Quote:
Originally Posted by DoTheMath
In the unfortunate thread on the WW II internment of US citizens of Japanese ancestry, dzikijohnny said:
I've thought about the question several times over the decades, but have had a hard time imagining anything plausible that would have led to ultimate defeat for the Allies. But my imagination is limited.
It depends what you mean by 'defeat.' In my opinion there was zero chance of the United States ever 'losing' and next to zero chance of Britain ever being successfully invaded by the Germans, but had a few things gone differently in 1941-1943, the Soviet Union could have potentially fallen or at the very least devolved into a never ending stalemate.
One of those things was the securement of the Suez canal and the mediterranean. The Germans could have easily kicked Britain out of Africa, and invaded Gibraltar, effectively sealing off the soft underbelly. The could have then attacked the Soviet Union from the west
and south, effectively destroying the biggest trade route between the allies and the Soviet Union (through Iran). As you probably know, the Soviet Union had a severe deficit in coal and other energy when they lost their biggest energy region near Dnepropetrovsk. The loss of some or all of the caucasian oil fields from the south would have severely limited their war effort with Germany and either resulted in a negotiated truce or in a stalemate.
Alternate scenarios in the east could have been the Germans being better prepared for the winter 1941, and stopping their winter offensive before they were overextended, however they had lost almost a million men in the 1941 campaign and likely could not have attacked along the whole front anyway in 1942. Hitler was right in the sense that winning the war in the east would have meant winning the war of resources, and his strategic decision to capture the Caucusus oilfields in 1942 was likely correct, however there were extreme logistical issues plaguing the Germans right from the get go, and those issues were never more harshly felt than in Blau. Stalingrad was largely undefended in August 1942, and it was a very near run thing, but it's unlikely the Germans would have been able to capture and hold the city anyway due to their supply problems. The Caucusus campaign was likely destined to fail because of these issues as well.
Another potentiality was the continued bleeding of the Red Army via mobile warfare and elastic defense (Manstein) rather than the static world war I era defense (hitler) that led to high casualties for the Germans in 1943-44. The Russians had been literally bled white up until that point and a couple million more casualties for them would have meant the war protracting into a stalemate and likely concessions.
The defeat of the Soviet Union would likely lead to a cold war between Britain-USA and German European hegemony, and would probably have resulted in the first atomic bombs being dropped on Germany, but who knows if the Germans would have had nuclear weaponry at that time. They had a program of their own and were not far behind the Americans up until 1941 ish.
The Germans could have never conquered the world, but they could have easily held onto Europe and captured territory from the USSR, which essentially was their war end-game anyway.
As far as the war in the west goes, Germany lost their greatest chance at a protracted war when Hitler failed to capture the hundreds of thousands of allied troops at Dunkirk. He let them escape because he believed it would lead to peace with Britain, but really it allowed them to assist in the invasion of Europe that much sooner.
In my opinion Japan never stood a chance. Their defeat was inevitable vs. the United States behemoth. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the people in the United States were never going to stop until they were victorious, and any losses at Midway or Leyte would have done nothing to change this. It might have prolonged the war, but with Japans allies nowhere near to help with their own naval force projection and Japans severe lacking in natural resources, it was only a matter of time.
Last edited by DoOrDoNot; 07-09-2017 at 02:00 AM.