You are Hitler, now take over Europe

Japan pissing off America was kind of inevitable, really, knowing Imperial Japan and the field they were operating in. As for Russia, it's a bit more complicated, it's possible that Stalin would have invaded if Hitler hadn't [they are, as you well know, both complete fucking lunatics].

@DA Not really.

You have to remember that Russia was led by Stalin and Germany by Hitler. Both of them are pretty evil people (by popular opinion).

Seriously, Hitler had death camps for Jews, homos, and other undesirables. Stalin had gulags for capitalists, anti-revolutionaries and other undesirables. (Odd how didn't get along despite being so alike no? )

Conflict was a safe bet. Hitler just tried first and ran into Russia's winter.

Though I do think he could have a better chance if he hadn't declared war on the US, micromanaged his Operation Barbarossa troops and delayed his invasion by one month.

Not saying this would specifically grant him victory, but it'd give him a higher chance.

@ G.

I'd have gone for "Liberating" the people in the Gulags and NOT trying to swallow all of Russia.

Instead, I'd go for the typical USA model of supporting which ever faction(s) seem to support my interest.

The ultimate goal would be Russia WITHOUT a strong, central leadership but a lot of divided powers, optimally at war with each other.

Nothing would secure Germany's East like turning Russia into a civil war torn no man's land....to be conquered slowly (to avoid anyone noticing) and at Germany's leisure.

That ship had long since sailed. Stalin's purges in the 1930s were pretty thorough in rooting out any potential warlordism or opposition factions.

Going against Russia was an all or nothing ordeal. Given that Stalin wasn't going to let Hitler dominate all of Europe either way, Hitler had to strike them first and take it all.

I doubt it.

Its not that Stalin wasn't through in his paranoid purging, its that human nature is human nature.

Hitler supposedly didn't lay out a clear chain of command for more or less the same reason.

There's always going to be someone dissatisfied, ambitious, deluded, or whatever, who would think that being in charge would be great.

Get enough of these guys and with covert support, you can topple a dictatorial government with repression at its foundation.

Repeat as often as needed to turn one big empire into a bunch of squabbling nation states with We ARE Struggling Together as a bonus.

Pick them off one by one at your leisure.

edited 28th May '13 12:49:42 AM by Natasel

Stalin's purges weren't thorough as one would think, as local population Russian, and non-Russian alike, initially welcomed their new overlords with flowers, but Hitler had the nerve to antagonise pretty much every one of them except for Balts (whom they classified Aryan or close enough to be left alone) with ethnical purges.

If Hitler maintained high support of Ukrainians, the eastern front would be less strained by guerilla activity and they could gain troops who hated Stalin's guts for Holodomor.

What about the party itself?

Any chance Stalin's inner circle could be turned against him?

Hitler's supposedly had his own inner circle try to assassinate him a few dozen times over the years.

Stalin dying from poisoned booze, ground glass in his butter, gas, whatever, would be a step to turn Russia into an infighting hell.

(Think Stalin dying was a Command and Conquer video game plot point.)

Also pretty hard. Stalin wasn't crazy like hitler was. Everyone in the higher echelons knew Hitler would lead the country to ruin. The Russian leadership could trust Stalin.

I'm not quite sure "trust" would be the right word to use.

Didn't Stalin die alone and in agony because no one dared check in on him?

Doesn't sound like the guy was surrounded with friends. Terrified servants, probably. Friends, unlikely.

Pretty sure a standard MI-6 tactic of manufacturing some fake "proof" of being disloyal, would be enough to turn someone near Stalin. Fear of Stalin can be quite motivating for seeing him dead.

Now Hitler might not be 007, but he's not totally stupid. He at least tried to use subterfuge during World War 2. (Though IRL, the German espionage effort was an utter disaster of humiliating proportions) He only had to succeed once to kill Stalin after all.

Here's how hitler could have conquered Europe.

It should noted, there is no approval of anything Hitler did, but it is dangerous and insulting to allied soldiers to assume his defeat was a forgone conclusion. The fact that he could have won is what made him dangerous.

Step 1. Allow army to finish off British and French forces at Dunkirk (as appose to ordering the army to halt for a day and letting them escape [like Hitler did in real life]).

Step 2. Win the battle of Britain.

-This should be accomplishable because the British people will be demoralized by the recent Dunkirk Massacre. After defeating the RAF, launch a beach landing and occupy Britain similar to how France was occupied (Vichy style collaborators based in Nottingham or York).

Step 3. Invade Russia

-This should be accomplishable now that there is only one front left to deal with. Still, there are important things to remember. If possible, wait for spring. If not possible, than be sure to prepare the German Army by giving them winter uniforms as well as good supplies. Remember to let the commanders do their job, and to avoid giving arbitrary and potentially disastrous commands. If possible, send hit squads to kill Stalin (his successor will be more likely to agree to peace treaty).

Step 4. Rebuild strength and rebuild industry. Prepare for other conquests. Encourage growth of loyal population so as to ensure there are enough soldiers

Other Goals

- Conquer European Colonies in Africa

- Conquer Middle East and British Raj

- Get rid of Rommel before he attempts to launch a Coup or a anti-nazi Revolution

End Goal

- World Domination

Just one problem. Rommel was one of if not the most competent commander in the Wehrmacht. After he died, the Germans began having some major leadership issues at the military command level.

Reapply myself and work hard until I get into art school. While there I perfect my painting talents and win over the hearts and minds of the masses with my glorious artwork.

Problem... wouldn't have worked. The Kriegsmarine might have been able to effect a landing, but it's doubtful. But even if they did manage to fight past Home Fleet its generally considered that they wouldn't have been able to hold a landing ground against the Atlantic Fleet afterwards.

Hahahahah. Oh wait you're serious.

Operation Sealion is one of the worst conceived military plans ever in history and would have led to devastation of the German army if it had ever been carried out. And that's under ideal circumstances.

Also, epic scale We Have Reserves. From what I've read, Germany was highly successful on the Eastern Front for the first couple months, but Stalin could conscript and mobilize new armies faster than Hitler could destroy them.

edited 20th Jul '14 12:16:19 AM by storyyeller

And that gave them plenty of time to restore their industrial capacity after losing a significant chunk of it in the early stages. Even before the offensive began to seriously stall out, Stalin didn't just have the advantage in manpower (by orders of magnitude) but also in materiel. The only thing that kept the eastern front going for a while after that was that the red army largely consisted of badly-trained conscripts and the officer corps had been gutted (sometimes literally...) in repeated purges. Once "natural selection" resulted in the soviets building up veteran units of their own (especially since around that time the germans' own veteran units were falling apart), it was all over.

Hitler could have done it, if he'd focused entirely on the eastern front. If he'd driven the initial advance deep enough, knocked out or taken over enough infrastructure, the soviet union probably wouldn't have recovered the initiative in time. However, Hitler was fighting a war on two fronts (or three, if you count bailing out Italy in northern africa as a separate one), having thrown the best parts of his air force into what was essentially the airborne version of WWI trench warfare (the Battle of Britain).

Simply put, Germany tried to do too much at the same time with resources that had been strictly limited from the start.

edited 20th Jul '14 12:37:37 AM by MattStriker

If you want Hitler to take over Europe, then he needs to avoid fighting a two front war. Somehow you have to allow him to do one of two things:

1) Attack Russia without invading Poland (thus provoking Britain and France into declaring war on Germany)

2) Invade and occupy France without allowing Russia to stab you in the back.

It doesnt look doable to me, but maybe someone who knows the time period better than I do can figure out some way to make it work.

Also, the impression I get is that Hitler was actually very lucky to beat France. People treat it as a fait accompli just because it happened in real life, but it wasn't exactly inevitable. It's hard to imagine changes that would lead to Hitler wining WW 2, but it is easy to imagine changes that would lead to the war ending in 1941, or 1940, or even 1939.

I wonder what AH buffs would discuss in the world where France won. Then again, a one or two year war in Europe that didn't even involve the US probably wouldn't excite the popular imagination like WW 2 did in OTL.

edited 20th Jul '14 8:43:45 AM by storyyeller

Actually not really. On paper the two were somewhat comparable because the French Navy was taking up a lot of the slack. The French Army on the other hand was in worse shape than it was in 1919. Hell, some units of the French were still using craptastic Lebel rifles when everyone around them had better shit.

The problem was that France (and, let's be honest, the rest of the Allies, but they had time to start fixing the problem...France didn't) had invested heavily into a doctrine of warfare that was about to be rendered utterly obsolete by technological advances. France was superbly equipped and prepared for the form of war it expected...a rehash of the later stages of WWI. Their static defenses (the often-mocked Maginot Line, for example) were first-rate and quite probably impenetrable at the time. What they didn't reckon with was the sheer speed at which a mechanized army could advance and outflank.

The Blitzkrieg came as a very nasty shock to military planners who were already reeling from seeing the effectiveness of modern air support in Spain. Most of the armoured forces available to the western allies at the start of the war had been designed with slow, deliberate movement in mind, and the faster vehicles they had were armed to deal with infantry, not enemy armour. It took several years of hastily-converted and jury-rigged stopgaps to finally get some effective tanks on the field (the soviet union actually had an advantage there: Hitler's initial assault had knocked out much of their existing armour production facilities so the older models were removed from the roster more or less entirely...all new production was dedicated to the top-of-the-line T34. Other nations kept producing outdated tanks following the infantry/cruiser tank doctrine for a lot longer).

And tanks weren't the only issue. Trucks, or at least their use in moving large formations, were at least as much of a strategic shock as the Panzers. Until WWII started, the prevailing wisdom had been that large-scale movements of units and materiel could only occur along railway lines. But the germans managed to keep their forces light and mobile enough to move significant forces, including artillery, AT guns and limited AA assets, along even poorly-maintained road networks.

Simply put, having been forced to rebuild their forces from scratch in just a few short years, the germans had the advantage of avoiding the "dead weight" of other armies of the day. They were able to fully focus on new tactical and strategic doctrines with none of the investment in outdated strategies that was dividing the resources of their enemies.

Of course, that ended up turning into a near-pathological belief in the superiority of technology which led to them throwing reliability and easy logistics to the wind in favor of ever-flashier hardware...

edited 20th Jul '14 6:26:38 PM by MattStriker

It seems to have taken the Germans by surprise too. Hitler was expecting war with France to last for years.

Expectations have a nasty habit of being broken by reality. It was expected in 1905 the Russians would whup the shit out of the Japanese. We all know how well that turned out.

Same deal with France. Everybody, especially the French thought they'd be able to hold their own against a Round 2^note Really it was more of a Round 3. with Germany. Reality proved they had Saddam's chance of driving the Americans back into the sea in terms of effectiveness.

edited 20th Jul '14 4:56:37 PM by MajorTom

Hitler's Germany had several issues with it's military:

• Fascist, but Inefficient: not only was each service in the Wehrmacht allowed to do it's own thang, each unit from the battalion on up could act on it's own. It was what they considered the "pillar of their military system", but it lead to many planning headaches.

• The Nazis never had enough trucks, despite having a Nazi auto club organized as light infantry. German horseises froze to death in the Russian winter when they first got there.

• No carriers, no landing ships and no heavy bombers. Even if they own the Battle of Brittan, the Nazis didn't have a means to get across the channel like the Allies did.

So if you want your Stupid Jetpack Hitler here's how you do it.

• Plan Z: suck it up and let the Kreigsmarine build a carrier despite the Luftwaffe's bitching about it have fighters. Wait until it's complete.

• Put off the "land war in Asia" for a good two years. Stalin will purge even more of his generals and there will be no lend lease till it's too late.

• If they won't work together, give'em a common enemy: play to the Wehrmacht's strenghs. Always be on the offensive to the east. The Nazi economy is based on loot and plunder.

• Once the carrier is finished, then go after all that lebensraum. The carrier's air wing can chase down all those Spitfires low on fuel and ammo. Or it can team up with the Bizmark and give the U-boats cover (since the Condor bomber under performed).

• It's not just chasing after the allies at Dunkirk, it's getting enough rolling stock to face the Russians. Captured trucks and captured factories are key.

• Once Brittan falls, Spain and Portugal would make better allies than Bennie the Moose. With the head cut off, the British empire would start to die off twenty years prematurely.

• Don't declare war on the US, but support Japan. Hitler probly would condem US "agression", but the isolationists (and racists like Charles Limburg) were Hitler's best friends before Pearl Harbor.

• Let the Italians invasion of Egypt go on. With a fallen Britain and control of the seas, Bennie can squander his peeps to his black heart's content.

• With a fallen Britain, make an alliance with Finland. If you're going to stab Russia in the back, get the ones who give the Soviets nightmares.

• With trucks from Spain, Portugal and Finnish forces opening up a second front, then attack Russia. By the time the US gets into the game, it's too late.

• The reason for all this waiting?? The V-1 and V-2, heavy bombers, jets and more trucks would help even the odds with Stalin.

Thankfully the only reason Hilter ever got as far as he did, despite his General Failure-dom was that someone down there liked him. And his generals, staff, Gestapo and his own staff were too busy plotting against each other.

Bottom line: Hitler can't afford to fight a static war of attrition with Russia while keeping the rest of Europe garrisoned and trying to fight The British Empire at the same time. With the US in the war, Germany's position was impossible. They don't have the reach to meaningfully strike at the US and they can't win the naval war.

Germany's only chance at winning would have been to prevent his offense stalling at Stalingrad and to keep the US out of the war.

For the first point, Hitler needs to: -Transition to full war production much earlier. The German army was designed for a short, tactical, knockout fight. It did very, very well at first, but the size of the Russian offensive was something that needed to be constantly reinforced and effectively supplied. -Let the generals fight the war. Hitler was an awful general. His aversion to retreat made his lost battles more costly than they needed to be, and he let his army get bogged down in the kind of static fighting that suited the Russians better than his own Army. If he had allowed his Generals more flexibility to take advantage of the Russian's weakness in logistics and organization, they might have been able to wipe out the Red Army before reserves could be brought up. -Don't be such a dick. The Holocaust was a massive waste of resources, and the Nazis did an excellent job of making sure that they could never benefit from a friendly population in any area they went to. Nor, for that matter, could they get resources they need from trade.

The second point is really tough. The Germans couldn't compete with the British navy, and really can't afford to try while fighting in Russia. Their major way of putting the squeeze on Britain was attacking their shipping, which is part of what got the US into WWI. Not making an alliance with Japan (Which wasn't really helping them militarily) might have helped. Meanwhile, the British were able to harass them in North Afrika, requiring a diversion of troops and logistics. If at all possible, Hitler should have tried to reach some kind of stand-off state with Britain. A full peace probably wasn't possible, but they needed to be able to focus on the eastern front.

All in all, Hitler needs to find a way to bite off less at a time. No number of strategic or tactical decisions would have allowed Germany to fight every battle he tried to fight at once. They might have made them more costly for the allies, but there was no way they were going to win a global war.

Probably wouldn't have helped. Carriers are great for projecting air power, but Germany already had land bases for aircraft in the areas where it was useful. Germany would have needed enough carriers to seriously challenged the British navy, which would have just given the British a way to fight you in the way they were best at. They weren't going to make a serious difference in the channel, which already had air cover, and getting them to the open seas means committing to a naval war with a country whose philosophy going into the war was that they should have a navy as strong as any other two navies in the world combined.

Awful idea. Stalin wasn't stupid. He knew that Germany wasn't serious about peace, and was scrambling to get his military ready to fight. Delaying would have cost Hitler his greatest advantage.

"Always be on the offensive" is a nice thing if you can achieve it, but in practice it requires a massive effort to keep the enemy off-balance. Being on the offensive against prepared defenses exposes you to high losses, and outrunning your supply lines means that your army is going to be wiped out when the counterattack comes and you don't have the fuel to retreat. Counting on loot and plunder is suicide: a massive offense needs massive support from the rear.

Or it can get sunk. A carrier isn't going to win a boxing match with land-based airfields.

Wasn't going to happen. The US wasn't exactly on great terms with Nazi Germany to start with. The US was already supporting Britain, and with Germany's formal ally declaring war on the US war with Germany was inevitable. Hell, Germany's deceleration of war on the US was practically meaningless. They weren't in a position to pursue it anyway.

Britain isn't falling that easily. They might not be able to invade the rest of Europe, but they still have global support from their empire and enough troops to make any attempt to invade them incredibly costly. Supplying the allied armies when they invaded France was a *huge* problem that took a lot of time and industry to solve, and the US was really good at that sort of thing.

Remember how, after WWII, Russia became the world's number 2 superpower? That didn't come out of nowhere. A war against a prepared Russia (while trying to keep Britain and the rest of Europe occupied) would have been a disaster for Germany.

edited 22nd Jul '14 10:23:08 AM by Bloodsquirrel