He'd have had to put the British in the situation where any offense would be prohibitively costly and doomed to fail, while not dumping resources into any offensive operations.
Yes, it's a long shot, but the chances of winning a victory that will lessen the need for forces in the west in time to help with the eastern front were nil.
That's not entirely true. The Maginot line was designed with the intent of making sure that the next big war didn't happen on French soil. They fully expected the Germans to try to outflank it, and situated their troops accordingly.
The problem was that, in the meantime between the inception of the Maginot line and Germany invading Poland, French politicians had used the Maginot line as an excuse to underprepare their military. Once they were defeated they had no reserves or secondary defenses to fall back on, and they were completely overrun. The French were overconfident of beating the Germans in Belgium, and when they lost they had nothing to fall back on. By contrast, the Russians knew they couldn't hold back the Germans so easily and did their best to delay the advance while denying the Germans spoils, took the same kind of losses, but came back swinging when the German's initial thrust was spent.
edited 22nd Jul '14 10:39:31 AM by Bloodsquirrel
"Yes, it's a long shot, but the chances of winning a victory that will lessen the need for forces in the west in time to help with the eastern front were nil."
A very long shot. The British Empire had been playing that game for over 200 years. They were very good at acting as the spoilers in Continental wars by then (and Hitler was well aware of it).
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.The record says otherwise though. US, IJN, and UK carriers all fought land based airfields in WW 2 and won. Sometimes those carriers beat the absolute fuck out of the land based airfield.
Those were island-based and usually tiny in both the local facilities (which often couldn't handle larger planes such as the light bombers used as night-fighters) and in capacity compared to things like the RAF's base network. The carrier wouldn't be going up against one airfield. It'd be up against several dozen at the same time. It wouldn't even remotely be a contest.
edited 22nd Jul '14 4:06:50 PM by MattStriker
Yes, compared to the RAF's defense network right on it's own borders, Midway was tiny. And isolated. And the Japanese still weren't going to take it with a single carrier. They attacked it with four carriers and a fleet of escorts. And... uh... you know that they lost that battle, right?
And why are you even bringing up Hickam? You realize that was part of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, right?
Here's the thing: you can't sink an airfield. You can damage it, but they can be rebuilt relatively easily. The US could build them in days. Carriers are a bit harder to replace. And you can also surround your airfields with AA guns. To do that for a carrier you need to put a ship under them. Carriers are also more limited on the types of aircraft they can carry. Despite having plenty of carriers, establishing air strips was still a priority in the Pacific.
What, exactly, would a carrier in the channel have done for Germany that an air base in France couldn't?
edited 22nd Jul '14 4:33:04 PM by bloodsquirrel
Midway Air Station was hit early in the battle and lost most combat effectiveness. Their contributions to Spruance's victory were somewhat minimal.
It was well within air cover range of Pearl Harbor. Medium and heavy bombers could use the place to attack from Dutch Harbor in the north to anywhere in Hawaii in the south and the vast carpet of ocean in between.
That's why the IJN went for it. They were gonna use it as a springboard to finish the US Pacific Fleet off and take Hawaii and the war. Fortunately things didn't go that way.
"Airfield vs carrier in a boxing match". Hickam and Wheeler were major aerial installations. And like a boxer who gets KO'd by a surprise haymaker at the beginning of a match they got their shit kicked in by the Japanese carriers and their aircraft.
"Of the 108 Japanese aircraft involved in this attack, 11 were destroyed, 14 were heavily damaged, and 29 were damaged to some degree. The initial Japanese attack did not succeed in neutralizing Midway: American bombers could still use the airbase to refuel and attack the Japanese invasion force, and most of Midway's land-based defenses were intact. Japanese pilots reported to Nagumo that another aerial attack to soften Midway's defences would be necessary if troops were to go ashore by 7 June.[59]"
Midway promptly launched counterattacks afterward.
Midway is 1300 miles away from Pearl Harbor. That's good enough for bombing raids against land-based targets with heavy bombers, not for reacting to an a naval attack. This would be why no planes from Hawaii took part in the battle of Midway.
Even aside from the fact that you're trying to stretch an analogy past the point where it has any relevance to your argument, a boxing match means that you're going against someone who knows that there's a fight on. Running up to someone on the street who's sipping his coffee and punching them is not a boxing match. You can't even hope to be technically correct on this point. Unless the British somehow forget that they're at war with Germany and revert to a state of total unreadiness this is nothing but a silly tangent that you're pursing.
edited 22nd Jul '14 5:09:30 PM by bloodsquirrel
The problem with knocking out an airfield with a carrier is that the airfield doesn't stay knocked out. Sure, blow up the munitions depot, set fire to the fuel bunkers, and crater the runway and it's not going to be servicing any planes any time soon but all this can be fixed with adequate supplies.
A sunken carrier is gone for good.
Taking on the British in a naval fight was a loosing proposition to begin with. What the Germans needed to do is figure out a good way of leveraging their air power to knock out British fleets. The Stukas were accurate enough to hit battleships and carried enough firepower to sink one as evidence of the Russian Marat. Still, the Marat has somewhat thin deck armor and the Stuka was vulnerable to enemy air power.
The problem is that even if the Germans were successful at attacking via air, they'd just move the ships north where they would be untouchable.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayDriving the british fleet north can be considered a victory in and of itself. If anything it lets the Kriegsmarine patrol the entirety of the english channel which means that D-Day would be impossible as we know it. Drop tanks, which historicly didn't show up until late in the war, would have extended the Stuka's range even more.
Essentially, if the germans had any hope of winning WW 2 or even fighting to a draw they need to keep air superiority. That means giving the Me262 all the funding it needs and not blocking it's deployment in 1943.
It wouldn't allow the Kriegsmarine to do anything in the channel but get chewed up by the still very much existing RAF.
The main defense ships had against air attack wasn't having their own fighters: It was not being where the enemy air assets thought you were. Essentially, carrier fleets were playing Battleships, sending probing missions to spots where enemy forces might be and hoping to get lucky. Anything that got spotted would quickly be the target of a massive strike.
The problem with applying that to the Channel is that there's simply not enough room to maneuver there. You can't hide in the Channel.
At best, they could have turned the Channel into a kind of no-man's-land where no surface ship could hope to survive for long (and even subs would be at serious risk).
As for the planes involved...
Stukas were a dead-end design. They were effective early on in the war, but once the allies learned how to deal with them they became flying coffins with horrendous loss rates. The whole dive-bomber concept was dropped by pretty much everybody in the later stages of the war...it just didn't work against defenders who knew what they were doing, and the Stuka was a particularly weak dive-bomber design in that respect.
The 262...yeah, it's a Cool Plane, but it was the epitome of Awesome, but Impractical. Difficult to produce and maintain, fuel-guzzling and malfunction-prone, its effect on the war was minimal, and it would have remained minimal if it'd entered production earlier simply because at that point the Allies could easily produce several dozen cheap and reliable piston-driven fighters for every potential 262 and win by Zerg Rush.
edited 23rd Jul '14 5:38:25 AM by MattStriker
Germany couldn't beat the UK, US, and USSR, regardless of strategy or tactics. Therefore, I wouldn't try that.
The only major difference up through the Battle of France is Dunkirk. Just finish that off with the Heer instead of waiting for the Luftwaffe to fail.
After that, though, the goal is to make peace with Britain. This means no Battle of Britain, no Operation Sealion, and no wolfpacks attacking British shipping. Also, don't waste extra resources on the Kriegsmarine/denounce the AGNA. It wouldn't beat the Royal Navy even if it tried, so don't bother with it beyond heavy cruisers.
If Britain refuses to make peace immediately, take Malta, then Egypt, then the rest of the Middle East until they agree to terms. The only demands for peace are signing the Anti-Comintern Pact, a UK-Japan alliance and surrendering Malta if it's been taken. Mediate between Italy and Britain/Greece/whoever-Mussolini-decides-to-attack for your own benefit.
The end-game is to fight the Soviets with the US, UK, and Japan on your side. It's basically Patton's post-WW 2 plan without the western front battles. After the USSR goes down, all Germany needs to do is win the peace through trade with the other major powers acknowledging that mainland Europe is German.
Arguably, you could bribe them with Belgium. It isn't that valuable and it's a long standing ally of Britton. Yes, you're going to loose political clout for a concession to a country "on the ropes" but you're a dictator, f'ck the opposition.
It may be possible to take on the soviets then but you need to capture the Russian farmlands and oil fields to the south. Without those resources Stalin can't utilize swarm tactics since large armies would eat through his stores.
On the subject of tanks, what about a tiger with stripped down armor. The 88mm was one of the best guns in the war but the tiger was overpriced and riddled with issues. Less armor would at least mean less strain on the engine.
"The end-game is to fight the Soviets with the US, UK, and Japan on your side."
Again, not gonna happen. The UK knows better than to commit long-term suicide by giving Hitler continental Europe. Their strategy since 1688 had been not to let any one power dominate Europe. And anyway the UK went, the US would follow, meaning that in the long run, the Anglo-Americans are unbeatable.
So- Hitler was on the horns of a dilemma: Invade Poland and start a war with France and the UK, while Stalin builds up in the East, eventually to invade; or somehow invade Russia without going through Poland. Every other scenario leads to Germany's defeat.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.The thing about finishing conflicts with britain was, well...britain was extremely dedicated to making sure Germany would never, ever become globally relevant again (complete failure in the long run, but it was a big factor in starting both world wars). They likely would have jumped in to keep Germany down no matter what, and they would have pulled every string available to them to get others in as well.
And Stalin was expansionist and had an eye on the same regions Germany had a shot at expanding into. If Hitler hadn't attacked when he did, a rather nasty soviet attack would have rolled over Germany a few years later.
So...they had an implacable enemy on one side and The Starscream on the other.
edited 23rd Jul '14 2:33:51 PM by MattStriker
or more likey dont be and asshole if you try to take over europe, but to be fair i dont think hitler ever thought he would go to become a petty demagogue to the futher
now, to make more dificult, you are the imperial japan, what would you do?
edited 24th Jul '14 9:53:00 AM by unknowing
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"Don't attack Pearl Harbour. They just don't have the industrial capacity to go toe-to-toe with the US.
Arguably Imperial Japan did the same thing as Germany, opened up their war on too many fronts. Occupying China was a huge drain on their resources and they really only got away with their expansion into South East Asia by the fact that the forces of the colonial powers were tied up in Europe.
They didn't really have a lot of choice. The oil embargo would have crippled their economy and forced them to abandon all their earlier territorial gains, more or less (which is pretty explicitly what it was meant to do). Their options were either going to war against the US, which they reckoned they might pull off with a sufficiently damaging sucker punch, or resign themselves to small-country status forever. Given what that would have done to their interior situation (the loss of face would have been devastating), their backs were against the wall.

"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."
That's the entire problem right there. Basically, not going to happen, because the Brits arent idiots. They know that if Russia gets knocked out, they're next, so the worse off Russia appears to be, the more pressure GB is going to try to bring on to Germany. And FDR isnt going to let GB lose, no matter what.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.