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).
Which is why I suggested starting earlier and trying to not be so militaristic. Not sure if that would require avoiding war with China or not, but it would definitely require not antagonizing the US.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayDude, I don't even know where to begin with German intelligence. Their entire British spy network was a plant by this spanish guy and nobody noticed. Even when he was making reports that were verifiably false since he never was in the UK and had to guess at the landmarks.
Hell, the British nearly killed him until someone realized that all his reports were BS.
The Kriegsmarine U-boats and Luftwaffe Ju 88s should have tried to cross verify before anyone trusted an outsider.
Basic point being, if you want to improve Germany's fortune's in the war, you could do a lot worse than simply tightening its intelligence protocols. In spite of its flaws, Enigma was pretty damn good, but its human component was rather...lacklustre.
Probably won't let them win the war, but may well allow them to give the Allies bloody noses.
With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.Dude, I don't even know where to begin with German intelligence. Their entire British spy network was a plant by this spanish guy and nobody noticed. Even when he was making reports that were verifiably false since he never was in the UK and had to guess at the landmarks.
To be fair, it wasn't just that one Spanish guy. The Germans sent numerous spies to England, and every single one of them was intercepted with most persuaded to turn double agent.
So they weren't just blindly trusting one unreliable spy, they were trusting lots of unreliable spies.
edited 4th Aug '14 11:11:20 PM by storyyeller
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayThe problem seems to be less "Germany's got terrible intelligence" and more "Britain's Intelligence is fucking superhuman"
"All you Fascists bound to lose."^ More like more experienced. MI 5 and MI 6 (or rather their predecessor agencies/orgs) have been around for a while and their lineage dates back a hell of a lot longer than anything Germany ever had.
They don't call it Der Fuhrer's Secret Service, it's Her Majesty's Secret Service. (Even though the thing does not officially exist.)
edited 5th Aug '14 5:49:57 PM by MajorTom
Actually, the problem was that the Germans only made a major intelligence effort against the UK after the war started. They were focused on France.
This is to say nothing of the failures of German intelligence against the Soviet Union. Chief of Staff Halder, on the 42nd day of the campaign, was practically weeping into the army's war diary: "When we began this campaign we counted on a Russian army of 142 large formations. We have to date engaged 214." Hell, the British, who were not even planning an invasion of Russia, counted roughly 200 large formations in European Russia just before Barbarossa, and also marked more of them as armored rather than infantry compared to the Germans.
If you can find it, and it may be out of print, read Hitler's Spies by David Kahn.
Hah! Yeah right. Japan was the only Axis country that could have actually gotten something out of World War II.
It was not inevitable that the United States would go to war with Japan. It was inevitable that it would go to war with Germany; that was what FDR wanted. If Japan had simply attacked the holdings of the colonial powers, it is very likely the United States would not have gone to war for them; the US was noticeably cool towards helping them recover their colonial possessions during and after the war.
The colonial powers of Europe were not able to beat Japan, because Japan's investments in the IJN meant it could chew up and spit out any of the European navies. Seapower is vitally important to success in the Pacific because it's the only way to get anywhere, even when dealing with the Asian mainland. The Royal Navy, the only European force that even has a prayer of matching the IJN, can't afford to take the losses it would require. The RN has built up its stock of warships by careful planning across decades. The RN can't pull off a Guadalcanal; it doesn't have the ability to repair and replace major fleet losses. They are also hopelessly far behind in carrier doctrine and aircraft; a knock-down drag-out between First Air Fleet and British carrier air can hardly be described as less than a nightmare scenario for the RN.
In retrospect, Japan went about the Pacific War in exactly the wrong way. Even if they really, really did have to fight the US, they still should have done so differently. Pearl Harbor had an immense unifying, no-quarter effect on the public; it cost Japan any chance of the negotiated settlement that was required to gain something from the war. WW 2 is the only war in American history without a significant antiwar movement. It was also a temporary setback at best. Even attempting to destroy the base facilities at Pearl would probably have only bought Japan three months while they were rebuilt; sinking the battleships in shallow water didn't put them out of the game for very long either.
Pearl Harbor also invalidated all the US pre-war planning on fighting Japan, which was good for the US since its pre-war planning would have been very unlikely to stand up to the reality of Japanese night warfare skills and massed carrier airpower, and very bad for Japan, since they had massive doctrinal and positional advantages for the expected Battle Line action near the Philippines that both sides foresaw. If the USN and IJN had both executed their pre-war plans for fighting each other, it is difficult to see how Japan could not have crushed Pacific Fleet as a unit and including its carriers.
edited 5th Aug '14 8:02:11 PM by Night
Nous restons ici.Many and varied, from combinedfleet.com to Shattered Sword to Retribution to the official USN history to The First Team to a sense of RN ship construction/modernization/ultimate fates from running a Today In Naval History project over on the World Of Warships forums to Captain Eric Brown's collected test flights of contemporary naval aircraft to simply inferring the possibilities from what actually happened.
As for the other part, about Germany, I already gave you a one-stop source.
Japan itself had something of an intraservice battle over the decision to attack the United States, and the fact it got done was largely because they were unwilling to bring Isoroku Yamamoto to heel, much as they had been unwilling to bring to heel the colonels behind the Manchuria Incident.
edited 6th Aug '14 5:45:40 AM by Night
Nous restons ici.Yeah, having air superiority helps... but you have to actually be able to refuel your planes. This is one of the many reasons Germany failed the Russian invasion—Hitler thought his superior air force would help him out, but the planes just didn't have the kind of range necessary for prolonged air strikes.
I feel like a lot of Germany's problems back then could have been resolved if Hitler simply decided to give Japanese the finger and cut off all the relations between them once they got too cavalier with US. From Nazis' ideological standpoint any kind of Asian being an ally was simply illogical. While this could be understood as simply having a powerful ally, once they went too far, there was no real reason for Hitler to declare war to US.
With that out of the way, you have tons and tons of people sitting in camps. Use them as a workforce. Rather than just straight-out murdering Jews, you could have some mileage out of them before murdering them.
Give up trying to conquer UK right away. Brits were stuck in there, so there was no point to try and blitzkrieg them like the French. They're on an island, for Christ's sake, you can't just waltz in there. Try it later, but only when you've accumulated enough navy forces to match the British. Controlling the waters 'round the isles should be enough.
Make it a point to begin Operation Barbarossa early enough. If need to, postpone it a year to root out and/or contain any troublesome elements(guerrillas, Mussolini's antics etc.). Let Stalin murder some more of his people before jumping in. Go straight to Moscow. If you can take the Kremlin, the regime will fall like a house of cards. For that matter, if you really want to antagonize locals, do so only after you've conquered Moscow.
Ideally you've just took the entirety of Europe sans Francoland, Finland and the Brits. Keep constant tabs of US' movements. Once Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, ditch them immediately, so FDR has no reason to slug you with US Army. You could even declare war on Japanese in the first place. It's mostly symbolic, but that way you get American radicals' approval, further limiting FDR's options.
Congratulations, you now have enough undisturbed Lebensraum to populate it with tons of Aryan Germans. Good job. Now rot in Hell.
edited 15th Sep '14 8:19:30 AM by FergardStratoavis
Just one problem. The purges were more or less done by the time of Barbarossa's launch. There wasn't a lot of incompetence left to purge. By the time of Stalingrad (less than a year after Barbarossa's launch mind you), all you had left on the Soviet side were the competent and resourceful, those who knew how to stave off the Germans while also avoiding Comrade Stalin.
Give the Soviets an extra year of preparation and every commander would be a Nikita Khrushchev and Vasily Chuikov. Plus instead of facing off against BT-series tanks and immobile KV-1s (and various bric-a-brac from Lend Lease or elsewhere), Stalin would have had entire divisions of combat ready T-34s as opposed to the scattered bits he had initially.
What Hitler needed to do to beat the Soviet Union was launch earlier. That one month postponement of Barbarossa was the only thing in the end that saved the Russians' bacon. One month earlier and the Soviets would have been even less prepared.
I doubt the Russians would have lost under any set of circumstances, what with a two front war, and Russia's de-centralized economic capacity. But Germany would have done better longer had they attacked earlier.
@Fergard: You are not aware of the slave labor that Germany utilized, including Jews?
Once Hitler took France, he had to knock out the Brits. Failing to do that led directly to Normandy. Attacking Russia without first eliminating the British threat to his flank was his major strategic blunder of the war. Under no circumstances whatsoever could Germany have ever matched GB's capacity to rebuild their navy over time, and Hitler knew it.
The whole point of invading Russia was to secure the oil fields and the farmland in Ukraine. Attacking, even taking Moscow was Napoleon's mistake, and Hitler knew that too. Russia was never going to collapse like a house of cards- the only thing Russian peasants hate more than their own overlords is some foreigner invading their fatherland.
So, no, although you have some interesting ideas, I dont think it would have been nearly that simple and easy.
edited 15th Sep '14 8:45:07 AM by demarquis
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.@Demarquis: Very much so. I'm just saying that it could have been used on a greater scale.
Regarding the morale of the Russians however, I would argue that in this case for them foreigners were, at least initially, better than the rulers of the fatherland in question. Before it was revealed that Hitler is no better than Stalin, tons upon tons of people peacefully surrendered whenever German army showed up. I mean, they hated Stalin's guts and for a good reason: just how many people did he kill for various ends?
Had Hitler resorted to this pointless locals' antagonizing after dealing with Stalin, Russians' defense wouldn't be as nearly effective as it was.
I suppose I can agree on topic of letting UK free although I still think that had it not for America's involvement the Normandy would look completely different and would likely be organized much later - if at all.
@Major Tom: While I can agree on the purge part, the bit with better tanks would also apply to Germans, wouldn't it? Assuming there would be this extra year gap and nothing extraordinary happened in between, both forces would be upgrading at a steady pace. At the same time however, Russians' morale would go down and down with each month for the reasons mentioned above while Germans would likely be no less than euphoric from their triumphs and what not.
Of course, I'm not an expert by any means and I'm certain it's not as easy as I portrayed it in my first post here, so feel free to prove your arguments are sounder than mine.
I think they drained every last bit of sweat they could from their slave laborers. There is no way to use such a workforce sustainably in the long term, not in a modern economy.
I dont suppose we will ever know what the average Russian's attitude might have been, had circumstances been radically different. It's not like anyone did an opinion survey at the time. I would just point out that the Germans treating the "Slavs" as anything more than slave fodder would have required them not to be led by Nazi's, in which case they would have been very unlikely to have been there in the first place.
Hitler vastly underestimated America's potential contribution to his enemies' war effort, but that only makes his mistake even worse. Had he realized just what having the US industrial steamroller come down on him would mean, he would never have invaded Russia at all, at least until he could secure the Atlantic coastline (assuming he ever could).
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Not necessarily. Improvements to current Panzers in the Wehrmacht largely came as a result of combat. (Especially against the KV-1 and T-34.) The Panther was developed as a direct result of contact with enemy T-34s and the Tiger was spurred on by newer Allied tanks like the Sherman, Lee, Grant and Matilda as well as experience against the T-34 and KV series.
I don't think there was any realistic chance of invading Britain. Hitler was right to ignore it.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayThe german tanks weren't actually all that technologically impressive at the start. What made them such a shock to everybody else in Europe was the way they were used, and particularly the way they discarded the cruiser/infantry tank doctrine (note ).
Interestingly enough, other nations' armies at the time were starting to realize that this was a dead end too and were working on their own approaches. If Hitler'd waited much longer, chances are he'd have gone up against people who'd seriously considered and planned against his initial strategies.
Uninformed thought: What if Hitler had backstabbed Stalin by not invading Poland? The wrath of France and Britain might then have fallen solely on the Soviets, and perhaps they would have taken Germany as an ally of convenience instead. Then Germany could have an opportunity to move their tanks through and counter-invade and seize crucial Russian infrastructure without provoking a second front.
ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NO

^ After the Indian Ocean Raid...not really.