speed, not heavy lift.

There were more appropriate aircraft from Focke-Wulf and Messerschmidt, but there was never the will or the resources to put them into series production. In fact, one of the Messerschmidts is supposed to have flown from France to within miles of the US coast and returned without being detected.

1. July 1943-Hitler cancels Operation Zitsdelle, the attack on Kursk. Von Manstein appointed Commander in Chief, East.
2. Luftwaffe Chief of Staff Wever survives.
The Luftwaffe develops and adopts a 4 engine bomber. The FW 200 Kondor was basically a reconaissance plane, not a bomber.

Attacking the rest of Czechoslovakia in 1938, although acquired the excellent Skoda Arms Works and Czech armored units, it sent the Western Powers to begin rearming thus giving Britain just barely the fighters needed to hold off blitzkrieg and Britain the equipment to interfere in the Balkans just enough to delay Barbarosa. The remainder of Czechoslovakia could as easily be taken with Poland. Hitler was content to let the generals run the war when they were attacking, he did not understand the concepts of mobile defense and the crushing defeats that the panzer divisions could inflict on the Soviets in a mobile retreat. By the time of the "Fuhrer Prinzep", the issue was decided.

I would have said he was fixated with Stalingrad, but given the same reason otherwise. We like to think we were the big dogs in WWII, but the rooskies did most of the heavy lifting, and if the Nazis would have knocked them out in a year or so, it would have taken us forever, or maybe longer, to win the war.

No Pearl Harbor no United States fully involved in WW2.

Roosevelt was scared that the Japanese would just attack the Dutch East Indies, Australia, and such spots, and maybe even the Philipines, and he would not be able to rouse US opinion against them. That's one of the reasons for the surprise at the Pearl Harbor attack. He did not believe that they would be so stupid.

Now for WWII and Hitler winning. If the Japanese had done that strategy - just hit at British and Dutch posessions to get the oil they needed, and then continued on that same direction through India, and linked up with the Germans who came across via Africa and maybe with an alliance with Turkey, and not attack Russia and the U.S. until they have a giant land empire across Europe and Asia.

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Regulate Banks, not guns

Germany could never have won a world war. It just wouldn't have the resources or the allies. Roosevelt was not going to let England go under. We would have been drawn into the war eventually by the U-boats being in our waters and sinking our ships. I don't think that Stalin would ever have cut a deal with HItler, after his betrayal. He would have fought to the last Russian.

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Wayne
Torn & Frayed

We were already actively engaged with the U-Boot fleet even before Pearl Harbor. In one engagement a US Destroyer rammed a U-Boot, causing the two to become lodged together. The two crews fought it out with smallarms and even thrown shell casings from 3" or 5" guns.

Of course it was a US Navy pilot illegally on board a British Catalina who found the Bismarck immediately before it was found and sunk.

Missed your reference to Wever just before I started doing the research for this post. Walther Wever, he died in 1936 in a plane crash and it appears that any hope of 4 engined strategic bombers died with him. Hitler was more into a numbers game, and you could build the 2 engine bombers faster, and have more numbers quicker, and the 2 engine bombers didn't need the range to be the tactical airforce that the Luftwaffe turned into. It really worked quite well for a while when the "blitzkreig" was all that on the battlefield. But the 2 engined bombers didn't have the range or load capacity to make a good show at strategic bombing, which they needed badly to cripple the Soviets industrial bases in the Urals.

IIRC it was Goering who told Kesselring-Wever's successor that:
"The Fuehrer will never ask me how big our bombers are, but how many there are!"
The Do 19 and Ju 89 were designated as "Uralbombers"-they should have enough range to bomb Soviet industry in the Urals. But the push for their development died with wever, the Luftwaffe was good for close air support, little
else. Stalingrad exposed the Lustwaffe's lack of strategic transport capability.

Operations "Freshman", "Grouse", and "Gunnerside" - where Norwegian commandos destroyed Norway's heavy water production facility - insured that Hitler would not get the heavy water he needed to develop an atomic bomb. With that resource, it is possible that Germany would have gotten the bomb before the US. I'm convinced that it he got it, he would have instantly used it on Britain and Russia.

Buck

Many people believe that Germany's approach to the bomb project was fundamentally flawed. Even with the heavy water, we probably would have beaten them to the bomb.

No arguement with you regarding the Nazi's nuclear capability being flawed......but would the Allies have used their atomic bomb in mainland Europe.....lots of thought and study say NO!

Dresden not withstanding! (very bad pun )

Too many relatives, close and distant, in some cases parents, grandparents, children, etc. still there.
Remember the two main theaters of WWII were different in a lot of ways.

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Wherever my mind isn't
Jim

IMO it boils down to this, Hitler was a madman. It was his way or the highway...total control. I've talked to WWII ETO vets and many say the German Army was a tough foe with excellent equipment and worthy command officers. But, unlike the American Army who were permitted to make on the spot command decisions by NCO's, German Infantry soldiers were restricted and had to receive orders from high command officers and/or Hitler at times. Even historians have said, if Rommel had his way, the Normandy landing outcome would have been much different. But, thankfully for the allies, he was overruled by the supreme madman himself, Hitler.

At the lower levels, there was considerable autonomy in the Wehrmacht. The bottleneck was in situations which required a decision by Hitler, or as was all too often, attracted Hitler's attention, like a shiny colorful object.

I'm reading the Collector Grade book "Sturmgewehr!", about the tortuous development of the assault rifle by the Germans in WWII. Hitler was a stumbling block every step of the way because of his WWI based prejudices.

Hitler wasn't alone in making arbitrary decisions based on personal prejudice (of all types, not just racial, religious and ethnic), but unlike Stalin, he never learned from his mistakes. Stalin personally retarded development of modern monoplane fighters in the Soviet Union, based on his faulty assessment of air combat in the Spanish Civil War. But once the Luftwaffe swatted the Red Army Air Force out of the air in 1941, herculean efforts were expended to ensure that modern aircraft were produced in sufficient numbers to overwhelm the Germans. Hitler and his fawning sycophants continued to meddle disasterously with German aircraft R&D and production to the very end.

We bombed FRANCE during the war, and killed a lot of Frenchmen doing it.

Had the Germans either looked like they were going to get the bomb in a timely fashion, or that they were going to mount a coherent, tenacious defense in depth, like the Japanese, Germany would have gotten a family sized dose of "Jewish Science".

The bomb would have been dropped on Germany for the same reason it was dropped on Japan. Any President who even LOOKED like he was willing to take up to a million US casualties to protect the ENEMY, would have been voted out, impeached or assassinated.

There's a book by Panzer General von Mellenthin that makes many of the points raised here earlier: the war started earlier than expected (planned 1943?), Mussolini needing rescued in the Slavic republics delayed Barbarossa (Russian invasion and title of the generals book) by 6 months or so, ensuring the winter debacle, the failure to capitalize on the Ukrainian hatred for Stalin (Whermacht greeted as liberators), Hitlers meddeling in decisions (tho' he was right a decent number of times), the generals overvaluing their personal oath to Hitler, the list goes on.

I think you could credibly argue that Hitlers giving in to Goerings claim that the Luftwaffe could finish off the BEF at Dunkirk was the turning point. Changing the target set from the RAF to whatever it became would be a close second.

1. All of Hitler's "successes" were POLITICAL successes, NOT military ones. In the beginning, Hitler was a genius at culling the weaklings from the herd. Whenever he meddled in actual military strategy, it was almost always a disaster.

2. Not only did Hitler throw away the chance for an allied Ukrainian army, he throw away the very real chance for an allied RUSSIAN Army. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet POWs KNEW they'd been sold up the river. They had already been labeled as "criminals" and "traitors". They had NOTHING to lose by switching sides. Instead, Hitler starved them to death.

But then, why should anyone be surprised by questionable judgement on the part of a syphilitic meth addict?